The Green House

Hypermiling... the art of maximising fuel efficiency

2008-07-21T23:33:00.002+10:00

I was introduced to the concept behind hypermiling when I was a kid, back in in South Africa by our Geography teacher, Mr Wahee. He used to run the hiking tours taking groups of six to eight twelve year olds through outstanding parts of the country on two to three week treks. On one trip from Joeburg to the Knysna forest Elephant Walk our combi ran very low on petrol.

Wahee's strategies for conserving fuel was to coast down the hills, gathering speed and momentum to take us as far up the next hill as possible without rapidly accelerating, discard useless weight and slip-stream trucks down the highway. The memories lay dormant for decades, until I started realising that my emissions-spewing, hoon-like diving style was at odds with a new understanding of the causes of climate change. So I resolved to drive more fuel efficiently, and picked up where Wahee had left off.

It was a revelation. It's quieter when you coast with your foot off the accelerator — and in neutral, down a long hill, it feels like the difference between sailing and stink-boating. You become more conscious of your car's performance, and more aware of traffic around you. The latter is for the same reason why motorbike riders are hyper-vigilant in traffic, you are driving in a manner that is different to the flow. You quickly add another rule. Your hypermiling is not to interrupt the flow of traffic.

I was discovering a better quality driving experience that offered me the satisfaction of competing against myself to beat my fuel mileage record, while saving money and co2 emissions.

Now I discover that there are other freaks like me.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green

Personal carbon trading

2008-06-09T00:06:00.003+10:00

Was this the future being debated in the British House of Commons by the Environmental Audit Committee, last month?

A House of Commons committee suggested last week that the U.K. Parliament create a personal carbon-trading scheme for all citizens of the United Kingdom. It was the strongest statement yet by any government in favor of an individual cap-and-trade system for buying and selling greenhouse gas emissions.

Personal carbon trading would provide a set "carbon emissions allowance" to each citizen and establish a national carbon budget. Individuals would then be able to trade their carbon credits with one another on a designated carbon market if they chose to purchase additional energy or to partake in activities that would exceed the allowed emissions limit, such as riding a plane.

Seems logical to me, but there will be adjustment pains. Seemed logical to Tim Yeo, the committee chairman, when he told the BBC ,"It's the single best instrument to encourage every man, woman, and child in the country to make a low-carbon choice every day. The problem with green taxes is they tend to bear most heavily on poor households. This way poor households will be able to make cash rewards for their decisions."

NSW households emitting 2.5million tonnes of CO2 annually

2008-06-08T23:41:00.001+10:00

That's equivalent to 'putting an extra 500,000 cars on the road every 12 months'.

Much of it is wasteful, according to an EnergyAustralia survey.

"Bad habits with appliances waste energy and waste money and like most bad habits, they should be broken."

We have proved how much water we can save, we can do it for electricity. The incentives are both financial, and environmental.

Almost 90 per cent of householders rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, with almost half rinsing them in hot water.
More than a quarter of all households run the dishwasher before it is full.
Many householders also use refrigeration inefficiently with 22 per cent of people surveyed saying they leave the door open while unloading shopping and 29 per cent own a second fridge that is rarely used.
Young people waste more energy than older people, with people under 30 more likely to leave the fridge door open while making a meal (28 per cent) compared with people over 60 (7 per cent).
People under 30 are also more likely to use a clothes dryer, with 29 per cent saying they mostly use the dryer compared with only 9 per cent of people aged over 60.

Technorati Tags: energy efficiency, green-living

There's money in restocking biodiversity

2008-06-08T23:02:00.003+10:00

Or so hope Scottish millionaire, Paul Lister, who is restocking his estate with bears, wolves, elk and wild boar, and plans to charge visitors to see them.

Well it worked for Steve Irwing.

THE howl of a wolf echoes through the glen, lumbering bears fish in the lochs and moose amble through the forest of native trees.

This is multimillionaire Paul Lister's vision for his estate in the Scottish Highlands, and his grand scheme is already under way.

Last year, the British businessman spent £ $33,000 buying a pair of moose, also known as European elk, in Sweden and flying them to Scotland in a chartered plane.

Hulda and Hercules now roam a bracken and heather-carpeted 180-hectare enclosure in the Alladale Wilderness Reserve, alongside newly released wild boar.

His aim is to restore a section of the deforested and depopulated highlands to its former glory by releasing into his vast reserve native species that have disappeared from the highlands, and to turn a profit by charging people to visit.

"Alladale is a restoration project," said Lister, 49, the son of the founder of British furniture retailer MFI.

"It's not about conservation - we haven't got a lot to conserve."

Environment Lifestyle Green

Rudd backs deep 2020 emissions cuts

2007-12-06T01:10:00.001+11:00

During the election campaign, Kevin Rudd has repeatedly said that Australia would not set its own 2020 target until he received a report from economist Ross Garnaut next year. But when he arrives in Bali next week he will face international expectations from Europe, China and Indonesia to make Australia's position clear whether, having ratified the Kyoto Protocol, it is committed to its own deep cuts:

clipped from www.smh.com.au

THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, signalled his support for
developed countries, including Australia, agreeing to making deep
cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions in the next 12 years.

In a significant move last night the Australian delegation to
the UN climate talks stated it "fully supports" the proposal that
developed countries need to cut their greenhouse gas emission by 25
to 40 per cent by 2020.

The public statement came after China and Indonesia demanded at
the UN climate change talks in Bali yesterday that developed
nations who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol stick to this
understanding reached earlier this year.

Last night Australia publicly aligned itself with the nations
under the Kyoto Protocol that have agreed to consider these cuts,
distancing the new Rudd Government further from the US position.
Saying Australia "fully supports" the position, the delegation said
Australia was, "happy to proceed on this basis".

Lessons About Climate Change Pose Many Challenges for Science Teachers

2007-11-11T22:44:00.001+11:00

clipped from www.edweek.org

Yet educators also say they face challenges in finding accurate and student-friendly classroom activities and lessons on the topic, partly because textbooks and other materials have not caught up to a growing body of scientific evidence about climate change.

Consequently, many science teachers are turning to Web sites and resources produced by scientific organizations. They’re also sharing strategies at conferences and workshops and by word of mouth.

One billion climate refugees in our lifetimes

2007-11-11T22:43:00.001+11:00

But, don't worry, Howard's Pacific solution will deter them from coming to Australia.

clipped from www.smh.com.au

A BILLION people - one in seven people on Earth today - could be
forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years as the effects
of climate change worsen an already serious migration crisis, a new
report from Christian Aid predicts.

The report, based on the latest United Nations population and
climate-change figures, says conflict, large-scale development
projects and widespread environmental deterioration will combine to
make life unsupportable for hundreds of millions of people, mostly
in the Sahara belt, South Asia and the Middle East.

