Now why would you not recycle your Water Bottle?

Agreed that you found the need to drink bottled water with your lunch at the cafeteria. Now comes the hard part. What do you do with the empty bottle? You see two bins to discard it. The Thrash Bin and the Recycle Bin. Which would you choose?

Well it all depends on the personality. I guess. If you are educated and knowledgeable about global warming, recycling etc. you will choose the recycle bin.

But I have seen people dressed up in suits not flushing the urinals in the men's room. Go figure...... I think these folks have been pampered by auto flushing urinals in expensive bath rooms, that they forget at other places where manual flushing is necessary. ;)

Plastic bottles can be made into rugs, fences and goggles.

Source: Americans recycle more


====================================

Make use of technology to reduce flying

People fly regularly for business. Most of the time it is for meetings to make a presentation or two. In many cases, these trips can be avoided by making use of technology. Technological advances have made it possible to hold virtual meetings with participants dispersed geographical. Nothing beats a room with face to face interaction with attendees. But if you have to fill a meeting room with geographically dispersed people, then imagine the amount of CO2 that is emitted by flyers.

An interesting take on greening flying by an exec of Boeing.

A BBC News reporter at the Paris Air Show has written a nice article on the growing concerns about the environment by the Aircraft manufacturers. This is an extremely positive step.
Planemakers confront green issues

Carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft are a significant and growing contributor to harmful global warming. It is time for the industry to sort it out, says Scott Carson, chief executive of Boeing's commercial planes division.

Well, if you are rich and can afford one of the 12 private suites on a A380, then you should know that it is not recommended to have S*x in the air, as per a guideline issued by Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines has taken the unusual step of publicly asking passengers on its new Airbus A380 plane not to engage in any s*xual activities.

Read it all here: >>>

Now why don't you just stay at your home? ;)



==============================

Scientists are looking beyond the planet to save the planet?

It is quite interesting to learn that the Chinese scientists are looking at the moon to power the earth. Well, to get out of the mess that has been created on this planet, any research, any attempt is always a good thing.

Read about this here.
Scientists look to Moon to power Earth

"When obtaining nuclear power from helium-3 becomes a reality, the resources of the Moon can be used to generate electricity for more than 10,000 years for the whole world," Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar programme, told state media in August.

What do you think?



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Change in Lifestyle is necessary

There is too much talk on the reliance on oil around the world. Well, there is no doubt that we need to look for alternatives to reduce the reliance on Oil.

Same argument goes to the discussion on Carbon. Eamon O'Hara has written an excellent view point on the BBC Web Site.

Focusing on the need to reduce CO2 emissions has reduced the problem to one of carbon dioxide rather than on the unsustainable ways we live.

Read Here >>>

With the new push towards Biofuels, we see that the prices of Milk has been rising due to the shortage of corn (cattle feed) which goes into the production of bio fuels. The idea is not that price of milk/dairy is rising, it is the choice of corn as feed that needs to be looked at.

Iowa dairy farmer testifies to U.S. House Agriculture Committee on the effect of the biofuel revolution on dairy operation costs

“As many of you are well aware, commodity grain prices, particularly corn, have dramatically increased over the past seven months to price levels not seen since the mid 1990s,” Wonderlich said. “Many economists are attributing this phenomenon to a growing demand from the ethanol industry, which uses corn as its primary feedstock. While this is great for U.S. grain farmers that have experienced several consecutive years of depressed prices, it is tragically affecting the financial viability of dairy farmers.”

An interesting take on the issue of bio fuels by a UN expert.
UN expert seeks 5 yr moratorium on bio-fuels

"It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces food stuff that will be burned into bio-fuel," he asserted.

Based on all this, I want to throw out a thought that it is impossible to solve global warming, environmental issues etc without having serious changes to life style, our choices and our intentions.

According to the October 2007 issue of Conscious Choice, New Yorkers can expect to live 9 months longer than the average American, thanks to the fast city walking. :)


Now do your part!!!!



===========================================

I want to do online statements and online bill pay

According to the October 2007 issue of Conscious Choice (http://www.consciouschoice.com), some interesting statistics/tips on the topic of online statements and bill pay.

* 18.5 million trees will be saved annually if all Americans viewed/paid bills online.
* 18 percentage is chances of identity theft reduced with online bills.

You may have noticed that the credit card companies have been coaxing you to switch to online statements. Well, there is their hidden agenda of saving costs (of paper statements). But if you look further, it is beneficial to the entire world.

How does online statements and online bill pay help the world?

Let us first start with your own home:
- It will save you from clutter.
- When the time comes for you to discard them (say in few years), you will need to ensure that you shred them (lest you fall victim to identity thefts).

