Posts from — November 2009

What a great guy

David de Rothschild has revealed he prefers life off-grid and can’t stand carbon off-setting.  “There is just something more satisfying about living off grid,” he told me at the launch of the NatGeo control room in London which will be the land HQ for his next great adventure.  “You are much more aware of your resources, managing them …. making decisions about what I can use and when I can use it.

“Especially on an expedition you are really aware that you only have limited resources  - I prefer living off-grid, “ he said.

The aristo-adventurer, and rumored  former boyfriend of Cameron Diaz, is about to set sail on his vessel made from plastic bottles. The Plastiki is a 60-foot catamaran which will be home to David and his crew for an  11,000-mile voyage due to kick off next month, out the Golden Gate and across the Pacific to Sydney Harbor.

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Taking control

Gary Lavalette is saving $3500 a year in heating and electricity costs since he installed renewable energy.  At this rate his investment will have paid for itself by 2018. From then on his heat and light are nearly free….forever.

Over the past four to five years, the Massachusetts plumber made the switch from traditional to alternative energy sources in a series of steps including solar hot water, photovoltaic panels and a wood gasification unit in the backyard.

The result? (more…)

Loboa: prince of darkness

The vulnerability of grid-bound power was exposed this week after the world’s largest operating hydroelectric plant failed, blacking out a quarter of Brazil and all of neighbouring Paraguay.

The ‘outage’ affected tens of millions of Brazilians living in nine states which include Rio de Janiero and Sao Paolo, the country’s two biggest cities – as well as 6m Paraguayans. They were plunged into darkness at on Wednesday evening when the massive Itaipu plant which straddles the border of the two countries, suddenly went off line. (more…)

Utter nonsense

2012, the Movie, is aimed at really stupid teenagers, and was made by a really stupid foreign guy.

The Europeans, as we all know, hate America, but Roland Emmerich born 1955, in Stuttgart,  has such a bias, one has to wonder if he’s French.

Emmerich blew up the White House and New York and most other American cities in “Independence Day” (1996). In 1998, he picked on the Big Apple again, having “Godzilla” stomp most of it with incompetent resistance from a number of pinheaded Yankees. (The only characters who seemed to know what they were doing were a team of French commandos — French, mind you! led by Jean Reno.) (more…)

Pielke: clear thinking on carbon …….what matters is our greedy, wasteful power companies.

OFF-GRID was a week ahead of other media in revealing  a major report which accused the UK government of setting unachievable and illusory carbon reduction targets. The report, from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers implies that the official targets would require the  building of 30 Nuclear power stations in Britain by 2015 (an impossibility), and IMEchE has called for a huge rise in off-grid energy production as the only sensible way to take a big chunk out of UK  carbon emissions.

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No, I’m not talking about your last job… I’m talking about canning. It’s all but becoming a lost art. But it doesn’t have to be a mystery. I read a great article all about canning, this is about the basics, what you will need to get started, how to determine how many canning jars, rings and lids you will need. This is the part that most canning manuals don’t tell you about. Enjoy.

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Palin. Oil? You betcha.

Sarah Palin has put some of her thoughts on the record in an interview withRush Limbaugh. See the transcript below.

Limbaugh was moved to say of Palin; “The intellectuals don’t understand her, don’t like her. She doesn’t analyze herself. She doesn’t analyze her thoughts; she just has them and expresses them.” He described her new book  ‘Going Rogue’ as “One of the most substantive policy books I’ve read.”  He might be serious! (more…)

When a handful of soft-spoken back-to-the land types bought up a 25-acre parcel of land 18 kilometres west of Chilliwack in Canada and showed up at city council to ask for a special “eco-village” zoning, they were prepared for questions.

According to Yarrow eco-village co-founder Michael Hale, “There’s a fair percentage of people that are skeptical about what we’re doing. Some people are totally unconvinced or think we could be a cult.” (more…)

Boyle's free apple downloads

There can’t have been anything like it since the beardy bloke in Galilee fed the five thousand with some loaves and a few fish.
British campaigners are planning to mark Buy Nothing Day later this month with a ‘freegan’ feast for up to five hundred people. Not only will the guests pay nothing for their three course meal -with drink, nor will the hosts, because every item on the menu will be foraged, found or donated. (more…)