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Responsible Death Rites

Byoliveridley

Can cremation be used as an offset under the Kyoto Protocol? Read on..

Seed: New Green Pyre Promoted in India

UN figures show close to 10 million people die a year in India, where 85 percent of the billion-plus population are Hindus who practice cremation. That leads to the felling of an estimated 50 million trees, leaves behind half a million tonnes of ash and produces eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, according to research by Agarwals Mokshda environmental group.

The solution is to design a much more efficient wood burning stove hence satisfying religious sentiments (have to use wood to burn your body) and save lots of wood.

Agarwal built his first pyre, a raised human-sized brazier under a roof with slats that could be lowered to maintain heat. The elevation allowed air to circulate and feed the fire.

It gets even better…

Mokshda hopes its projects will eventually be registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism, which encourages green projects in developing countries.

It allows industrialised countries that have committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to count reductions achieved through investments in projects in developing countries towards their undertakings.

Really, we can get carbon credits by improving cremation practices?? That’s creative! Going all electric on the crematorium would obviously be the best thing, but Hindu religious sentiment being what it is, this is an improvement.

If you want environmentally friendly, this has nothing on the Parsis (or Zoroastrians):

The interior of the Tower of Silence is built in three concentric circles, one each for men, women, and children. The corpses are exposed there naked. The vultures do not take long—an hour or two at the most—to strip the flesh off the bones, and these, dried by the sun, are later swept into the central well

Yes, that’s right, the vultures! Now, that’s energy efficient! Unfortunately, due the use of diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory in livestock, vulture populations in India have declined to the point that this ancient ritual is now in serious jeopardy.

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    Colonialism: Environmental Edition

    Byoliveridley

    Does put recycling in context…

    Independent Online Edition > Environment

    Regardless of how carefully you separate your waste, there is a good chance a disposal firm will dump it all in together with other kinds of plastic trash and ship it to the developing world to be dealt with by a family of migrant workers earning a pittance. They will deal with the salad-bar container, the pistachio ice-cream container and the superfluous bag for carrots in your shopping basket in a variety of different ways – it may be recycled, it may become landfill or it may simply be burnt. Whatever happens, it is generally not a priority for the waste disposal company. Britain dumps around two million tonnes of waste in China every year, everything from plastic mineral water bottles to shopping bags and other forms of superfluous packaging from some of the country’s biggest supermarkets.

    Same for India as well. The article says that all of this “recycling” is illegal. But how do you hide 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste?

    Read the whole article, it is tragic. Some highlights:

    So too are the many and varied health complaints suffered by the local population, who risk multiple skin ailments and exposure to potent carcinogens as they touch the contaminated materials. Poisonous chemical effluents stream into their water supply, turning it black or lurid red, and studies by Greenpeace show that acid rain is the norm in this region. Children are prone to fevers and coughs. Their skin is often disfigured by the toxic plastic waste they have to process.

    A report by the University of Shantou on the town of Guiyu, another Guangdong recycling hub, showed that more than 80 per cent of local children suffer from lead poisoning.

  • Environmental Racism Strikes

    Byoliveridley

    If you had not been following this story previously, the NY Times finally mainstreams it.

    Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast – New York Times

    Over the next few days, the skin of his 6-month-old son, Salam, bloomed with blisters, which burst into weeping sores all over his body. The whole family suffered headaches, nosebleeds and stomach aches. How that slick, a highly toxic cocktail of petrochemical waste and caustic soda, ended up in Mr. Oudrawogol’s backyard in a suburb north of Abidjan is a dark tale of globalization. It came from a Greek-owned tanker flying a Panamanian flag and leased by the London branch of a Swiss trading corporation whose fiscal headquarters are in the Netherlands. Safe disposal in Europe would have cost about $300,000, or perhaps twice that, counting the cost of delays. But because of decisions and actions made not only here but also in Europe, it was dumped on the doorstep of some of the world’s poorest people.

    “Dark tale of globalization”?? More like blatant disregard for non-white life, just saying…

  • Revised theory suggests carbon dioxide levels already in danger zone

    Byoliveridley

    If climate disasters are to be averted, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) must be reduced below the levels that already exist today, according to a study published in Open Atmospheric Science Journal by a group of 10 scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom and France.

    The authors, who include two Yale scientists, assert that to maintain a planet similar to that on which civilization developed, an optimum CO2 level would be less than 350 ppm — a dramatic change from most previous studies, which suggested a danger level for CO2 is likely to be 450 ppm or higher. Atmospheric CO2 is currently 385 parts per million (ppm) and is increasing by about 2 ppm each year from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) and from the burning of forests.

    via Revised theory suggests carbon dioxide levels already in danger zone

    Read the entire paper here. As usual, coal is the main culprit and the answer to the puzzle is the elimination of any coal burning without sequestration.

  • Gapminder -Visualize Global Development Data

    Byoliveridley

    I must have been living in a cave somewhere to not have heard of this before today.

    The Gapminder World 2006, beta

    Gapminder is a non-profit venture that develops information technology for provision of free statistics in new visual and animated ways. In short, it enables you to make sense of the world by having fun with statistics. Our method is to turn boring data into enjoyable interactive animations using Flash technology. Gapminder is a Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. Funding has been mainly by grants from Swedish International Development co-operation Agency, Sida. In collaboration with United Nations Statistic Division we promote free access to searchable public data and our animations of different types of data are freely available at www.gapminder.org.

    The Pros
    You have to take it for a test drive to see how cool it is, especially the animations to see how parameters like life expectancy, population, etc. change over time. You can pick countries to compare, or just scatter plot everyone. Look at Botswana’s life expectancy, for instance, see it peak in 1987 at 65 years and start a steep  plummet to 35 years in 2004 as its AIDS mass murder (epidemic is a word that does do this one justice) took hold. To watch the dot for life expectancy drop that quickly as you animate it is pretty powerful, as powerful as a statistic can be. Each parameter you change also changes the URL, so you can send links easily.

    The Cons
    You have to plot something against something else. Not everything is a scatter plot between two variables, you use it long enough, and you start seeing correlations (=causations!) where none exist. There’s no way to extract plots to use for later, though I guess you can do a screen capture.

    Regardless, very cool, and nothing beats free access to large amounts of data that previously needed specialists to visualize and make sense of.

  • Plastic Bag Use – Money Talks

    Byoliveridley

    In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

    Motivated by a Tax, Irish Spurn Plastic Bags – New York Times

    Turns out that you can swiftly alter habits, attitudes, perception and behavior by charging people 33 cents per bag! Plastic bags are a convenience only because they are free.

    Also, if you read the entire article, you will realize that ad-hoc, voluntary, or piecemeal approaches by individual retailers, cities or states will not make as much of an impact as a national policy.

    All hail Ireland!

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  • More signs of the rapture – Fish dying in the Great Lakes

    Byoliveridley

    Freaky and scary, first the bees, now the fishes…

    Fish-Killing Virus Spreading in the Great Lakes – New York Times

    A virus that has already killed tens of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading, scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways.

    The virus, a mutated pathogen not native to North America that causes hemorrhaging and organ failure, is not harmful to humans, even if they eat contaminated fish. But it is devastating to the ecosystem and so unfamiliar, experts said, that its full biological impact might not be clear for years. It is also having a significant impact on the lakes’ $4 billion fishing industry.

    There is no known treatment for the virus. As a result, scientists are focusing on managing its spread to uncontaminated water — quite a challenge since the Great Lakes are linked and fall under the jurisdiction of several states and provinces in Canada.