Stave Churches, My Heritage

Well I have gotten a comment from a close friend who said that my posts where too long and used too much brain power to read. I told her that I did not really care but I will try to put posts that don't make you think too much from time.
This post is about my heritage, my family is from Norway and Northern Europe. My relatives that are from Norway are from Hallingdal, which is near Olso. There traditions still are alive in the generations of my family even though we have been in North America for many years.
Taking one of my classes I learned that I was homesick, or nostalgic, for Norway. The class is wonderful and I learn a lot about myself each week. That week we were talking about our place in the world, and I realized that being Norwegian was an important part of who I am. One of my other friends said that you should always have a place where you want to go but never get there. I understand what she meant by that. If I went to Norway I do not think I would feel the same when I got back.
Stave Churches are very Norwegian and Hallingdal has some excellent examples of them. The Torpo and Gol stave churches. These churches are not build large out of stone but smaller out of wood. They are the cathedrals of the Nordic Nations, but they are not massive but beautifully small (in my view).

New Energy From Body Heat

There are two new and exciting sources of energy I think you would like to know about. Both of the new sources of energy deal with energy that humans create. The first one is using the heat from one building to heat another. While the other one can recharge your cell phones as you walk. I am really excited to see both of them in the real world if they get there.

The heating of another building is being put into place right now in Sweden, they are cutting edge on the environment. The central train station in Stockholm is too hot in the winter time and they have to cool the building in order to make the travelers comfortable. They have enough left over heat to heat 15% of a new office building next to the station. If it works it will be the first building in the world that heats another building. I think that this is a very interesting idea, it expands on the idea of having many buildings being heated by one central plant. If all of the building in Stockholm could be built sharing there heat they could reduce their costs.
Sweden also has trains running on cow manure, a subdivision that collects urine for farm fertilizers and apparently has a fairly good planning policy for 'suburban' growth.

The other interesting idea was created by Canadians what powers electronics from walking. (the team is 1/3 or less Canadian, cbc skews the facts). The device attaches to your knee and when you walk to moves back and forth to create energy. The process transfers 100% of the energy put in to the device into what ever is charging. The part that they do not mention is that it is really heavy and that it take a lot of energy to walk with it anywhere. This is a product that will most likely not be but into the market place for a really long time.
This product does not appear to help make our lifestyle more sustainable. How much energy is being put into making each of these products and is more that energy being kept into the grid because the person does not have to charge their phone the normal way. Sometimes I feel that people just look at the end product and what it can do but not what it takes to make that end product. I remember having discussions with somebody about building a new building with recycled materials and make it have a zero carbon foot print. Then we went on talking and we figured out that there was already a building nearby that did all of the uses that they wanted the new building to do. We realized to reduce the carbon impacts of the activities they should not build the new building but just use the original one.
Building sustainable is always an interesting thought, if you build a new building on a greenfield (nothing has been there before), than you are causing urban spreading (sprawl is uncontrolled). On the other hand if you tear down a building to make a sustainable building, then you are destroying a building that you could use. This makes it hard to figure out how to actually develop in the most environmentally friendly way.

I like the idea of new ways to produce power that is not based on oil and gas but at the same time we have to look at these new systems and think what use of them really are?? I also found out that the University of Waterloo has an institute for sustainable energy.

