Home/Posts Tagged ‘Texas’
Posts Tagged ‘Texas’
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Apr 30th, 2012,
I read the news today, oh boy. Wind farms are causing global warming? No, but maybe a bit of local warming. A new study of wind turbines in Texas shows that rotating blades force warm air downwards at night, causing ground temperatures to rise by up to 0.72C (1.3F). And so the headlines read that wind farms warm the night, or as Reuters states ‘Wind Farms Might Have Warming Effect’. But they also cool ground temperatures during the day according to previous research. Isn’t this piece of information equally significant? The Guardian doesn’t include it in their article, while Discovery…
Tags: temperatures, Texas, warming, wind farm, wind turbines
Climate Change, Natural disasters, Videos & Documentaries, Apr 13th, 2012,
It must be hail season, though I’ve never before heard that a hail season exists. On Tuesday I was caught in a sudden, though fairly light, hailstorm in central Scotland. Yesterday I read a post here on Greenfudge that mentioned a recent hailstorm in Texas that caused disruptions at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. And it’s not just the Scotland and Texas that have experienced hail this week. A poor doggy was left tied out during a hailstorm in Cheltenham, England. Furthermore, California crops suffered major damage due to a hailstorm in that state. From freshplaza.com: 150 acres of his 4,000…
Tags: China, hail, hailstorm, Scotland, Texas
Climate Change, Oct 31st, 2011,
As droughts cause famines in poor parts of the world like Somalia, they also affect the developed world, albeit in less catastrophic ways. France and the UK have worryingly dry areas, but nowhere so much as the US state of Texas. Have the ‘water wars’ already come to the United States? Well, maybe not, but things look bleak and even downright apocalyptic in parts of the state. Never a wet place, climate change and population growth in arid areas do not make for good bedfellows. Severe drought conditions in Texas have dried out some towns, prompting local governments to make…
Tags: drought, Texas, water, water wars
Green living, Science & Technology, Oct 17th, 2011,
Despite the well-publicized bankruptcy of California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, solar power is a growth industry in the United States and is set to boom, according to the US National Solar Job Census. The new survey shows that job growth in the United States’ solar energy sector grew by 6.8% over a one-year period ending in August, compared to less than 1% for over-all job growth in the US. The industry believes that solar jobs will grow by another 24% over the next year. A quarter of American jobs in the solar power industry are currently located in the State…
Tags: California, energy, job growth, jobs, power, Solar, Texas, United States, US
Weird Stuff, Oct 4th, 2011,
A couple of bizarre environmental/eco-related-ish stories caught my attention this past weekend as I was skimming the ‘intertubes’. One was a video of a mysterious, mystical California surfer dude removing a fishhook from the mouth of a small (but not that small) Great White Shark. A small crowd gathered as the injured Great White flopped around in the shallows of Venice Beach, California when suddenly a local surfer/friend of the animals arrived on the scene and took control; removing the hook, sending the shark on its way and then promptly vanishing into the Venice mists. Check out the video here…
Tags: California, great white, shark, surfer, Texas, venice
Politics, Videos & Documentaries, Aug 15th, 2010,
BP has agreed to pay $50.6m (€39.7m) in fines to US government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for failing to rectify safety hazards after a 2005 explosion at a Texas City oil refinery killed 15 workers and injured 170. BP already paid a $21.3m (€16.7m) record breaking fine to OSHA following the deadly 2005 explosion. Besides both fines BP has agreed to set aside $500m to correct safety conditions at the refinery for current workers. From an RTT News report: The settlement resolves 270 of 709 citations OSHA issued at the Texas refinery in October 2009, BP said in…
Tags: 2005, BP, explosion, Gulf, Maddow, Mexico, oil, OSHA, Rachel, refinery, safety, Texas, violations
Conservation, Health, Nature, Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 10th, 2010,
This summer has been pretty crazy for the south, dealing with the oil spill clean up, the seafood industry, and threatening storms in the area. Sounds like a great way to spend a summer vacation, right? Fortunately, the end to the whole fiasco is drawing nearer (hopefully), but before I go into that, let’s check out some other things that have happened recently, first. To start with, Texas filed a lawsuit against BP, claiming the oil giant put profits before environmental safety. Surprisingly, this doesn’t have so much to do with the oil spill as it does with a refinery,…
Tags: blue crab, BP, drill, food chain, Gulf Coast Oil Spill, indicator species, lawsuit, oil change, relief well, Texas, updates
Green living, Science & Technology, Mar 31st, 2010,
What, you mean you haven’t been breathless with anticipation regarding the large-scale storage of renewable energy from wind and solar power? Well get with the program. Presidio, a small town on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico, is also on the frontier of energy storage technology. Life in Presidio, Texas is harsh, isolated, hot and stormy. So why would anyone live there? Well, I don’t have the answer to that, but those who do reside in Presidio endure some of the hottest temperatures in the United States as well as frequent electrical storms, which tend to disrupt the…
Tags: battery, electricity, energy, japan, power, Presidio, renewable, Sodium-sulfur, Solar, storage, technology, Texas, wind
Climate Change, Jan 26th, 2010,
Yet another oil spill occurred over the weekend, this time off the coast of Texas. Apparently, the incident happened near Port Arthur and involved 2 vessels. One was the Dixie Vengeance, which was towing 2 barges at the time, and the other was the 807-foot tank ship, Eagle Otome. The crash caused at least 450,000 gallons of oil to spill into the ocean. The Coast Guard proceeded to close a waterway, deployed 4,000 feet of boom, and set up boundaries around both ships. No injuries were reported from the incident, though that doesn’t speak of the effect all that oil…
Tags: Coast Guard, collision, Dixie Vengeance, Eagle Otome, oil spill, Texas
Green living, Recycling, Dec 9th, 2009,
In a small city in East Texas, Dan Phillips builds charming rustic houses for low-income people. That’s remarkable enough in itself, but what’s really amazing is what he builds them out of: 80% waste material. These energy efficient, earth friendly’ homes are unique and eye-catching. Perhaps every detail isn’t done in the best of taste – bones adorn several parts of the houses’ interiors and exteriors – but a lot of Phillips’ work is downright beautiful in a ‘junkyard meets the enchanted forest’ kind of way. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyway, right? Dan Phillips’ company,…
Tags: Dan Phillips, houses, New York Times, Phillips, Phoenix Commotion, Texas, trash
