For you futurists, geeks and of course, you greenies……… look at this!

Supercomputers Break Petaflop Barrier, Transforming Science By Betsy Mason
A new crop of supercomputers is breaking down the petaflop speed barrier, pushing
high-performance computing into a new realm that could change science more profoundl
than at any time since Galileo, leading researchers say.

When the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was announced at the
international supercomputing conference in Austin, Texas, on Monday, IBM had barely
managed to cling to the top spot, fending off a challenge from Cray. But both competitors
broke petaflop speeds, performing 1.105 and 1.059 quadrillion floating-point calculations (more…)

About 40 percent of the trash you create that is put into the landfills is made up
of paper products.

Alot of us are doing our thing by recycling newspapers and plain paper, but there
is still more we can do including a couple of steps that you may not of thought
about.

30 percent of timber is being used to create paper, it is important to find ways
to conserve what we use by starting at the ATM. Many of us take the receipt from
the ATM, look at the balance, stuff it in our pockets or purses only to rip it up
later and throw it away. Did you know that approximately 8 billion transactions (more…)

We Americans plug in, text, log on, tune in (tv) and tune out (music). We use
13 times the power than just 60 years ago. Electricity is truly the life blood
of the U.S. Economy. Back in 2003, New York and surrounding areas really realized
how important electricity is. 50 million folks lost their power in minutes.

Building a national grid may be on top of President Obama’s list of things to
do. One idea is a power network, modeled like the interstate road system
that was thought up by President Eisenhower. Some folks feel that moving
power the same way could help out in the long run. This system would supercede
the 200,000 miles of power lines and 500 different owners.

Wind farms that have been cropping up everywhere need to have transmission lines
to the surrounding cities, towns, and villages. The same is true for solar, (more…)

The whaling fleet is scheduled to put to sea in a matter of days and has set a target
of 850 minke whales and 50 fin whales, according to Shigeki Takaya, a spokesman for
the Ministry of Agriculture’s Far Seas Fisheries Division.

Last year, Tokyo announced that it would also take 50 humpbacks for the first time
since the sixties, provoking outrage from anti-whaling nations. That plan was dropped
and plans to hunt the species this year have again been cancelled.

“We received a lot of pressure from around the world, but particularly Australia
and New Zealand, so we will not be catching humpbacks as part of the research (more…)

Austrailia is working on a desalination plant due to the water shortage they are
experiencing.

Perth, Western Australia, is considered the most remote city on the planet. And
one thing they are running out of, like much of drought declared Australia, is
fresh drinking water.

They are currently working on a plan to cut the amount of energy it takes to
run it. They have considered using the wind. There is a new alternative that is
being looked at by inventor Alan Burns. He teamed up with Seapower Pacific (more…)

T. Boone Pickens is delaying his plans to build the world’s largest wind farm, according
to The Arizona Republic, which cited his remarks at a conference on Tuesday in Phoenix.

The Texas oilman, who has created a stir by his endorsement of wind power as part of a
national strategy to reduce dependence on foreign oil, cited the fall in natural gas
prices, a competing source of electricity generation, as a deterrent.

Pickens has leased hundreds of thousands of acres for a giant wind farm in West Texas,
where he plans to erect 2,700 turbines and produce energy for urban areas such as Dallas
and Fort Worth. (more…)

This is a guest article focused on the environmental effects of domestic oil
refinery use from Mesothelioma.com, a leading web resource for information about
mesothelioma cancer and its various causes.

CFCs and Fossil Fuels Have Short, Long Tail Effects

Often when considering the environmental hazards presented by human behavior, we fail to
see further than the direct effect on our planet. However, if we examine further, we can
gather that our behavior is affecting not only the earth we live on but also the general
human condition. There are essentially two levels to the damage posed by destructive
environmental actions. Let’s examine each of them in depth for a better comprehension of
this hazard.

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