About 155 million people are known to be displaced now by
conflict, natural disaster and development projects. This figure
could be augmented by as many as 850 million, as more people are
expected to be affected by water shortages, sea level crises,
deteriorating pasture land, conflicts and famine, the report
says.

Google, Cisco to help fight global poverty

2007-11-11T22:39:00.001+11:00

clipped from www.theage.com.au

The United Nations teamed with technology giants Google and
Cisco Systems to launch a new website on Thursday that will
provide data and a bird's eye view of global efforts to fight
poverty and meet UN development goals by 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals, which world leaders approved
at a U.N. summit in 2000, provide the latest statistics on health,
education, malnutrition, women's equality and other measures that
contribute to poverty.

On one portion of the new site, a web surfer
can also use Google Earth's map and satellite imagery to fly
anywhere on the planet and "explore" the places where work is being
done to achieve the goals.

"They can see successes and celebrate those, and observe
failures or shortfalls ... and redouble their country's commitment
to pursue those efforts. So it's very exciting for us," said
Michael Jones, chief technologist for Google Earth and Maps.

Mattel recalls more Toys

2007-11-10T21:41:00.001+11:00

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Mattel in fresh toy recall alert

Toy manufacturer Mattel is recalling 12,000 toys sold in the UK and the Irish Republic, a European Commission official has said.

The recall affects the Fisher Price-branded Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boat toys, because of excessive levels of lead found in the paint.

As a result, its profits over the past three months slipped by 1%.

This latest recall marks the fourth in six months, prompting the EU to embark on a two-month review of its toy safety regulations, expected to be complete in November.

Solar USB Charger

2007-11-10T21:31:00.001+11:00

I want one...

clipped from www.ifilm.com

Turn those useless Solar Powered garden lights into an all purpose solar charger for your USB devices.

Parasites trickle-feeding of your power

2007-11-10T20:52:00.001+11:00

clipped from www.cnn.com

New kind of 'vampire' sucks power out of homes

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A force as insidious as Dracula is quietly sucking a nickel of every dollar's worth of the electricity that seeps from your home's outlets.

Insert the little fangs of your cell phone charger in the outlet and leave it there, phone attached: That's "vampire" electronics.

Allow your computer to hide in the cloak of darkness known as "standby mode" rather than shutting it off: That's vampire electronics.

The latest estimates show 5 percent of electricity used in the United States goes to standby power, a phenomenon energy efficiency experts find all the more terrifying as energy prices rise and the planet warms. That amounts to about $4 billion a year.

lawmakers passed a proposal last year -- dubbed the Vampire Slayers Act -- to add vampire electronics labels to consumer products, detailing how much energy a charger, computer, DVD player, PlayStation, microwave or coffee maker uses when on, off or in standby mode

With apologies to Salvador Dali

2007-08-23T23:34:00.001+10:00

clipped from www.zuzafun.com

Global warming effects

Blood moon due on August 28

2007-08-19T22:29:00.001+10:00

Put it in your diary...

clipped from www.smh.com.au

THE eastern states are in the box seat to see a rare full "blood moon" eclipse on August 28, with astronomers tipping that most people in NSW should have a clear view.

The moon will appear a vibrant red as Earth's shadow passes over it.

Nick Lomb, curator of astronomy at Sydney Observatory, said lunar eclipses occurred at least twice a year, but the chance to see one in its entirety from the eastern states was rare.

The moon will rise in the east at 5.22pm. At 6.51pm the eclipse will begin, with Earth's shadow starting to block light travelling from the sun to the moon's surface.

The moon, which will have red wavelengths from Earth's atmosphere scattered across its surface, will be fully eclipsed from 7.52pm until 9.23pm.

Beautiful pictures from Antarctica

2007-08-18T01:02:00.001+10:00

I love the underwater shot of the penguins! (Pics didn't come out, you have to go to link...sorry)

clipped from beirutraders.org

Biofuel Threatens Europe's Wildlife

2007-08-18T01:00:00.001+10:00

clipped from www.climateark.org

Millions of farm birds could be left without enough food and breeding sites next spring if plans to scrap Europe’s agricultural land set-aside targets for next year go ahead, warn environmental groups. Plans to set a zero set-aside targets from October this year have been announced by the EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Mariann Fischer-Boel, as a response to rising food prices. Those plans are to be ratified by ministers this autumn. Several studies confirm that set-asides have become a vital habitat for many of Europe’s endangered birds and insects, and that farm birds have declined by nearly 50% on average since 1980. Over 5300 people have written to European politicians this month, asking for the plans to be dropped and supporting a moratorium on biofuel targets.

David Hicks goes green

2007-08-15T00:27:00.001+10:00

He's a candidate for causes, this one. Bet he's looking forward to New Year's Eve.

I'm all for Hicks 'having a go' at being an environmental crusader, can't see the corporate world clamouring for his CV, and he is not allowed to make money from writing his story, so... break a leg.

But he does have baggage that risks distracting from his message.

"So there I was in the Hindu Kush, taking pot shots at the Indian Army and thinking that something was just not right....

... then I realised it was the glacier; it was much smaller than in the brochure.

clipped from news.ninemsn.com.au

New quest for David Hicks: save the planet

While adapting to life in the high-security division in Adelaide's Yatala jail, Hicks now identifies more with Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery than Osama Bin Laden.

Hicks now spends his days reading and considering his future environmental career options, while turning down the option of having a television in his small cell, his lawyer David McLeod told The Bulletin.

Flannery, who was recently named Australian of the Year, has signalled his interest in advising Hicks on his green crusade.

"People who've had a hard life often find nature a more easy and forgiving place to engage," Flannery says. "The natural world offers you some solace."

Hicks, who arrived back in Australia on May 20 after five years in Guantanamo Bay, will be freed on December 29.

Witchcraft not wicked

2007-08-14T00:33:00.001+10:00

"The amount of witches is now roughly the same size as Mormons."

Not bad growth, considering there is no cult leader, just the innate affinity to nature that we all have.

clipped from www.theaustralian.news.com.au

Two researchers have interviewed 90 teenage witches in Australia, England and the US to find out whether they have a broom in the cupboard, a cloak upstairs or any spells on the boil.

They found that teenage witches, including both girls and boys, use witchcraft positively to help deal with issues that young people face every day while growing up.

Professor Ezzy said witchcraft was a form of paganism, which worships nature and celebrated the harvest festivals.

He said that there was a huge increase in witchcraft in the late 1990s when Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed hit television screens. Professor Ezzy said the shows tapped into a need expressed by teenagers to find something more spiritual in life.

He said that he and his co-author Helen Berger found that witchcraft was not seductive but instead empowering and offered personal development for teenagers.

Battle at Kruger Park

2007-08-14T00:19:00.000+10:00

An amazing battle between lions, buffalo and crocodiles...

