2006RUS

The information was supplied by EE IN WISCONSIN, A guide to Wisconsin’s environmental education organizations, programs, materials, and professionals

The Wisconsin No Child Left Inside Coalition is working to develop an Environmental Literacy Plan for Wisconsin that will address the environmental education needs of Wisconsin’s pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade schools and will pay special attention to creating more opportunities to get kids outside. The Plan will recommend a comprehensive strategy to ensure every child graduates with the environmental skills and knowledge needed to contribute to a sustainable future.

Wisconsin has a strong environmental education foundation already established, with active schools, supporting organizations, and abundant opportunities to get outside in rural and urban settings. The Environmental Literacy Plan will build upon these strengths, and suggest priorities for present and future attention. It will lay out the next steps towards fulfilling on our State’s commitment to ensure all people in Wisconsin are environmentally literate.

State Superintendent Evers has formally asked the Coalition to develop the Environmental Literacy Plan for Wisconsin. A Steering Committee meets each month to draft the Plan. The Wisconsin No Child Left Inside Coalition Steering Committee is made up of representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education, Wisconsin Environmental Education Board, Wisconsin Environmental Education Foundation, Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wisconsin Environmental Science Teachers Network, Milwaukee Public Schools, the Green Charter School Network, and the US EPA’s Environmental Education and Training Partnership. The broader Coalition is kept updated on progress, provides input and feedback to guide the plan development, and ultimately, will play a key role in implementing and evaluating Wisconsin’s Environmental Literacy Plan.

Wisconsin’s Environmental Literacy Plan will be compliant with the pending national No Child Left Inside (NCLI) legislation. The No Child Left Inside Act requires States develop, implement, and evaluate a State Environmental Literacy Plan in order to be eligible to receive funding associated with the Act. Currently, the bill suggests an appropriation of $100 million to support the State Environmental Literacy Plans. You can learn more about the national NCLI Act and its various provisions and requirements here: www.cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=948.

For more information about Wisconsin’s NCLI Coalition, contact Jesse Haney (Jesse.Haney@uwsp.edu).

Nature Summer Camps provide a excellent place for kids to get outside and enjoy nature.

Swift Nature Camp is one of a handful of Wisconsin Science Summer Camps for boys and girls ages 6-15. Our focus is to blend traditional Overnight Camp activities with an appreciation for nature, animals and the environment.

If asked to think about solar power, most of us would imagine the blue or black rectangular panels that sit silently on the roof, providing electricity to the home below free of cost and pollution. However these panels are not the only way the sun’s energy can be used to generate electricity. One other approach is called Concentrated Thermal solar power. Many commercial scale power stations have been built using this technology and their production can rival that of coal fired plants. How does this technology work?

Whereas domestic solar panels convert sunlight directly into electricity, Concentrated Thermal solar works with the heat of the sun’s rays. As children most of us will have used a magnifying glass to burn bits of wood, cardboard and the odd unfortunate ant. When we concentrate of the sun’s rays through the magnifying glass lens it is acting as a heliostat. Concentrated Thermal works in a similar way but it reflects the heat from mirrors rather than condensing it through a lens.

By making a mirror in an arc shape called a parabola, it is possible to reflect all the light that hits it onto one point. The amount of heat focused on that point is then a factor of the size of the mirror. A large surface area of mirror can produce incredibly high temperatures. This fact is utilized in dish shaped solar camping cookers that can be used to boil water.

In commercial production of electricity, a tube containing synthetic oil is placed at the focal point of the mirror. This oil is able to reach temperatures in the many hundreds of degrees. This oil can then be cycled from the heating dish to a turbine where it heats water to make steam. Then the turbine can generate electricity in the same way as a coal fired power station.

Clearly the more mirror surface available the better such a system will work. There are Concentrated Thermal power stations in operation that consist of seemingly endless rows of such parabolic mirrors. These mirrors track the sun’s movement so that the power plant makes the most electricity possible through the daylight hours. Excess energy is stored in tanks in the form of molten salts. At night the heat released by these cooling salts is used to continue water boiling and therefore electricity production.

Concentrated Thermal solar technology ticks all the boxes. It is cheap, reliable, safe and proven. It produces no pollution save for that generated by the construction of the plant in the first place. There is also very little maintenance required aside from keeping the mirrors clean.

Learn more about solar power at Roger Vanderlely’s website, www.green-planet-solar-energy.com. You may also be interested in free kids’ experiments in the solar energy education section which will give your child hands on experience of the power of the sun.

