But the citizens, it seems, are having the last laugh as it has been reported this week that the town is to be the first in the UK to make use of the sewer system in a whole new way.

Rather than rely on the rather un-environmentally friendly process of digging up swathes of countryside and road to lay cables, H2O Networks Ltd have been called in for the gig.

As is so often the case, simple ideas seem to have manifest benefits and using sewer systems to lay fibre optic cables is a case in point.

As already stated, there is no need to dig up roads.

Conventional cables are normally laid a mere 45 cm below ground. Utilising the sewer systems means that the cables lie a full 10 metres below ground, decreasing the likelihood of damage and increasing security in potentially dangerous situations.

And of course, with no digging needed, with the sewers already in place, getting the fibre optics laid can be achieved far more quickly.

So, as many Britons languish behind with slow internet access, Bournemouth is casually reinventing itself as a rather fast, happening town, and in the not-too-distant future, will enjoy internet speeds approaching 100Mbps.

The UK has 360,000 miles worth of sewers. As Elfed Thomas, CEO of H2O Networks says:

“This is just the start of bringing next generation connectivity to the UK.”

Sources:

Yahoo UK

I.T. Professionals

Further Info:

H20 Networks Ltd

Image Source:

Photo of Victorian sewer courtesy of Flickr

Citing green hotels, coconut oil fuel for airlines and even recyclable golf tees, executives in one of the world’s largest industries say they are urgently trying to shrink tourism’s oversized environmental footprint.

But with global travel projected to keep soaring, and those very leaders still eager to expand their own ventures, some doubt such efforts can significantly lessen global warming and other ecological woes.

“There are no simple solutions,” Anna Pollack, head of a British tourism consultancy, told a two-day conference which ended Wednesday. “Tourism is both a victim of and a contributor to climate change.”

Online you can read the a lot guides about how to reduce global warming. As you can see travel is only a little part of the main causes of global warming.

Below, I list of useful guides. You can use to reduce global warming.

Global warming refers to the Earth’s air and oceans gradually heating up to a point that disrupts balance, a problem that is continually getting worse. It sounds like a problem too massive for any one individual to take on, but it really isn’t. Combining any few of these suggestions can make more of a dramatic effect than most people understand. The goal is to emit less carbon dioxide into the atmospher

The part of Global warming caused by travel, is especially the ecotourism, practiced in remote destination. It’s so because it requires the use of air travel to land is those countries.

Some times ago an airline company used to travel with biofuel.

IN February, on a chilly, clear Sunday morning, Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, along with the co-sponsors Boeing and GE Aviation, lured more than 200 journalists to a hangar at Heathrow Airport near London to witness what they said was airline history. Over flutes of Champagne and plates of mini-bagels filled with salmon, everyone’s eyes were fixed on a 747 as it took off on the world’s first biofuel demonstration flight.

Never mind that only one of the plane’s engines used biofuel, and that was about 25 percent mixed with standard kerosene jet fuel. It was still significant, given that air travel is the fastest-growing source of global greenhouse gases, and the race to find an alternative to kerosene is now crucial. The biofuel used — a combination of coconut and babassu (a Brazilian tree) oil, which Mr. Branson pretended to drink that day like an island cocktail from a coconut shell — worked in this very small test. But even its developers, Imperium Renewables, are aware it could never become a substitute for what John Plaza, president and chief executive of Imperium, another sponsor, says is the 87 billion gallons of fuel needed each year to fly the world’s airline fleet.

“This is just a first-generation product,” Mr. Plaza said. “But the test was meaningful in that it showed that a biofuel was viable with the infrastructure in a commercial jet.” Imperium created the fuel from oils harvested from existing plantations, but Mr. Plaza said he believed that algae was the fuel of the future. “You would only need the landmass of West Virginia,” he said, “to make enough fuel to replace aviation’s demand for kerosene.”

So I’m not scared about the future, because change is happened. I think that most airlines will become more green so traveling in foreign countries will be less environmental damaging.

Amy Winehouse

If you appreciate irony, as I’m sure you do, then you’ll understand there’s something quite beautiful about the fact that Amy Winehouse will shortly be securing a $700,000 deal to sing at the opening of a nightclub in Rotterdam, Holland.

Irony, yes, because the club will be powered by widdle and Amy’s career is going down the pan due to a vicious circle of relapses. (Rehab? No thanks.)

So, I hear you cry: A club for degenerates powered by urine? Of course. That’s why I’ll be there, wondering about the best female voice of a generation as she battles through the set. A voice that effortlessly combines honey, mess and heartbreak.

