The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo.

• Watch Portugal Vs Brazil (POR Vs BRA) Soccer Matches 2010 World Cup Live Streaming Online? Watch Portugal vs Brazil (POR vs BRA) Soccer matches 2010 world cup live streaming online? Live Brazil vs Portugal stream from South Africa World Cup Soccer BRA vs POR June 25, 2010 Video CaseCrown iPhone 3G 3GS World Cup Series Case - Three Lions England 2010 (Wireless Phone Accessory) newly......
• Greening Our New Home - So Far, So Good...Mostly. So here we are in week #4 in our new home, 1000 miles away from our old home. Back in California, we had our "green-ness" down pat - we knew where the good stores were, we knew how much water we were using, we watched our energy usage and knew......

• Solar Screens Solar Screens are the perfect window treatment for your living rooms, family rooms, media rooms, or any form of entertainment room. Also known as solar shades, solar screens offer the ultimate in technology for light control while still providing great, stylish looks. In terms of operation, solar screens are very......
• Aurora Glow Blue Green Sea Glass Solar String Lights Description Product DescriptionAurora Glow Blue Green Sea Glass Solar String Lights combine the beauty of hand-blown artisan glass and solar power with white LED lighting for unique and stunningly bright outdoor garden lighting.  Nestle these beautiful lights amidst the greenery of an arbor, archway, tree, wrap them around a......

So for today, I want to talk about a search engine called Regoog.  Regoog through it is an environmentally friendly  search engine based on the Google platform.  They use a black screen, which is supposed to save 34% more energy over using a white screen.  I know this sounds inconsequential, but when you think about how many people Google everyday, every bit adds up.

So search away and save green and have a great New Year!

• Simple Tips for a Popular Blog Blogs are, hands down, one of the easiest possible ways for you to publish your thoughts or messages on the internet. Blogs are excellent for spiking search engine enthusiasm, meaning that by writing in a blog you can easily attract plenty of traffic. But are you aware of what you......
• Samsung Epic 4G for Sprint - TouchWiz Software For more info: briefmobile.com Why we like TouchWiz on the Epic 4G: Ability to play just about any kind of media we throw at it's Video or Music players Stylish glass bar on the bottom screen A more useful pull-down notifications bar - shows WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G, and GPS......

• Green Job Sectors In Demand For The Future. Want in on the coming green job boom? With energy costs heading ever higher and a President who finally gets it, we are soon going to see a rather large increase in the availability of these "green jobs". Whether you have direct experience with some of these sectors or you......
• Making money with an eBay Store, Part 2: What is it and do I need one? (This post is part of a series on Making Money with an eBay Store. The Introduction and table of contents to the series is here.) In the Introduction I mentioned some of the fruits of starting a side business, especially the feeling of empowerment over one's financial life that it......

 I decided to go online and see if any of the local stores carried that pet screening that stretches instead of ripping when an animal jumps up. What I found is a great energy saving screen. A company named Phifer, that makes the pet screening, makes a whole line of screening and fabric. I never even knew there was something called weave technology, where the type of fabric woven in different ways can have different effects. The one that caught my eye was the Super Solar Screen.

 The company claims the Super Solar Screening reflects 90% of the suns heat and glare, improves daytime privacy, and still allows for excellent outward visibility, not to mention it keeps the bugs out. Sounds like the claims on an infomercial, but at the Home Depot site the product had been rated and review by two individuals. Both reviews gave the screening 5 out of 5 stars and both said it performed as advertised.

 This will be a huge benefit for a house like mine that faces northwest. I get full sun at my backdoor every morning in the summer; I don’t like to open the door and shades because it raises the temperature in the house. Then in the late afternoon I get the full effect of the sun as it gets ready to set so I have to close all the doors and shades on that side of the house. I am hoping with my Super Solar Screen, I will be able to get airflow from the windows and doors without the heat and glare from the sun. If I decide to turn on the air conditioner it should not have to work as hard with the Super Solar Screen. But maybe with the heat and sun reflected away from the house I won’t have to turn on the air conditioner at all. Sounds like a huge energy saver to me.

