Our Earth, Our Environment & Our Responsibility

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Here at Our-Environment.com we are passionate about the Earth and helping to create a better, sustainable environment for ourselves and our descendants.

The purpose of the site is to help raise awareness about important issues that affect our planet. Things like Climate Change (Global Warming), deforestation and pollution, all these issues are too easily overlooked in our busy day to day lives.

We need to be reminded – regularly, and we need to understand that the responsibility lies with us all to effect lasting and sustainable change.

We are not “tree huggers” we do not want to move back to the stone age, we believe that there are solutions available and available now. Sure there are costs to consider, though the price of ignoring the impact we as a species we have on the environment is even more costly.

Helping us achieve our goals are our sponsors. Our-Environment.com’s major sponsor since the beginning has been Steve Scott (the vinyl banner guy) from B2bJv.com, Steve has helped us in many ways, financially by helping keep our website alive and also by designing and supplying some great vinyl banners for us that we have used to promote the cause.

Here in this article is an example of one of our banners Steve’s created for us. Thanks Mate we all appreciate all your support.

Jamie & The Team at Our-Environment.com

Greenhouse Effect - To Be or Not to Be - No Question

I think it’s important to keep a positive mental attitude in our lives as much as we can. It’s good for us, good for people around us, it makes the world a better place.

That said there are some things that leave me…. peeved. Not angry, not upset, not hostile just peeved.

The thing that triggers this response in me most readily is comments and belief that Climate Change is a natural phenomenon. That Global Warming is just part of the cycle the Earth goes through, and that no human activity could possibly cause any impact on the larger environment.

Are the people who believe this BS from another planet? Are they consultants for the oil companies and the coal mining lobby? Or does this fall into the basket of someone else’s problem, and let’s just pretend that Climate Change through human activity does not exist. The Ostrich Syndrome…

Last time I checked, the levels of Carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere every day was a staggering 70 million tonnes – each day. Now I don’t care what cultural background you have, or what level of schooling you have enjoyed. But in my humble opinion 70 million tonnes is a lot of anything, let alone a known greenhouse causing gas that we are pumping into the air we breathe every 24 hours.

One favourite pastime of mine is astronomy, I am an amateur astronomer (very amateur) and enjoyed looking into the heavens and dreaming of what’s out there since I was a small boy. So as such I have a fundamental understanding of the nature and composition on the planets in our solar system. Of course where this fits in to this particular comment is the planet Venus, a classic case on runaway greenhouse effect.

The surface temperature of Venus is about 400 °C (or around 800 °F), so what is my point? I am no scientist so let’s have a quote from Bill Arnett (University of Arizona), and I quote.

“The dense atmosphere of Venus (primarily CO2) produces a run-away greenhouse effect that raises Venus’ surface temperature by about 400 degrees to over 740 K (hot enough to melt lead). Venus’ surface is actually hotter than Mercury’s despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.”

Venus’ surface is actually hotter than Mercury’s despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun, interesting don’t you think. Why… the CO2.

Thousands of millennia ago the Earth had a carbon loaded atmosphere akin to that of Venus, the temperature unbearable by today’s standards and the atmospheric pressure over 100 times what we enjoy today (equivalent of being about a mile under water).

Over an age through natural processes (including photosynthesis), this carbon was pulled from the atmosphere sequestered into the Earth largely in the form of fossil fuels, oil and coal.

This occurred about almost 3 billion years ago when a microbe called Cyanobacteria (one of the first form of life on Earth) came into being. Cyanobacteria were the first oxygen-producing phototropic organisms, and they slowly sucked in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release the oxygen you and I need to breathe.

This process took a long time, about 500 million years. It happened during the early Paleoproterozoic age. These microbes converted the Earth’s atmosphere from an anoxic (or oxygen-poor) atmosphere into an oxic (oxygen rich) condition.

The problem now is that we are undoing all the good work that the microbe Cyanobacteria did for us. By burning coal and oil and releasing the CO2 back into our atmosphere we are turning back the clock in a way that will eventually lead to an obvious result – the Greenhouse effect.

You and I may not be here to see the Greenhouse effect here on Earth at its worst, though if thing keep going the way they are – out of control – No One Will Be Here To See It….

Food for thought, what are you doing about it today?

Recommended Resource

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-history-of-the-earths-atmosphere.htm

Peeved

Jamie

Deforestation Causes 25% of all Man Made CO2 Emissions

It is a little known fact that one of the major contributors of carbon emissions into the atmosphere is deforestation. If we could stop deforestation today, we would effectively eliminate the number two man made cause of carbon emissions.

The United Nations declared that deforestation accounts for around 25 percent of all emissions of carbon dioxide as a result of human activity. This is roughly the same amount of carbon discharged by the United States each year, the world’s largest polluter.

Over 30 billion tonnes of carbon in the form of CO2 is predicted will be released into the atmosphere this year (2009). It is estimated that this will continue to increase to a staggering 33.1 billion tonnes by 2015.

Of the estimated 30 billion tonnes of carbon discharge this year, the felling of trees in Brazilian forests, old growth forests in Asia and in Africa will contribute over 2 billion tonnes. That is unless we start acting now to actually stop deforestation.

The World’s forests harbour a total of approximately 280 gigatonnes of carbon in their biomass. The total amount of carbon stored in forests including their biomass, fallen timber and debris, leaf litter and the soil in which the forests grow is estimated to be one trillion tonnes. This represents almost twice the amount of carbon already present in our atmosphere today.

Is the Answer to The Problem Plantation Grown Timber?

I think yes. Let’s look at the basic forest cycle. Trees like all plants use carbon dioxide as a food source. CO2 combined with sun light and water by means of photosynthesis, converting CO2 into carbohydrates for nourishment and oxygen which is released as a by product.

