Green Options

Living in Australia brings with it a wonderful set of environmental circumstances to live with. Not only do we have two weather patterns – El Nino/La Nina and the Indian Ocean Dipole – that are combining to lengthen our drought, but we’re one of the countries that suffer from the ever fluctuating ozone hole in the Southern Hemisphere. This year, the ozone hole extended to approximately 27 million square kilometers. This compared to 2007’s 25 million square kilometers and 2006’s 29 million square kilometers. Want a size comparison? That’s about the size of the North American continent!

Again highlighting the lack of political willpower at the top of the US Federal tree, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has announced that his state is hoping to become a world leader in wind-generated energy. Governor of New Jersey since January 17, 2006, Corzine wants the Garden State to triple the total amount of wind generated power that it plans to use by 2020. This would bring its total up to 3,000 megawatts, measuring out to be 13% of New Jersey’s total energy, and enough energy to power anywhere between 800,000 and just under a million homes. This comes just days after the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced that it had chosen Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE) as the preferred developer for a 350-megawatt wind farm off the NJ coast.

Ever since negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol begun last year, we’ve been waiting to hear about progress. But as Yu Qingtai, China’s special representative for climate change talks says, things are looking a little gloomy.

  With the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere these days, comes the inexorable wait to see when the Arctic sea ice starts melting, and then waiting to see how far it’ll melt. If nothing else, it’s great for journalists looking for a story. For my money though, I’m a much bigger fan of this time of year, when the Arctic sea ice starts reclaiming ground. And after reaching the second-lowest extent ever recorded last month, sea ice in the Arctic has begun to refreeze in the face of autumn temperatures. Subsequently, both the Northern Sea Route and the direct route through the Northwest Passage have been closed. “This is the first time in our charting records that both historic passages opened up in the same year,” said NIC Chief Scientist Dr Pablo Clemente-Colón. “Both of the routes appeared as closed by 22 September.”

Google has announced its own plan to wean America off the use of coal and oil by 2030.

China, and the mixed responsibilities in ensuring that their export and trade industry does not single-handedly doom the planet to a carbon ridden future.

Environmentalists and anyone else attempting to derail wind farms have often turned to the fate of birds for scientific back up. In the case of the environmentalists, I’ll let it pass, but it’s when the senators and other politicians who have never shown an ounce of interest in the outdoors – let alone an animal in the outdoors – jump on the “PROTECT THE BIRDS” bandwagon that gets me riled up (among a host of other things). Thankfully, new research out of England has lain to rest at least some of the claims saying that wind farms, and to a lesser extent singular wind turbines, represent a real threat to bird populations.

My attention was captured yesterday by a story written by AFP. Entitled ‘Madagascar: solar power ends Dark Age for rural clinics,’ the author looked at how one of the poorest countries in the world is using solar power to benefit those in poor rural areas.

The author wrote of Elisabeth, a 53 year old grandmother, who accompanied her daughter after she gave birth to her first child. She spoke of how, for her, if she had wanted to give birth with light, she would have to bring her own candles.

Now, in the small village of Antsahadinta, 20 kilometers to the west of Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, the medical clinic now has its own solar generator to produce its own electricity.

If it wasn’t bad enough that we seem to be pumping more and more in the way of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, we humans seem to be doing a pretty damn good job of eating away any chance of removing said emissions. The latest comes in a one-two punch. First of all experts are labeling the fight to save the Florida Everglades as a “losing battle,” while Brazil’s Environment Minister is blaming upcoming elections and increasing food prices for another rise in Amazon deforestation. So no matter which way you look at it, the simple fact of the matter is, humans are irreversibly stupid.

Climate science is a little bit like me and books: I can never get enough of them, and appreciate lots and lots of them. For climate science though, it’s a case of getting more and more data, from as many possible sources as humanly possible. And now, thanks to Virgin Galactic, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be getting a bit more data to continue their never ending quest to understand planet Earth.