Looking to the future.

Hey, it’s wonderful to see British Airways getting a biodiesel fuel policy plan together in such a large and positive way and helping the environment.

I have heard that this fantastic development comes with benefits of renewable energy by building a ‘Jet Fuel Plant’ in East London which will in fact bring new employment to around 1,200 people.
It is reported that there are 4 new development sites for this project, which is hoped will pass through the planning stages and gain consent very quickly, so that construction work can start early in 2011.

Apparently the construction will be in partnership with the US renewable energy company, the ‘Solena Group’, who’s head office is located in Washington, DC.

Making biodiesel fuel will be from the conversion of millions of tons of waste materials, such as forestry, agricultural and food, which would have otherwise gone to landfill sites. Initially half a million tons a year, which they say will produce about 15 to 16 million gallons of environmentally safe biodiesel jet fuel which is fantastic news for helping the environment and especially for those living and working in and around London.
Just think of the knock on effects as others too, will say, “Why not me too?”

With the horrendous price of fuel constantly going up and up for the foreseeable future, and the huge unsustainable costs of imports doing nothing for our balance of payments etc, as a nation producing Billions of tons of waste annually, we are throwing away a vast fortune.
So why not instead, cut our greenhouse gas emissions and our national debt by our turning waste mountains, which when manipulated is turned into a slurry of carbons and technically managed into a usable form which will produce natural gas, biodiesel and fertilizers; and get on with building these sort of systems right around the country?
Naturally once the system starts producing; it will be able to manufacture its own electricity therefore in and of itself being an environmentally friendly full circle.

So come on UK, let’s put the ‘Great’ back into ‘Great Britain’, get stuck in, and get cracking with more of these schemes for homemade biodiesel fuel, natural gas and fertilizers to regenerate industries and our soils, plus making electricity as ways to save electricity , from our own constantly renewable energy source.

Now all this has to be real cool!
Ooop’s nearly a Merv rant !

So, moving from one extreme to the other, let’s take a look at motor sports. Everything that can move seems to be raced these days, from Formula One cars to lawn mowers on steroids, and there’s no doubt that such races are incredibly popular.

All over the world, racing motorised vehicles draws millions of ardent fans each year to the literally thousands of races and other events which pull in billions in gate fees and merchandising.

The cost of supporting one F1 vehicle—which is only in theory, as all racing teams host a minimum of two vehicles, a primary and secondary one, in case of a crash or system failure—is literally tens of millions of dollars per year. Sponsorships account for the vast majority of operating fees, but the ticket office and licensed merchandise they generate is still the financial mainstay of the racing industry. NASCAR alone pulls in billions annually from such products.

What exactly is it that draws the crowds to motor racing:

Is it the potential for an accident; the thrill of speed?

The mental powers involved in being able to handle such a machine?

Perhaps each spectator has his or her own individual reason for enjoying the sport.

One thing that’s certain is that from the very beginning of the automobile age, people have succumbed to the pressing need to test the limits of their skills and vehicles by pitting themselves against one another in a test of speed and endurance.

Not unlike horse racing, dubbed ‘The sport of Kings,’ motor vehicle racing offers the senses the thrill of victory laps, and the agony of defeated egos, and could quite easily be dubbed ‘The sport of the Proletariat.’

The very first sanctioned automobile race was in 1894 in France, and was a test of the vehicle’s durability. It wasn’t long, however, before the emphasis shifted to raw speed, and the appeal of speed in motor soon spread. A multitude of racing formats drawing enormous crowds sprang up all over the world with the end result being that today; motor racing is among the most popular and certainly among the most commercialized of all sporting events.

Not only that, but there is now a literally dizzying array of such contests to choose from. If you are a fan of the more conventional form of motor car racing, you have your choice of F1, CART, NASCAR, Indy Car, Drag Racing, Hot Rods, Rally as well as Motorcycle contests and a host of others.

For the more eclectic fans, there is Ice racing, which consists in outfitting either cars or motorcycles with special studded tires to grip the ice, or may even involved the more suitable snow mobile variety. One can also enjoy the exploits of Hill Climbing or Speed Climbing, which tests individual drivers of either motor cars or motorcycles, to compete against the clock to finish a course on an uphill incline.

Believe it or not, this is one of the oldest forms of racing competition in the world, the first such event having taken place as early as 1897, and remains as popular today as ever.

A common event which serves as an introduction to racing for many enthusiasts is ‘kart racing’, involving small, scaled down models of open or caged chassis motor vehicles commonly known as Go-Karts.

