tingilinde

spendy ice cream

yikes

For less I could offer hand churned ice cream and collecting huckleberries in a field filled with drunken bears in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

where is the carbon from?

Some time ago Bjarne mentioned Project Vulcan - an effort to create high resolution time and space maps of North American carbon dioxide emissions.

a flame's private plane

The concept of the Olympic torch originated in Nazi Germany - if anything, they were good at theatrics.

I was surprised the torch is moved around in a private jet - here is a bit on its carbon footprint.

music on your mind

From today's walk - Radiolab had an excellent show on music hallucinations, songs that go beyond language (guess where country music is popular?) and other neat things you may not have considered.

recommended!

happy birthday dad!

Happy Birthday Dad!

lemon pie today!

saving energy and money by banning left turns

UPS minimizes left hand turns to save energy and minimize accidents

seedbombing

How to do guerrilla gardening with style ...

only in England

but a really good idea

really old accents

New work on the mechanics of what Neanderthals may have sounded like. (mp3 via quirks and quarks)

385

bad news

there is likely to be an acceleration with the new coal powerplants coming online worldwide along with deforestration...

nova and the car of the future

The Car Talk guys on Nova .. watch here if you missed it. A very high level view, but it is a good background piece.

But remember that part of what you can do is drive less. Walk or bike when possible and you are doing better than the most sophisticated car concepts. Cut your driving by half and you are many years in the future - and healthier with the exercise.

Some resources including video clips to allow you to make your own version of the show.

moving away from driving on short trips

Figure out how much you will save - money and carbon dioxide. The numbers may not be perfect, but it will give you a starting place.

save carbon, money and burn calories and get in shape

a way to lower plastic use

talk about novel sourcing

history of oil prices

Not up to date, but fascinating charts here

You can plot current prices if you can find enough vertical space on the right of some of the graphs.

Still thinking about that new SUV?

conservation and efficiency

It is important to recognize the difference between energy conservation and efficiency. Both are important, but conservation generally involves changing behaviors to lower energy consumption while efficiency involves getting more from the energy you consume.

There is great evidence that car engines have become much more efficient in the past three decades, but consumers have opted for larger cars and higher performance. If we had the weight and performance of 1981 cars in the fleet today, we would be at over 38 mpg.

Home appliances have become more efficient and homes themselves are generally better insulated, but the average home size is now over 2300 square feet, up from 1400 square feet in 1970. Air conditioners have become more efficient, but they are now common and people use them much more. TVs are larger, people have computers - the list goes on and on. From an engineering point of view energy efficiency of devices is improving in many areas, but consumers are demanding "big" and usage patterns are increasing.

Conservation implies a more fundamental change. Rather than a huge house, you find something smaller and fill it with less stuff. You consider efficiency when you buy things, but your usage pattern shifts. Maybe you move to a region where walking and biking is practical. Maybe you have a vegetable garden. Maybe you use tap rather than bottled water.

Our advertising-driven consumption-based economy tells us we are sacrificing if we use less. But we aren't. It is very possible to be a happy person if your focus isn't centered on consumption:-)

I'm guilty of many excesses, but have been cutting back and looking at new ways to do common activities and to be happy. A friend is focusing her efforts on trying to convince kids that they can be healthier, happier and have richer lives by doing activities that many would see as "green." Her approach is to show these activities are more fun than what couch potato kids do and it gives them a sense of responsibility. It isn't the message they get on TV or in the malls, but she has the presence and enthusiasm to get them thinking.

Efficiency is great and engineers love working on it. We need engines, transmissions and thousands of other things that are much better than what we have, but we also need to consider what a car means and how we want to use it. Combine these two and perhaps there is more hope than we think.

Today is Earth Day. Perhaps it is too spread out and diluted to mean very much. People are being told there are enormous problems and it is easy to get depressed. It is also easy to just do something. People doing things at the grassroot level can influence how others think and act. Eventually companies and policy makers may get the message.

Maybe it is better to think about something you could change in your life by changing behavior rather than buying something new. How much could you cut back on your driving? Are there places you could walk or bike rather than drive? How will you feel as your body gets in better shape?

Pick one piece of your life and think. For bonus points sit down with your kids and think together. You can even be creative!

more montana springtime

notice the low

springtime in montana

and it is dropping to 8F tonight.

But Montana is a place of extremes. I've seen snow on my birthday in mid June. But there really is human caused global warming.

infocom and douglas adams

If either of these ring a bell - go here

(I had a tiny bit of input on Zork:-)