As a writer more used to the logistics concerning wind or tidal power, I have to confess that the concept behind a residence having its electricity fuelled by wee is alien to me, but with Google my trustworthy steed, I’ve soldiered on.

But even with my friend, I glean only limited joy. My best bet seems via here and from the page, I learn that:

“Nanologix has a patented renewable hydrogen production method that instead of using the traditional energy wasting methods requiring natural gas or electrical power, creates the gas out of waste water and other biomass using bacteria in a “Hydrogen Bioreactor”.

The bacteria eat the hydrocarbons in the waste and exhale hydrogen gas. Not only does this truly create energy, it also cleans the water. To the best of our knowledge Nanologix is the only public company producing hydrogen from waste.

This process solves the storage/transportation problems as well, since the hydrogen can be converted to mechanical or electrical power on site. If more energy is produced than can be used, it can be transported over the existing electrical grid.”

I can only presume that’s a clue. Whether that is the concept behind the club’s waterworks is as yet undisclosed, though it seems a reasonable bet.

And there we have it. You won’t find a finer source of wee than a nightclub. A confident money spinner for the club’s owner as he hikes up the price of the lager, knowing the clientele are going to find the whole process enjoyably innovative when it helps the environment an hour later.

And the name of the club? Watt.

(Her: Where are you off to?

Him: Watt.

Her: I said: Where are you off to?

Him: Yeah, and I’ve told you!

And so it goes on.)

Source:

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Winner of the Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest.

For more details:

Innovate or Die

Original Promo for Competition

For instance, the respected journal; Geophysical Research Letters, 13 June 2006, has published this  paper by Chylek et al: 

ABSTRACT:
We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995-2005) warming period with the previous (1920-1930)
Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995 - 2005.

For more information:  http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html 

A 2002 paper by a lead author in the 2007 IPCC report on this topic; J BOX and colleagues studied a longer time series of Greenland temperatures and also show the same 1920’s -1930’s highs.    http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/jbox/BOX_2002_Greenland_Temperature_Analysis.pdf 

Polyakov and Johnson 2000, discusses relevant  natural climatic cycles, including primarily the Arctic Oscillation (AO) which is apparently described by others as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO = basically that of regional natural atmospheric pressure cycles) http://denali.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/~igor/research/pdf/50yr_web.pdf

It is interesting that figure 1 in that paper showing the NAO cycle record, has an impressive correlation with theGreenland temperatures.

It should be noted that most of the temperatures evaluated in
Greenland were necessarily on the coastal fringes away from the prime ice sheet. However, Johannessen et al 2006, in the only comprehensive study (45 million of data) of the prime Greenland ice sheet show that the ice sheet is growing significantly.  They also identify the NAO as a key factor, and higher air temperatures resulting in increased snow precipitation.  (Others argue, based on modelling, that coastal melting exceeds this growth, but in reality, such modelling is immensely complicated, and arguably controversial)   http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1115356 

Finally, here is a brief extract from a recent release by NASA’s JPL:  

“Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.” 

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html 

Is anyone interested in discussing some GOOD NEWS? 

Bordered by Sweden, Finland and Russia, the Kingdom of Norway is apparently one of the most peaceful countries in the world (though, by which measuring scale that was taken I’m not sure). Amongst the wealthiest countries of the world, Norway can thank the natural reserves of oil and gas reserves off their coast for their economic boom.

And though Norway apparently holds some of the strictest emission rules in the world, they want to do more.

Naturally there are critics that look at the bottom line, and see this “doing more” thing as meaning “costing more.” And it even seems a little hypocritical, once you realize what it is that Norway is trying to do.

See, Norway has several off-shore oil and gas platforms. These platforms use a certain amount of what they produce, to fuel themselves. Subsequently, in providing emission-producing fuels, they emit emissions in producing the … you get the picture.

Reported last Friday (the 9^th of November) was the news that Norway is pushing through with plans to power these off-shore stations, from the shore.

The theory goes that, if you can provide clean power to the platforms, then a modicum of emissions will be reduced.

BP is part of this initiative, and hopes to develop technology that will bring electrical power to the platforms. BP’s Skarv field development is one target for such a plan, as it attempts to reach the 16.4 million cubic meters of oil and 34.5 billion cubic meters of gas beneath the field.

However there is a flaw in their planning that seems just a tad too big to have been overlooked. It’s the critics that have brought this up, and not surprisingly, as they’ll latch on to anything to save themselves a few bucks. But apparently, Norway simply doesn’t have the energy production available to provide power to these stations.

