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Archive for the 'The Planet' Category
Climate Change: Canada we’re coming
Risk advisory firm Maplecroft has published a “Climate Change Risk Report” looking into the vulnerability of 168 countries to the impact of climate change. The study does not review the severity of the threats in general, but instead evaluates the ability of each of the countries to adapt and withstand potential change.
The report includes a vulnerability index and comparable country scorecards with risk indices, risk indicators, maps and graphics.
Not unsurprising the developed nations with…
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USA: Largest Wind Energy project approved
With prices of oil and natural gas skyrocketing, Texas, home to some of the largest US petroleum industry conglomerates, is already planning ahead of current boom times for a future that could turn this state into one of the World’s biggest producers of alternative energy.
Following Oil Billonaire T. Boone Pickens’ declaration of “going green” and his initial purchase of about 670 MW wind turbines from GE earlier this year, regulators have now (preliminary) approved a plan to invest about USD 5 Billion into the electrical grid infrastructure connecting new alternative / wind energy projects in the wind-rich West and the Panhandle to the urban areas of Texas.
According to the approved plan…
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Video: Bottom-up skyscraper demolition
Japanese construction company Kajima is currently in the process of constructing their new headquarters building and as part of the work it had to demolish their old high rise buildings used for that purpose before.
Unlike today’s common approaches to demolishing high rise building from top floor down or via controlled explosions, Kajima has developed a new method that allows to dismantle the building from bottom up. Besides that heavy machinery used in the demolition work does not need to be brought up to the top of the building…
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Video: How fair is fairtrade?
This short video / interview looks at some general aspects of the concept of fair trade and the brand with the same name.
Welcome to a very unfair edition of the Telegraph’s video show “Holy Cows”.
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Environment: The Planet animation
The Swedish web site forskning.se together with a group of Swedish environment and research agencies has created an excellent interactive animation on fundamentals, issues and problems of the planet we’re living on…
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Space: Gaja calling
f “Contact” with Jodie Foster was your kind of movie then you should have a look at the real-life version of sounds and noises recorded in space.
Watch the video for the sounds Gaja sends out into space that might be heard by other “aliens” on their planets…
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NZ Boat Earthrace takes new world record for circumnavigation
This Friday at 14:24 CET when crossing the finishing line in Sagunto, Spain New Zealand’s Eco-Diesel boat “Earthrace” set a new world record for circumnavigation with powerboats.
With the new record time of 60 days, 23h:49min skipper Pete Bethune and his crew have shaved off almost 14 days from the previous record set by the British “Cable & Wireless” in 1998. After the failed first attempt to break the record last year when they had to abandon the run due to structural damages to the boat’s hull, this year’s attempt was not plagued with similar issues…
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Geo-Politics: The New Yorker on war preparations in the USA
The New Yorker in his next issue (July 7 - available online) includes an excellent editorial on the preparations for another war by the Bush administration.
This time its Iraq Iran and based on a Presidential Finding signed by G.W. Bush the congress has already approved 400 Million USD for covert, sabotage and all sorts of other shady activities to “destabilize Iran“…
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Data-Visualization: Oil prices 1861-2008
If every “close encounter” with a petrol station these days gets you into a bad mood and you slowly start believing these gas prices are from another planet, this diagram might not be helping either.
Forbes Magazine brushed up a chart with data from the Commodity Research Bureau and the US Department of Commerce showing the development of oil prices from 1861 to 2008. Data is charted in real prices (constant 2008 Dollar) and nominal.
When you look at this diagram it shows…
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US Credit Crisis: Fed borrowing shown as a chart
If you would like to see the “official version of how much money the Fed is pumping into banks and financial institutions recently, have a look at the chart below.
The gray shaded areas are times officially recognized as recessions. The underlying data is available at the St. Louis Fed web site together with a charting application that allows you to further customize the range and other parameters.
To better visualize the substantial change we have split the data into two charts:
The larger chart shows the borrowing from the FED for the period 1919 to 2007 and the smaller one data for 2008 only. As you can see during these almost 90 years borrowing remained continuously within a range of almost none to max 8 Billion USD per month.
Since the beginning of 2008 the numbers have drastically changed and are now at about 155 Billion USD per month. The monthly figures for 2008 in detail…
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