Focus the Nation 2009: A Nationwide Town Hall on America's Energy Future
Companies Cite Growing Interest, Need and Value for Environmental Smarts: Survey
Surge of college students pursuing 'clean energy' careers
Peapod All-Electric Vehicle Ready for Earth Day Launch
Tesla Takes 520 Model S Reservations in a Week; Delivers 104 Roadsters in March.
China Intends to Own the Electric Car Market
We Drive Nissan's Electric Car, and It's Sweet
Students claim solar breakthrough
GE Energy, Invenergy Team to Build Wind Project with Federal Stimulus Funds.
A Green World is a Safer One
Corporate Political Transparency: The Green Business Rating We Really Need
"Conversations That Will Change the World"
How to Save Our Economy in Under Seven Minutes
Urge Your Representatives to Support the Plan NOW
Collapse Of The Ice Bridge Supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf Appears Imminent
An Antarctic ice shelf has disappeared: scientists
How Low Can It Go? Sun Plunges Into The Quietest Solar Minimum In A Century
Climate clock is ticking
Process For Making 'Unbreakable' Glass Developed
Statement Is Anti-scientific And Anti-science In The Most Extreme Sense
New England's sugar country confronts a bitter future as the climate warms.
Energy-efficiency jobs get a jolt
House Produces Huge Climate Bill to Cap Emissions and Reduce Energy Dependence
10-Year Study Uncovers Toxic Aspects of DBPs
Free Academic Licenses of ArchiCAD 12


Focus the Nation 2009: A Nationwide Town Hall on America's Energy Future
In 2009 we have a real opportunity to adopt and implement policies to create millions of new green collar jobs, revitalize the American economy, and help create a more just, equitable, and cooperative world.
Between now and April 2009, we must Focus the Nation on seizing this opportunity to build the new energy economy. On Saturday, April 18, 2009, join Focus teams in every Congressional District in America to connect campuses, communities and elected officials in a nation-wide town hall meeting on America's energy future.
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Companies Cite Growing Interest, Need and Value for Environmental Smarts: Survey
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Businesses have a growing interest and need for environmental and sustainability knowledge -- so much so that 65 percent say they value such knowledge in job candidates and 78 percent say that value will appreciate as a hiring factor in the next five years, according to a survey by the National Environmental Education Foundation. The points are among the results of research detailed in a 50-page report called "The Engaged Organization, Corporate Employee Environmental Education Survey and Case Study Findings" (pdf). The report was released Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
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Surge of college students pursuing 'clean energy' careers
Climate change is a concern among undergraduates, driving a surge of interest in science and engineering on campuses nationwide.
Reporting from Washington -- In what could be an encouraging sign of change in the long-standing shortage of Americans preparing for "clean energy" careers, the subject is suddenly hot on college campuses across the nation -- a surge of interest largely stimulated by the specter of global warming.
Concern about climate change is galvanizing more undergraduate students to turn toward a subject involving science and engineering, some educators suggest, in much the same way that Moscow's launching of the Sputnik space satellite jolted baby boomers to turn their eyes to the stars.
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Peapod All-Electric Vehicle Ready for Earth Day Launch
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Most hybrid, alternative fuel and greener cars strive to provide the same performance and driving experience as gas guzzlers. But that's not the purpose of the new all-electric Peapod car.
The Peapod, a creation of renowned brand designer Peter Arnell, has been developed in line with typical driving conditions and city planning trends that are heading more and more towards slower, smaller spaces. It's also been created with an eye towards efficiency and the environment, boasting zero emissions, nearly-zero maintenance and a long life.
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Tesla Takes 520 Model S Reservations in a Week; Delivers 104 Roadsters in March.
Tesla launched the all-electric, seven passenger family sedan March 26, and orders immediately began streaming in online and at showrooms in California.
"Frankly the number of cars reserved in the first week has exceeded our optimistic internal projections," said Tesla CEO, Chairman and Product Architect Elon Musk. "Enthusiasm surrounding the Model S is proof that there's pent-up demand for more affordable, fuel-efficient vehicles - including those made in America." The $5,000 reservation fee for the Model S is refundable.
