The Energy Lady » Carbon Footprint

Climate Change New Welsh Supercomputer is ‘On The Case’

ecoanne — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:56:03 +0000

Exciting news from Wales. Blue Ice, a new supercomputer has been unveiled at Pembroke Dock Swansea. Prof. Tavi Murray, a leading glaciologist, is the team leader. NB. The article refers to Prof Murray as both Him & Her. If any Welsh speakers are reading this, can you tell us if ‘Tavi’ is a male or female christian name, please? Thanks.

Prof Murray said: “With many glaciers experiencing rapid thinning, time is of the essence in discovering the effects of these drastic changes.

It will allow researchers to convert vast amounts of scientific data on temperatures in thousands of locations into meaningful images, leading to better interpretation of the results.

According to the university, the icing on the cake is that the computer’s operation has also been specifically designed to be energy efficient.

Blue Ice is housed in a new “green” data centre and boasts energy efficient computer processing units which provide high performance computing within a small carbon footprint.

The computer, the latest from the series of IBM “blue” series, one of the first of which defeated Kasparov in 1997, can now make two trillion calculations per second.

Surrounded by a spectacular visualisation suite, the surprisingly small supercomputer will try to help Welsh scientists understand one of the most worrying modern climate trends: the thinning of polar ice sheets.

To read the full article please visit BLUE ICE

PS. Blue ice is the term given to the ice which is melting at the toe of a glacier. This ice appears blue. I’ll try to hunt out a picture for you.

Well Done Canada, The Brainy Part of North America

ecoanne — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:21:37 +0000

Ontario plans to restict the use of 87,000 sq.miles of pine forest to eco-tourism and traditional ‘First Nation’ uses like hunting and fishing.

The forests in Ontario support one of the world’s largest intact ecosystems. There are more than 200′ sensitive’ species of animals including polar bears, wolverines and caribou as well migratiry birds.

Ontario’s forest is a significant global carbon sink, absorbing some 12.5 million Tonnes (about 30 million tons in ‘old money’) of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

The Canadian Forestry Service tells us that Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions account for about 2% of global emissions.

Well Done Mr McGinty – Ontario’s Premier. You obviously didn’t attend the same school as Mr Bush!

If anyone in Canada is interested in Powertune Energy Saver. Please leave me a comment, thanks.

How Low can household carbon savings go?

ecoanne — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:27:50 +0000

This is a resume of an article in the latest update from www.EuroACE.org

How Low? Achieving optimal carbon savings from the UK’s existing housing stock: A new report commissioned by WWF-UK and prepared by UK ACE, the Centre for Sustainable Energy and Dr Richard Moore, concludes that it is feasible to reduce CO2 emission levels in the UK domestic housing sector by 80% by 2050. Read the report to see what governmental policy changes are deemed necessary to ensure this happens.

The Report

WWF say – UK’s Carbon Footprint is too Big.

ecoanne — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:44:16 +0000

This a very informative but sobering article quoting a report from the WWF.

The last paragraph reports that the battle for the environment will be won or lost in our cities. They have the highest potential for eco-living due to local facilities, public transport links, dense housing and shared public resources.—–One of the first things to tackle head on is awareness and recognition of personal responsibility.

To check your carbon footprint visit http://footprint.wwf.org.uk

To red the full article visit http://www.carbonmanagers.com/blog/file/newsletter-articles/uksca