It’s true. For most of us coffee drinkers, the dark liquid functions as a fuel of sorts for our brains. But get this, after making brain fuel out of coffee beans, Italian researchers from La Sapienza University in Rome believe they can transform the dregs of their nation’s 70 million cups of coffee to fuel stoves and boilers. So the bean makes coffee. And the spent coffee grinds make fuel to help make MORE coffee.

Do you see the beautiful circle of caffeinated life going on here? Do you?!? 

Oh. My. God. Jordan Catalano...I mean, sorry, Jared Leto, is still really really hot (even if he has weird hair and eye makeup now).  And he loves the environment. And he plays in a band called 30 Seconds to Mars. And he’s filmed a music video in Greenland. And in it they have a native Greenlander talking about how the melting ice is making their way of life harder. And there is this real slow motion match lighting that’s so cool. And it’s just so like arty. And like really poignant. And like really beautiful. Totally.

Either that or it is just a stupid and pretentious music video with a really hot front man. Sure they bought Green Tags to offset the filming, but how much biodiesel could they produce if they all just cut off their hair?

(yes, I know you can’t make biodiesel from hair, but someone should really work on that). 

PISSY PISSY VANCOUVER. PICTURED HERE IS THE GRANVILLE STREET BRIDGE HEADED DOWNTOWN. (PHOTO: TOM HARPEL)

I saw this headline and I nearly gleefully cackled so loud I fell off my chair:

”Scientists Produce Energy From Rain”

FINALLY. Seriously this is great, GREAT news. I hate the rain, which comes down in droves out here in Vancouver. All winter it’s wet. It’s damp. It’s cold. It’s never ending (seriously it rained FOR ALL BUT TWO DAYS last January. This actually broke a 1937 record for the most soused January. And the scary part was most of didn’t notice; it felt THAT normal to us long suffering and anemic citizens).

Anyways, it’s ABOUT TIME the rain made us rich in something other than damp and depression. See, we average about one meter of rainfall each year. That’s a lot of downpour to suffer and there had to be a silver lining somewhere in those never ending winter clouds…

Presto. Rain turned into power. The new technology, developed by scientists at the atomic energy commission (CEA) in Grenoble, France, takes the mechanical force produced by raindrops falling and converts it into electricity.

Here’s my favorite quote, as per the Red Orbit news article:

“We thought of raindrops because they are one of the still-unexploited energy sources in nature,” said Jean-Jacques Chaillout, who led the research, in an interview with the magazine New Scientist.

Yes, that’s right people. You read that right. “One of the still-unexploited energy sources in nature.” Cause we’ve raped and pillaged every other natural phenomena for energy.

Anyways, it might be too early to get all happy about the discovery - as far as us Vancouverites go. See, Chaillout’s system uses piezoelectric structures to convert the mechanical force of your raindrop into voltage. Now I don’t know how sensitive his little piezoelectric structures are but often what we call “rain” out here is really “to sit in a sopping wet cloud.” In this case we get less raindrops and than we do variations of drizzle, mist, spray, and when the weather is super gross, spit. 

A while back, we covered Eco-Balls, the lovely no-soap laundry gadget. I just found Dryer Balls, which cut down on drying time by 25% and therefore energy use by 25%.

Two thoughts. I lived in the UK for a couple of years and learned that I don’t really need to dry that much at all, except sheets and towels. Everything else is pretty good to go using the drying rack = ZERO energy drying. Second, couldn’t you use a tennis ball or something? 

Remember a while back when all Anne could think about was that stupid hummer parked on her street and how totally horrendous it was? Well now instead of slashing his tires, she can just slip a handy instructions packed through his mail slot, showing him how to turn his gas guzzler in to a 60 mpg eco-friendly vehicle. Nice. I mean he just has to rip out the current combustion system and install an electric engine/biodiesel burning jet turbine. Yar har. 

And if he fails, she can always stuff some eco-balls up his tail pipe. Axel Foley would be so proud.

Does everyone still remember the Hunger Site? You know, that website where if you just clicked a big button on their main page you would give food to hungry children? The site has expanded to included several other charities - breast cancer, animal rescue, child health, literacy, the rain forest - but the principal is the same. You go to their site, click, and advertising sponsors pay for a small donation towards your cause. It’s win win win win win. Kids get food, you feel good and big companies get some seriously feel good press.

Well there’s a new kid on the web with a similar strategy, except focusing instead on carbon emissions. The site is Carbon Neutral Search. In essence, the team will buy carbon offsets equivalent to the emissions generated by an average Google search, which by their reserach is about 17.5 grams. They calculated this figure in two parts; first the amount of energy used by Google servers for your average search (.0044 grams CO2) plus the energy used by your typical computer during the roughly 15 minutes it takes to search and review results, they say.

For every search (it’s powered by the Google custom search), they buy 100 grams worth of carbon offsets..yes, that’s exceeding the 17.5 grams you actually used, but hey, they are just generous like that (or carbon credits aren’t costly enough, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms).

I emailed the developer of the site, Gareth Davis for some of the particulars above. If you go to the search home page, you’ll see that it has a distincly dark color scheme and Davis was indeed inspired by Blackle (Katie blogged about it previously). Blackle is a Google-clone search site just like Davis’s that uses a black background to reduce the energy requirements of computer displays thereby saving energy/carbon. Davis figures that Blackle gets about 800,000 search per week, but the ad dollars don’t go to the cause.

Hence his desire to start up Carbon Neutral Search. It’s not the catchiest name, and not the prettiest site, but the search seems solid (no crappy Yahoo search here) and why not? I mean really?

Now it’s all about habit breaking - changing bookmarks, homepages, and not typing in that oh so easy http://www.google.com (who are going carbon netural themselves, see). Davis is hoping to develop a browswer toolbar application shortly, which would be great because that is where I enter 80% of my searches.

