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I've now moved on and up in the virtual world of blogging and got myself a fancy wordpress page. So avid followers (!) listen up, to keep up with my cleverly worded, well-thought-out and motivational posts click here.

Definative proof of climate change?

 My first blog post as a volunteer at Project Dirt:

Hello! My name’s Jo and I’m one of the fantastic, new volunteers here at Project Dirt. With barely a few days in, they already have me writing blogs for you lovely dirters to read. I was chucked an article from the Guardian about climate change and was banished from the office until I had blogged about it. Well...maybe it wasn’t quite that mean. But here it is, my very first blog, enjoy!

The great climate change debate. Does climate change exist? Or is it another trendy theory that will soon fade out of fashion and only remain dear to a few ever-lasting believers like velvet flares and platform shoes with live goldfish? Richard Muller intends to find out once for all.

As a professor of physics at Berkeley University and well respected for his work on the big bang theory, ice ages and moon craters, Muller is pretty much a Top Dog when it comes to science stuff. Appealing to all demographics by spending 30 years advising the US government on defence and also writing award winning lectures that became a YouTube phenomenon, if anyone is up to the job of answering this question, Muller is the man to do it.

His project is called The Berkley Earth Project. It’s simple enough. He wants to provide an un-biased, non-political, independently researched assessment of global warming. See, simple.

Starting from scratch he and his team are researching over a 100 years of data from thousands of different instruments all around the world. They will connect them all together and generate the planets temperature changes. Now I know what you’re thinking, this doesn’t sound particularly new and groundbreaking. So let me explain. All the 1.6 billion data points of information that Muller and his team find are being published online for anyone to look at, challenge and discuss. No hiding places, no excuses and no political spinning.

"We are bringing the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and too contentious," Muller says, over a cup of tea. "We are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group. We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find."

This mass production of results isn’t new. Nasa, The National Oceanic and Asmospheric Administration (Noaa) and the Met Office all collect readings from around the world to determine the earth’s average temperature. However, each organisation produces a different set of results due to how they do their workings out. The overall results is roughly the same though: we’re 0.75C hotter now than pre-industrial times.

So why produce another set of results? Muller believes that Nasa, Noaa and the Met Office is not using up to date data and their findings are misrepresented. Big errors such as the 2009 ‘Climategate’ email fiasco certainly don’t install trust into the public and their belief in global warming either. Whatever the reason, these organisations haven’t convinced everyone that climate change is a real threat. Or indeed that it is no threat at all.

So step up Muller and team. Working for a year already and gathering records from 39,340 individual stations worldwide so far the Berkeley team still have a lot of work to do; including encouraging belief in their project from other scientists. For every believer in Berkeley Earth there is a sceptic, with many not having heard of the project or claiming he is doing no more or less than any other research group out there. Either way, his research can only improve and extend our knowledge of climate change, whatever the end result. With universal agreement on theories being the stuff that scientist’s dreams are made from, I believe that we should all keep on avoiding plastic bags, cycling to work and composting to our hearts content. Just in case. And because velvet flares always have the potential to come strutting back onto the catwalk.

http://projectdirt.com/profiles/blogs/definitive-proof-of-climate

The Bicycle Library

Bicycles are a lot like books. Well, actually they’re not. But now you can borrow a bike in the same way you can borrow a book. The Bicycle Library in London lets you try out their range of bikes to see which one suits you. Helping to find the perfect bike-human coupling means that out of love, rejected bikes rusting alone in the garden will become a thing of the past and you'll never need to buy another, slightly shinier bike again.

If you want a bike to play in the park, a bike for commuting to work or a bike for some mountain cycling the Bicycle Library has it all. With expert advice from their ‘Librarian’ they will help you find your perfect two wheeled machine for a transport relationship based on long term love and comfort, not lust for those multitude of gears and shiny handlebars.


You can give your chosen bike a ride there and then on their special covered track or take it away for up to 10 days and see how your new transport system settles into your life. If you love it you can buy it and it’ll be yours to cycle forever more. If it’s not quite Mr Right then simply take it back and try a different one. Once you've picked your perfect bike you need never look back (except to check for oncoming traffic) and can just stick with what you've got.