Please enroll right away in online statements and online bill pays.

A very nice blog entry on the paper clutter in your homes > Five Steps towards impact-awareness: Paper Clutter

Now if you receive all those paper catalogs at home, you can stop them by using this organization called as "Catalog Choice".

If you use a PC or a Laptop, then please download this tool called as "Local Cooling". It can help in saving energy.

More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car.

Read more on PC Power Consumption.




==============================

Drive against global warming: Solar taxi comes to India

Drive against global warming: Solar taxi comes to India



Mumbai: The world's first solar taxi is on a trip around the world and has made a stop in India. It’s a car that is spreading awareness about global warming, the fun way.

It’s a taxi with a difference. There is more to this sleek three-wheeler than what meets the eye. The compact electric car runs purely on solar energy.

And how do you get a solar powered car? It’s simple. Just attach a solar cell panel to the car. This ingenuous idea took birth in the mind of taxi driver Louis Palmer a long time ago and he decided to stretch it to the limits by travelling around the world. He drives his electric car which runs purely on solar energy around the world to spread awareness about global warming and its causes.

He says, "This idea came to me when I was 14. I wanted to travel the world and not pollute it so I designed this taxi.”

The car's gearless electric motor runs on twin 380 volt batteries that are charged from solar cells that allow it to accelerate up to 90 kms per hour.

And that's not all. If the driver is tired he can just slide the steering wheel to the passenger.

Palmer says, “I hope that with this car people realise that they can use alternative sources of energy.”

Louis, who has driven from Switzerland through Turkey all the way to Dubai has also been posting his experiences on the we and the solar taxi is now all set to conquer India's tough roads.

Read Here >>>



===========================

Virgin Atlantic to test biofuel in 747 in early 2008

Virgin Atlantic to test bio fuel in 747 in early 2008

British entrepreneur and serial investor Richard Branson has revealed more details about his Virgin Group's hopes to produce clean biofuels by around the start of the next decade and said early next year will test a jet plane on renewable fuel.

Virgin hopes to provide clean fuel for buses, trains and cars within three or four years, he told a Mortgage Bankers Association meeting in Boston. Earlier this year, Virgin Trains launched the first scheduled passenger service with a train operating on biodiesel (more here).

In the meantime, Virgin will be conducting a test jet flight on renewable fuels. "Early next year we will fly one of our 747s without passengers with one of the fuels that we have developed," Branson told the annual conference. The fuel in question is likely to be biobutanol which can be made from lignocellulosic biomass (more about this biofuel here, here and here). Earlier, a company spokesman said the test will certainly not involve the use of synthetic biofuels, because these have already proven to work in jet engines.

Virgin is developing biofuels for aircraft in conjunction with Boeing Co and engine-maker GE Aviation, a unit of General Electric Co. Previously, Branson had said the company would test the fuel sometime next year and that some people had said it would be late in the year.

Read More >>>




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Scientists warn for acid oceans - could erode Great Barrier Reef

Scientists warn for acid oceans - could erode Great Barrier Reef

The world’s oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth’s breathable oxygen. The acidity is caused by the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons which make up more than a third of the planet’s marine life.

Acid oceans will be among the issues explored by Australia’s leading coral scientists at a national public forum at the Shine Dome in Canberra tomorrow.

Read More >>>



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President Putin encourages farmers to produce biofuels

President Putin encourages farmers to produce biofuels

For those of us who thought energy exporters are not interested in biofuels or feel threatened by them, think again. The world's largest oil and gas exporter, Russia, has called on its farmers to join the global transition to biofuels.

During his televised conversation with Russians last Tuesday, Vladimir Putin told farmers they stand to benefit from capturing part of the emerging market for bioenergy. Few countries have as large a biofuels potential as Russia, he said, given its gigantic territory which stretches across 11 time zones.

Read More >>>




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North Atlantic slows on the uptake of CO2

North Atlantic slows on the uptake of CO2

Further evidence for the decline of the oceans' historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia.

Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions.

This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly.

A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Dr Ute Schuster and Professor Andrew Watson of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences again raises concerns that the oceans might be slowing their uptake of CO2.

Results of their decade-long study in the North Atlantic show that the uptake in this ocean, which is the most intense sink for atmospheric CO2, slowed down dramatically between the mid-nineties and the early 2000s.

A slowdown in the sink in the Southern Ocean has already been inferred, but the change in the North Atlantic is greater and more sudden, and could be responsible for a substantial proportion of the observed weakening.

The observations were made from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments for measuring carbon dioxide in the water. Much of the data has come from a container ship carrying bananas from the West Indies to the UK, making a round-trip of the Atlantic every month. The MV Santa Maria, chartered by Geest, has generated more than 90,000 measurements of CO2 in the past few years.

