The Climate club
On the net you can get help quit smoking, get thinner, get healthier and get rid of other habits. September 1st “Grønn Hverdag” (Green Everyday), a group of volunteers, 14 organizations and groups of individuals, is launching a website called klimaklubben.no (The Climate Club). At first it will let users measure their extension of friendliness to the environment. They hope for several hundred thousands taking this initial test. Later they will offer tight follow up for the ones who want to make an effort thinking green.
They will give specific info regarding transport, warming, consumption, food habits and on other areas that can contribute to reducing own emissions. Information will be channelled by e-mail or sms. All for free. Users will also be able to set their own targets and to compete with other users to see who reduces their emissions most.
There will also be a community function where companies, municipalities and other group can register and get a designated area. This way a company can organize cycle-to-work competitions without having to create a huge project. Target members the first year is 30.000.
The interface is not released yet, I’m excited about the project and look forward to test it. Are there similar concepts out there?
There are lots a family can do, and there are lots of information to gather, maybe this system will help people get started?
WES - The future?
Do you remember Stanley Meyer’s water-fueleed car? In 1996 it were found to be fraudulent by a court in Ohio followed by lawsuits from the investors.
Yet he demostrated how it worked and he claimed it could run Los Angeles to New York on 83 liters of water. He had worked out how to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using less energy than it gave. The system were never confirmed by independent scientists.
In 1998 he died visiting a restaurant and is a hot topic among conspiracy theorists. Some mean he were poisoned but it were never proved.
Earlier this week we learned about the Japanese WES - Water Energy System, a system that breaks down hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical process, emitting no Co2. They have demonstrated a 300W fuel system and soon a 500W system will be ready. Their target within near future is 1000W.
They need a initiate system, and plan to use solar cells and dry battery cells - after initiating it runs and can run 1 hour in 80 km/h on only 1 liter of water. This all sound like a dream but they have at several demonstrations proved that it works.
I am scared that some big oil company will buy up this company and bury all patents, this is why I write about this - I don’t want it to be forgotten.
Think of the usage possibilities, I would transfer usage to several other areas. What if this could be built into an aggregate? Will we in future have such in every home? It almost sound too good to be true. Lets say this will be possible in the future, think of the power-companies and oil-companies and their immense power. Will they fight this?
Will we be disappointed by a scam-scandal? I am so eager to follow this - I think its important to our future. Our oil wont last forever.
Genepax on wiki
17 Myths about the climate
Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, CICERO and The Norwegian Meteorological Institute got together to clear up some myths and misunderstandings.
The list of 17 myths and misunderstandings is for some reason in Norwegian only, I’ll try to translate them, please notify me if I misspell something or make a mistake ok?
I feel that if we together are going to take care of our planet we at least got to have the same basic understanding of what is going on. Too many speculations and guesses can ruin the joint mission.
1. The human made releases of climate gases like CO2 can not result in global warming - they are too small compared to the natural releases.
2. The temperature has not increased the 10 last years. Does this mean the scientists who say we suffer global warming is wrong?
3. The scientists cannot even tell us how the weather will be in a week - then how can they tell us how the weather will be in 100 years?
4. During stone age the temperature were higher than now; so high that trees were growing on Hardangervidda (the largest mountain plateau in Europe). This means that the global warming today is due to natural causes and not human made.
5. During earlier climate changes the increase of temperature came first and the CO2-increase came afterwards. This must prove that CO2 is not causing climate changes but rather a consequence.
6. It is the increasing solar activity that is causing the change in temperature on earth, not increasing climate gases in atmosphere.
7. A large volcano eruption can stop the global warming.
8. Ice on Arctic is increasing, opposite of theories on global warming.
9. Allegations that the ocean is rising rests on computer models that by all means concur with field observations and measures of the real world.
10. If all ice on earth melts, the ocean level can rise with 70 meter.
11. Climate gases is only 0,04 percent of the atmosphere and can therefore not cause climate issues.
12. The global warming is highly exaggerated because thermometers is placed in cities and close to airports where black asphalt and tall buildings inflicts on the temperature.
13. 99 percent of the atmosphere consists of water damp that gives us a natural greenhouse effect we humans cannot do anything with.
14.The increase of CO2 is caused by natural oceanic gasreleases and not human releases.
15. If the level of CO2 in atmosphere is too high - the ocean will solve the problem by consuming more CO2.
16. More acknowledged scientists have come to conclusions that is opposite of IPCC’s.
17. The UNs Climate Panel (IPCC) is a political organ formed to prove that humane made climate changes exists.
CICERO, Bjerknes and Met explains and elaborates on each of these 17 myths and misunderstandings, I am awaiting their approval to translate that as well.
