There is some very, very scary stuff going on with the environment right now. For those of you that have seen the movie An Inconvienent Truth, these stories are almost apocalyptic. For those of you that haven’t yet seen the flick, what are you waiting for?

First piece of news: Enormous Ice Shelf Snaps off in Arctic, published: Dec 28, 2006 (Also the NASA article.)

An ancient ice shelf has cracked off northern Ellesmere Island, creating an enormous, 66- square-kilometre ice island and leaving a trail of icy blocks in its wake….
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December 5, 2006

New World Record Achieved in Solar Cell Technology
New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.
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Surprisingly (at least to me) the Christian Science Monitor has a very good article about a guy that cut his electric useage by 2/3rd, so I figure that even if you don’t do everything he did you should be able to cut yours in 1/2!

Personally I’ve already done everything on this list, and then some, and as a result our electric bills are less than people we know whose houses are smaller than half our home’s size. I’m telling you, these tips work!
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The Wollemi pine tree is a rare species that dominated the southern hemisphere for over 100 million years. And when I say “rare” what I really mean is that it was thought to be extinct until 1994 when a hiker found a grove of about 100 of the plants in the middle of a one million acre wilderness area outside Sydney, Australia.

In order to help keep these trees alive, they have discovered a way to sell clippings from the trees which are now available for purchase from National Geographic for $100.
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First of all, if you haven’t seen the movie An Inconvenient Truth you need to do so. I couldn’t possibly give a suitable recap of all the information presented there.

Ok. This can’t be a coincidence…

Every year for the last several years has set new records for wildfires. The Nov. 20 edition of Business Week first brought this to my attention when they reported:
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Junk mail is more than a nuisance: unsolicited mail has a tremendous negative impact on the environment. At least 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail, and 28 billion gallons of water are used to produce the paper.

All of these resources are wasted to produce items many people don’t even look at: about half of all junk mail is thrown out unopened or unread, and the rate of response to junk mail is less than 2 percent. The result is that more than 4 million tons of paper is wasted every year, according to the Native Forest Network (now known as the WildWest Institute).

Junk mail also has a direct negative economic impact as well. An estimated $320 million of local taxes are used to dispose of junk mail annually, and transportation of junk mail costs about $550 million per year, not to mention the air pollution generated during transport.

You can fight back. Read on to learn about effective ways to reduce and even eliminate junk mail in 15 minutes or less!
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A company called Aqua Sciences was recently put on the Time Best Inventions list for it’s portable water extraction systems. These systems can be deployed to areas affected by disaster to ensure adequate clean water supplies.

The 20-foot machine can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts. They also have larger units that can pump out 1200 gallons a day.
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Today I went to see Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I had heard a lot of positive buzz about the film and the IMDB rating is 8.2, which is off the chart.

The movie is a documentary and is more like sitting through a PowerPoint presentation than actually watching a movie. In fact, the vast majority of the movie is watching Mr. Gore actually giving a presentation to an audience somewhere. Although that might sound a bit boring, the movie grabbed and held my attention from beginning to end.
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