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But who's the biggest seller of solar electric lights on the continent? Until recently, perhaps surprisingly, it was the French oil giant Total — which was selling portable lights through its gas station forecourts and other channels. That leadership position has now been overtaken by TreeHugger regulars Solar-Aid. In a blogpost over at Sunshine Is Free, Solar Aid CEO reveals how a tiny, recently launched charity has become the biggest seller of solar lights in Africa:
At SolarAid and SunnyMoney, we have huge respect for the work Total are doing – and will do all that we can to encourage and support it – but it’s hard not to be a bit competitive! So we smiled when we learnt that they have sold 111,000 solar lights in the last three years. Here are our latest figures:
- Sold in the last three years: 203,000
- Sold in the last seven months: 137,500
- Sold in October 2012: 35,000
We believe this makes us the biggest last mile seller of solar lights in Africa; probably by a big margin if you look at our current run rate.
This isn't just a story about how small social enterprises can have a massive global impact. It's also pretty neat to note that fossil fuel giants are getting in on the action too, and not - we suspect - just to boost their corporate image. Solar power offers huge opportunities in the emerging markets of poor countries. It's neat to see how different players are jockeying to meet that demand.
Arctic sea ice running low? No problem, according to scientists – technology can refreeze it. Photo courtesy: Yahoo!News
2012 marked a new record low for the extent of Arctic sea ice, but apparently that's not a problem. We can just refreeze it!
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the key to a lasting solution to 'human-enhanced' climate change, however since governments and industries aren't doing a very good job of meeting reduction goals, strategies to reduce the worst effects of climate change may be needed. Dr. David Keith, a Canadian physicist, climate scientist and public policy expert who teaches at Harvard University, has done extensive research into the field of Solar Radiation Management, which involves different ways of reducing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface.
The concept behind solar radiation management is fairly basic: introduce a substance into the environment that will reflect more sunlight back into space, and the resulting reduction in the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface will cause an immediate temperature drop in the affected region. One method of doing this involves spraying reflective aerosols — tiny drops of liquid about the same size as those that make up clouds, such as sulphur dioxide or titanium dioxide — into the stable stratosphere, where they can persist for years. Similar aerosols injected into any level of the troposphere (the lowest level of the atmosphere, where all weather happens) would quickly get caught up in the turbulent weather that we see every day and would not last long enough to help reduce incoming sunlight.
Would this really work? Studying the effects of volcanic eruptions (which is where they got the idea from in the first place) and using computer model simulations have given scientists plenty of evidence that it will.
Some approaches to solar radiation management have tried to deal with the situation on a global scale, with talk of releasing a million tons of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to lower the temperature around the world. However, these ideas have come under criticism, because of the potential for unforeseen consequences. For example, it has been suggested that introducing sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere could destroy the Earth's protective ozone layer, exposing us to dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Dr. Keith and his colleagues suggest that much better results could be achieved, with a minimum of risk, by only using solar radiation management on a regional scale. Therefore, rather than spread the reflective substance across the entire stratosphere, we would only use it over the area that needed it. They used a selected climate model to simulate these regional changes, compared to a uniform global change, and according to CalTech News, "it took five times less solar reduction than in the uniform reflectance models to recover the Arctic sea ice to the extent typical of pre-Industrial years."
Injecting just five metric tons of these reflective aerosols into the Arctic stratosphere could lower solar radiation levels over the Arctic Ocean enough to refreeze it and allow it to remain frozen. Before you get too alarmed by that five metric tons, the latest official figures from the US EPA show that in 1999, industry released over 17 million metric tons of sulphur dioxide into the troposphere.
There are down-sides to the plan, of course.
Likely no surprise to anyone, it is going to cost money. Compared to how much the effects of climate change are projected to cost us, or what the costs of reducing emissions will be, though, it is a drop in the bucket. Dr. Keith, along with Justin McClellan, from the Aurora Flight Science Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Jay Apt, from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published a cost-analysis report in the journal Environmental Research Letters, in August of this year.
