Australia's Joke...

What is this, a joke? A 5% cut on 2000 levels? They have to be kidding right? It seems that developed nations ARE indeed quite serious about solving the climate change crisis. Right.

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Australia announced plans Monday to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 15 percent by 2020, angering environmental groups that had lobbied for much deeper cuts.

In a policy statement, the government said the final target would depend on whether developed and developing nations, including major emitters like China and India, could agree to binding reductions under a new United Nations climate treaty next year.

If the world acts together to forge deep cuts, Australia will reduce its emissions by 15 percent of its 2000 levels over 10 years starting in 2010. If there is no agreement, Australia will cut emissions by 5 percent over the same period.

----from the International Herald Tribune (read full article here)

Bottom drops out of recycling industry

Bottom drops out of recycling industry - Yahoo! News: "CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Norm Steenstra's budgeting worries mount with each new load of cardboard, aluminum cans and plastics jugs dumped at West Virginia's largest county recycling center."

Web 2.0/5 minds/Energy Security

When asked what I to choose a topic for my talk at the IIIEE seminar I hesitated between Web 2.0, five minds for sustainability and energy security. I ended up speaking about all three at the same time. Since the projector did not work it must have been one of those rare Web 2.0 talks that do not use a computer. Anyway, for those of you brave enough to attend, here are the links to various things I mentioned. Thank you for coming and listening!
Web 2.0

• Start with watching Web's Secret Stories by Jonathan Harris and visiting his Universe;
  
• Google Reader. Note the links on the left-hand side of this blog which were created directly from the Reader. If you want to share your Google reading items with me or other friends I can tell you how
  
• This is my Energy Security blog on the same platform;
  
• Go to the front page of the MESPOM to see how a blog works in reality;
• Check Grokker;
• Check LinkedIn ; Note the IIIEE group
  

Five minds for sustainability
There is not so much on the Web except the Five Minds Website (Web 2.0, of course). You will need a permisssion to see all the content.

Energy security
This is my Energy Security blog on the same platform;

Is it Fair to Treat China as a Christmas Tree to Hang Everybody's Complaints?

Putting its Own Energy Saving into Perspective

This is the Abstract of the paper by ZhongXiang Zhang originally posted by Chunyu Liang (Class'07) to the MESPOM Google Group. Other papers by ZhongXiang Zhang can be found here.

China has been the world's second largest carbon emitter for years. Recent studies show that China had overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest emitter in 2007. This has put China on the spotlight, just at a time when the world community starts negotiating a post-Kyoto climate regime under the Bali Roadmap. China seems to become such a Christmas tree on which everybody can hang his/her complaints. This paper will first discuss whether such a critics is fair by examining China's own efforts towards energy saving, the widespread use of renewable energy and participation in clean development mechanism. Next, the paper puts carbon reductions of China's unilateral actions into perspective by examining whether the estimated greenhouse gas emission reduction from meeting the country's national energy saving goal is achieved from China's unilateral actions or mainly with support from the clean development mechanism projects. Then the paper discusses how far developing country commitments can go in an immediate post-2012 climate regime, thus pointing out the direction and focus of future international climate negotiations. Finally, emphasizing that China needs to act as a large and responsible developing country and take due responsibilities and to set a good example to the majority of developing countries, the paper articulates what can be expected from China to illustrate that China can be a good partner in combating global climate change.

This paper can be downloaded at the URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1285618

The financial crisis and environmental services

This is an interesting article to reflect on, considering the current global financial crisis: As we look for answers, it is also quite important to note that the global economy loses more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study. Happy reading (and thinking) from Nairobi!

Jenn

True sustainability

Got this one from Gergo on EnvSci07.

IKEA Lamp (from Wayne)

Just wanted to share with everyone one of my favorite commercials, from everyone's favorite big box Swedish retailers!

Starbucks, water waster?

This story is really baffling, and sort of ridiculous. How long has this been going on? Why hasn't this been brought up before? How many liters of water are being wasted every day?

Starbucks Denies it Wastes Water

Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point: Scientific American

Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point: Scientific American: The world's most outspoken climatologist argues that today's carbon dioxide levels are already dangerously too high. What can we do if he is right? (By Michael D. Lemonick)

Recent drop in crude is an illusion - oil is going to $500

Fortune Magazine. - Sep. 22, 2008: Here comes $500 oil if Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion - and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He's just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.

Aquarium scum: fuel of the future

USATODAY.com reports on efforts of obtaining biofuels from algae. I have read before that this method requires less land and water and thus does not compete with food. A previous entry (Algae and Jet Fuel) on this blog refers to an attempt to use algae derivatives as fuel in aviation.

US EPA uses Google Earth to map out places with high RE potential

Originally posted to envsci07 by Fai (MESPOM Class'09)

Google Earth is used as a platform to map out sites suitable for renewable energyy. These sites are potentially contaminated and generally unfit for traditional forms of development.