The results show that the uptake by the North Atlantic halved between the mid-90s, when data was first gathered, and 2002-05.

“Such large changes are a tremendous surprise. We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean’s great mass,” said Dr Schuster.


Read More >>>



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Environmental Hazards

Asbestos

From Wikipedia,
At the turn of the last century, asbestos was considered an ideal material for use in the construction industry. It was known to be an excellent fire retardant, to have high electrical resistivity, and was inexpensive and easy to use.

The problem with asbestos arises when the fibers become airborne and are inhaled. Because of the size of the fibers, the lungs cannot expel them. They are also sharp and penetrate tissues.

Health problems attributed to asbestos include

** Asbestosis - A lung disease first found in naval shipyard workers, asbestosis is a scarring of the lung tissue from an acid produced by the body's attempt to dissolve the fibers. The scarring may eventually become so severe that the lungs can no longer function. The latency period ( meaning the time it takes for the disease to develop) is often 10-20 years.
** Mesothelioma - A cancer of the mesothelial lining of the lungs and the chest cavity, the peritoneum (abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac surrounding the heart). Unlike lung cancer, mesothelioma has no association with smoking. The only established causal factor is exposure to asbestos or similar fibers. The latency period for mesothelioma may be 20-50 years. The prognosis for mesothelioma is grim, with most patients dying within 12 months of diagnosis.
** Cancer - Cancer of the lung, gastrointestinal tract, kidney and larynx have been linked to asbestos. The latency period for cancer is often 15-30 years.


Carbon Monoxide

From Wikipedia,
Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. It is the product of the incomplete combustion of carbon-containing compounds, notably in internal-combustion engines. It has significant fuel value, burning in air with a characteristic blue flame, producing carbon dioxide. Despite its serious toxicity, CO plays a highly useful role in modern technology, being a precursor to a myriad of products. It consists of one carbon atom covalently bonded to one oxygen atom. It is a gas at room temperature.

Carbon monoxide, though thought of as a pollutant today, has always been present in the atmosphere, chiefly as a product of volcanic activity. It occurs dissolved in molten volcanic rock at high pressures in the earth's mantle. Carbon monoxide contents of volcanic gases vary from less than 0.01% to as much as 2% depending on the volcano. It also occurs naturally in bushfires. Because natural sources of carbon monoxide are so variable from year to year, it is extremely difficult to accurately measure natural emissions of the gas.

Carbon monoxide has an indirect radiative forcing effect by elevating concentrations of methane and tropospheric ozone through chemical reactions with other atmospheric constituents (e.g., the hydroxyl radical, OH.) that would otherwise destroy them. Carbon monoxide is created when carbon-containing fuels are burned incompletely. Through natural processes in the atmosphere, it is eventually oxidized to carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide concentrations are both short-lived in the atmosphere and spatially variable.

Anthropogenic CO from automobile and industrial emissions may contribute to the greenhouse effect and global warming. In urban areas carbon monoxide, along with aldehydes, reacts photochemically to produce peroxy radicals. Peroxy radicals react with nitrogen oxide to increase the ratio of NO2 to NO, which reduces the quantity of NO that is available to react with ozone. Carbon monoxide is also a constituent of tobacco smoke.

TreeHugger : How to Green Your Furniture

Original : http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/how_to_green_your_furniture.php

What’s the Big Deal?
Some people obsess over furniture. Others hardly even notice it’s there. One way or the other, making environmentally savvy choices in furnishing your home or office can make a big difference in your impact on the planet and your health. The modern sustainability movement has attracted such a large number of innovative designers that it’s hard to know where to start. In this article we won’t be listing every green furniture company or designer under the sun but rather give a rundown of basic concepts that might guide your search. Of the specific products and brands we do mention, not all will be budget-friendly for everyone—at this point, a lot of the green design is still specialty stuff, and thus pretty high-end. But don’t worry. There are always cost effective ways to go green. We’ll list some of our favorite brands and stores at the end, but we suggest digging through the TreeHugger archives. This could keep you going for hours, if not days, and the library is always growing.

Read More >>>



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In many countries, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green

In many countries, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green

By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Published: October 21, 2007

PARIS: In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is the glue of progress. The material that binds the ingredients of concrete together, cement is essential for constructing buildings and laying roads in much of the world.

Some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine.

But making cement creates pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and the greenest of technologies can reduce that by only 20 percent.

Cement plants already account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

Compounding the problem, cement has no viable recycling potential, as the abandoned buildings that line roads from Tunisia to Mongolia demonstrate. Each new road, each new building, needs new cement.

