Ginger,Close-Up!

Some close-up pictures of my lovely kitty Ginger.



More Photos: Ginger, Close-up!

An Inconvenient Truth

Caption: An Inconvenient Truth is the first climate documentary to get mainstream distribution. Former US vice President Al Gore is featured and is the narrator in the about the truths of global warming. Photo Source:Paramount Classics

"Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced. If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom - think again. This documentary offers a passionate and inspirational look at former Vice President Al Gore's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress."

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH is a climate documentary made by the former US vice president Al Gore. I’ve been waiting for this movie for long time and it showed in the Sydney Film Festival few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I missed it… too bad! I have to wait until September when it is shown in the cinemas.

Some criticisms said that the motivation of Gore make the film is to gain publicity as he is a possible presidential candidate in 2008. However, the film also make a change in the cinematic landscape in which documentaries from all sides of the political spectrum are finding audiences and affecting the political conversation. No matter what is the motivation of the documentary, it still gives a powerful lecturer on climate as it borrow a Hollywood marketing playbook to propagandize impacts of climate change as well as raining people’s environmental consciousness.

Global warming has been a passion of Gore's since he was a student a Harvard University. After losing the presidential election and leaving office five years ago, Gore pulled together a nonpartisan slide show on the effects of global warming and took it on the road, making hundreds of appearances since then at universities and colleges, and for lawmakers, environmentalists and anyone else who will listen.

View Movie Trailers Here
Official Website: An Inconvenient Truth

Too much money, Too less sport (2)

Days before the big kick-off, there also have been complaints from the German organisers that the marketing of this tournament has reached unacceptable levels.The amount of money paid by the World Cup sponsors rise sharply in past few years: US brewing giant Anheuser-Busch paid 40 million dollars (31 million euros) to be one of the 2006 World Cup’s 15 official sponsors, sparking outrage in Germany where all but one local beer will be banned from the stadiums in favor of Budweiser. Polls in Germany also showed that the public is growing sick of World Cup-related advertising and product tie-ins. Just wonder whether there have limits of money-making.

The side effect of money that ruins the sports not only can be found in the World Cup as it is also the core cause of the Italian match-fixing scandal. The Football Federation's prosecutor charged Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio, as well as 26 individuals for sporting fraud and violating fairness and probity. Juventus almost certainly face relegation as a result of the scandal, while AC Milan may receive lighter punishment.

I am quite depressed by the news as once I was a very big fan of the Italian Serie A., especially during the age of Roberto Biaggio and the time when Del Piero started his career in Juventus. What is happening now is too bad...anyway, hopefully the scandal can give some sorts of lesson to the sports world.

More information: FIFA deny World Cup spoiled by money-making

Too much money, Too less sport

Photo Source: freshegg.com

Sport is the world’s most common language. The World Cup,as one of the biggest sports events, it is supposed to be a platform of building bridges across boundaries and ethnic. However, due to its enormous profit making potential, every one just tries to to make big bucks from the global frenzy and distorts the real spirit of sports, I think.

In some cities and countries, the broadcasting right is snatched by paid TV and high prices are set which avoid some lower income groups and poor people to enjoy all the 64 matches. Although the first and the last few matches are broadcasted for free everywhere, watching the process of how the teams going to the final is definitely the heart of World Cup, but such right is being deprived from some poorer people. Sports is no longer being a bridge across different people, but a potential tool to deepen the problem of social injustic as some poorer social groups are being excluded in this universal event when money is involved. What is underlying the “sports spirit” nowaday is more likely refer to the partnership between football, the economy and television which need to find a way to benefit all sides. Sports now is a bit over commericalised and capitalised. So sad to reckon this reality.

The Dirty Secret of China's Economy

Photo Source: The Globalist

According the latest statistics from the China's top environmental agency the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the mainland's pollution scourge costs almost 10% loss in gross domestic product of the country, which is roughly about $200 billion a year. That's why an article used the title "The Dirty Secret of China's Economy" to criticize the country's economic development.

