Perpetual Innovation

Category: earth day

  • Earth Day 2022 Who Killed the Electric Car?

     Earth Day 2022 (April 22, ’22) Who Killed the Electric Car?

    The statistics and the forecasts for Global Warming and
    Climate Change are increasingly dire. The decision – and it is a decision – to do
    business as usual (buy big gas guzzlers) is becoming increasingly costly to the world. And the window to avoid
    the worst warming scenarios is closing. The CO2 and methane that we have been
    pumping into the atmosphere will persist for decades (centuries really)
    continuing to heat a warming world.

    On that note, a documentary is in order for Earth Day 2022, Who
    Killed the Electric Car     (2006). Read about it on Wikipedia,
    watch on many venues including IMDb and Prime Video. It pretty much describes the methods of
    Big Tobacco in its hay day, and the methodology adopted by oil companies for
    about a century. Lots of celebrities. Hard to find a single factoid that is not true.

    General Motors was starting to be very successful with its
    electric car in 2005, rolling it out to meet the aggressive zero emissions vehicle
    (ZEV) standards that California was phasing in at the time. The standard,
    appropriately call CARB, was suddenly watered down and phased out, with both
    the state of California (Schwarzenegger)
    and the Federal government (Bush) chasing after a shiny object: Hydrogen. Cool technology, but… Hydrogen is still not here, and will probably never be truly competitive for most applications.

    GM (and the other Big Autos) killed off their EVs. In GMs
    case, the recalled them all back from their leases (not renewing) and crushed
    them all (but 1). If GM had stayed with their EV program they would have been
    in the same market position as Tesla is now, only 15 years earlier.  GM bought controlling position in a wonderful
    battery technology that would have given the EV 200+ mile range (vs 60 for the antiquated
    lead battery technology they were implementing). But that battery was never
    utilized. This controlling stake in the battery company was later sold to …
    Chevron!

    The documentary investigates who were the murders of the EV
    and who were the accomplices. But the obvious victims are the general public
    and, of course, the environment! We continue to be addicted to oil. Ukraine is
    a stark reminder of what the power bought with oil revenues can do.

    For now, drive less. Plan for a small vehicle. Make sure
    your next vehicle is either electric of plug-in- electric hybrid.

    As we celebrate Earth Day of 2022, think about how easily
    the citizens can be manipulated away from objectives that are better for the
    world into paths that are only good for monopolies and the ruthless.

    Please let us know if there is anything that is factually untrue. Also, are the conclusions sound?

    #EV #PHEF #WhoKilledTheElectricCar #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #EarthDay

     

  • Earth Day 2021 Quiz

    Earth Day 2021 Quiz (April 22, 2021)

        Test your knowledge of a few Earth related topics on Earth Day. Note that when you Google some of these topics, you can get rather wide ranges of answers. Make sure you are looking at the US (if that is the target region), rather current information, and rather reliable sources. Or, just wait a day to see what we think the correct answer should be. 

    Answers will be forthcoming today or tomorrow.

    1.  Plastics. Approximately what % of the US’s
    plastic gets recycled?

    a.  8-10%

    b.  14-15%

    c.  25-30%

    d.  45-50%

    2.  Plastics. Approximately what % of the US’s
    plastic makes its way into lakes, rivers, oceans?

    a.  0.5%

    b.  1%

    c.  3%

    d.  5%

    3.  Plastic in the environment (on land or in
    ocean). About how many years does it take to decompose a plastic bottle in the
    ocean?

    a.  Plastic decomposes in about 20 years.

    b.  Plastic decomposes in about 50 years.

    c.  Plastic decomposes in about 150 years.

    d.  Plastic doesn’t really decompose, but let’s
    go with 450 years.

    4.  Plastic in the oceans. Approximately how many
    years before the plastic in the oceans will exceed the fish? (by weight). 

    a.  Too last, plastic already exceeds fish in
    oceans (by weight).

    b.  2030. In 10 years, plastic should exceed fish
    (by weight).

    c.  2050. In 30 years, plastic should exceed fish
    (by weight).

    d.  2100. In 80 years, plastic should exceed fish
    (by weight).

