Hat tip to Joe for this one.

An accidental discovery by a cancer researcher has shown that we can burn salt water using radio frequencies. If this can be harnessed appropriately, just imagine what it could do for our future energy needs. I wonder however if it costs more power to fire the water than what they can harness from it.

Roy explained to the Post-Gazette, that the water itself doesn’t burn. His best guess is that the energy from the radio waves breaks the bonds between the molecules, releasing hydrogen that can be ignited with a flame. The temperature of the flame was measured at 1,650 °C.

Cosmos Magazine

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6vSxR6UKFM[/youtube]

As I ventured out on my first morning bike ride, I felt somewhat odd. It wasn’t the strange shoes, nor was it getting used to feeling the wind as I moved down the street.

You see, I opted to just go for a ride. Nowhere in particular, just loiter around the back streets of Mornington for 30 minutes and make sure I get home in one piece. Unlike running, I felt that riding needed a destination.

Run around a block 5 times and get home feeling a great sense of achievement. Ride around a block 5 times and get home feeling stupid. It probably has something to do with the speed I’m traveling. How fast do I need to be moving before I feel like I have to get somewhere.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be riding up to “Morning Star” and back. If you know the area, Morning Star is at the peak of a pretty long hill. If I can make it up there and back home in one piece, I’ll have no problems riding to work next week. That’s my goal for the next week - let’s see if it get me anywhere.

This is totally my kind-a-thing. A little morbid, but something we gotta think about one day.
I’m gonna be stuck in the ground somewhere for no-one to ever see again. Or, as I prefer, I’d be burnt into a smouldering pile of ash and shot out into space Star Trek style.

So … why should I burden people with the expense of purchasing an ornate, body-preserving coffin?

Well here are a few options I might enjoy. Recycled, paper based, eco-coffins.

• Eco Coffins
• Life Art (an Aussie company)
• Another blogger’s perspective
• DIY Ikea Coffin
• This is not my style at all

Hat tip to Boing Boing.

Why ride when you can run?

That was the conclusion I came to with my Boot Camp trainer last week. One of my goals was to ride to work twice a week (5kms each way). Much to my surprise, we had just run 7kms in under an hour that morning at Boot Camp so it seemed like my original goal had already been achieved.

Here’s what we came up with:

• Lose 10k by the end of this year
• Ride to or from work twice a week (5km)
• Run to or from work twice a week (5km)
• Complete the half marathon in October

Aside from getting myself fit, I’d be saving 0.19 tonnes of greenhouse gas each year (according to Greenfleet). That’s not much at all actually. Perhaps I should be working up to running to Carlton three times a week?

Especially not in the Liberal party. Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced the phasing out of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012.

Great idea. It at least gets more people thinking about energy consumption. What bugs me though is how much the Liberal government are going to rely on these small changes and avoid making the big decisions.

Let’s take a closer look at this particular initiative. By 2012, this change is expected to cut greenhouse emissions by 800,000 tonnes a year, jumping up to 4 million tonnes a year in 2015. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2004 were around 564.7 million tonnes.

Now I’m no Stephen Hawking, but that amounts to a 0.71% reduction in our total emissions. That’s not even taking into account that our emissions are projected to rise dramatically over the coming years.

Pull your head out Prime Minister Howard and make a real decision.

A pretty great idea. EnviroMission is planning to use natural convection (i.e. hot air rising) to create energy. The thing I love about this energy idea, is we have trials running in Australia!

Take a look at the EnviroMission site and also this video which explains the idea perfectly.

Google have published a top 50 ideas list on strategies for combating global warming. The interesting thing is that these ideas were collated by young students. The full list can be found here on the Google site. Following are the top 10…

1. Include global warming/climate change in school curricula (as part of National Science Standards), so when the students are in charge they can make educated decisions.
2. Increase availability of low-interest Energy Efficient Mortgages to support homeowners who increase the energy efficiency of their homes.
3. Put light sensors in all office and school buildings so all lights go off when the rooms are empty.
4. Require that all products contributing to global warming be marked with a specific color (e.g., chemical pesticides could be marked with a red sticker for being extremely dangerous to the environment).
5. Use less paper; use the back of the paper to print on or write on; use recyled paper.
6. Plant more trees to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
7. Teach recycling techniques in classes and school-wide programs.
8. Make recycling mandatory in all public facilities, such as schools, parks and beaches.
9. Do public service announcements on TV featuring celebrities promoting carpooling, walking, riding bikes, using public transportation, conserving electricity and recycling.
10. Give grants and tax credits to companies that invest in alternative, sustainable, emission-free fuel technologies while ending such subsidies for fosssil fuel production.

Good to know that our future population are thinking about these things. The problem is, it’s still up to us oldies to act on it now.

Al Gore is in the Aussie press again today. His meeting with Steve Bracks yesterday morning seems to have gone well.

