Treehugger reports on the power use of the latest chips from Intel and AMD. It looks as if both companies are making enormous strides in the performance-per-watt arena.
If you are planning on buying a new computer, take a look at the results. It’s getting easier to have the ultimate in computing power while being a bit more friendly to the earth.
Steve Irwin was known as being a bit on the wild side. He took lots of chances while taping his shows. This was a display of how connected he felt with nature. Irwin had set up Australia Zoo, a wildlife park. The site is unfortunately down at the moment.
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Tropical Storm Ernesto spared us. I think that this is partially due to the mountainous regions of Cuba. Regardless, things worked out for the best. This was a test of my hurricane preparedness. How would I rate my preparedness?
Food and Water: 10
Flood-proofing: 6
Deep Cycle Battery / Solar Supplemental Power System: 5
Generator Supplies: 8
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The Miami Herald reports on Zach Gruskin. He is a 15 year old who is interning at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division on Virginia Key.
From the Miami Herald report:
One day last week, Zach led the daily tropical weather briefing at the research center, more than holding his own before nearly a dozen of the nation’s top hurricane researchers.
New Scientist Premium- A fuel tank full of water:
Forget cars fuelled by alcohol and vegetable oil. Before long, you might be able to run your car with nothing more than water in its fuel tank. It would be the ultimate zero-emissions vehicle.
While water, plain old H2O, is not at first sight an obvious power source, it has a key virtue: it is an abundant source of hydrogen, the element widely touted as the green fuel of the future. If that hydrogen could be liberated on demand, it would overcome many of the obstacles that till now have prevented the dream of a hydrogen-powered car becoming reality. Producing hydrogen by conventional industrial means is expensive, inefficient and often polluting. Then there are the problems of storing and transporting hydrogen. The pressure tanks required to hold usable quantities of the fuel are heavy and cumbersome, which restricts the car’s performance and range.
I could not read any more of the article online as I do not subscribe. There is a synopsis of the article at Platinum Today. It turns out that the reaction between water and boron would release hydrogen and have a by-product of boron oxide. The boron oxide could then later be converted back.
The Tesla Roadster was recently unveiled. It is an electric sports coupe. I want one! (Well… if I had a much larger income) It goes 0-60 in around 4 seconds according to the company.
Autoblog produced a video of Tesla Motor’s Roadster:
Business 2.0: Chiquita cleans up its act - August 1, 2006
At first, Dave McLaughlin didn’t tell his bosses at Chiquita that he was talking to environmentalists, much less taking their suggestions. After all, the banana company’s executives so mistrusted the “greens” that meetings with them often turned into shouting matches.
“They would sit at opposite ends of the table,” McLaughlin says.
Treehugger: Lessons to Learn From BP’s Latest Misstep
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the US will spend an additional $24 million per day on oil imports as a result of the increased prices that were prompted by the BP shutdown. The science-based nonprofit organization also determined that if all the cars and trucks on US roads gained one extra mile per gallon, the 400,000 barrels produced daily at Prudhoe Bay would be irrelevant.
Treehugger: Biomimetic Building Uses Termite Mound As Model:
The Eastgate Centre is a shopping centre and office block in central Harare, Zimbabwe. The building was designed to be ventilated and cooled entirely by natural means — it was biomimetically modeled on local termite mounds. It was probably the first building in the world to use natural cooling to this level of sophistication.
Verizon heeds call of fuel cells | CNET News.com:
Verizon’s Garden City project is unique because it uses fuel cells as its primary source of energy. Seven fuel cells generate power for a 292,000-square-foot facility that provides telephone and data services to some 35,000 customers on Long Island. And it’s connected to the commercial power grid as backup. This is a complete paradigm shift for a company that traditionally uses diesel-fueled generators as backups to the commercial grid.
By producing its own energy, Verizon is adding another layer of network reliability that it can fully control. And as luck would have it, new, cleaner technologies such as fuel cells also help the company reduce energy costs, as well as the impact on the environment over time, making the situation a win-win.