Read More >>>



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World's Richest Self-Made Woman: A Paper Recycling Entrepreneur

Observant of the trend for Europeans to show keen interest in all things green, Financial Times has just introduced us to a world-scale female Tree Hugging entrepreneur, Ms. Zhang Yin, who is described in the article as "worth an estimated $3.4bn." Remarkably, Ms Zhang, after starting up Nine Dragons Paper just a few years ago, has become "the world's richest self-made woman, surpassing US talk show host Oprah Winfrey and J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author". Now here's the "kicker" as we say in the US. "Ms Zhang's listed company, of which she owns 72 per cent, buys scrap paper from the US and processes it in China for sale". Incredible in so many ways. North-American pulp producers clear cut Boreal and Piedmont forests to produce virgin fiber for paper making, hitting, at best, a recycled content in the 10 to 20 percent range in final products. A good part of your paper recycle bin contents, then, goes to China, where the Boreal gets "hugged" into products we might buy back. The other possible market scenario (we don't know which market view is correct) is that China, having devastated native forests and failed to create a sustainable forestry program, has forced its paper industry to scavange what they can, pulliing North America into a scrap cellulose depletion mode to serve non-American markets. Hold your temper now. The "real" scenario, whichever that might be, is driven by other less visible forces that you, our readers, are partly responsible for.

Read More >>>


The original article is available at the FT website.



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Offices Going Green - Or are they?

Lexmark Research Reveals Home Environmentalists Go Green at Work

The ‘green’ revolution is truly established across households in the UK which is having a ‘knock-on’ positive affect on environmentally sound behaviour in the office, according to new research from Lexmark, with a massive 85% saying their behaviour in the office is environmentally friendly.

A new study by the printing solutions provider of over 500 office workers in the UK reveals that thinking about the environmental impact of day to day tasks is fast becoming habitual with 93% recognising that printing at work has a big impact on the environment.

Time for more action
It’s clear that office workers are keen to see greener workplaces but they also claim that their companies are not helping – 38% claim that their company does not care about paper wastage and 35% don’t think energy waste is on their employers’ agenda. In response to this, over a third, 39% felt that the best way to ensure that companies care about the environment was for governments or the EU to pass laws forcing companies to change the way they work. A further 30% feel manufacturers should play a larger part in educating office workers what to buy and why.

Read More >>>



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IT Professionals in Paper Pile-Up

IT professionals are straining under the weight of thousands of tons of unread documents as we print out and pile up more paperwork than ever before, according to new research from printer experts Lexmark. The profession came second in a poll of the untidiest desks in Britain.

Lexmark conducted the research as part of a campaign for more responsible printing in the workplace. £230million worth of printed paper is wasted in British businesses every year, with one in five sheets lost on desks, left on the printer or binned within five minutes.

Compared to other professions IT professionals have the second most untidy desks in the
country. They are also the most likely of the professions to eat at their desks.
The ‘paperweight pile-up’ adds up to 2,354 million sheets of wasted paper in offices across the UK and a 2.5 kilometers tall in-tray, weighing almost 12,000 tons, as much as 800 doubledecker buses. *

A spring clean is urgently required. Just 4% of IT professionals claimed to have a clutter-free desk, despite almost half of them (40%) acknowledging that an untidy desk leads to high levels of stress.

“Paperweight pile-up means businesses are wasting a fortune and losing productivity.” Said Giovanni Giusti, managing director, Lexmark UK.

Read More >>>



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Reduce Paper Wastage at Offices

When you go to a bank to apply for a new loan, a new credit card or get a second mortgage, you may have noticed that you are required to sign papers that range anywhere from 2 pages to 20 pages. Many of these sheets of papers are recycled paper, which is better than nothing. Also each time, the mortgage rates have gone down, so has the tendency to get mortgage refinanced.

Lexmark has conducted a study on the paper wastage in Europe and according to their report, UK businesses top in paper wastage.

You can get a copy of the report from:
UK businesses top European paper-waste league




==================================

Spam sent on the issue of Global Warming

It is unfortunate to see that the spammers have targeted the important topic of Global Warming to lure people now.

Here is an example of one such scam from the Nigerian spam emails.
Nigerian Global Warming Email Spam

NWF: Global Warming in Greenland

National Wildlife Federation


Day 1:



Day2:


Day3:


Day4:





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Meet Andrew C. Revkin

Picture linked from New York Times Website


Andrew Revkin has spent nearly a quarter century covering subjects ranging from Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami to the assault on the Amazon, from the troubled relationship of science and politics to climate change at the North Pole. He has been reporting on the environment for The New York Times since 1995, a job that has taken him to the Arctic three times in three years. In 2003, he became the first Times reporter to file stories and photos from the sea ice around the Pole. He spearheaded a three-part Times series and one-hour documentary in 2005 on the transforming Arctic.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Revkin was a senior editor of Discover, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, and a senior writer at Science Digest. Mr. Revkin has a biology degree from Brown and a Master's degree in journalism from Columbia. He has taught environmental reporting as an adjunct professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.

