Canadian wave energy firm Finavera wins a license for a wave power electricity generation project in Makah Bay, Washington State.

This ‘hydrokinetic’ energy project is planned to begin generating enough electricity to supply at least 150 homes by 2011. The company is now seeking investors.

The aquabuoy wave power generator is an innovative design.
Learn more by watching the wave power generator videos & see the technology in action:

Wavepower Video

Checkout: Useful Links
Aquabuoy wave power generator animation

Renewable energy: More Videos: Wave power videos

Renewable energy: Further reading: Wave power books & articles

We all know Al Gore’s inconvenient truth: global warming is real. Nobel-winning professor Mark Jaccard reveals what he believes is the second inconvenient truth. We have to pay for our emmissions

Climate Change: Further reading

The very funny Blue Man Group do their take on global warming. This really made me Laugh!

Climate change may be happening much faster than we imagine. Global dimming appears to be masking the true extent of the global warming that is underway. The prestigious BBC programme ‘Horizon’ reports on ‘Global Dimming: the phenomenon by which the earth is cooled by man-made particulate pollution in the atmosphere,  inlcuding the vapour trails left behind by aircraft, which spread out and reflect sunlight, keeping the planet cooler. As we clean up our emmissions we may find that warming has been masked, leading to a faster rise in global temperatures than previously expected.

Get the facts: Watch the Horizon programme on Global dimming online now

More Climate Change Videos

A new consumer report explores the contents of dishwashing detergents and the negative effects they can have on our health and on the environment.

A recent study has discovered that a common dishwashing detergent ingredient, styrene-acrylate copolymers, can cause cancer at concentrations of 21 per cent. The safety limit for styrene is only 50 parts per million, and the side effects are reported to include headaches, lassitude, dizziness, confusion, drowsiness, unsteady gait, possible liver damage and reproductive effects.

If you’re not really careful to wash all the detergent off your crocks and cutlery, you could end up eating styrene with your food. And even if you do wash off the styrene off it goes into the water system. Fish have been discovered with high concentrations of styrene and other washing-up liquid ingredients: surfactants

In response to these health and environment concerns, companies have developed detergents that are meant to be safer. But not all these ‘green’ & ecological detergents are equally good either in ingredients or effectiveness

Top recommendation goes to: Dishmate Washing up Liquid

Dishmate Washing up Liquid was the hands down winner. Dishmate is so confident of the quality of its short list of botanical ingredients that it claims that “it can be used as a liquid hand soap and bath/shower soap”, and even “softens hands while doing dishes”— surprising for a dishwashing liquid. The surfactants in Dishmate are derived from coconut oil, and Dishmate says that they have excluded cocamide DEA, and put in almond and cherry oils for fragrance and skin care

In the test Dishmate worked as well as well known toxic commercial brands. On cost it is one of the least expensive of the green & ecological washing up liquids (0.005 p per mL) so it is very good value for money given its remarkable quality.

The well known brand Ecover did not do quite as well, with a couple of questionable ingredients. However it was judged to clean well and is a little cheaper than Dishmate (0.002 pence per mL)

Buy Dishmate Online here:UK / US

Treat yourself to a Earth Friendly Home Detox Kit including Dishmate Washing up liquid

Methane is a much more powerful global warming gas than carbon dioxide. Why should we care? The quantities of methane stored around the planet are astounding. If the sea warms beyond a certain temperature then the stored methane will be released, in vast quantities, from the sea bed and the seas will appear to boil.

In addition Methane is stored in frozen ground and in some places frozen water. When the methane rich ground or ice thaws across the vast area of Siberia, for example, huge quantities of this planet warming gas will be released. 

This is frighteningly well illustrated in the programme on ice in the recent BBC series: ‘Earth: The Power of the Planet’

In the programme geologist Dr Iain Stewart travels to somewhere in the Siberian wastes and there he is shown, by a scientist who studies this phenomena, a graphic demonstation of the amount of methane trapped in the ice there. They cut a hole in the ice and light the escaping gas. The result is an astonishing flame spurting from the ice. A remarkable sight worth seeing.

The series is very well made and full of lots of fascinating titbits. Very well worth going out of your way to watch it.

 ‘Earth: The Power of the Planet’ Book & DVD

 From the programme notes:
 ”But ice does more than shape the Earth. Its peculiar properties mean that small changes in the Earth’s temperature can be amplified massively. This amplification means that ice ages are times of massive climate change – and that helps drive evolution. In fact, ice played a crucial role in our own evolution, by creating many sudden climate changes in East Africa at a time when our ancestors were struggling to make a living.

Now the ice is in retreat again. We explore the speed at which it’s melting – the newly discovered mechanisms which suggest it will disappear faster than we ever thought. We film with scientists on top of the Greenland ice cap as they explore why the ice is retreating. Startling satellite imagery shows the expanded area of melting. And we discover that the melting ice is going to bring some unexpected effects in unexpected places.” more…

Celebrations! The Americans sign up to an agreement to engage in more negotiations on Climate Change mitigation at UN climate conference in Bali. It may only be talking about talking but at least there’s been some agreement. The nations have agreed to seek a new global climate-change treaty by 2012.

However agreement came at a heavy cost. Canada, the U.S. and Japan banded together to force removal of references to specific emissions targets for developed countries by 2020. References to longer-term targets were also removed.

Though I would like to be only positive about this news, it sits uneasily alongside a comment on BBC news a couple of nights ago from a scientist studying the retreat of the artic ice. He revealed that the ice was disappearing so much quicker than scientists have been expecting that all artic sea ice would be gone within five or six years.

Not only have we been astonishingly slow to get the message about global warming, but the scientists who have been studying this phenomena have, it seems, spectacularly underestimated the speed of warming.

Put alongside the emerging understanding that huge quantities of the powerfully global warming gas methane; currently held trapped in the permafrost & in the sea bed;  will be released as the planet warms; one wonders if our response to this ongoing calamity is about as useful a response as the 1950’s UK government’s ’Duck & Cover’ advice was in response to a nuclear strike.

The climate change conference seems to have made some progress, but is it enough. As the artic sea ice melts faster than our worst expectations, are we fiddling while the planet begins to burn?