The Solar Impulse took off on its first test flight from Payerne field in Switzerland Wednesday, reaching an altitude of 975 meters (3,199 feet) and maximum speed of 45.9 kph (28.5 mph).  The plane’s wingspan is  63.4 m (208 ft).
Bertrand Piccard, the aviation pioneer who, with Brian Jones, completed the first non-stop circumnavigation of the globe by balloon in 1999, is the creative force behind this solar-powered venture.

The “Science Catfight” over the climate change mandate is brought to you by the Colbert Report.  If you can get past the cat fight scenes, you might find that there are a few nuggets of common sense in the debate from Comedy Central that features AccuWeather.com meteorologist Joe Bastardi and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Science Catfight - Joe Bastardi vs. Brenda Ekwurzel

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor
Fox News

The undersea volcano, Marsili, off the coast of Italy is worrying volcanologists. It has a large magma chamber that is structurally weak. On Monday experts warned that the chamber could collapse at any time sending a tsunami toward the coast of Italy and Sicily.

David De Rothschild,the 31 year old environmentalist, adventurer and banking heir, set sail Saturday with a crew of six on the Plastiki, a catamaran made from 12,000 plastic bottles. Rothschild anticipates that the 11,000 nautical mile journey from San Francisco to Sydney will take at least three months.

Here are some of the articles that appeared this week regarding scientists defending their work on climate change.

The gold, silver and bronze medallions slung around winning athletes’ necks as they step on to the winners’ podium at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games could well be made from the guts of an old Belgian computer.

The manufacturer of medals for this Olympics is for the first time incorporating token amounts of recycled material into the medals. Medals historically have been made of freshly mines ores.

The innovation – though largely symbolic – was directed by an Olympic organising committee which had vowed to put on the greenest games ever, raising the bar for London in 2012.

The Bloom box verses solar — what are your thoughts when you compare the two videos?

At first the course in carbon trading at the University of  Houston seemed like a sensible environmental idea, particularly because the business school teamed up with the law school.  But now that the Obama Administration has just announced that it is awarding clean energy tax credits, educators might be taking a more serious look at the interface between the environment and the legal issues involved.  Obama Awards $2.3 Billion in Clean-Energy Tax Credits 

Queen Elizabeth shows she knows how to go green.
Queen Elizabeth boarded a regularly scheduled commuter train yesterday for her trip from London to the royal estate at Sandringham for the Christmas holidays. The Queen and her security detail sat in a first-class compartment, which was separated from other passengers by a glass partition.
The Daily Mail reports that her fellow commuters were quite taken by surprise to see their 83 year-old monarch with a silk headscarf appear at King’s Cross.
The Queen’s son, Prince Charles, was recently in the news for traveling to …

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reduced its long-term forecast for global oil demand as the financial crisis continues to squeeze markets and countries increase their pursuit of alternative energy sources.
The news comes as global energy consumption is set to fall in 2009 for the first time since 1981 and CO2 emissions could shrink by as much as 3 percent - the steepest decline in the last 40 years.
According to the revised forecast contained in the IEA’s recently released annual World Energy Outlook, global oil consumption is now expected to expand 1 percent …