Green Options

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On September 30, 2004 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued an interim final rule for the mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) program for fish and shellfish as required by the 2002 Farm Bill. On November 10, 2005, President Bush signed Public Law 109-97, which delayed the implementation for all covered commodities except wild and farm-raised and shellfish until September 30, 2008.

Under the interim final rule, fish and shellfish covered commodities must be labeled at retail to indicate their country of origin and method of production (wild and/or farm raised). However, covered commodities are excluded from mandatory COOL if they are an ingredient in a processed food item.

Food service establishments, such as restaurants, lunchrooms, cafeterias, food stands, bars, lounges and similar enterprises are exempt from the mandatory COOL requirements.

Fast forward to August 2008, the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) issued an interim final rule for mandatory Country of Origin Labeling of beef, pork, lamb, chicken, goat meat, perishable agricultural commodities, peanuts, pecans, ginseng, and macadamia nuts. The 2008 Farm Bill added chicken and goat; pecans, ginseng and macadamia nuts as covered commodities to what had been previously proposed. This interim final rule (IFR) will go into effect September 30, 2008.

I couldn’t pass this one up. That ugly little fellow in the Reuters photo is an electric eel, and it’s powering lights for a Christmas tree in a Japanese Aquarium.

In a video from Reuters Television, which is available at the bottom of this story, two aluminum panels inside the eel’s tank act as electrodes, capturing the power needed to light the tree. Kazuhiko Minawa, who thought up the idea, spent two months devising [...]

It’s finally happened, good old St Nick is beginning to buckle under to the stresses of an over-abundance of controls and regulations. The jolly old elf just isn’t that jolly anymore, and he explains why in this interview.

Well, the residents of that Swedish community have been fighting with the National Heritage Board for a new name, or at least a return to the old name. Globalization has apparently led to rude English-language associations that residents of this small community could live without.

The whole thing apparently started in the 1930’s when the spelling of the name changed from Fjukeby. Embarrassed and finally tired of all the jocularity, a committee of [...]

They loaded up the fuel tanks with fresh canola oil refined to biodiesel, started the engines, and the 1968 L-29 Czechoslovakian jet, nicknamed BioJet 1, soared into the sky from a Reno, NV airport. It’s the first recorded time that a jet plane used biodiesel as a fuel.

It was a three minute flight, revving the engines to 98 percent of capacity, but certainly enough to be a nonissue in climb performance and time [...]

We hadn’t finished eating leftover turkey from Thanksgiving when Sally began decorating our new apartment for Christmas. She enjoys the season, and every year right after Thanksgiving, the decorations come out again.

Over coffee this morning, we were discussing whether to have a Christmas tree this year. We haven’t had one since our marriage, deciding instead on Sally’s ability to decorate with style and grace. During our talk, we did discuss the [...]

I love an honest man, and Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is on the top of my list, after his appearance at a Manchester, NH high school. When asked about his high school days he openly admitted to being a “pot head,” who experimented with drugs and alcohol.

Obama attended high school in Hawaii, and he admitted to not applying himself and choosing to have a good time. He was trying [...]

Back in May I wrote an article for Green Options called “The Perfect Hydrogen Vacation,” and it was centered around a young Galesburg, IL college student by the name of James Hunt. His claim to fame is development of a hydrogen fuel generation system that would power internal combustion engines with hydrogen. To say the least, I got a few negative comments about Jim’s invention, mainly that it was nothing more than an attempt at a perpetual motion machine.

The Galesburg Register-Mail newspaper, which broke the story first last April, has two more updates, “From Concept to Company” and “Energy Source Answers some Old Problems,” written by John Pulliam. I’m particularly fascinated with this story because Galesburg is my home town.

Well, Jim, shown in the Register-Mail photo at the left with a fire engine he hopes to convert into a hydrogen fueled mobile power unit, has moved out of the lab at Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg to his own plant in nearby Monmouth, IL with 15 employees. All that, he says, in a period of 9 months from concept to reality.

The company’s name, by the way is Akvo Energy America, and the shop is full of engines undergoing conversion to his hydrogen fuel system. Part of his plan is to fuel power plants and desalinization facilities with hydrogen. He plans to use the fire engine as an emergency portable desalinization unit, something sorely needed in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina ravaged that city.

