Tag Archives: climate change

Free For All – November – Fight Climate Change Without Spending Money, Save It Instead!

Posted on November 5th, 2019

In this edition of Free for All, rather than providing you with a useful tool or website, we address how one can do their part to save the planet, for free! There are a multitude of different approaches to fight Climate Change, so inevitably, there will be some that I do not cover, so we invite you to do your own research and learn as much as you can from reliable sources. For example, check out scientific literature that has been reviewed by multiple experts so that you know it’s valid. Once you absorb the information, share it with your friends and family, as every person that becomes educated then becomes an activist! Here are two easy-to-read pie charts showing the key greenhouse gases and then the sectors that emit them. The solutions I offer below are ordered by the impact they can make on Climate Change, so without delay, let’s jump in. While it can be hard to hear, changing our diet is one of the most impactful actions we can take to improve the climate. While carbon emissions are a key contributor to the greenhouse effect, as an individual it is tough to reduce many of these emissions … testContinue reading →

Free For All – The Climate Impact Map, a Dynamic Climate Change Visualizer

Posted on September 3rd, 2019

In this September edition of our Free for All series, we change the pace by covering a great example of an interactive and informative online map of climate change—the Climate Impact Map created by the Climate Impact Lab. The Climate Impact Lab is a collaborative entity consisting of climate scientists, economists, researchers, analysts and more from various research institutions. They hope to address the growing scourge of climate change by studying and modeling its impacts at different geographic scales. Using a data-driven and evidence-based approach, they aim to analyze both past and future climate trends in order to understand their global socioeconomic impacts and the complex relationship between climate and society. Information gathered will be accessible via an open, web-based platform, allowing for impact models to change dynamically as more research is added in. In addition to cataloguing important research, the Climate Impact Lab created an interactive map allowing users to model future changes in temperature based on RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways – or greenhouse gas concentration trajectories) values and varying probabilities of these occurring. On the website, users can input average summer and winter temperatures, average annual temperatures, as well as the number of days below freezing or above … testContinue reading →

Apollo News Snippets – April 2016

Posted on April 5th, 2016

It’s April and it looks like I will finally be caught up after this month’s dump of cool technological advancements. With that said, let’s jump into this right away! How about this for a recent discovery, scientists found 120,000 cubic miles of water below the ocean floor, or a volume equal to 100 times all of the water used since 1900! Perhaps we can mine carbon nanofibers from the sky while reducing climate change with this idea. Or maybe a better idea to reduce climate change would be tiny nanobots that harvest carbon dioxide from our oceans? Another idea to clean the oceans would be using industrial waste, including a citrus extract, to capture mercury. Let’s ditch insecticides and start blasting the vibrations of feeding insects over all of our fields. This idea could reduce harmful runoff while making our roads safer to drive More efficient desalination might be just a bit closer to reality with this idea which removes salt from water with a shockwave of electricity. If this idea works, your Wi-Fi router could charge your small electronics in the future. Here is a new wonder substance we can now produce for a low-cost, is biodegradable and can … testContinue reading →

Apollo News Snippets – March 2016

Posted on March 8th, 2016

Yep, you guessed it, another month of headline dumps from my list of cool technological advancements coming down the pipeline. Let’s jump right into it folks! Government research suggests that the wonder material graphene could be used to clean the world’s drinking water by punching holes in it with the greenhouse gas of much controversy, methane. Like graphene, nanofibers have a wide range of potential uses if the production costs can come down – here is an idea that might do this. Rare-earth metals are important components of many modern products but they are expensive – this research could reduce their cost by simplifying the recycling. Paddlewheels embedded with bacterial spores can generate energy from evaporation which if scaled up could be a significant source of renewable energy over large bodies of water. Or perhaps we could harvest energy from the millions of rolling tires on our roads? Talk about an eye catching idea, how about this 1,600-foot solar tower that could power your city. Splitting water efficiently and renewably is one of the holy grails of energy, could this research do it finally? Do you like bacon, if so you will love this bacon-flavored seaweed! Maybe that spoiled milk … testContinue reading →

