I imitate Vespas when I see them. Mreeee-eeee-eeeee. Always. Although I know it must be terribly annoying to Vespa pilots, I can't help it. It's not like I don't like them. I think they're great. {mosimage} Subtly hilarious, even. Like this picture. 

Anyway, now I'll be imitating them with even more vigor and/or glee, as it turns out that Piaggio , Vespa's daddy, is dangling its feet in hybrid waters.

Why, here are some words about it right now!

Piaggio and the Council of the City of Milan decided to launch a collaboration via the setting up of a meeting table ... "to check and study certain proposed applications that lead to the use of two wheeled transport with a nil or very low environmental impact."

 

It's sort of the natural opposite to trying out hybrid SUVs. Okay, maybe the opposite to hybrid SUVs would be coal-powered Vespas, but you see what we're getting at; even vehicles with "good" gas mileage can be improved upon. 

 

 Grazie to TreeHugger , BoingBoing .

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OK, I don't know why I think it's so great that someone created a potato-powered sound system using a 500 lb bag of potatoes. I don't even know if this is officially ecogeeky, since, after all, this isn't doing anything to save the environment. But, I guess, now we know how to power our iPod's when the apocalypse comes. Though, probably potatoes will be useful for more traditional purposes by then.

Full Article Here

The founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore , has an article in the Washington Post this week championing nuclear power. I know this sounds really weird. But it sounds less weird if we consider that the coal industry is flattening the mountains of Appalachia, killing workers in mines and emitting 67% of America's carbon dioxide.

 

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If we're worried about global warming (and here at EcoGeek, we are) then we need viable alternatives. The only real alternative we have right now is nuclear. EcoGeek, as of yet, doesn't have a clear position beyond “More Research is Necessary,” but Moore's opinions have swayed us somewhat.

He mentions the commonly listed claims against nuclear power and rebuts each in turn. He does not mention uranium mining as a disadvantage of nuclear power, though I consider it to be possibly the second most environmentally hazardous part of the whole process. But it's hard to imagine uranium mining doing more damage than mountain-top-removal coal mining.

Weakening his argument, though, is that Moore is co-chairing the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition with Christine Todd Whitman , Bush's head of the EPA. Environmentalists hate Christine Todd Whitman, mostly because she censored government documents concerning the threat of global warming. This coalition (paid for by the nuclear power industry) is either an amazing and inspiring alliance of people who love the earth and people who have the technology to save it, or it may be an underhanded and evil ploy.

But, for now, we're listening. Nuclear power is a few steps away from being the dream of an EcoGeek. And, really, it's hard to imagine anything could be more destructive than coal.

 Read Moore's whole article here

{mosimage} MSI is working on the world's first MP3 player with built-in solar charging.  It's a versatile devise, in more than just power supply.  It's also a FM radio, picture browser and voice recorder.  Four gigs is a bit limited for my tastes, but I am impressed that built in solar charging is moving to mass-market so quickly.

Panels are getting more efficient and the devices are getting smaller and less power-thirsty.  The Mega Player does use a traditional hard drive though, rather than solid-state (and more efficient) flash memory.  But we're OK with small steps. 

 

No word on when this little machine will be collecting rays at your local Best Buy, but the production model should be out at the end of the year. 

 

Spotted at TreeHugger Via MobleMag 

In re-reading a story about a man who planted a small forest inside a colleague's keyboard, I found a link to a Mobuzz TV segment (pretty great) which references the keyboard jungle. A little past half way, Karina of Mobuzz gives the nod to all us green geeks and ponders thusly: “I guess we'll have to call you “Geens” huh...cause if we do it the other way around, it'd be “Greeks...” and that's already taken.”

Great point Karina, but I think I'll stick with EcoGeek.

{mosimage} It's cheap, non-toxic, and we've got plenty of it. Why not find a way to use it. Some crazy scientists at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotech have managed to harness the power of urine to create a substantial amount of electricity.