    5.  Manatees in Florida are dying at an unusually
    high rate recently. What is the primary cause of deaths in 2021?

    a.  Boats

    b.  Cold

    c.  Disease

    d.  Starvation

    6.  The artic is melting enough that ships can
    now travel through the Arctic to the North during the summer and avoid the
    Panama Canal or longer routes? Approximately how long during the summer can
    ships now navigate through the Arctic?

    a) About 4 weeks of thaw sufficient to
    navigate in the summer.

    b) About 8 weeks of thaw sufficient to
    navigate in the summer.

    c)  About 3 months of thaw sufficient to
    navigate in the summer.

    d)  About 365 days a year.

    7.  About, what percentage of the US lakes,
    rivers and streams are polluted (according to US EPA)?  (Polluted, as in no swimming and you should
    not eat the fish, if there are any.)

    a.  4%-5%

    b.  10%-15%

    c.  25%-30%

    d.  40%-45%

    8.  Soil. The current “industrial” farming
    methods deplete the topsoil. No topsoil, little or no farm crops. At the
    current rate of topsoil depletion, how many years do we have before we “run
    out” of topsoil? [Ooops…. Things changed… problems with this question… Well, with the answers…]

    a.  About 20 years until the world’s topsoil will
    be effectively depleted.

    b.  About 30 years until the world’s topsoil will
    be effectively depleted.

    c.  About 60 years until the world’s topsoil will
    be effectively depleted.

    d.  About 100 years until the world’s topsoil
    will be effectively depleted.

    9.  Extinction. Out of about 8 million plant and
    animal species on earth, approximately how many are in threat of extinction?

    a.  100K, 1.2%

    b.  300K, 3.7%

    c.  500K, 6.2%

    d.  1M, 12.5%

    10.  Earths. Current estimates are that we
    significantly overuse the earth’s resources (overshoot the earth’s carrying
    capacity). We currently need part of another earth to be “sustainable”. But, if
    the rest of the world consumed at the same rate per person as we do in the US,
    how many earths do we need?

    a.  2 earths (+1)

    b.  3 earths (+2)

    c.  4 earths (+3)

    d.  5 earths (+4)

    11.  What is the depth of the oceans? (Plus, water
    expands when warmed about 0.000214 per +1C for seawater, so how much would sea
    levels rise based on a +1 degree Centigrade increase in global temperature that
    transferred throughout the oceans.)

    a.  Average ocean depth is 1,000ft (+1C temp
    increase = +2.6in increase in avg ocean level.)

    b.  Average ocean depth is 2,500ft (+1C temp
    increase = +6.4in increase in avg ocean level.)

    c.  Average ocean depth is 1.2 mile (+1C temp
    increase = +16.3in in increase avg ocean level.)

    d.  Average ocean depth is 2.3 miles (+1C temp
    increase = +31.2in increase in avg ocean level.) 

  • Earth Day 2020, 50 years of Hind sight

    It is the 50th Earth Day and the world is generally locked down while we deal with the Coronavirus pandemic — and how best to ramp back up the world economy.

    50th Earth Day. April 22 2020

    The pandemic is a serious and sobering aspect to the fun and excitement to an otherwise interesting and informative day of rallies, speeches waterway cleanups and more…

    Worldwide we are going on 3M positive COVID19 cases and nearing 200,000 deaths. The US, never to be outdone in anything that seems competitive, has 32% of the cases and more than 25% of the deaths. Deaths in New York and New Jersey just passed 15,000 and 5,000 respectively. New England deaths exceed all other countries. It is hard to imagine this given that the virus had to cross the Pacific (to the west coast) or travel to Europe and then cross the pond to New England. The US has only 4.2% of the world’s population, yet 25% of the worlds deaths, and rising. How can that be?

