Alicia Silverstone and PETA

Low Cost Flights? Part II

From time to time I have to refresh my memory respect to the harmful that flights are. Here I summarize you, because of royalties, a post sent by a reader to a spanish magazine whose name is CNR. You can find the writing in the 114th number in August 2006. I imagine you can find the report in the previous number.

OK, so, let's go.... The sender expressed her outrage when she realized that flying 1000 kms pollutes the equivalent to the bills of a whole year on electricity, heating and land transport during two and a half years. When she thought of the damage that an irrational usage of planes cause to the environment, she wondered whether it's worthy to live thinking about your daily acts to cause the smaller damage to the environment. Is it worthy to recycle, switch off lights or ride a bicycle? She compared the situation as giving aspirines to a terminal patient.....

By the way, the article had an excellent title: "Flying to the abyss". In the moment I wrote this post in Spanish, it was an update on CO2 emissions and those from the transport seemed to have increased. No long time ago, the transport emissions represented a 15% of the whole, in that moment it seemed that it got 25% even there was some survey which pointed to 40%. In any case, it seems that aviation was and is increasing its emissions year after year, so it should be a must for many people to get a plane as much once a year. By the way, domestic flights please do not. In Spain we could do it, perhaps... with an exception... Canarias Islands.

More about Canada's Slaughter

Faster than Expected

Just as we get more knowledge about past climate and how the biosphere works and just as we get more powerful computers to mix all these things and make them to run together, we realize once and another that changes are happening faster than we thought last time. The British Antartic Survey released the following information some days ago.

British Antarctic Survey has captured dramatic satellite and video images of an Antarctic ice shelf that looks set to be the latest to break out from the Antarctic Peninsula. A large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is now supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two islands. It is another identifiable impact of climate change on the

Antarctic environment.

Scientists monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf spotted that a huge (41 by 2.5 km) km2 berg the size of the Isle of Man appears to have broken away in recent days - it is still on the move.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos from the University of Colorado alerted colleagues Professor David Vaughan and Andrew Fleming of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that the ice shelf looked at risk. After checking daily satellite pictures, BAS sent a Twin Otter aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to check out the extent of the breakout.

Professor Vaughan, who in 1993 predicted that the northern part of Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if climate warming on the Peninsula were to continue at the same rate, says, "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened. I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know

in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

Jim Elliott was onboard the BAS Twin Otter to capture video of the breakout for Vaughan and colleagues. He says, "I've never seen anything like this before - it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble - it's like an explosion."

The breakout is the latest drama in a region of Antarctica that has experienced unprecedented warming over the last 50 years. Several ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years - six of them collapsing completely (Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.)

Professor Vaughan continues, "Climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula has pushed the limit of viability for ice shelves further south - setting some of them that used to be stable on a course of retreat and eventual loss. The Wilkins breakout won't have any effect on sea-level because it is floating already, but it is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region." Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado says, "We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up."

Here you have some things that were told on TV.

Canada's Cruel 2007 Seal Hunt

An obvious sentence

Listen to me Pedro, I'm going to tell you a thing: don't forget that summer is for being hot and winter is for being cold. I was said that by a biologist with a lot of experience when we spoke about climate and the tremendous compsumtion of energy from the air conditioning machines when we try to go beyond the limits of necessity. If we add to the abusing compsumtion a bad building, in terms of energy efficiency, it is, houses bad insulated both winter and summer, the cocktail is very "interesting" in terms of waste.

In this part of Spain where I live, it isn't unusual to find the type of houses I say. In this way, you can see big houses for only two or three people and I wonder why such people need such big houses, maybe many times the reason is to show off.... in another words: ostentation and waste. Why not more little houses and more efficients? We are so proud that we are completely blind. Yes, Paco, yes, your house is very nice but in terms of ecology is an authentic disaster. I don't want to think of the so much kilowatts it devours for keeping the inside temperature. To think that you set the machine at 20ºC in summer and 25ºC in winter.... is an authentic nightmare for me....

Anyway, some recommendations, 25-26ºC would be very well for summer and 20-21ºC for winter as well. If we get the cold from Finland as a reference, normally, when someone gets into a hotel, he/she finds a 20-21ºC temperature, no more, that means that your clothes doesn't bother you, but neither you are cold. It is unacceptable that somebody wants to wear bermuda shorts at the expense of rising the temperature of the air conditioning. Be sensible.

Since town-planning scandals seem to "sing" a lot in our coastlines, it seems that now builders are looking at inland; deforesting and destroying our coastlines seems not to have been enough for those people, they have to destroy now our mountains. Madrid, Castilla León or Murcia are some of the examples.

A mayoress from a village of Murcia who expects to build a big estate on a inirrigated land as well as having deforested the last places which were left, says that water will be brought from a dasalination plant. Lots of thanks Miss Mayoress, thanks a lot for contributing to the green house effect. We are so corrupt that even we speculate with desalination plants in the way we don't built the most efficient ones, so we need a lot of energy for running them and the most of the energy that will be needed will come from non-renewable sources. Please, listen to me, whether you want or not: if it is not possible to hold more people in one place, why so much interest in going against nature? Money is the only reason to be justified, the money... the cancer of our daily world. Maybe any day will you understand the meaning of the word NO? Miss, school finished long time ago and what's happening makes me to think that you were not a brilliant pupil.

Well, many things, many words... but I continue thinking the same: consumers have the last word. Before buying a house we should think where and how the building has been built. We don't have only to appreciate a pretty landscape, an idillyc landscape and the most probable is that our home has been built destroying the house of "others". Anyway, everything can be reduced to the benefit of a few people and to the offense of the most, now and in the future, but of course, bullfighting, guitars and party have to be a must, the rest... can be forgotten.