There is a growing car hacker movement that has local inventors and tinkerers making changes to hybrid cars to improve their mileage drastically. Basically, (check that link at the beginning of this post for a good FAQ) they add the ability to plug the car in and recharge the batteries from the grid. Additional batteries are added and the car is set to run on electric only for short trips under a certain speed. Over that the gas engine kicks in. It is also available if the batteries lose their charge.

The savings come in because the car runs on electric only for local trips, the vast majority of drive time. Electric is cheaper than gas and actual gas usage drops.

This is a simplistic explanation, however it begs the question: Why don’t the car makers embrace this if it’s easy enough for an individual to build? An unholy alliance with the oil business perhaps?

This rather incredible article about a study commissioned by the travel industry details exactly what our travel plans might look like in 2030 and it’s a huge change. A few key points:
- 1mm of sea level rise translates to 1.5 meters (about 5′) of shoreline lost
- they project a 72mm rise by 2030, translating to 360′ of shoreline loss. This pretty much eliminates Florida as a destination (or anything other than a malarial swamp)
- Virtually every beach or island destination is affected
Given that this is an industry study done to help them plan for changes it can be considered apolitical, and therefore more credible.
Better visit the Med while you still can.
Update: As I noted in this post, we’re currently gaining 1.6 mm of rise annually which means we’re losing, on average, 8 feet of shoreline each year!

According to this article in New Scientist, a new survey of fresh water shows that world supplies are declining at a rate much faster than previously predicted. This study focused on water basins rather than a country by country approach and found that we are 20 years ahead of predicted levels for water loss.

The article has an upside however- the solution in many subsistence agricultural areas is relatively simple: Create systems for storing rainwater in anticipation of drought. As obvious as it sounds, many poor farmers have no means to store water. There are simple plastic inflatable basins similar to swimming pools that can help with storage issues at low costs.

The primary message of articles like this is that we can no longer treat fresh water as an inexhaustible resource. We need to conserve and plan for times when no water falls from the sky. Time to buy a rain barrel.

We’re looking at replacing our roof in the next year. Due to changed local regulations, this will be a complete tear off and resheathing of the roof. I’m looking at Solar shingles but they’re pretty expensive and we’re not in an area with many sun days annually.
I’ve read about a company called NanoSolar that is building a factory in San Franscisco to build a new generation of solar panels that are far more efficient and much lower in cost. Maybe we can hold out until we see if they’re for real (they did recently raise $100 million in capital so it’s not a start-up).