    COVID19 Positive Cases and Deaths

               As of April 22, 2020
           Cases  %/World
    World 2,621,436 100.0%
     deaths 182,989 7.0%
    7.0%   %/World
    US 837,719 32.0%
     deaths 46,771 25.6%
    Deaths% 5.6%

    COVID has had a big toll on health and live and a wicked toll on the world’s economies. There some linings, and some of them silver, from this
    pandemic – currently and on the other side of it. Let’s think of a couple while
    we address what the other side of COVID might look like. First, if you think
    that we will ever get back to “normal”, you probably haven’t thought it through
    a lot.

    Pollution. The massive slowdown in the world economy has
    allowed the earth to take a breather. There are wonderful satellite views of
    China, Europe and the US, before and after pictures. Business as usual shows
    clouds of pollution followed by a few weeks of complete economic shutdown, and
    pristine-looking skies. Wow! There are similar pictures everywhere. Denver. LA, New York. The clear
    canals of Venice with fish and dolphin. 
    Pollution contributes to hundreds of millions of ailments every year, and to millions and millions of deaths. Let’s say 6 to 10 million people die each year because of air pollution. (See for example, this Forbes article in 2018.) Note that the infographic shows about 2.1M in the USA. Maybe the slowdown in the first quarter of 2020 will result in 1M people saved related to air pollution? 
    Once people get a taste of clean air, they tend not to want to return to smog and pollution.
    A Whole New Economy. The world economy will never be the same. For several reasons. First, what we came to think of as “normal” was never normal. We have undertaken to consume all the world’s fossil fuels in a few short centuries. We are fully beginning to realize the full costs of non-sustainable systems, the business-as-usual economy was never normal.
    Earth Overshoot day is a concept that is especially relevant to the first Earth Day in 1970. The resources we took and consumed from the earth — although maybe not sustainable and renewable — were fully supplied by the 1 planet we inhabit. That is, the 3.7B world population in 1970, staying with the same consumption patters, could live on the earth without depleting her resources. Think of this earth carrying capacity like you do a annual budget, it would be nice if the annual income lasted all year. But the population has more than doubled to 7.7B, and overall consumption has nearly doubled. Right now, the carrying capacity of Earth is exhausted about the end of July, only 57% of the way through the year! That’s 43% deficit spending for the rest of the year. To consume 43% more than the earth’s annual carrying capacity, we deplete resources like trees, fish and more.
    But, in 2020, the earth has gotten a bit of a breather. Overshoot day will improve dramatically!
    The economy will change. There will never be a “new normal”. People have gotten a taste of teleworking. It’s going to be hard to force people back into the offices that require an hour commute each way. Travel will take some time to come back, and business travel will never be the same. Stadium events will take some time to come back. Students have fully embraced online learning, and they will never fully go back.
    Consumption of fossil fuels are down at least 30% during the closed economy, but consumption may only bounce back half when the economy slowly starts to churn back.
    This might be the jump start that we all needed to step up a move toward sustainability. Assuming a 15% jump back, we would need to reduce our carbon footprint by 3% each and every year to have a 40% (overall) reduction by 2030, a 66% reduction by 2040, and near zero by 2050. Good news, we can easily move to 100% renewables by that time. (See Stanford Roadmap to 100% Renewable Energy by 2050 by country and also by major city.) And we can profitably move to 100% renewables if we include the health and death costs of fossil fuels.
    Hind sight is 2020. Every year since the turn of century as been in the hottest 20 some years, with many years breaking all time records. In fact, many months have hit monthly record highs, especially since 2015 (an El Nino year). January 2020 was hottest on record, and the oceans have never been hotter. Remember that carbon dioxide (CO2) persists in the environment for about 100 years from the time we introduce it by burning fossil fuels. As CO2 zooms from about 320ppm a hundred years ago to 415ppm now, the green house gasses will result in atmospheric heating for a century!
    Our linear economy was never “normal”, for this reason, and many others no one should consider using the term “new normal” on the other side of the COVID recession. Hopefully, with 2020, we will have a new respect for science and scientists.
    Let’s leverage this tragedy of COVID to make a real difference in our trajectory of the future.
    May every day be an Earth Day.

