Quote of the Day: White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs
I don’t honestly think it opens up a whole new series of questions, because, you know, in all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last.
– White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked whether the Deepwater Horixon drilling disaster would modify the Administration’s plans to open large sections of the U.S. coast to new offshore drilling leases.
Image: Detail from a NASA/MODIS capture of the Gulf of Mexico, showing an oil slick spreading from the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Click to feed the hungry, do good
I’m a little biased, since I did the web design for the site, but Grateful for TODAY is certainly shaping up as a terrific quick read each morning.
The usual fare is a positive thought about the simpler things in life. Today, though, the topic is sites where you can donate something helpful — for free. One example is Free Rice, the UN World Food Programme-sponsored charity which provides meals based on the number of quiz questions you answer correctly (hint: venesection = phlebotomy). Others, such as the Animal Rescue Site, only require a clickthrough.
All good causes, and all for free. Here’s a link to the post if you’d like bookmark a few of your favorites.
Train saves time, energy by not stopping at stations
So how do you make a bullet train even faster?
You don’t stop. Sounds silly, but wait until you see how it works. Even with Chinese audio, you’ll get the idea. This concept uses a pair of roof-mounted boarding cabins to eliminate the time lost for station transfers (and the energy used to get a fast train back up to speed).
Passengers wishing to board are seated at the station in an elevated compartment. As the train approaches, it picks up the boarding compartment on its roof-mounted track. Disembarking passengers are left behind in a similar module. Once newly arrived passengers are seated on the train, the boarding cabin is moved to the rear, ready to be loaded for the next station’s departures.
Brilliant. It’s just the kind of forward thinking we’ll need as energy prices rise — and air travel becomes unaffordable.
via kottke
Photo gallery: Efforts resume to contain massive Gulf oil spill
With a strong storm system moving away to the east, the U.S. Coast Guard and crews from BP Exploration are expected to resume cleanup efforts Sunday at the site of a sunken oil platform.
Robotic cameras have spotted at least one large leak from what is left of an undersea drilling pipe. The line was ripped from the Deepwater Horizon platform as it capsized and sank Friday. A search for 11 missing crew members was called off on Saturday.
Coast Guard officials sounded a cautiously optimistic note immediately after the sinking of rig, minimizing the potential of a serious environmental disaster. But yesterday’s discovery is “game changing,” according to Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, whose district is in charge of recovery operations.
Though 40 miles off the Louisiana coastline, the spill now covers a 400 square mile area near some of the United States’ most sensitive marine environments. Engineers estimate that about 1,000 barrels of oil per day are escaping from the ruptured line. That’s the equivalent of about 42,000 U.S. gallons.
The oil platform — lying on the seabed about a quarter mile from the leak — was thought to have contained up to 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel at the time of its sinking.
Cleanup was hampered Saturday by high winds and rough seas. Recovery crews were still able to dump almost 2,000 of chemical dispersant on the growing slick. Meteorologists expect conditions to improve today.
Higher auto fuel economy standards mean nothing
Jeff Rubin on why CAFE standards won’t get us there:
Your engine may be a lot more efficient that your dad’s old gas-guzzler from the 1970s, but chances are you burn just as much gasoline on the road over the course of a year as he did. You, like your fellow North American drivers, eat up all the energy efficiency gains made in engine and materials technology over the last thirty years by driving ever-larger, ever-faster vehicles loaded with more and more energy-consuming features. And to top it all off, you drive your vehicle about a third more than your parents did, in large measure because you commute so much further every day than they did.
So what will work? Nothing. Just wait for oil prices to spike again — and they will. People will park their cars and look for other ways to get around.
Five solar power projects that aren’t junk and cost less than $500
Part of my deal with Mother Nature Network (which acquired our site, Lighter Footstep, in March) is that I’d start doing some writing for them. So I finally got my first assignment: Write 1200 words on residential solar power power.
That’s a bit like being asked to write an article on physics. Where do you start? In any case, I’ve really come to loathe green tech articles written by people whose depth of experience goes no deeper than the Google search bar at the top of their browser. It’s not as if I’ve ever planned a solar residential project of my own. Looking at the price tags of full-home systems, I rather doubt I’ll be fitting panels anytime soon.
It was the cost angle that finally caught my interest. I may not know a bunch about tax credits for home renewable energy projects, but I’m all about cheap. Hooray for MNN’s flexible editors. If you’re so inclined, head over and read Solar power for less than $500.
Quote of the day: The minimalist mind
Never memorize what you can look up in books.
–Albert Einstein
I’m pretty sure the good professor would extend this to web search these days.
Jamie Oliver’s ‘Food Revolution’ concludes tonight (sneak peek)
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution concludes this evening on ABC at 9pm Eastern/8pm Central time.
The “Naked Chef” spent several months last year filming his efforts to improve eating habits in Huntington, West Virginia — particularly in school cafeterias. The results were predictable, especially at first: Huntington residents were wary of the British chef and his drive to dump processed school lunches. Huntington’s caution was perhaps understandable, having been singled out (a little unfairly) as “America’s Unhealthiest City” by a Centers for Disease Control study.
After some initial stumbles, Oliver mounted a charm offensive which won-over most of the town’s skeptics, including WDGG morning host Rod Willis. Having spent most of my career in radio, I find it difficult not like Rod. He’s been around, is tied deeply to his community, and took a dim view the possibility that Oliver’s crew was in town to take some cheap shots at the locals. It took some time before he warmed up to Oliver and came along for the ride.
Primary production of the Food Revolution wrapped in 2009, but Oliver returned on April 13th to film the series coda. You get a sneak peak of tonight’s final episode at the Huntington Herald-Dispatch website, which has a gallery showing a healthy community cook-out.
Grassroots Food Revolution groups have popped up in Seattle, Vancouver, and Detroit. ABC hasn’t announced of the show will continue at any of these locations next season, but a half million people have signed a petition calling for better school lunch programs, and Food Revolution group on Facebook is over 97,000 members. It’s tough to image Jamie Oliver will walk out on such a well-developed network.
About the author
Chris Baskind writes about the environment and simpler living. He's also an advocate of carfree transportation, relying entirely on bicycles since June, 2009.Three years ago, Chris launched Lighter Footstep, a pioneering website focused on greener, healthier, more affordable living. It was recently acquired by the Mother Nature Network (MNN). Connect with Chris on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.