Snippets from the Interwebs 5

Everything you need to know about the Real Bread campaign

http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/

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Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops may be encouraging the proliferation of a new pathogen – a viral sized microfungus. If so, then they should be outlawed. Click for a letter from the (emeritus) professor who discovered the pathogen to the US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack warning about the new problem.

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An article from “The Green Economy Post” - Wind Solar Water Alone Could Power the World by 2030 New Study Claims

Here’s a link to the paper that the article was based on

And here’s another similar claim

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

and a brand new article on Skepticalscience.com (which is mostly the best source on the Internet for skewering denialist disinformation) – A plan for 100% renewable energy by 2050

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I remember the cost of the US space programme being compared to how much the US consumer spent on cosmetics or toothpaste or some such a long time ago. This was because there were people then claiming that spending on NASA was starving funds from those who would do good works for the poor and hungry etc.

Here is an interesting graphic (source : Wellhome) which truly puts into perspective how much US government spending is being invested in renewable energy compared with how much the US consumer spends on such vital expenditure as that on the weight loss, plastic surgery and tanning industries.

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Oil from algae is a technology that has been mentioned for years. A lot of work was done in the Jimmy Carter years but was almost abandoned when the Reagan/Bush years happened. There are plenty of “algoil” start ups around nowadays and one of the most promising is Origin oil who are near commercialisation.

Link to Businesswire article about Origin Oil

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Pepsi recently announced (March 15 - click for link to story) it has developed the world's first PET plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources, enabling the company to manufacture a beverage container with a significantly reduced carbon footprint. This  steals a march on Coca Cola’s Plantbottle which so has 30% plant based material in it.

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Agave, the cactus that Tequila and Mezcal is made from, looks like it could have real potential as a biofuel. Link to paper. It is being investigated for use in Australia where its low rainfall requirement would be ideal.Reported dry biomass yields of various Agave species, when annualized, range from <1 to 34 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ without irrigation, depending on species and location. A. salmiana and A. mapisaga can have high nocturnal net CO₂ uptake rates and high productivities averaging 40 tonnes dry weight ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹.

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Build your own biogas system using 3 IDB tote tanks. These are widely used and available second hand Click for detailed instructions

 

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Join the Cloud Appreciation Society! Have another look at my two recent posts featuring clouds - “Both sides now” and “Flytec 2010” - then head over to cloudappreciationsociety.org and celebrate finding that there are others who are a little deeper than those who only indulge in blue sky thinking.

 

Flytec 2010

Another masterpiece from Bobby Bailey. Taken at the Flytec race and rally last autumn this again shows off the sheer joie de vivre when flyers get together. At around 2.27 there is one of the best videoed loops I have ever seen and it then smoothly goes into a textbook spin. As if that wasn’t enough, the glider does it in a perfect “amphitheatre” between the clouds that shows off the perspective superbly. Now, unless you have been there yourself, I cannot adequately describe how playing amongst the clouds like this can be a peak ecstatic experience. It can have the most pragmatic (on the ground) individuals going all spiritual on you when they attempt to recall what it is like to feel like this:

“Oh I Have Slipped
The Surly Bonds of Earth...
Put Out My Hand
And Touched the Face of God ”

The full poem  is called “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee who was a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on 11 December 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

 

Both sides now

Bows and flows of angel hair,
And Ice-cream castles in the air,
And feather canyons everywhere,
I’ve looked at clouds that way – Joni Mitchell

Silver Lining from Kym Fielke on Vimeo.

Join the cloud appreciation society http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/