He lives in the Hudson River Valley with his wife and two sons. In spare moments, he is a performing songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who often accompanies Pete Seeger at regional shows and plays in a folk-roots band, Uncle Wade.

Read More Here >>>



Thank You Andrew For Making A Difference To The Future Of Our Kids And Their World.
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New York Times: Grim Outlook for Polar Bears

Picture linked from New York Times Article

Grim Outlook for Polar Bears
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

ANCHORAGE — Two biologists who measure field time with polar bears in decades sat in a federal building here, envisioning two possible fates for this denizen of ice in a warming world — and neither future looked bright.

A polar bear expert with the Fish and Wildlife Service, Scott L. Schliebe, said the bears were resilient and adaptable, but just to a point. “I truly believe this is an important part of our natural history,” Dr. Schliebe said. “We should take every effort we can to try to maintain it.”

On one possible track, the bears, facing a chronic food gap, could weaken and reproduce ever less as the ice-free summer season expands. The other course could be a swift collapse, should more summers unfold like this past one, said Steven C. Amstrup of the United States Geological Survey. He led an exhaustive recent study of polar bears in a federal review weighing whether they should be put on the endangered species list.

If emissions of greenhouse gases and resulting global and Arctic warming continue apace, the study said, two-thirds of the 22,000 or so bears will disappear by midcentury. Some bear experts see that prognosis as overly dire.

The script for a slow fade-out may already be on display along the western shores of Hudson Bay in northern Canada, Dr. Amstrup said.

After binging on ringed seals early each year, this southern population, well below of the Arctic Circle, leaves the melting ice and scrounges snow geese and lyme grass, losing weight all summer.

“It appears they’ve reached a point where the earlier departure of the sea ice and their earlier appearance onshore is starting to affect their survival,” he said.

But an abrupt collapse could occur, as well, Dr. Amstrup said.

Read More Here >>>





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Billie Jean King Launches GreenSlam

New Initiative Aims to Improve Environmental Practices in Sports

NEW YORK (Aug. 28, 2007) --- Sports legend and social activist Billie Jean King is launching GreenSlam, an eco-conscious initiative to harness the power of sports, beginning with tennis, to create socially responsible change with positive environmental impact.

One year after the home of the US Open was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, King announced plans for GreenSlam, saying, “I’m challenging myself – the industry of sports, professional athletes and fans, to take positive action to help counter the negative effects of climate change. It’s simple, if the billions of people who live and love sports take just one single step – we can help win back our planet.”

As an initial action, King’s GreenSlam has teamed with Adopt-A-Highway to support the maintenance of a section of the Whitestone Expressway near the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y. GreenSlam intends to implement similar efforts around other sport complexes in the coming months.

Read More Here >>>




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EPA Targets $2 Million to Fight Climate Change in Nine Countries

by Trey Granger

Washington, D.C. — China, Russia, Argentina, Brazil, India, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria and Ukraine will have projects funded under the auspices of the Methane to Markets Partnership, an international effort promoting near-term, cost-effective projects that capture and use methane as a clean-energy source.

EPA is announcing the award of $2 million for projects that will enhance the capture and use of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. The primary component of natural gas, methane is also a valuable and clean-burning energy resource.

“An investment in methane capture and use projects is an investment in a more environmentally sustainable future,” said Bob Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air & Radiation. “By financing international projects through the Methane to Markets Partnership, the U.S. government and its global partners are cutting greenhouse gases while promoting economic development and energy security.”

Projects funded by these grants will support a variety of partnership activities designed to remove technical or informational barriers to successful methane capture and use projects. These activities include, among others: training, development of databases on potential project sites, feasibility studies, technology transfer and project expositions.

Read More Here >>>



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Arctic Warming

Picture linked from www.arctic-warming.com




Picture linked from New York Times Article


Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.

Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates.

Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water — six Californias — beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.

Read More Here >>>

To have a look at the Sea Ice In Retreat, please click on the following location:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/10/01/science/20071002_ARCTIC_GRAPHIC.html



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Economist: Clean tech in China

Green shoots

A new venture hopes to promote clean-technology investment in China

CHINA is not feted for its stewardship of the environment. One recent World Bank report found that 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities were in China; and a draft version of another puts the total economic cost of outdoor air and water pollution at around $100 billion a year, or 5.8% of China's GDP. By some estimates, China has now overtaken America to become the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases. Environmental protests, such as one that took place in Xiamen last month in response to a plan to build a chemical plant in the city, are on the rise.

