Oil reaches $100 a barrel
Today the price for a barrel of oil reached, for the first time ever, $100.
3110 Evolve: Nokia’s eco-friendly phone
January 4, 2008
Nokia recently released its brand new 3110 Evolve. It’s a new, greener, phone from Nokia (maybe they wanted to impress Greenpeace?).
The new phone uses “bio-covers” that, are said, to be made from over 50% renewable material. It also uses smaller packaging made of 60% recycled content. Nokia have also thrown in their best energy efficient charger. The charger uses 94% less energy than the Energy Star requirements.
If you are in the need for a new phone this one might be worth to take a closer look at. But please, do not throw away your already working phone.
21 342 people killed
January 3, 2008
New numbers from WHO (World Health Organisation) shows that last year 21 342 people from around the world were killed by different nature catastrophes. About 134,6 million people got damages on their health or their property.
Icebergs and Global Warming
January 3, 2008
It is a fact that global warming affects the icebergs in a most dramatic way. The greenhouse effect is to be blamed, as it is the cause of global warming. How does that make the sea level rise? Well first of all when water is heated it expands. But also since an iceberg is 99% ice it starts to melt as soon as the temperature is over 0 degrees, making it just too easy for the icebergs to start melting.
Icebergs are huge, the largest one is 12,000 cubic miles. So, if you were to melt it you would get an awful lot of water. Also there are many, many icebergs on earth, so if all of them melted you would have millions of gallons of water. Icebergs won’t melt completely, but enough to make the sea level rise quite a bit.
Scientists used to say that by the end of the century the sea may have risen up to three centimetres. That didn’t sound a lot, but it really is. And now, scientists have started to realise that their first calculation was far too positive for our case, since nothing is done to stop global warming and the process of melting ice becomes quicker and quicker.
All the things we throw in the sea
Despite the ban in 1994, radioactive depositions still reach the seas. In french pipes of nuclear facilities Greenpeace’s divers found the waters to have 17.000.000 times more intense radioactivity than clean waters. In Norway, crabs and seaweeds have been polluted by the radioactive substance technetium. Scientists found it comes from old british facilities for nuclear fuels. However, american geologists are thinking of burying under the seabed radioactive materials.
Since 1959 enormous quantities of radioactive waste have been thrown into the Arctic Ocean, including nuclear reactors, while another million of chemical weapons decay onto the sea floor in 400-4500 metres depth. Moreover, Spain has stored 100.000 barrels containing slight radiocative waste, from scientific laboratories. Plutonium from the nuclear trials is detected in the southern seas of the Atlantic ocean. Britain has recorded 57.435 shipwrecks, including nuclear submarines.
The highly dangerous poison DDT harms the marine organisms more than the others, and thanks to the marine currents it is transfered to all seas, affecting every organism. PBDE, a substance used for computer and television construction, has been detected in whales’ fat!
Panda pioneers teach babies how to survive in the wild
China has a dream that the giant pandas it breeds in captivity will one day frolic in the mountains with their wild cousins. This is the next challenge for the scientists who manage the country’s biggest reserve for captive pandas. They have mastered the art of breeding the world’s iconic and endangered animal; now it is time to send some of their babies out into the real world.
The centre’s first experiment ended in tragedy, since the five-year-old panda that was released knew to survive on it’s own, but couldn’t protect itself from the other wild pandas and thus fallen to his death from a tree,after being pursued by wild pandas angered at an intruder in their territory.
Now two males and two females have been selected as the second attempt. Scientists running the program hope that wild pandas will be less likely to attack a female who strays into their territory. Everyone wishes the experiment has a happy end this time.
Ireland bans incandescent light bulbs
Ireland has decided to ban all energy wasting incandescent light bulbs by year 2009.
By switching over to Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) Irelands carbon emissions will be reduced with about 700.000 tons every year. But this move is not only positive for the climate but also for the households in Ireland that is expected to save the impressive amount of €185 million in energy costs.
Ireland is also planning to tax all new and imported cars accordingly to how much they pollute. The more carbon emissions a car releases the higher it tax will be.
Image credit: Napalm filled tires. Image licensed under a
Creative-Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
Video: Al Gore in Bali
Watch a video (summary) of Al Gore’s rather passionate speech at the United Nations climate change conference in Bali.
“You can make a path that goes around that blank spot…”
Video after the jump. Read the rest of this story »
The climate conference in Bali
It started as a big balloon that was constantly being filled with hot air. Everyone seemed to agree that strong guidelines and goals had to be decided to be able to slow down the effects of climate change and possibly stop global temperatures from rising above the 2 degrees threshold and into a future of death and climate chaos. You could constantly hear that this was the only chance we had, and if we didn’t fully grab this opportunity we wouldn’t have a second chance.
Over 15000 people from all over the world attended the climate conference in Bali. Every respectable news media had someone reporting from the meetings. Environment organisations, trade unions and even fossil fuel companies where there to influence the end result.
So how did it all end? Well, at least they agreed on something. That’s better than nothing, right? But the agreement is far from enough. It’s not even close.
An Inconvenient Truth about Christmas
Prepare to be shocked this Christmas by the new documentary from Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth about Christmas. Video after the jump:
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