Big and exciting news are coming today from the UNFCCC climate talks currently being held in Bangkok, Thailand. Norway has announced a commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with 40% by 2020 – based on 1990 levels.
This emission reduction promise from the Norwegian government is now the biggest commitment announced by any industrialized country. It beats the European Union (the now former climate leader) who has so far only promised a 20% reduction by 2020.
Adopt A Negotiator says in a statement that this is “a great day for ambition” in the climate talks and praises Norway for committing to a target that comes very “close to what the science demands”.
“Norway has shown that we can be ambitious in these negotiations. They have decided to break ice today, to avoid their glaciers melting and to avoid seeing more and more devestating climate consequences around the world.”
The Inter Press Service has an interesting interview with James Lovelock, known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, about everything from the IPCC to geo-engineering and climate tipping points.
Lovelock has earlier said that he believes that climate change is now irreversible. He predicts that the major part of the humans, more than six billion people, will get wiped out of the face of the earth due to wars, starvation, epidemics and chaos during the rest of the century due to the effects of a changing climate. Lovelock estimates that by year 2100 there will only be around 500 millions people left who struggles to survive on the few remaining liveable places on earth: Scandinavia, Canada and Iceland.
In the IPS interview Lovelock says he hopes that once climate disaster strikes “we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees”:
“TIERRAMÉRICA: What will this new climate be like?
JL: The tropical and subtropical zones of the Earth will be too hot and dry to grow food or support human life. People will be forced to migrate towards the poles to places like Canada. There will be less than one billion people by the end of the century. My hope is that we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees.”
Sölvesborg, a small village near the coast located in southern Sweden, was first in the world with sea-based wind power. And now it might become the place for Sweden’s and northern Europe’s largest offshore wind farm.
The renewable energy companies Vingkraft AB and Eolus Vind AB wants to construct 500 wind turbines in the sea outside of Sölvesborg by 2014-2019. Once completed the wind farm will supply 5-7 TWh of electricity every year. That is equal to the amount of electricity the now decommissioned Swedish nuclear plant Barsebäck generated every year.
Although the proposed wind farm have a long way to go and many different instances to pass, such as the military, before getting approved the local politicians and people in the region are excited. The politicians believe the wind farm will create thousands of new jobs in the region and even act as a way to attract more tourists.
The wind farm is expected to cost 50 billion Swedish kronor, equal to around €4.5 billion.
Sweden has approved Universal Wind Offshore’s plans to construct Scandinavia’s largest offshore wind farm.
The wind farm will be built in the Kattegatt strait about 30 kilometres off Sweden’s southwestern coast and cover an area of about 60 square kilometres. Once completed the wind farm will be one of the largest in Europe.
The wind farm will consist of a maximum of 108 wind turbines with a height of 200 metres and a capacity of 860 megawatts (MW). The wind farm is expected to produce three terawatt hours (TWH) a year and will double the Swedish wind power output.
Scandic, the Nordic hotel company, have decided to ban water on bottle on all of their 141 hotels this year.
Instead of bottled water their customers will be offered ordinary and carbonated water from water taps from the hotel. It is expected that this will save around 160 tons of carbon dioxide.
The cell phone towers are in today’s society a valuable service and you can pretty much find a tower anywhere you go. Yet they look like trash and people can go into legal battles if a company tries to put one nearby their homes.
Now Ericsson have introduced a more aesthetic pleasing cell phone tower called the “Ericsson Tower Tube“. It is designed by the Scandinavian architect Thomas Sandell. The tower tube is, just like it name says, a simple and hollow flexible concrete tower that replaces current steel structures entirely.
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The Inter Press Service has an interesting 
