Category Archives: Connecting the Dots

Solar Power Enhanced Prius

Solar Prius

Solar Prius

Toyota solves the micro-greenhouse effect of the sun heating a parked car, in the Prius III. The new Prius has a Photovoltaic Solar option. The PV Solar Modules, from Kyocera, power the air conditioner and fan to keep the car cool when it is parked on a hot sunny day. In this generation of the car, the PV Modules will only power the air conditioning system; they will not charge the batteries or the transmission. That, however, may be coming. While it’s expensive, and perhaps more whiz-bang than practical, which can perhaps be said for things like radios, cd players, MP3 players, automatic transmissions, air conditioning, heat – in short everything but the engine, transmission, wheels, seats, doors, and windows, it’s a very cool whiz-bang feature. More observations at the Environment Blog

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According to Rory Reid, at CNET ,

“By using a combination of a solar panel and an electric motor, Toyota is able to use the power of the sun against itself, save gas, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“It’s a shame that these particular solar panels can’t be used to power the entire vehicle, but there is hope: A U.S. company called SEV has already demonstrated a modified, solar-powered Prius that improves fuel economy by about 29 percent. According to SEV, this gives you a daily electric-only range of 20 miles.”

As Dylan said, “The times, they are a-changing.” This is a step in the direction of a plug-in solar and bio-diesel powered car.

Coal Is Really Dirty

Burn Coal – release arsenic, mercury, radioactive particles, and carbon – lots of carbon.  Here’s how the National Resources Defense Council, NRDC, describes it:  Coal is Dirty and Dangerous

Coal is America’s dirtiest energy source — and the country’s leading source of global warming pollution.

Coal mining destroys land, pollutes thousands of miles of streams and brings massive environmental damage to mountain communities.

… produces dirty air, acid rain and contaminated land and water … childhood asthma, birth defects and respiratory diseases that take nearly 25,000 lives each year.

“Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.” – James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientistThere are far cleaner and cheaper ways to meet America’s energy needs. Yet industry apologists are spending millions of dollars to block clean energy solutions and persuade Americans that they can keep using coal without the consequences.

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Green technologies and renewable fuels will create millions of good-paying jobs, … reduce dangerous pollution and help fight global warming.

Earth Day 2009

Shows Oxygen and Fish Catch in the Chesapeake

The Chesapeake: Oxygen & Fish Catch

“Poisoned Waters,” a documentary on PBS Frontline examines the state of our nation’s waterways. It focuses on the Chesapeake and the Puget Sound. As the title suggests, the nation’s waterways are far from pristine. Click here for Tim Wheeler’s review in the Baltimore Sun and here for Frontline. The documentary suggests that the Clean Water Act, in response to Earth Day, 1970, started off well. But gutting regulation, castrating the EPA, allowing open dumping and externalizing cleanup costs do not solve pollution problems. Perdue, in his denial that chicken manure contributes to algae blooms in the Chesapeake, sounds like a shill for the tobacco industry saying “Well we know the plaintiff smoked 4 packs a day for 25 years. How do we know the cigarettes caused lung cancer? How do we know lung cancer killed him? He died when his heart stopped. The cancer was in his lungs.”

This image, from Science Daily, shows a dead zone in the northern stem of the Chesapeake. The area in red shows oxygen depletion. The area in blue shows oxygen. The green circles in the blue zone show fish catch.

On Earth Day, 2009, we have much to do.  It is not as if we have accomplished nothing in the last 39 years. However, we see two glaring omissions in the clean water act. It doesn’t regulate farm waste or coal ash. We also need to understand that regulation and enforcement are effective and deregulation and voluntary compliance does not work.  After all,  we have police and prosecutors to chase and bring to trial criminals in order to protect the citizens. Speed limits and parking regulations are not “goals” or “guidelines” for voluntary compliance. They are hard and fast laws. Break the law; get a ticket. This paradigm must be applied to protecting the nation’s waterways.

But here’s an idea: Take this algae-manure system and transform it from one that is destroying an estuary into one that is creating the biofuels for the next generation of cars and power plants!

On Failure

“There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.”

– Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero, No Limit.”

Failure is not only an option; it is a fact of life. But giving up is not an option. When you’re ready to give up, it’s time to retire or better yet, go work for the competition. So understand that sometimes you will fail. And when you fail, try something else. Because failure to succeed, and then failure to try something else; that’s giving up.

