I have mentioned many times that the R's are very important, including the re-use and renew. In this pair, I include things like used cars. As I have personally had some car issues recently, the family van died, I want to share my experience as evidence that I try and practice the R's.

Let me first say that the van got decent gas mileage and has room for 4 car seats. 6 days a month I drive my own two children and my niece and nephew. On the alternate 6 days, my brother in law does the kid shuttle. This reduces the amount of gas and vehicles on the road right away. On the off days, I still drive my own kids one way, so the van has been very practical.

Because my kids are now in boosters, the option for a regular car is real. When the van blew a head gasket, I knew it was time to make the switch.

I did some research and a lot of shopping. I can not afford a car right now. I purchased an older Acura for about $5000 and had to borrow the money to do it. The cost to have the van fixed was estimated at about $3,300, so I only spent a little more to get better fuel efficiency and a better fit for our current needs. I am selling the van as a "mechanics special".

Even though the car was used, I called Acura and asked if they would look it over for me. I was amazed at the level of care and service I received. The dealer inducted me into the Acura family like royalty. The dealer gave the car a once over - and even washed it for me. They found several problems that I will be addressing in the near future, but it runs like a champ and I can shuttle my kids with confidence.

Buying used and taking steps to renew can really pay off. I could not afford this level of car with my current economic situation.

This is the kind of positive experience I hope everyone is able to enjoy when they make a decision that is environmentally friendly and economically conservative. Thanks Acura!

McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education and the Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc. are named in a Wall Street Journal article as having plans to make electronic study guides. This is a first step toward electronic textbooks at school. I for one feel that this could be good for students and the environment if handled correctly.

We will see.

The only problem I see with the current deal is that it is for a single device. Hopefully this is just a first step. A very practical alternative might be a netbook because it can perform other functions as well as having a real keyboard. Another benefit is that a netbook costs a lot less than a fruit logo tablet. Making electronic textbooks more cost effective and attainable by more of the population would make it a very real possibility.

I feel that if the device were a netbook and students could potentially do real work on the device as well as read information, the schools could supply them to students instead of textbooks. However, they would be issued for the entire school career and parents would be responsible for replacement if lost, broken or stolen. As many textbooks run $40 or more, the cost is already close to a break even when calculated 1st through 12th grades.

See the related link for the article about the fruit logo device.

Dubbed "Revolutionair," the sleek turbines were officially debuted after a lengthy 2 years of research and work. This is supposedly a brand new, never before seen helix-shaped version of the Revolutionair unveiled by Starck today. I don't know if maybe the photo just doesn't reveal the helix because it is 2 dimensional or if the slant of the blade is what they are trying to describe. Best I can tell, the blades are standard airfoils and held at a progressive angle.

I would like to see this in person. The idea of a useful and still home size turbine is something very important to me as I have a project in this category that is very close to full production. If you are curious, spinpower.org is my site and I use a little bit of the server space to host this blog.

I am a firm believer that wind power will be wide spread in the future and people in windy areas will have them the way people living by water often have boats. There may be big beautiful turbines all the way down to turbines not much bigger than a desk fan. If we are talking boats, luxury yachts down to inflateables, my turbine would be a ski boat and hopefully affordable by the masses.

Someday we will know if my prediction is correct. :)

More photos are available on the related link below.

Do the following statements conflict?

-- NASA's conclusion: "2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows."

-- NOAA's conclusion: "For 2009, global temperatures tied with 2006 as the fifth-warmest on record."

Not really. As each of these groups operate independently and the data sets were gathered independently from sources all around the world, the fact that the result is so close actually re-affirms the basic conclusion. Look at the following chart of their comparative analysis from the last 30 years:


Click the image to enlarge.


What is most important is that they used their own process and over 30 years have consistently come to the same basic conclusion with very little difference.

All this rain and flooding has not filled the reservoirs. The rain and flooding is highly visible, but not necessarily going into the locations that store the water for future use. Most of the runoff is finding its way back to the bay or other water outlets.

Another trick is the snow pack. A huge portion of our water comes from wet snow in the sierra's. The snow up there has been exceptionally dry. Hopefully some more storms like these recent storms will carry water up the hill for later use.

"It took three years to get this dry," said David Rizzardo, chief of the department's snow surveys section. "Barring an extraordinary year, it's going to take more than one year to get out of it."

The next two months will tell the tale, according to Rizzardo. The state could emerge from drought if the storms caused by that tempestuous weather maker known as El Niño keep coming, he said. But they would have to be particularly ferocious.

Forecasters are predicting regular storms until spring, but it is difficult for meteorologists to predict what will happen a week ahead, let alone several months in the future.

Although rainfall is now above normal in the Bay Area, Lake Oroville, the State Water Project's primary source of drinking water, is only 31 percent of capacity. That's about 48 percent of average for this date.

Reservoirs statewide, including Hetch Hetchy, appear to be doing relatively well, hovering around 72 percent of average. But most of them are tiny compared with Lake Oroville, which has a capacity of 3.5 million acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough to cover an acre in a foot of water. Hetch Hetchy holds 360,400 acre-feet of water.

Rain and snow runoff in the northern Sierra feeds both Lake Oroville and the state's largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, which can hold 4.5 million acre-feet and is part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project. Shasta is only half full. The two dams provide water to millions of people in cities up and down the state and on farms in the Central Valley.

The bottom line - Continue to conserve water. If you have the means, collect some of this rain water for your own garden in the spring.