CLIMATE CHANGE AT THE MOVIES

The irony of screening this movie at Governor's Square mega thratre will not be lost on Green Readers:

The UK-produced The Age of Stupid is showing one night only, September 21 at 7:30 PM. Filmmaker Franny Armstrong has put together a collection of forecasts of irreversible doom resulting from our failure to act on climate change.

The movie is set in the year 2055 and global warming melted down both the ecology and the economy of Earth in 2015. An archivist in the rim of the Arctic Circle re-examines the data that led to the demise of the world through a touch-screen time machine. One reviewer called it 'Planet Earth's Unfunniest Home Videos.'

Armstrong, who says her film is "about humans not about climate change," spent over four years roaming the globe to gather the footage.

The Age of Stupid Global Premiere Trailer from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

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SUSTAINABLE TALLAHASSEE

Check out the new Sustainable Tallahassee website!

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COULD CRANKING POWER CARS LIKE A RADIO?

It's fun to think that Ford Motor Company will come full circle and that we will charge the new electric cars by using a hand crank, just like the ones we started when the Model T was first invented.

Since the practicality of the power source that charges weather radios and other small appliances is unlikely to be adaptable to autos, Ford Motor Company is working to figure out the infrastructure to power electric cars throughout America.

The NY Times reported this week that Ford is testing new technologies that would make charging batteries cheap and convenient. No one clearly knows at this point how much demand will be placed on the existing electrical grid and whether the grid can meet the needs when everyone comes home from work and plugs in.

Ford says it will produce an electric commercial van in addition to its planned compact, Focus, sometime in 2011. The question becomes if everyone wants to charge their vehicles in the evening, will the grid be able to handle it? Ford is looking at a system that identify areas that are projected to have large numbers of electric hybrid cars and would notify drivers when to plug in, to stagger the demand.

Coulomb Technologies in California, is selling recharging stations, which have the capability to be run on solar power.

Closer to home, Ybor City in Tampa has purchased ChargePoint systems that will be installed soon by a local Solar Source company. Florida's Department of Management Services has had an electrical recharging station for state electric vehicles ever since its facility was built in Southwood early in 2000. Despite the ChargePoint's charging station's new installation in a McDonald's in North Carolina, it's doubtful that a battery would receive much of a charge in the minutes it takes to order and consume a burger, and even more doubtful that electric car owners are big McDonald's consumers. How many times has a person actually used the free Wi-Fi offerred at McDonalds?

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RECYCLING GLASS

Sustainable Tallahassee is looking at a practical, regional approach to recycling glass in the community. Information on the upcoming August 18th meeting at Green Calendar.

In the meantime, this amazing use of glass shows there's more uses than glass beads.

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WOLFRAM ALPHA FOR TRACKING YOUR WATTS

For the compulsive among us, Wattvision has come up with a formula that you can plug into the new Wolfram Alpha to gauge your usage or test the accuracy of your analog electric meter. I've been looking for an excuse to really use Wolfram algorithms for something other than the frequency of my birthdate and a reason to dust off the stopwatch!

Or City utility customers can just sign up for the Smart Metering program and lose the old meter altogether. City of Tallahassee also now offers an electronic payment option that eliminates the paper bill, but subtract points for charging other customers to pay their bill online!

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Since at least the time of this post, Green Readers have been following proposals of Progress Energy and Florida Power and Light to build future nuclear power plants and note that the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has filed a Petition to Intervene in this Power Plant Siting Application (read the full petition here.)

The Florida Cabinet meets this Tuesday, August 11th to vote on whether to approve Progress Energy's application to construct at the Levy County site. Public comments will be accepted, if you register prior to the meeting. Thanks to Carolyn Oblin for the link to the agenda and other relevant information.

Public comments that bolster the concerns raised in the SACE petition have been generated since the projects were first announced. Last month's press release from the SACE, quoted testimony to Florida's Public Service Commission (PSC) indicated that, notwithstanding the environmental concerns, the financing of two proposed plants (Levy County and Turkey Point near Miami) was "not prudent." This ties back to the proposal of both Florida Power and Light and Florida's Progress Energy to bill customers now for costs incurred later, thus passing the investment risks to customers. It is conceivable that Florida's electric customers could pay and pay for a project that never gets built and never returns anything to the customers for their investment.

"The Economics of Nuclear Reactors" by Dr. Mark Cooper, a report released on June 18, 2009, found that it would cost $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors than it would to generate the same electricity from a combination of more energy efficiency and renewables. The full report is available here.

See also Bruce Ritchie's comments on Levy County and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection at FloridaEnvironments.com

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