Their report states that the technology to deliver these materials to the right altitude and location already exist, and by modifying existing aircraft to act as the delivery method, the entire effort of running the program would cost between $5-8 billion per year (depending on the method of delivery), with the majority of that cost going towards buying or producing the sulphur dioxide itself. According to the same report (referencing from the 2007 IPCC report) "the costs of climate damages or of emission mitigation are commonly estimated to be 0.2—2.5% of 2030 global GDP... equivalent to roughly $200B to $2000B per year. Our estimates of the cost of delivering mass to the stratosphere — likely to be the most substantial part of the cost of SRM deployment — are less than 1% of this figure."
So, we can do this, and compared to the alternatives, it is fairly cost effective. However, is this something we should be doing?
From the standpoint of the effect of having sea ice as opposed to not having sea ice, we should choose to have the sea ice. Without it, global temperatures will rise even faster than they are now. When the sea ice is there, it reflects back solar radiation into space and limits the amount of warming there is of the planet. Take that sea ice away and the darker water absorbs a large percentage of the incoming solar radiation. This will not only contribute to more melting of sea ice, but will give a generally warmer atmosphere and as the water warms it will expand, causing further rises in sea level.
There is the risk of destroying the stratospheric ozone layer, especially if these reflective aerosols get into the Antarctic stratospheric clouds that accumulate during the winter, which are the primary cause of the Antarctic ozone hole. These chemicals, in higher concentrations, would enhance the destruction of ozone and make the ozone hole even larger. However, using a regional scale approach would allow us to limit the concentrations of the aerosols, and thus limit the damage they cause.
There's one other problem with this idea, though — a general tendency towards quick fixes.
Peter Mooney, with Ottawa's Etc Group, which monitors the effects of technology and corporate strategies on society and the environment told The National Post, "It's naive to think that once [solar radiation management] becomes a political option that governments won't just take it on and interpret it as they wish. They will always find scientists who will give them the spin that they want."
"[We shouldn't be] opening up the back door for politicians to creep out of, claiming that, 'Don't worry folks. We don't need to do anything because we have technological fixes that we can deploy on short notice.'"
Cooking liquids are one of the most valuable, wasted commodities in the modern kitchen. "Experienced" water contains a lot of taste and nutrition that many people just pour down the drain once the cooking process is finished.
Stop wasting this resource and save some money replacing some OTC (over-the-counter) products as well.
Asparagus - clear up blackheads, pimples, and other facial sores by dabbing them with asparagus water twice a day. Toothpaste dabbed on the blemish works well too. Put on at night, wash off in the morning. Good-bye expensive drugstore remedies.
Eggs - clean pewter by immersing the objects in egg water and letting them sit for a few minutes. Then dip a soft cloth in the water and rub your treasures clean. Rinse with clear water and wipe dry. Good-bye dangerous, toxic OTC cleaners.
If you are a gardener (no matter how big or small), egg water is a wonderful tonic for your plants. Give them a couple of good drinks of egg water throughout the year to help them remain healthy and hearty. Cut back on your fertilizer bill.
Peas - relieve the itch of poison ivy and other rashes by sponging the skin with pea water. Repeat as often as necessary.
Potatoes (unpeeled) - put glistening highlights in brown hair by dipping a pastry brush in potato water and saturating your hair (being careful not to get any water in your eyes). Wait 30 minutes and rinse thoroughly with cool water. Repeat every few weeks to retain the highlights.
Do you bake your own bread? I do and I have never found anything that makes a moister, lighter loaf than potato water. I save my potato water (usually with a potato blended into the liquid) and use it as the liquid in my bread dough. Try it once - you'll be hooked.
Of course, there is also the option of keeping a container in your freezer and using it to hold the liquids until you are ready to make a soup or stew. When I am saving the liquid, I simmer it down to just a small amount and let cool. Then I add it to the container in the freezer. When it's time to make a soup or stew, I already have an excellent starting point for the broth that comes pre-loaded with loaded with flavour, vitamins and minerals.