Availability New Species

I have been wanting to talk about all of the New Species that are found, but I found that I had enough other stuff to talk about. Maybe to much stuff to talk about. There have been few new species that have been found recently even though I thought that most have been found, or there are no new ones. The two that made new this week where about an Elephant Shrew and a Warbler.
The Elephant shrew was found in Eastern Africa, and is about the size of a cat. Elephant shrews are not really shrew, they are more closely related to elephant but look like shrews. So I guess the name actually fits. Eastern Africa is not a unique place to find new animals last year there was a new genus of primate discovered in the region. This is also a region where there is land that has not been looked by scientific eyes, which means that science may never know about them. I am sure that people have seen them, even if the world never knows about them. There is major threats to the natural spaces in this area of Africa, oddly enough wars can actually protect these places. When there was talk about peace in DRC there was fears that the wilderness areas may become developed, sadly enough there has been a war there for many years.
The warbler the was found has a different story. It was found in Nepal inside of a already conserved location. It is the missing link between two other subspecies of warbler, these to other ones were on opposite sides of India. The new Warbler is geographically in between these two other populations. It was found in an already protected location which gives the possibility that the new species will not be destroyed by us. Protected areas around the world do not have the same standards. It is no fault to many developing countries if they are not able to truly protect their parks. Why would a country be able to protect game animals when it can not feed their own population. It is very unlikely that people will purposely go out and kill these birds, but they may destroy the environment that they rely on.
This issue of developing countries having to protect our environment reminded me when I was looking at charities one day. The charity is called African Conservation Foundation, which is raising money to help conservation in Africa. It was commended by the Dalai Lama in 2002 for the work that they have done. I do not think that this is a bad idea, but I am afraid that people will say that they are helping nature in Africa and they can destroy it over here.
They also have products that you can buy which the money will go to the charity. And I really like this painting, too bad it costs a little more that I can afford at this time. The painting is of an elephant and all the money goes to elephant causes. One of the programs is actually mitigation of the damages that elephants can cause on rural communities.

http://www.africanconservation.org/component/option,com_ezcatalog/task,detail/id,6/Itemid,4/

Oh How I Hope Airbus is Wrong

Airbus recently came out with their predictions over what the air industry will be like in the next 20 years. They are projecting a 5% growth in the industry each and every year from now until ever (maybe not). This growth in my view is not going to happen due to a few issues. These issues are climate change, end of cheap oil, airbus being optimistic (because they want people to by their planes).

Yes Climate Change is happening, I use the term climate change because global warming does not make sense as a term. The world is not just getting on average warmer, there are also changes in the weather and seasons. This means the impacts go beyond just warming up. It also should be noted that Europe will get colder due to climate change. The world climate is changing not necessarily just warming up.
So how climate change will affect the air industry is through peoples knowledge about how bad it is to fly. I know that flying is a great way to visit people and travel to places you have never been, I do it too. I think that the culture will change that we do not have the right to fly but the luxury to travel around the world when ever we would like. I can also see countries putting restrictions on travel, I have mention the European ones. If people, including myself, start to change the way they live because of new respect of the environment then all of these predictions will be thrown out the window. It is true that the planes that they are making are more efficient than the average car. But cars to not travel across oceans.

The good old end of cheap oil, if you have not heard of this term it will become more important as time goes on. This idea is that oil is in a finite amount and that we are using it to fast so supply will go down and prices will go through the roof. This would have a huge impact on the airline and most other industries. How could the airline industries continue to fly around the world in the price of oil is very high. They can pass it on to the customer, but they will already be paying higher prices for heating, food and most other products. There are questions about when the end of cheap oil will occur. Will it happen in the next few years, has it already happen?? I thought the end of cheap oil had occurred when the price of oil when over 100 dollars but then it went right back down (well not all the way). There also are not alternatives that are viable, ethonal is a joke. The produce of the alternatives usually take about the same amount of energy going into it as you get out of it.
When the price of oil goes up only certain people while be able to fly, maybe the person who bought an A380 for personal use. Don't worry he also has a 747 as a backup. I feel that the airbus report is view the world through the eyes that it will stay the same, not that oil will go up.

The airbus report is optimistic, I think this is because they are the ones who are making the planes. I would doubt that they would say that the airline industry is going to die next year and we are not going to make any money and go bankrupt (this is not going to happen, an example).

There is also the issue of urban area extending their airport facilities, Queenstown NZ is expanding their airport. This is to bring it up to international standards, that is for large planes. They can already take smaller planes at that location but they want to expand it, it will take two years to move all of the supplies that they need for it. For background Queenstown is a tourist town that needs many tourists to survive, also one of the tourist traps in NZ. They should be looking at alternatives if the price of flying is to increase.
They could put the AGV in place, it would only take 1 hour from Dunedin, and take 2 hours from Christchurch. I am sure this is not going to happen but it would be good to increase the rail service in NZ.

I hope that Airbus is wrong because then our western lifestyles would have changed and the rest of the world would have not gone down our path. Our lifestyle is one of selfcenteredness, wanting everything we can get at the expense of other. The good old 'tragedy of the commons'.