Archive for February, 2007
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Al Gore’s Carbon Love Life
It’s a fairly well known fact that celebrity media reports always attract a lot more attention than those on important cultural, social and scientific topics. Faced with a choice between a glossy magazine cover story on Brad and Angie’s love life, and a research article on the solutions to world poverty - you can guess […]
No Comments » - Posted in Celebrities, Media by Craig Mackintosh
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Complex Work of Carbon Labelling to Begin
Take a product from your local store. Any product, anything at all. Now, what have you got there? A can of beans? A bag of bananas? Whatever it is - try to figure out its carbon footprint. I’d like to know how much energy was consumed from the conception of that product, through growing, processing, […]
No Comments » - Posted in Agriculture & Food, Carbon Market, Industry by Craig Mackintosh
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Windfarm Construction
Ever wondered how these enormous off-shore windfarms get constructed? Click here.
No Comments » - Posted in CleanTech - Wind by Craig Mackintosh
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Synthetic Biology - Opening Pandora’s Box v.2.0
In what looks to be a complete parallel of the story of Eve in Genesis, Pandora, who in Greek mythology is the first woman on Earth, unleashed all manner of hell on the world through giving in to ill-advised curiosity.
Oops…
Endowed by the gods with every attribute of beauty and goodness, Pandora was sent to Epimetheus, […]
No Comments » - Posted in Agriculture & Food, Industry, GMOs by Craig Mackintosh
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Bees Dying by the Millions
Farmers may have to get out their feather dusters and do some manual pollinating if the millions of bees that have vanished in the U.S. don’t show up soon.
A chain is only as strong as the weakest link.
What happens to our food supply,
without the humble bee?
Honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate from 24 US […]
17 Comments » - Posted in Agriculture & Food, Environment & Wildlife by Craig Mackintosh
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
The Sweet & Sour Taste of Victory
You won’t need me to inform you that the ‘Inconvenient Truth‘ enviro-documentary took the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. That’s a great push for efforts to promote environmentalism in the world, and we hope it’ll encourage those that haven’t already to take a look at this movie.
Unfortunately, the sour side of this news is […]
No Comments » - Posted in Global Warming Science, Celebrities, Media by Craig Mackintosh
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Priorities - Can you worry about global warming while your children are dying?
Mirko Bagaric published an excellent article in The Australian that is worth mentioning here. The article tries to draw attention to the hypocrisy of western concerns over future global warming disasters, while ignoring the extreme misery and suffering being endured right now in developing countries.
HOW worried do you reckon people in developing nations — who […]
4 Comments » - Posted in General by Craig Mackintosh
Monday, February 26th, 2007
Global Warming, Hitler, & WWII Rationing
 Peer pressure, national pride, and legal mandates worked together against the common evil |
It’s an unusual title, I know - but bear with me.
If you were to personify global warming, to literally morph it into some kind of effigy - something you could tie to a stake in the town square, and throw cabbages, or rocks at - what would the guy look like?
I guess the degree of grotesquery in your visualisation would largely depend on where in the world you live, and to what extent this ‘person’ has adversely influenced your life, although in some ways it could be easy to conjure an image of one of last century’s most notorious, infamous villains - Adolf Hitler. Couldn’t it?
6 Comments » - Posted in Carbon Market, Green Philosophy by Craig Mackintosh
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
Bolivia Blames Developed States
Just yesterday we did a post on how unfair global warming is - and commented that those that haven’t caused global warming, but are nevertheless suffering disproportionately, will eventually get a bit… er… annoyed.
Issuing an appeal for $9.2m, the UN
described the flooding as the country’s
most devastating disaster ever,
warning that water supplies and
sanitation conditions have been
severely […]
No Comments » - Posted in Natural Disasters by Craig Mackintosh
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Air Car Tantalisingly Close
The MDI MiniCAT
A French designer of engines for Formula One racing cars has turned his attention to creating an engine that runs on, and emits, only air! By all accounts, this is no pie-in-the-sky dream invention either - as the vehicle’s release is slated for later this year.
With a top speed of 110kph (68mph) and […]
68 Comments » - Posted in Transport, CleanTech - Air by Craig Mackintosh
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
The Future of Solar Looks Bright
The Telegraph put out a very positive slant on Solar a couple of days ago. Check this out:
Where did fossil fuel energy
come from anyway?
Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that […]
No Comments » - Posted in CleanTech - Solar by Craig Mackintosh
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Global Warming Isn’t Fair
It’d be great if it’d all just go away, wouldn’t it? If we could wake up tomorrow morning to headlines like “Global Warming - It’s All Over”, “Scientists Apologise for Taking Our Time”, or “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines - The Problem Is Solved!”
If you feel global warming is messing with your plans, and want to […]
3 Comments » - Posted in Global Warming Science, General by Craig Mackintosh
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Tremendous Surge in Global Warming Interest
Searches for ‘global warming’
are heating up
There’s nothing like the threat of floods, disease, and devastation to get a person’s attention. Hitwise, a leading internet analysis company, has recorded a huge increase in searches for the words ‘Global Warming’. Hitwise provides the graph at right to support their stats - one that doesn’t look so unlike […]
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Craig Mackintosh
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Trees Return to Niger, and Bring Prosperity With Them
You often hear people, including myself, preaching the need to preserve bio-diversity. Actually, we’ve reduced the biodiversity so much, we can’t really get away with just preserving it any more - rather, we need to actively promote its increase.
Well, promoting bio-diversity is what we’ll do today - by sharing an exciting and large-scale practical example […]