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China Intends to Own the Electric Car Market
As America obsesses over whether or not to bail out Chrysler and General Motors or let them slide into bankruptcy, along comes an announcement that brings Titanic deck chairs to mind. The government of China wants it known that their nation intends to become the pre-eminent producer of all-electrically powered autos within three years.
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We Drive Nissan's Electric Car, and It's Sweet
The prototype of Nissan's forthcoming electric car may look like a breadbox, but the technology beneath that boxy body could propel the Japanese automaker to the front of the EV pack when the car hits the road next year.
Nissan may be a small player compared to the likes of General Motors, Toyota and Honda, but it's probably the most committed to EVs. CEO Carlos Ghosn has said in no uncertain terms that cars with cords are the future of the automobile. And he's backed that up with an all-in bet on a practical, affordable hatchback with decent range, reasonable recharge time and room for five people. Oh - and Nissan says it'll cost about 90 cents to charge.
"It's a real car with 100-mile range," said Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning. "We may not be the first to market with an EV, but we'll be the first to mass-market an EV."
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Students claim solar breakthrough
Cambridge University has unveiled plans for a solar-powered racing car which will cruise at 60mph using the same amount of energy as a hairdryer.
The car, which students have named "Bethany", will be completed this summer and will race in the World Solar Challenge across Australia's Outback.
Its power will come from solar energy captured by high-efficiency silicon cells which will create a solar "skin".
In addition, an electric braking system will also generate energy.
The university said the car will "essentially be an ultra-efficient electric vehicle" and its designers say it could provide a model for other forms of green transportation.
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GE Energy, Invenergy Team to Build Wind Project with Federal Stimulus Funds.
One of the first wind energy projects expected to benefit from President Obama's stimulus plan is being developed by Invenergy Wind in LaSalle County, Illinois. GE Energy will supply 74 of its 1.5-megawatt (MW) wind turbines to begin the expansion of the Grand Ridge Energy Center, which, when completed, will increase the country's wind power capacity by over 110 megawatts, enough clean energy for 30,000 U.S. households.
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A Green World is a Safer One
For the Greener Good
Presented By: The Home Depot Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services
Date Recorded: February 18, 2009
Duration: 01:43:05
Ed Mazria, founder Architecture 2030, and John Podesta, president and CEO, Center for American Progress, co-chair Obama-Biden Transistion Project talk about the impact of sustainability on politics and the building industry.
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Corporate Political Transparency: The Green Business Rating We Really Need
See, a huge number of companies make modest improvements in practices, but lobby all-out, in a variety of ways, to stall the adoption of higher standards, better land-use practices, green taxes or even health and safety regulations. And the impacts of those lobbying efforts usually far, far outweigh the good they claim to be doing with their pilot green efforts.
The most recent shocking report? Revelation of donations by companies that like to claim green leadership, including Microsoft, Toyota and Wal-Mart, to the ultra-anti-environmental Cato Institute, which recently launched an ad campaign targeting president Obama's climate policies, relying on climate skeptic deceptions. That's right, your Prius purchase may have helped fund an attack on climate action.
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"Conversations That Will Change the World"
DC Speakers Series Presents Mazria and John Podesta;
Video and Q&A Forum Online
Conversations That Will Change The World: On February 18, Edward Mazria appeared at the National Building Museum in DC with John Podesta who, as a key advisor to President Obama and President of the Center for American Progress, is another of today's most influential minds. A video of the event, presented as part of the museum's ongoing For the Greener Good lecture series, can now be seen online, with an interactive forum for posing questions to the speakers.
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How to Save Our Economy in Under Seven Minutes
The Two-Year, Nine-Million-Jobs Investment Plan Webcast
Edward Mazria and the team at Architecture 2030 have created a concise new webcast on The Two-Year, Nine-Million-Jobs Investment Plan, illustrating clearly how merging the 2030 Challenge targets with a mortgage interest rate buy-down program puts the Building Sector back to work, creating 9 million new jobs, $1 trillion in new spending and investment, and a brand-new $236 billion dollar per year renovation market.