As such – and having exploited their natural bounty of hydro-electrical surroundings – they would have to build a gas-fired plant. In my eyes, and the critics’, this would negate any good done by providing energy to the stations.

There is one last option that may provide the benefit, but once again, it seems to be at cross purposes. StatoilHydro, the biggest operator on the Norwegian shelf, is already developing floating windmill farms that will provide off-shore power to shore. So the logical step is to link these floating farms to provide energy to the platforms.

Granted, Norway need to keep their revenue up: one can simply not ignore an entire profit-maker simply because of the environment. As much as we would like them too, their people come first. But it seems to me that, all the money going towards producing elaborate shore to off-shore electric conduits should just be redirected towards floating windmill farms.

I look forward to the day where we no longer rape our planet of its natural gasses and fuels, subsequently bringing the doom of our planet closer through their emissions. But until that day, can we just allow a small amount of logic to rule? Please?

Reuters via ENN - Norway seeks land power for offshore fields

There's no need to rehash what we already know. The Arctic is melting. It's a fact that we are going to have to come to grips with. Shipping lanes are being changed, animals and natives are being displaced, and ice is disappearing faster than my friends when I attempt to swing the conversation away from bodily functions to politics.

So it's no surprise to see five of the nations likely to be hardest hit up north — Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland — come together and issue a cry for help.

"The Arctic and the world cannot wait any longer," environmental ministers from the five nations said in a joint statement after talks in Oslo. "The climate is hurtling towards a turning point after which irreversible processes will have been set in motion."

A Norwegian company called Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) will build the complex, which will be completed in different stages to incorporate wafer, cell, and module production. REC already operates the world's current largest solar plant in Norway, which produces about 650 megawatts of energy annually.

A solar manufacturing plant would be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, and REC looked at 200 locations before settling on Singapore. A combination of tax incentives, grants, and a skilled workforce were some of the reasons REC liked it. Likewise, Singapore officials are thrilled about playing center stage in the world's rush to clean technology. Ko Kheng Hwa of the Economic Development Board explained:

Four years ago, before America was awash in greenwashing, Mothering Magazine featured a great article title "No More Junk Toys: Rethinking Children's Gifts" by Judith Rubin. Rubin writes,

Like junk food, junk toys can be fun but are devoid of nutrition. Buying them requires little forethought. They are excessively commercial, and are often linked to cross-marketing schemes. They excite children at first, but that initial flicker doesn't endure. Also like junk food, junk toys have hidden environmental and social costs for which the consumers pay.

For example, rather than using lumber sawn from old growth forests, engineered lumber and I-joists make more efficient use of lumber resources and can take advantage of smaller trees. Instead of needing to find trees old enough and large enough to produce a piece of 2 x 12 lumber, an engineered I-joist can be made that uses chipped wood and glue manufactured wood board (like oriented strand board) and narrow, laminated strips of wood (again, made of smaller pieces of wood and glue). These engineered joists are lighter, straighter, and less prone to warping, cupping and twisting than even kiln dried sawn lumber is.

Engineered joists would seem to be an ideal solution. They are made from small, rapidly renewable trees, which can be farmed, rather than requiring the logging of large trees. Builders and carpenters like them because they are more regular, and they make for flatter floors, straighter walls, and truer roofs, with less variability when they are installed and less likelihood to move and twist over time.

But there are downsides to these more efficient materials.

Granted, our bushfire seasons are horrific!

OK, so yeah, I'm just having a bit of fun with the different words and descriptions, but I have a point. Not an etymological point, but a point nonetheless.

A Brief Australian History Lesson

The Californian fires have once again brought to light the sheer flammability of our surroundings. I live in Victoria, an Australian state with a very high bushfire rate. Australia has the dubious honor of being the home to what may have been the worst bush/wildfires in the world.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak may be the first mayor in the nation to drive a plug-in hybrid vehicle as his official city car.

Since he was first elected in 2002, Mayor Rybak's official car has been a Toyota Prius. But the dramatically superior gas mileage of a plug-in hybrid vehicle prompted him to make the switch: he had his hybrid converted to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, from which he expects to get about 70 miles per gallon (mpg) compared to his average 40 mpg with the Prius.

A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is like a regular hybrid with a cord. That is, its battery can be recharged by plugging it into a regular 120-volt outlet.

Typical of many PHEVs, Mayor Rybak's car can travel about 30 miles solely on battery power if the speeds are 30 mph or less. If he drives further or needs to go faster, the car automatically switches over to using the gas engine. But for local city driving — when speeds are low and distances are shorter — he could go days without using any gasoline to power the engine.