Once considered merely a hobby, the appeal of kart racing has grown to become a considerable sport in its own right, and has launched the career of many a professional driver.

For the truly unique minded fan, there is the ever popular Demolition Derby. Amounting to the very antithesis of safe driving, the object of this frenetic ’sport’ is to literally use your wreck of an old vehicle to destroy those of all other contestants, engaging the old adage of ‘last car standing’ to its ultimate degree. There’s no denying that there’s something undeniably exciting about watching someone else’s vehicle getting sandwiched by a phalanx of drivers, and trying to gauge which one will eventually limp out of the arena, smoking and creaking like a battered and bruised gladiator of old.

Motor racing certainly has its place in our society and there’s little chance of it ever disappearing – apart from lawn mower racing, that is. That just seems such a waste when there are so many good plots of overgrown grass in desperate need of grooming.

Being involved in an accident is every motorist’s worst nightmare. Statistically speaking, the longer you drive the more likely you are to have one. It doesn’t really take a rocket scientist to work that one out though, does it?

An accident can be anything from bending a bumper/fender to a serious collision causing injury, or worse. Simply because the statistics may predict it’ll happen to you sooner or later, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a foregone conclusion.

So as to help avoid these predictions, you do have to be proactive, and by taking some simple precautions, the risk can be reduced considerably.

The number one cause of all traffic accidents is speeding.

A motor vehicle travelling at high speed is an incredibly dangerous machine, which is precisely why speed limits are posted and enforced all over the world; and as much as we sometimes like to believe it, speed cops aren’t out there because they have nothing better to do. . .

They are protecting the public from themselves and the dangers of other reckless drivers.

By maintaining safe and controlled speeds, you can greatly minimize your risk of being involved in a serious car accident. . .

Apart from the fact that you may get to your destination a few minutes earlier, there are no good excuses for speeding, but there are many against.

It’s not just good driving practice to slow down, it will save cash on fuel, the price of your insurance, or perhaps even worse, the loss of your precious Driving License; and if that’s not bad enough, it’s also better for the long-term maintenance of your vehicle as well as being better for the environment.

I’m not preaching, just laying out the facts, for there but for the grace of God go I!

Maintenance

Keeping your vehicle in good running order is another excellent means of reducing your risk of an accident. Every car’s maintenance manual includes the recommended time lapse between inspections. Regular maintenance and checkups will ensure your car is running at peak performance, and will certainly assist in the prevention of any general or specific breakdowns which could lead to a possible parts failure, which in turn may cause you to be involved in an accident.

Car safety is such an important aspect of driver awareness; it’s precisely why so many countries and insurance companies require new drivers to complete a safety course prior to authorising a license to operate a motor vehicle.

The more knowledge drivers have about the necessity for safe automobile practices; including the regular maintenance of the vehicle, the less likely they will be to allow their car to lapse into a poor state of service and repair, thus increasing the likelihood of either a breakdown or worse still, an accident.

By insisting on such knowledge being taught, as part of all new drivers’ driving tuition and experience, the better the chances that this vital information will stick throughout the whole span of the driver’s history.

Barring that, just stay the heck out of my way!

Defensive Driving

This essentially means staying highly aware of other drivers and vehicles in relation to your own, as well as diligently following the rules of the road and maintaining your own safe driving standards.

Often taught as part of a pre-licensed driving safety course, it is all designed to increase the ability of all drivers to be alert to possible driving hazards, such as road obstructions, bad driving habits of other motorists, and to maintain a regular routine of adherence to motor vehicle laws.

As I taught my own youngsters years ago, “Expect a lot of drivers to be idiots”; and they won’t let you down!

Thanks to the Internet, much of the information can now be gleaned online, thus offering more drivers than ever before a chance to familiarize themselves with these extremely important concepts.

Defensive driving is often taught through both in-class and on-road practice, with the idea being that the driver becomes more attuned to recognizing potential driving problems, and so establishes safe driving habits.

To start with, the price of fuel has gone sky high! But then I’m pretty sure you will have noticed that with so many factors at play in the recent rocket ship ride of oil prices, far be it for me to offer any more sage analysis than what you may already have heard:

1. That the conflict in Iraq has contributed to OPEC price instability.

2. That the recent hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico have played havoc with US and international petroleum production and refinement in the region.

3. A general recognition that energy consumption practices must be seriously altered.

4. That, as Harry Potter seems to be everywhere these days, he must be involved, though J.K. Rowling has remained suspiciously quiet about it.

