Car Steals Light at Climate Change Conference

The Climate change Conference in Poland started this week. But stealing the limelight was Louis Palmer who arrived at the Conference in a solar powered car he had just driven "around the world" to be at the conference.

While the trip was augmented by some charging from the grid - the designers of the car claim that it could be mass produced for as little as 14,000 euros (including the panels, which may soon get cheaper).

Next year, Palmer plans to extend the cars range of sources by using, possibly, hydro, geothermal and wind energy. To showcase these extensions he is planning a follow up trip involving 5 more cars, traveling around the world in 80 days.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Everyone wants to be an eco-warrior these days.

This story from the Sun in England (so it must be true) outlines one man's plans to create a modern day Noah's Ark.

At the other end of the scale, a student has managed to charge his iPod using an onion soaked in Lucozade... apparently.

So, assuming there's enough room to grow onions and manufacture Lucozade on the Eco Island, we'll still be able to listen to our music - if you're lucky enough to be one of the 50,000 on the island, I guess.

Worst floods in 22 years

I read a comment at the bottom of an article the other day that said "none of the predictions, not a single one, of impending doom, from climate scientists, has come true".

Now, putting aside the argument that once they do come true, it's too late for all of us...

I can't really be bothered going back to find the article in question - but it was an article referencing some of the mistakes recently made regarding monthly world average temperatures, and claiming that these mistakes were proof that climate scientist's other claims were all bunkum...

To the writer of the original article, and the writer of the comments below it - I would simply like to send this.

New Wind Turbine for Cities

For more details see their presentation PDF - Contact Mike Hess - or see the official web site.

Hot for Solar

Well it's all about Solar today.

For an interesting coverage of some of the common energy myths that need busting The Guardian has released an interesting article - with their top 10 list.

In it they quote the statistic that "solar panels capture only 10% or so of the sun's energy" - however Reuters would beg to differ. Not only do they claim that "Current solar panels ... absorb only about two-thirds of available sunlight" but, more importantly they are also reporting that "surfaces treated with a coating developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, can harvest 96.2 percent of sunlight".

Whatever the truth about today's panels - hopefully the news regarding the coating is reliable.

Find the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy - or visit their web site.

Water out of the air?

A new invention, called the WaterMill, is promising to allow households to supply their own water by condensing it our of the air. The company producing it, Element Four, is, obviously, very positive on its potential.

For more details on how it works, see The Observer article.

The US currently goes through 30bn litres of water a year, at a cost of approximately US$11bn - while using 1.5m barrels of oil and twice as much water as is actually delivered in the bottles, in the process. If those US consumers could be convinced that the output from the WaterMill was worth swapping for their addiction to bottled water, the ecological benefits are obvious.

What did worry me, though, was this: if the WaterMill was widely used and most houses manage to extract the water they need directly from the air - could this, in effect, reduce the moisture in the air, even further, and therefore reduce rainfall in the areas where it's used? Could the WaterMill actully reduce the likelihood of rain, locally, in the regions in which it is used... thereby reducing the total rainfall in the catchment areas of those regions?

Could this be a zero-sum game, or at least a solution that suffers under a law of diminishing returns?

Perhaps somone more knowlegable on these matters of meteorology than myself could speak to the possibility of such a negative feedback loop being an issue.

Just a great picture

Nothing "Eco"... nothing "Techno"...

Just a cool photo - that I wanted to share.