Good Fact

Blimps for Heavy Lifting

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Airships are really fun! We haven’t looked at them in a long time though, last time airships were mentioned here was in 2006. Well, there has been some development since then and now a company has designed an airship for really heavy lifting.

SkyHook International announced Tuesday that it will build the Jess Heavy Lifter (JHL-40) in conjunction with aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co.

The JHL-40 takes elements of a blimp and a helicopter to lift up to 40 tonnes in one load and travel up to 320 kilometres without refuelling. It will have a top speed of 70 knots.
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“The perception is ‘Oh, it’s going to blow up. It’s a Hindenburg or something like that.’ And it’s going to be our job to educate people as to what this thing is. You can’t get around the fact it’s a large envelope full of helium, and it does look a little bit like a balloon,” said the aviation engineer and former helicopter pilot.

“It’s a blimp on steroids because it’s got more than 20,000 horsepower on it and it’s a serious working machine.”

The company said that unlike blimps, the airship is neutrally buoyant.

Ontario and Quebec Don’t Like Carbon

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

I’m not a big fan of carbon trading but there is good news insofar that two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec have decided to tackle environmental concerns. The Canadian federal government has followed the lead of Bush’s administration and have tried to stop any environmental progress, indeed they even say Ontario and Quebec are wrong because they are doing something. I sure this is the first of many headlines that show the provinces leading the environmental way in Canada.

It’s great to see two large provinces in Canada teaming up to show the federal government that they are open to legislating improved environmental protection.

Charest called tackling the issue of climate change a “tremendous challenge for humanity.”

He said whoever becomes the next U.S. president will be doing a “180-degree turn” on climate change policy, and the two provinces shouldn’t wait for that to happen before making changes of their own.

“Why wait for the Americans? We want to subscribe to everything that is being done on the European level and the North American level,” Charest told reporter

Eco-Flooring

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

flooring

There are a few options on how to make that thing you walk on everyday a little more environmentally friendly. Bamboo flooring is my personal favourite. Some enterprising people have taken left over flooring from other projects and put them together in a neat way.

In keeping with our eco design model, and just for the sheer fun of it, we’ve decided that the kitchen floor will be made up from all the leftover pieces of Marmoleum we’ve saved so far.

The first part was the installation of a high quality sub-floor (similar to the bathrooms), consisting of maple plywood and a lot of staples.

SMS Helps Rural Farmers

- Adam Clare

Cell phones are handy devices and can be used for seemingly endless purposes. Indian farmers are using SMS to help them earn more money from their crops.

Standing in a grove of lush green banana trees I find Kapil Jachak.
He’s busy checking his mobile phone for text messages containing practical information for farmers.
It’s a new service called Reuters Market Light, and he was one of the first to sign up in this area.
The first message every morning is a daily weather forecast for his area.
“By getting the weather reports we can see exactly how much water our banana plants need,” he says, “I keep my cost down, and get the best crop I can.”

Whale Songs to Warn Mariners of Their Presence

- Adam Clare

A system of buoys that will warn boats of the presence of whales has been put in place along a part of the east coast of the USA. The network of buoys listen for sounds that whales make and then the network will relay messages to boaters in the area to stay clear of the undersea creatures.

They have developed a cutting-edge underwater listening system to protect the creatures from their number one killer: ships. The Massachusetts Bay network can track right whales by their signature call – and in as little as 20 minutes warn mariners to slow if they’re too close.

The devices are also giving scientists unprecedented insight into how the creatures change behavior to respond to the cacophony of man-made noises in the bay.

“We need to listen to these whales” to save them, said Christopher W. Clark, director of Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research Program, which developed the technology with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Clarks said an increasing number of pipelines, cruise ships, tankers, and construction projects are drowning out the whales’ soft calls, making it difficult for them to connect. Clark has evidence that the whales simply don’t “whoop” when the bay gets too noisy.

“In the world of right whales, we know it’s a noisy place to live,” Clark said in an e-mail. “Underwater [is] not much different than living on the tarmac at Logan.”

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