Anyone over 40 has been hearing about the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels since the aptly named ‘energy crisis’ of the mid 1970’s, when for the first time, the West came face to face with the grim facts that:

1. Arab oil producing nations (OPEC) as well as Russian oil and gas, effectively have the world over the proverbial barrel, (of oil that is – black gold, Teheran tea) because of our frighteningly wasteful consumption of oil and gas at present.

AND

2. Our grossly improvident guzzling of said fuel HAD to be radically restructured, BEFORE we ran out of the stuff, or we all have to become familiar with the old horse and buggy once more.

That was thirty years ago and sadly, very little seems to have fundamentally changed since then. OPEC & Co still have the West over a barrel, and that’s simply because we haven’t altered our consumption practices to any great degree.

Or have we?

There’s no question that automobile manufacturers are producing more fuel-efficient cars than ever before. Compared to even the early 1980’s, motor vehicles today generally have much higher fuel efficiency than their forebears.

Manufacturers have even gone so far as to create the ‘Hybrid’ vehicle – a car that runs on a combination of traditional petroleum and electricity. It does so by converting normally unused combustion engine energy, such as that normally squandered by braking or coasting, into electricity and storing it in a battery.

This energy can then be used when needed by the hybrid’s electrical motor to assist the conventional engine at times when it’s at its least efficient – generally during low speed driving conditions or when climbing steep inclines.

Then there is the even more futuristic fuel cell vehicle. Essentially, this is a car which runs on a device (another highly specialized battery) which converts oxygen and hydrogen into water, the end result of the process being electricity that is then used to power the motor. Unlike conventional batteries, whose internally stored chemicals are finite and are eventually depleted, thus rendering the battery expendable, the fuel cell battery will continue to produce electricity as long as oxygen and hydrogen are continually introduced into it.

Apart from being relatively cheap to maintain, one of the main selling points of this design is that with the chemicals used to stimulate the process including pure hydrogen, the sole by-products of such an engine would be nothing more harmful to our environment than water vapour and heat. We could say farewell to the catalytic converter and emissions guidelines and testing, forever. Yes I know, it brings tears to your eyes, doesn’t it?

The automobile industry is clearly being forced to re-think its approach to fuel efficiency even further, as the line-ups and gas gouging prices of the 70s are with us once again, although thankfully they’ve left their bell bottoms and platforms boots at home this time.

The 80’s and 90’s were conspicuous by the appearance of the ‘monster’ car. SUV’s and mammoth trucks were all the rage offering an unprecedented sense of status, luxury and power for anyone with the laissez-faire to fork out tens of thousands of £’s or

s for what amounted to a living room on wheels.

This decade seems certain to be characterized by just the opposite. Smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, even those that run on alternative forms of energy such as hybrids, electricity, or hydrogen fuel cells, are being marketed as the way of the future.

The question is, will these vehicles capture the interest and the buying power of the consumer before the reappearance of the horse drawn carriage?

Stay tuned; but stock up on your sugar cubes and bags of apples, just in case.

Cars are status symbols – there’s no getting away from it. People can bang on about them being a means of getting from A to B but very few of us want to drive around in a car we don’t feel proud of.

While most of us want a car that’s on the “A” list, that doesn’t mean we necessarily want a car that looks just like everybody else’s. It’s a matter of combining accepted style with individual creativity.

That’s where gadgets come ‘into-their-own’. With so many of them on the market, we can pick and choose to our heart’s delight, and “design” a car that’ll reflect individual personality and style.

Exterior

Have you ever watched a stranger walk over to a parked car and give it the once—or even twice—over?

What is that makes the stranger choose that particular car to look at rather than the one in front or behind it, even though they may be the same make and model? Yes, it’s the way the exterior has been personalized.

Exterior car accessories are currently running the gamut, from traditional chrome trim to exotic custom paint jobs, neon lighting trim and the ever-popular personalized license plates.

The most obvious exterior characteristic is the vehicle’s styling. For some time now, manufacturers have been streamlining their vehicles to reflect more attention to aerodynamics, as well as enhancing the fuel efficiency of their products. The end result is a sleek, lithe (dare one say sexy?) and highly attractive automobile.

Next is the endless variety of paint jobs now available. Why settle for factory green when you can mix a personalized colour you can name after yourself? For the truly conceited, you might even throw your own face on the bonnet/hood! Warning – this may elicit more laughs than accolades.

The availability of custom body garages that will do virtually anything you want to personalize your car has become nearly as commonplace as any regular mechanic. The sky literally seems the limit on what can be accomplished with some imagination and the corresponding access to seemingly limitless funds.

