Science & Technology

Can we fix the climate without reducing emissions? Might there even be a way to fix the climate that is cheaper then reducing emissions and doesn't have side-effects? In this post I will look at some of the more creative proposals for fixing the climate, and see if they are any good. Many of the ideas I'll present here sound like crazy-talk at first, and I'm not saying that they necceceraly aren't, but I don't think they should be disregarded before we have considered them. I'll start with

In a rather surprising move Apple, the computer manufacturer, decided to pull out its entire line of around 40 products from the EPEAT green certification registry last month. According to anonymous sources within the company, Apple no longer wanted their computers to be EPEAT certified because Apple’s new "design direction was no longer consistent with the EPEAT requirements". Apparently the problem lies with Apple's new MacBook Pro laptop with Retina Display. The people over at iFixit fou

We have been used to see NASA's 64-megapixel "Blue Marble" photos of the Earth. But now a Russian weather satellite has taken a 121-megapixel image of our fragile Earth, making it the most detailed photo yet. The satellite is stationed on a fixed located over 35000 kilometers above the Indian Ocean and takes a full image of Earth every 30 minutes. The resolution is one kilometer per pixel. The photo portrays our Earth a bit differently from what we are used to. The rust color that d

Nowadays there's an app for everything. There even happens to be many apps for the ecologically conscious, some of which are better than others. Let's take a look at some green apps that are particularly useful and which you may have missed. Green Genie is a super useful app for people who may not be eco-experts. The app provides tips on how to improve the environment and also includes a plastics directory, which deciphers the meaning behind those plastic numbers stuck on the bottom of plasti

The world’s population will soon pass 7 Billion, and the United Nations Population Fund will mark that milestone this week by releasing its annual State of World Population report. On October 22 the UK Guardian claimed that the report will contain a statistical bombshell. It headlined: Population of world ‘could grow to 15bn by 2100′ “Nearly 7 billion people now inhabit planet but projections that number will double this century have shocked academics“

What is E-waste? E-waste stands for electronic waste. This includes anything from discarded and broken cell phones, computers, iPods, and small appliances. Developed nations are dealing with a crisis of overconsumption, which produces many harmful consequences. One of these consequences is e-waste, which is created when electronic products are thrown away. Unfortunately, the production, consumption and ultimate disposal of e-waste is sped up with planned obsolescence, when products are

If you are looking for a way to save trees by reading books on an e-reader but you don’t like the Sony Reader or can't use the Amazon Kindle you might want to check out the Cool-er e-reader. The Cool-er (Yes, that the actual name of the e-reader. And no, it's not cool.) e-reader looks like one of those colorful ipods, although it's a bit bigger. The Cool-er e-reader will offer a larger library of books than the Amazon Kindle and will sell the digital books in the open

Al Gore and The Alliance for Climate Protection have announced that they are interested in creating a new .eco domain name extension. The .eco domain extension will be for individuals to express their support for environmental causes, for companies to promote their environmental initiatives, and for environmental organizations to maintain their websites in a namespace that is more relevant to their core missions. “We fully support Dot Eco LLC in its efforts to secur

Swedish designer Peter Thuvander has come up with the iYo YoYo, a nifty green alternative way to charge your iPhone or iPod. "To celebrate my new Iphone and the fact that darkness is looming over me. I´ve done this: An induction powered yoyocharger for Apple. And since solarchargers don't work at night or in Sweden half the year, this should be a smash hit." Thanks to a small Li-ion battery inside the yo-yo you build up a charge while you p

Sony Ericsson recently released a new eco-friendly concept phone called the GreenHeart. According to Sony Ericsson the phone is made from bio-plastic housings, recycled plastic keypads and will come with an "environmentally conscious packaging" (see the picture to the right). The phone will have a zero charger with 3.5mW standby power. The manuals to the phone will no longer be printed on paper and will instead be offered as HTML based e-manuals that you can read on your computer. W

Apple recently released their new line of MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, which are mainly made from aluminium. They say that they are their greenest latops ever and claims that they are "highly recyclable and even more energy efficient", and that they are "designed with the environment in mind". But really, how green are the new laptops? Greenpeace, who is running a hard and successful campaign for greener electronics, says that the new laptops are "not q

Tangent, who mainly provides computer solutions to education, government, corporate, and healthcare markets, have announced Evergreen 17, a "green" and "ultra power efficient" touch screen PC. According to Tangent the Evergreen 17 only consumes 24 watts, which is 72% less than the Energy Star 4.0 rating requires. "Not only do users experience computing with a touch screen LCD in a space-saving form factor, they also get industry leading power efficiency at 24 watts an

Today PC World unveiled, via its Advent brand, a new eco-friendly computer called Advent Eco PC. The Advent Eco PC is made from 75% recycled plastics, comes with electronic manuals, uses 25 watts when idling and is said to save you £35 (about $65) a year on energy. The computers specs are surely enough for the average computer user: 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo T5250 CPU, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g, and Vista Home Premium. But, the Advent Eco PC is almost one year late

