This is a picture of the bags of candy and Spooky Truth fact sheet that were delivered to members of Congress today. It is promoting the fight to keep the Energy Bill. The main goals of the Bill are to have a 35 mpg CAFE standard by 2020 for automobiles, a 15% renewable energy standard, and having no more nuclear loans. The auto industry is pushing for a compromise of 32 mpg by 2022 but that difference in a few years and a few miles can actually make a significant impact. Lots more info about the bill can be found here: http://smnr.us/thespookytruth/.

I have mentioned this in an earlier post as well here. Here is another blog post by my friend Lorna Li on the subject.

If you have not heard of what vampire electronics are, they are the electronic equipments such as cell phone chargers that plug into the outlet with its fangs and drain energy while it is plugged in and unused. It is also referred to as “Phantom Energy”. Last year, California passed the Vampire Slayers Act proposal to add the vampire electronics label to consumer products showing how much energy gets used when left plugged in. I haven’t seen or heard anything more about this act so it doesn’t seem like it has done anything. I doubt that companies would want to spend the extra money making a label that would do nothing for their profits and I honestly don’t know if the labels would make a difference for consumers.

What I still don’t really understand is, whether pushing the off button on a surge protector will cut off the electricity flowing to the surge protector. Obviously, the power to everything that is plugged into the power surge will get cut, but is there still energy that is wasted by having the power surge plugged in? The best way is to avoid having anything plugged in when it is not in use, but we all know that can be a hassle. Flipping the switch on the power surge can be a lot easier but I don’t really hear or see much of that being promoted. Also as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a couple of power surges that claim to cut all electric currents when you flip the switch so I guess I sort of answered my own question that normal power surges still do not cut off all current to the power surge but it is probably still better than having the electricity currents flow to everything that is plugged into the power surge.

 According to this article, having electronics go to standby mode makes up for 5% of all the electricity that gets used in the United States. It amounts to $4 billion a year and the number will continue to increase. Putting your computer in “standby” mode is an example, but I dont think it is a bad thing that electronics go into standby mode. It is a lot better off than having the electronics actually be left on. For example, putting your computer in standby mode can save a lot of energy as a regular desktop uses about 60-250 watts when it is on. When that computer in sleep or standby mode it only uses 1-6 watts. Here is a good website on how much electricity gets used by your computers: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html.

So how does the wildfires last week of Southern California relate to global warming?

This is actually a pretty interesting topic as scientists have actually contributed the increase of wildfires to global warming. According to this article in TheDailyGreen, “There were four times as many major wildfires between 1986 and 2004 as there were from 1970 to 1986, and a six-fold increase in the area of forest burned in the Western United States. ” Global warming did NOT cause the wildfires to happen, but it is not helping either. The wildfires put plenty of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the air along with destroying plenty of trees that would normally be helping our environment. Since temperatures have increased recently, snow in the mountains melt earlier and streams and rivers have decreased waterflow. Humidity will also drop as a result. This will then cause our ground and grass to be more dry and humid, which would lead to easier wildfires to happen. It can be another good sign to let people be aware that global warming can affect people in ways that people would not suspect. There will also be a lot of home rebuilding as a result of the loss homes and it might be a good idea to build green and be environmentally friendly.

The City Council of Berkeley will be voting on November 6th on a plan for the city to help finance the installation of solar panels for property owners. The owners would pay back the costs over a 20 year period. It sounds like a pretty good plan and it will be nice to see the city of Berkeley take an initiative to promote being green to the city. The cost of installing a solar panel can cost at least $15,000 and many people do not have the money to pay for the installation up front. The solar panel installation would be paid for by the city and the property owner will get an extra tax bill to pay off the system. As a result, the property owner would be saving on his/her electricity bill every month and the tax cost would be about the same as the savings.

What sucks about this however, is that if the owner sold the property, the tax would still stay with that owner even though the solar panel stays with the property. So in other words, if a property owner were to go through with this deal, they should plan on living in that same house for 20 years! I guess technically, if you were to get your own loan for a solar panel installation, it would work the same way. This is a big step towards making the city a more responsible and eco friendly place and hopefully the plan will pass.

via SFGate

 Target is introducing a new bioplastic version of their gift card made out of Metabolix’s Mirel. This bioplastic is suppose to biodegrade and break down in only 40 days. The new cards will be available in 129 Target stores nationwide. The problem with corn based bioplastic however, is that it comes from conventionally-grown corn which includes the use of many pesticides and artificial fertilizers. I wonder why they are only rolling it out to 129 stores and not to all stores nationwide? My guess is that this is just a marketing plan to show that Target is being green. I am sure that using the special material costs a lot more than using regular plastic and that would be why they are limiting the production. We will see if Target will continue to produce more and implement the material in other products that they use in the store such as beverage and food containers.

via Treehugger