Mmmokay. So, I, like everyone I know, am obsessed with Google Maps. I just love ‘em. Love love love. Mmm, mmm, good.

Annnnnyways. I am all lookin’ up stuff about Google and their carbon neutral plans and I stumble upon Google Transit, which you all have probably heard about because you’re cooler than me. But whatever. It launched earlier in October. And I see that my one and only hometown of Vancouver BC is one of the cities searchable on Google Transit. So of course I look up my bus ride home (is dark and rainy, the bike is no more fun) and TA DA! It gets it right. What’s more, the search delivers the next three departures and is SO MUCH LESS ANNOYING than the Translink (Vancouver bus co.) trip planner.

(I’d show you the lovely map it generated, but then you would all know where I work AND live and that’s just creepy..and there are enough creepy people on the bus in Vancouver already. I mean really.)

Now you could be all BAH! other people have done this (like Hopstop) and ARG Google and their monopoly on the world!, but the goodness for me is that I already know how to navigate the Google map system. I am familiar with the interface and their directions. Also, they are particularly good at finding addresses when you type them in wrong. Maybe I am getting old, but I LIKE that. And the Google maps are so pretty. And handily movable with that hand. Oh that hand.

Also, they give you the total cost in public transportation tickets versus the cost of gas to drive. For example. If I wanted to go from Mountain View (home of Google) to a nice hotel in Union Square in Downtown San Francisco, it would cost $9.55 to take the bus/train/subway and $18.64 to drive. And that doesn’t include parking. Of course the public option takes twice as long and you can’t choose the radio station..but hey.

There aren’t many cities yet available with the system, as I think the individual transit systems have to make their data in some way compatible with the Google searchings. But more are being added. Like Duluth. And Tampa. And the whole country of Japan (I mean have you ever tried to take the Subway in Tokyo?). They are still missing some biggies - New York, LA (ha ha), Chicago, Boston, DC. Philadelphia, but they’ll succumb.

Paper people Present&Correct have an A to Z poster of endangered animals on the British Isles.

They say it’s “perfect for all age groups and ecosystems.” I say it’s depressing. But beautiful enough to get a spot on your wall. For only £17.50 you can’t lose. Perhaps once you’ve invested in framing it and teaching your toddler all the animals on it, you’ll be that much more dedicated to actually making sure such critters as the dormouse or Fen Orchid actually survive for one more generation. Here’s hoping. 

Erm, so. I landed in NYC last night at around 10pm, when it was still a stifling and humid 80 degrees. Even in the airport. You’d think people would have heard of AIR CONDITIONING. I mean this is AMERICA. Anyways. I made my way through the customs line at JFK (they were nice) and then waited for my bags (it didn’t take forever) and then hopped in a cab (seriously the best $50 you can spend). But it was, again, not air conditioned.

So as my cab driver is flying down the Van Wyck, windows rolled on all sides (pleasant because I could not hear his terrible music), I again pondered that age old question: windows vs. AC, which leads to crappier fuel economy?

I found several sites that suggest, yes, AC is actually more efficient at “highway” speeds than rolled windows because the open windows lead to serious aerodynamic drag. But then I found this site - it’s from PG&E, an electrical company, but the info seems solid. They present the data from a trial conducted by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) of fuel economy for an SUV and a sedan when driving at various speeds with a) windows down no AC, b) windows up no AC and windows up with AC.  As the graph shows, for a sedan, driving fast with the windows down used up at 20% more gas; AC was another 5 - 10% more on top of that.

For the SUV, however, which has all the aerodynamics of, well, a box, rolling down the windows did no affect the drag much (8% more fuel), because it was already about as shit in the aerodynamic department as possible. Turning on the AC at highway speeds sucked an amazing amount of fuel on top of that, though.

This leaves me with a few questions: why, exactly, was my cabbie driving a dumb sqaure box of a mini-SUV that didn’t even have any more seating or storage than your standard Crown Vic if he was worried enough about his gas mileage to sweat me to death in the back seat? And why do they count out your change so sllllllowl; does he think if he takes an extra three minutes curbside I am going to crumble and say “ just keep it?”.  I mean really. THIS IS AMERICA.

So. Call me spoiled, but I will only eat wild salmon. The farmed stuff just doesn’t look like real food sometimes and it’s so fatty and unflavorful. I’d much rather find a random local fish that has actually been caught from the sea (sustainably, of course).  Living in the UK that kind of means not eating salmon; it’s hard to find the wild stuff and even if you do, it looks like it’s done a few rounds on the plane over from Alaska before landing in the frozen/fresh section. Hermph.

But, see, farmed salmon aren’t just bad-tasting, they are also bad for the wild stocks. A bunch of experts came out today with a statement of how lice from farmed salmon (EW) is killing baby wild salmons as they swim by. This is bad bad bad. A 2005 paper found the juvys had 73 times the number of lice when passing close to a farm compared with other places on their migration route. Furthermore, the farm area had 30,000 times more lice than non-farmy sea water. EWWWWWWW.

Thing is, we are not just talking about what ends up on my plate or how much it’s gonna cost. Spawning salmon are a BEDROCK of the ecology of the forests where they breed and die. Grizzly bears eat them. Their decomposing bodies actually fertilize the whole bloody forest. Loosing this important source of energy would be devastating for the whole ecosystem.

SO. If there was a way to reduce the harm of farmed fish - by raising them in totally closed pens, as opposed to the cheaper open nets most often used, you should do it right? It will reduce the transfer of lice, prevent “spills" of farmed Atlantic salmon into the habitat of native Pacific salmon, keep in the antibiotics, drugs and....did I mention LICE? I mean you’re eating it people…