Canada: "Can be a Clean-Energy Superpower"

"One of those key solutions will surely include Environment Canada's proposed electricity regulations scheduled to come out in 2012. These regulations will mean that coal-fired electrical generation plants will have to meet a strict performance standard based on parity with the emissions performance of high-efficiency natural gas generation. This will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality for Canadians. The regulations will mean the gradual phase out of traditional coal-fired electricity generation and will have a significant impact on reducing electricity emissions from coal and other sources. This is expected to result in a projected de-cline in the absolute level of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by 31 megatonnes between 2005 and 2020. This one step alone will position Canada as a leader in reducing CO2 emissions with real action, not just wishful thinking."
(see full article by clicking link Shaw: Canada can be a clean-energy superpower)
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Tip: Gardening offers Healthy Exercise and Keeps the Gardener & the Environment Healthy

ANN LOVEJOY | Healthy garden, healthier gardener » Kitsap Sun: "Gardening offers healthy exercise to people of all ages and ability levels. If you are strong and fit, you can enjoy double digging your vegetable beds and hauling blown down branches out of the woods. If gentle exercise suits you best, get out the rake. Raking leaves is splendid exercise, involving all the body's major muscle groups (arms and legs, back and shoulders, belly and butt). Best of all, steady raking builds strength as it burns off holiday calories. While winter is not a great time to muck about in the garden beds, it is a terrific time to do a bit of tidying and some leisurely pruning. Wet soil compacts easily, so stay out of the beds as much as possible. Do, however, continue to weed, pull ivy, cut down holly and Scotch broom, and dig out thistles. You'll be stretching to prune a high branch, bending to pull weeds, lifting sacks of compost, and pushing the wheelbarrow. Doing so, you'll be getting the same kind of resistance training people pay big bucks for at the gym. You'll be building stronger joints and healthier bones for free!"

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US: Newt Gingrich: Nancy Pelosi Climate Change Ad Is 'Dumbest Thing I've Done In The Last 4 Years'

Newt Gingrich: Nancy Pelosi Climate Change Ad Is 'Dumbest Thing I've Done In The Last 4 Years': "Gingrich's primary rivals continue to batter him over the decision, despite his repeated attempts to brush away the imagery of appearing in an ad campaign spearheaded by Al Gore and co-starring a vocal Democrat who was, at the time, preparing to push a cap-and-trade agenda. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney's press secretary, Andrea Saul, appeared on MSNBC and referred to the ad while slamming Gingrich as a "desperate candidate trying to revive his failing campaign." Earlier this month, Romney also used the commercial as evidence that Gingrich was an "extraordinarily unreliable leader in the conservative world.""

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Fighting Obesity Tip: Know your waist size is one of the more important ways to measure your health

<i>Dr. John:</i> Corn-syrup hazards, Nutcracker Syndrome, healthy-weight range | 9news.com: "BMI has certain limitations that can limit how accurate it is. It can overestimate body fat in those with muscular builds and underestimate body fat in older persons or those that have lost some muscle mass. A new measurement known as the BAI, Body Adiposity Index, is proving to be more accurate but is also a little more difficult to use. This method not only uses your height and weight but also adds your waist measurement into the equation to give you your overall body fat. And since we know your waist size is one of the more important ways to measure your health, this method seems to give a better idea of where you stand. To measure your own BAI you can go to http://www.intmath.com/functions-and-graphs/bmi-bai-comparison.php."

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UK: Solar subsidy changes could deal 'fatal blow' to industry

BBC News - Solar subsidy changes could deal 'fatal blow' to industry: "Government plans include restricting access to solar subsidies to houses meeting energy efficiency standards. Thousands of solar industry jobs could be at risk, the committees warn. On Thursday, a group of companies and environmental groups won a legal judgement against one of the changes. Central to their campaign was the Department of Energy and Climate Change's (Decc) plan to halve abruptly the level of feed-in tariff (FiT) that small-scale solar installations attract, from 43p per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 21p."

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Hydroelectric Dam: The height of the water behind the dam is the relevant height for the potential energy calculation

How Much Dam Energy Can We Get? By Tom Murphy: "Hydroelectric dams exploit storage of gravitational potential energy. A mass, m, raised a height, h against gravity, g = 10 m/s², is given a potential energy E = mgh. The result will be in Joules if the input is expressed in meters, kilograms, and seconds (MKS, or SI units). Water has a density of ρ = 1000 kg/m³, so if we know how many cubic meters of water flow through the dam each second (F), the power available to the dam will be P = ηρFgh. We have inserted η to represent the efficiency of the dam—usually around 90% (η≈0.90)."

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Philippines: Disaster foretold 3 years ago, , but was dismissed by lawmakers as "too alarmist"

Philippine disaster foretold 3 years ago - Yahoo!: "Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan, chief executive of the World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines (WWF), said Monday (December 19) the events in Northern Mindanao over the weekend mirrored the prediction. "It was an exact fit," Tan said.
Environmentalists said a simulation of the effects of extreme weather events from climate change such as saltwater intrusion, sea level rise and intense tropical cyclones, showed that major Philippine cities, including Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, were at risk of massive flooding.
The simulation of the effects of extreme weather phenomena was drafted in 2009 by the Philippine Imperative for Climate Change (PICC), WWF and Filipino scientists.
"At best, this might provide a very rough indicator of areas that may be more vulnerable to sea level rise, storm surge, saltwater intrusion or a combination thereof," the group's presentation said."

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