Anne of Carversville

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Monday

15Mar2010

Walmart, P&G Announce New Green Initiatives

Monday, March 15, 2010 at 4:33PM

Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer remains a key leader in environmental initiatives, announcing two weeks ago that it would cut 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain by the end of 2015 — the equivalent of removing more than 3.8 million cars from the road for one year.

“Energy efficiency and carbon reduction are central issues in the world today,” said Mike Duke, Walmart president and CEO. “We’ve been working to make a difference in these areas, both in our own footprint and our supply chain. We know that we have an opportunity to do more and the capacity to do more.” via Walmart

Walmart collaborated with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to develop this approach that looks at the supply chain on a global scale. Other members of the external advisory team include PricewaterhouseCoopers, ClearCarbon Inc., the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Applied Sustainability Center (ASC) at the University of Arkansas. This team will identify projects, quantify reductions, engage suppliers and ensure proper procedures are followed for each GHG reduction claim.

Any action taken by Walmart traditionally impacts an entire business sector. Their clout is so massive that suppliers can’t have one set of standards for Walmart and another for other retailers. For more details on Walmart’s Selection-Action-Assessment process, read the press release.

Walmart’s participating in the potentially transforming Boom Energy test, which hopes to redefine clean energy in the world.

Specific examples of Walmart’s other actions include:

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Business,

Sustainability

Friday

05Mar2010

Giant Asteroid Caused Dinosaur Extinction

Friday, March 5, 2010 at 2:07PM

A panel of 41 scientists reviewing 20 years worth of research has concluded that a giant asteroid smacking into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago.

Scientists have concluded that the cause of the so-clled Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction was a 9 mile-wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is not Mexico.

“We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis,” said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review. via Science Daily

The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth with a force a billion times stronger than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

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Living with Nature

Thursday

04Mar2010

Left & Right | Dogma Dominates Climate Science

Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 9:59AM

Trust me when I say that I am far more a NYTimes readers than a FOX News one. Yet, I try to follow the facts. Searching for new updates on climate change just now, I found Let’s Talk About It: Discussing the Science and Politics of Global Warming, published yesterday.

For one moment, I understand why conservatives hate the NYTimes. This lesson plan on climate change is indoctrination at its worst, and one of the most biased documents I’ve ever seen.

Warm-up | Prior to class, put a strip of masking tape across the floor, and mark one end with the words “strongly agree,” the other “strongly disagree” and the midpoint “neutral or unsure.” At the beginning of class, tell students they will now be asked to literally and figuratively take a stand on climate change.

First, tell students to stand in a line along the masking tape. Explain and show them that the line is an opinion spectrum. Then, tell students that you will read a series of statements out loud. After each statement, students should rearrange themselves on the line depending on how strongly they agree or disagree with each statement. via NYTimes

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Climate Change

Sunday

28Feb2010

Dolphin Brains Rival Human's |The Japanese Slaughter Disgrace Continues

Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 1:56PM

‘Riverdo’ by Jean Luc Bozzolihttp://bit.ly/cgBYDD

Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino, a leading expert in the neuroanatomy of dolphins and whales, begs humans to reconsider making pets and now therapists, of these magnificent creatures.

“Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma,” Marino says.

Scientists believe that dolphins rival humans in intelligence. One measure known as the encephalization quotient, or EQ, quantifies the size of a species’ brain compared with what would be expected based on body size alone.

Humans have an EQ of about 7 and chimpanzees and other great apes a little more than 2. Dolphins have an EQ of 4-5.

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Anne |

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Animal Rights,

Dolphins,

Oceans

Thursday

25Feb2010

Bloom Energy Reveals Impressive Clients & Existing Functionality

Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 9:07AM

Bloom Energy’s ‘Bloom Box’ flowered yesterday in California. Word is that co-founder KR Sridhar cringes with a smile over ‘Bloom Box’ but I think the term is here to stay. Naysayers remain abundant in the unveiling of Bloom Energy’s new energy technology, but it seems that the unveiling revealed more than a few surprises.

Like the hardy flowering cactus I chose to represent the story, Bloom Box runs on readily-available, plentiful sand for silicon, a key ingredient in the technology. More importantly, the product’s been in operational mode with some of America’s biggest companies who say it works.

Details please.

Flanked by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former US Secretary of State General Colin Powerll, a member of Bloom’s B of D, Bloom Energy’s CEO Sridhar revealed its current client list: Google, Coca-Cola, eBay, Wal-Mart, Staples, Bank of America, Cox Enterprises, and Fedex Express.

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Energy in

Innovation

Tuesday

23Feb2010

Let's Hope Bloom Energy's 'Bloom Box' Is Bathed In Good Karma & Kilowatts of Clean Energy

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 12:54PM

FutureTracker| K.R. Sridhar, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy, has a global vision, one that’s exciting media and investors both. Sridhar has plenty of skeptical critics, charging that Bloom is certainly not the first fuel cell company to promote clean energy.

As the Next Big Future blog pointed out, the Connecticut company Fuel Cell Energy has been installing fuel cell units since the 1990s, but lost $71 million last year. “People have been trying to develop fuel cell technology for the last 100 years,” says Ron Pernick, cofounder and managing director of Clean Edge, a research firm focused on clean technology. “The biggest obstacle is price, price, and price.” via ABC News

Sridhar says he’d like to see his company’s Bloom Box fuel cell technology lighting up most American households within the next 10 years. Then there’s the fact that 1.5 billion people live without electricity today. Many of these “powerless” live as humans did centuries ago, in darkness and cooking over wood fires that damage their health and the environment.

Bringing the Bloom Box to villagers could be a similar jumpstart to the way that mobile phone technology has bypassed land lines in developing countries.

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Anne |

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tagged

Energy in

Innovation

Friday

19Feb2010

Liebniz Institute Rejects Geoengineering Oceans Scheme

Friday, February 19, 2010 at 9:10AM

The results of another study coming out of the Leibniz Insitute of Marine Science in Kiel, Germany, douses the idea that pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algai growth in sunlit surface waters is an effective way of ameliorating global warming.

“Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail,” said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

The plan to ‘draw down’ carbon dioxide from the atmosphere isn’t deemed effective, based on a new interactive model that deals with the straight-line analysis of how much carbon dioxide could in principle be contained with the scientific process.

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Climate Change,

Oceans