Architecture that repairs itself or that grows

Arctic Melt Time Lapse - Nature's Great Events: The Great Melt - BBC One

Towards Permaculture Centres Worldwide

Only three year funding for each site is needed. Then it will be sustainable for the future indefinitely employing local people and improving local food supply!

Solving Africa's Food Problem

The first "green revolution" called for by the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2004 has been producing good result.

Countries, such as Malawi, have transformed their food production using relatively simple means: With the help of government subsidies, farmers can now obtain two bags of fertilizer and five kilograms of hybrid maize seed at just 25 percent of the actual price. And, whereas the World Bank and other donors have refrained from such agricultural subsidies over the past few decades due to concerns about corruption, they are now supporting them and refocusing on agriculture as a priority. "It's a 180-degree turn for the better," Sanchez says. "You can avoid corruption by keeping it on a small scale."

Bill Gate is now charging for a second green revolution

"The charge is clear—we have to develop crops that can grow in a drought; that can survive in a flood; that can resist pests and disease," Gates added. "We need higher yields on the same land in harsher weather." The answer, at least in part? Sustainability paired with genetic modification.

Gates also called for a more environmentally focused effort this time around. "The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first," Gates said. It "must be guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment. The last thing anyone should do is create short-term gains for poor farmers that have long-term costs for their children.

Basing on fossil fuel based fertiliser will make these farmers continuously is not sustainable in the long run as we know that fossil fuel is a limited natural resource which is not renewable. A better solution would be to adapt/adopt a permacultural path. Here is a video showing how permaculture is applied to green the desert in the middle east. [source]


Cross posted to Atheist Bible Reading and Forum

The Great Global Warming Swindle

A re-watch of The Great Global Warming Swindle prompted me to look at the evidence again. [I am not a practising Scientist. I am just trying to apply a rational mind on this important issue.] The skeptics pointed at the correlation between atmospheric CO₂ with the earth temperature and said that the earth temperature led the atmospheric CO₂ by about 800 years. They claimed that solar activities have much bigger impact on earth's temperature than atmospheric CO₂.

BBC weather presenter, Paul Hudson has written article on the issue: research published by the Royal Society two years ago seemed to rule out solar influences. Its approach was to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare them with changing global temperatures. The results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Beside climate change, there is the issue of exhausting the available fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is a limited resource. While according to wikipedia using 2005 estimates, there is 4x10²⁴J of remaining fossil fuels which at the rate of 2005 consumption may last up to 800 years. I believe cheap, easily extracted fossil fuel will be exhausted within no more than another 100 years because there has been no significant discovery of large reserve since the sixties.

The energy falling on Earth's surface from the Sun is about 120PW which is 8000 times the usage at 2004.

The Great Global Warming Swindle did point out an important equity issue - we should not be barring the developing countries from using cheap fossil fuel to drive their development.

On one hand, I believe human is causing the current climate crisis. On the other, we should respect the wish of people in the undeveloped or developing countries to pursuit a better life.

It only took about 150 years for the developed countries to switch from the traditional renewable biomass fuel to fossil fuel. With the rapid technology development, it is possible to switch to renewable energy in much shorter period. The technological capability of the developed countries was developed based on exhausting fossil fuel. On the basis of equity, the technology of renewable energy should be shared with the developing and undeveloped countries to provide energy source for these countries. China and India have a proposal on the table:
"Developed countries should pay at least 0.5 percent of their economic output to help less wealthy nations build wind turbines, solar plants and use other clean technologies," and "industrialized nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2020, such cuts would make room for the developing countries to 'modernize their economies'".

What is it?

The answer is this is a fan. Watch James Dyson's explanation:


also posted at Random Walk in Learning

Can we survive?

I believe we, as current human civilisation, are hanging by a thread. If we continue on the current path of consumption and depletion of natural resources, this civilisation will end. May be my daughter will witness the ending of the known civilisation. I don't want this happen. Can human be smart enough to save ourselves?