 As for my screen door, apparently there is no pet friendly screen that can hold back a German Shepherd. I am going to replace the screen with the Super Solar Screen and buy pet guards to keep Duke from going through it.

• New Belgium Brewery: Wind Powered & Employee Owned. Now this is a true example of what a sustainable business should (and can) be. The New Belgium Brewing company in Fort Collins, CO is powered by wind energy and is employee-owned, meaning the employees have a say in the decisions that the company makes. The company has even had......
• 29 Free Or Low Cost Ways To Save Energy & Money. With everyone's energy costs rising so rapidly and our economy in question at least for another couple of years, we are all starting to look for easy ways to cut energy use and save money, for little to no cost. And here is where this list, and you, the reader,......

 Sometimes people don’t vote because they think “one vote can’t change anything”. I think the 2000 election proved that wrong, but some people still don’t believe. Now is your time to be counted by your elected officials. If you want this country to move forward with cleaner energy contact you Congressional Representatives and Senators today. It only takes a minute but can help save the earth a life time.

 Click here to email your U.S. Representative and Senators about the NAT GAS Act today!

• Alternative Energy For Homeowners As home heating costs rise, and energy in general gets more expensive, many homeowners are turning to alternative means to power their homes. While many systems require a lot of effort to implement, there are quite a few that can be easy to install and quite economical. Whether it is......
• Is Solar Right For Me? - Part 1. This is part 1 of "Is Solar Right For Me?" from Neil Kaminar, author of Solar Basics. Part 2 will appear next week. The answer may be no. There are many factors that determine if solar is right for your home, including your motivation, how much electricity you use, the......

We have all seen list after list of ways to save energy around our house; these should not be pushed to the side because you “did” the list last year. Like all maintenance around the house, conservation cannot be done once and forgotten about, that is why they call it maintenance. There are always new products coming out that can make energy conservation easier, more efficient and more affordable.

My attic is always the first place I look when thinking about energy loss. I have a cathedral ceiling in my living room and just never feel comfortable in the room during the cold winter months. Obviously I have insulated but I still just feel the heat escaping. So I went up to the attic at night leaving the living room lights on and the attic lights off. Bingo! I was able to identify several areas that were not completely insulated around the recessed lighting (make sure your recessed lighting fixtures are rated to have insulation around them). Next I went up to the dark attic on a very sunny morning, before the heat made it unbearable. Again, Bingo! There were a couple of places along the eaves where I could see daylight. Once these were fixed I started looking at different insulation products for attics that were DIY friendly and wallet friendly. Two products caught my eye: Super Insulating Radiant Barrier and the Battic Door Attic Stair Cover.

The Super Insulating Radiant Barrier is a fold out, insulating, reflective product that goes over your current insulation and/or over the roof rafters to create a barrier that actually radiates heat back down to the living space.

The Battic Door Attic Stair Cover is an insulating box that goes over dropdown attic stairs and keeps heat from escaping. This product is a huge improvement over ones of days gone bye. I have had a similar product for about fifteen years and can see this will pay for itself in very short time.

Take time to look at these and other energy saving products. A dollar spent today could save hundreds over a life time not to mention helping to save the environment. Never under estimate the heat, or cooling, loss in your home. Keep vigilant about conservation, any energy saved is energy that does not have to be produced.

• Ten Tips Toward a More Eco Friendly Home Tip 1 - Turn the lights off any time that they are not needed, even if you are just moving from room to room in the course of your day. According to Energy Star, as much as 20 percent of a home's overall energy use comes from its lighting. Using......
• 9 Weekend Home Projects That Will Save You Money Winter is one of those double-edged swords that we must endure in life. We know we’ll have to endure mind-numbing coldness, but on the bright-side, this allows us to finish all of the DIY-warrior projects we have been putting off. (If you live someplace where the winter means it’s as......

Here in Massachusetts, where I live, Cape Wind has been fighting an uphill battle, at their expense, to get government approval for a project in Nantucket Sound. Eight years of pushing for wind energy is too long if we are actually going to make wind and renewable energy a reality. In order for individual states to meet any renewable energy quota we need more positive government actions like this.  

Lets all pray that the government will continue to put their money and decisions where their mouth is.