Apollo News Snippets – November 2015

Posted on November 3rd, 2015

There is always so much to talk about in the world of solar energy; as such, our focus will remain on this topic in November. First, here are a few ideas to improve the efficiency of solar cells. Stanford University scientists have invented self-cooling solar panels that will increase efficiency by expelling extra heat from pyramid silica structures. Princeton research has developed a metal-plastic sandwich of solar cells that traps light to increase efficiency by 175%. NC State researchers have pioneered a new technique to link multiple solar panels without losing much voltage as waste heat (or energy). And Yale has found a way to make solar cells more efficient using a fluorescent dye which captures photons over a broader range of the spectrum. One of the challenges of solar energy production is storing the power you generate – here are three new approaches to overcome this hurdle. A team of UCSD researchers have developed a silicon nanoparticle material that can absorb 90% of the radiation focused on it by solar concentrating power plants. U of Tokyo scientists have created a ceramic material that could efficiently store heat generated by solar energy and/or waste radiant heat. This revolutionary plastic material … testContinue reading →

Our Changing Landscape – Carroll Glacier

Posted on October 7th, 2014

In this monthly feature, we span the globe to examine Our Changing Landscape with time series of medium resolution RapidEye satellite imagery. The RapidEye archive dates back to late 2008 and already contains more than 5 billion square kilometers of data. This month, we look at changes in one of Alaska’s many glaciers, Carroll Glacier. The RapidEye Constellation RapidEye is a constellation of five 5-meter medium resolution satellites each offering five spectral bands of information. The RapidEye constellation offers daily revisits to every location on the planet with a huge footprint that is 77-km wide. The data is priced competitively with a starting cost of $1.28 per square kilometer for all five spectral bands – academics do receive discounts. RapidEye adds a fifth band, the red edge, to the ‘traditional’ multispectral set of blue, green, red and near-infrared (NIR). The additional spectral data in the red edge band allows users to extract more useful land ‘information’ than can be from traditional 4-band imagery sources. When RapidEye imagery is ordered as a Level 3A Orthorectified product, images from multiple dates are extremely well registered, making it the ideal data source for Our Changing Landscape. Carroll Glacier, Alaska As our regular readers … testContinue reading →

Free For All – Climate Inspector

Posted on May 6th, 2014

Are you doing research on climate change? Or perhaps you are just curious about the future climate of our blue and green ball orbiting the Sun? If either is the case, you should check out the Climate Inspector which is a project funded by a National Science Foundation grant to the University of Colorado’s University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). Climate Inspector features an interactive map which is tied to graphs on past and expected changes in both precipitation and temperature. The data on this website is based on the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Community Climate System Model (CCSM4). A map of the predicted change in mean annual precipitation from 2059 to 2078. Here are a few tips to get you going with Climate Inspector: When you click on the map, it will drop a pin in that location and this is the climate data you can access with the download button. You will get climate data for the one-degree cell containing this point. If you move the slider right below the map, you can change the map display to show you a 20 year view of climate predictions and also of past climate conditions. When you hover over … testContinue reading →

Apollo News Snippets – May 2014

Posted on May 6th, 2014

There are always tons of advancements in the world of solar technology, so this month let’s turn our attention to this industry.Organic solar panels are very attractive as if their efficiency can be increased, they are cheap and easy to produce. Here is an idea for controlling electron spin that might improve organic cell efficiency. And here is an idea inspired by trees for self-healing organic solar cells. Now here are some ideas to improve the efficiency of other types of solar cells, for instance this one which is a nanostructured material that will absorb more light energy. Other researchers have developed a new ceramic material which can absorb a wider spectrum of photons. Here is an idea to modify a common polymer used in solar cells for a possible 30% increase in efficiency. And this research has created a new connection between stacked solar cells to handle much more energy. Storing energy created by solar panels for future use is always a challenge. This is an idea to store excess energy in hydroelectric facilities retrofitted to abandoned mine shafts. This approach to storage converts solar energy to hydrogen gas. Finally, here are two interesting ideas to extend the uses … testContinue reading →

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