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Urge Your Representatives to Support the Plan NOW
If the Fed does not tie lower mortgage interest rates to the energy efficiency targets of the 2030 Challenge, we will miss out on a historic opportunity to put America back to work, rebuild the Nation's economy and dramatically reduce US energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Urge your representatives to support The Two-Year, Nine-Million-Jobs Investment Plan with Architecture 2030's powerful new advocacy tool. To take action now, click here.
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Collapse Of The Ice Bridge Supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf Appears Imminent
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) - The Wilkins Ice Shelf is at risk of partly breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula as the ice bridge that connects it to Charcot and Latady Islands looks set to collapse. The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts forming along its centre axis resulted in a large block of ice breaking away.
Many changes occurred to the ice shelf in 2008, as witnessed by Envisat. In late February, 425 sq km of ice calved away, narrowing the ice bridge down to a 6-km strip. At the end of May a 160-sq-km chunk of ice broke away and reduced the ice bridge to just 2.7 km, leaving it only 900 m wide at its narrowest location.
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An Antarctic ice shelf has disappeared: scientists
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.
They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.
Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.
"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.
"This continued and often significant glacier retreat is a wakeup call that change is happening ... and we need to be prepared," USGS glaciologist Jane Ferrigno, who led the Antarctica study, said in a statement.
"Antarctica is of special interest because it holds an estimated 91 percent of the Earth's glacier volume, and change anywhere in the ice sheet poses significant hazards to society," she said.
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How Low Can It Go? Sun Plunges Into The Quietest Solar Minimum In A Century
ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) - The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
The year 2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.
Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent).
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Climate clock is ticking
In the summer of 2007, a large portion of Arctic Sea ice - about 40 per cent - simply vanished. That wasn't supposed to happen. At least not yet. As recent as 2004, scientists had predicted it would take another 50 to 100 years for that much ice to melt. Yet here it was happening today.
It raised the question: Had global warming suddenly pressed the gas pedal to the floor? If so, the world was in for quite a climate ride - dramatic, jarring changes in climate much sooner than expected. Climate scientists were deeply worried.
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Process For Making 'Unbreakable' Glass Developed
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) - Wine glasses that don't shatter? Baby bottles that don't break? Coffee mugs that last generations?
All are possible with a new process for strengthening glass and ceramics developed by an Alfred University researcher.
Alfred University has signed a royalty agreement with Santanoni Glass and Ceramics, Inc., of Alfred Station, NY, for proprietary technology related to the strengthening of glass.
The process allows Santanoni to produce "unbreakable" glassware such as wine glasses, canning jars, bottles, tumblers, goblets and mugs at a cost that allows the products to be competitive with normal, un-strengthened glassware.
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Statement Is Anti-scientific And Anti-science In The Most Extreme Sense
"Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind." - Harold Ambler
Such a statement is anti-scientific and anti-science in the most extreme sense. It accuses the scientific community broadly defined of deliberate fraud -- and not just the community of climate scientists, but the leading National Academies of Science around the world (including ours) and the American Geophysical Union, an organization of geophysicists that consists of more than 45,000 members and the American Meteorological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Bazil)
  • Royal Society of Canada
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Academie des Sciences (France)
  • Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
  • Indian National Science Academy
  • Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
  • Science Council of Japan
  • Russian Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Society (United Kingdom)
  • National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)
  • Australian Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
  • Caribbean Academy of Sciences
  • Indonesian Academy of Sciences
  • Royal Irish Academy
  • Academy of Sciences Malaysia
  • Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
  • Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  • National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
  • State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)
  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  • Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)
  • American Geophysical Union (AGU)
  • American Institute of Physics (AIP)
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
  • American Meteorological Society (AMS)
  • Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)


    • New England's sugar country confronts a bitter future as the climate warms.
    SABBATH DAY POINT, N.Y. - All farming depends on the weather, but few foods are more dependent on a specific climate than maple syrup. After all, for the sugar maple's sap to run at all requires cooperative weather - freezing nights followed by warmer days.
    But with the build-up of invisible greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those temperature swings don't happen as reliably. At risk is an American tradition that stretches back even before Europeans discovered the "New World."
