Filed under: Uncategorized
Most people want to know “what’s in it for me” when they ask about PV. They don’t want to wait the amount of time for their ROI. They want to start making money now and they don’t think about any invisible future generation.
Well, the time to act with alternative energy is now because this is going to affect most of us now.
Arctic Summer Ice Could Vanish by 2013: Expert
by David Ljunggren
OTTAWA – The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region’s sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on Thursday.
Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover “appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models”, which call for an ice free summer in 2013.
The year “2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we’ve been wrong — each year we’re finding that it’s a little bit faster than expected,” he told Reuters.
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008.
In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100.. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years.
If the ice cover disappears, it could have major consequences. Shipping companies are already musing about short cuts through the Arctic, which also contains enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.
Vincent’s scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 2,500 miles northwest of Ottawa.
“I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven’t experienced in the 10 years that I’ve been working up there,” he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament.
“We’re losing, irreversibly, major features of the Canadian ice scape and that suggests that these more pessimistic models are really much closer to reality.”
In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 percent.
Vincent told Reuters last September that it was clear some of the damage would be permanent and that the warming in the Arctic was a sign of what the rest of the world could expect. He struck a similarly gloomy note in his presentation.
“Some of this is unstoppable. We’re in a train of events at the moment where there are changes taking place that we are unable to reverse, the loss of these ice shelves, for example,” he said.
“But what we can do is slow down this process and we have to slow down this process because we need to buy more time. We simply
Filed under: Solar and Wind Energy
We received a wonderful email today from a customer.
Dear Skyecrafts,
I just wanted to tell you how helpful you were when I walked into your store last month. You actually talked with me about my options for my house and believe me, this is a very different attitude then most sales people give. I did buy the Kill a Watt meter and I am still trying to figure things out and what I can afford. Pasco county is really lucky to have a solar store like Skyecrafts. A place where we can just go in and see all of these new things displayed and in action.
I hope you last a long time Skyecrafts. Good luck and I’ll be back again.
Sincerely,
Reginald Spruce, Long Beach NY and Orlando FL
PS Any hope of opening up a solar store in Orlando for us?
well, what can we say, right? A big fan! Thank you Mr. Spruce, as I told you by phone and now in print. We try, really we do. It is difficult, small business under the glare of big box. Thank you for being our customer!
We shall see about Orlando.
In the Saint Petersburgs Times today there is this article about home owners feeling trapped in their homes. They want to sell but the current economic crises doesn’t allow for them to do that. One person caught my eye, he wants to move out of Orlando and up to the Panhandle to build an energy efficient home.
This got me wondering, is it cheaper to build up from scratch then to go back with what you already have to be more energy efficient?
I look at our old windows in our home. We truly need to update them.
Filed under: Uncategorized
We got fed up with the tv, so we junked it. This was last year, so it has been one year without tv for us.
We junked it because of a few reasons. Commercials was one reason. There were too many them. It has been a long time since anyone uttered on television “we will be back in 30 seconds after this commercial break”. Movies dragged out to late night due to the interruptions, tv shows had so many breaks that I lost interest in what I was watching. To top it all off, we were paying for this. We paid for cable tv, somebody’s marketing campaign.
Finally, my sons were laying around watching it too much. 24 hour Noggin channel, the ability to rewind and play the upper channels was just too much.
So, we canceled the cable to a very surprised cable company. lol.That felt good.
We brought the tv itself to a special dump.
Then we destressed. So, what happens when you quit TV? Ok, well, at first it’s a like an unhappy withdrawl. You think about all of the shows you are missing. Then you begin to do things to take up the time you would have spent watching tv. This led to new discoveries and going out to new places for us.
Then the first bill comes without tv, just internet connection and we found we are saving 100 bucks a month.
Over time, we learned that we can watch whatever movie we want online for free. We can see streaming news, tons of childrens shows and cancelled tv shows, like Picket Fences from the early 90’s and MST3000. It’s very hard to just go back to boring old tv like we do in a hotel room. Although, the kids are mesmorized by a large tv set and thus very easy to control in a hotel room.
So, even though we can watch what we want online, we do it for a shorter time and it’s really what we want to watch, not just channel surfing.
I think it’s been worth it. Plus, the fact we see no commercials for this years “must have toys” has been it’s weight in gold.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: florida, hydroponic, hydroponic garden, port richey
I am a garden novice but I plan on using the garden in the next few years to provide more and more food for the family. ok, we would have starved by now. I had 4 tiny Okras. I chopped them up and put them in the skillet with mushrooms etc. However, we keep trying.
We grew Eggplant in our hydroponic garden. The Eggplant grew massive however it did not produce any fruit. We think this is an old maid eggplant. It needed fertilzation from beasties that also flew on to flowers from neighboring eggplants. This has not happend and my eggplant remained a virgin and never produced any vegetables. Who knew this about eggplant? I didn’t.
So we knocked down a shed and now have space for a topsoil garden. Bags or soil in a row, pierced with holes for drainage on one side, split down the middle on the other and then the plant grows directly in the bag. We are trying this for the first time with Endive (grown from seeds and in the hydroponic garden) and strawberries. Let’s hope it works.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: animal cruelity, ducks, florida, muscovy ducks, pasco, port richey
A drama of life and death played out in front garden through the past year. My husband made a nice little nook for me to sit out in the front yard. I am hidden from sight from our bushes and I enjoyed the privacy. I spent some time out there during the last few months of pregnancy with my third child.