The inevitable crisis of Peak Oil comes closer to us as each month passes, and may already have occurred. This is the point where global oil production begins to decline, which will inevitably lead to demand exceeding supply. This has moved from a hazy distant problem to an immediate issue that we will have to face in this lifetime, with significant global consequences.

It is fair to say that the industrial and economic power of developed nations such as the USA, many European countries, Australia and now China have come from the use of fossil fuels. From production capacity to military strength coal, oil and gas have allowed people in those countries a higher standard of living than at any time in the history of the earth.

Pleasant as this situation is for those of us fortunate enough to enjoy it, it may soon be due for a change. Without a serious effort to employ renewable energy on a massive scale, the economies that rely on fossil fuels, oil in particular, will become unstable. This is no idle concern; the International Energy Agency has undertaken a comprehensive study of the 400 most significant oil fields around the globe in an attempt to clarify the situation regarding actual reserves of recoverable oil.

There are good grounds for the IEA’s concern about the status of oil reserves. Very recently the Saudi government stated that it will lift production by another 300,000 barrels of oil per day. This is not even close to the lift in production requested by the US Administration. There are fears that the Saudis won’t lift production above this level simply because they are unable to. This throws into relief the possible status of the reserves of OPEC countries, whose reserves are not monitored by any regulatory body. Since their ability to sell oil is tied by mutual agreement to their stated reserves and has been so since the mid 1980s, there is a widespread belief that they have grossly overestimated their reserves in order to capitalize on current high oil prices.

If this is indeed the case then the scenario of Peak Oil may be upon us very soon indeed. This will have a significant impact on the global economy which is still geared toward continuous growth in order to achieve stability. It does not take much pondering of this situation before scenarios of resource wars, extreme nationalism and a global economic crisis come to mind.

The way to address the need for energy security is to focus on developing alternative energy sources. Nuclear power would make a good intermediate, but since that too is based on a limited resource it is not a long term solution. While Nuclear has a bad name, its safety record is very good compared to electricity production from coal or oil, even after taking account of its spectacular disasters such as Chernobyl. A better solution would be the implementation of renewable energies.

Irrespective of whether we opt for a nuclear stopgap or go straight for massive scale implementation of solar and wind energy, we need to start moving away from relying on oil. A global investment in clean energy makes a great gift for future generations but these need to replace fossil fuels, not just act as a decorative add-on. Decisions need to be made to ensure our energy supply for the future, regardless of ecological concerns from the pollution caused by fossil fuels.

Read more about Peak Oil and other issues related to Fossil Fuels at www.green-planet-solar-energy.com. You can also find information on getting cheap solar panels to reduce your reliance on the mainstream energy supply.

Hydroelectricity is often presented as a green energy source, but how true is this? Hydro has several environmental and aesthetic drawbacks that make it less than ideal compared to the clean energy provided by sources such as wind and sun.

There is much talk about the environmental impacts of hydroelectric power, as they rely on damming of rivers and permanent flooding of the low lying land behind the dam. While this is not desirable, it is merely an alteration to the environment. If the dam remained flooded this would not pose long term ecological threats to us from this modification.

The real problem with Hydroelectricity installations is the amount of methane gas they produce. This gas comes from plants that rot in the absence of oxygen. The process of methane formation is very similar to that which produced oil and the other fossil fuels.

Consider the following chain of events that unfold once the dam has been constructed.

First the valley fills with water. As this happens, the trees and other plants are covered with water. They drown and begin to rot, but since there is no air and little oxygen in the water the decaying plants give off methane. This methane is absorbed by the water.

So far all is normal, just the same as any other permanent flooding. But since this is a power station and in most cases also an urban water supply, the levels tend to fluctuate annually. The water levels drop in dry times. This exposes sections of land at the bottom of the dam.

This exposed land is ideal for growing plants and so it blooms with new life. As most dams are shallow, the amount of land exposed at the edges as the water drops can be very large. The shallower the dam, the more land is exposed annually.

Eventually the rains come and the dam refills, filling the new plants with water. Then it is the turn of these plants to rot anaerobically, releasing even more methane into the water.

This continues year after year, resulting in a slow but steady increase in the amount of methane absorbed in the water of the dam. This is a problem because methane is not very soluble in water. When the water passes through the dam’s turbines it escapes the water and enters the atmosphere.

Methane is approximately 21 times more effective than Carbon Dioxide as a greenhouse agent. This makes hydroelectric energy anywhere up to three times more polluting per megawatt of electricity generated than the equivalent coal or oil fired power station. This figure is dependent on the climate the dam is located in and the geography of the region. The effect is significant nonetheless, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now taking hydroelectric energy methane production into account when inventorying national greenhouse gas emissions.