Man turns down $5,000,000,000 (that's 5 Billion) to save ancestral lands

2007-08-14T00:02:00.001+10:00

Big props and much respect to Jeffrey Lee (as you can see from the comments to the following Clipmark).

clipped from www.planetsave.com

JEFFREY LEE is not interested in the soaring price of uranium, which could make him one of the world’s richest men.

“This is my country. Look, it’s beautiful and I fear somebody will disturb it,” he says, waving his arm across a view of rocky land surrounded by Kakadu National Park, where the French energy giant Areva wants to extract 14,000 tonnes of uranium worth more than $5 billion.

Mr Lee, the shy 36-year-old sole member of the Djok clan and the senior custodian of the Koongarra uranium deposit, has decided never to allow the ecologically sensitive land to be mined.

“There are sacred sites, there are burial sites and there are other special places out there which are my responsibility to look after,” Mr Lee told the Herald.

“I’m not interested in white people offering me this or that … it doesn’t mean a thing.

“I’m not interested in money. I’ve got a job; I can buy tucker; I can go fishing and hunting. That’s all that matters to me.”

Cycle to work to save planet, pocket, and parking

2007-08-13T23:28:00.001+10:00

I took a King's Parking hit the other day when I drove into the CBD — S44.00 plus GST, for two hours parking!

clipped from www.smh.com.au

A report that Sydney is topped only by London and Tokyo for the cost of a parking space in the city makes a free spot at work look even more of a perk.

An increasing number of time-poor executives do not see driving into town as an attractive option. Instead they expect their employer to supply a spot for their bikes.

Antony Cliffe, a senior manager in mergers and acquisitions at Rabobank, abandoned the 40-minute bus ride from Drummoyne into town to ride his bike because it took half as long and it kept him fit.

"Even riding through town isn't so bad," he said.

His spot in the basement of his office is a car space that has been converted by the bank into 20 bike racks, enclosed in a cage.

Unlike a car spot - likely to be close to the Sydney monthly average of $815, according to a survey by the real estate company Colliers International - he does not pay a cent

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Australia Energy

But would you cycle to work?

If it makes it bigger, it's on

2007-08-10T20:29:00.001+10:00

Clearly the way to get men to use more condoms is to turn the condom into a tool that makes their dicks bigger.

Great solution to HIV/AIDS in Africa; "What cultural taboo?".

clipped from www.smh.com.au

British condom maker Futura Medical Plc said on Thursday that results of a study showed its new condom helped men have firmer and bigger erections, as well as a longer-lasting sexual experience.

Shares in the company, which specialises in sexual healthcare and pain relief, rose 14.5 per cent to 59.25 pence on hopes the condom, which will be marketed by Durex condom-maker SSL International, could go on sale next year.

Futura said the study of 108 healthy couples showed its CSD500 condom helped men to get a firmer erection compared with a standard condom, increased penis size and made the sexual experience last longer, delivering statistically significant results.

The condom has a small amount of gel in its peak that dilates the arteries and increases blood flow to the penis.

Global consumption of condoms is around 14 billion per year, of which half are branded condoms that are actually sold, with the rest being condoms distributed to promote safer sex and in developing countries

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Earth Australia

Robots to be folk dance historians

2007-08-10T18:47:00.001+10:00

When they build a dancebot that can get drunk enough to get out on the dance floor — those Japanese scientist will have a market in Australia.

clipped from www.smh.com.au

A HUMAN-SIZED robot shows off its newly learned dance steps. Scientists in Japan who taught the robot to imitate the steps of a dancer say it could be used to record the movements of traditional dances being lost as their performers die off.

To demonstrate the prancing dancebot's prowess the team programmed the 1.5 metre tall, 58 kilogram machine to imitate the graceful sways and whirls of the aizu bandaisan, a Japanese folk routine. To prove its accuracy, the robot can perform alongside a human dancer. And despite its Terminator appearance, the robot is remarkably lifelike.

Shin'ichiro Nakaoka and his colleagues at Tokyo University taught the dancebot - named HRP-2 or Promet - using video capture techniques to record human dance movements. The New Scientist said these were converted into a sequence of robotic limb movements.

I found a dancebot, from my Video Bar to the left and up, that pulls exactly the same dance moves as me, it's eerie.

How cool is that? You can see it planning its next move. I'll bet this groover pulls the chicks.

New Theory - Periodic Mass Extinctions

2007-08-09T02:42:00.001+10:00

The following new theory implies that biodiversity has a built in resilience to keep coming back from cyclical mass extinctions.

clipped from sciencenow.sciencemag.org

Deadly wobble.
The solar system's rollercoaster-like path around the galaxy periodically makes it vulnerable to lethal radiation from intergalactic space.

Researchers may have uncovered the reason why Earth's biodiversity mysteriously plummets periodically. They have found that a rollercoaster-like wobble in the sun's orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy regularly moves Earth closer to a source of dangerous intergalactic cosmic rays.

Over the last 500 million years or so, the number of species on Earth has tended to dip regularly about every 62 million years. The last time this happened, about 55 million years ago--or about 10 million years after the great K-T extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs--biodiversity sank by about 10%; around 115 million years ago, it dropped by a similar amount. So far, evolutionary biologists have only been able to establish that the phenomenon seems cyclical, but they haven't isolated a cause.

Save the black cockatoo

2007-08-05T22:04:00.000+10:00

I'll find out more about whether these guys have a fund or something.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Earth Australia LOHAS Kyoto Energy

Tree-planting not the carbon-offset low-hanging fruit

2007-08-05T21:22:00.001+10:00

Beware of seeing tree-planting as easy alternative for carbon offsetting. A carbon offset is a promise you made that a tree has to spend it's life paying for, during which anything can happen. It makes sense to investigate offsetting in renewable energy — invest in infrastructure and technology.

clipped from www.smh.com.au

Tree-planting schemes popularly used to offset carbon emissions do little to combat climate change, a think-tank says.

A paper by The Australia Institute released today accuses governments and businesses of exploiting such "fads" to avoid the need for real cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Downie said Australia needed a compulsory accreditation scheme for carbon offset projects.

He said there were strong grounds for excluding forestry-based offsets from an emissions trading system in Australia or least restricting their use.

"Tree-planting, or forestry, cannot secure real, measurable and permanent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions because sooner or later the forest will be felled, burned or destroyed," Mr Downie said.

10 tips for wildlife visitors to your garden

2007-08-05T01:32:00.001+10:00

Jackie French, the author of The Secret World of Wombats (The Amazing World of Wallabies will be out early next year from Angus and Robertson/Harper Collins), gives great advice for maintaining a wildlife-friendly garden in this linked SMH article.