(Spotted on Springwise)
http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/the_bike_borrowing_library

The Long And Windy Road

The Wind Explorer is the first wind and lithium-ion battery powered car to travel across a whole continent. After 6 months of building, this emission free car was blown across Australia to inspire the use of the elements in travel. Charging the batteries overnight with mobile wind turbines perched on a six-meter high telescopic mast made of bamboo, the 440 pound car sped along the south coast of Australia alternating between wind and battery power. Very cool.

Driven by Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer and travelling at up to 80 mph, the Wind Explorer completed the 3,100 mile test drive in two and a half weeks with a total electricity cost of just $10. The idea behind this noiseless, ultra green car was to encourage travelling and adventure without the guilty conscience that comes with current, fuel guzzling transport. The ever practical German designers realised that cars powered by kites are slightly impractical in most day-to-day travelling situations and are using the windmobile to inspire further research and development into alternative travel. With many car industries turning their focus to vehicles better for the environment, quieter, cleaner cars might be blowing onto our roads sooner than we think.


(Spotted on Fast Company)

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/the_long_and_windy_road 

Green Beer and Piss Whiskey

Breweries are one the more recent companies to start thinking about their carbon footprint. With the help of a new, (almost) all-consuming piece of machinery, beer factories are starting to save energy by creating their own whilst cutting down on unusable waste.


Some of the ingredients in beer; hops, barley and yeast create a natural gas that can be captured using a closed-loop recycling system and used as fuel to power the brewery. This system, named the Biphase Orbicular Biodigester™ System (or BOB) was developed by PurposeEnergy and is believed to be first and only one in the world. It produces 200 cubic feet of biogas per minute which helps to power the energy-intensive brewing process.


Installed last year in Vermont brewery Magic Hat, it is estimated that a saving of $2 a barrel is being recovered, not an amount to be sniffed at if you’re a large company.


So if you want to save on waste disposal and energy then BOB’s your...brewery recycling system.


P.S- BOB isn’t the only all-consuming alcohol idea, last year we blogged about James Gilpin and his all-consuming whiskey made from human urine. Probably not an experiment to be tried at home.

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/if_you_can’t_say_the_word_‘brewery’_then_don’t_try_to_say_‘brewery_powered_brewery_’_just_read_about_it

Add Valuable Inches With This Chinese-Made Pencil Enlarger

Don’t you just hate it when your pencil gets too small to hold? Or when that loud-mouthed suit is talking so loudly into his phone next to you on the train that you snap your pencil in two in a wave of suppressed rage? Gazing sadly at that tiny amount of wood you think of all the words it was going to write, all the scribbles it was going to sketch and all the sudoku’s it was going to lightly and hesitantly fill in.


But wait! Your pencil isn’t redundant. Just because it’s smaller doesn’t mean it is unusable. There are still pages of messy notes and meandering doodles left your mini-pencil. Check out our brilliant illustrator and very talented friend, Guillaume Cornet as he draws to the end of the pencil to the edge of the page.

But my hands are too big! I can’t hold that tiny pencil! Ok ok, here is a handy, if slightly ridiculous, design to get you using up those remnants of pencils. 1 + 1 = 1 Pencil. No, I haven’t got my maths wrong, this design gets you adding your stubby pencils to the plastic connector, instantly lengthening it to the size of a brand new pencil. Unfortunately this design only comes in plastic which is not such a green thing. So how about this, when your pencil is beginning to become too teeny for your fingers, slot in the Continuous Pencil at the end and keep on scribbling. The pencil extender creates a smooth transition from old to new, using up all the pencil dregs. The drawback being that you need to buy the Continuous Pencil in the first place as this lengthening device only works on other Continuous Pencils.

So take our advice, forget the fancy gadgets but don’t forget your stubby little pencils. Stick with what you’ve got and use it to the very last dot.

(Spotted on Yanko Design) 

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/add_valuable_inches_with_this_chinese_made_pencil_enlarger 

Yes, Headphones Made From Guitars and Cardigans

If you love gadgets but with a green twist then check out these beautifully designed headphones by Ashcraft Aria. With wood recycled from acoustic guitars, ear cups from reclaimed aluminium and pre-worn leather lining from bags, sweaters and jackets these earphones are a recycling-mad, music-lover’s dream come true.


Like this but prefer to stick with what you’ve got? Check out our hacked earphones. They work just as beautifully and have their own aesthetic quality and individual style...


(Spotted on Yanko Design)

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/yes_headphones_made_from_guitars_and_cardigans