China is a remarkable growth story. But it is also fast becoming an ecological wasteland, home to world-class smog, acid rain, polluted rivers and lakes, and deforestation. Environmental problems play a role in the death of some 300,000 Chinese people each year, according to World Bank estimates.”

- Brian Bremner, "Business Online"

It is quite true that with the China’s “Dragonomics”, it is unrealistic to expect China to be very clean or environmentally sound. Indeed, the Chinese government shows quite a lot of initiatives about how to make China greener and more sustainable. For example, the newly released 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), which is the guideline for development directions, propagates more energy-saving, higher value-added industries as well as expanding the services sector as a call for turning away from rough, polluting, and energy-wasting industries that had been made as early as the mid. The 11th Five-Year Plan further stipulates that the industrial sector must cut energy use by 20 percent.

The Chinese Government also suggested heaps of schemes to deal with different environmental problem, such as Green GDP etc. But many skeptics wonder whether all these are just done for greening the Beijing Olympics 2008 and the country will lose interest after the Game. Although I am also quit suspicious about the environmental program for the Beijing Olympics is some sorts of greenwashing, I am still optimistic that the Chinese Government does learn some lesson from the Western mordernisation. So, it is too early to say whether they will lose interest and will do badly in environmental protection after the Olympics. Let’s see.

More information:
The Dirty Secret of China's Economy
Green GDP — The Real Chinese Revolution?

Football, Solar City – Gelsenkirchen

Caption: Gelsenkirchen- a model to move dirty energy source to sustainable and clean solar energy (Photo Source: FC Schalke 04 and the City of Gelsenkirchen Official Website)

Immediately after the World Cup opening match in Munich on 9 June 2006, the second match of the tournament is kicked off at the FIFA World Cup Stadium Gelsenkirchen, a city once know “the city of a thousand fires” for its dependency on coal-mining, now has shifted its energy focus dramatically to become a national solar energy technology centre.

The city was once dominated by the coal industry, however, the coal crisis in the late 1950s brought about a structural change away from coal and steel. Today, Gelsenkirchen is more renowned for cleaner solar energy and has developed into a national business and research centre for solar technology. More than 21,000 of jobs in the renewable energy sector are also created throughout the transformation. Moreover, the end of coal to exploitation has also made way for a rich cultural landscape with mineshafts being replaced by theatres and cabarets.

Green power and solar energy debates have been lasted for years in Australia. However, moving to solar energy means a decentralization of electricity service and a reform of economy structure, which involves heaps of vested interests and large corporations. The myth between government-business relationship is definitely the biggest barrier for the clean energy transformation, from my point of views. That’s why the solar energy development in Australia is always stayed within the academic domain, while centralized nuclear energy plants development dominated the policy agendas in Oz.

(The next match in Gelsenkirchenis the quarter final between England/Ecuador and Portugal/Holland on 1 July. I do looking forward a good game in this Solar City!)

More about the city:
Science Park, Solar City, "Stairway to Heaven"
The history of the city of Gelsenkirchen

Hydrogen Bus to Ferry Football Fans in Germany

Caption: Two hydrogen are being tested by football fans in Berlin. Environment-friendly hydrogen-fuelled buses will be a common sight in European streets in the future. (Photo Source: MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Group )

Football fans in Germany traveling from the stadiums are riding hydrogen buses during the World Cup. Two 12 m single-deckers hydrogen buses are being tested in the Berlin bus network to transfer World Cup visitors coming or going from the Olympic Stadium or the Tegel Airport.

This project is a part of a sustainability development program HyFLEET to contribute to the establishment of a safe hydrogen infrastructure for the European future. The buses will be tanked at a service station that the station is itself part of the experiment: a steam reformer will generate, on site, gaseous or liquid hydrogen meeting the majority of the fuel needed to feed the buses. Fuel cells from a Sweden-based company will be used to power and heat the tank station. Fuel hybrid vehicles are used in other "Lion's cities”, such as Hannover and Hamburg, to shuttle visitors between World Cup games in order to achieve better urban-driving efficiency and lower emissions.

However, when adopting new hybrid vehicles, questions about in what way the energy source is clean and renewable, what energy use to produce the hydrogen fuel cell and what are the negative environmental impacts associated should also bear in mind.

