The basic rules to follow when leaping into a body of water are neither long nor complicated: only jump from a survivable height, don't try to inhale once you're under the surface, and always be sure your landing spot is free of rocks, small children, and federally protected marine life.One Florida man seemed to easily managed those first two points, but his failure with the third might soon be landing him again in water -- hot water, that is.Officials from the state's Fish and Wildlife Conserva...

Straight from the source Earlier this month, our atmosphere crossed an important - and potentially dangerous - milestone: Based on readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, we reached 400 ppm of CO2 for the first time in about 3 million years.NASA has posted some reactions from 10 climate scientists on this historic event. As you can probably imagine, the mood is not very celebratory...NASA/Screen captureYou can read all the quotes here.NASA/Screen captureHere's the two years chart for ...

Electric automaker Tesla Motors just announced that it has paid back the nearly half a billion dollars the Department of Energy lent it in 2010. According to a company press release, today’s wire transfer of $451.8 million dollars follows two other payments in the last year and a half. U.S. taxpayers could see a $12 million profit, in addition to a thriving company employing thousands. The loan was offered in 2009 through the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan ...

Toyota has been rather slow to adopt lithium-ion technology compared to some other automakers, but it seems like they want to catch up.. Japan's Nikkei is reporting that the company is increasing its lithium-ion battery production sixfold to 200,000 packs per year. The article says that the goal is to upgrade the Prius family, which currently uses NiMH batteries except for the plug-in model.It's no clear if only the next generation of the Prius will get the li-ion batteries, or if the current ge...

Story time Let's reason by analogy a little bit. Let's pretend that there's someone with a gun to your head, and he gives you a hard quantum mechanics (a famously counter-intuitive branch of physics) problem with two answers, only one of which is correct. If you answer wrong, bang, you're dead. To help you, the man gives you two surveys. One was conducted with people picked at random in the general population, and 95% of them think that the correct answer is "A". The second survey was taken by p...

Credit: Associated Press China is taking steps to tackle its huge carbon output. Today, the country announced the details of its first carbon trading program, which will begin in the city of Shenzhen next month. The southern city is one of seven cities and provinces, including Beijing, which will take part in the pilot program, set to be completely implemented by 2014. And according to one local news source, China could implement an absolute, nation-wide cap on its carbon emissions by 2016. Chin...

China struggling with environmental issues A few months ago I wrote about how pollution was now the #1 cause of social unrest in China. Well, it's not that surprising considering the stream of news out of the country (f.ex. thousands of diseased dead pigs found in a river upstream from Shanghai). The latest scandal has to do with Guangzhou, a huge metropolis in the South of the country: Testing by government employees has found that nearly half the samples from the region's rice supply were cont...

The purpose in travelling to New York for Design Week has ostensibly been to find the latest in green design. The trouble is, it is getting harder to know what that is anymore; is it material choice? local manufacture? craft based? promoting local designers? Take Areaware, one of my favorite design companies, promoting young American designers and producing "everyday objects that are mindful, functional and unusual". They have just launched a new block of wood to complement the bedside table...

One of the means to more sustainable cities is through better public transportation, which can potentially take more cars off of the roads and reduce emissions in urban areas, and further step along that "greening" of transportation could come through electric buses, which could replace their diesel counterparts.The sticky point for many electric vehicle solutions is the need for plenty of charging stations along the route, so drivers can "top off" their batteries and extend their range, along w...

Biomimicry is a great tool to solve problems. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we can often look at the solutions that nature has come up with over millions of years of trials & errors. For example, the study of how ants can so quickly move underground and dig relatively stable tunnels in all kinds of soil can teach scientists and engineers a lot, some of which might be quite useful to make robots that could do search & rescue missions or explore hard to access corners of the Earth (equip...

According to statistics, about five billion pounds of discarded carpet goes to landfills each year. In order to help put a dent in this wasteful problem, Brooklyn-based designer Igor Siddiqui of ISSSStudio has an idea to put carpet remnants to good use: by making more one-of-a-kind carpets out of irregularly shaped offcuts. Tessellated Floorscape from ISSSStudio on Vimeo.Dubbing these coverings "Tessellated Floorscapes," Siddiqui plays on the geometrical possibilities on tessellations, which are...

Uncle Sam gains $12 million in interest Tesla Motors, famously called a "loser" by Mitt Romney, is on quite the winning streak these days. It seems like there's good news about the company every week.After raising about a billion dollars in a new stock and debt offering, Tesla has decided to use about half of its new mountain of cash to repay the $465 million Department of Energy loan all at once, 9 years ahead of schedule, rather than do it in half the required time like it had previously said....

By Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I see a lot of fanfare applauding increased oil production in the U.S. and the increase is truly remarkable. We are producing nearly 2 million more barrels of oil a day than government (EIA) experts had predicted ten years ago. But here’s what is truly astounding: We are consuming over 5 million barrels less in oil a day than had been predicted in 2003. So, there is no question we are making dramatic strides in the...

Dr. Ernest Moniz was sworn in as the new Energy Secretary this week. Last week, the previous Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, gave an interview to Stanford where he is returning as a physics professor. The Nobel laureate was asked “What’s the No. 1 problem on your list?” His answer: Climate change. We’re heading into an era where if we don’t change what we’re doing, we’re going to be fundamentally in really deep trouble. We’re already in trouble. So we have to transition to better solutions. We’re ...

It's estimated that as much as 20 to 50 percent of energy consumed in the world is dispersed as heat. We've seen waste heat harnessing technologies before that convert that loss back into usable energy, but usually they only work with high temperatures.Out of a laboratory at EPFL, a start-up has come up with a way to harness waste heat as low as 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) to be converted to electricity. This new technology could see waste heat from things like waste incinerators,...

An infographic from the International Displacement Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council of populations displaced by climate change and extreme weather disasters. [The Guardian] More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes – 98% of displacement related to climate change. Asia and west and central Africa bore the brunt. Some 1.3 million people were displaced in rich countries, with the US particularly affected. Floods...

By Michael D. Lemonick via Climate Central When 97 percent of Greenland’s ice experienced at least some melting in July 2012, scientists wondered if it was a one-time phenomenon. Now a new study in Geophysical Research Letters indicates it is a sign of things to come and by 2025, there is a 50-50 chance of it happening annually. Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8, 2012 (left) and July 12, 2012. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimate...

Stockholm-based architecture firm Belatchew is proposing to retrofit a tower on one of the city's island neighborhoods with 14 new floors and millions of tiny piezo-electric 'straws'.Calling the idea the Strawscraper, Belatchew said the retrofit of the landmark Söder Torn would result in the building being an urban power plant, with the millions of strands of piezo-electric straw collecting energy as they vibrated in the swirling wind. Is this even possible? Theoretically - Belatchew said resear...

Skinny urban land lots present a difficult design challenge, especially when they are as thin as they are in ultra-dense cities like Tokyo. Here, with a lot that is barely wider than a parking space, Japanese architect Yoshihito Ikeda makes this tight space seem much larger than it is with the help of a few vital design decisions. Check out the video tour from the BBC:With the use of an open staircase, sliding doors and integrated storage all over the house, Ikeda was able to make the house -- w...

There's something about scones hot out of the oven, with a steaming cup of coffee, that really makes a morning special. This recipe fills warm scones with sweet fruit. Served with a little butter or honey drizzled over it and it is a delightful breakfast for a weekend morning.This recipe calls for using coconut milk as a substitute for cow's milk. I liked the coconut milk because it has a unique lightness and sweetness. However, you can use most any type of milk you'd like -- soy, almond, goat's...