  • 13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN | Environment

    13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN | Environment | theguardian.com:

    Ouch. As you look at the clock, you will see that we are only 14 years into the 21st Century. Yet we have 13 of the hottest 14 years in recorded history.

    You do have to take the whole of the earth into account, obviously, not just the USA, where we were ?fortunate? enough to have a exceptionally cold and blizzardy Winter. (Polar Vortex is now in our daily vernacular.)

    If you are interested in the science go here to look at the 11 or 12 major indicators (based on several data sources each) that would indicate global warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

    If you want a composite graphic that shows the robustness of the evidence, go here. There are several data sources overlaid in each graphic. Note that the stratosphere is decreasing (cooler), that is consistent with a depletion of the ozone layer.

    The recent UN report talks about the trends in costs associated with climate effects, like typhoons. A draft report talks about $1.45T costs associated with climate change over the next decade. (See here http://www.livescience.com/43891-global-warming-economic-damage.html.)

    The costs are expected to reach $70 to $100B per year for adaptation by 2050. (See here: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/03/31/will-the-uns-new-report-shift-the-global-warming-debate)

    NASA has lots of interesting graphics, including time-series that will show the world temperature changes over the last couple hundred years. (Or just recently if you want since 1970).(The science visualization study at NASA is awesome, no mater what your interests: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Gallery/index.html or if you want to draw your own graphs based on the underlying data, go here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/3/2/1880-2014).

    As we come up on Earth Day (EarthDay.org or EarthDay in Wikipedia) the impacts of business as usual (BAS) really revolves around whether you think something should be done to be much more sustainable NOW!, in decades or in centuries to come.

    The degree of urgency really depends on how much you believe in global warming, and how fast you think that warming may take place.

    Look at the graphs and make your own call on this.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • World Water Day 2014 — March 22

    Welcome to the World
    Water Day of 2014:     This
    year’s theme is Water & Energy.
    By
    the Way:     Earth Day is coming in a month, April 22!!!
    Look for Seminar information.
    See the 2011
    SustainZine post     related to World Water Day.
    Some info is borrowed here.
    World Water Day
    The
    44th World Water Day (March 22, 2014):     http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/
      World Water Day can easily flooded past us without
    most of us hearing a drop about it.!:-(  And
    why is that, you may be wondering? Or not… The problem with this, and most
    things sustainability related, is where to start.  And how do we put the critical sustainability
    issue of water onto our daily radar screen.

    Water,
    Water, Everywhere…
      Water, so critical to life can be devastating in its
    absence. It can be devastating in abundance. Australia, plagued with decades of
    drought, finally got rain in 2011: it had an area flooded the size of Germany
    and France combined!  This was followed
    in February with Cyclone Yasi in the northeast. (A cyclone is the Pacific version of a hurricane… and, yes, they went
    through the alphabet to get to Y.) We know a lot about hurricanes for two years
    starting in 2004 giving us in Florida 3 or 4 per year including Katrina that
    also hit New Orleans.
      Then in the Winter of 2013-2014 we got snow, and
    more snow (let’s call that a polar vortex). In the meantime Europe (England) got
    drowned in rain.
    But the quiet pain associated with water is very
    easily preventable with very little money. More than 1 billion of our world’s
    6.9B population have inadequate drinking water with an additional 1B having
    inadequate sanitation. The result is that more than 3.5 million people die each
    year because of easily preventable water-related diseases (World Health
    Organization at     www.WHO.int).
     Approximately half of the world’s
    hospital beds are taken by water and hygiene-related diseases (    http://water.org/learn-about-the-water-crisis/facts/).  [This should be updated, it has improved
    since 2011.]

