Generating energy from sewage will soon become a reality in the north of England
Being a wastewater treatment specialist, I have often pointed out that more projects should be making use of waste by-products to generate renewable energy. Anaerobic digestion (AD) processes, which are widely used in wastewater treatment processes produce biogases. These are mainly methane and carbon dioxide gases, which are often wasted. In a recent paper McCarty…
He’s OK if you don’t get on the wrong side of him
Most of us have preferences such as left- or right-handedness, and tend to favour one eye over another to look down a telescope. These biases are the result of brain lateralisation, with a dominant left side of the brain leading to right handedness, and vice versa. Many animals show comparable biases. Lesley Rogers believes a…
Food for thought on UN World Food Week – Close to one billion people are chronically hungry
“In the searing heat of late spring, before anyone realized that what was happening here was just the beginning of something much bigger, a tiny girl stumbled through a field of rocks toward a group of international aid workers. She was barefoot and limping. Flies dotted her face, craving the moisture of her eyes, lips,…
Following the heat wave – moths migration to the UK
Photo courtesy of Butterfly Conservation A number of moth species from other countries in Europe and areas as far away as the Mediterranean region have migrated to the UK in the past week, most probably due to the heat wave we have experienced this Autumn, reported various news channels this morning (e.g. BBC News). Some moths…
How green is bioenergy?
It is well known that there is an international effort to replace fossil energy with biomass in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and curb global warming. It was widely assumed that biomass combustion would be inherently 'carbon neutral' because it only releases carbon taken from the atmosphere during plant growth. However, there…
If I ruled the world…
On the way home yesterday I was musing about the UN summit on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) happening next week. If I was in charge what would I do? As we are dealing with limited resources in many countries, prevention could achieve more than concentrating on cure. What I’d do about NCDs would be to ban…
24 hours of reality – is this the beginning of a global climate crisis movement?
A total of 24 presentations on the climate crisis were broadcast via the internet, starting in Mexico City at 7 pm on the 14th of September and proceeding westward around the globe, so that the presentation happened at 7 pm in each city, ending at 7 pm on 15th September 2011 in New York, on…
24 Hours of Reality
24 Presenters, 24 Time Zones, 13 Languages, 1 Message: the climate crisis is real and we know how to solve it. Read on to find out more about this event.
Want to know your individual carbon footprint? Here is a quick carbon calculator tool
I found an easy and fun to use carbon footprint calculator in the Guardian online, which I thought I should share with handpicked readers. The carbon calculator tool is also available in the 10:10 webpage, an organisation which aims to inspire and support people and organisations to cut their carbon emissions by 10% in a…
Getting kids to eat healthy- mission impossible?
There’s a challenge! How to do it? Stealth, education, marketing, example. Which do you choose? Should we hide fruit and vegetables in meals so children eat them without realising as suggested in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently or use marketing to improve the image of healthy food, employing packaging and advergames? Or in fact…