We have an orange tree and a lemon tree, which attracts gangs of cockatoos on their end of the day forage, and possums at night. The cockatoos strew the lawn with half-eaten oranges — they're too good for lemons — discarded after holding the orange in their claw, peeling off the top of the skin with their beaks, and then ripping into the contents like drunks at a cocktail party. After its fill, the cockatoo flies off with a satisfied screech and a squawk... and a new replacement instantly appears in flash of white wings, sparing the tree no relief. At night, the possums race up and down the roof — they get on one end along the single strand of telephone wire coming in off the street — shoot across the roof to launch themselves off the roof onto the lemon tree, and from there, onto the orange tree. Their tell-tail signs are the hollowed out orange skins still attached to the branch. If you are going to encourage them into your garden you need to discourage them from getting into your roof. You don't want to try growing tomatoes either.

So there is a lot of noise day and night; flocks of cockatoos of the move can be deafening and possums are loud spitters and hissers when being territorial, and the nocturnal possum fights can be as disturbing as cats on heat.

But I'll take the din of wildlife over the drone of traffic, any day.

Without further ado, here's Jackie's Top Ten Tips from her article:

clipped from www.smh.com.au

■ Keep cats and dogs indoors after dusk.

■ Ensure trees and roosting spots are safe from cats - put wide collars around tree trunks and large tree branches to stop cats encroaching while bats are feeding or sleeping.

■ Allow some of your lawn to go to seed for seed-eating birds.

■ Leave spiders' webs on your eaves for birds to use in their nests.

■ A small, solar-powered garden light will attract insects for night-flying birds and bats - and for frogs, too, if it's near a pond.

■ Use mulch. Mulch feeds worms and other small creatures, and they'll feed birds and lizards. Mulch is also a great shelter for all sorts of things.

■ Don't scrape lichen off trees — it's nesting material for birds.

■ Paperbarks and other trees with loose bark also provide nesting material. No paperbarks? Leave the castings from your brush or comb near the bird feeder and they'll probably be foraged instead.

■ Cover chimney tops with chicken wire to stop possums falling in.

■ Avoid pesticides and herbicides.

Solar cost-prohibitive? Buckyballs to that

2007-08-03T01:32:00.000+10:00

clipped from www.engadget.com

Researchers develop "paint-on" solar cells

The quest to builder a better, cheaper solar cell continues on, as researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed a new type of solar cell that can be printed or painted onto flexible plastic sheets. Unlike traditional silicon cells, the print-on cells are composed of carbon nanotubes and buckyballs, which results in substantially cheaper manufacturing costs and greater efficiency, since apparently carbon nanotubes are terrific conductors. The scientists seem pretty pumped about the potential for their tech, with lead researcher Somenath Mitra quite confidently proclaiming that we'll all soon be printing "
sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers." Yeah, we're sure there won't be any shenanigans going on in that ink cartridge market.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Earth Australia LOHAS Kyoto Energy

Sydney emergency water supply found.

2006-07-01T10:37:00.000+10:00

Well, well... two holes in the ground with water in 'em. Joking aside, two aquifers containing more water than Sydney Harbour have been found deep within the sandstone on Sydney's outskirts. In a report to be released next week the Sydney Catchment Authority confirms that water source is viable in a drought crisis, but it does not mean our day-to-day water problems are over: :::[SMH]

"The volume of groundwater likely to be developed is small (at present) in overall supply terms," the report says, "however, it can reduce the rate of dam depletion and hence is important as a water supply source in severe drought.
"Groundwater should not be seen as a water supply system augmentation. It is too valuable in the context of a drought supplementary supply source for it to be developed as an ongoing source of supply."

John Ross, the authority's groundwater project manager, says that the quality of water is high with low salinity, "mostly basically equivalent to rainwater". The NSW State Government had announced earlier this year it would turn to aquifers in order to help augment the water supply if dam levels fell below 40 per cent. As you may be able to see from my right hand column Warragamba's level was at 41.8 per cent (at time of writing). All the heavy rain we have been getting lately just did not fall in the damn catchment - same old story. Seven sites were targeted for test drilling and at least two seem suitable for the establishment of large-scale bore fields - the Upper Nepean near Kangaloon, east of Bowral, and Leonay, near Penrith. Nepean may have hundreds of gigalitres and if developed as a ground water supply the catchment plans to pump about 15 billion litres of groundwater a year into nearby creeks and rivers flowing into Nepean Dam, of Sydney and Illawarra use.

While good news, don't put off your purchase of a water tank. As the SMH says, 'The combination of climate change and a natural dry cycle may mean that Sydney is facing a water shortage which some predict could last decades.' Large scale engineering simply complements the range of solutions we need to develop to drought proof Sydney in the coming big dry. More on drought solutions: :::[Drought turns Aussie knight historical searching for solutions.]

Other blogs on: water conservation drought sydney global warming climate change

World map of renewable energy distribution

2006-06-24T00:05:00.000+10:00

Want to know what the world will look like post oil and coal? This groovy little flash program shows how far some countries are on their way to renewable energy independance, and also shows the distribution of regions rich in renewable 'natural assets'. Brazil grows 40% of its motor car fuel as sugarcane ethanol. In Iceland, 93% of homes are powered by geothermal electricity. :::[Popular Science]

Other blogs on: sustainability solar energy wind power wave power geothermal power nuclear power

The solar roof tile: a cool way to harvest the sun.

2006-06-23T01:51:00.000+10:00

Demonstrating how renewable energy not only is cool, but looks cool too are these solar and heating tiles from SolarCentury. They sit flush on the roof to give a computer chip like look making the home look intelligent and leaving the occupants feeling smart. :::[moringorbit.com]

Other blogs on: solar solar energy energy

Drink beer to fight prostate cancer.

2006-06-18T23:08:00.000+10:00

Xanthohumol. It's an ingredient in beer that thwarts prostate cancer, however you have to quaff 17 pints for a medically effective dose.

That's good news for the 1 in 11 men who are currently expected to develop prostate cancer during their lifetime in Australia. A not low incidence, but now your doctor can offer you some hope; get an at-risk of prostate cancer diagnosis and head straight down the pub for some preventative therapy. No more do you have to sit around at home worrying about contracting prostate cancer, summon up some dutch courage, get out there and fight the good fight? The more immersed in the treatment regimen you become the treatment you will realise you made the right choice.

An overlooked part of any cure is support, and there is nothing like being surrounded by your mates, shouting you through your convalescence, to know that you will pull though. A happy side effect is that you will be too drunk to worry about cirrhosis of the liver, but if you want to play it safe you can supplement the last few glasses of amber medicine with pizza. There is a flavenoid in the tomato paste that also protects againt prostate cancer, or order double. :::[Study by Fred Stevens of Oregon State University's College of Pharmacy]

For those who suspect their livers may already be in an advanced state of disrepair, scientists believe it is feasible to make pills containing concentrated doses of xanthohumol. Or even better, to bump up the concentration of the flavenoid in hops:

Scientists in Germany have already brewed up a beer containing 10 times as much xanthohumol as found with traditional recipes, according to Stevens.
"It tastes good," Stevens said of the beer, a microbrew with sales limited to within Germany. "It has a bit of a fresh taste."

