I'm not sure how this would work, but here's a post claiming that you can sail across the ocean on a wave powered boat: not wind power, wave power.
Hey, I'm back :-) no thanks to Telkom, the "dis"utility I have now ditched for leaving me without Internet access for a month :-( and blaming everyone but themselves ("Have you checked that the cable is plugged in?").
This mobile solar cooker is on display at the MTN Sciencentre in Cape Town. According to the display panel,
The Sustainable Energy Society of South Africa, in collaboration with the Soweto Information Centre in Johannesburg, has initiated a project to promote the use of solar cookers in urban and rural environments of South Africa.
Mathias Weber decided to make a solar cooker more mobile by mounting it onto a tricycle, which is used by the Greenhouse Project for Recycling Programme. His 'Solar Tricycle Pilot Project' has been active in Newtown, Johannesburg, since May 2005 and has created a huge awareness of alternative cooking methods.
The tricycle-mounted solar cooker can cook porridge, pop popcorn and heat up a variety of dishes, using only the energy of the sun.
Currently, street food vendors in South Africa use hazardous, unhealthy and costly methods of cooking, such as paraffin stoves, Primus stoves and Imbaulas (perforated paraffin tins with a fire inside). These cooking methods release harmful gases and ashes into the atmosphere and contribute to the development of respiratory diseases.
Solar cookers are clean, non-polluting, efficient and cost-effective and offer a very viable alternative for street food vendors.
For photos of the cooker out in the community, and a description of Mathias' work, have a look at the Solar Energy Project. The site also describes other solar food projects in a number of countries.
It's got skylights, natural ventilation, a grey water system, a car that runs on biodiesel... and it's a gingerbread house. That's right, the folks at bakeforachange held a competition to see who could come up with the most sustainable gingerbread house design. It's too late to enter, but you can view the results on Flickr. [via SCQ]
Somehow, this recipe feels just right for Easter weekend:
Throw the balls into vacant lots, pavement cracks, long-standing rubbish piles, or anywhere that would benefit from a bit of random greenery. [Source: The Guerilla Art Kit, by Keri Smith]
Had enough of all this talk of ecological footprints, the energy crisis and global warming? Let's just get it over with. LiveScience presents the Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth. All your worries will soon be over. (Warning: May require the use of heavy equipment, toxic materials and large quantities of antimatter. Don't try this at home, kids.)
They're messy, interfere with the view, and can be really tricky to uninstall without leaving a trail of destruction. But don't take my word for it - here's the full review of trees. (Don't miss the readers' contributions.) [via kottke.org]
File this under "I can't believe they'd really consider this."
Australian obstetrician professor Barry Walters proposes that because all humans are responsible for carbon emissions - just by the act of living - any couple producing more than two babies should be levied a carbon tax for every additional baby.
Hell, why stop there? Just stick a methane collector on the rear end, send a gas truck around once a week to every house with a registered baby, take the gas to a municipal depot, and sell it as a new fuel source. And in the spirit of the carbon trading negotiations, shouldn't couples with no babies be allowed to sell their carbon credits to those with three? A whole new market in baby offsets could give new meaning to the term "baby boom".
And what about farmers with all their methane-belching cows? Give every Australian citizen a milk quota, and anyone who drinks more than three litres a week should pay a carbon tax as a way to limit the size of the national dairy herd. The possibilities are endless.
This week's Bali COP debate around protection of rainforests is vital to a comprehensive climate change strategy, but as the Climate Action Network points out, there is far too little discussion of how to address the needs of people who depend on forests for their livelihoods - many of whom are from poor communities.
It's all very well to suggest that the rest of the world should pay Brazil not to chop down the rainforest, but that's a fraught strategy that can lead not only to disempowerment of local people, but also to struggles over national sovereignty. A large proportion of deforestation activity is illegal anyway, and beyond the ability of national governments to control.
Just who owns the rights to these oxygen factories? They are geographically-bound public utilities of global significance. We might just as well say that the world population should pay Brazil a monthly fee for the air we breathe. It's an invisible, global commodity trade that currently has no monetary value, so let's monetize it and see if that stops deforestation.
The UN could set up a financial system for micropayments from individuals, using an equivalent of the Internet's Paypal, and using mobile phones to transfer funds - who doesn't have a mobile phone? - and provide discounts to people who pay annually in advance. Just for good measure, developing countries could provide their citizens with a Basic Income Grant so that nobody need go without oxygen for want of money.
Imagine the illegal activities that would spring up, like trading oxygen credits on the black market. Enterprising individuals would set up hermetically sealed rooms, or entire buildings, and produce their own oxygen from the most efficient plants they could find. They would build up a supply, stop payments to the UN, and sell bottled oxygen cheaper than the UN rate.
Dedicated agencies (in South Africa, a special branch of the Green Scorpions) would be set up to enforce oxygen regulations and bust the grow houses. Some derelict city districts would become unenforceable no-go zones, guarded by gangsters sniffing pure oxygen.
Even residents of respectable suburban neighbourhoods would watch suspicious activity at rental houses on their streets, fearing an invasion of undesirable characters coming and going under the protection of the night. There would be accusations and denials in the press. Occasionally, a house would be sold, and the buyer would find evidence of an oxygen operation (known colloquially as an O2): unusual plumbing and electrical fittings; dampness and mould on the walls and ceilings; traces of liquid fertilizer.
A public outcry would follow. The local Councillor would assure residents that everything possible would be done to rid the city of this scourge of the carbon age, and eventually an official inquiry would find that the Councillor had been on the take.
"Politicians," we'd say. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." And we'd think back to Bali 2007 and curse the crackpot who came up with the Oxygen Protocol, and the politicians who endorsed it.
If you can't eat it... burn it. Two British environmentalists are on their way from Britain to Timbuktu in a lorry running on biofuel made from waste chocolate by British firm Ecotec. And when their load of 2,000 litres of fuel runs out, they can just crank up a small processing unit they are carrying with them to convert waste oil products into fuel, which they will donate to an African charity (Mali-Folkecenter), along with the lorry, at the end of the trip. Sweet.
The two claim their biotruck will be making the first-ever carbon negative expedition across the Sahara Desert through a combination of using biofuel and offsetting emissions with the portable processing unit:
"When measuring the carbon footprint of the expedition we will factor in the offsetting effect of the carbon saved by the fuel that is produced over the next 12 months following the expedition," say Pag and Grimshaw, who expect the project to save 15 metric tons of carbon emissions in the first year alone.
Don't get too excited, guys and gals, but if you're having trouble designing roads so that people will actually drive at the design speed, how about this:
Several experimental Japanese "melody roads" have been deployed, whose cut grooves and bumps play distinctive songs through your car, but only when you drive slowly and carefully down them. This seems like a potentially useful bit of social engineering -- set the musical timing on a road at the safe speed, and combine that with timed traffic lights that reward you with a "green wave" if you stick to the limit, and you'd have a pretty good set of cues telling you how to travel at speed.
And I love the tag line from one of the comments following this BoingBoing post:
Next up: "Symphony for Road Rage in A(ccident) Minor"