We already know that smart grid technologies could cut peak power demand by 20%, but this is particularly important in remote communities where energy security is fragile.
That's why Hawaii is experimenting with demand response technologies, powering down lights and appliances in businesses and homes when the wind stops blowing. Now Business Green has an interesting case study of the Faroe Islands' demand response experiments, where 3 major businesses account for a full 10% of the islands energy use. These businesses — all involved in one way or another in the fishing industry — see a controlled, predictable power down scenario as much more favorable than the alternative:
Bergfrost Cold Storage boasts a storage tunnel drilled into a mountain at the harbour side, which means it can lose power for 24 hours without causing damage to its frozen foods. Hiddenfjord Salmon Farm, by contrast, can only operate for up to 15 minutes without power loss harming its fish. After 15-30 minutes, three to four million fish would be lost, costing the company a minimum of 20 million DKK (£2.2m). But SEV knows the constraints and the company maintains 10-15 minutes of controlled outage is far better than the prospect of emergency blackouts that can last for hours.
The other interesting element of the Faroe's case study is that rather than going after the relatively complex challenge of shaping consumer demand, the folks who run the island's energy supply have instead chosen to create partnerships with a few key industry players who represent a hefty chunk of demand. The result is a much less complex, easier to implement scheme that still delivers significant energy savings at a fraction of the cost and red tape of a consumer-oriented program.
Beautifully designed, ecologically sound, and socially-minded are not phrases we associate with toothbrushes. But maybe they should be. Recently profiled on Design Milk, Bogobrush is a biodegradable toothbrush on a mission to bring healthy smiles to people across the country that do not have accesses to dental care.
Growing up the children of a dentist, the brother and sister team of John and Heather McDougall seemed destined to design a product that brought social awareness, and environmental action to something as mundane as brushing your teeth.
According to Bogobrush, 450 million toothbrushes are thrown away in the United States. An astounding 80 million people in the country lack access to adequate dental care. Enter Bogobrush: it’s crafted from bamboo and nylon bristles that are biodegradable. That means you can bury it in your garden instead of sending it to a landfill.
For every Bogobrush bought, one toothbrush is donated to a giving partner. Right now partners include centers in Detroit, Atlanta and Minnesota. You can preorder a single Bogobrush for $10.00 or buy a year’s subscription for $40.00, and every three months a Bogobrush will be delivered to you and someone in need.
The world's rarest whale, the spade-toothed beaked whale, has been spotted for the first time in New Zealand. The whale stranded and died on a beach in December 2010. Photo courtesy: New Zealand Department of Conservation
The world's rarest whale has been spotted for the first time, in New Zealand, where two of the whales stranded themselves.
The two spade-toothed beaked whales, a mother and calf, stranded and died on Opape Beach on the North Island of New Zealand, in December 2010. The mother was 17 feet (5.3 meters) long and the calf was 11 feet (3.5 m) long.
A report describing the whales and the analysis of their DNA appears in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal Current Biology.
"Up until now, all we have known about the spade-toothed beaked whale was from three partial skulls collected from New Zealand and Chile over a 140-year period. It is remarkable that we know almost nothing about such a large mammal," Rochelle Constantine, a marine biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, said in a statement. "This is the first time this species has ever been seen as a complete specimen, and we were lucky enough to find two of them."
At first, the animals were thought to be much more common Gray's beaked whales. Their identity came to light following routine DNA analysis, which was done as part of a 20-year program to collect data on beaked whale species in New Zealand waters. New Zealand is a known hotspot for whale stranding, and it has the highest rates and greatest diversities of stranded whale species in the world, the researchers report.
The New Zealand Department of Conservation photographed the animals and collected tissue samples.
"When these specimens came to our lab, we extracted the DNA as we usually do for samples like these, and we were very surprised to find that they were spade-toothed beaked whales," Constantine said. "We ran the samples a few times to make sure before we told everyone."