Light bulbs are horribly inefficient at converting energy to light (touch one sometime, if you need a reminder.) They also force us into giving lights a very specific role in our homes. Light either comes from a lamp or a ceiling fixture. I know it doesn't seem all that annoying, since we've never lived any other way, but it's rather unfortunate that, in the day of iPods and 2mm thick flash drives, we still rely largely on bulky bulbs to light our homes.

{mosimage}So a team of scientists just developed a product that may solve these problems: The Organic LED. Two layers of phosphorescent diodes and one layer of fluorescent diodes releases white light much more efficiently than tungsten bulbs. These diode layers are only 10 nanometers thick and, when unpowered, are completely transparent.

We've just opened the door to lights that live inside our windows. Why have light fixtures at all anymore? As light stops coming through the windows (y'know, because of that whole sunset thing) the windows will just start producing their own light. Of course, only in rooms where you're currently spending time. I can't wait.

Of course, I'll have to wait, as Organic LEDs are currently very expensive and have never been mass produced. But it's good to hear that this century-old technology might finally meet its superior.

Via SciAm

{mosimage}Holy...Crap... The machine I'm using right now gobbles up between forty and sixty watts (depending on how much I'm asking it to do for me). The power needed to power my three hard drives, two optical drives, and two CPU's make my machine a power hog, I'll admit it.

Sun Microsystems has just released a desktop client that consumes four watts, less than a typical night lite. Of course, the Sun Ray 2 doesn't exactly have five drives and a dual core processor. It's a desktop client, used for logging into a server where software is run. That server, of course, requires power, but it can also be used by hundreds of clients at once. The reduction of power for people using Sun's Global Desktop Software is significant.

The Sun Ray manages quite a punch out of this tiny package, and can display on two 1920x1200 monitors simultaneously for a ridiculous combined resolution. Of course, two 1920x1200 definitely constitutes power-hogging, but sometimes even an ecogeek needs more screen.

The Sun Ray is less useful for us home users, of course, because none of us have servers running that we can log into from our Sun Rays. But someday, maybe we will. The low power, low cost, and simplicity of these desktop clients might make them eventually marketable to lower-end PC users. And that might make the power drain of the personal computer movement much less noticeable.

Via Yahoo and Sun

Spotted at TreeHugger

{mosimage}ost of my fossil fuel footprint is airplane travel. I've worked out how to avoid those pesky old cars (small town, work at home, etc). But if I want to go see my mom, or attend my brother's bachelor party, I'm certainly not going to walk to the South East United States. Planes eat up the kerosene, and there's not much we can do about it. Lifting tons of over-sized carry-on bags into the air requires an enormous amount of energy.

I'm still wrapping my head around this but, apparently, Hunt Aviation has fugured out how to use the same force that works so hard to keep airplanes on the ground, to lift them into the air. The Gravity Plane does just that. First by filling itself with helium, gravity pulls the heavier air all around underneath it. Then, the plane sucks it's helium back into its tanks, and uses gravity to propel it downward and forward. If it ever needs another boost, it just fills up its internal helium chambers again, and climbs.

The gravity plane requires NO FUEL, just the power of the earth's gravity, which is, by any means, considerable.

Nothing is burned, it makes virtually no noise and can land without the need for long runways. I imagine that all this climbing and gliding will make for a somewhat slow ride, but probably faster than driving. The gravity plane would, of course, be massive, with one zeppelin under each wing. But, if it proves a viable form of transportation, I could finally go to North Carolina to visit mom and come home with a clean conscience.

Via Damn Interesting

Video of the Gravity Plane 

{mosimage}A majority of Americans now say that they'll be interested in purchasing a hybrid vehicle when they replace their next car. The news comes from a Gallup poll that also shows Americans are also doing their best to cut back on the amount that they drive. I hate to say it but, I don't really mind when gas prices go up, at least people make smarter decisions.

The problem, of course, is that lower income people are forced to make those decisions far before the upper class is. The majority of people who make more than 50 k a year still haven't cut back on the amount that they drive. The good news is that people of all income levels are interested in hybrid cars.