Photo: Suntech Power Suntech Plans to Make 2.4 GIGAWATTS of Panels in 2011 Not all news out of China today is bad . The Middle Kingdom’s largest solar panel maker, Suntech Power Holdings , has come out with its sales projections for 2011 and they forecast a healthy solar power market (though not quite as ebullient a a few years ago). … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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The notorious tar sands in Alberta, Canada have long been a source of contention for environmentalists, and rightfully so: Due to the destruction wrought by extracting the oil from the sands and the carbon-intensive refinement processes, this oil is often considered the dirtiest on… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: Enercon E-126 , currently the biggest wind turbine Winds of Change Wind turbines have been getting bigger and more powerful for a while. It wasn’t that long ago that 1.5-megawatt turbines were considered impressive, but now we have the Enercon E-126 (pictured above and below), currently the biggest wind turbine and able to generate 7 megawatts. But even that isn’t even close to reaching the physical limits of what we can build; The Norwegian company Sway will build a 533-feet, 10-megawatt giant by 2011 (follow… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …There’s No Longer A Happy Ending Where We Prevent Climate Change Anymore: Bill McKibben (Video)
December 6, 2010 No CommentDown in Mexico at the COP16 climate conference, Andy Revkin of the New York Times just posted a video interview he did with environmental campaigner and thinker extraordinare
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Manure, runny. Image credit: USDA Synthetic fertilizer is likely to become significantly more costly for US farmers. This trend will make manure a valuable commodity once again (as it was prior to the 1950s). There are two main reasons for the anticipated cost rise. 1.) Traditional US natural gas production has already gone ‘past peak,’ while natural gas is increasingly needed for producing electricity. * (Ammonia fertilizer is made from natural gas, remember.) If a Federal climate bill is ever passed, the transition from coal- to… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Should Societal Values Be Considered When Placing Animals on the Endangered Species List?
December 6, 2010 No Comment
photo: Steve Jurvetson / Creative Commons Though the US Fish & Wildlife Service is tasked with placing animals on the Endangered Species List based on “the best scientific and commercial data available” when it comes to the gray wolf in the northern Rockies, important social science data on how human activity and values wasn’t consulted, and it… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image Credit Mikael Colville-Andersen We have not had much snow here in much of North America yet, but in Europe they have been socked with it; Copenhagen has had 18 inches so far. But where we don’t get our bike lanes ploughed first (that would be considered a war on the car), if at all. But Mikael Colville-Andersen writes in The Ultimate Bike Lane Snow Clearance Blogpost! :” During snowstorms I’ve seen these bike lane sweepers roll back and forth past my f… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Around the world, tarantulas are kept as pets but many popular species are endangered in the wild. Photo credit: christopher.woo / Creative Commons ” Operation Spiderman “—which had nothing to do with the fictional crime-fighting web-slinger—came to an end this weekend with the arrest of Sven Koppler, a German man thought to be responsible for the smuggling of thousands of endangered spiders. Authorities began tracking Koppler after intercepting a package concealing 3… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Sumatran Tiger Population May Be Larger Than Believed – Second Only to India
December 6, 2010 No Comment
Sumatran tiger in the Melbourne zoo, photo: Wikipedia A rare bright spot in the world of tiger conservation: New research by the Wildlife Conservation Society ‘s Indonesia Program and Forum HariumauKita has produced a new map of Sumatran tiger distribution which shows that the Indonesia island may actually have the second-highest population of tigers
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Image credit Mark Craemer That is the headline of a powerful article in the Globe and Mail where they write that there is 25 Trillion dollars worth of untapped mineral wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Seven million people have died in the fight to control that wealth over the last twelve years. We all contribute to the tragedy every time we buy an electronic product: they contain tantalum that comes from the mineral Coltan (shor… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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