Captain America, He's Our Hero!

Did You Know?

• We sent $2.6 billion dollars in oil money to Hugo Chavez in July 2007 alone!
• Global Warming also results in more intense hurricanes, malaria at higher altitudes, more frequent wildfires and droughts.
• The oil demands of China are funding the genocide in Darfur
• Even oil producing countries like Abu Dhabi are developing green technology because of its profitability.
• The average American emits five times as much greenhouse gas as the world average.
• China is constructing the equivalent of one large coal-fueled power station per week. Some estimates put it closer to three.
• If the U.S. constructed enough wind farms to fully tap the resources of the Great Plains, the turbines could generate nearly three times the total amount produced from ALL energy sources in the nation last year.
• A simple CFL (compact fluorescent bulb) lasts 10x longer and uses 1/4 the energy of a conventional incandescent bulb.
• If everyone in the US recycled the Sunday paper, we could save over half a million trees every week!

Learn more!! Read the Dems Energy Policy Paper, written by the Legislative Committee!

http://www.harvarddems.com/files/energy-policy.pdf

Play your Wii, save the environment

So we have here a nice little chart describing the power consumption of the latest video game options out there.  Power guzzlers all, with the exception of Nintendo's latest offering, the Wii (pronounced like the pronoun "we").  So when you are looking for your next procrastination tool entertainment system, make sure you get the system that won't use oodles of electricity and also can double as a fitness program.

Incandescent gets the ol' pink slip

Australia just outlawed the incandescent light bulb, such that 3 years from now no stores will sell incandescent bulbs.  Good bye tungsten, hello florescent glow! Interior photographers across the one nation continent are weeping tonight.  This is not a move that is unprecedented, in fact our own coastal friend, California, had a similar proposition back in late January.  This plan gives five years for the transition, allowing all those Californians time to upgrade to SUN-A-LUX-super-awesome-sunlight-except-not bulbs.  So what do you all think of our little, inefficient friend the incandescent light? What would you do with a bulb that is more than 5% efficient in light production? Anybody want to stick up for our 125 year old friend?  

How Many Earths Would We Need If Everyone Lived Like You?

Check out your eco-footprint to see how many acres you take up and how you compare to other people. Help raise consciousness about consumption and how much is available on the planet!

My Eco-Footprint:

CATEGORY ACRES FOOD 3.2   MOBILITY 5.9   SHELTER 4.2   GOODS/SERVICES 9.1   TOTAL FOOTPRINT 22
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 5.1 PLANETS.

(I must say that the 22 score is interesting because that only happens when I put Cambridge as my residence. When I do back home in Oceanside, CA, I get 16.)

Saving the World, One Ethernet Connection at a Time

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is working on a way to have wired ethernet connections take less power.  The linked article deals more with the technical side of the problems,  but it also summarizes the 2002 Dept. of Energy study that says " that the total power consumption of enterprise IT equipment in U.S. offices at around 97 terawatt hours per year, which translates to around $8 billion per year in energy costs. Extrapolating that cost over time, and accounting for network-related power consumption, the study group came up with the estimate of $450 million per year. "  The technical idea behind this is that most computers come with gigabit ethernet connections which, while faster, take more energy than 100mbps connections, which in turn take more than 10mbps connections.  The idea is that the new study group will find a way to make it such that computers can scale back the bandwidth of their connection to use less power when it isn't needed.  

Now if only they could work on making my wireless ethernet not take up so much battery life... 

Senator Inhofe's Big Dirty Inconvenient Truth

Last week, the Chair for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Senator Inhofe, made a speech on the Senate floor “debunking” the "myth" of global warming. He made vicious attacks on Al Gore (which doesn’t seem politically motivated at all considering that Inhofe is a Republican) and cited scientists who receive checks from Exxon-Mobile in the mail.

Speaking of checks—let’s take a look at where Inhofe’s campaign money comes from!

--When he was elected in 2002, he was the politician who received the 3^rd largest sum of money ($462,015) from the energy and natural resources sector—meaning the oil and gas, electricity and mining sectors

--This year he has received close to $600,000 from this same sector

--5 of his top 6 contributors are: Murray Energy, Koch Industries (a gigantic oil conglomerate), National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Cummins Inc (Designer and manufacturer of power generation equipment, power systems, gasoline engines), and OGE energy

--The top two industries that support him are oil and gas contributing $314,208 and electric companies contributing $191,907

Looks like the only inconvenient truth may be that he gets the vast majority of his funding from you guessed it oil/gas and electric companies—That couldn’t possibly be either a HUGE conflict of interest or the reason why he is attacking the vast scientific consensus on global warming, could it?

Gee I wonder why Inhofe gave this little speech in the Senate the other day…

I think the answer has much more to do with political science than climate science