The researchers said they have no idea why the whales have remained so elusive.
"It may be that they are simply an offshore species that lives and dies in the deep ocean waters and only rarely wash[es] ashore," Constantine said.
Grand Canyon viewed from Hopi Point, on the south rim. New evidence suggests the western Grand Canyon was cut to within 70 percent of its current depth long before the Colorado River existed. Photo courtesy: US National Park Service
The age of the Grand Canyon is a puzzle, because the Colorado River has washed away many of the clues.
So for 150 years, geologists have pondered the processes shaping the canyon, one of the world's great wonders and a living laboratory for understanding Earth history.
The gorge's rugged beauty, with its sheer cliff and steep slopes, looks young. And the general scientific consensus, updated at a 2010 conference, holds that the copper-colored Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon beginning 5 million to 6 million years ago. Many strong lines of evidence support this theory, including a pile of gravel and limestone pancaked with lava at a place called Muddy Creek. This geologic layer cake, at the western mouth of the canyon, locks down the Colorado River from exiting the canyon before 6 million years ago.
However, recent advances in dating techniques have upended the notion of a uniformly young Grand Canyon. The new approach determines when erosion uncovered rocks in the canyon. The big picture: there were two ancestral canyons, one in the west and one in the east. And the western canyon may be as old as 70 million years.
The latest sally is a study reporting samples from the western Grand Canyon were close to the Earth's surface 70 million years ago. The evidence suggests the western Grand Canyon was cut to within 70 percent of its current depth of 3,200 feet (1,000 meters) long before the Colorado River existed. The results appear today (Nov. 29) in the journal Science.
"Our data suggests that there was in fact a large canyon present for most of the Grand Canyon by about 70 million years ago in its western segment, and that canyon was carved to nearly modern depths," said Rebecca Flowers, lead study author and a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "In the eastern canyon, the canyon was higher, and lowered into its modern configuration sometime after 20 million years ago."
View of the western Grand Canyon and the Colorado River from the canyon bottom. New data suggests most of this portion of the canyon was carved by 70 Ma, more than 60 Ma earlier than generally believed. Photo courtesy: Rebecca Flowers.
This much older western "paleocanyon" was incised by an ancient river flowing west to east. This Cretaceous river carved the western Grand Canyon to within a few hundred meters of its modern depth, and the eastern Grand Canyon to a higher level.
When combined with rock sample ages Flowers collected in the eastern Grand Canyon during this study and in 2008, the overview gives the Grand Canyon a complicated history. However, the research can fit into the constraints presented by the Muddy Creek barrier and other evidence supporting a young canyon, Flowers told OurAmazingPlanet.
"The presence of the [Muddy Creek] detritus represents the integration of the river system," Flowers said. That is, the Muddy Creek simply represents the Colorado River appropriating the paleocanyons and created a single drainage 6 million years ago.
Two canyons? Geologist Richard Young, who has studied the Grand Canyon for nearly 50 years, said scientists have considered the idea of two Grand Canyon precursors — one west, one east — since the research community's first symposium in 1964.
"We agreed that there were two canyons, one in the west and in the east, we don't disagree on that," he said. The problem is that Dr. Flowers wants to make the western canyon very old, Young told OurAmazingPlanet.
"It really looks like they're onto something, but it's hard to make sense out of it," said Young, a professor at the State University of New York in Geneseo. "It's really good work and it's really interesting, so obviously there's something we're missing in the story. I'm sure we're going to be talking about it forever," he said.
Recent work by geologist Karl Karlstrom supports the idea for a paleocanyon in the east. "We showed very conclusively that there was a paleocanyon in the eastern Grand Canyon that was carved between 25 and 15 million years ago," said Karlstrom, a professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
But Karlstrom is a strong advocate for a Grand Canyon quickly carved by the Colorado River starting 6 million years ago, not older rivers coming from the west. The western Grand Canyon region was cut across nearly at right angles by one or more paleocanyons with rivers that flowed north around 70 million years ago, but these paleorivers did not follow the modern course of Grand Canyon, Karlstrom said.
