canada

Preserving Canada’s Boreal Forest

- Adam Clare

The Ontario government recently announced that a patch Canada’s boreal forest twice the size of England will be protected. The De-Smog Blog describes the greatness of the boreal forest and what the recent announcement means.

Canada’s Boreal Forest is important when it comes to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. Canada’s Boreal forest is the world’s largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon, exceeding even the total carbon stored in the Amazon.

North America’s Boreal Forest stores up to 11% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. Roughly 56% of all the carbon is stored in peat. The remaining carbon is pooled in above-ground vegetation, rocks, and soil. At 186 billion tons, Canada’s Boreal carbon storage alone is equal to near 27 years of the world’s carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels.

You can download a comprehensive fact sheet on global warming and Canada's Boreal Forest here. (pdf)

Last year, 1,500 scientists from 50 countries called on Canadian governments – federal, provincial and territorial – to protect the 5.6 million square kilometres of boreal forest in Canada, which holds about 186 billion tonnes of carbon.

Ontario Electronic Waste Program

- Adam Clare

Starting in April 2009 people living in the Canadian province of Ontario will start paying a levy on electronic products that are costly to recycle. These added fees will go to fund the expensive recycling procedures for electronics, while also expanding the program.

The fees will go to an arm’s-length organization established by Waste Diversion Ontario and will be used to fund the collection and recycling of the products from hundreds of drop-off locations to be established across the province.

The program for TVs and computers is just the beginning of the province’s plans. Waste Diversion Ontario, which creates and runs recycling programs for the province, will today begin drafting the next phase of electronics recycling in Ontario. By next summer, the agency will put forward a plan to recycle nearly all other electronic products.

The ultimate purpose of adding recycling fees is to force manufacturers to create more environmentally friendly products.

Under the program, the fees, which are expected to total $62 million in the first year, could drop in future years if, for example, the cost to recycle the products decreases because manufacturers have removed lead or mercury components.

Things Are Good’s occasional writer, Cam Proctor, will be working on the program! Congrats to Cam!

B.C. Carbon Tax Begins

- Adam Clare

Burning gas is a sure way to destroy the environement, and the province of British Columbia is joining other parts of the world by taxing this bad practice. B.C. has started to tax gasoline purchases at the pump – the first Canadian province to do so.

The carbon tax, introduced in the Feb. 19 budget, taxes carbon-based fuels — including gasoline, diesel, natural gas and home heating fuel — at a rate of $10 per tonne of greenhouse gases generated. The carbon tax will rise $5 a tonne for the next four years until it hits $30 per tonne in 2012.

Spinning Energy from a Tornado

- Adam Clare 3 Comments

We’ve looked at tornadoes as possible energy sources before, and now Live Science has an article on the Canadian engineer with the swirling energy idea.

Tornadoes and hurricanes form when sun-heated air near the surface rises and displaces cooler air above. As outside air rushes in to replace the rising air, the whole mass begins to rotate.

Michaud got the notion of a man-made tornado — what he calls the Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE) — while working as an engineer on gas turbines.

“When I looked further into it, I didn’t run into anything that was impossible,” Michaud told LiveScience.

The AVE structure is a 200-meter-wide arena with 100-meter-high walls. Warm humid air enters at the sides, directed to flow in a circular fashion. As the air whirls around at speeds up to 200 mph, a vacuum forms in the center, which holds the vortex together as it extends several miles into the sky.

The concept is similar to a solar chimney with the swirling walls of the vortex replacing the brick walls of the tower. But the AVE can reach much higher into the sky where the air is colder.

With wind turbines at the inlets to the arena, Michaud calculates that as much as 200 megawatts of electricity (enough for a small city) could be extracted without draining the vortex of its power.

“Look at natural tornadoes that destroy a house or carry off a car and still have plenty of energy left over,” he said.

U.S. War Deserters Welcome in Canada

- Adam Clare

American troops who don’t want to fight in an illegal war can now live in Canada without fear of being deported!

U.S. soldiers who fled to Canada to escape the war in Iraq won a symbolic victory in the House of Commons Tuesday when a majority of MPs voted that the deserters should be allowed to stay permanently in the country.
But the motion, put forward by the NDP, is non-binding on the minority Conservative government. Tory MPs voted against the motion but were outnumbered by the three opposition parties in a 137-110 vote.
“The Harper Conservatives must respect this and immediately implement this motion,” said Olivia Chow, the Toronto New Democrat who moved the motion. “Ordinary people want the Iraq war resisters to stay.”
The Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign estimates as many as 200 American soldiers escaped to Canada to avoid serving in Iraq.

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