Hydroelectricity may be a renewable energy source but it is not an environmentally friendly one. When looking at whether a new Hydro plant is warranted, methane emissions must be taken into account. A cleaner and greener solution is to build solar and wind power stations as once constructed these have no emissions associated with them at all.

Read more about issues around the topic of electricity generation and use in the Fossil Fuels section of Roger Vanderlely’s website, www.green-planet-solar-energy.com. If you’re looking to reduce your own carbon emissions, have a look at the tips for buying cheap solar panels.

What is Clean Coal?

Clean coal technology is perhaps the shortest sighted approach to controlling carbon emissions. Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS for short, aims to remove Carbon Dioxide from the emissions of coal burning power stations. Several methods of doing this are under development, yet not one of them has been brought to the point where it would be commercially viable. Not only that, none of the current methods are able to extract 100% of the Carbon Dioxide from the emissions in large scale operations.

CCS does not eliminate Carbon Dioxide but rather requires it to be stored. Current suggestions for storage include injecting liquefied gas into used oil wells.

There is a major risk associated with this activity. Should geological movement open up one of these carbon storage areas, there would be effectively an enormous Carbon Dioxide burp emitted. Given the vast quantities of CO2 that are being planned to be buried, such an event could release enough CO2 to risk a significant imbalance in the atmosphere.

CCS does not dispose of Carbon Dioxide, it merely hides it away underground so that we don’t have to deal with it now. But it will have to be dealt with, most probably by our children. It looks as if our children are going to have enough problems already without adding an extra ticking time bomb in the form millions of tonnes of buried CO2 gas.

30 MW Of Carbon Free Coal?

There is a fully functional 30 Megawatt clean coal power station being operated by a company called Vattenfal, in eastern Germany. The emission fumes from this power plant are pure CO2. Because of the high purity and concentration of those gases, it is easier to capture the majority of the CO2. The CO2 is then liquefied and trucked away some 300km to an underground storage site.

The pure exhaust fumes are obtained by burning the coal not in regular air, but in an environment of pure oxygen. Both the use of the pure oxygen and the effort needed to capture and store the emissions reduces the effectiveness of this type of energy generation, while doing nothing to remove the long term threat of the Carbon Dioxide escaping into the atmosphere at a later date.

Just As Long As I’m Alright

It is important to realize that CCS does not stop Carbon emissions. It merely delays them to become a future problem. It is just this kind of “I’m alright Jack” attitude that has led to the environmental problems we have right now. If we are to genuinely clean up the future, we need to produce clean energy, not just dirty energy with a whitewash over the top of it.

Perhaps we should refer to clean coal as “swept under the carpet” coal.

Read more about Clean Coal and other current issues about energy production at the Fossil Fuels section of Roger Vanderlely’s website. There is plenty more at the site, including tips on finding cheap solar panels to make your home more environmentally friendly.

Fossil fuels and their use is a major point of concern throughout the world at present and will continue to be so for a long time to come. So why all the concern and what can we do about it?

These fuels have provided the developed world with a cheap source of energy, and this energy has allowed technological and financial success. This is almost entirely due to the ready availability of coal, oil and natural gas. Those fuels are responsible for running the power stations, our cars, factories, and even the production of food through large scale farming and fertilizers.

Given that coal and oil have been used as fuel throughout human history, why has this now become a problem?

The answers to these questions are population and lifestyle. The human population is over three times what it was less than 80 years ago. At the same time our technology is advancing, so that virtually all aspects of our lives use electricity in some way. Also take into account the amount of fuel that is burned each day in cars alone and the picture becomes clearer.

Pollution is not always a visible problem. We can see it when the truck or bus in front of us is belching black smoke, but emissions from power stations are far from obvious. Yet each time we use an electrical device that power is coming from a power station. While the number of alternative energy power stations such as concentrated solar thermal and wind power is growing, the main base load of electricity is still being produced by coal or oil fired power plants.

These power plants generate electricity by boiling water to make steam, and the steam is used to turn huge turbines. The turning of the turbines rotates enormous coils of copper wire inside equally huge magnets, and it is this that generates the electricity. That electricity is then transported to our homes through power lines and substations. Burning the fuel produces among other things carbon dioxide. This is a greenhouse gas, meaning that it acts to trap heat in the atmosphere.

There are many electrical devices we use on a daily basis such as televisions, computers, MP3 players, mobile phones, heaters, air conditioners and so on. If we multiply the amount of energy we use on any given day by the number of people living a similar lifestyle, we can start to understand the scale of our energy use.

