"State May Shut Down Five Coal-Fired Power Plants"

Opening lines of article:  "The state will install more pollution controls, eliminate coal use or possibly shut down five coal-fired heating plants, the Wisconsin Department of Administration announced Friday.
The plants are at Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison and UW campuses in Eau Claire, La Crosse, Oshkosh and River Falls."

Click the title above to read the rest of the story as reported on the Wisconsin State Journal web site.

Putting it into Perspective

I have a quick question I wanted to throw out there. I calculated my personal carbon footprint to be about 4,827,946 grams CO2 per year or 1,316,712 grams of C per year. I guess what I was wondering is if someone could put these numbers into some sort of perspective for me. (They really don't mean anything to me in that format.) I don't know if you could give me an idea how many, I don't know, maybe Lambeau Fields this would fill or something, just so I could get a general idea. Thanks!

How to Break Up a Long Post

Hi All,

If you look in the formatting palette that runs across the top of the box--like the one I'm typing in now--you'll see (at the far right side) an icon of a sheet of paper with a rip across it.  When you get to a point in your post that you want to break (you can do this after you've hit "Preview" and decided on a spot, then closed "Preview" to return to the text box), you put the cursor at the point you want the break.  Then you click on that icon.  You'll see a line appear across the text box.  You can just hit "publish post" at that point, or of course you can always hit "preview" again.  Of course you can also delete these.

Request for Info on Posting

I noticed someone or other figured out how to put a "Continued" at the bottom of posts to link a snippet to the full post and prevent so much space from being taken up. Could whoever did that post how they did it? I tried for ages to figure it out, and never did discover the secret.

Class Log 2/15/2010

Dr. Jim Phillips visited our class today. He reviewed concepts from basic chemistry:

-Chemical Equations: Hydrocarbon Combustion
-Dimensional Analysis (Conversion factors)
-Chemical Mass Balance

He also provided on-the-spot chemical mass balancing exercises (with hydrocarbons and their respective equations) and dimensional analysis conversions for students to try out.

**On Wednesday students will account for what happens when they add energy into the hydrocarbon combustion equation. After this is completed, Dr. Phillips will teach students how to calculate their own individual basic carbon inventories using the following information (don't forget to bring this info to class!):

(1) utility bill
(2) estimate of miles driven/taken by bus
(3) estimate of caloric intake in a day.

"The Curse of Akkad": Question for the Class

When Kolbert ends section I of Field Notes by reporting on a conversation with biologist Chris Thomas, she has directed our attention toward the future.  "Part of it simply is," Thomas says, "we've got one planet, and we are heading it in a direction that . . . we don't know what the consequences are going to be."  As we turn from that sobering conclusion and flip the page that reads "Part II Man," we find that Kolbert is asking us to look to a past that is 4300 years distant.  Comment on your experience of reading the chapter and--perhaps--how your reactions to her choice changed as you read.