Cape of Storms getting stormier

The City of Cape Town has issued the December 2011 issue of its bi-annual Enviroworks newsletter, appropriately themed around climate change. It covers the major socio-economic challenge of climate change, with contributions by leading experts. There are articles on how the Western Cape’s climate can be expected to change, the energy picture and the Climate Smart Cape Town campaign. There’s also a piece on the African Mayors Climate Change Declaration.

Bruce Hewitson, South African Research Chair in Climate Change and Director: Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG), and an IPCC Lead Author, summarizes our challenge:

We have a good understanding that the region will continue to warm, and that the warming will be greater further inland away from the coast. Likewise, we are confident that, on average, the rainfall intensity will increase. We are reasonably confident that the large high-pressure systems that cause the south-easter in Cape Town will strengthen. We have an emerging understanding of the pattern of rainfall changes and the impacts on seasonality. We can develop messages that, in a risk management context, are useful information to inform our decision making.

I mentioned Hewitson’s regional climate modeling work when I wrote about COP15 in Copenhagen.

mix your own cement

Cement is massively energy-hungry in its manufacture. And it also uses a lot of energy in transporting it from the factory to your building site. So here's a business, called Origami 4, that lets you order just the essential chemicals online, while you supply the bulky sand and materials that are costly to transport.

This is not just a case of buying a bag of cement and mixing with sand and stone as you might do normally to make concrete. You are actually mixing the cement itself in a special machine, BEFORE even making the concrete, and packing it in bags like the ones you would buy at the hardware store. So the transport saving is significant if you make a lot, and have sand available nearby. And if you use this method, you're going to want to make a lot, because the cement manufacture plant you'll need to buy won't be cheap, I'm guessing. But it doesn't take up much space.

Sounds great for community-based building projects.