How to spot the signs of global warming

The Independent thinks the increasingly early onset of Spring is a pretty good sign.

What event defines the spring for you? Maybe it's the first primrose. Primroses traditionally appear around Mothering Sunday. But last year the countrywide average date for the first primrose was 28 February. And even in these climatically challenged times, February is not many people's idea of spring.

How about frogspawn? Well, if you live in Cornwall, frogs start to feel the urge around Christmas time. By the time spring comes to the south-west, garden ponds are full of tadpoles.

Technorati tag: Global Warming, Spring

It's Not Easy Being Green

If Casa Spinneyhead had a television, we'd be watching this show- to be broadcast on BBC 2, on 28 March at 8pm.

Technorati tag: EcoHouse, Green, Television

The Green map of Britain

More of a list, really.

Lowest carbon town: Woking in Surrey

Over a period of 15 years, Woking Borough Council achieved a 77.4 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and reduced carbon-equivalent emissions by 17.23 per cent.

Technorati tag: Britain, Environment

Brown to raise the tax on soft roaders

I like the name "soft roader", it sounds so much more..... English than SUV.

The Daily Mail reports that Gordon Brown may be considering a rise in road tax for the most polluting cars to £200 a year. The new top rate will be for vehicles emitting more than 250 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, catching all those school run monsters and a lot of luxury and sports cars.

Drivers' groups will be up in arms, of course, and it will only be a symbolic charge anyway. The fuel costs of one of these monstrosities must be huge, bound to dwarf the cost of road tax. Maybe it's time to put width or height restrictions on roads past schools (with bollards that only raise at school run time?). Or, even better, announce that every £200 raised taxing the mammoths would be spent to buy a bike for a school kid or commuter.

Update The Independent reports that road tax may also be waived for low emission vehicles.

Technorati tag: Gordon Brown, Tax, SUV

howtosavetheworldforfree.com

How to Save The World for Free has now moved to its own domain- http://www.howtosavetheworldforfree.com/. It's hosted by GreenWebHost, because I thought it would be appropriate.

The new rss feed is at http://www.howtosavetheworldforfree.com/ecoatom.xml.

For now I'm trying to get all the archives to publish, but Blogger's being a pain in the arse. The archives at Spinneyhead will stay, because they still get search engine traffic, but I'm going to stick a redirect on the front page. Dig, Digest and 2 Wheels Good will come over as they have similar themes that will sit better as subdomains of howtosavetheworldforfree.com. When everything's fully published I'll think about converting to WordPress or some other publishing tool.

Technorati tag: How to Save the World for Free

The Green House

A few environmewnt related press releases from MPs-

David Lepper, Brighton Pavilion Labour and Co-operative MP, has been told the government is reviewing the guidance it gives to local councils about conservation areas to see if it can be made more compatible with energy effciency devices and renewable energy devices.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats will put the spotlight on the Assembly Government's green credentials in their minority party debate next week.

Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Lembit Opik MP, who will open a groundbreaking new exhibition at the Centre for Alternative Technology today, has backed his colleagues in Cardiff Bay, and called on Labour to be bold where they have been timid and do more to make Wales a powerhouse of the green economy:

"The green economy can bring enormous benefits to Wales. Labour should embrace green technology, not shy away from it."

The Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill will reappear in the House of Commons tomorrow (Friday), after it was wrecked by filibustering Tory MPs last Friday.

Despite huge support amongst the public, environmental pressure groups and politicians this legislation, was "talked out" in its Report Stage - one of the final hurdles.

Bath's MP, Don Foster, has rearranged his diary so that he can attend the debate and vote in favour of the Bill.

Alan Whitehead, MP for Southampton Test, says that if the tactics of two maverick MPs are not curbed tomorrow, it could have disastrous consequences for the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill.

The Bill which had its Report Stage and Third Reading last week with all-party support was once again subjected to the juvenile actions of two Conservative MPs, one Mr Christopher Chope, a former Southampton MP, the other the Rt Hon Eric Forth. Between them they spoke for a total of three and a half hours out of five, an attempt to deliberately delay the Bill's passage preventing progress through the Bill's remaining clauses. This tactic effectively prevents the Bill from proceeding.

Technorati tag: Parliament, Environment

MEN- "TV queen to turn city green"

Manchester council has recruited Penney Poyzer, of BBC2's No Waste Like Home, to help spread the word on their plans to make Manchester a green city.

Technorati tag: Manchester, Green City

The Alternative Wedding List

A note to all Friends of Spinneyhead (and Spinneyhead members) planning their nuptials this year- the Alternative Wedding List gives money to charities for you. If you really do need kettles and fondue sets, I guess you could run this one in parallel.

via Hippyshopper

Technorati tag: Wedding, Charity

Big bucks for high mileage

After paying out $10million for the first non-government space flight, the X Prize Foundation is coming back down to Earth. It has announced a prize of $25million for the company that produces the first commercially succesful car with a fuel consumption over 250 miles per gallon. The money goes to the first company to sell 10,000 of such a super efficient vehicle, though the exact rules and requirements are still being worked on.

via Jalopnik, where they have the following take on the McDonalds franchisee who runs his car on the waste oil from his burger bars-

Man, here's a dichotomy. A Mississippi man who owns four McDonald's franchises has converted his Ford pickup and his VW Beetle to run on excess grease from his stores; the four locations dispose of 10,000 gallons a year, giving him basically unlimited supply of food. According to him, it's about environmental sustainability and independence from foreign oil, yet ironically, dude owns four McDonald's franchises; rainforests are being clearcut for land to raise cattle to satiate the world’s appetite for meat, and all those cows release volatile organic compounds out their bums, which leads to air-quality problems like we see in the Southern San Joaquin Valley. That said, we’re a vegetarian and our car has a V-8. We'll shut up now.