So, cheers, here's to your very good health. And mine.

Learn more: :::[Wikipedia/hops plant]
Medicinal use
The medically active ingredients in Hops are humulene and lupulene.
Dried female buds have a high methylbutenol content, which has a mild sedative effect on the central nervous system; it is used in the treatment for insomnia, stress and anxiety. If one has trouble getting sleep, hop tea before going to bed may help, though a quantity of beer has similar results.
Hops' antibacterial qualities also stimulate gastric juice production.

Other blogs on: beer prostate cancer

Recycle your own sewage and slash water use

2006-06-17T10:46:00.000+10:00

A Sydney scientist has developed a revolutionary sewage recycling technology for homes and apartments that are a spin-off from nuclear research at Lucas Heights to develop antibiotics and environmental repair technology. Dr Tony Taylor, a microbiologist for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has developed technolgy that uses bacteria and fungi to convert sewage into water fit for gardens, flushing toilets and cleaning. :::[SMH]

A home would need a unit, costing about $2000, fitted with 40 to 50 gills - membranes, or panels - each about one metre by 1.5 metres. Sewage flowing down the middle of each gill would seep through, feeding bacteria and fungi growing on the outside.

The bacteria and fungi would eat the waste, using oxygen from the air to remove nutrients and toxins. So, it was also "a stomach and a lung". "We are aiming at reducing water consumption at the house by 40 to 60 per cent. You would still have sewage leaving the house, but it would first go around two or three times."

While existing sewage treatment plants already use bacteria, the new technology was significantly more efficient, and a fifth the cost.

Conventional treatment systems also use oxygen, creating bubbles in the sewage. "But bubbles are very expensive to make," Dr Taylor said. "They use a lot of electricity, producing lots of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels."

The running costs of the 'nano-particulate membrane bio-reactor' are about $A1.30 per kilolitre, the current cost of Sydney town-water.

Global Warming Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Drought Sewage Recycling Australia LOHAS Kyoto Energy

Sydney hits water conservation glass bottom.

2006-06-10T23:29:00.000+10:00

Does Sydney have water conservation fatigue?: :::[SMH]

MOST Sydneysiders have made efforts to reduce their water consumption but few households believe they can do much more to save water, and many are not prepared to make changes that affect their lifestyle.

A major study of Sydney residents' behaviours, attitudes and intentions regarding water use raises questions about where the next great savings in household water use can be made if the current water shortage continues.

The good news is that 87 per cent of Sydneysiders have acted to save water:

- behaviours targeted by water restrictions had changed most dramatically
car washing
garden watering
- Sydneysiders made changes that required little effort
shorter showers
turning off taps while brushing teeth
- 97 per cent do not flush toilets less frequently, recycle water for gardens or ensure dishwashers were filled before use

- water restrictions had directly affected only a minority of Sydneysiders because many people did not have a garden or own a car, or did not use water on them to any great extent

- publicity about the water shortage had touched most residents
only 13 per cent of people said they had taken no action to reduce their water usage
mostly by reducing car washing and garden watering or taking shorter showers
high-rise flat dwellers were less likely to change their water-use patterns
60 per cent did not want water prices to be increased to encourage lower water use

Study by Professor Bill Randolph of the City Futures Research Centre at the Uni. of NSW

Other posts on the drought and water conservation:

Other blogs on: water conservation, drought, sydney

The green h2o-me.

2006-06-10T23:28:00.000+10:00

I know what it is like to have hit that glass bottom in water conservation. You do what you can. Our apartment is an old 80 year old three story house on the middle level with original plumbing, so taps either leak a little or have to be turned off really tightly. This is a plus for the bathroom hot taps so the little one can't turn it on himself and risk scalding. He's the only one who bathes, in 8 inches of water, so about a quarter full. I estimate about 50 litres (13.2 gallons).

I used to recycle his used bathwater by gravity-fed siphoning it well into the garden via a long hose otherwise left hanging through the bathroom window bars. I was pretty chuffed with this but in the middle of planning improvements at the garden end to the concept we became aware of being struck by the scourge of Sydney, rising damp. A forced shower renovation over-turned that project, and now the little one has taken to farewelling his 50 litres on its way to Sydney Harbour. He had been delighted with the previous arrangement ever since he first understood how the garden being watered and feels that Nemo and his dad already have all the water they needs.

We installed a water efficient shower head that can set the plumbing system off screaming like an alarm when the pressure is up to far. My wife doesn't use it's efficiency settings but can finish her shower inside a commercial break most mornings, and in a flash when she is running late. I like a 15 minute one but now do it hopping around under the heated trickle most mornings to distribute the warmth evenly between shoulder-blades and upper and lower back. It's winter and I am showering to warm up. I get reminded of the makeshift winter bush camping showers of my youth, and other camping trips. I need my 15 minutes, I won't relinquish them. At a flow of say, three litres (0.8 gallons) per minute my 15 minutes uses 45 litres (11.8 gallons) a day for my ritual shower. I would not be surprised if my wife's water consumption here was 20 litres or less.

I am sure I am the only one who flushes the toilet less when it's reasonable, only slightly depressing the button to dilute to suit although, because I do the toilet training, I am inculcating my boy to be conscientious. Learn 'em when they are young.

In accordance with bucket-not-hose council water restrictions, bath water will also be recycled to wash the car, infrequently as is the case, usually it goes to the carwash bloke in Randwick who keeps recycling his water, and I'll scrub the wheels myself on return. Needing to improve the bucket system, I started saving our empty 1 liter PVC plastic water bottles to collect the used bath water whenever the car started looking dirty. I've done it on occasion but nothing has 'stuck' yet. The sticking point is storage space for the bottles. The missus wants them out of sight and no suitable (handy) storage space has been scoped for the DA.

The dishwasher is for storage. She considers using automatic dishwashers to wash dishes as lazy and overruled my defense that the dishwasher has eco-cycle and a low energy rating. I'm the greenie, I'm dubbed dishwasher! I reckon, what, 10 to 20 litres a day?

The washing machine water consumption I could not even begin to guess at. Not my job although I get roped in to hang the clothing out to dry. My wife thinks it's ridiculous that people with options still use drying machines in our climate. Here we can both agree.