The pollution that has resulted from China's growth is a huge problem, but to investors it presents an enormous opportunity. Venture-capital investment in clean tech in China is picking up, increasing by 147% from $170m in 2005 to $420m last year, according to the Cleantech Group, an industry research body. Most of this investment was in solar energy, a booming field in which several Chinese firms have gone public in the past year. But though China has now become the world's third-largest manufacturer of solar panels, most of them are exported, thanks to the subsidies offered in the developed world.

Read More Here >>>

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9517615



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Do you need to recycle?

Earth 911 empowers the Earth’s citizenry with community-specific “actionable” environmental information for you to use in everyday life for the purpose of living responsibly by contributing to the solution of sustainability.

While sustainable prevention programs are by far the best way to protect our environment, the costs associated with many of the programs designed to accomplish this can be astronomical. That is why the use of the Earth 911 Public and Private Sector Partnership is so important in effectuating prevention ideals. Through this Partnership, economies of scale and scope are achieved, promoting this public service across the nation and centralizing environmental resources into one user-friendly neutral and non-governmental network.

Today, Americans consider the environment as one of the top three priorities facing our country. In the past, most environmental programs have focused on, either repairing damage that has already been sustained, or attempting to return the environment to its original state before the advancement of industrialized societies. While these retroactive concepts of environmental protection are critical to cleaning up existing problems, the proactive solution that Earth 911 provides is an unparalleled response to today’s environmental challenges.

Read More Here >>>

http://earth911.org/



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www.personallygreen.com: How Personally Green Are you?

Visit: www.personallygreen.com


Take the pledge at Pledge







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Hewlett-Packard India, Sanctuary and WWF-India photography contest

Our climate is getting unpredictable and more violent by the minute. Human survival itself is at risk.
After years of denial, the countries of the world are now convinced that climate change is a reality. We must act collectively to adapt to the changes that are inevitable, reverse the most dangerous trends, including our penchant for over-loading the earth's atmosphere with carbon. This will need lifestyle changes. It will also need the governments of the world to unite. We can and must win the climate battle or we will perish.

This is our "Inconvenient Truth." This is also our "11 th Hour."
Hewlett-Packard India, Sanctuary and WWF-India have joined hands to search for images that have the power to shake people out of their stupor, to recognise the reality and inevitability of climate change. We hope to move them to action by showing how the quality of their lives is going to be impacted. We are looking for creative, attention-grabbing, or poignant images that graphically express the reality and impact of climate change on people and the environment. These images will help us fight for climate stability and justice. You are limited only by your imagination.

Literally, any image you take is eligible for entry, provided you are able to explain its climate change relevance in between 10 and 25 words. Your subject could be living or non-living, involve man-made or natural environments, depict technology, health, urban or rural life, the economy, the problems or the solutions. The jury will be looking for images that have the ability to grab the attention of people, images that tell a story, and that have the potential to change peoples' lives.

Read More Here. >>>

http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/climatechangecontest/



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AutoBlogGreen: Mahindra Scorpio may offer diesel-electric hybrid when sold in U.S.

Officials from Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian auto manufacturer, will wait until next April before announcing details on the Scorpio SUV and pickup the company will export to the U.S. However, observers say a diesel-electric hybrid version of the Scorpio will be offered along with gas models. M&M will sell the trucks through Global Vehicles, which could have 200 dealers lined up by the time the vehicles hit U.S. ports. Small car-based SUVs are holding their own in the U.S. but compact pickups are sliding fast. Maybe what the market needs is a low-priced jump start, but having a diesel certainly won't hurt.

Read More Here >>>

Or More Here >>>





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New York Times: As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About the Ozone Layer

As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About the Ozone Layer
By KEITH BRADSHER

MUMBAI, India — Until recently, it looked like the depleted ozone layer protecting the earth from harmful solar rays was on its way to being healed.

But thanks in part to an explosion of demand for air-conditioners in hot places like India and southern China — mostly relying on refrigerants already banned in Europe and in the process of being phased out in the United States — the ozone layer is proving very hard to repair.

Four months ago, scientists discovered that the “hole” created by the world’s use of ozone-depleting gases — in aerosol spray cans, aging refrigerators and old air-conditioners — had expanded again, stretching once more to the record size of 2001.

An unusually cold Antarctic winter, rather than the rise in the use of refrigerants, may have caused the sudden expansion, which covered an area larger than North America.

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New York Times: Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms

Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The world’s richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.