More Information:
First hydrogen buses for Berlin: today's step into the future of mobility
Hydrogen Buses for Football Fans at the FIFA World Cup in Berlin

How China involves in the Germany World Cup

Photo Source: Yahoo! FIFA World Cup

Although China is unable to qualify for the Germany World Cup, everyone one in Germany is still able to feel China’s “involvement”- it is because most of the flying German National flags are made in China!!

Some flags manufactures announced that the number of different national flags used in the Germany World Cup is far more than the number in 2002. In the past few months, one flag manufacturer already used more the 300 thousands square meter of clothes to make national flags and half of them are used for the German one’s. The company now produces 30 thousands flags every month instead of 150 before the World Cup. The cheap price of the flags(1 euro to 2 euro) is also another reasons for the drastic sales boost. It is believed that such cheap price is solely because they are “Made in China”!

Relater Article: How China involves in the Germany World Cup 2006 (Chinese Article)

Green Goal

It has been a while I haven’t update my Blog. Last week was the final week of semester and I was so busy with all presentations and assignments in last few weeks. My work doesn’t final yet as I still have one 4000 essay to go. This week seems much busier…not because of study but the World Cup!! Vive de fútbol!

As Australia also participate in this year (after missing the competition for 32 years), the Aussies are just suddenly being so crazy about this sport. Everything here, news, commercial or non-commercial stuff etc, are link with the competition to draw people’s attention. Similar situation in Hong Kong as the World Cup fever is just sweeping across the city and driving almost everyone crazy. So do I.

Some environmental protection project is also taking in place with this soccer fever as it can probably yield twice the result with half the effort when everyone’s attention is on the topic. A Green Goal™ was piloted in The 2006 FIFA World Cup™ which is assigned a central role to protecting the global climate. For the first time ever at a FIFA World Cup, the event’s effect on the climate will be minimized by conventional methods of energy efficiency, use of renewable energy sources and support for environment-friendly transportation. Unavoidable greenhouse gases, emitted throughout Germany, will be balanced by investment in climate projects, ensuring the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ ends up "climate neutral". Tight, measurable targets also set to minimize the environmental impacts from this sports event. For example, they set rules to restrict plastics, food and drink packaging and promotional items in the stadiums and introduce high-tech energy management systems to reduce 20 per cent in electricity consumption on both and match and non-match days.

It is a very positive and effective strategy to incorporate environmental considerations into the World Cup and I can see including environmental impacts and considerations are increasingly being factored into important sporting events. What an uplifting news for the environment! Although it is very possible they are not doing as good as they can, but at least they moved the first step!

Link: 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany: Green Goal

New "Trend" in Hybird Car

Source: Rustle the Leaf

With high gas prices straining our household budgets, hybrid car has been advocated (both by government, car manufactures and some scientists) as the “best” alternative of conventional petroleum-based vehicles for a long long time. Such advocacy is much more strengthened with these two years due to the striking oil price.

Originally, the rationale behind hybrid car development was to reduce gasoline consumption and reduce air emissions. Fuel efficiency, together with alternative energy source, should be the main concerns. However, new hybrids car model are very focus on power and speed, ther newer the hybrid car model, the faster and more powerful it is. It implies that more fuel/electricity are required pre journey with those newly innovations. It seems to me that there is a risk the hybrid car development is going out of the track.

The current hybrid car development trend is a good demonstration about the “effectiveness” of using technology to fix environmental problems. Technology is one of the solutions but never can be the only solution to deal with environmental crisis. In the hybrid car case, attitudes towards how and why people using car is the more underlying cause that we have to deal with. It is pointless to use an environmentally sounded technology or products in an unenvironmentally friendly way. Similar situation in the nuclear power or other renewable energy development. Shifting energy sources or finding alternative are not able to solve energy crisis if people keep using energy in consumptive and insensible way.

Sadly, the main stream environmental practice is still focus on techno-fixed solution. Although there are heaps of people and studies suggestion and urging about the essential of changing attitudes, behavior and culture, those discussion are still fighting only on paper.