Interior

Once the exterior of a car has been accepted as cool, that same stranger that admired the exterior will bend down and take a look through the window. What’s it like inside?

If all he sees is dull grey seat covers, run-of-the-mill floor mats, and a standard steering wheel, he’s unlikely to be impressed.

If you want a car that looks good, the interior has to match the exterior.

Trends that are popular right now include the use of: Non-traditional materials such as real wood or aluminium, or perhaps traditional materials used in non-traditional ways (custom moulding and trim).

Mood lighting and the use of vibrant colours such as neon lime and orange are also popular.

Custom upholstery, faux animal prints, leather or even suede.

Electronic accessories like stereo and speaker systems, DVD or mp3 players, video games and security systems, give a car a degree of individuality that others will enjoy too.

The most popular accessory is currently chrome. Once confined to the exterior as merely trim, it’s now being used extensively as interior ornamentation for those who want to be seen as the baddest dog on the block. Word to ‘Yo Momma’!

They move fast, they have flashing lights on the roof, and they have sirens that can be heard a long way off. But surely that isn’t all that’s special about police cars?

There’s no standard design for these extremely vital and increasingly sophisticated vehicles, and no manufacturer can ever claim to have designed a police car model from scratch. They’re invariably refitted standard models, usually modified to the specifications of the particular force that orders them.

First of all, apart from needing them to go exceedingly fast, many police forces require that a full size spare tire be standard issue on their vehicles. Most consumer models have little or no room for a full size spare, opting instead to offer their customers more storage space and a much smaller temporary spare. This means many models are already ruled out at this early stage.

Next is the considerable problem of ‘up fitting’, meaning any conversion of the standard vehicle in order for it to conform to operational requirements. The growing complexity of police dashboard computer systems, satellite radio, and even the siren, requires an ergonomic design principle allowing maximum space allocation and functionality, not to mention accommodating the sheer weight of all that technology. Many police models now come with steering column transmission, which means a radical reconstruction from a standard floor model transmission, and in some countries there’s the need for a gun rack to consider, too.

While it’s obvious we can’t do without high-speed police cars, we can only hope that, for the sake of the environment, battery powered vehicles that are capable of moving at high speeds over long periods aren’t too far into the future.

After all, any standard petrol driven vehicle moving at 80+ mph isn’t exactly environmentally friendly

VOC = Volatile organic compounds VOC Emission Rates by Speed

Of course, we could just ban high-speed police cars, but would free-for-all amongst gun toting drunks caught up in bar room brawls be any better? Is anarchy environmentally friendly? No, but perhaps we could put real emphasis on manufacturers to produce more environmentally friendly vehicles. At least that way the speeders and the police who chase them will be doing less damage to the air we all share.

The future of transportation on this planet will undoubtedly be ‘green’. It really is time that major vehicle manufacturers start to realize that the continued prosperity of their companies will not be in mindlessly producing larger vehicles that are dependent upon fossil fuels, but in environmentally sound and ethical vehicles which are not harmful to the Earth.

It may sound like wild eyed dreaming, but the facts are that alternative fuel vehicles continue to see growing sales trends, and what was once passed off as a fad, is seeing wide acceptance among suburban consumers concerned about the environment they’re passing on to their children.

This issue covers:

4×4s – The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful.

Boy’s Toys – Bringing Motoring Up To Speed.

Police Cars – What’s Special about Them?

Green Fuel – The Facts.

1. 4×4s – The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

It seems that wherever in the world you wander, or even drive for that matter, you’ll find the 4×4 – a huge metal beast with a deep growl that shudders the ground as it approaches, scaring away anybody or anything that dares to stray into its path.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, four wheel drive vehicles are refusing to stay on the rough terrain they were designed for; they’ve invaded our cities and they’re a status symbol that some just have to have!

The Good

One of the good points, and undoubtedly one of their biggest selling points, is that 4×4s are comfortable. They’ll almost always have big plush seats that you sink right into, lots of room for the long-legged amongst us, and plenty of flashy controls including satellite navigation, built in DVD player, a hands-free wireless cell phone, and a surround sound stereo. Some even have built in DVD players to be enjoyed by back-seat passengers, as well as plugs for game consoles, mp3 players and the like.

Because of their size and weight, they’re generally safe vehicles to drive. Unless you’re on the motorway/freeway, the average accident is more likely to cause far more damage to the other vehicle than to the 4×4, one reason why mothers tend to choose 4×4s for taxiing their children around in.