• Summary Text Of Final Stimulus Appropriations Package. Interesting, to say the least. It's not the entire stimulus package, but the side from the House and Senate majority Appropriations staff: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides $311 billion in appropriations, including the following critical investments: Investments in Infrastructure and Science - $120 billion Investments in Health -......
• How To Integrate Feng Shui & Green Living: Ask Maureen K. Calamia /caption] Feng Shui developed about 4000 years.  It originally is an art form that was developed by the Chinese civilization to enhance the positive life force energy "chi"  within the living spaces. What makes Maureen's Feng Shui consulting unique is that she combines the Green living concepts with Feng Shui. ......

That is why I found this article interesting. If the companies offering these great new innovative energy saving products donated them to Habitat for Humanity, we would all benefit. First the company would win, getting actual exposure to the public with their product, as well as goodwill, for donating the product. Any builder interested in the product could donate their time to help install the product at the Habitat for Humanity job site. This gives them goodwill for helping, but also gives them experience with new products and techniques that they can sell to their clients. The homeowner wins because they are buying a product that they have seen work and are having it installed by someone who has had experience with the product. The recipient of the Habitat for Humanity home wins with lower or no utility bills. And last, but not least, the environment wins every time we do not use fossil fuel to power our world. This could be the ultimate win-win situation.

• The Oxley Woods Prefab Housing Development In London. Well, that sure didn't last long. Just 8 days after talking about not being able to find worthwhile prefab houses to cover, the new issue of Dwell shows up in the mailbox with a little story about "EcoHats" and a prefab development in London called Oxley Woods. This is......
• Causes Of Land Pollution And Recycling Facts Have you ever wondered if what you know about the causes of land pollution is accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare what you know to the latest info on the facts about solar energy. Solar energy is energy from the sun. When the sun is shining solar energy......

The problem is that small wind turbines cannot be erected on any building, ever. Mother Nature is a very formidable force to deal with. Any and all wind turbines have an incredible vibration; this can cause both structural and noise problems. Roof top turbines have been known to cause nails to vibrate right out of the roof. While the museum roof may be substantial enough to withstand this, with a full time maintenance crew, the average home is not engineered to withstand these forces. 

Second, there is no usable wind on a roof. When you see a small wind turbine on a roof spinning wildly, it looks like it would be generating plenty of power. The truth is, all that spinning is the turbine trying to find a steady wind in a very turbulent area. Wind is invisible, and most people don’t understand what they can’t see. Think of a stick lazily drifting down a calm stream, making slow but steady progress, then there is a rock in the way, the stick goes around the rock but gets caught twirling in the eddy behind it, there is a lot of movement, but no progress. Wind is the same way, once it hits an object, such as a house or a tree; there is wind turbulence behind the object. Another way of looking at this is a sailboat in the lee of a bluff. You feel the wind on your face, it feels strong, but the sail is slapping madly and the boat is going nowhere. A wind turbine is the same way as it searches for the wind in the turbulence.

The Boston Museum of Science would be doing the public a huge favor by teaching the physics of wind and turbulence using smoke chambers and roof mock ups to show how a nail or a screw can be loosened due to vibration. They should teach the benefits of clean wind energy when placed in the right location and the uselessness of putting it in the wrong location. With all my heart I hope the Boston Museum of Science is not advocating building mounted turbines, not only would they be putting the public at risk physically and promoting a waste of money, they will be putting a black mark on wind energy when these turbines never produce any meaningful electricity.

Look for an upcoming blog on proper wind turbine location.

For more information check out the Warwick Wind Trials data on building mounted turbines.

• How To Integrate Feng Shui & Green Living: Ask Maureen K. Calamia /caption] Feng Shui developed about 4000 years.  It originally is an art form that was developed by the Chinese civilization to enhance the positive life force energy "chi"  within the living spaces. What makes Maureen's Feng Shui consulting unique is that she combines the Green living concepts with Feng Shui. ......
• What Is A "Living Building"? Dear EarthTalk: I recently heard the term “living building.” Can you explain? Over the past couple of decades, architects and builders looking to green their projects turned to the addition of various piecemeal elements to save water here or cut down on electricity there. Those who added more than a......