RECYCLED LAPTOP PROJECT

Popular Logistics needs several laptops and laptop drives.  We need Macs running OS X, Linux machines, or netbooks running Windows or Linux. Non-operational machines that can be used as spare parts are also of interest. If you would like to donate, e-mail Larry at “L Furman 97 ‘@’ gmail . com”.  Donations to Popular Logistics are not tax deductible.

CORP. RESPONSIBILITY & SUSTAINABILITY

The Institute for Sustainable Enterprise (ISE)

and the

Sustainable Business Incubator (SBI)

are pleased to invite you to Net Impact’s special holiday event, where

Dr. Jeana Wirtenberg,

Director, ISE External Relations and Services

will be moderating a panel on career paths in sustainability…..

Corporate Responsbility / Environmental Sustainability Panel Discussion & Networking in Hoboken, NJ, on Wednesday.

The event will take place at Carpe Diem, 1405 Grand Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030 (under the Viaduct). A short walk from the Hoboken PATH train. Wednesday, December 10th  @ 6:30pm – Panel Discussion Event begins at 7pm.

http://view.fdu.edu/default.aspx?id=2354

Jews, Moslems, and Humanity: A Christmas Story.

dervis_korkut11

This is the story of how Dervish Korkut, and his wife, Servet, Muslims of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, saved the life of Mira Papo Solomanova, a young Jewish woman during World War II, how Mr. Korkut, the curator of the Sarajevo Museum, also saved the Sarajevo Haggada (click here), from the Nazis, and how Mira then saved Dervis and Servet’s daughter, Lamija and her family from the Serbs.  Click here for the details in the New Yorker, here,  here and here for other documentation on the Internet.

In 1942, Naza Commander Yohan Fortner arrived at the Bosnian National Museum in Sarajevo demanding the Sarajevo Hagadda. Dervish Korkut, Muslim, librarian, intellectual anti-fascist, and anti-communist, hid the book. He told Fortner that the book had already been taken by the Nazis. One way of looking at this is that Mr. Korkut risked his life to save a book. However, I would suggest that he devoted his life to saving books, ideas, culture, and humanity.

In April, 1942, Dervish protected a young Jewish woman, Mira Papo Solomanova, by bringing her home and passing her off as “Amira,” a Muslim servant, a cousin of his young wife, Servet, to help care for their infant son, Munib. They risked their lives to save another person.

In 1994, in a letter to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel, Mira documented how Dervish and Servet saved her life.

Dervish passed away in 1969. (While we originally reported that Servet had passed away in 1998 we now know that) Servet lives in Sarajevo, and we hope, in good health. In 1999 their daughter Lamija evacuated her children in advance of the collapse of Kosovo. Lamija and her husband were sent by the Serbs to a refugee camp. Lamija went to the Jewish community in Kosovo with a photocopy of Mira’s testimony. Four days later she and her husband were flown to Tel Aviv and reunited with their children, and Mira’s Israeli son, Davor Bakovic.

If this story is filmed, Harrison Ford should play Dervish, to Angleina Jolie’s Mira, and Uma Thuman’s Servet. Robert DiNiro should direct and play both Munib Korkut, and Davor Balkovic.

Regardless of whether or not this story makes it to the silver screen, the world needs more Dervish Korkuts, more Servet Korkuts, more Mira Papo Salomanovas, and fewer Yohan Fortners.

Timothy Naftali’s “Blind Spot”

Reading Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism

by Timothy Naftali. Thus far, excellent history of U.S. responses to terrorist attacks – in each of the varieties in which they occurred from the Nazi “stay-behind” program to 9/11.

More and some excerpts shortly.

Another Canary in China's Coal Mines

Pollution kills 750 thousand per year in China, according to a self-censored World Bank study described in the Independent and on Yahoo News. According to these reports, the Chinese government is suppressing knowledge of the issue, rather than addressing the problem, and the World Bank agreed to suppress the data.

While three quarters of a million people in a population of one point three billion is only six out of ten thousand and is a low percentage of the population, this corresponds to 173 thousand Americans. If 173 thousand Americans were dying each year from pollution, which is slightly more than the 150,000 Americans who die each year from stroke, we might be upset.

The worse things are:

  • The Chinese government is supressing the news, rather than addressing the problem.
  • The Chinese State Environmental Protection Agency, SEPA, and Health Ministry are the agencies suppressing the news.

As China continues to industrialize, as they put an additional 1000 cars on the road each day, things will only get worse.

And according to the World Watch Institute, 16 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities are in China.