"The best answer is that Grand Canyon was carved by the west-flowing Colorado River in the last 5 to 6 million years and that earlier paleocanyons were likely re-used and deepened once the river found its present path," he said.
The American Southwest had a radically different appearance 70 million years ago. Most of the region's famed dinosaur fossils come from the Jurassic, and the canyon-cutting identified by Flowers and colleague Ken Farley of Caltech began in the Late Cretaceous.
North America during the Late Cretaceous, 68 million years ago. The flat Colorado Plateau can be seen in the southwest, bounded by the Sevier Mountains on the west and the Western Interior Sea to the east. Photo courtesy: U.S. Geological Survey
Seen from the air, the flat Colorado plateau might be recognizable, but the rainbow-hued pillars and monuments of national parks such as Arches, Zion and Bryce had yet to take shape. Close to the west rose a volcanic arc similar to today's Andes — the precursor to California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. A wrinkled belt called the Sevier mountains was northwest of the plateau. To the east was the Western Interior Seaway. Rivers flowed out of mountains generally heading northeast into the ocean.
The infant Rocky Mountains didn't start their rise in the east until about 10 million years later, though this timing is debated. The Basin and Range province, which built the classic Southwest monuments and valleys immortalized in film and art, began tearing apart 20 million years ago. Rivers crossing the Colorado Plateau reversed their course, flowing east to west, around this time.
"We know the river systems must have evolved dramatically during this time. The controversial part of it is how they evolved," Flowers said.
Trash made up of balloons and plastic bags can prove hazardous to desert wildlife. Photo courtesy: Erin Zylstra
Ocean garbage patches get a lot of attention, but a lot of trash is blowing across some of the most treasured and remote parts of America's desert wilderness, according to a new study out of the University of Arizona.
Biologist Erin Zylstra mapped and added up all the wind-dispersed plastic trash bags and latex balloons in two protected parts of the Saguaro National Park in Arizona. She was surprised to discover that these particular kinds of very mobile trash outnumbered desert tortoises and western diamondback rattlesnakes. Like in the oceans, the bags and balloons pose potential threats to wildlife.
The study, due to be published in the February 2013 issue of Journal of Arid Environments, grew out of surveys Zylstra was conducting on those same two reptile species as part of her studies at the University of Arizona, where she is now a doctoral student.
"We were spending a lot of time surveying and we started to notice a lot of trash," Zylstra said. "Balloons are everywhere, once you start to look." The balloons were often found in clumps, tied with string and can become so degraded they look almost like lichens stuck to rocks, she explained.
"Western diamondback rattlesnakes are pretty common in the areas we studied," she said. "The fact that there is considerably more balloons than snakes was kind of shocking."
Like trash on the oceans and in coastal areas, winds seems to play a role in where trash collects in the desert as well. Zylstra found that the wind-blown bags and balloons in the two study areas, situated on opposite sides of the city of Tucson, reflected seasonal wind patterns in the region.
Because balloons are made of latex, they eventually decompose, although how long that takes in the desert is unknown. Plastic grocery bags, on the other hand, only break down if they are exposed to sunlight. Even then they only break into smaller pieces and become part of the water and soils, without actually changing into other compounds. That means they could mix with the water and food ingested by wild animals.
"Nobody really knows where those pieces of plastic bags end up," Zylstra said. "It's not known whether they have toxic effects." One possible concern is that the bags could end up in the few desert watering holes that animals of all kinds must share.
Another potential hazard for wildlife is the strings that come with the bunches of balloons, said Don Swann, a National Park Service biologist who works at Saguaro National Park.
"We see plastic bags and balloons in very remote places," confirmed Swann. This study finally put numbers on the amount of trash, which is very helpful, he said. It also showed how efficiently trash surveys can be incorporated into biological surveys.
"It's really great when researchers think outside the box," said Swann. "They can come up with insights that are valuable to us."