Of course, their choice could also be connected to the incredible sense of empowerment they get when driving around town in, what essentially amounts to, an urban tank. There’s something incredibly sexy about being in control of such a powerful beast!

Hence – In London they are known as ‘Chelsea Tractors’.

The Bad

No matter how good something appears to be, there’s always a downside of the coin, and in the case of the 4×4, the downside is that they’ll guzzle more gas in one day than a small car will in a month! Well, perhaps not quite that bad, but when comparing gas consumption by vehicle class, the difference is most definitely noticeable.

In US figures, where a “Honda Civic” will zip around for about 32 miles on one gallon of gas, a “Nissan Murano” will stop running 12 miles earlier. Even an “Audi A4″ or a “Mercedes-Benz C230″ will run for 2 miles more. But a “Murano” isn’t a BIG 4×4. Move up to a “Chevrolet Suburban 1500″ and you won’t move further than 14 miles before the beast demands a re-fill. In comparison, a “Honda Accord” will happily run for 26 miles, just 2 miles less than a “Toyota Camry”. Highway driving figures show equally comparable differences.

In other words, when it comes to choosing the “class” of vehicle, owning a 4×4 (or SUV, as they’re also known) is going to hit you considerably harder at the pumps than would be the case if you chose a smaller car. With prices continuing to rise, filling up will be a tearful experience before long, especially if this summer’s roller-coaster fuel prices are any indication of future trends.

The other obvious knock against these huge machines, is that they are much less forgiving on the environment. If you’re interested in limiting the negative effects on the environment, an SUV purchase isn’t likely to be the right choice for you. If, on the other hand, you are an urban parent with teenage children in need of regular taxiing, a member of the PTA and a car-pooler, then the environment is likely to have slid further down the line on your new car priority checklist.

Finally, because they are what they are: very expensive and noticeable luxury vehicles, they’re incredibly attractive targets for thieves and vandals. Compared to hatchbacks and mini-vans, an $85,000 SUV is certainly going to stand out in the supermarket parking lot.

Big 4×4s are still very much a North American market phenomenon. The sheer size of their designs continues to make them too cumbersome and expensive to operate virtually anywhere else on the planet, although the Scandinavian market has increased considerably over recent years.

Twenty years ago, SUV sales accounted for only 2% of the automobile market in North America; today they are one in four and rising – an extraordinarily high share of the automobile market and one that looks set to continue to increase.

As manufacturer’s continue to inflate the size of the 4×4 machine in order to meet the needs of their ego gratification starved customers, it’s certain that SUVs are here to stay whether we’re happy about that or not.

The Beautiful

Are SUVs beautiful? Some would say yes, but there are plenty that would say the sub-title here should definitely have been the expected “ugly”.

Because these vehicles are status symbols, you’d imagine that their owners would automatically consider them beautiful, but that isn’t always the case. The status symbol came into being because they’re expensive to run, so anybody able to afford to use a 4×4 on a daily basis has to have a dollar or two in the bank. What the cars actually look like seems to be of secondary importance.

Of course, there are vast numbers of 4×4 models available, so it’s impossible to say “they’re all ugly”, and just what is the definition of “beautiful” anyway? Somebody clever once said “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder” and that’s undoubtedly the case with a 4×4.

I’ll leave it up to you to make up your mind.

I thought I would chat about some aspects affecting the production of biodiesel.

The Kyoto Protocol goes by a number of aliases: The Kyoto Treaty, The Kyoto Accord, or The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It does not stand alone but is actually an amendment to a larger body of work by the United Nations on climate change. The larger body of work is a treaty on managing environmental change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. It came into being in 1992 at a summit in Rio De Janeiro, but since it is a treaty and does not hold countries accountable to make any changes, an amendment was added to it, called a protocol, to help nations take action in response to the treaty. The goal is to stabilize the amount and concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Since then, the Kyoto Protocol has eclipsed the treaty itself in terms of assumed effectiveness and controversy. Countries who choose to ratify the Kyoto Protocol are committing to the reduction of six greenhouse gas emissions including carbon monoxide, or developing measures to deal with those commitments if they cannot fill them.

There were two conditions for the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force. The first condition was that no fewer than 55 participants in the convention needed to ratify the protocol. This was reached on May 23, 2002 when Iceland ratified the protocol. The second condition was that countries who participated in producing a leased 55% of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 needed to ratify the protocol as well. Russia’s ratification on November 18, 2004 met the second condition needed to put the Kyoto Protocol into force. Ninety days after the conditions were met, on February 16th 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force.