Other posts on the drought and water conservation:

Other blogs on: water conservation, drought, sydney

Kiwi classics

2006-06-04T23:14:00.000+10:00

"Nobody in Rugby should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
Jono Gibbs - Chiefs

This is just one of the quotable quotes to come out of this last rugby Super 14 season from across the dutch, er, I mean ditch :::[Not PC] Ok one or two more and I'll hand you over to Not PC:

"I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes."
Rodney So'ialo - Hurricanes - on University

"I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."
Tana Umaga

"I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat."
Ewan McKenzie

Murray Deaker: "Have you ever thought of writing your autobiography?"
Tana Umaga: "On what?"

other blogs on: humour, rugby, super+14

Snowy Hydro sale scuttled by disgruntled backbenchers

2006-06-02T19:21:00.000+10:00

This next post is dedicated to the memory of Clem Grothaus of Gippsland Victoria, who died a few years ago after a long life raising a family arriving in WW2 from the ruins of a defeated Germany to work on the massive Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. He and 100,000 other people like him from over thirty countries in 1949 who worked on constructing Australia's largest engineering formed the nucleus of Australia's contemporary multicultural society.

I am sure his surviving family, daughter Eva, Michael his son and Pauline his wife are pleased to know that all Australians will continue to be shareholders in his shared legacy. May we always.

Snowy schemers too clever by half.

The final twist in the Snowy Mountains saga has left the body twitching and turning in the wind.
When John Howard pulled out of the deal decision to support a sharemarket float of the hydro-electric scheme due to backbencher pressure, taking the Federal Governments 13 per cent share of the scheme with him, the 'done deal', the fiat that the Iemma Government had presented us with, collapsed like a house of card. The NSW Government immediately announced they were pulling their 58 per cent, and the Victorian Government soon after pulled their 29 per cent share. :::[SMH]

A) It is ours to begin with, thanks to people like Clem. B) How can Australia's competing interests for something as fundamental as water be sorted out by the sharemarket? I believe in a free market but what sort of blind faith in unbridled capitalism is this that potentially allows an overseas entity to make the decision about when our farmers get the water and when the hydro-electric scheme does based on strict profitability? Thank goodness the people powered by commonsense triumphed over one-eyed ideology.

Other posts on the Snowy Mt Hydro sale

Snowy Hydro sale: Engineer steals Iemma's wind.
Protest letter by 56 prominent Aussies presented to Parliament

Other blogs on: snowy hydro scheme, drought, australia

Snowy Hydro sale: Engineer steals Iemma's wind.

2006-06-02T10:28:00.003+10:00

Yesterday I made mention of a letter signed by 56 prominent Australians objecting to the sale of Snowy. In today's SMH is the story of how the campaigner Doug Nicholas became fired up when NSW Premier Morris Iemma denied in Parliament his intention to sell. I guess he didn't trust Premier Morris.

That was last year. By yesterday he could unfurl his 56 Aussie a-lister autographs before the House of Representatives and the Senate, taking some of the wind out of Iemma's defense of the sale to the National Press Club of the same day. He has also done so in a manner that allows each of the signatories to claim a conscientious motivation: :::[SMH]

"I didn't win a single person [over] by telling them a single [other] person on the list," Mr Nicholas said.

But that is not stopping Morris Iemma who says we need the sale to fund health infrastructure. I am pleased the Premier recognises the past neglect to hospitals, but thought funding hospitals and schools is what I already pay my tax for.

Other blogs on snowy hydro scheme drought

Colorado family tackles global warming from home

2006-06-01T19:16:00.000+10:00

I write a blog called The Green House, Will Toor of Boulder County, Colerado and his family live in one. :::[USA Today]

Other blogs on: global warming climate change green living

Drought turns Aussie knight historical searching for solutions.

2006-06-01T14:23:00.000+10:00

You have to give it to Ian Kiernan. The man is a one man crusade, having started the unbelievably successful Clean up Australia Day 16 years ago he is not about to rest on his knighthood. He is now turning his attention to the formidable problem of solving Sydney's water problem, which he attacks in typically pragmatic style: :::[SMH]

Mr Kiernan said Sydney had to abandon its reliance on big engineering fixes to solve its water shortage and instead focus on innovative schemes that made the most of the water the city already had.

"We are capturing water that would otherwise be wasted as it flows to the ocean outfalls," he said. "We just have to keep turning over rocks and finding new opportunities to save water."

There is not one solution, but hundreds, and some of these have been worked out before:

SYDNEY could soon be tapping into a world of sandstone tunnels, disused industrial tanks and long-forgotten water courses, in an ambitious effort to take pressure off the city's dwindling water supplies.
The NSW Government yesterday provided $430,000 for the first stage of a Clean Up Australia project to restore the historic Busby's Bore as a source of recycled water for Hyde Park and Cook and Phillip Park.
The bore, hewn out of sandstone by convict labourers in the 1830s to pipe water to Sydney, runs 3.6 kilometres from Centennial Park to Hyde Park. The city eventually outgrew the bore, but water still runs through it.
In the more ambitious and costly second stage of the project, an underground lake formed in the dead end of a 1920s derelict train tunnel near the State Library could be used to capture and store run-off, stormwater and seepage to irrigate the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain.

The initial relief this puts on reducing demand to Sydney's water supply amounts to 110,000 litres a day, or 40 Olympic sized pools a year. There plenty of other opportunities to investigate as well. Well done Ian Kiernan.

It is also worth noting that Clean Up Australia has been extending it's horizons to Clean Up the World for 13 years now, with 'Clean Up' days organised in 100 countries and mobilising 35 million volunteers annually so far. The idea proved so viral in Australia I was sure it will easily pass borders, the extent of the success is breathtaking. It is one of the largest community-based environmental campaigns in the world, so if it comes to your town, be sure to roll up your sleeves and join in for a day.

More from their website. :::[Clean Up Australia website]

UPDATE:

Fifty six prominent Australians sign a letter objecting to the Snowy Mountains Hydro Ltd sale, amongst them my favourite actor, Cate Blanchette. It is just madness that a government can sell us what we already own. :::[Who signed?]

Other blogs on: sydney drought water efficiency

Oil price makes biodiesel competitive

2006-05-30T13:32:00.000+10:00

Leichhardt Council in Sydney is taking the opportunity of high fuel prices to respond meaningfully to the threat of global warming by fully converting its fleet of 59 street-cleaning and council vehicles to use biodiesel. :::[Video].

Nick Dyer, the mayor for Leichhardt described the biodiesel as a carbon neutral fuel, "What is grown this year is used as fuel the next."

Other councils in Sydney have plans to go green, and Sydney Ferries is also said to have a biodiesel trial project underway. Because spilt biodiesel decomposes rapidly it is ideal for water transport.

Other blogs on: global warming biodiesel leichhardt council sydney LOHAS sydney ferries

You can fight cancer with exercise

2006-05-30T11:50:00.000+10:00

Dr Andrew M M Haydon and colleagues at Monash Medical School in Melbourne have looked at baseline body mass index and levels of physical activity for subjects in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, a prospective study of 41,528 adults recruited between 1990 and 1994, and compared baseline levels of IGF-1or IGFBP-3 with those measurements. Insulin-like binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) is a protein that inhibits another protein called insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and in this way blocks IGF-1's proliferative effect on cell growth. Cancer is uncontrolled cell growth.