Nowadays the concerns about the environment are very present in the minds of more and more people. Maybe because of the huge amount of information that circles on the internet in site and blogs like this one, because they saw it on the TV, or because they have already suffered from some of the effects of climate change: floods, extreme drought, heavy snow storms, etc. Some of the solutions presented to prevent or decrease the effects of global warming are, as we all know: Drive you car less

Edison is a new and free energy-saving PC software from the developers at Verdiem. The software makes it a lot easier for you to control your computers power saving features helping you save electricity and money. Edison doesn't shut down your computer completely; it just puts it in a "suspend mode" which uses much less energy than if the computer would be running normally. You can decide if you want to schedule Edison to shut down the computer screen and hard drive before going int

The ATP 8GB EarthDrive claims to be the world’s first eco-friendly USB drive. The EarthDrive is made from bio-recycled plastics and is designed to be fully recyclable at the end of its life. A portion of all sales will be donated to American Forests and towards the planting of trees. "The EarthDrive takes our more than fifteen years of effort, design and quality implementation in the memory marketplace to the next level. Now, more than anytime in the history of our company, we are committed

The [re]Drive from SimpleTech is an eco-friendly external hard drive that would look great by the side of the new Studio Hybrid from Dell, or by any computer for that matter. The [re]Drive is Energy Star Level 4 qualified and uses 30% less energy than other non Energy Star drives. The external hard drive is made and designed using recyclable aluminium and bamboo. According to the makers the packaging also comes from recyclable materials. The external hard drive automatically powers on or o

Earlier this May I reported that Dell was going to sell a "never before seen" eco-inspired computer with a bamboo casing later this year. We could also see an early design concept of the computer. And now Dell has released their brand new eco-friendly computer, the Studio Hybrid. It’s small and it looks great. According to Dell the Studio Hybrid is their "smallest, most personalized and most environmentally responsible consumer PC" to date. The computer is about 10% smaller than the average

The Australian Consumer Association recently published a list on Computer Energy Costs for various home gadgets such as your computer screen, DVD player, cordless telephone, gaming console, laptop etc. Interesting with this list is that it shows how much energy these gadgets consume weekly, monthly as well as yearly, even when they are supposed to be off. According to the study, the Sony PlayStation 3 consumes 33.34 kWh (weekly consumption) when on and playing a game. That is more than a P

Michael Dell, the chairman and CEO of Dell, announced at the Fortune Green conference that the computer company will start selling a "never before seen" eco-inspired computer with a bamboo casing later this year. The computer will be, according to Dell, 80% smaller than an average desktop computer. It will also contain recycled materials from plastic bottles and use 71% less energy than the average desktop computer. The price tag is expected to land somewhere between $500 and $700. A name

Nokia seems to be trying hard to gain the top green spot among mobile developers these days. For example, they recently released 3110 Evolve, an eco-friendly mobile phone. And now they are trying to introduce another gadget that will help us "reduce our environmental footprint" called the Eco Sensor Concept. The Eco Sensor concept is made up of two parts – a wearable sensor unit and a dedicated mobile phone. The sensor unit will be able to "sense and analyze your environment, health,

Consider this statement: "The EPA's Energy Star efficiency criteria only consider the energy a PC uses while it's in standby mode, which means that almost all current PCs qualify as Energy Star compliant." Is that statement true or false? What about this: "Constantly shutting down and restarting your computer during the day would consume more energy than just leaving it running." Is that true or false? If you are a bit unsure you might want to check out the Sierra Club's "How Green i

Yesterday we got this email from Matt Bentley: Changing Microsoft XP power scheme settings determines whether or not power-saving CPU features are activated in a machine when idle. All modern desktop CPU's past the AMD Athlon XP and the Intel Pentium 4 (ie. AMD A64 & Intel Core and upwards) have some kind of speed-stepping feature built into them, which is utilised via Windows XP's power management settings as per Orthogonal Thought's blog. What does this mean? Well, basically, if

Are you interested in how a sustainable city could look like? Just take a look at the EfficienCity! EfficienCity is a city built and governed by Greenpeace. The city shows, with text, images and video how a sustainable city it’s made, the flash application way. The site is packed with interesting information that explains and give examples on how a smart and "eco-friendly" city should look like. You can easily zoom in on the different buildings in the city and learn more about, for examp

The cell phone towers are in today’s society a valuable service and you can pretty much find a tower anywhere you go. Yet they look like trash and people can go into legal battles if a company tries to put one nearby their homes. Now Ericsson have introduced a more aesthetic pleasing cell phone tower called the "Ericsson Tower Tube". It is designed by the Scandinavian architect Thomas Sandell. The tower tube is, just like it name says, a simple and hollow flexible concrete tower that replac