13 News for the 31st
By Daniel de la Calle Three years ago you really needed to scrape at the bottom of the barrel to come up with news on the web about Ocean Acidification. Today I am “only” posting 13 items and have to leave at least 10 more out: ≈≈≈≈64% of the waters existing outside national jurisdiction, the […]
Information & Communication
By Daniel de la Calle Information and communication, going hand in hand as should be: »Lecture near Lake Tahoe: Dr. Howard Spero, UC Davis, will deliver a lecture titled Changing Seas about the earth’s climate, climate change throughout history and ocean (and Lake Tahoe) acidification. The date is March 22nd at 5:30PM and the location […]
News, Some Good
By Daniel de la Calle »Washington State became last month the first in the USA to create an expert panel on Ocean Acidification. The panel, convened by Gov. Chris Gregoire, is made up of scientists, seafood industry representatives and local and tribal officials. It has set up three tasks: 1 Survey the latest […]
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
By Daniel de la Calle Two news, one good and one bad. Then the ugly: THE GOOD: NASA claims to have developed an innovative method called OMEGA (Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae), that grows algae, cleans waste-water, captures carbon dioxide and ultimately generates biofuel without competing with agriculture for water, fertilizer or land. Wow. […]
To Save Corals
By Daniel de la Calle Right where you read these words now many others have stood, layer upon layer, in a frustrated attempt to write about corals and my dives at the Tayrona National Park back in June. They were not the problem, the source of trouble was the confusing mixture of sensations and […]
Videos Of Present & Future Inventions
By Daniel de la Calle This weekend I wanted to take a look at inventions, some that look like science fiction but are in fact here with us now, other technologies that still need years or decades in development to be functional but that look promising, ingenious, and cheap simple ideas that are changing the […]
Little Red Dots
By Daniel de la Calle• Don’t be afraid to scratch if they itch: •Anyone who has been to the Pacific Northeast in general and to Puget Sound in particular can bear witness to its beauty and uniqueness. An invisible contributor to this distinctiveness lies in the origin of its waters: strong currents bring […]
Screening at the Oil Company
By Daniel de la Calle from Ipanema Beach, Brazil This past Friday the 28th A Sea Change screened at the CENPES center in Rio de Janeiro. It is a massive 25 acre complex that employs over 1,500 biologists, chemists, marine ecologists and engineers working in interdisciplinary groups at the Petrobras headquarters, one of the leading […]
Some News, Some Information
By Daniel de la Calle Our poor blog has remained silent for over two weeks. I do not know how to make excuses sound like explanations, so my excuses are that I was busy showing Barbara Ettinger (our director) and Sven Huseby (our protagonist) my side of the world and after their departure I suffered […]
Reading on the Beach
By Daniel de la Calle On my last blog post I promised a picture from the wind turbines around Zahara de los Atunes in Spain. Driving with my daughter on the twisty road with no shoulder three days ago I chickened out and chose life over greatness. We humbly pulled out on a dirt road […]
Anthropocentric Geoengineering!
By Daniel de la Calle If there is one possible scenario that frightens me more than our current lack of action to stop the countless maladies we are inflicting upon the planet it is this very tempting flight forward casino gamble of geoengineering. Just two unoriginal thoughts I want to throw out there: No scientist […]
Facebook app tracks energy consumption
Peer pressure’s getting employed in a new Facebook application that monitors power consumption. Called GreeNet, it tracks the user’s energy consumption patterns via data from electric companies. If you engage in energy-saving activities you get virtual flowers on Facebook. GreeNet is designed by Kevin Muise, an MA student and Jin Fan, a third-year undergrad, of […]
Fishmobiles galore
We were looking for the Fishmobile designed by Urban Studio Brooklyn and Habana Works and found this one instead, an art car which frequents Burning Man–we like it so much we couldn’t resist posting it here.(What can we say: we’re fans of Burning Man, even though it may have gotten too big for its britches.) […]
Green For All
Greening the US plus jobs for the job-less. A win-win if I ever saw one. increasing the flow of green to the disenfranchised in the forms of jobs hence income increasing American’s use of green energy http://www.greenforall.org/
Al Gore’s green energy challenge
Here’s Al Gore’s complete speech of July 17, in which he challenges the US to attain sustainable energy goals by 2018, courtesy EnergyEnvironmentTV.
Shopping for a green sleeve for our new laptop
We just invested in a new laptop, a MacBook Pro. We’re shopping for a protective sleeve, so we can carry it around safely. Want to go as sustainable as we can with the purchase, live up to our aspirations if we can. We’ve done a bit of research, and have found the following links to […]
Shopping for green laptop sleeve
Well, such a thing may exist only in our dreams.But thanks to a kind friend–Steven Volynets from GoodCleanTech–we’ve found something pretty close from a company called Simple Shoes. Affordable, cute, responsively sourced: yup, pretty close. The materials are hemp, organic cotton, jute, felt. No cherry red or golden scales. We’re leaning toward the burnt brick. […]
Hot rocks help us cool down, courtesy Google
Google.org is funding a brand-new renewable energy technology, to the tune of $10 million. It’s technology powered by hot rocks deep underground. I.e., several miles down. Here’s what Louis J. Sheehan has to say about it on a Greenpeace USA blog: "The technology, called Enhanced Geothermal Systems(EGS), differs from traditional geothermal energy that relies on […]
Fuel
We’d definitely like to see this: star power (Julia Roberts, Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow) plus humor (how many french fries does it take to run that thing?) plus scary facts plus solutions. We do wonder about biodiesel as the cure-all, but we don’t know if that’s what he’s proposing. We’ll just bide our time, see […]
Holiday shopping
Oh, my goodness. We are so excited. Last weekend a friend was wearing an awesome T-shirt reading: "Plastic bags blow." And on the back: "BYOB. Bring Your Own Bag." We sourced them at ResusableBags.com. American Apparel. Organic cotton. Water-based ink. $4.95! We usually refuse to wear or give T-shirts with a slogan (though we made […]
McKenzy Haber Eco Drives at IUCN World Conservation Congress
He may be only 12 years old, but McKenzy Haber held first place atthe Toyota Eco Drive exhibit in Barcelona. Here he explains and testdrives for us. Turns out he’s also in third, fifth, seventh &eighth places. What’s that about "and a little child shall lead them?"Mind you, in two years McKenzy can drive legally […]
US Now Largest Wind Power Producer in the World
The United States has overtaken Germany to become the largest producer of wind energy in the world, generating enough capacity to eliminate the burning of 91 million barrels of oil per year. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports US windproducers experienced a record year of growth in 2008—the third in arow. America now has […]
Bacteria turn excess clean energy into methane for storage
Penn State researchers have found a possible solution to the problem of storing alternative energy. It's a bacterium able to convert electricity into methane gas when combined with CO2. The Cleantechnica blog reports that: "Any surplus power from wind, solar, or tidal sources is fed into thebacteria and combined with CO2 from the atmosphere to […]
Concrete as a cure for climate change?
A Scientific American article is reporting on what sounds like a revolutionary technique for partially solving the greenhouse gas problem: using it to produce cement. A new company called Calera claims that, by passing carbon dioxide through seawater, it can produce cement. For example, the waste gas from power plants, now released into the atmosphere, […]
A cool green case for your iPhone
Well, our old cell phone was on the verge of dying. The body was cracked in two or three places. High time to upgrade massively because we're also wanting to tweet more frequently and generally be more accessible. Yet not carry our laptop everywhere. So we took the plunge into the 21st century. To protect […]