The researchers have identified new cases of colorectal cancer in this way as they analysed 443 colon cancer patients followed over more than five years: :::[SMH]

Among subjects who were physically active, an increase in
IGFBP-3 was associated with a 48 per cent reduction in colon
cancer-specific deaths. No association was apparent for IGF-1.
For the physically inactive, there was no association between
IGF-1 or IGFBP-3 and colon cancer survival.
Haydon said that "physical activity can increase IGFBP-3 levels,
which, in turn, reduces the amount of free IGF-1". IGF-1 has been
shown to stimulate cell growth, inhibit cell death, and promote
angiogenesis - the formation of new blood vessels, which tumours
need to grow.

This is not the first time a link between reduced cancer risk and exercise has been found:

"Other studies that have looked at this have shown a
dose-effect, meaning the more exercise the lower the risk, however
our study did not try to address this issue. We were examining the
effect of physical activity on one's prognosis following a
diagnosis of bowel cancer and the possible mechanisms behind this
effect."

Other blogs on: health, exercise, healthy living, cancer

Poor diet as bad as smoking.

2006-05-30T11:34:00.000+10:00

A Dutch public health agency (RIVM) has concluded that eating too little fish, fruit and vegetables is as bad for human health as smoking in a new report by the Dutch public health agency that will be used in an upcoming European Food Safety Authority analysis of food and diet risks. :::[SMH]

Each year in the Netherlands, poor diet causes about 13,000 deaths due to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, while obesity claims 7,000 lives by causing heart disease and cancer, it said.

The Dutch researchers also say that about 25 per cent of deaths and serious illness caused by overweight and obesity would be avoided if all adults shed 3 kg.

"In particular, attempts at reducing saturated and trans fatty acid uptake and increasing fish, fruit and vegetables consumption could save many lives," the report said.

Other blogs on: health, diet, food, healthy living

Hip to Tony Abbott's sleight of waist.

2006-05-11T17:23:00.000+10:00

How is this guy, Tony Abbott, he who should never walk into a wind tunnel?

The story so far is that Tony Abbott wants to avoid regulating the food industry advertising their goodies to children and has come up with a proposal to supposedly address the grotesque childhood obesity figures Australia sees in the national mirror. He is happy for them to keep advertising to kids but wants to 'force' advertisers to prominently display percentage of the recommended daily intake of their product on their packaging. Source: :::[SMH]

Good job Tony. You are the Australian federal Health Minister; in today's upside down world your new job is not to protect the health of Australians from predatory food practices like pushing carbohydrate tolerance by calorie cramming or Little MacAthletics sponsorship programmes. Your job is to protect fast food, advertising and media companies and their constituent shareholders from skinny returns.

And like a mad monk of mammon you seem to have perfected the bald-faced lie to protect these profits:

The minister, who has refused to ban the advertising of food during children's television viewing hours, said that Sweden and Quebec had had bans for more than a decade "with no discernible impact on childhood obesity".

It does not take much research to check that Quebec has the lowest childhood obesity rates in Canada; a recent study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has determined an unholy correlation between hip and knee replacements and obesity: Source: :::[CNW Group]

The provincial rates for obesity are generally in alignment with varying rates for joint replacement surgery. The provinces that reported the highest rates for hip replacements (Saskatchewan and Alberta) and for knee replacements (Manitoba and Nova Scotia) also have reported obesity rates that are higher than the national average of 23%. Mirroring the same relationship between BMI and joint replacement surgery, British Columbia and Quebec consistently had among the lowest rates for both surgeries and similarly have reported obesity rates that are lower than the national average.

That's because the kneebone is connected to the hip bone and the hip bone is connected to the tummy bone. A July, 2005 study confirms that childhood obesity in Quebec is well below national levels: Source: :::[Statistique Canada]

In 2004, the combined overweight/obesity rate of young people aged 2 to 17 was significantly above the national level in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Manitoba. The combined rate was significantly below the national level in Quebec and Alberta

Tony never had a childhood and doesn't have children. It's the only explanation for his seemingly blatant lie about his purported children's television food advertising restriction not working in Sweden: Source: :::[Swedish National Institute of Public Health]

11.2% of the girls and 14.5% of the boys were found to be overweight, and 3.3% of girls and 3.7% of boys were obese.

In Australia the proportion of overweight and obese children is 21% for boys and 23% for girls. With those jumbo ears Tony Abbott has, he needs a growing nose as much as our children need growing waists. Ok, I needn't be so harsh, I have checked my facts and he indeed does have children, but at least I do minimal fact checking; it seems Tony doesn't, or he does and is a liar. As it is rumoured he once wanted to be pope I am giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Not that I am against his basic concept for food packaging RDI labeling. Who could be? But it is no substitute to not creating the demand for excessive calories in the first place. Children get their calorie requirement messages from their bodies and it's worked fine for us throughout evolution. They don't need these naturally regulated messages overridden by increasingly sophisticated television advertising. Three other things strike me about the clear RDI labeling proposal if you are targeting children in the hope that they can control their calorie intake:

once the Mars Bar is in the kid's hand it seems a measure too late to put a warming on the package - wouldn't banning Mars from advertising to children in the first place be smarter?
you are going to need a RDI for each age-group, from tots to tweens to teens and twenty-somethings. Is this a plot to upsize products to accommodate a table on the label?
you hope the kid can read at minimum, then understand the concepts of recommended daily intake, body mass index, so have basic biological and nutritional knowledge as well as the ability to calculate the accumulated daily intake adjusted to the child's age group.

How many of us adults can do that? It's much easier to teach your children that if the food that has no packaging it is far more likely to be healthier for them. And their children when they have them, because the carbon footprint of unprocessed and unpackaged foodstuffs is minimised.

global+warming, activism, greenhouse+effect, children's+nutrition, childhood+obesity, packaging, food, organic+food, diet, health, sustainability

How the Foley family cut greenhouse gas emissions by 65%

2006-04-05T11:10:00.000+10:00

Jonathan Foley lived the American dream: a five-bedroom house on a large double lot, a wife, a young daughter, two dogs, two cars, and two jobs in the city.

One day Jonathan, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin researching how humans are altering the global climate , worked out how much this lifestyle was costing in terms of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. The family's direct emissions of carbon dioxide calculated at 42,000 pounds per year (19,050 kilograms). This is slightly less than average for two adults in the United States*.

Once Johnathon understood his family's contribution to global warming he knew they had to make changes. From Audubon.org:

His examination of his family's role in the process was a turning point. "Am I willing to put my money where my mouth is?" Foley asked himself. If not, he figured, he had no business telling others to do their part.

As the headline suggests, the rest is history. Find out how the Foleys went about cutting their GHG emissions by 65%. This Audubon Magazine article has plenty of practical links for US readers interested in what companies can help them cut their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Earth Australia LOHAS Kyoto Energy

Change the planet globe by globe.

