Now the average consumer can participate in the renewable energy revolution. You can power your home with wind energy, biomass, and other renewable energy sources. All without installing any new equipment.

Alliant Energy’s Second Nature Program allows you to buy renewable energy for your home.

When your family participates in Second Nature, you’re helping us buy earth-friendly wind power and bioenergy.

Through Alliant Energy’s innovative Second Nature™ program, your family can support renewable energy equal to 25 percent, 50 percent or even 100 percent of your household electric usage each month.

This additional renewable energy comes from new Second Nature resources, above and beyond Alliant Energy’s standard sources.

As electricity from renewable sources comes into the energy pool, it displaces electricity that would otherwise come from fossil fuel sources like coal and natural gas.

Caveat: You must live in Iowa, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.

Your small monthly contribution covers the added expense of harvesting the wind power and biomass energy used in the program:

* Your electric meter measures the kilowatt-hours you use each month. We use your Second Nature participation level (25%, 50% or 100%) to figure how much green energy you require.
* Next, we combine your requirement with other Second Nature customers to get the month’s total green requirement.
* Then, we bring enough new green power into our energy pool to meet the total green requirement.

Learn more and sign up here. You can even sign up online.

Robert Muraine’s Official Web Site

Massive ice shelf collapsing off Antarctica
March 26, 2008 7:04 AM PDT

Scientists are citing “rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica” as the cause of an initial collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The damage got started at the end of February when an iceberg dropped off and triggered the “runaway disintegration” of a 160-square-mile portion of the 5,282-square-mile shelf.

The ice shelf, which scientists speculate has floated in the Antarctic region for hundreds of years, is succumbing to recent rises in temperature in the area–an average of 0.9 degree Fahrenheit every 10 years for the last 50 years.

This series of pictures that show the beginning of the breakup were taken by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor, which flies on its Earth Observing System Aqua and Terra satellites.

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center/NASA

source: http://www.news.com/2300-11395_3-6235636-1.html?tag=nefd.also