Shenanigans on the high seas

There's an interesting article (it may require a login) in last week's Economist about the Polestar, a tramper that carries fish without using sea containers, that was detained by Moroccan armed forces at the request of several European governments. It was on a blacklist of ships known to be involved in illegal fishing. It had picked up a consignment of Pollock from one of the world's few certified sustainable fisheries, off the coast of Alaska, that was destined for Europe. The cargo has been allowed to proceed on a legal ship but the Polestar's fate is undecided.

The worry is that cargoes that come from Marine Stewardship Council certified fish stocks, which companies like WalMart and Unilever are increasingly committed to using (see the links for details of their schemes), can become contaminated with illegally fished cargoes. Until the entire supply chain can be validated as clean then the world's fish stocks will remain under threat. And as the above article pointed out, the business of international shipping is notoriously lawless.

Airbus A380 SuperJumbo bought as Private Jet

My jaw dropped when I read The Economist that a private buyer has placed an order at the Paris Air Show for an Airbus A380 super-jumbo. Airbus said the individual was "not from Europe or the US" and that the plane was for "personal use for him and his entourage". The cost is estimated at around $300m.

This follows on from Joseph Lau, the Hong Kong Real Estate tycoon, who became the seventh person to order a Boeing 787 VIP as a private jet.

Apart from the moral aspects of such outrageous flaunting of wealth, the unjustifiable squandering of the earth's limited resources mean that neither Boeing nor Airbus should even be selling large aircraft for this purpose. But as all taste and propriety seems to have disappeared in the stratosphere of the super-rich and the boardrooms of corporate behemoths, then a simpler approach needs to be taken.

My proposition is this, that non-commercial/private aircraft, over a certain (small) size, should be barred from landing at any public airport or airport whose flight path causes noise pollution over residential areas. And that should go double in the over-crowded skies in Europe and the US.

Google basks in sunlight...

As part of its commitment to solar energy production, Google's Mountain View Googleplex offices is having 9,212 solar panels installed - now 90% completed according to the Google Solar Panel Project website.

The website provides details and graphs on how much energy has been produced in the last 24 hours and the last week. You can also see pictures of the installation.

This part of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers by 54 million tons a year by 2010.

Plug-in hybrid cars

Check out this site about Plug-In hybrid cars.

Key points:

• battery electric vehicles emit at least 50% lower greenhouse gases than gasoline cars even including the power station emissions required to produce the electricity to power them
  
• higher reductions possible if using renewable energy sources
• runs at an equivalent cost of under $1 (50p) per gallon
• reduces urban air pollution and smog
• reduces reliance on foreign oil imports
• the technology is here today
  

EU greenhouse gas emissions drop

The European Environmental Agency's "Annual European Community greenhouse gas inventory 1990-2005 and inventory report 2007" reports that emissions of greenhouses gases (GHGs) dropped between 2004 and 2005, the latest years for which they have figures. The key findings are:

• EU-15: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 0.8 % between 2004 and 2005.
• EU-27: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 0.7 % between 2004 and 2005.
• EU-15: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 2 % compared to 1990.
• EU-27: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 7.9 % compared to 1990 levels.
• Germany, Finland and the Netherlands contributed most to the EU-15 reduction.

The EU-15 has a common target to reduce GHG emissions by 8% compared to their baseline (usually 1990 emissions). The laggards would seem to be Austria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain who are all way above their targets. The table below has the GHG emissions by country and their targets. Click it to open in a new window.

Wind farms in the sky

The Economist magazine, in its Technology Quarterly supplement, has an article about a company Sky WindPower, based in San Diego, that wants to build wind farms in the sky (about 6 miles up where the winds are very strong).

Check out the company site for more details but here is a thumbnail of their design, there's a larger picture on their website.



The only thing I'm not clear about is how they'll avoid it being blown away or the cable connecting it to earth snapping! Neat idea though.

EU fisharies policy

There's an interesting article by Charles Clover in today's Daily Telegraph about the latest EU fisharies policy. Charles Clover wrote an excellent, but depressing, book about the state of global fishing called "The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat" which I read a couple of years back and I keep an eye out for his articles.

Here what he says today:

- EU voted to allow fishing of endangered bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic at twice the quota level scientists say will lead to a collapse of stocks.

- Britain and Ireland voted against and were unhappy that Italy and France who are estimated to have overfished their quotas by 30% in the last two years were not forced to pay this back.

- French and Itailian fishermen are using illegal drift nets to catch tuna. Drift net fishing can lead to the death of dolphins and turtles.

- According to the WWF, the fisheries should be closed in June and the minimum landing size reduced to 30kg.

So after the razzamatazz of the Global warming spectacular last week at the G8, the EU is back to the dirty business of petty national advantage being considered more important than the long term survival and viability of our fisheries.