Bye reactor number 4 - for now
Next year the French consortium Novarka (VINCI Construction Grands Projets (lead contractor) and Bouygues Travaux Publics) will start building a 18000 ton sarcophagus. It will be 105 metres high, 150 metres long and with a span of 257 metres - formed as an arch. Construction will be done 2012/2014.
It will be built next to the old shelter and slid over it on rail tracks and hopefully it will last 100 years.
Meanwhile the inner construction will be slowly dismantled and removed and in 50 years the nuclear fuel will be extracted. No one has reported where yet.
Ukraine’s president Victor Yushchenko said last year that areas in Chernobyl is ready to be used again, he is convinced that the Chernobyl-zone will wake up with increasing phase.
To this date there are 439 nuclear power plant world wide and there are 35 under construction. Each of these produce 25-30 tonnes high level waste each year and we haven’t yet agreed what to do with it.
Edited this part a bit : (death toll of millions was a bit much)
This one “little” nuclear plant in Chernobyl may cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people, isn’t it a bit naive to thrust it won’t happen again? We can add all the depots as factors on top of the 439 nuclear power plants.
Death toll above is highly debatable though, check out these links :
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/mar/25/energy.ukraine
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Long-term_health_effects
- http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406
Starpower - the future energy source
The Norwegian energy company Statkraft announce that they have developed so-called gamma capturers that will capture the energy generated when stars explode.
What to believe?
On February 28th the large Wilkins Ice Shelf in west Antartica began to colaps, images of the process between February 28th and March 8th can be found
I am ofcourse concerned about our environment, but I don’t like hysteria, especially when hysteria can ruin an important case. What if people milks money of this hysteria and people find out. What will peoples reaction be? Its like collecting money for starving people in Africa. When people found out that only a small percentage of the money comes the starving people’s beneficial people stopped giving.
What if the general public stopped caring for the environment because a group of people made money of scaring us?
This question comes to my mind these days because I find it strange that David Vaughan screams “GLOBAL WARMING!” today but not long ago explained he explained how fragile this particular area is and why it so unstable. They say “One possible culprit could be a deep ocean current that is channelled onto the continental shelf close to the mouth of the glacier. There is not much sea ice to protect it from the warm water, which seems to be undercutting the ice and lubricating its flow. ” What they forget to tell you is that the Wilkins Ice Shelf rested on water. For hundreds of year this area has seemed to be stable, seen from above! Picture what will happend after 1500 years of waves digging benieth the surface.
I wish the scientists would be more humble, that they think before they leak info to the media.
We need proper actions anyway, not scared people and fake-environment-sollutions. I wonder who benefited David Vaughan’s latest comments.
It is wrong of me to focus on this?
Small steps.
Media Heap set up a nice reminder last year that small steps count. At blackle.com the lights are off, an idea they got from TreeHugger. They have now saved 472,290.538 Watt hours. While more and more people use LCD-monitors this wont matter as much as CRT-monitors, but on CRT one can actually save usage by using darkness. I like Media Heaps’ idea, its a nice way to remind us that we all can contribute to the environment.
All pollution should count
Until now greenhouse gas emisions from container ships has not been counted, because of difficulties in calculating whos cape it should go under. The amount of greenhouse gas from container ships is much lower than from air and land transport but it should count.
Maersk - one of the worlds largest shippers, has calculated a release of 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, from 1000 ships sailing the north sea. That is as much as Denmark’s total release.
Picture then, that there are right now about 100.000 ships out there.
Some say that it would be unfair to count Maersk release in Asia, but the shippers has now been given until the end of 2008 to find a sollution to this, a system for calculating greenhouse gas emmisions from their cargoships.
(The image is from Skysails, Maersk should look into this)
New site for my Colibri
Welcome to my new domain, thank you a lot for following me. I hope I wont regret that I moved my blog.
Good night! Moving blogs like this is not recommended after 23:00. hehe
Polar Ocean ice free this summer
Do you remember the reports talking about ice free arctic sea in 2040? And some horrific predictions calculating ice free summers in 2013? Guess what, most likely all of the experts were wrong.
Olav Orheim predicts ice free arctic sea this summer, from Siberia - the ice is thin now and it melts fast. This means that in August to September ordinary freight ships can save half the time using this route.
He points out that this is worrying since there are no disaster reduction measurements in these area. We know what happends when disasters strike fragile coasts - but we at least have some disaster reduction. The Arctic has 0. Who is willing to take the cost? If Olav Orheim is right, there isn’t much time.
When a small shipment company can save $200k on one tour, what can the major companies save?
Ships from the west coast of USA and southeastern Asia can save over 40% time going through the ice free arctic sea instead of the Panama channel.
Some might need reloading in northern Norway to tougher sihps before continuing, will the harbours be ready for this? I haven’t seen any plans out yet.
(Sources : Arctic Frontiers, NRK, Teknisk Ukeblad) (Norwegian)