Photo courtesy: Flickr/I Believe I Can Fry/CC BY 2.0
A Consumer Reports analysis of pork purchased in American supermarkets and other shops reveals that many samples contained surprisingly high amounts of a bacterium that causes food poisoning. Compounding the concern is that many of the samples of the bacterium, Yersinia enterocolitica, proved to be antibiotic-resistant.
The magazine analyzed 148 samples of pork chops and 50 samples of ground pork for contamination, the meat was selected from a variety of stores in six American cities -- the stores from where the samples were purchased were not named.
Y. enterocolitica was found in 69 percent of the samples. Salmonella, staphylococcus aureus, or listeria monocytogenes, which are all more-common causes of foodborne illness, were found in 3 to 7 percent of samples. And 11 percent of the samples had enterococcus, which suggest fecal contamination and may cause illnesses such as urinary-tract infections.
Although salmonella and E. coli usually steal the spotlight, Y. enterocolitica sickens about 100,000 Americans a year, commonly children.
According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), common symptoms in children infected with Y. enterocolitica include "fever, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, which is often bloody. Symptoms typically develop 4 to 7 days after exposure and may last 1 to 3 weeks or longer. In older children and adults, right-sided abdominal pain and fever may be the predominant symptoms, and may be confused with appendicitis. In a small proportion of cases, complications such as skin rash, joint pains, or spread of bacteria to the bloodstream can occur."
The magazine notes their concern that the majority of the samples it analyzed were resistant to at least one of the medically-prescribed antibiotics they used for testing in the lab. Many factory-farm raised animals are commonly fed antibiotics to keep them 'healthy' -- the practice is widely criticized because of the horror-movie potential for resistant strains of bacteria to dominate, and sure enough ... according to the report:
Some of the bacteria we found in 198 samples proved to be resistant to antibiotics commonly used to treat people. The frequent use of low-dose antibiotics in pork farming may be accelerating the growth of drug-resistant “superbugs” that threaten human health.
Photo courtesy: Flickr/podchef/CC BY 2.0
Also of note, about 20 percent of the 240 pork products analyzed also tested positive for the growth-hormone drug ractopamine. Originally developed as an asthma medication for humans, it was never approved for that use, but was later employed to increase pigs’ growth and lean muscle mass. (God forbid Eli Lilly should let a drug go to waste.) It’s a controversial drug, and is banned in the European Union, China, and Taiwan -- Consumer Reports' food-safety experts posit that no drugs should be used in healthy animals to promote growth.
There are steps consumers can take to avoid Y. enterocolitica in pork. Most importantly, make sure that the pork is cooked to 145 degrees for whole pieces of meat and 160 degrees for ground pork. But the best way to ensure avoiding illness from industrially-raised meat? Avoid it all together.
It contrast to the physics of global warming itself, sea level rise is much more complex. To improve future projections it is very important to keep track of how well past projections match observational data. The new findings highlight that the IPCC is far from being alarmist, and in fact in some cases rather underestimates possible risks.
So how fast are sea levels actually rising?
This latest research, based off satellite data so as to get more accurate readings and greater global coverage, shows that sea levels are rising on average 3.2mm each year—and not because of any temporary event like ice discharges from the ice sheets of Greenland or Antarctica, or because of internal variability in the climate system.
The IPCC has projected that sea level rise is happening at the rate of 2mm per year.
I'm fortunate to have several passions in my life. I am absolutely an eco-nut. I am always trying to find new ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. We, as a species, have done more harm to this planet in the short time we have been here, than any other catastrophe or happening ever has. It's up to us to fix it.
I care about the environment whether it is as small as a single cell or as large as the universe.
I adore creativity and think we can all do more with much less. This earth has enough resources for us all to live comfortably if we all learn to share. Wasn't that a lesson we were supposed to learn in kindergarten?
I also love the bizarre, unusual, the weird and the strange. Be prepared for the odd "different" blog.
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