Sustainability / Eco
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One of the most significant challenges confronting the renewable energy market is the erratic output of wind and solar power stations. Modern power grids are designed to provide peak demand power in real time, not to store generated power until it’s needed. Wind and solar energy generation is tied to local environmental conditions, which is why some critics have argued that neither technology is reliable enough to replace conventional gas-fired turbines. The UK company Highview Power Storage is challenging such claims , and has hard data to back up its position. For the past two years, Highview has operated a heat recovery and energy storage system at a working power plant in Buckinghamshire, England. Highview’s system is designed to take advantage of the fact that wind turbines continue spinning through the night, when electricity demand is far lower.
British company offers efficient energy storage using ‘liquid air’
February 21, 2013 | Melonie Magruder When NASA ended its space shuttle program in 2011, a lot of the engineers and systems technology staff ended up heading to defense industry contracting firms. But Douglas Mallette, founder and CEO of Cybernated Farm Systems, says he wanted to help feed the world rather than “figure out more ways to blow people up.” So he founded Cybernated Farm Systems with the idea of building a fully self-generating and sustainably-operating greenhouse growing system that could feed precisely 634 people for 30 years, leave a small carbon footprint and provide nutritious, organic, fresh food in a world of rising poverty and hunger. Sounds like a tall order, but Mallette is confident that his experiences figuring out the precise mechanical operations required for preparing a space shuttle pay load down to the minute square inch also prepared him for a humanitarian approach to making the world better.
Rather than 'Figure Out More Ways to Blow People Up', Former NASA Engineer Seeks Solution to Feed World
Vortex Induced Vibrations: Ocean Currents Could Power The Entire Planet
The massive oceanic surface currents that exist on Earth today are one of many unused reservoirs of energy that we could tap into. Their total output of energy has been estimated at approximately 280-trillion watt – hours. Ocean surface currents are considered an indirect form of solar energy because of their link to surface heating processes as well as the winds. Scientists have developed a device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents, which have the ability to power the entire planet. All that is required for the technology to work is a simple water way or sea bed.
Japanese 'Blest Machine' recycles plastic into oil at home
Plastics are generally recycled back into oil in massive facilities, but a Japanese inventor has built a tabletop machine that can accomplish the same task safely and cleanly. It's called the Blest Machine and was put together by Akinori Ito, after he began to see the places he played in as a child disappearing. He wanted to make the process of plastic recycling more accessible, so that less landfill would be required -- an increasing problem in densely-populated Japan. To operate, you put your plastic trash in a large bucket, then screw on a lid. The temperature inside rises, slowly melting the plastic, which becomes a liquid and then a gas. The gas passes through a tube into a container filled with water, where it than cools and forms oil again.
Cyberfarm | Home
We have received several emails like this, "I love what CFS is working towards, but I don't have a substantial sum to be an investor in CFS. However, I still want to contribute something. How can I do this?" First, we are honored and humbled by that level of appreciation for what we're working for. Fortunately, it is perfectly legal for a for-profit company to accept donations, and at this early stage of CFS when we're working many angles to get in front of investors to build the prototype system, all help is greatly appreciated. Feel free to use this donate button, but please remember that your contribution is NOT tax deductible.
By Vincent Graff dailymail.co.uk Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too. Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds. If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.
A Deliciously Resourceful Town Aims For Total Food Self-Sufficiency in 7 Years
ffee-powered cannabis cars and bambara breakfasts on Plants Day | Corrinne Burns | Notes & Theories blog | Science
Happy Plants Day! A company has created a prototype car built from hemp composites, and another is recycling coffee grounds for fuel. Photograph: Alamy
Peak Oil
'Hug The Monster': Why So Many Climate Scientists Have Stopped Downplaying the Climate Threat
Journalist Bill Blakemore has a great piece on ABC’s website: ‘Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate). He offers advice to journalists in covering climate change — and advice to the rest of us in a world captured by denial.
The UK’s agricultural minister Jim Paice will have the chance to support shorter times for live animal transport in the EU in a meeting next week. The issue is on the table for a meeting of the 27 member states’ farming ministers on Monday 14th May and we are urging the UK government to support calls for a maximum eight-hour limit across the EU for journeys to slaughter. The European Parliament recently issued a written declaration calling for an eight-hour limit following an EU-wide campaign that Compassion was a part of. The campaign saw more than 1 million people sign the 8hours.eu petition. Read on to find out what else you can do to support our campaign against long distance transport. Current laws not good enough
Compassion in World Farming - UK should lead transport welfare calls
RAW Campaign: The True Cost of Factory Farming
Animal cruelty Factory farming mistreats animals, cramming them together and abusing them in an effort to boost productivity. Egg-laying hens and rabbits reared for meat often spend their whole lives crammed into cages with less space than an A4 sheet of paper per animal.World’s largest sustainable city developed in China
The world's largest sustainable city, extending about 30 square kilometers, with urban living conditions has been developed in South Asian country of China. Rising from wastelands in China, the globe's biggest eco-city of Tianjin is located 150 kilometres (93 miles) southeast from Beijing that means less than an hour on the new high-speed train line. The city, designed to be around half the size of Manhattan Island in the United States, is slated to be enriched by the hottest energy-saving technologies. Designed by Surbana Urban Planning Group, the city is planned to have an advanced light rail transit system and varied eco-landscapes ranging from a sun-powered solarscape to a greenery-clad earthscape for its estimated 350,000 residents.Ecopsychology: Reconnecting with Nature II
Read Ecopsychology: Reconnecting with Nature I By Tatiana Casey According to Cohen, ecotherapy only works, “depending on the nature of the process involved and how hurt or deadened an individual’s 53 natural attraction senses are and how many, or how strongly, they can be revived” (Cohen, 2005, p.1). Cohen describes theses 53 senses through his courses in Natural Attraction Ecology.The Kontinuum Garden
Our Story We are two brothers who live in Copenhagen, Denmark. One works as an animator and compositor and the other as a video director and editor. Even though we took a more artistic route than the rest of our engineer family, we have always had a love for constructing things: everything from Legos to video equipment such as dollytracks, skatedollys and glidecams. When we discovered 3D printing through the RepRap Project we realized that this technology would allow us to design things, and make a difference on a much bigger scale. We started to look for attainable goals, and for the last 6 months we have been working on our first project; the Kontinuum Garden.(Credit: Eentileen’s Print a House project) Danish architects Frederik Agdrup and Nicholas Bjorndal of Eentileen used just a computer, a “printer” — actually, a computer numerical control (CNC) machine — and 820 sheets of plywood to build a 125 square meter (1,345 square foot) home in four weeks. Named Villa Asserbo, the home is the pilot project of Eentileen’s Print a House project . The designers are touting the process of mass-customizing houses and responsibly producing them on site.
In Denmark, a printable house
Bee Keeping
Bees - Colony Collapse Disorder