The United States and Australia have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. In spite of that, 157 nations have ratified the protocol, which represents 61% of global greenhouse gas production.

The legally binding protocol calls for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2%, compared to the emissions produced in 1990. While the average is 5.2%, different countries have different targets to aim for: Japan needs to reduce its emissions by 6%, Australia by 8%, the US by 7%, and Iceland by 10%. The reduction needs to affect the following greenhouse gases:

* Carbon dioxide * Methane * Nitrous oxide * Sulphur hexafluoride * HFCs * PFCs

Countries who exceed these targets earn “credits” that they can sell to other countries that are not yet able to meet those targets. Credits are also earned by countries with large forested regions that turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. So countries who can quickly exceed emissions standards or who can create Kyoto Protocol forest areas have financial incentive to do so.

Cleaner, breathable air, a clearer sky, and a reduction in global warming are noble pursuits. So why has the Kyoto Protocol received so much controversy and attention and not been ratified by everyone?

Objections and criticisms

There are a number of objections and criticisms to the Kyoto Protocol. Here are some of them:

* By 2050, if the Kyoto Protocol is successful, the global warming trend will be reduced by one third to one half of a degree annually. Unless other changes are made, Kyoto Protocol will be ineffective at reducing global warming in a largely measurable way.

* Both the United States and Australia have not ratified the protocol because of concerns over the economic ramifications resulting from sweeping changes that need to be made by industries. Other countries, like Canada, have ratified the protocol but with a lot of national controversy for the same reason.

* Credits earned from planting a ‘Kyoto Protocol Forest’ sound like a great idea, except that the first 10 years of a new forest tend to produce more carbon dioxide than it reduces, because new forests help to release carbon dioxide that is locked in the ground.

* China, who is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, is exempt from ratifying the Kyoto protocol or being bound to it because it does not belong to a specific class of countries: those who were producing excessive greenhouse gases during the growth in industry that the UN feels contributed to current concentrations. In fact, China’s usage is on the rise, increasing 40% between 1990 and 2003.

* Because of the variety of credit-selling opportunities as well as responsibilities to share knowledge with non-industrialized countries, some people see the Kyoto Protocol as a global social movement to spread wealth from the “have” countries to the “have-not” countries instead of effectively addressing climate change.

* As well, the law of supply and demand suggests that a reduction in fossil fuel usage by industrialized nations will lead to a reduction in overall prices for fossil fuels, allowing non-industrialized nations, who are not bound by the Kyoto Protocol, to burn more fossil fuels at a cheaper price without any restrictions.

* Lastly, critics say that the Kyoto Protocol only addresses the problem with an immediate, short-term solution. Critics suggest that the Kyoto Protocol, or something like it, needs to address greater issues such as population explosion, which has a huge effect on global warming.

Who wins?

If the Kyoto Protocol is successful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we will all win with a reduction in global warming. But there are others who will win in a different way:

* Kyoto Protocol measurements are based on emissions produced in 1990 and ratifying countries are measured against that number as a benchmark. Russia, however, because of its collapse, will easily meet its 1990 number, and its benchmark is set at 0%. This means that it should constantly generate credits which can be purchased by other countries. This means that reactionary spending by other countries will push millions of dollars to Russia.

* The Kyoto Protocol also requires industrialized nations to provide information and support to non-industrialized nations attempting to make leaps and bounds in technology and power generation. So countries like the United States will be expected to provide assistance and support to countries like India and China who both have a lot of people and are struggling to become industrialized nations. In both cases, by supporting the Kyoto Protocol, they receive assistance but have no parameters in which to operate once they do achieve industrialization.

Efforts to find affordable replacements to current vehicle fuel choices, biodiesel has quickly become one of the leading alternatives.

Biodiesel is considered a renewable eco-friendly resource derived from vegetable oil or animal fats. Once the vegetable oil or animal fat is processed, it becomes a combustible material, like the petroleum-based diesel currently used today in many vehicles. In fact, it is used daily around the world, and is already rapidly becoming the main stay of a lot of family budgets, with ever increasing popularity.

Biodiesel can and is being produced from rapeseed, soybeans, algae, palm oil, hemp, lard, mustard seed-in fact, any vegetable oil source, and yes, even waste vegetable oil, fish oil and animal fats. In fact, the August 2005 edition of National Geographic reported one biodiesel user who got his waste vegetable oil free from a local potato chip shop and spent eight dollars a month to turn it into biodiesel, which as we know is common practice now in many places.

