AFVI Show: Ways to save billions of gallons of fuel at the nation's airports

Airports are basically the epitome of using fuel as if it's abundant. Jet aircraft can only exist and be economically used when fuel is cheap and easily available. In any case airports are centers of air pollution due to all the vehicles flying in and out all day long, plus all the ground vehicles. There are service vehicles and a dizzying array of other vehicles running around, including those shuttling people around the airport, and to or from the airport.

While there isn't much which can be done to increase fuel efficiency for the aircraft, or reduce emissions due to the aircraft, the ground vehicles are another matter. The article goes into several programs meant to decrease emissions from the ground vehicles.

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AFVI Show: Ways to save billions of gallons of fuel at the nation's airports

The Low Carbon Diet

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The Low Carbon Diet

Description: 

This “30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds” is a fun, accessible, easy to use guide that will show you, step-by-step, how to dramatically reduce your CO2 output in just a month’s time.

Grounded in over two decades of environmental behavior change research, this illustrated workbook offers much more than a list of eco-friendly actions. It walks you through every step of the process, from calculating your current CO2 “footprint” to tracking your progress.

By making simple changes to actions you take every day, you’ll learn how to reduce your annual household CO2 output by at least 15%. And, for those who are more ambitious, you’ll discover how you can become “carbon neutral” and help your workplace, local schools, and community do the same.

SMART USA

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SMART USA

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smart is a member of the Mercedes Car Group. smart vehicles are sold in 36 countries throughout the world. Over 750,000 fortwo vehicles have been sold since its introduction. When the United States starts selling the smart fortwo it will become the 37th country. The smart fortwo is scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2008.

SMART car coming to the U.S. ... again

The SMART Car is coming to the U.S. ... of course, it's already been imported (legally) to the U.S. That effort was run by ZAP a company more famous for electric vehicles of all sizes (ZAP meaning Zero Air Pollution) who imported cars they commercially bought in Germany and had an American company revamp the cars to meet DOT compliance. The new plan is for Daimler Chrysler to import the cars themselves.

The author of the article spends the hole time in reaction to the small size. As usual the "different" gizmo meets with initial "eeew, that's so strange" reactions. Yes, it's a small car but so what? Why do we need huge vehicles to haul us around? If most of our driving is one person alone in a car, then why do they need a car designed for four people? Especially when the car designed for one or two people can get tremendously better gas mileage!!!

Then there's this little bit of eeeew that's so strange: the fact that it doesn't go very fast, capping out at 84 miles per hour ... I dunno about you, but 84 miles per hour is pretty darn speedy. That is unless you're in Montana or Idaho or Nevada. But very few people live in those states, and for most people, especially the city dwellers for whom this car is meant would find that speed very comfortable.

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SMART USA home page

So small, even a caveman could parallel-park it

An inconvenient comparison of two homes

Al Gore, the big time promotor of environmental awareness and alarming people of global warming... you'd think he'd be living in a super green house and driving a super green car, right? One would hope he'd put his money where his mouth is.

Al Gore's home is a typical mansion of the rich elite in all its energy wasting glory.

George W. Bush's home in Crawford Texas is the epitome of off-the-grid living with every sort of sustainable energy gizmo you could think of.

If only GW would do for the country what he does for himself in his own home.

UPDATE (April 14, 2007) In Ecotality Gets Drudged When Gore Goes Green it's noted that Al Gore has applied for zoning permission to install solar panels on his house.

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An Inconvenient Truth

Ecotality Gets Drudged When Gore Goes Green

Palm oil deemed biofuel failure

Marcel Silvius, a climate expert at Wetlands International in the Netherlands, led a team that compared the benefits of palm oil to the ecological harm from destroying virgin Asian rain forests to develop lucrative new plantations.

...Scientists and policymakers from more than 100 countries are meeting in Brussels, Belgium, starting Monday to report on the impact of global warming, including storms, flooding and the extinction of plants and animals.

...The report issued late last year by Wetlands International, Delft Hydraulics and the Alterra Research Center of Wageningen University in Holland studied the carbon released from peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia that had been drained and burned to plant palm oil trees.

About 85 percent of the world's palm oil comes from the two countries, and about one-quarter of Indonesia's plantations are on drained peat bogs, the report said.

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Palm oil deemed biofuel failure

Death of the cell phone charger...?

Eep, what a story this is. The story? That for decades researchers have dreamed of the ability to transmit power over long distances. It would remove the need for power lines etc. The dream goes back to the earliest days of the development of Electricity, as Nikolai Tesla himself worked on this idea. I first read of it in Heinlein's novel Farmer in the Sky.

According to the article the bugaboo was accuracy of the power transmission. The power would bounce off everything in sight making the power received at the device come at varying frequencies and power levels. This made it hard to build a reception circuit. Some researchers have focused themselves for a few years on this problem and come up with a small and very inexpensive solution.

The power levels are appropriate for charging a cell phone or similarly low power demand. It offers a way to keep portable electrical gadgets charged with few worries. No more worrying about charging your shaver, wireless keyboard or mouse, etc, because the power will be transmitted to them.

It doesn't say whether the device requires a power transmitter, or whether it will receive power from the ambient electrical noise that's already bombarding us. Modern society has seen fit to create a zillion different electrical transmissions going on all around us, so in a sense we're constantly in a soup of electromagnetic energy already. Perhaps the gadget will just draw its power from that soup?

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Death of the cell phone charger