Then mother nature and her numerous furry and feathered citizens discovered the peaceful serenity of this little secret garden and moved right in.
Mama Muscovy duck took her lover Drake in to my nook. Have you ever seen 2 Muscovy ducks fooling around? Neither have I, I decided not to look after I heard the sound of something similar to a small boat starting up in my garden. There are some things I just don’t want in my head and this was one of them.
Well, soon after, Mama Muscovy is nesting. Then the babies are born.
A word about the environment. At the time, a lady across the street was feeding them and giving them water. I was just providing the safe area to stay away from predators. I didn’t give in and feed them. My mother did that with stray cats and we all know what happens with them. Well, these ducks are the same way.
The babies were beautiful. They moved with precision through our blades of grass while following their mother. Their beauitful gold and black little feathers flowed like a wave in the ocean or wind through golden harvest of wheat. A beautiful visual rhythm of nature, sort of astounding to this city girl.
One thing about babies though, they do grow up. They grew up fast, all 26 of them. They all stayed in my nook then went across the street to eat and drink. They pooped all over the place, however their poop is good fertilizer for citrus trees and a tree I didn’t even know was a Lime tree started producing fruit after of a few months of Muscovy duck fertilizer in it’s soil.
Well, I began to get sick. I have allergies, as I explained to the ducks. I can’t take all of your feathers and I can’t take that damn stray cat that refuses to leave either. So, can’t you just buy a group rate and take yourselves and that cat and move into one of the numerous foreclosed houses on our street?
The ducks didn’t listen. The cat sighed heavily with my reasoning for wanting her to evict her property.
I started shooing the ducks away. I used broomsticks and my voice. They were adults, it was time to stop hanging around my little nook. I cleaned the piles of poop on my chairs and tables and front walkway. I fenced off the nook. After some time, they stopped coming by. My eyes stopped feeling irritated every time I came home. I started breathing better and I started sitting outside in my nook again.
The ducks continued to come by but they stayed away for the most part. That was when I started noticing the arrows. Bright yellow arrows sticking out of their necks and bodies. My mind didn’t make sense of it. It just seemed to not belong in “my ducks” especially the runt, who had an arrow sticking clear through his neck. I was horrified. I started to cry. I called animal control who told me they had a bunch of calls like this and to trap the injured ones and call them back to pick them up.
I posted a letter on PETA and exchanged emails with an interested person who wanted to help.
I unfenced my garden area, I invited them back. Slowly they did. Now, I have a few that hang out by me again . The ducks with the arrows were picked up and taken to the “VET” (bridge….Brooklyn….sale) So, I now have my ducks back, or at least their grandchildren. They act like pets and come up to us wagging their tail feathers and drinking from flowerpots that my garden gnomes are holding.
Ok, so this is how I got interested in Muscovy ducks. I found out they eat lots of bugs and dangerous spiders like the brown recluse spider. They will drink the water left in your flowerpots and eat all of the mosquito larvae in there. They are quite beneficial to citrus trees (my own experience) and their poop just hoses off into your dirt. Frog poop, which we always find on our windowsills does not wash off easily.
Muscovy ducks are not native to Florida. They are like most of the people around here, transplants. However, this is an important fact. By not being protected by the Florida Wildlife Foundation, people have the right to dispose of them. By disposing of them, the foundation suggests to shake the eggs found in a nest to kill the babies. The foundation gives no suggestions for dealing with the adults. It leaves it all up the person, like the person who decided that shooting them with a crossbow was a good idea.
Ok, even if you don’t care about these ducks or you hate them , you must undertand that they should be protected. People dispose of them like roaches and this is inhumane. People shoot them like what happened here in Port Richey and this is dangerous, to other animals and people around. It’s a short hop from shooting a duck, to shooting your dog. Plus what if the shooter misfires and shoots into a house window or a car driving by.
I would like to see Muscovy ducks protected. I am trying to change their status, so besides writing about my turning green, I will write about these ducks and my new found activism.
April Kolen
Skyecrafts INC
Filed under: Solar and Wind Energy | Tags: energy, florida, green, skyecrafts solar store, solar
Welcome to Skyecrafts Solar Store. Visit us at http://www.windandsolarnow.com or if you are in western Florida, you can stop by: 8161 State Road 52 , Hudson Florida 34667
Our telephone number is 727-862-1682
What can we do for you? We sell over 7,000 products for alternative energy. We are part of the USA solarstore network of stores. http://www.usasolarstore.com So, anything you see on their page is what we can offer.
We have a shop where you can walk into and look around at the products. We have solar attic fans and solar tube lights which we can get installed quickly in your home. Believe me, once you see that brilliant sun shining through your ceiling in what was a previously dark area of your home, you will think it’s the greatest thing since slice bread. Free light. Free energy.
We have solar hot water heaters, solar back packs and we can also provide you with full PV systems.
So, stop by our site or our shop. Let’s save the planet together. We also stand by our products and have them installed in our own home. Ask us about our daylighting system.
Filed under: Uncategorized
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