Greasecar.com, for all your fast food fuel supplies.

Technorati tag: Economy, Transport, Biodiesel

Telegraph- " New suburbia is an environmental cul-de-sac"

Unsurprisingly, the 400,000 new homes that John Prescott insists on building in the South of England will probably be like the ones described in this article- energy intensive and giving nothing to the areas they invade.

Technorati tag: EcoHouse

Sunlight

I'm still working in the CIS tower, which now has a big display in the foyer telling us how much power the solar panels have generated and what that means in saved CO2. However, every floor has row upon row of flourescent tubes lighting it. Direct sunlight, on the rare days we get any, is blocked by blinds because it tends to shine in the eyes of those facing the windows.

Perhaps the Co-op can take another step in energy saving and have a few solar collectors on the roof, such as those by Solartech, which use parabolic mirrors to direct light into light tubes that can illuminate thousands of square feet of office space. The company needs further funding to bring their products to market. They estimate twenty times greater efficiency than converting light to power and then back again and say a system could pay for itself within two years.

via Treehugger

Technorati tag: Solar illumination

Click for the Climate

It's National Science Week, and we're being asked to pledge to take action to cut down CO2 emmissions. Despite already doing most of the things on the list, my pledge will still save 1045.32kgs of CO2 (providing I take an international flight and remember to plant a tree to offset it).

Technorati tag: Science Week, Carbon Dioxide

Cohousing

Cohousing is a different way of creating high density housing, a lot of house modules arranged around a communal section. The Independent reports on a project in Stroud.

Springhill Cohousing is at www. springhillcohousing.com; the UK Cohousing Network is at www. cohousing.org.uk; 'Designing Your Natural Home' by David Pearson is published by Gaia Books.

Technorati tag: EcoHouse, Cohousing

Keep your cleaning clean

From The Scotsman- How toxic is your home?

Mary Rayner, from the consumer watchdog magazine The Ethical Consumer, believes many of us are, and thinks we should be aware of the potentially harmful ingredients many of these cleaning products contain. "In an attempt to make us shell out for the latest products - promising ever faster and shinier results - many manufacturers [seem to be] adding more and more toxic ingredients to their cleaners without much regard for the effect they might have on the environment or the consumer," she says.

Amongst the worst culprits- ammonia, bleach and triclosan

Technorati tag: Cleaning, Toxins

Poop Power- fuel from cow dung

Japanese scientists have announced that they can extract petrol from cow dung by applying high pressure and heat and hope to have a commercially viable system ready in a few years.

Technorati tag: bio fuel, Waste, Cow dung

Lunar Power

A small scale scheme in New York could be the precursor of widespread tidal power schemes.

The appeal of next-generation hydropower is hard to miss. "It's local, reliable, renewable, and clean. Plus, it's out of sight," says Trey Taylor, president of Verdant Power LLC, the Arlington (Va.) startup developing the East River site. Adds Roger Bedard, ocean energy leader at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the industry's research-and- development arm: "Offshore wave and tidal power are where wind was 20 years ago, but they'll come of age faster." By 2010, Bedard predicts, the U.S. will tap about 120 megawatts of offshore wave energy -- enough to power a small city -- up from virtually zero today.

via Treehugger

Technorati tag: Tidal Power, Lunar Power

Green cleaning solutions

Eco Street has a useful checklist of less polluting household cleaners

Technorati tag: Cleaning

Hybrid House

Hybrid technologies are almost finished building the "Hybrid House", which promises to be 100% self sufficient for energy. Buy the right kind of rechargeable hybrid car and you can plug that into the system as well.

via Treehugger

Technorati tag: EcoHouse, Hybrid House

How to Save the World for Free is looking for a Green home

This blog has been going since October 2004, starting as Spinneyhead's EcoHouse before becoming How to Save the World for Free. All that time it's been sitting as a subdirectory of Spinneyhead. Now I think it's time for it to move out and fend for itself in the big bad world.

I'm looking for a Green hosting solution, hopefully one that costs less than $17.50/£10 a month (which is roughly half the blog's income last month). If anyone has suggestions please leave them in the comments.

Technorati tag: Web hosting

Loremo

It looks like the car of the future, as envisaged in numerous sci-fi films, and you will have to wait until 2009 to get the first ones. The Loremo offers fuel consumption of 1.5litres/ 100km. Someone on Digg has calculated that out to 159mpg for those of us still thinking in Imperial.

Technorati tag: Transport, Fuel Economy