George W. Vanderbilt enjoyed looking into Mount Pisgah from the palatial Biltmore House that he constructed in the late 1890s.
He wouldn’t have seen much of the peak if he were around as of late.
The vistas too often are not clear today, according to his great-grandson William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil Jr.
Burning eyes, scratchy throats, headaches - maybe even a general feeling of malaise.
Color-coded Air Quality Index warnings offer a tangible barometer of the quality of air in East Tennessee, but those all-too-familiar symptoms may signal to many people that it’s another dirty-air day in Knoxville.
“Since 1998, we’ve had 548 unhealthy air days in the park - that’s not good,” said Jim Renfro, air quality specialist at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The olive’s reputation as a health food is being borne out by modern science, as studies of olive-consuming Mediterranean peoples have shown. To keep the world’s olive lovers satisfied, an intensive wave of olive planting has occurred in the past decade in many parts of the world. Traditionally, olives have been cultivated in the Mediterranean region. But fresh water is becoming increasingly hard to come by in semiarid areas, and irrigation of most new olive plantations is often accomplished with low-quality sources of water that contain relatively high levels of salt.
The study presents an analysis on a range of programs demonstrating that low-cost locally led projects have a much higher rate of success than high-cost government-led projects.
The mangrove forests along the Philippines’ 36,300 km of coastline play an important role in fisheries, forestry and wildlife as well as providing protection from typhoons and storm surges, erosion and floods. In the last century, they have declined from 450,000 ha to 120,000 ha, mostly due to their development into culture ponds. This has led to many replanting initiatives ranging from small community projects to large scale international development assistance programs. During this time planting costs have escalated from $100/ha to >$500/ha, mainly due to the overhead costs of large-scale projects. Unfortunately, despite heavy funding, the majority of these replanting schemes have been unsuccessful with only 10-20 percent of the mangroves replanted surviving.
During the week of July 6, leaders of the world’s 17 major economies at the Montreal Protocol Parties’ meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, pledged to “continue to promote actions under the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer for the benefit of the global climate system.” The treaty was signed in 1987 in order to reduce the production of substances that deplete the ozone layer. Representatives from Argentina, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Mauritius proposed strengthening the Protocol to address the 7.4 billion tons of carbon emissions that will be emitted through 2015 from discarded products and equipment if not properly recovered and destroyed. Destruction of these substances—including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) in developed countries, as well as additional CFCs in developing countries—would also significantly benefit the ozone layer, saving lives and reducing the risk of cancer and cataracts .
After a hugely success inaugural event in 2008, we are now working hard to put together the programme and plans for the 2009 World Future Energy Summit.
The conference will cover a wide range of themes including:
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With over 15,000 attendees expected to attend in 2009, the summit will be the largest meeting of influential figures within the renewable energy industry.
The exhibition has been extended in 2009 to cover over 20,000 sq metres and will include a series of new feature areas to encourage networking and interaction within this global community.
There will also be a range of social events including the Zayed Future Energy Prize ceremony and dinner.
They’ll huff and they’ll puff and they’ll blow their carbon foot print down. Tesco, the worlds third largest grocer, has been given the go ahead to build Britain’s first ever straw-powered power plant.
The Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP) will meet the electricity and heating needs of its Goole Distribution Centre.
The finding does not change estimates of the oceans’ total carbon uptake, but it reveals the surprisingly large role of tropical oceans and major rivers.
The tropical North Atlantic had been considered a net emitter of carbon from the respiration of ocean life. A 2007 study estimated that ocean’s contribution to the atmosphere at 30 million tons of carbon annually.
So far this season, 16 days have been tagged for bad air quality. But according to a new study just released by The Nature Conservancy, air pollution isn’t just a concern for humans. Our environment suffers too.
“Just like we breathe in air through our mouth and lungs, these plants take in air through their leaves and take in the pollution just as we do,” said Andy Finton of The Nature Conservancy.
Finton says ozone has cut down on forest growth.
“The productivity of northeastern forests has been shown to be decreased by ozone by up to and greater than 10 percent,” he said.
Shell is so impressed with the new approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. ‘We think it’s a promising idea,’ says Shell’s Gilles Bertherin, a coordinator on the project. ‘There are potentially huge environmental benefits from addressing climate change — and adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment.’
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