    "Weather controls it all," says Marty Fitzgerald, a fifth-generation sugarmaker in upstate New York.
    And, in recent years, the weather has been weird.
    Extracting sap from maple trees - the business of maple sugaring - employs everything from little tin funnels and hanging pails to plastic spigots and light blue tubing that turn the forest into a spider's web of tripwires, often at chest height. Sugar makers collect the sap any number of ways: hustling a pail down the mountainside to the sugar shack, using gravity to deposit it in the holding tanks, even vacuum pumping the sap downhill.
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    Energy-efficiency jobs get a jolt
    Asa Foss spends his days fielding calls from construction workers who were bulldozed along with Maryland's home-building market and now want to be part of a booming side-industry: making houses more energy-efficient.
    The callers tell Foss that they're desperate for work and that the classes he teaches can help them get it. He tells them there's a two-year waiting list.
    Foss runs Maryland Home Performance, a state-sponsored program based in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., that trains workers in re-engineering buildings to cut electricity use. The field -- and Foss' voice mailbox -- got a steroid shot this year when President Obama and Congress set aside $20 billion for energy efficiency in the federal stimulus package.
    The result is a case study in the challenges of flooding federal dollars into a sector that long survived on a trickle.
    The average American family spends about $2,000 a year on home energy bills, the Energy Department reports. In most cases, a quarter to a third of the energy is wasted: Air leaks through windows, ducts and poor insulation; older appliances hog power. The Obama administration believes that presents a prime opportunity to create jobs and free up cash for homeowners.
    The administration estimates the first wave of stimulus efficiency spending will employ 87,000 people -- including energy auditors who scour buildings for waste with high-tech sensors and weatherization contractors who install the often-simple upgrades that cut energy bills. In addition, the White House believes the program will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help combat climate change.
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    House Produces Huge Climate Bill to Cap Emissions and Reduce Energy Dependence
    A collaboration between Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA), its four parts encompass clean energy, energy efficiency, global warming pollution reduction and the support for the industries and workers who would bring about a transformed future.
    With a Democratically-controlled Congress and a President who has made energy reform one of his trinity of objectives, along with health and education, the draft portends that the nation may finally be poised to take action against foreign oil dependence and climate warming after eight lost years of obstruction and backsliding.
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    10-Year Study Uncovers Toxic Aspects of DBPs
    University of Illinois geneticist Michael Plewa said that disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in water are the unintended consequence of water purification.
    "The process of disinfecting water with chlorine and chloramines and other types of disinfectants generates a class of compounds in the water that are called disinfection byproducts. The disinfectant reacts with the organic material in the water and generates hundreds of different compounds. Some of these are toxic, some can cause birth defects, some are genotoxic, which damage DNA, and some we know are also carcinogenic."
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    Free Academic Licenses of ArchiCAD 12
    My name is Charlie Cooper and I am the Education Specialist here at Graphisoft North America. Our curriculum aids and training guides are fantastic learning/teaching tools to help streamline the implementation process of bringing our BIM solution into your school, and I want you to know that I am available any time to answer any questions or concerns you may have.
    I wanted to let you know that, in conjunction with the BIM Curriculum, we are also offering free Academic Licenses of ArchiCAD 12. This is a two-year, fully-functional license. It can be put onto your server and installed onto all the computers that are connected with that server. All in all, one Serial Number for ArchiCAD 12 will be sufficient to supply your entire school with the software, and you can upgrade or renew your license at any time.
    If you are interested, please follow the instructions below in order to register:
    1. Register your school with the following link:
    2. After you register your school above, you will receive an ArchiCAD 12 Serial Number via Email in 3-5 Business days.
    3. Once you receive your serial number, download ArchiCAD 12 with the links provided in the email and follow the directions for Install! You should choose ArchiCAD (Educational) when asked during installation.
    4. ENJOY!
    There are over 550 schools that have registered for ArchiCAD 12 to date, including the majority of the accredited architectural programs nationwide. Join them in supplying your students with the most powerful and user-friendly software on the market!