Distant-Help : Think Different and Act, soon there is no nature left to save!

Norway: recovering ‘petroholic’ or prudent saver?

statfjord

My name is Norway and I’m a petroholic.

“I’ve tried it all: Vaseline, kerosene, gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. I’ve even tried natural gas,” says a leaflet from the most controversial stand at Norway’s biggest oil and gas exhibition.

Situated next to lavish exhibits of dozens of oil and gas companies and hundreds of oil sector contractors, green group Bellona is preaching the sober message of the renewables revolution at the heart of Norway’s oil world – the ONS conference in Stavanger.

In a 12-step rehab plan for Norway, Bellona says the world’s No. 5 exporter of oil and No. 2 gas provider has based its prosperous economy on resource extraction that will not last, and is already exhibiting signs of a “petro hangover”.

By some measures, Norway is increasingly dependent on oil. Half of its exports, a third of budget revenues and a quarter of its economy come from the offshore sector. Studies show that wages in Norway, which was the poorest Scandinavian country at the start of its oil era 40 years ago, are among the highest in the world and about a third higher than in neighbour Sweden.

Norwegians also work the fewest hours per year in the developed world, take the most sick leave, and have built up a generous welfare state that relies heavily on oil revenues. oseberg

But Norway has also managed to do something quite sober – it has saved some of its oil wealth in an offshore fund, to spend when the black gold runs out. The democratic world’s biggest public savings experiment has grown to about $450 billion, or the size of Norway’s annual GDP.

By diverting the stream of petro-dollars away from its economy, it has managed to avoid overheating and collapse of non-oil industry associated with the “oil curse” that has engulfed many resource-rich states.

So what’s your view? Is Norway a petroholic in need of rehab, or a prudent saver with a taste for petroleum tipple?

(Photos: Top left – the Statfjord A platform and its loading buoy in the North Sea. Right: The Oseberg oil platform in the North Sea. Both pictures – Scanpix/Reuters)

Hemp car sparks a buzz

Undated promotional photo shows the Motive Kestrel electric vehicle. REUTERS/Handout

The blogosphere is abuzz about an electric car made of hemp developed by a team of Canadian companies who plan its debut at the EV trade show in Vancouver next month.

The compact four-passenger car, with its body made of hemp bio-composite, will have a top speed of 55 miles per hour and a range of 25 to 100 miles before needing to be recharged, depending on the battery, CBC News reported.

Calgary-based developer Motive Industries Inc. said hemp achieves the same mechanical properties as glass composite without the weight, an important goal when designing the body of a battery-powered vehicle.

“Didn’t Cheech and Chong already try this?” wrote one observer on Slashdot.org.

“Model THC?” quipped another.

Hemp is a natural fiber product of the Cannabis sativa plant and is comparable to cotton as a fiber. It is bred differently from the Cannabis indica plant that produces marijuana, which is outlawed under the U.S. Controlled Substance Act.

“It’s illegal to grow it in the U.S., so it actually gives Canada a bit of a market advantage,” Nathan Armstrong, president of Motive Industries told the CBC.

Industrial farming of hemp is practiced in 30 countries including Canada, France, England, Germany, Australia and Russia but cultivation is illegal in the U.S.

Last year, an Ontario company secured $1.8 million from investors to open the first North American bio-processing plant for industrial hemp, The Canadian Press reported.

Hemp for the Kestrel is supplied by Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, a Crown corporation in the western Canadian province that purchases its cannabis from an industrial hemp farm in Vegreville, Alberta.

The vehicle is slated for prototype and testing later this month.

It’s not the first attempt to make a care using hemp, once an abundant fiber crop in the U.S.

In 2008, Lotus released its solar-powered car made from hemp.

In 1941, Henry Ford attempted that very feat.

___________________
Top image shows an undated promotional photo of the Motive Kestrel. REUTERS/Handout

Why Pakistan monsoons support evidence of global warming

-Lord Julian Hunt is visiting Professor at Delft University, and former Director-General of the UK Met Office. The opinions expressed are his own.-

The unusually large rainfall from this year’s monsoon has caused the most catastrophic flooding in Pakistan for 80 years, with the U.N. estimating that around one fifth of the country is underwater. This is thus truly a crisis of the very first order.

Heavy monsoon precipitation has increased in frequency in Pakistan and Western India in recent years. For instance, in July 2005, Mumbai was deluged by almost 950 mm (37 inches) of rain in just one day, and more than 1,000 people were killed in floods in the state of Maharashtra. Last year, deadly flash floods hit Northwestern Pakistan, and Karachi was also flooded.