Latest News on Hybrid Car: Scientists Back Plug-In Hybrids

A “Damn” from Space

Caption: Damning the Earth? The Keyhole Nebula NGC 3372 (Source: NASA Image Gallery)

The photo was taken in 2000 by NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team. This Nebula is about 8000 light years away.
When I saw the image first time, I found that this glowing cloud of gas, dust and stars is just like giving us their “middle finger”. Well, it is just a normal astrophysical phenomenon in the outer space. But for a raving person like me, I will say it is a damn to the Earth because those who are living on the globe is not only damaging their own planet but also dumping rubbish to the space. The world currently sends approximately 200 tons of payloads, the equivalent of two 747 freighter flights, into space annually and there is an increasing trend for such “illegal dumpling”. In US, some scientists suggested that to dump the nuclear waste into the space is the best option for nuclear waste disposal!! So, it is very reasonable why the outer space gives us their “middle finger”!!

About the Keyhole Nebula

Ecological Footprint

Caption:What we did and doing is making permanent mark on our planet. (Image Source: http://dieoff.org/Foot.gif)

Ecological Footprints is an environmental accounting tool to estimate the resources consumption, emissions and waster assimilation requirements of a defined human population or economy in terms of corresponding productive land use. A population’s ecological footprint is the total area of productive land or sea required to produce all the crops, meat, seafood, wood and fibre it consumes, to sustain its energy consumption with the biologically productive capacity of the land and sea available to population.

According to the WWF research in 2002, the Earth has about 11.4 billion hectares of productive land and sea space and it is about 1.9 hectares per person. Nevertheless, we consumed 2.3 hectares per person which was 20% above the Earth’s biological capacity. Moreover, due to the wealth gaps between nations, not every one can consume their own productive space. In 1999, the average for North American was about 9.6 hectares per capita, while it was 5.0 hectares per person in Europe and 1.9 for Asian and African. (China is 2.0 hectares per person in 2001)WWF predicted that the humanity’s footprint is likely to grow to about 220% of the earth’s capacity by the year 2050. It means that we need 2 more Earth to sustain our activities at that time!

Yet, there are some limitations to use ecological footprints to estimate the environmental degradation. One major deficiency of this tool is only CO2 emissions are included in land consumption calculation. Other emissions are assumed to be within the carrying capacity of receiving environment but the validity of such assumption is really doubtful.

By the way, I still think that ecological footprints is pretty useful in terms of education as it can help those who do not have science, engineering and environmental background to understand the broad picture of the land required to support their activities on a per capita basis, and of the enormous inequities between nations of the world in access to resources and pressures placed on the planet.

To calculate your own Ecological footprint: Earth Day Footprint
More about Ecological Footprint: Global Footprint Network

Quote of the Day

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

(I tried to get more information about who is Larry Hardiman but i just failed to found more about him. What a pity!)

Light and Shadow

This is a photo I took in a cemetery when I went for a walk before. I was so impressed when I saw this view: shadows of different kind crosses form other graves projected on to a grave that with Mary’s statue during the sunset time. It just gave me a strong sense of peacefulness and holiness even though I am not a religious person. (I went to church for a whole year last year but eventually I reckon that those kind of spiritual stuffs do not fit in with my shoes.)

Greenwash

Image Source: Portland indymedia , Green Left

Last week was an extraordinary busy week for me because I had to attend a short course of Environmental Auditing (EA).

Environmental Auditing, by academic definition, is a systematic, independent and documented assessment process to evaluate the environmental performance of an organisation, a facility, a process, a service or a product against a set of pre-agreed criteria. . Performing an EA is suppose to improve environmental performance, identify risks, improve staff and public relations, ensure compliance and contribute to a defence of due diligence. However, the current EA practice seems to me that is being a tool to greenwash a company or a product. (Greenwash, by my word, is an action of giving people a false sense of eco-satisfaction and giving a positive public image to putatively environmentally unsound practices.)