    The
    Nexus of Energy with Water, Paper, Plastic and Transportation.
      Few people realize how much water it takes to
    produce energy. How much water to power a light bulb, for example? To power a
    60 watt bulb 12 hours per day for a year? How about 3,000 to 6,000, depending
    on the power source, it could be more or less. See here.
      The water doesn’t go away, per se. Water might be
    taken in upstream, used to produce steam and power turbines and then released
    downstream.  Give a look at the Nexus
    sections in the outline on the last page of     Climate Changes and Sustainability, a
    WikiBook    : http://tinyurl.com/SustainYBook

    Power and the Nexus of Energy, Water,
    Paper, Plastic, etc. are discussed in Wikipdedia:
    World
    Water Day
      World Water Day was initiated to try to solve health
    and wellness problems around the world where people have poor water and
    sanitation. The UN has a 10 year program to attempt to overcome the pain and
    death associated with inadequate water by 2015. Progress has been made, but it
    is slow.
    WATER STATS: Most of
    the earth’s surface (70%+) is water. Yet only about 2.5% is freshwater. (The
    salt in oceans and some lakes make it unusable for drinking, agriculture, etc.
    without expensive desalinization processing.) Of the world’s freshwater 68.7%
    is in ice caps and glaciers, 30.1% is underground, ~1% is other, and barely
    0.3% is fresh surface water! That’s about 0.009% of our total is fresh surface
    water. Freshwater is lakes (87%), swamps (11%) and rivers (2%). So as we divert
    and consume the fresh water available to us – taking from rivers and aquifers –
    the impacts become ever greater as rivers dry and ancient aquifers are depleted.
    This year the theme is Water & Energy. Most people don’t realize the Nexus of Water
    and Energy.

    The
    Water Bubble and Water Wars
      The water bubble may be coming faster
    than we originally thought… Water sources, especially the invisible
    underwater aquifers are being depleted. 
    This will show in increased prices for water, water shortages and food
    shortages/prices (Marks, 2009). “We’re fast draining the fresh water resources
    our farms rely on, warns Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute”
    (George, 2011). Our own Ogallala Aquifer in the high plans of the US (underground
    aquifer from Texas through Wyoming) will be depleted in about 25 years. (See     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer.).

      Water
    wars and water conflicts are expected to increase dramatically. Counties (and
    states) that are at the headwaters of rivers can take all the water and leave
    nothing for the cities, farmers and fishermen below. 

      Worst case, and a horrible
    example, is the Aral Sea. What used to be the world’s 4th largest
    lake is now mostly dry, highly salty and toxically polluted. Russia has been consuming
    the water that would have run downstream (and through) the former USSR state of
    Kazakhstan. (See     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
    and the following news video:     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8b0svfuO_k
    at Russia Today.)
      The truth of the matter is… that water
    matters!  …
      Even in Florida where we are surrounded
    by H2O.

    What can we do?
      Basically, we need to become more
    informed about the sustainability impact of all we say and do. We need to
    become more informed consumers of water. Maybe compute our water footprint.
    Please fill out the H2O Footprint calculator.
    We need to start conserving more water, more energy and more resource. (Recycling
    actually saves huge amounts of energy and water.)
     1)     
    Compute your water footprint
    (and take actions to reduce it):
    a.      
    H2O Footprint: http://www.h2oconserve.org (Water footprint calculator.)
    c.      
    Water footprint of food,
    products, etc.:     http://www.waterfootprint.org
    2)     
    The average American uses
    2,000 gallons per day, more than twice the global average when all things are
    considered. (Most of the statistics will show only about 1,000 gpd, but they
    don’t include food, energy, etc.)
    3)     
    For Florida-centric details
    & water-saving tips, please visit:     www.WaterMatters.org and www.savewaterfl.com.
    4)     
    References and links below.
    Look for information about Earth Day
    2014 coming up on Tuesday April 22.

    Thanks for listening, reading, and thinking about
    sustainability.

    Let’s be good stewards of our God-given resources:
    water and more.

    Some References
    George, L. (2011, Feb. 2) Earth economist: The food
    bubble is about to burst . New Scientist.
    Retrieved from:      http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927986.400-earth-economist-the-food-bubble-is-about-to-burst.html
    Marks, S. J. (2009). Aqua shock: The water crisis in America. NY, NY: Bloomberg Press.
    Some Links:
    ·        
    Official
    site    :
    http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/
    ·        
    http://www.UNWater.org
    ·        
    http://www.Water.org
    ·         http://worldwater.org/