Author: Adam Clare

I Vote Toronto Wants New Torontonians to Vote

I Vote Toronto is all about getting people who live in Toronto to show their support for their city and democracy come voting day. I Vote Toronto wants to help people new to Toronto (and those unfamiliar with the Canadian electoral system) figure out how to vote. Canada’s federal election is happening on Oct. 14th and hopefully people will vote showing respect for each other and vote for a party that looks to help the people of Canada.

From their website:

I Vote Toronto is a coalition of individuals and organizations who believe in creating a more inclusive and representative city. Our coalition consists of community centres, settlement and integration services, social justice groups, employment agencies, environmental organizations and concerned residents from all areas of Toronto. While the coalition represents many different interests, we are united in our understanding that Toronto’s electoral process must reflect the makeup of its residents.

The I Vote Toronto campaign will engage communities all across Toronto, building awareness and providing the facts about immigration, integration, civic engagement and the health of our neighbourhoods. We will then make our case to provincial and municipal politicians, and urge them to update our voting laws, which currently leave hundreds of thousands of Torontonians without a voice.

Local Currencies Have a Good Return

Doulgas Rsuhkoff is guest blogging on boing boing and today he wrote a neat post on his small town. A restaurant owner there is trying to expand, but in order to do so he needs to raise cash. The owner turned to the community instead of a bank by selling local credit.

So Halko’s idea is to sell VIP cards. For every dollar a customer spends on a card, they receive the equivalent of $1.20 worth of credit at either restaurant. If I buy a thousand dollar card, I get twelve hundred dollars worth of food: a 20% rate of return on the investment of dollars. Halko gets the cash infusion he needs to build the new restaurant – and since he’s paying for it in 20% tab adjustments, it just comes out of profits. He gets the money a lot cheaper than if he were borrowing it from the bank, paying back in cash over time. Meanwhile, customers get more food for less money.

But wait, there’s more: the entire scheme refocuses a community’s energy and cash on itself. Because our money goes further at our own restaurant than a restaurant somewhere else, we are biased towards eating locally. Since we have a stake in the success (and the non-failure) of the restaurant in whose food we have invested, we’ll also be more likely to promote it to our friends. And since we have already spent a big chunk of money on Comfort’s food, we’re more likely go get food there than dish out more cash for a meal somewhere else.

Microwave CO2

Something that I’ve never thought about is happening in New Zealand and that’s using microwaves to store carbon in charcoal.

“The application of microwaves to charcoal making is new,” says Tim Flannery of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, an expert on climate change and not associated with Carbonscape. “If it increases efficiency in the charcoal-making process it could prove to be a real winner.”

The plant is months away from running at full capacity, and is currently being used to produce charcoal that can be used to fertilise soil and for academic research.

The use of charcoal as a fertiliser, or “biochar”, is well known. Nearly 500 years ago, tribes in the Amazon used to smoulder their domestic waste, and the resultant charcoal was mixed into the soil. In places in the Amazon, this terra preta, or black earth, is nearly half a metre thick.

Charcoal makes the soil more fertile by binding nutrients to itself and making them available for plants, and is extremely resistant to breakdown. “You do quite often get a very significant boost in soil fertility and water holding capacity,” says Michael Bird at the University of St Andrews, UK.

“The unknowns that remain are exactly how long [the charcoal] stays in the soil. In some circumstances it can be millions of years, or decades, depending on how it is made, and soil conditions.”

Canadian Scientist Create CO2 Scrubber

A researcher from the University of Calgary has create a machine that essentially scrubs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The Tech Herald explains:

The team now believes it is close to achieving that goal with the development of a relatively simple machine that can capture, or “scrub” the trace amount of CO2 present in the air at any place on the planet.
“The climate problem is too big to solve easily with the tools we have,” explained Keith, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy’s (ISEEE) Energy and Environmental Systems Group and a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering.
“While it’s important to get started doing things we know how to do, like wind power nuclear power and ‘regular’ carbon capture and storage, it’s also vital to start thinking about radical new ideas and approaches to solving this problem.”

Climate Time Machine

Nasa and the JPL have created a climate time machine to quickly explain to policy makers the effects of climate change.

Because everybody is affected by the weather, it seems like everybody likes to improvise themselves a climate scientist. Amateur theories about global warming are a dime a dozen and, unfortunately, that can make it hard for the general public and policy makers to figure out what’s based on sound science and what has just been made up in 5 minutes by someone who doesn’t know anything about climate science.

That’s the problem that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is trying to help fix with Climate Time Machine. Read on for more details.