The Last Frost

It looks like the city of San Francisco stepped up as the future home of the UN Global Compact Center. It will be built on a former naval yard which is listed by the EPA as a superfund site. It will be a few years before the area is cleaned up and construction can begin.

San Francisco to Provide Home for New UN Global Warming Center – via Gizmodo

Nanosolar, Inc. has created the worlds first solar panels that produce power at a cost below that of dirty coal. At $1/Watt these innovative panels could be the first step towards the abolishment of coal as a power source.  

At $1 per Watt, the iTunes of Solar Energy Has Arrived – [SolveClimate.com]

Awesome, Al Gore has taken home 1/2 of the Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". 

The other half of the prize went to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for the same reasons. 

This is great news for bringing awareness to Climate Change as an issue as well as recognizing some major players working on the front lines of the attempt to change global awareness. Congrats to Al and the IPCC.

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UPDATE: Al's response to winning:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis–a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Thank you,

Al Gore

Al Gore Win's The Nobel Peace Prize – [NobelPrize.org]

Not really a surprise but still scary as shit. I hope global culture shifts before it's too late to fix this. 

Global Warming: Scientific Consensus Proved Wrong – [Daily Kos]

The Sietch Blog » Arctic Will Melt To Projected 2050 Levels, This Year

All in the name of climate change.  

Hundreds Pose Naked on Swiss Glacier for Spencer Tunick – Laughing Squid

Talk about a sweet looking storage facility, and energy efficient too. Pictures on Gizmodo.com.

Eco: Portland's Solar-Powered, 22-Story Storage Facility – [Gizmodo]

I made one of these in high school out of some black paint, sand, cardboard and some tinfoil. The water in the can reached almost 180 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few minutes. Pretty cool, and easy too. 

DIY: Make a Solar Water Heater for Less Than $5 – [Gizmodo]

It looks like India is planning to break the world record for the number of trees planted in a single day. Their goal? 10,266,736 at over 9,000 sites across the country. This is great stuff.

India eyes tree planting record – [BBC News]

Climate change, visually.

Grinnell Glacier from Mt. Gould 1938 – 2005