Climate Change

July 12, 2011 | Author Stephen Jacobs

The driest place on Earth is the Atacama desert located in Northern Chile where the average rain fall is less than 50mm per year. Some of the desert’s weather stations even go as low as between 1 and 3mm of rain in a year. During the winter the desert’s average daytime temperature is about 72°F.

This is a picture from the Atacama desert taken a couple of days ago.

Emergency services were sent out to rescue motorists after 31.5 inches of snow closed roads through the region. That’s 16 years worth of average annual rainfall in one storm. While large sections of the US have been baking under higher than normal summer heat as the jet stream has been forced high into Canada, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay have been experiencing an unusually cold winter.

It’s so hot…

July 17, 2010 | Author Stephen Jacobs

Global Average Temps

According to the NOAA, June 2010 has racked up to the hottest June on record globally since measurements were kept going back to 1880.

The combined average of land and ocean temperatures was

61.1?F. That is 1.22?F above the 20th century average of 59.9.

Areas such as the Midwest and Eastern US were far above normal while areas such as Scandinavia and Southern China were below normal. The average June temp in Spain made it the coolest on record in 13 years.

Solutions: Powered Schools

July 2, 2010 | Author Stephen Jacobs

There are hundreds of thousands of schools scattered across America and the costs of educating our young people continue to rise every year, forcing higher taxes on all of us either through property tax increases or through state budgeting. When schools are in session, the class rooms use huge amounts of electricity, not to mention the costs of heating and providing water. During the summer months these large buildings and properties often sit largely idle aside from normal maintenance.

So here is my idea:

Install solar and wind power generating capabilities to every school building. Most schools are generally built with large flat roofs. These are great open spaces for the placement of solar panels. The idea of course is to generate as much electricity as possible, and preferably as much as the building would normally use during high usage days. This would make the building electrically self-sufficient during the winter months when class in session. During the summer months when the schools are sitting mostly idle, the power generated by these systems could be sold back to the power grid, generating money for the school districts that can be used for books, computers, etc to help educate our kids.

In the town of Grinnell alone we have 2 elementary schools, 1 middle school, and the high school. That’s 4 buildings in this one town of just under 10,000 people that could be generating power for sale to the grid and improving the financial situation of the town.

The downsides of course is the initial investment. It can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 to retrofit a home for solar power which would obviously have far lower electrical needs in comparison to a school building. That is money that would have to be paid for either through bonding or higher property taxes unless private enterprise were to volunteer and donate the monies, but in the long run there is serious potential for school districts to generate revenue by turning their buildings into power generating stations.

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Vast Variety

Blogroll Amnesty Day

The GOP Fu-dget Plan

The Next War

Talking Point – Guilt by Association

Questions

To Mars and Back in 80 Days

The Political Playground

Homo-rality

Senator Harkin: Fair

The Rising Cost – Part 1

Hell Froze Over

It’s so hot…

Solutions: Powered Schools