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Smoke Signals: Global-warming activists can learn from the anti-smoking campaign

Smoke Signals: Global-warming activists can learn from the anti-smoking campaign
By Audrey Schulman

Twenty years ago, it seemed that virtually everyone smoked. You couldn't sit in a restaurant for five minutes without stinking of cigarettes for hours. Now, in state after state, even biker bars are going smoke-free.

Clearly, there's been a dramatic shift in the public's attitude toward smoking -- but it hasn't been an intellectual shift. Since the 1964 Surgeon General's report on the dangers of smoking, anyone tapping a cigarette out of a pack knew the possible health consequences. Still, through the combined magic of advertising and denial, for years the strongest image in many people's minds as they puffed away was Faye Dunaway romantically chain-smoking.

Over the past two decades, that image has changed. When a person fingers a cigarette today, she's more likely to envision a dying Yul Brynner denouncing smoking, or lying tobacco execs, or the Marlboro Man rasping for breath through a chest tube.

What's changed are the emotional images associated with smoking, the ones anti-tobacco activists worked so hard to publicize.

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http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2004/02/03/smoke/



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New York Times: In India, a $2,500 Pace Car

In India, a $2,500 Pace Car
By HEATHER TIMMONS

NEW DELHI, Oct. 11 — A revolution is taking place in India that could change what most of the world drives.

Next fall, the Indian automaker Tata Motors is scheduled to introduce its long-awaited People’s Car, with a sticker price of about $2,500. Hot on its tail may be as many as half a dozen new ultra-affordable vehicles — some from the world’s leading carmakers, including Toyota and Renault-Nissan.

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Environmentalists and safety advocates are less enthusiastic.

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Popular Mechanics: Windbelt, Cheap Generator Alternative, Set to Power Third World

Windbelt, Cheap Generator Alternative, Set to Power Third World
By Logan Ward

Working in Haiti, Shawn Frayne, a 28-year-old inventor based in Mountain View, Calif., saw the need for small-scale wind power to juice LED lamps and radios in the homes of the poor. Conventional wind turbines don’t scale down well—there’s too much friction in the gearbox and other components. “With rotary power, there’s nothing out there that generates under 50 watts,” Frayne says. So he took a new tack, studying the way vibrations caused by the wind led to the collapse in 1940 of Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge (aka Galloping Gertie).

Frayne’s device, which he calls a Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps in Haitian homes. “Kerosene is smoky and it’s a fire hazard,” says Peter Haas, founder of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which helps people in developing countries to get environmentally sound access to clean water, sanitation and energy. “If Shawn’s innovation breaks, locals can fix it. If a solar panel breaks, the family is out a panel.”


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Popular Mechanics: Jay Leno's Green Garage

Read Here: >>>


http://www.popularmechanics.com/greengarage





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CEOs cost cutting does help

http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/071011/tech01.html?.v=1

Much of the Berkeley event centered around energy innovation, which participants called key to national security, economic growth and environmental health.

"We need a wave of innovation around energy" on the same magnitude of recent advances in information technology, Tyson said.

John Doerr, a partner at the Silicon Valley investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, put it more strongly, in another panel discussion. He called the issue "more important than the Internet."

He said the push will dwarf even the massive national efforts to build the first atomic bomb and launch the Apollo space missions. "This is about changing the energy infrastructure of the planet," Doerr said.

Short of an E=MC -level energy breakthrough, Sun Microsystems (NasdaqGS:JAVA - News) CEO Jonathan Schwartz asked companies to make better use of resources. Many Sun employees work from home via the Internet.

The company stopped printing its annual report in favor of electronic copies. That alone saves Sun $1 million a year, Schwartz says.

"It isn't about hugging trees," he said. "It's about hugging the balance sheet and shareholders."

Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google's (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News) nonprofit arm Google.org, said he's worried that energy and climate-change issues haven't become more mainstream, but is encouraged by recent trends, including rising investments in alternative energies. "Let's find a way to convert this crisis into an opportunity," he said. "I'm more optimistic than I was before."


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BBC News: Concern over Europe 'snow crisis'

Unseasonably warm conditions across Europe are being greeted with a mixture of disbelief and despair by those who normally rely on cold winters. James Cove and James Rodgers assess the winter weather.




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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6185345.stm





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National Geographic: Alps Glaciers Gone by 2050, Expert Says

Alps Glaciers Gone by 2050, Expert Says

John Roach

National Geographic News

January 23, 2007

Glaciers are quickly disappearing from the Alps and will be all but gone by 2050, a climate expert said Monday. That's 50 years earlier than a July 2006 study predicted.

The loss would change the supply of drinking and irrigation water, lead to more falling rocks, and cripple the European ski industry.

On average about 3 percent of Alpine glacial ice is lost each year, said Roland Psenner, a fresh water scientist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. That corresponds to about 3.3 feet (1 meter) of ice thickness.

