Not to dwell on the weather, but this is pretty intense, even for North Carolina. Last week, the official low temp. was 18 Deg. F (-7 ° C) and today the high was 81 F (27 °C). In the 50 hours from Wed AM to Friday PM temperatures went up by 50 Deg. F. Right [...]

Sunday night central North Carolina was blanketed in 2-4 inches (5-10 cm) of snow. This is our third snowfall this winter, which makes this a pretty “wintry” winter for NC. Last year the temperatures hardly dipped below freezing. Last night it was 14 Deg. F (minus 11 Celsius). The kids enjoyed building their first snow-person. [...]

Corn-based ethanol fuel may not be a “crime against humanity” after all. New research (pdf) shows that newer plants can produce a fuel that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent and replaces a lot of fossil fuel: The ethanol industry currently is producing a fuel that is 48 to 59 percent lower in direct-effect [...]

The German start-up car maker Loremo says it is still on track with production in 2010 and they announced a couple of weeks ago that they will offer the Loremo in three flavors: Electric (EV), Gasoline (GT) and Diesel (LS). While I understand the idea of adding diversity to their product lineup, I hope they [...]

Right now I am in Atlantic Beach, on the North Carolina coast. I am sitting on the deck of a friend’s beach house with a drink, waiting for the last load of laundry and the dish washer to get done, so I can pack our stuff and head back to Durham. I can hear the [...]

My current batch of biodiesel is my greenest yet because I used homemade, bio-electricity to cook it (instead of Duke Power’s dirty coal-based electricity). A couple of weeks ago I bought a little 5KW diesel generator at Costco, plus a 10-circuit power switch. Last weekend I wired the generator to the circuits. Now I have [...]

The big splash about Tata Motor’s ultra-cheap Nano ($2,500) all but buried another announcement from the Indian automaker at the Delhi auto show: they signed a $20M deal with MDI, a European start-up car maker working on commercializing cars that run on compressed air. Of course, the cars don’t “run on air,” rather they use [...]

As of yesterday, days will be getting longer again on this side of the globe. Of course here, in the Old North State that’s not that big a deal, anyway. But I did start paying more attention to sunrise/sunset this fall. When I bike to work and back home, I prefer to avoid the bad [...]

Skysails is a German company that is working on commercializing a simple, brilliant way for large ships to use wind power for propulsion. Large kites tethered high above the ship can generate up to 50 percent of the propulsion energy needed for freighters and large yachts. The company estimates that their product can save 10-35 [...]

A huge storm is brewing in the North Sea. The Dutch and the Brits are closing their imposing coastal barriers to keep the water away from their cities. The largest seaport in Europe, Rotterdam, is closed for a day, and oil rigs have been evacuated. The coastal residents in Britain, Holland, Germany, Denmark, and Norway [...]

The Moon from inside the eye of Hurricane Felix, shot by Randy Bynon during a hurricane hunter mission. Amazing photo – click on the thumbnail to see the large version on the Wunderground site.

We brought this plumeria back from Hawai’i in 2004 and planted the stem in a pot. For a while nothing happened. Then it started growing leaves. This spring Laura transferred the plant to a larger pot and it started growing more leaves. When we moved, we gave the plumeria a nice, sunny spot on the [...]

Ugh – I’m melting! North Carolina in August is certainly supposed to be hot, but tripple-digit temperatures are still unusual. Yesterday we hit a new heat record for the day and came within one degree of the all-time highest temperature ever recorded at RDU airport. It was 104 Fahrenheit – 40 Deg. Celsius – and [...]

If this story about these three guys from Wales is true, and their “greenbox” is real, and if it works … then it might well be the holy grail in the struggle to prevent a climate catastrophe. They claim that their invention can capture emissions from IC engines and store it. The waste from the [...]

“Bush moves to counter gas emissions” the headlines read all over the place. He moved? Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to craft regulations that will “cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.” He ordered the agencies _ the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency [...]

Today is Africa Malaria Day. Malaria is an ancient global killer, and in Africa, more than 3,000 children die each day from malaria (Red Cross). In order to raise awareness about Malaria, and what to do about it, the WHO’s Roll Back Malaria initiative issued a statement that expresses hope that global collaboration can finally [...]

Yesterday was the Durham Earth Day Celebration and it was a gorgeous, sunny and very busy day. We had a Piedmont Biofiuels/BullCity Biodiesel booth at the event and Chris brought his brand-new, jet-black 2006 Jetta TDI over for show-and-tell. Interest in biodiesel and alternative fuels in general was really strong, and our volunteers Jeff, Gary, [...]

The US and the EU have reached a deal to liberalize transatlantic air travel. It may seem like a good idea to allow US airlines and EU airlines to send their planes to any destination in Europe and the US. It will increase competition and presumably give consumers more choice and lower prices. And they [...]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest report yesterday: “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis”, assesses the current scientific knowledge of the natural and human drivers of climate change, observed changes in climate, the ability of science to attribute changes to different causes, and projections for future climate change. The report [...]

Heat mining apparently has much greater potential in the US as previously thought. The idea of exploiting geothermal energy by drilling deep holes into hot rocks deep underground is not confined to Iceland and Yellowstone. According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) this awesome, abundant source of energy (the hot core [...]