DESCRIPTION & ACTIVITIES
If we are to create a sustainable future our carbon footprint must be reduced. Energy conservation and stopping a global economy bent on infinite growth on a finite planet is the key but on the local level we can play a role by turning away from fossil fuels and toward energy from the sun. Transportation on foot or bike, fuel from waste veggie oil, homemade solar hot water collectors, and electricity from the sun, are all things you can do! Hands on activities include solar site surveying, touring working systems including pv power and waste veggie oil vehicle.
FRIDAY FILM
Kilowatt Hours
GUEST INSTRUCTOR
Robert (Bob) F. Cahalan, is Head of the Climate and Radiation Branch of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Laboratory for Atmospheres in the Earth Sciences Division, in Greenbelt, Md. an elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and elected President of the International Radiation Commission.
Bob Cahalan is recognized for his pioneering theoretical and experimental advances in understanding the role of cloud structure in climate; his lead role as Project Scientist of the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE); and his leadership in three-dimensional atmospheric radiative transfer. He has worked on global warming and other climate change research at NASA Goddard since 1979.
His research on clouds led to retrieval techniques that extend the “independent pixel approximation,” an “effective thickness approximation” relating cloud optical properties to cloud structure. With colleagues at NASA Goddard and Los Alamos National Lab, Dr. Cahalan designed a lidar system “Thickness from Offbeam Returns (THOR),” that employs a multiple field-of-view wide-angle receiver to determine thickness of optically thick cloud, ice and snow layers.
Gabe Cahalan studied appropriate technologies, agro-ecology and permaculture while completing a BA in Sustainable Living and Environmental Philosophy at Warren Wilson College near Asheville, NC. As a part of a work-study at Earthaven community in 1998, Gabe helped build a circular post-beam straw bale building that now serves as the main community center. He worked on a number of greening the campus initiatives including a community free bike program and a solar panel installation.
As a seasonal field biologist in 2003-06 Gabe drove back and forth across the country in a waste veggie oil powered Volvo that he converted. More recently he has worked on native plant and habitat restorations at nature preserves in NY, FL & VA. Gabe currently works for The Nature Conservancy as a nature preserve manager in MD and now drives a veggie oil converted VW Jetta. His most recent venture in homemade appropriate technology is a solar air heater to supplement his home heating needs.
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