Drive fewer miles

Vehicles make up almost one-third of smog-forming emissions nationally, and because we are driving more and more miles every year (up 127% since 1970), vehicles continue to be a significant contributor to air pollution. Whenever possible, take public transportation, car pool, and combine activities into one trip (such as shopping trips). Even your Weather channel says so!

Sydney black outs: its lights shown on global climate change

Major Landmarks including the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbor House shut down its lights for 1 hour in the evening in an attempt to raise awareness about Climate Change.

Said GW "Sydney did what?"

The News story

New green is coal?

Winona Daily News reports

The latest trend in the green world of ethanol is a surprising one: coal.

Minnesota’s first coal-fired ethanol plant soon will begin operation in Heron Lake, and it won’t be the last. The high price of natural gas is enticing new plant owners to embrace coal power. But while it may make economic sense, the choice of this fossil fuel to make a renewable one has some people shaking their heads. [emphasis added]

look around in your neighborhood to see if this is the trend we want to see? The report offers this comment on the Californian law:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his state’s Legislature have embraced a plan to rate all motor fuels by greenhouse gas emissions over their entire life cycles, from production to transportation to ignition.

Measured that way, ethanol made from plant residue would earn an excellent rating. Ethanol from corn would do moderately well. And corn ethanol made in a coal-fired plant? That would rate poorly — even lower than ordinary gasoline, according to Schwarzenegger’s office.

Water and Oil do mix

To provide for water in plastic bottles to Americans for one year requires 47 million tonnes of oil, which is equivalent to taking 100,000 cars off the road. - Container Recycling Institute.

SUVs and Monster trucks

Reasons for not buying a SUV:

• The environmental damage is very significant.
• Even if it buys safety for the owner, in any accident it will inflict greater damage to the family in the other car.
  
• The mileage is very low. The CAFE standards has a very interesting history. In 1979 the standards for passenger cars was at 18mpg and and for light trucks at 17mpg. S.U.Vs introduced in the 90's got classified as light trucks and since then the standard has nudged its way up to 21 mpg today. The passenger car standards have increased up to 27 mpg. The low price of oil in U.S helped a surge in market share for S.U.Vs.
  

Today GM still advertises "at least 30mpg cars" on their website, when most competitors have gone way past that mark and the future looks to 100mpg cars.

100 mpg car

Steve Lapp, a professor from Ontario, says the moment has nearly arrived. "I've actually gotten over 100 mpg on some trips in my 2001 Toyota Prius," he says. The secret? He mounted solar panels on the car's roof to keep the batteries charged when the sun is shining. If Lapp, a backyard big thinker, can get triple-digit mileage occasionally, why can't the world's car manufacturers hit the mark on every drive?

Automotive X prize will soon announce a challenge to design 100mpg car that can be produced in large scale.

Some interesting bites from a very long but very interesting article in Popular Mechanics:

• Body Use of carbon fiber instead of aluminum or steel, because of its superior strength to weight ratio can bring down the weight of the vehicle significantly.
  
• Aerodynamics "We're noticing in the wind tunnel that what you do on the bottom of the car can be more profound than the roof shape. The rear of the car needs to be either long and attenuated or abruptly cut off. A car's wake can have a detrimental effect on the mileage by creating a partial vacuum behind the car, tugging it backward." says Stewart Reed, who chairs the Transportation Design Department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.
• Tires Tire manufacturers already use silica in the tread compound to help lower rolling resistance. David Van Emburg, Michelin North America's product marketing director, says we could soon see exotic tires with 20 percent lower rolling resistance than today's models.

Ongoing efforts All electric 100 mpg car from Tesla Motors (Jon Mittelhauser has a blog on why you should get yourself a Tesla). The Aptera Concept Car from Steve Fambro of Accelerated Composites have a 330 mpg, 2 passenger car that can cost under $20K (link : pdf file). Popular Mechanics has a design to achieve 100 mpg without too much extra sweat using existing technology.