Some of the benefits of biodiesel include:

* Biodiesel is an excellent way to use the vegetable oil and animal fats produced today, solving the hugely potential problem of waste products otherwise disposed of badly and the past problems that caused our environment.

* Biodiesel is biodegradable on land or in water, so naturally safer for all animal and plant life.

* Biodiesel is nontoxic.

* Biodiesel can be safer in accidents because it has a much higher flash point (300° Fahrenheit) than regular diesel or gasoline, and is considered a non-hazardous material.

* Biodiesel is a better solvent, so it cleans engines that have been dirtied and stained by long-term use of regular petroleum diesel.

* Biodiesel can be used right now, in any concentration with current petroleum diesel engines, making the transfer from one to the other very easy. However, older petroleum diesel engines may experience a higher degradation of seals and gaskets which can easily be changes for modern plastic alternatives used today.

* Biodiesel usage dramatically reduces carbon monoxide emissions and carbon dioxide emissions.

* Biodiesel reduces sulphur emissions by 100% (because it does not contain sulphur), which will help contribute to the Kyoto protocol mandate of reducing sulphur emissions.

Proponents say it may replace the fossil fuels used today to power vehicles. But it still has a ways to go:

* Biodiesel just like regular diesel tends to gel at temperatures that are very low, but this can also be rectified with additives.

* Biodiesel is more expensive to produce by the Gas Companies right now than other fuels currently in use (although rising costs in fossil fuel production could outstrip this problem shortly).

* Biodiesel will require a lot of vegetable oil and animal fat to meet the demand, and critics suggest that land use dedicated to filling the need will be astronomical, and largely an inefficient use of land in supporting the demand.

* The EPA reports that American restaurants produce 300,000,000 gallons of waste cooking oil every year, and although biodiesel can be produced from it, in the past it went to producing soaps, etc, but the cost of collecting it has caused Biodieselers to celebrate because a lot of them are happy to collect it for free.

There is a lot of support in the potential of biodiesel eventually helping to replace fossil fuels. In order to generate an accurate calculation on whether it’s a viable alternative or not, there are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration. Check out my new book ‘The Secrets of Biodiesel’ and really get a handle on this.

Biodiesel commercially, is not cost effective today because it is not produced in such a large-scale. If it were produced on a larger scale, it may have a greater effect on price. To use a different example, it costs more-per-car to produce only one or two cars than it costs to produce 10 cars, or a hundred cars, or thousand cars. (This is why Henry Ford is hailed as a genius of the production industry, because he reduced car prices by creating an assembly line). So once the scale of biodiesel is ramped up, the cost will be more effective.

The cost of biodiesel has become very affordable as a way to fuel cars and heat homes of our individual Biodieselers, however, replacing the current processing plants that take oil and turn it into fuel may be so high that it is prohibitive, and asking drivers to switch vehicles or swap engines may not be an alternative for everyone. So clearly, there will need to be a “phasing in” effect in order to increase biodiesel or other bio-fuels, thereby greatly reducing the stranglehold of petroleum-based fuels.

Another thing to consider is the social cost. While many people do have the best intentions in mind to reduce emissions and waste and improve on their use of fossil fuels, people still make decisions based on their own personal impact; how much money and time will they save? There may be lots of people that are concerned about ecology, but there are so many more people concerned about whether they can afford to make the transition. Until biodiesel becomes the cheaper choice, the general public will not make the transition.

Mervyn Rees – The author of, ‘The Secrets of Biodiesel’.http://www.whybiodiesel.com An active young 72 year old with a lifetime of experience to share, being a Fellow of the Institute Motoring Industry, built his own Dragonfly Roadsters before retiring as a Motor Vehicle Manufacturer. Having tried retiring twice and given up, he has now created an additional websitehttp://www.mervtech.com to share his many interests with other likeminded people.

Is it a plant? Is it an animal? Algae are very unusual! Algae are microscopic organisms, and are usually considered to be just simple aquatic plants. Pond scum, really. But it may surprise you to learn that some algae display characteristics we would normally associate with an animal. Characteristics like motility and a cell structure more like bacteria than plants.

Algae can come in a variety of sizes from microscopic to dramatically large. As well, algae are not just water-based. Algae also live in soil, snow, fungus, and animals. But water based Algae, which is what we’re looking at today, can be found in both fresh and marine waters.

There are many types of water-based algae, so we will quickly review just a few of them here so you know the difference.

The algae that grows on rocks or plants in the water is one kind. Another kind is more commonly referred to as seaweed because it grows into the water but is attached to a larger stem-like structure.