The main reason for an organisation to conduct EA nowadays is to accredit with the ISO 14000 series standard to benchmark their Environmental Management Systems or “environmentally friendly” practices or products. Yet, there has some major flaw of the ISO requirement as it does not assess the real environmental performance and outcome of a company but to assess whether the company has “continual improvement” in their environmental related aspects. So, it is very possible for a company or a product accredited with ISO certification but the company is doing something harming the environment seriously. I heard a story about an environmental audit of a printing company in Australia. They did the audit in order to accredit with the ISO standards. They got the ISO certificate just by improving their printing material treatment and paper usage from “sub-standard” to “below standard. However, once the got the ISO certificate, their customers may just think that their printing activities are in “environmentally friendly” manner!! I dare to say that heaps of multinational corporations or oil companies are doing such “greenwashing” stuff. McDonald’s is a good example and their environmental management system is accredited with ISO 14001.

By the way, EA and ISO are still useful tools to get the company at least to start some improvement and awareness on their environmental performance.

More about Ginger

Ginger

It'd been a while I haven't updated my Blog. The main reasons are i'm a bit lazy and a bit busy with the new member in my apartment- Ginger, a four-months old kitten! After her arrival, we have much more funs+work with this little cat and i do really enjoy a lot althought sometimes i doubt that i am the kitten's servant instead of master!!

The Dying Out of April Fool's Day

(Source: Star Wars' Funny)

Just wonder if anyone celebrates April Fool's Day anymore. It seems to me that the official day of practical joking appears to be as flat as a deflated cushion. In the past, people would make hoaxes during the day to bring in some funs and sense of humor in the unexcited everyday life.For example,

The Left-Handed Whopper
In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
(Source: The Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time)

Well, there still has some April Fool's jokes in recent years, but most of them are circulated within Internet instead of mainstream media. One joke made by Nature.com last year that an lunar image taken by the Floating Optical Orbital Lens (F.O.O.L) revealed that the moon surface was being heavily eroded by the bacteria that Apollo lunar mission left behind!
I’d really like to have more these kinds of jokes around us. People nowadays become more serious, feeling insecure or even scare because of different sorts of instability and threats (terrorism, natural disasters, environmental degradation, more competitive and demanding workplace etc.). Depression, psychiatric or psychological problems due to pressure become more and more common, and even becomes a social problem in some big cities. So, the celebratipn of April Fool's Day may refresh our world with a bit more humours.

Interesting Links:
The Origin of April Fool's Day
The Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time

What is your political position?

My friend introduced a very interesting web site in his blog. It is about a test called "Political Compass" which helps us to know about our own political stand. Here is my political compass:
Economic Left/Right: -4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.15

Web site: The Political Compass

Post-Normal Science

Caption: Post-Normal Science can be located in relation to the more traditional complementary strategies, by means of a diagram . (by J. Ravetz)


These few days I am doing some reading and research on the concept of “Post-normal science” to help me diagnose the process of environmental policy making. It might be a bit sophisticated or boring for those who are not interested in the environmental stuff, but I still found it is an interesting concept to share as it can trigger us to rethink about the role and the nature of science.

Post-Normal Science is a concept to describe the methodology of scientific “facts” inquiry in contemporary conditions, especially in the environmental science and policy arena. The so-called objective “truth” or hard “scientific facts” from science research itself is no longer adequate to deal with the uncertainty, decision stakes and complexity of environmental problems. Most of environmental policy are value-driven that soft subjective human value are “hard” in various ways, for which the scientific inputs are irremediably “soft” instead. It is a new form of scientific “facts” construction and interpretation with the involvement and participation of different stakeholder & local knowledge to construct new “facts” as a basis for policy making. To put it simplier, post-normal science is:

Scientific facts+ extended facts (such as local knowledge) + human value = new perception of "scientific facts" as policy basis

After reading enormous amount of related readings, there are only two words in my mind about what happens with science in the environmental arena, i.e. “politicizing science”.
By the way, science researches are always goal-driven and value-laden. What we need to do, as a general citizen or reader or whatever, is to be more sensible with those scientific reports or articles, and think about what are the drives behind such scientific publishing, maybe we can find more interesting stories after.

Further Information: The Post-normal Time