Planting renewable forests is beneficial in two main ways, firstly new trees will leech CO2 out of the atmosphere, secondly oxygen as we have already said is a by product released by photosynthesis. The new trees will keep the carbon dioxide contained for the life of the plant.

The only trouble with plantation timber being when trees die or indeed are harvested for our use, the original carbon dioxide is released and our CO2 discharge increases with it. As I write today globally we fell many more trees than we are replanting and replacing.

This means that more CO2 is being released than is being captured by the plants and trees photosynthetic processes, leading to our carbon emissions accelerating.

By planting new trees at the same (or indeed a faster) rate than we are consuming the forest resources, we reduce our carbon output by 25%, that’s 7.5 billion tonnes per year at current levels, a huge decrease in CO2 emissions that can be achieve with very little penalty at all.

Plantation Forests May Be the Answer

So are there good reasons to stop deforestation? I believe the answer is self evident. By putting a halt to the felling of old growth forests and replacing our timber consumption with plantation grown trees, and replacing them at an equal or better rate than our prevailing timber appetite, we can put a halt on the second the biggest contributor of man made CO2 emissions that exists today.

We can still use timber for construction, we can enjoy its warmth and beauty in furniture and around our homes. We can stop deforestation without any negative impact on our lives at all. How can we work together to help stop deforestation once and for all?

What do you think?

Residential Wind Turbines

Only a few years ago talk of residential wind turbines was thought of as the territory of the “Greenie” or the extreme environmentalist. Such is not the case any more.

Conversion of the kinetic energy of the wind to usable and clean electric power via a residential wind turbine is now a very simple business. Sophisticated off the shelf wind powered generators cost from around $800 (US) up to many tens of thousands for larger high output varieties.

Residential wind turbines are now more affordable, much more practical and applicable to a wider variety of situations than ever before (and without the need of an electrical engineering degree).

Of course yachties have known how effective wind turbines are be for years. Mainly used to keep boat batteries charged between uses, a relatively small marine wind turbine can supply enough electricity to run a television or small appliance and run several lights in a breeze of about 8-12 knots (about 14 mph or 20 kph). Wind turbines have been common place on cruising boats for about a decade.

Marine Wind Power Generator

These maritime versions of  the residential wind turbine usually work on a twelve or twenty-four volt system, though with the use of smart, cheap technologies now available, they can be used to supplement many more domestic uses too.

While I was sailing in Greece this year I visited an island called Levitha, which lies about three quarters of the way to Turkey from the Greek mainland in the Aegean Sea (see the images).

Only one family live Levitha, this rugged though beautiful island, when speaking to the owner I found out that they are 100% energy self sufficient and are less dependent on fossil fuel (diesel) generators than ever before. A large percentage of this power now being generated by the small wind generators pictured here.

Wind power electricity provided them with not only enough electricity to live a normal (if secluded) life on their island home. It proved more effective (in their case) than solar electricity generation because the wind blows here both day and night.

Residential wind turbines are not science fiction, they work. They are clean, quiet and require very little maintenance. The do not interfere with television reception and most small residential wind turbines now days have an expected useful life of over twenty years.

Most residential wind turbines and small wind powered generators have very few moving parts (two only in newer systems) and once installed operate in a completely automated way.

Wind power electricity does not suit everyone. To get the most from your wind turbine you need to have it quite a long way above the ground, the higher the better. The reason being trees, houses and other ground obstacles disturb the flow of the wind in an effect know as “Ground Friction”.

Ground friction, impedes the flow of the prevailing wind and reduces the effectiveness of your residential wind turbines power output.

Depending on the size of your small wind generator, a height of 60 plus feet is not out of the question. So that said, wind power is not really suitable for suburban use just yet.

You realistically need minimum of about an acre of land to erect a suitably sized tower for your  wind turbine, so the ideal situation is a rural and semi rural situation (at least for now).

This is where residential wind turbines shine. Places where power has traditionally been unavailable now can have a cheap clean power source that will supply electricity for 20 plus years.

Many people on the land who are approaching retirement are adopting residential wind turbines to help offset the cost of their power once they retire. Typically a residential wind turbine system will pay for itself in as little as 6 years, any power produced after this is effectively free.

As I said earlier the costs of a residential wind turbine can vary from about $800 up to $20,000+ depending on what you need.

When considering wind as a power option, be sure to investigate the average wind strength in your area over say a 12 month period to really determine if wind powered electricity is for you. You should look for wind speeds of 10 mph or better for at least 6 months of the year. Checking with the local Bureau of Meteorology would be a good place to start to find this information.

So if you do find yourself in a position where you are fortunate enough to be able to use wind power to generate all or at least some of your electricity. Not only will you be reducing carbon emissions and green house gas production. You will reduce your dependence on the electricity power grid and have the option of selling your surplus power back to your utility provider to offset the cost of your own power.

Another bonus of this is that the power you sell back to your provider is clean power for others to use.

If you currently use wind generated electricity, or indeed own a residential wind turbine I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading.

Where has all the water gone?

Today my comments come from Paros. Almost all the islands in the Cyclades we have visited do not have their own supply of fresh water. How do they manage?

In my wandering around the main town here on Paros I cam across these dry canals and many other examples of well built water supply areas – when and why were they built?

Paros, with its dramatic landscape and fertile plains, embodies all that is associated with the Greek islands. Composed mainly of marble, the island rises out of the central Aegean to its peak at 771 meters above sea level.

Paros has been inhabited since at least 4000BC and is famous for its almost translucent marble. Some of the famous statues from Parian marble are the Venus de Milo, the Victory of Samothrace and the Hermes of Praxiteles.

So water must have been around millenia ago – where has it gone? When did the climate change here?

I’d be interested to hear your views……

Water shortgae on Paros?