”I’ve heard some very forward leaning positions here,” said Gore after a morning meeting with the Premier.
The Age, When Al met Steve

The fact that a previous international political leader met with an Australian local Premier is pretty awesome. Whilst I still think we can do heaps more, the lift in profile is definitely a useful one.

Gore has also commented on Howard’s push for nuclear energy.

“Mr Gore said nuclear power was unlikely to play a significantly bigger role in the climate change battle. “Even if you set aside the problem of long-term waste storage and the danger of operator accident and the vulnerability to terrorist attack, you still have two others that are more difficult,” he said.

The first problem was one of economics. [...] The second was nuclear weapons proliferation.”
The Age - The truth? ‘Nuclear is not the answer’

Instead of backing nuclear energy, he challenged Howard to stand up and join the rest of the world by adopting the Kyoto protocol. In Nairobi, they are beginning to discuss the next stage of the protocol. This is a prime opportunity for our Prime Minister to raise his concerns and contribute to the process which the rest of the world is now a part of.

There’s been a fair bit of talk on the climate change issue lately. Especially with the looming Victorian election. As usual, I have a problem with this. Most of the talk has been just that, talk. There is very little detail in any of the policy statements. Very little real action. Here is a random rundown …
Desalination
Let’s look at the Liberal Party’s desalination project. Contrary to what is often spun in the press, the party isn’t actually proposing a desalination plant. What they are proposing is a “feasibility study.” No real action spoken about. So, if elected, the Liberal Party of Victoria will conduct a feasibility study for a desalination plant which uses up more energy and produces only 10% of one dam’s volume of water. Here is some more info from the ACF on issues with desalination plants.
Doing it yourself
Also in the press are articles about people who have spent money to greenhouse proof their homes. The Brod street house is a prime example. This guy spent an additional $40,000 on a $250,000 renovation to gear up his home so it produces pretty much all the energy it consumes. What is in place for us not so financially fortunate to contribute something similar?
Rebates and subsidies
The article in The Age mentions some of the rebates provided by Sustainability Victoria when you convert your gas heater to a gas/solar model. Currently, if you pump power back into the grid (e.g. through your solar panel), the power retailer will reimburse you the wholesale price for that energy. If elected, the Victorian Labor Party is saying they will legislate so that power retailers must reimburse the retail cost for power pumped back into the grid.
Al Gore says Howard is “the” man
In other news, Al Gore has said today that he sees our PM as the man to change the US’s position on climate change.

Mr Gore, in Australia to capitalise on the success of his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, said he was unsure of Mr Howard’s intentions but encouraged by his comments.

He said it was unclear whether Mr Howard’s comments heralded “a genuine change in substance” but it was clear Mr Howard, who recently saw An Inconvenient Truth, was prepared to acknowledge the threat of increases in CO2 emissions. “If Prime Minister Howard’s statement is a prelude to actually joining the world community on the basis of the Kyoto treaty and then negotiating some changes that he would like to see, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Mr Gore said.

Al Gore in Australia
And finally, Al Gore is in Australia at the moment ready to train his first set of “climate change messengers.” This is a project done in conjunction with the ACF. The project aims to train people to give a localised version of his “Inconvenient Truth” presentation. Kind of like the pyramid scheme of climate change.

Finally it’s happened. All it took was a report from Sir Nicholas Stern, dubbed the “Stern Report.”

Actually, it’s taken a whole lot more than that. Decades of long haired hippies chaining themselves to trees, the banning of CFCs and the sudden increase of phrase “climate crisis” appearing in the popular press.

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that environmental topics have been making a more prominent appearance in the media (television, paper, online and radio.) Then today, the Stern report was delivered and the climate topic made headlines in all the media. It even hit the lead story on some news programs.

Tonight, the Ten network opted to broadcast an episode of Futurama called “Crimes of the Hot.” In this episode, the Earth’s polar ice caps begin to melt causing disaster accross the globe.

Much to my surprise, Al Gore makes an appearance in Kyoto as the “The Inventor of the Environment.” A quick Google, and I realised even more to my surprise that this episode was first broadcast in 2002. Quite a while ago in popular press terms. Gore also performs the voice himself in this episode.

A further link exists between the show and “An Inconvenient Truth.” A movie that the professor shows was featured in the Al Gore movie.

“Earth in the Balance” by Al Gore was published in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol first opened for signatures in 1997. That seems like so long ago. It’s such a shame that it has really taken this long (plus some) to get to a stage where this important issue has hit the common consciousness.

So long, and I feel that Australia had such an opportunity to jump on this early on. We could have now been presenting the world with solutions to this issue. New technologies and best practice for renewable energy. Instead, we’re still debating about renewables vs nuclear.

Well I’m glad it’s now in the prime time. With the International Day of Action on Climate Change happening this Saturday, the story might at least stay in the headlines for a little longer. The Walk Against Warming is the Australian event aiming to promote further awareness around this issue.