FUSF Green

Focus the Nation Event at FUSF

Its almost here.

http://www.focusthenation.org/index.php

FUSF will be participating in the nationwide FOCUS the NATION teach-in on Wednesday January 30th at 7:30 pm.  Come to our event at the sanctuary, 262 Chestnut St., Franklin, MA. We are expecting some important guest from our local government. This is your chance to tell them how you feel about the issue of global warming, as well as become better informed yourself and make this event newsworthy. We will be tuning in to the national webcast and see the film, The 2% Solution.

Some Light in an Otherwise Black Future

I have not changed my opinion that we as a nation will not wake up to the serious nature of global warming. We will not take meaningful action before we have destroyed the planet. Prove me wrong folks. I am begging you.

I am pleased to report, however, that there is positive action taking place at a local level. Massachusetts is just one small step away from adopting the Green Communities Act of 2007! This bill has passed in both the Massachusetts House and Senate. It is in conference committee, which is the last step before it is signed into law by the Governor.

Here's an abridged summary of the bill's major features:

(click link  below to read the rest of the story !)

Nothing to See Here Folks... Move Along.

A while back I heard about an issue that had something to do with global temperatures. They were rising, or something like that. But I checked my thermometer today and it said 18 degrees F.  Brrrr! I guess I heard wrong.

They gave that fella Al Gore a Nobel prize for something bad he said about the weather. I guess its all better now. Anyway, I don't like people who talk about such things. They are pushy, impolite, and they don't know when they are not welcome.

The climate crisis will be the biggest challenge facing the next president. But the top Sunday Talk Show hosts don’t seem to think so.

Since January of 2007, they have asked 2938 Questions of the presidential candidates, but only 6 mentioned global warming. One of them was framed as a joke to belittle the issue, comparing it to the issue of UFOs. The only candidate who would have brought up global warming in a serious way, was Dennis Kucinich, who was barred from attending debates by the television networks.

Go here   http://www.whataretheywaitingfor.com/  to register your complaint. Make yourself heard. Write about global warming. Talk about global warming. Bring it up in politically incorrect situations. Be a pain in folks' pant seats when it comes to global warming and the politics of pollution.

from The North Pole is Melting, Scientific American September 21st, 2007 www.sciam.com:
The sea ice cover this year has reached a new record low," says Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "It's not just that we beat the old record, we annihilated it."

As a result of atmospheric patterns that both warmed the air and reduced cloud cover as well as increased residual heat in newly exposed ocean waters, such melting helped open the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time [see photo] this summer and presaged tough times for polar bears and other Arctic animals that rely on sea ice to survive, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Such precipitous loss of ice cover far outpaces anything climate models or scientists have predicted.

Minutes from Monday, January 21st

FUSF GREEN COMMITTEE

Minutes From Meeting: January 21, 2008

Minute Taker: Donna Miller                              Meeting Coordinator: Marian Szymansky

1. REVIEW OF LAY-LED SERVICE, FEBRUARY 24th

1. Music: Michele Kelly, Critical Mass, “Crumbs from your Table” (U2), Jeff Cerrier, “Mother Earth” (Neil Young), drumming and other percussion instruments, “The Air” CD (Michael Mish).
2. Speakers/Readers: Marian Szymansky, Sue Fouracre, Mark Sadecki, Ted McIntyre, Jon Kava, Steve Dedarian, Donna Miller.
3. Informational table after the service.
4. Marian will send out detailed format of service.

2. FOCUS THE NATION: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30^TH, 7:30 – 9:30

1. Location:

   FUSF

   Office

   Building

   , upstairs in living room area
2. Televised Movie: 8-9, followed by some discussion
3. Members encouraged to come early- anytime after 6:30
4. Marian S. has key; will be there at 6:30 for setup
5. Susan Spears (Franklin Recycling Committee),  connected to project and has sent word to Metacomet,

   Crystal

   Springs

   ,

   SPARKS

   , Franklin Town Council, Country Gazette.
6. Could be large turnout, so Committee should be prepared.
7. Ted will announce follow up events: UMass Boston, March 13^th, for hearing on

   Cape

   Wind

   ; David Gershon, author of Low Carbon Diet, will be speaking in April at FUSF; Carbon Rally website
8. Karen Spilka will be at

   Elizabeth

   ’s Bagels in

   Franklin

   this week and Lynne will attempt to speak with her and plug this upcoming event.