2006-03-29T21:08:00.000+11:00

After my brush with the City of Sydney's box of energy efficient light bulbs giveaway of yesterday I have consoled myself and am back to exploring the subject with enthusiasm. There is plenty of information around.

Greenhouse.gov.au's Home Technical Manual has a comprehensive section on efficient househouse lighting, an overview of different types of lightinting and their correct application. It confirms big savings are to be made by switching to CFL. The table below shows the lifecycle costs for lighting systems using different globes to produce the same amount of light. Lifecycle costs include purchase, running and replacement costs.

	20 W CFL	100 W Incandescent	65W Halogen
Running cost over 10,000 hours*	$20	$100	$75**
Average life	10,000 hours	1,000 hours	2,000 hours
Purchase cost	$25 1 lamp	$5 10 bulbs @ 50c	$20 5 lamps @ $4
Total cost	$45	$105	$95

* Based on 10 cents per unit of electricity,
** Includes magnetic transformer losses.

Ecovoice report in their March 2006 edition that NSW will be saving $2.8 million by converting all traffic light from incandescent bulbs to new, highly efficient light emitting diode (LED) technology.

I also found a link to neco.com.au, an online eco friendly hardware store where I can buy my bulbs.

Remember, if the old idea is now no good, change the lightbulb.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Energy Efficiency Earth Australia LOHAS Sydney Energy

Drop my watt?

2006-03-29T04:19:00.000+11:00

The easiest way to combat global warming is to put fewer emissions up there. Since 90 per cent of our electricity is generated by burning coal, which creates greenhouse gas, lowering the electricity bill seems a good place as any to start.
So I was delighted to Google up an offer from the Lord Mayor of Sydney for free energy efficient light globes.

"City of Sydney residents who want to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions can receive a free box of energy efficient light bulbs, which are being provided through a joint initiative between the City and Low Energy Supplies and Services (LESS).

Each box contains five 15 watt bulbs, which are equivalent to a 75 watt incandescent globe, but last eight times longer than regular globes. Households who use the bulbs should save about $240 over their lifetime.

I do the maths - 20% of the energy usage of filament based light bulbs. A saving of $240 per lightbulb. That box is a $1,200 giveaway by the City of Sydney.

Great! Except I live in Wentworth, not City of Sydney. So close ... so I post as a service to my neighbours, and for a cleaner climate.

LESS estimates that 2,000 boxes will potentially help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4,800 tonnes, the equivalent of around 1,066 less cars on the road.

Ta: City of Sydney resident blogger nicholsstreetsurryhills

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Earth Australia LOHAS Kyoto Energy Blogging, reducing+emissions, Sydney

Welcome to The Green House.

2006-03-26T00:28:00.000+11:00

Global warming is real, and there is nothing the skeptics can do about it. But you can, and I can. Along with a growing movement of millions who are making simple and easy adjustments to their lifestyles to make big reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.

75% of the world's energy that sustains the global economy that supports our lifestyle is derived from fossil fuel. Global warming skeptics argue that changing is going to cost too much money. They claim the maths just does not add up. And so we still have the situation where 75% of the world's energy is provided by oil and coal despite the 'realness' of global warming becoming more and more apparent every day.

Those with the hands on the levers of the economy protect the status quo to drive growth, pumping more and more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Humanity's collision path with habitat collapse has us looking like the proverbial deer in the headlights, but we don't have to sit there and wait for global warming to get worse. We can take action now, small but effective cumulative actions, to mitigate extreme climate change.

That is what this blog is about. I am here to teach myself how to make slight adjustments to my lifestyle to minimise my carbon footprint and, over time, find out how to neutralise the effect of the carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere as a result of my lifestyle. I am also curious to see how much money I can save by conserving energy.

This project is about living within one's means by taking into account the true cost of goods and services, and it is about learning stewardship, and passing on to our children the ability to prosper in a sustainable way. Teaching them to trade in the currency of life, energy.

I will be looking at how my spending can be adjusted to send out market signals to support sustainablity. An example is how the costs of cheap oil and coal should not be borne by humanity and habitat just down the track. There's not just me, there's millions, and green business is becoming big business.

Mainly this blog journey is about my becoming part of the solution, and not being an on-going part of the problem. So bookmark me, blogroll me, furl-me, but come back and see how I am going.

Global Warming Climate Change Environment Lifestyle Green Carbon Sink Earth Australia LOHAS Kyoto Protocol Energy Blogging Blog

The Green House

Hypermiling... the art of maximising fuel efficiency

Personal carbon trading

NSW households emitting 2.5million tonnes of CO2 annually

There's money in restocking biodiversity

Rudd backs deep 2020 emissions cuts

Lessons About Climate Change Pose Many Challenges for Science Teachers

One billion climate refugees in our lifetimes

Google, Cisco to help fight global poverty

Mattel recalls more Toys

Solar USB Charger

Parasites trickle-feeding of your power

New kind of 'vampire' sucks power out of homes

With apologies to Salvador Dali

Global warming effects

Blood moon due on August 28

Beautiful pictures from Antarctica

Biofuel Threatens Europe's Wildlife

David Hicks goes green

Witchcraft not wicked

Battle at Kruger Park

Man turns down $5,000,000,000 (that's 5 Billion) to save ancestral lands

Cycle to work to save planet, pocket, and parking

If it makes it bigger, it's on

Robots to be folk dance historians

New Theory - Periodic Mass Extinctions

Save the black cockatoo

Tree-planting not the carbon-offset low-hanging fruit

10 tips for wildlife visitors to your garden

Solar cost-prohibitive? Buckyballs to that

Sydney emergency water supply found.

World map of renewable energy distribution

The solar roof tile: a cool way to harvest the sun.

Drink beer to fight prostate cancer.

Medicinal use

Recycle your own sewage and slash water use

Sydney hits water conservation glass bottom.

The green h20-me.

Drought turns Aussie knight historical searching for solutions.

Snowy Hydro sale scuttled by disgruntled backbenchers

The green h2o-me.

Sydney hits water conservation glass bottom.

Drought turns Aussie knight historical searching for solutions.

Snowy Hydro sale scuttled by disgruntled backbenchers

Kiwi classics

Snowy Hydro sale scuttled by disgruntled backbenchers

Snowy schemers too clever by half.

Snowy Hydro sale: Engineer steals Iemma's wind.

Colorado family tackles global warming from home

Drought turns Aussie knight historical searching for solutions.

Oil price makes biodiesel competitive

You can fight cancer with exercise

Poor diet as bad as smoking.

Hip to Tony Abbott's sleight of waist.

How the Foley family cut greenhouse gas emissions by 65%

Change the planet globe by globe.

Drop my watt?

Welcome to The Green House.