Even though the problem is large there are steps we can take individually to reduce it. Using less energy is the first step. Turning off devices rather than leaving them on standby immediately reduces our energy use without having any effect on our lifestyle. This will also result in lower electricity bills.

The next thing we can do is get our electricity from renewable energy sources. Most electricity retailers will have a green energy option, though sadly in a lot of cases this is more expensive than power from a coal or oil fired plant.

We can also invest our money in producing our own renewable energy. Installing solar panels on our roofs for electricity and water heating is a good long term investment, though up front costs can be high. The same can be said about investing in an electric vehicle, though both electric and hybrid cars are becoming more commonplace.

The problem of dependence on fossil fuels is something we can have a personal impact on. If we reduce our personal energy use and learn more about the subject of fossil fuel use we can leave a smaller footprint on the earth.

Looking to find the best information on fossil fuels, then visit www.green-planet-solar-energy.com to find the best advice on solar power for you.

It is clear that we cannot rely on an endless oil supply and as world reserves of oil dwindle we need to consider what impact replacement energy sources will have on the planet. Biofuel has been promoted as one such alternative. The implication is that we will be able to maintain our current lifestyle by using oil substitutes in the same manner as we have done for the past one hundred years.

This is certainly a worthy goal, but how realistic is this and at what cost will this fuel be produced? The basis of biofuel production is the conversion of plant sugars into ethanol, which can then be used as a fuel. There are two broad types of sugars available in plants, and the choice of which to use as the fuel source directly affects the profitability of the fuel generated from the plant.

The first type is simple sugars, with one or two sugar molecules joined together. These are the sugars that we digest from plants, which are we get our energy from. These sugars are mainly present in the fruits of plants. An example of this is the corn cob. This part of the corn plant is high in energy. Making ethanol from this part of the plant is profitable since the sugar molecules are easily converted into ethanol with the help of organisms such as yeast.

The second source of sugars in the plant is in the plant body itself, the tough fibrous material called cellulose. This is comprised of the same sugar molecules present in the fruit, but are bonded together in long strands. These strands are very difficult to break down into simple sugars and involve complex enzymes such as cellulase. These can be produced commercially but this is an expensive process. The result of converting cellulose into ethanol is both a lower yield and a higher cost per unit of fuel, but its great advantage is that any plant matter, even cardboard and paper, can be converted into fuel. There is no need to reduce the availability of food with cellulose conversion.

At present virtually all biofuel production crops rely on simple sugars such as the cob of the corn plant and the sap of sugar cane. Such crops solve nothing – they are supplementing fuel supplies while reducing food availability. Given the rising global demand and price of food, use of agricultural land to make ethanol from simple plant sugars is at best irresponsible.

Biofuels may represent a partial solution to our energy needs, but they cannot be produced at the expense of food. Research into improving methods of breaking down cellulose needs to be done. If this can be done efficiently, bioethanol could mean a genuine step toward a clean energy world.

Find more information about this topic in the What Is Biofuel section of www.green-planet-solar-energy.com. You may also be interested to read about the production and properties of fossil fuels and issues associated with that industry.

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One of the Carbon Dioxide properties, and the major concern for us, is its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere that would otherwise be radiated from the surface of the planet back into space.

Why does this happen?

Along with methane and water, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) absorbs energy at longer wavelengths than the other major atmospheric gases Nitrogen (N2) and Oxygen (O2).

CO2 molecules that are exposed to heat absorb this long wavelength energy. This makes the molecules speed up and makes the chemical bonds inside the molecule vibrate more than normal. The Carbon Dioxide molecules eventually lose this added energy and so return to the state they were in before they were heated.

The energy it releases is the same as the energy it absorbed, and so it not only absorbs but also emits long wavelength energy. This energy is radiated in all directions; upwards into space, and downwards back towards the Earth.

So why is that a problem?

The heat initially absorbed by the CO2 molecules comes largely from heat that is reflected from the surface and so is making its way out of the atmosphere into space. Carbon Dioxide molecules effectively take some of this energy and return it towards the surface, trapping it in the atmosphere. In essence, the CO2 acts as a heat blanket which is why it is given the term “greenhouse” gas, since greenhouses also trap heat. If we add enough CO2 to the atmosphere there can only be a significant warming effect, causing a rise in atmospheric and surface temperatures.

This change in surface temperature can have dramatic effects. Even a slight rise in temperature will result in increased evaporation from the ocean surfaces. Water is also a Greenhouse gas, and the Greenhouse effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere is compounded by the additional water vapor it causes.