Ten percent was lost in the record-breaking heat of 2003. Seven percent was lost in 2006, Psenner said.

"If the melting goes on at this pace, glaciers will be gone by 2030 to 2050—except some high-altitude sites in the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps," he wrote in an email to National Geographic News.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070123-alps-glaciers.html



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Renewable Energy: Bioenergy

Renewable Energy: Bioenergy

In order to avoid dangerous climate change, Australia needs to dramatically reduce its greenhouse pollution by 80-90% by 2050. In addition to reducing our energy use, we need to be sourcing much more of our energy from renewable sources, including bioenergy. Australia currently sources just 8 percent of its electricity from renewable energy.

Bioenergy can bring multiple benefits for landscape repair and biodiversity, as well as the energy contribution. However, some bioenergy systems can do environmental harm, so it is important to look at the benefits and drawbacks of the whole system.

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http://www.cooltheglobe.com/article?article=21


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NUCLEAR POWER - THE CASE FOR

NUCLEAR POWER - THE CASE FOR
Ian Hore-Lacy

Australia's electricity is produced largely from coal, which contributes greatly to our high per capita carbon emissions, not to mention our very low electricity cost.

There is an emerging consensus that such relatively high carbon emissions are not satisfactory, so we need to reduce our dependence on coal whilst meeting the demand for a continuous, reliable supply of electricity on a large scale.

The main alternative for generation is nuclear power, with wind providing a useful but fickle supplement.

Read More Here >>>

http://www.cooltheglobe.com/article?article=19

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TV Commercial From cooltheglobe.com

"Cleaning up" according to The Economist

The Economist

May 31st 2007

How business is starting to tackle climate change, and how governments need to help

THE current row over climate change sounds all too familiar. Germany, host of this year's G8 summit, is trying to get the world to agree on what to do when the Kyoto protocol on curbing greenhouse gases runs out in 2012. America, which dislikes the tough targets that the Europeans want the world to sign up to, is proposing separate negotiations between the world's big emitters. Environmentalists accuse it of trying to sidetrack the issue. The line-up is much like the one that led to America's withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement in 2001.

Yet to conclude from this that nothing has changed would be wrong. Attitudes have shifted sharply over the past six years, most importantly among businesspeople.

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A stairway to heaven?

The Economist

May 31st 2007 | ACAPULCO

MOST solutions to the problem of global warming are tediously, almost oppressively, quotidian. Switch the lights off. Stop using fossil fuels to make electricity. Run an efficient car. Don't fly. A few grandiose projects have also been suggested, such as giant parasols in space or adding iron to the ocean to encourage planktonic algae to grow and soak up carbon dioxide. On the whole, though, those big ideas are either mad or could have dangerously unpredictable consequences.

That does not mean that lateral thinking about the problem has no place. And the idea proposed by Alfred Wong of the University of California, Los Angeles, at last week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in Acapulco, is about as lateral as they come. Dr Wong reckons the problem is not so much that CO2 is being thrown away, but that it is not being thrown far enough. According to his calculations, a little helping hand would turn the Earth's magnetic field into a conveyor belt that would vent the gas into outer space, whence it would never return.

The site of the conveyor Dr Wong is proposing to build is the Arctic. More specifically, he is suggesting it be over one of his workplaces, the High Power Auroral Stimulation facility near Fairbanks in Alaska that he set up 20 years ago to stimulate and study artificial auroras.

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WARMER WORLD GETS WETTER

Surprised?


Satellite observations suggest climate models are wrong on rainfall.

Harvey Leifert

Global warming will increase worldwide precipitation by three times the amount predicted by current climate models, according to a study based on two decades' worth of satellite observations.

The discrepancy between the models and the data might mean that the models are wrong. Or it might be that two decades is not long enough to test their predictions. But researchers believe that the work is a step towards understanding the thorny issue of how global temperatures affect rainfall.

Warmer air holds more water. Satellite observations and climate models agree that each rise of 1 °C in global temperatures increases the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere by about 6.5%.

Read More Here>>>


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DroppingKnowledge.org

Click:( DK Magazine on Global Warming )






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Expansion on Eucalyptus Monoculture in Brasil

http://www.carbontradewatch.org/news/0704_caravan_against_the_green_desert.html









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CarbonTradeWatch.org

www.carbontradewatch.org












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PostKyoto.org

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What is Global Warming?

Wikipedia defines Global Warming as
Global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

AL GORE: Global Warming Testimony @ Congress 3.21.07

11th Hour Trailer

Please watch the trailer for the forthcoming film "11th Hour" starring Leonardo DiCaprio.