King Corn focuses on co-producers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis as they move to Iowa, rent an plot of farmland, and attempt to grow an acre of corn using typical industrial methods: genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, powerful herbicides, and government subsidies. They show us exactly how industrial corn production works today, from seed to table, in the convoluted journey of a commodity. From Ian and Curt's one acre, they harvest enough corn to make 57,348 sodas, 3,894 burgers, or 6,726 boxes of cornflakes. And yes, corn is a major ingredient in all of those foods.

The terrifying part — if we hadn’t already seen it — is the prediction that firestorms (or bushfires) like these could very well become part of the norm for areas like California, according to Ronald Neilson, a professor at Oregon State University and bioclimatologist with the USDA Forest Service.

The catastrophic fires are in line with what climate change models have been predicting for the past several years. Sadly, the predictions also suggest that these fires may just be the beginning to a new way of life.

"This is exactly what we've been projecting to happen, both in short-term fire forecasts for this year and the longer term patterns that can be linked to global climate change," said Neilson. Thankfully, for all of us out there who do see the damage, he prefaced his comments by saying that "You can't look at one event such as this and say with certainty that it was caused by a changing climate…"

In McKibben and the Step It Up Team's new book, Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community (Henry Holt, $13.00), the authors show how normal, everyday people, without any community organizing background, were able to create successful events to rally support for addressing climate change. Reflecting on the success of Step It Up allows the authors to repeat what worked--and discard what didn't. Their seven tips (make it credible, snappy, collaborative, meaningful, creative, wired and seductive) are a framework for understanding how community organizing works in the 21st century.

Kudos to Edutopia; this issue ain't no puff piece. Every teacher looking to go green, or those already greening their classroom, can find something of use to them in this jam-packed issue. The editor's note in the issue is penned by guest editor Bill McKibben of Step It Up fame, who skillfully explains why all teachers should and can incorporate sustainability into their curriculum.

Edutopia listens to McKibben's advice by provided several ideas for sustainability lesson plans and projects for all ages. Not only are there many useful ideas in the magazine, but there are more on the magazine's website. There are also tips for teachers, by teachers, about how to green up their own classroom practices: some helpful, some fairly obvious.

Very recently my boss came to me and said. “Jessica, we need to do something about the graveyard, it is getting seriously out of control”. She was right. The box had turned into three boxes, nearly spilling out into the hallway whenever someone opened the door. So, now I had a mission. I had to figure out someway to deal with the tech stuff that was more sustainable than keeping it a closet (out of sight, out of mind- right?). Well, little did I know, the answer would be waiting for me in my inbox the next day. A friend of mine sent me an article that she thought I might find interesting. And interesting it was! Here is what I found out…

The process of producing agrichar uses low-temperature burning (called pyrolization) to break down the plant materials and produce two products, syngas and char. Syngas is mostly carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and can be used as a fuel for electrical production. (Wood gas, which is very similar to syngas, has widely used in the past for lighting, heating, and as a fuel for internal combustion engines.) The char turns out to be a good soil amendment that helps fertilize the soil. More importantly, the carbon that has been captured in the char breaks down very slowly so it remains sequestered for a long period of time.

"[B]urn biomass (preferably agricultural waste) in a special way that pyrolisizes it, breaking down long hydrocarbon chains like cellulose into shorter, simpler molecules. These simpler molecules are more easily broken down by microbes and plants as food, and bond more easily with key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. This is what makes terra preta such good fertilizer. Because terra preta locks so much carbon in the soil, it's also a form of carbon sequestration that doesn't involve bizarre heroics like pumping CO2 down old mine shafts."

And, for five Asian nations, they are initiating a new course focused and designed around preparing for bigger floods.

Experts from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal and Sri Lanka will head to the U.N. University in Thailand to partake in the three-month course. Focused around making an effort to foresee and mitigate flood damage, the course has been initiated as a result of the rise in storm severity and frequency in the region.

The course, announced on the 15th, was spurred by the scientific belief that many of the cities and mass-population areas in these countries are under risk of being submerged.

As the most frequent and deadly natural disaster in Asia, floods have long been a way of life. However, we only need to look at the past several months to see that the severity has grown. More than 3,000 people have been killed in the recent monsoons and storms, affecting a total of 100 million people, and racking up property damage well in to the billions of dollars.

"Floods created the fertile plains on which agriculture and populations have flourished," says Janos Bogardi, Vice-Rector of UNU, which leads the training programme.