Green Options

Coming up with a list of 10 eccentric habits of what she calls “love snobs who try to evoke green passions but miss” shouldn’t have been easy for anyone. But Jeanette, my green-conscious friend, did it with very interesting observations.

Eco-consciousness in many intimate relationships of the boy-and-girl type can be snobbish, Jeanette says, because the lovers who probably kissed on a garden sidewalk for the first time unknowingly tend to outdo each other while emphasizing their green credentials. This is the thrust of her musings:

In what could be a first in the world, a fish species in the cichlid family has been observed by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake and one of the world’s biggest fresh water bodies.
This may be remarkable because what is causing them to diverge are adaptations to their vision as animals and plants try to cope with increased pollution and the effects of climate change. The change is also happening without geographical isolation, which was thought to be a precursor for evolution.

Odd-ball green news it may be but Coke has been discovered to be an effective spermicide, which may be good for the environment; and for that very elaborate effort of discovery, a woman’s sexuality expert has just been awarded an alternative Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Weird or wacky, you might say, but rumor actually has it that Snopes.com might soon bring down this link that debunked the long suspected (was it an urban legend until the Ig Nobel Prize?) but now confirmed sperm killing effects of the famous Coca Cola soft drink.

Australians and the rest of us agree that climate change is real, but the guys Down South can do more than listening to harangues about how to combat global warming - a dish of Kangaroo meat can help reduce their carbon footprint, if an Aussie government adviser on climate change has his way.

Having compared the harmful methane gas produced by sheep, cows and other domesticated animals through belching and flatulence, Professor Ross Garnaut contends kangaroo meat is a safer alternative for the environment.

Italian biodiesel producers have announced a $14 million plan to shift from food crops to seaweed in an effort to lessen competition with crop cultivation.

In so doing, they will be working with the best scientific minds to grow the seaweed in plastic tubes of seawater that will be fed with carbon dioxide captured from thermal power stations in a project called Mambo spearheaded by Italy’s Union of Biodiesel Producers.

A plant will be built at a coastal location in southern Italy in as little as two years and should be producing biodiesel from seaweed five years from now.

A new global project is screening food crops for useful traits that can be adapted for reversing the effects of climate change and boost their diversity and sustainable production.

This will involve the setting up of crop banks and seed vaults, so to speak, in developing countries that depend on staples such as corn and rice, to tap on their valuable ’sustainability traits’ as a way of conserving the diversity of the world’s food crops.

In attempts to boost food security, crops from banana to sweet potato will be screened to identify material that plant breeders can use to produce varieties adapted to conditions associated with climate change.

Researchers in Canada have found 4.28 billion year old rocks, probably the world’s oldest, and which may be remnants of a portion of the first crust that formed at the surface of our planet, known as the primordial crust.

The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson’s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt.

Nature has finally confirmed it: the industrialized nations may be rich but the air that people breathe in poorer nations in the Southern Hemisphere is cleaner four times over.

A chemical equator - an atmospheric line - discovered by scientists suggests the existence of a 50 kilometer-wide boundary between polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere and the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere.

In a model, the red that represents high levels of carbon monoxide present in the air in the Northern Hemisphere gives way to blue that reflects clean air of the South; in between, a white-colored ‘chemical equator’ separates them.

Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is one man you can bet is clutching the prayer beads seeking some solace and hope that a potential nuclear power deal with one of the world’s emerging economies would land his country’s way.

That is, if the US Congress helps him by trashing George Bush’s deal with India before he can sign it into law. And the urgency means it is a critical time for both Washington and New Delhi. This might be easy if there’s no deal before the November presidential elections.

Here are the stakes: India seeks out partners to co-develop its nuclear energy potential, worth about US$ 80 billion. By 2032 the government plans to quadruple total generating capacity, to 700 gigawatts, with nuclear accounting for 63,000 megawatts.

Anaconda, the enormous South American snake that hunts its prey in water and which spends a lot of time in water environments, is just what two British researchers needed as inspiration to develop an innovative wave energy concept.

The anaconda is a wave energy converter device made of a giant rubber tube which may hold the key to producing cheaper, sustainable electricity from the energy in sea waves.