Water-based algae, in many cases, are also called “phytoplankton”, and it is one of the key ingredients that take carbon dioxide out of the air and replace it with oxygen! We need water-based algae (phytoplankton) to live, and they account for a lot of the carbon dioxide/oxygen replacement in the world today.

Often, algae are referred to by colour. Plank tonic algae, like the kind described above, are called green algae. There are other kinds, too, referred to as blue green algae. Blue-green algae is a type of bacteria, even though it has plant-like characteristics as well, and they grow everywhere, including dams, rivers, creeks, and hot springs.

Okay, so you’ve probably read more than you wanted to about algae. And there’s a lot more that you probably don’t need to know. Essentially know this: Phytoplankton is a type of algae that we want lots of in the world to help scrub our atmosphere of greenhouse gases. Blue-green algae, although it also releases oxygen, also has a different effect.

Blue-green algae grow and rise to the surface where it accumulates into a large bloom. These blooms take on other colours, including brown and red. And as a result of this bacteria blooming in the water, bad things happen. In fact, the term “red tide” when referring to water-based algae blooms, is never a good thing.

Because blue-green algae are bacteria, it tends to grow where bacteria would typically grow: in areas with high nutrient levels, slow rivers, low wind, and warmer temperatures. When this happens, bad water can result. While usually people think of algae as being a plant that grows, you might think of blue-green algae and the resultant bloom as bacteria that fester.

At a very basic level, blue-green algae can create unpleasant water. For example, it can leave water with an unpleasant odour and taste; it can clog machinery filters; it can fluctuate the pH balance in water, turning alkaline water acidic and acidic water alkaline; it can pull the oxygen out of the water and both fish and humans need water with oxygen in it to live!

While those are unpleasant and sometimes dangerous results of algae blooms in the water, there are other potential risks as well. Algae blooms can create Hepatoxins which attack the liver and other internal organs and promote cancer. Algae blooms can create Neurotoxins which can lead to respiratory arrest. Algae blooms can create Endotoxins which irritate the skin and also cause stomach cramps, nausea, fever and headaches if consumed.

So how bad can algae blooms get? Why can’t we just swim around them or scoop them up? Because they can grow tremendously huge! One algae bloom in 1991 was reported to be over 600 miles long!

What causes blue-green algae to become so dangerous? There are a few things. The first suggestion is the use of fertilizers and sewage that eventually works its way back into the water system. (Sure we use it on the soil, but we live in an interconnected Geo-system that has rainfall soaking the ground, draining off the land into the water, and getting evaporated into the sky. On the way, it picks up all the bad things we leave in the ground).

Another problem that allows blue-green algae to bloom is called thermal stratification. This is a distinct difference in the layers in a river, where a quickly flowing surface does not actually mix with a slower moving bottom layer. These two distinctly different layers of water allow algae to grow in large proportions, but remain in one layer; however when a temperature changes as the result of seasonal fluctuations, the algae mixes and moves, and blooms can develop.

So how does global warming affect, or get affected by, algae blooms? Algae blooms can have a negative impact on the delicate ecosystem that requires balance to thrive. This is because blooms can virtually kill water, reducing its impact on scrubbing carbon dioxide. And, because temperature changes often act as a catalyst for algae blooms, our warming planet may exacerbate more blooms! Also, the more we use fertilizers or allow sewage to seep back into our water systems, the more we’ll see the proliferation of algae blooms over time.

So what’s the answer? It’s easy to simply say “don’t use fertilizer” or “don’t let sewage get into the water system”, but it’s quite another thing to manage it. After all, reverse thinking suggests that a greater amount of fertilizer will theoretically grow more plants which will feed more people. So you might think of it this way: more well-fed scientists can spend time thinking how to reduce algae blooms, than a few poorly fed scientists can spend time thinking how to grow plants without using fertilizer.

And, as our understanding of DNA structure develops, scientists may be able to develop a super-phytoplankton that uses elements of good green phytoplankton that currently scrubs our atmosphere with the aggressive and migratory nature of blue-green algae to create a phytoplankton that can respond to atmospheric changes and congregate where it is needed most.

Mervyn Rees – The author of, ‘The Secrets of Biodiesel’.http://www.whybiodiesel.com An active young 72 year old with a lifetime of experience to share, being a Fellow of the Institute Motoring Industry, built his own Dragonfly Roadsters before retiring as a Motor Vehicle Manufacturer. Having tried retiring twice and given up, he has now created an additional websitehttp://www.mervtech.com to share his many interests with other likeminded people.