It is important to keep this most significant of carbon dioxide properties in mind, as doing so will motivate us to reduce our carbon emissions. The most effective way to do this is to develop clean energy sources.

Want to learn more about the solar greenhouse effect? Visit Roger Vanderlely’s website, www.green-planet-solar-energy.com. There you will also find out about solar energy solutions for you and your home such as cheap solar panels, solar energy gadgets and much more.

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Nuclear Energy has been touted as an alternative to mainstream electricity production from fossil fuel sources. But how does Nuclear compare to fossil fuels in the long run?

There’s no doubt that fossil fuels have lots of problems associated with their long term large scale use. One problem is that of Peak Oil production, where we may have already passed maximum capacity production, yet demand is still rising. More serious than this is the very real possibility of significant and virtually irreversible climate change brought about at least in part by our continuous addition of Carbon Dioxide and other pollutants to the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels.

So how does Nuclear energy stand up as an alternative to fossil fuels in terms of a sustainable source of electricity production? There are several concerns about Nuclear energy that have given it a bad name. Reactor problems such as those that caused the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents, along with several others, are far fewer in number relative to the scale of electricity production than compared to casualties in the mining sector associated with oil and coal.

When nuclear power stations were first developed there was the issue of waster storage. The liquid waste had, and still does have the potential to leak into water tables and cause severe contamination. This problem has largely been overcome as Nuclear waste can now be stored in solid form.

Use of fuel enrichment to produce weapons grade nuclear materials such as Plutonium-239 is an unfortunate but essential part of the economical use of nuclear fuel. It is worth remembering that no aggressive nuclear strike has been carried out since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two, and that many millions of casualties have occurred in conventional warfare since that same time.

The key long term factor though is that Nuclear energy production relies on a non-renewable resource. It is true that deposits of Uranium may have only started being used, but given that the world is continuing to use more and more energy we can see clearly that the day will come when the Uranium will run out.

It does not make sense to replace fossil fuels with an energy source that is doomed to face exactly the same problem. Those who champion Nuclear power say it is the solution to our current energy and pollution crisis, but those people are not looking far enough into the future.

To make correct, responsible decisions that take into account not only our own welfare but also that of our children and their children, we need to adopt wide scale renewable energy in the form of Solar and Wind power. These proven technologies have the capacity to meet our energy demands TODAY with no adverse future effects, assuming they are implemented in an intelligent way.

Governments around the world need to start making intelligent decisions that benefit both us and the generations to come. A secure, clean energy source is obviously the way forward so large scale renewable energy production must be implemented immediately.

Get more information about Nuclear energy, coal and oil by visiting the Fossil Fuels section of Roger Vanderlely’s website. You will also find information on possible energy developments such as the Bakken Oil Field.

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You’ll find quite a few reasons why you might possibly be eligible to put together a Florida oil spill suit. The most recent British petroleum oil spill is impinging on hundreds and hundreds of people’s homes and livelihoods, and could lead to both immediate loss and long-term reduction of earnings. A lawyer who specializes in Florida oil spill cases can help you establish what sort of a lawsuit you ought to file, and the amount of damages you may be entitled to.

Reasons for an Oil Spill Claim

Though your lawyer may help you put together a case by analyzing how you were damaged, you can find a range of prevalent causes to file an oil spill lawsuit in relation to the Bp oil spill:

Personal property damages typically comes about as a result of an oil spill, and you may be eligible for the amount of the ruined premises. The loss of revenue can occur if perhaps a company is damaged, or as a result of diminished tourism in the area. Loss of subsistence might arise in the event that you are no longer capable of grow or capture the food you depend on to live. Elimination fees may be high, and in some instances might be a continuous expense for many years to come. Destruction to natural resources may threaten not only your immediate cash flow, but the value of your property. Community services can become much more expensive as resources come to be ever more reduced.

Being approved for a Florida Oil Spill Lawsuit

It’s critical to take note that a Florida oil spill lawsuit can be made even though only the severe hazard of a Florida oil spill took place, as long as that threat adversely affected you. This can occur, for instance, as a result of waned tourism in a region where the risk of pollution because of the British petroleum oil spill is found. In order to be entitled to make an oil spill claim, as a minimum three factors must be true:

The oil spill or danger of an oil spill must have happened after August 18th, 1990. The spill or threat of an oil spill must involve oil. The oil leak or risk of a leak must have developed within the navigable waters of the U.S, or onto the shoreline.

Has your business suffered as a result of the Miami oil spill? Get advice from experienced Miami oil spill attorneys.