His process extracts hydrogen from water via what he calls plasmatic induction, a form of electrolysis, using electricty to zap water in a small reservoir tank which releases hydrogen bubbles. The bubbles, of course, become the fuel, a never-ending source as long as drinking water is in the small reserve tank. It’s a bit more complicated than that, he uses reserve batteries and solar cells along with non-radioactive carbon rods in the system. Hunt claims one fill-up of rods will power a vehicle for a year-and-a-half; the emissions, of course, are water vapor.

Hunt claims to have a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and what he called “a couple of pending contracts.” Two major universities are testing the process and he said GM was ready to license his system right now.

Besides the fire truck, a 1995 Civic, a 1976 Corvette Stingray, a Hummer and a pickup truck are waiting for conversion to the system. But before they can go on the highway for testing, they must be verified by the Environmental Protection Agency. This process is underway.

Jim hopes to eventually move his plant back to Galesburg and occupy the now empty Maytag manufacturing plant. Looking ahead, he hopes to have more than 1,000 employees for production and distribution. When would this happen? Maybe in 18 months, maybe more.

I interviewed Jim on my own website in April, the Lindberg Report.org, while he was still a student at Carl Sandburg College. Since Planetsave and Green Options are going through changes that right now don’t support audio, you might want to listen to Jim talk about his invention. As soon as we get audio on this site, I’ll have an updtated interview with Jim.

We’ll keep track of this young man and his invention that may just turn the hydrogen fuel world upside down, especially when billions of dollars are being spent trying to bring hydrogen powered vehicles out of showrooms, when Jim’s research cost $22,000.

If you’ve ever been to Yellowstone National Park, you’ve undoubtedly waited for one of the most photographed and viewed natural phenomena to take place, Old Faithful erupting on it’s not-too-regular schedule. But if scientists are to be believed, Old Faithfuls act would be a spit in the ocean compared to the eruption of Yellowstone’s caldera.

Will the Yellowstone volcano erupt anytime soon? Probably not, but a report in Live Science boggled my mind with the immensity of hot magma boiling beneath the seemingly pastoral serenity of Yellowstone.

According to the article, Yellowstone’s volcanic floor has risen 9 inches in the past three years, which doesn’t seem like much until you understand what’s pushing it upward. There’s an enormous plume of molten rock that begins some 400 miles beneath the surface of Yellowstone, and rises to within 30 miles of the floor. The magma chamber widens out at that point, encompassing some 300 miles across. The article likens Yellowstone’s hidden blob of molten rock as being the size of Los Angeles, and has now risen to a point about 6 miles beneath the surface.

Does this mean an eruption is imminent, not necessarily so, according to scientists who constantly study the 40 x 25 mile bowl-like depression.

A seismologist at the University of Utah, Robert Smith, has been studying Yellowstone for years, and concludes in the article; “There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That’s the bottom line.” He went on to say there were a lot of calderas worldwide that rise and fall over decades without erupting.

All that taken into consideration, the recent uplift has occurred “faster than a previous record of .8 inches per year from 1976 to 1985″.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent spate of television specials predicting what would happen if Yellowstone erupted full-force, a scary scenario, especially the predicted effect on the world’s climate! But, what the heck, enjoy Yellowstone, it’s a beautiful, magical place, and if it blows while you’re there, you’ll become a part of history. Think about it.

Imagine a wind tower with stained glass illuminated by solar energy. It’s happening at Regent College, a graduate school of Christian studies affiliated with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

The stained glass was designed by Sarah Hall, and is titled “Lux Nova”. The column contains an array of solar cells that collect energy during the day, and creates what the article calls, “a luminous column of light flowing [...]

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in meteorology bitched slapped Al Gore and all of us for that matter in a packed auditorium at the University of North Carolina. What would cause him to become so irate? The fact that humans are not responsible for global warming of course. It’s the salt levels in the ocean stupid! An Inconvenient Truth is ridiculous! We’re brainwashing our children! His ranting reminded me of Roald Dahl’s Matilda: “I’m Right, You’re Wrong. I’m Smart, You’re Dumb. I’m Big, You’re Little. And there’s nothing you can do about it!”

But then again, Dr.Gray had some interesting points, if not some very chilling facts about global warming and our impact. I actually feel bad for him. His remarks are the polar opposite of the scientific trend, making him an outcast or worse sounding like a madman. However, he may only sound crazy because it makes us mad to listen to someone put our cause to “save” the earth as being nothing but ridiculous. In the end, I think Dr.Gray would agree, that even if global warming has very little to do with our nasty ways, it’s obvious we need to make a change in the way we treat our Earth. From the article:

“Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

“We’ll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was,” Dr Gray said.