According to Ecogeek, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken advantage of Web 2.0. They have recently released an interactive site that uses Google Earth as a platform to map out places across the US that have high potential for renewable energy development. The information for this map comes from EPA databases.
The program allows the user to choose from a sidebar list of renewable energy types – various categories of solar, biomass and wind power. When one or several of these categories are checked, the map displays colored dots indicating locations that have shown high potential to produce the indicated type of energy. The dots are different colors depending on if they represent abandoned mine lands, brownfields, RCRA sites or Superfund sites.

Read more

Gore Calls For ‘Civil Disobedience’ To Stop Construction Of Coal Plants

Gore Calls For ‘Civil Disobedience’ To Stop Construction Of Coal Plants (Environmental Leader)

Al Gore is urging young people to stop the construction of coal plants without carbon capture and sequestration technology through acts of disobedience, Reuters reports.

This is interesting because many believe that 'war-like' measures are necessary to combat global warming. Such measures would primarily be directed at coal, which can potentially release more GHGs than all other fossil fuels combined. At the Tällberg Forum this summer, we prototyped the International "Coal Disarmament Commission" which would negotiate and enforce a ban or severe restrictions on coal mining by China, Russia, US, Germany and Australia.

Is Keeping Kosher Good for the Environment?: Scientific American

Is Keeping Kosher Good for the Environment? by Scientific American represents a good example of environmental assessment involved in carbon footprinting of various food stuffs.
Conclusions? Yes, it may have both biophysical and spiritual benefits ... if correctly used.

Debate between Monsanto and Michael Pollan

Originally posted to envsci07 by wjp (MESPOM Class'10):

Hey everyone, just got this link from Treehugger.com. It seems like an
interesting discussion between the CEO of Monsanto, Hugh Grant, and
one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan. It's about 40 minutes.

Blogging, Google Reader and Google Toolbar

Do you sometimes regret that you don't have time to read all these important environmental news? And do not want to have more emails? Try Google Reader! The Reader will collect RSS Feeds for you in one place. You can quickly browse through the feeds and mark those of them which are interesting as:

• starred - probably to come to them again and again;
• with labels (e.g. "wind energy") - to be able to retrieve them later according to classification;
• as shared to be available to your friends.

I find it especially useful that you can pre-categorize RSS feeds, for example, all feeds referring to search on "oil" in BBC News will be classified as "energy" and all fields from the IEMA will be classified as "environment". Multiple classification is of course possible, this is not Windows folders!

Most of the periodicals, newspapers, environmental bulleting and Websites provide RSS feeds. You can collect a feed from Picasa (to watch for new photos), Facebook and even this blog!

Yes, you don't actually need to go to this Webpage to check what is new, it is sufficient to subscribe to the feed on the right-hand side and then it will come to your Google Reader.

So, can we use Reader for Blogging. Yes!

Using the Reader for Blogging
The little box on the left-hand side of this Blog called "Envbits" via Aleh is automatically generated by my Google Reader. Every time I see an interesting piece of news I classify it as "envbits" and I have tuned Settings so that it is automatically sent to this blog. You need to have administrative privileges on the blog to do that.

A more straitforward but less elegant way of fast blogging is if you have Google Toolbar installed in your browser (IE or Firefox). It has a button called "Send to ..." and when you press the button you can choose to send the thing to your blog. It sends a snap of the page and its source and then you can edit it.

More to come ...

Blogging: why and how

I have been torn between two emotions: on the one hand wanting to share interesting pieces of environmental information, on the other hand getting increasingly irritated by the flow of information that clog my inbox.

Do you know the feeling? You get that email with an interesting link and then you say, ok, I will read it one day, and then many days later you read it and discover that you want to save it. But how? On your hard disk? In which folder? How many pieces of information have been already "saved", lost and forgotten by you? How many times have you vaguely remembered that something important was there, but where is it now?

Well, my first answer is: blogging. Want to share something which may not be immediately relevant, but interesting and useful in a longer term? Post it on the blog! Want people to find it? Label it appropriately!

Blogging is very simple

You want to try? Let us know and we will make you an author of this blog. Then you just click "New Post" and can write whatever you want. Label it according to the topic (e.g. "renewable energy" or "frogs") and click the "Publish" button. Here you go ... But more to come!

Algae and Jet Fuel

Originally posted by wjp (MESPOM Class '09) to envsci07

This is an interesting development that makes it sound like commercial- scale algal biofuels aren't that far off....

Innovations and Marine from Wayne

Post to envsci07 by Wayne (MESPOM Class'10):

• Innovations: Household wind energy;
• Marine: World's largest marine reserve proposed in Australia
  

Story of stuff, saving civilization and nuclear energy from Irina

This is the first post, I have simply inserted Irina's (ESP Class'08) email posted to envsci07:

1. The story of stuff short movie that you can find interesting and useful. It's a bit old, but it seems that some of you didn't see it before.
2. "Mobilizing to save civilization" by Lester Brown is worth reading.
3. Those who are interested in nuclear energy may find this link useful.