It is my clear view that this trend is being fueled both by global warming (which also means extremes of rainfall are also a growing world-wide trend), and indeed potentially by any intensification of the El-Nino/La-Nino cycle.

To understand the reasons why global warming is playing a role here, one needs to look at the main climatic trends in South Asia. In addition to more extreme rainfall events, there is also a decreasing thickness of ice over the Tibetan plateau and changing patterns of precipitation, with less snow at higher levels, plus more rapid run off from mountains.

How does climate change help explain this?

First, the warming in temperatures leads to less snow.

Second, the less stable atmosphere causes deeper convection and intense rainfall events.

The less stable atmosphere also leads to more airflow over mountains and less lateral deviation — so that the monsoon winds and precipitation can be higher in North West India and Pakistan and weaker in North East. In 2006, there was an unusually intense drought in Assam and rain in North West India. This year with the strong precipitation in North West, there is no pronounced decrease in rains in North East.

Recent U.S. studies have also concluded that the mountain meteorology is changing but as a result of the aerosols emitted into the atmosphere from urban areas of South Asia.

The biggest question going forwards is whether the El-Nino southern oscillation, that determines the large 10 year oscillations of weather across the whole Pacific basin and into South Asia and Africa, will change.

Although there is no scientific consensus on this, it seems likely to me that if the Amazon rain forest continues to disappear, and snow/ice melt significantly increases over the Tibetan plateau, there will be significant changes in enso climatic fluctuations as rises in temperature over land areas become comparable with the areas of the Pacific where currently the temperature fluctuates over a few degrees — which is now better monitored and computer modeled.
The reason for concern about changing enso is that depending on its periodic strength, it greatly affects magnitudes and locations of floods, droughts, hurricanes. Until about 2020-2030, these natural fluctuations are expected to be greater than man-made changes (as was pointed out by many scientists in the 1990s).

Given the massive stakes in play, not least because of the sizeable proportion of the world population impacted, these issues need urgent study and also preparations on the ground by the affected countries.

Picture Caption: A flood victim sits with his belongings while waiting to be evacuated in a flooded village in Jacobabad, about 78 km (40 miles) from Sukkur in Pakistan’s Sindh province August 15, 2010. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

“Dutch dialogue” aids New Orleans restoration

-Han Meyer is Professor of Urban Design at Delft University of Technology. He has been a principal organiser of the ‘Dutch Dialogues’ with New Orleans since 2005 and is Editor of ‘New Orleans-Netherlands: Common Challenges in Urbanised Deltas’. The opinions expressed are his own.-

In August 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated large [...]

Share and Enjoy:

Scottish scientists brew up whisky biofuel

Scientists in Scotland have unveiled a new biofuel made from whisky byproducts that they say can power ordinary cars more efficiently than ethanol.

A research team from Edinburgh’s Napier University spent two years creating the biofuel butanol that can be used in gas tanks either as a stand-alone fuel or blended with petrol [...]

Share and Enjoy:

Designers pitch ‘trashy’ island in Pacific

From time to time we are reminded there is a floating pool of plastic bottles, caps, and broken down debris roughly the size of Texas swirling in the Pacific Ocean.

There’s a collective disgust when it bobs back into view, like it did this week after the Guardian profiled a group of [...]

Share and Enjoy:

That sinking feeling along the U.S. Gulf Coast

The oil is no longer gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the broken BP well, and a final “bottom kill” is in prospect — though delayed by an iffy weather forecast. That means the environment’s on the mend along the Gulf Coast, right?

Not really. There’s the little problem of subsidence to deal [...]

Share and Enjoy:

Irresponsible to declare Gulf oil crisis over

– Dr. Bruce Stein is associate director for wildlife conservation and global warming at the National Wildlife Federation. Any views expressed here are his own. —

Here at the National Wildlife Federation, we’re encouraged by reports of progress in permanently sealing the Gulf oil gusher and at removing oil from the Gulf’s [...]

Share and Enjoy:

Want a daily update via mail ?

Categories

Older posts

Informative links

Spam Blocked

Norway: recovering ‘petroholic’ or prudent saver?

Related Reading:

Hemp car sparks a buzz

Related Reading:

Why Pakistan monsoons support evidence of global warming

Related Reading:

“Dutch dialogue” aids New Orleans restoration

Scottish scientists brew up whisky biofuel

Designers pitch ‘trashy’ island in Pacific

That sinking feeling along the U.S. Gulf Coast

Irresponsible to declare Gulf oil crisis over

Recent Comments

Services

today