3. MISCELLANEOUS UPCOMING EVENTS

1. January 29^th, State House, 10-11 am: Interfaith Pledge for Climate Action
2. Global Warming Solutions Act: supporting legislators want passed by Earth Day, so they are looking for letter-writers. Could make for a good Green Committee/UU Congregation activity.
3. April 26^th,

   Franklin

   Earth Day: Green Committee should have a presence.

4. RECYCLING AT FUSF

1. We need to establish a system for maintaining, ordering and paying for recyclable materials and earth-friendly cleaning supplies.

Cape Wind Comes Back to Life

Copied from:  capewind.org

Biofuels: For SUVs or People?

Feed the Hungry or Power an SUV?

I vote to feed the hungry. We are seeing a sudden craze in this country surrounding ethanol and other biofuels. In the United States, the majority of it is being produced from corn. This is in fact as strange as it seems on the surface, but is this phenomenon a positive one or a harmful one?

Recently, with the demand for fossil oil reaching record highs, and the prices rising to match, folks have been looking for alternative fuels. This has expanded the market for ethanol, and ethanol factories have become more profitable recently. They are expanding rapidly to meet the demand. Farmers in the corn belt have found that they can make more money buy eliminating all of their crops except corn, and selling the corn to ethanol production facilities. This raises the question of whether this is the right way to plan our energy future, and how the production of food-based combustible fuels effects the environment.

On the surface, a gallon of ethanol burned in an SUV produces just about the same amount of greenhouse gas as a gallon of gasoline. But if we start to ask questions, we find that it takes energy to manufacture the fuel product and bring it to our door.  If the entire energy consumption for the production chain of corn based ethanol and the production of oil is figured in, we see that corn has a slight advantage. According to National Geographic Magazine ("Green Dreams", October 2007, pg 44). The amount of green house gas emitted to produce and use corn ethanol is 22% less per gallon than gasoline. If you also consider that a gallon of ethanol contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline, the savings is reduced. So overall,  corn-based ethanol production and usage produces slightly less pollution than gasoline. 

Continued!! click link below -->

Green Computing

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2003 70 million American households, or 62 percent, had one or more computers in their household, up from 56 percent in 2001. The number of computers found in the workplace is harder to measure, but it is estimated that computers are responsible for 10-20 percent of power consumption in the commercial sector. With an increase in the availability of "always-on" broadband connections and the convenience factor of leaving your PC on, it is estimated that some 30-40 percent of the  PCs in our country are left running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“In the old days” frequent cycling (on/off) of computers was believed to be harmful to the computer and reduced the lifespan of the device.   However, if proper procedures are followed (using the operating system to shut down the computer and not the hardware button), powering your computer off and on does no damage to the hardware.  On the contrary, some literature suggests that leaving the computer on all day will actually shorten the computer's lifetime as heat and wear take a toll on moving parts, like our hard drives and cooling fans.

It is estimated that In 2001, PCs and peripherals accounted for a combined 23 billion kilowatt hours of electricity! This is over 16,675,000 tons of CO2 per year! Computers also produce waste heat, which in the summer time increases the demands on cooling systems.  The impact of computers on our environment could be drastically reduced by changing a few of our personal computing habits:

1. Turn your computer off when not in use.  Think of your computer as 150 watt light bulb (the incandescent kind).   We all know that turning off the lights when they're not in use can result in a significant drop in our energy consumption.
2. If you need to leave your computer running all day, turn off the non-essential peripherals.  Plug your monitor, speakers, printer, USB hub, etc, into a separate power strip/surge protector and power it down when not using your computer.  The drain produced by these devices can be significant.
3. Learn about your computers power management features.  Enabling these features or increasing their aggressiveness can save power and extend the life of your hardware (a hard drive in "sleep" mode does not spin and thus produces no wear.)  Enabling power management features can reduce energy consumption by 80%.  That's 965 pounds of CO2 per year.  Search google for "computer power management" to find out more.
4. Don't use a "screen saver".  Let power management turn off your monitor instead.  This will increase the life of the monitor and save electricity.  A monitor displaying a screen saver will often use more electricity than when you are actively using the computer.
5. Upgrade your old CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor with a new energy Star compliant LCD. These use only about a third the energy of a CRT (25W instead of 75W), take up less space in landfills, and contain far fewer environmental contaminants like the lead, mercury, and barium found in CRT's.
6. Consider upgrading to a new energy efficient "green" PC.  Everex (http://www.everex.com/) offers a line of energy efficient computers that include ultra-low power consumption CPU's that use only 20 watts at peak usage and 2 watts when idle. Most desktop CPUs consume an average of 40-130 watts of electricity at peak usage!

If you have any other tips or tricks to save energy while computing, feel free to add them to the comments below!