IDEAS

Just when we finally got some momentum going on the “Green” movement throughout the world, they find more oil   Hopefully the “Green” movement will continue strong, but in the meantime it looks like gas prices might drop

“Oil major BP Plc said it has made an oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, which analysts believe could contain over 1 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, reaffirming the Gulf’s strategic importance to the industry.

BP said in a statement on Wednesday that it had made the “giant” find at its Tiber Prospect in the Keathley Canyon block 102, by drilling one of the deepest wells ever sunk by the industry.

Further appraisal will be required to ascertain the size of volumes of oil present, but a spokesman said the find should be bigger than its Kaskida discovery which has over 3 billion barrels of oil in place.”

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I couldn’t believe this when I read it, then I started thinking about how few kids in my neighborhood are even out during the day… and it made sense… Get outside, put the mouse and controllers down!!!!

“A whopping 70 percent of American kids aren’t getting enough vitamin D, and such youngsters tend to have higher blood pressure and lower levels of good cholesterol than their peers, according to two new studies published this week in the journal Pediatrics. Low vitamin D levels also may increase a child’s risk of developing heart disease later in life, experts say.

“We were astounded at how common it was,” says study author Dr. Michal Melamed, an assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Bronx, New York. “There is a lot of data that suggests adults with low vitamin-D levels are at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and a lot of cancers, and if kids start out with low levels and never increase them, they may be putting themselves at risk for developing all of these diseases at a much earlier age.”

Vitamin D is often called the “sunshine vitamin” because the human body makes it only when exposed to sunlight — although it only takes 10 to 15 minutes a day to make an adequate amount. Vitamin D, which helps the bones better absorb calcium, is also added to multivitamins and milk.”

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Talk about every little bit helps! We’ve known for years that white reflects the light back out, but it might just take creative thinking like this to help us turn this thing around. I wonder if this would make my roof shingles last longer

“Making roads and roofs a paler colour could have the equivalent effect of taking every car in the world off the road for 11 years, Chu said.

It was a geo-engineering scheme that was “completely benign” and would keep buildings cooler and reduce energy use from air conditioning, as well as reflecting sunlight back away from the Earth.

For people who found white hard on the eye, scientists had also developed “cool colours” which looked to the human eye like normal ones, but reflect heat like pale colours even if they are darker shades.”

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Turning off your computer at night can save the planet alot of CO2’s:

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Found these at the Home Depot the other day and thought, damn another idea I had(only a few months ago though) that I didn’t share with the company that makes these things!!!

I guess I should be happy my ideas are good ones, otherwise they wouldn’t actually produce them They’re about $40 retail.

Check them out here

(CNN) — A floating city off the coast of San Francisco may sound like science fiction, but it could be reality in the not-too-distant future.

The Seasteading Institute already has drawn up plans for the construction of a homestead on the Pacific Ocean.

One project engineer described the prototype as similar to a cruise ship, but from a distance the cities might look like oil-drilling platforms.

According to the plans, the floating cities would not only look different from their land-based counterparts, but they might operate differently, too.

Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer who now works for the Seasteading Institute, said floating cities are the perfect places to experiment with new forms of government.

Some of the new political ideas the group is tossing around include legalizing marijuana and making intellectual property communal — so that everyone would take ownership in art produced on the city at sea.

“The idea isn’t just about getting away from rules or getting rid of rules. It’s about a system that encourages experimentation with different political systems,” he said.

Friedman said the floating city may be built in modular pieces so that city blocks and neighborhoods can be recombined to create new urban layouts.

The idea of building cities on the sea is not new, he said, but the Seasteading Institute has come closer to realizing the goal than others.

“A lot of people over the past hundred plus years have had this idea and even specifically building cities on the ocean to try out new forms of government,” he said. “But they’ve pretty much been totally imagined and if they did try, they totally failed.”

There are several unknowns about future attempts to create floating cities, said Christian Cermelli, an engineer and architect with Marine Innovation and Technology, based in San Francisco.

Cermelli, who is part of a team of designers creating a blueprint for the first seastead, said it’s unclear if construction is possible — or what it would cost.

Still, a prototype for the idea may be finished in as little as three years, he said.

Friedman said seasteads are loosely based on oil rigs, but with important modifications.

“We care more about sunlight and open space, so the specifications are different,” he said. “Also, oil platforms are fixed in place. We think it’s important to have more modular cities. So you would build a city out of buildings that can actually be separated and rearranged.”

Cermelli said the ocean cities may use technology from suspension bridges “to expand the space at sea and basically get a roomier platform.”

Friedman says the idea of seasteading has met a range of reactions.

“Some people think we’re crazy. A lot of people think we’re crazy,” he said. “Some people think terrible things could happen, others think it would be great.”

About 600 people have joined the Seasteading Institute.

Some of them, like Gayle Young, say the idea is exciting partly because it’s so different.

“I love the idea because it’s audacious. It’s big,” she said. “It’s about pushing frontiers.”

Very out of the box thinking to curb global warming. Works in simulations so why not do it…

Start reading, it’s a very intersting physics story:

Story Click Here