Wind and Solar Potential

I found this fun little toy earlier today. Basically a quick breakdown of wind and solar potnential for the entire nation, but detailed enough that you can find your own town. A lot of fun to look at.

Air Quality

Ready to be completely depressed. Check out the Air Quality maps I found on creativemethods.com. I have no real idea where they get their data from, but it was appear to me to make sense based on the areas with F grades. There sure seems to be a lot of F's and D's out there, and as of yet I have not found a single speck of A quality other than the Aleutian Islands. That is a truly sad state of things.

Water Shortages

For those of you out there that may not know, the southeast is currently suffering from a SEVERE drought. Many places are down to as little as a month of drinking water remaining. Plans are being put into place to truck water in and begin rationing it if things persist, other plans include taking water from other sources (quarries, lake bed sediment, etc). I was just poking around a bit yesterday to try and find some articles out there on there, as well as some of the truly unbelievable pictures of lakes and river, etc. in the area. In the process of that search I found these 2 articles; the first from USA today from 2003, the other is from a blog called whyfiles from 2001. Both of these articles predict extreme water shortages in the coming years, going as far as to predict "water wars" and other such horrors. I point out just how old they are for the simple reason that there are still people that do not believe global warming is taking place. Scientists can release information and articles all day and they will always be labelled as Doom and Gloomers. The fact is, the water shortage issues talked about in these articles from years ago are happening NOW. Some people would way that it is just a normal trend when it comes to weather, there are dry times, and there are wet times.. This is true, and may be so, but the fact is that all these people drinking SO much water and using water for frivolous things is a HUGE factor. The perfect illustration is Falls Lake near Raleigh, where basically all of Wake County draws drinking water, The lake has turned practically into a stream... Meanwhile Jordan lake nearby (while quite low) still resembles a lake.

The truly frustrating thing is that all of this can be helped, aided, whatever you want to call it with responsible uses. Stop watering your lawns for something as useless as green grass for one thing. Then there are many conservation steps we can all take, as well as systems that can be built into our houses to reuse graywater. I highly recommend the book The Natural House, which is also a GREAT source of info on the basics of many different natural building techniques, but also includes a great chapter on Graywater systems. Just one of the many types of things that I feel will need to be integrated into ALL homes for things to continue to be as prosperous as they currently are.. I personally do not want to ever have to worry about whether there will be enough water in which to bathe, but far too many people are more concerned with whether or not their yard is pretty. A lot of things will need to chance dramatically in this country and a lot of people's priorities are going to need to shift, but lets just all hope for some rain soon, and then we can maybe start to change some people's habits.

Back From the Holidays

Sorry for the long gap in posts. Been very busy around here with the holidays, but it's time to get back to work. Hopefully, there will be some more posts and updates coming soon.