The Crown Estate of England knows which way the wind blows and has decided to acquire the prototype of the world’s biggest wind turbine, Clipper’s 7.5 megawatt MBE turbine, also known as the Britannia. While the other windmills have been land-based, this giant will be located in deep waters near the UK. This will assist the marine interests of The Crown Estate which includes almost the entire UK territorial seabed out to 12 nautical miles , about 55% of the UK’s coastal foreshore, and rights to lease seabed for the generation of renewable energy on the continental shelf within the Renewable Energy Zone which extends out to approximately 200 nautical miles.
This will drive forward the development of turbine technology designed for the challenges of the offshore environment hence providing a great opportunity to help establish a new industrial base of activity to advance the UK’s leadership in renewable energy.

The 10-megawatt monster machine built by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California will have a wingspan larger than two soccer fields and will stand 574 feet tall when completed. The windmill is expected to displace two million barrels of oil as well as 724,000 tons of CO2 over its lifetime. It will also serve as the flagship for Clipper’s Britannia Project, an effort to produce massive new turbines on deep-sea floating platforms. If all goes as planned, the Queen’s windmill will light up thousands of British homes starting in 2012.
This thus, will not only prove benevolent but when yield as a good financial investment for the Crown as well.


Via fashionfunky

Want to spend sometime in the middle of the ocean? For all you nature lovers out there, this is your chance to experience serenity and be one with the life beyond. The solar powered hi-tech rowboat is a perfect bliss for you. This new invention of a hi-tech rowboat epitomizes the voyagers delight. Unlike a meager “regular” boat, this one comes equipped with cooking materials and other working tools for you to use when rowing, and can eventually serve as your little home in the ocean, wherein you can also sleep comfortably. Its major USP evidently is that it is solar powered, along with having the ability to row and stay in the middle of the ocean. With this comes its capacity to hold extra space for your belongings reaching you at a whooping cost of $50,000.

So for all the adventurers out there, rowing was never so much fun!!Buy yourself the solar rowboat and make the sea your second home.
Via igreenspot

WWF has found that a new fish technology is proving to save turtles while not affecting fish catches. Simply changing from the conventional J hook to circular hooks has been helpful in releasing turtles accidentally hooked. Moises Mug from WWF said that using circular hooks is the right choice as it does not even hamper the economy of artisanal fisheries.

Reports suggest that the alternate fishing method has brought about a significant trend in bycatch reduction, where marine turtle bycatch has been reduced by 89 per cent per thousand hooks. It was quite a relief to find that ninety-ive per cent of turtles caught while fishing were recovered alive and the fishing ability of the circle hook was as good as the J-shaped.
Indeed a strong example to show how conservation and industry can work hand in hand for a better and greener life.
Via enn

The Pacific Island countries now have the support of the United Nations and Samoa Plan. The two bodies have come together with an Inter-agency Climate Change Centre that will help the Pacific Island countries to fight global warming.  To appreciate the effort, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “I am glad that we are taking matters in our hands. Climate change is not science fiction. It is real and needs our attention.”
Reports suggest that there has been a rise in sea level in the Pacific Island region. This is not a very good news for the hundreds of people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods. A change in sea temperature can alter the temperature of aquatic species that people eat. For example, warmer waters can harm the rate of metabolism, growth, reproduction and immunity in shell fish.
Via ens

Anti-whaling activists are facing a hard time in Japan. Apparently, the authorities are miffed with the brouhaha they have created and have released arrest warrants for three of them (two Americans and a Briton from the Sea Shepherd group), who are believed to be a part of the heated clash with Tokyo’s whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean last year.
Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said, “Physical protests will not be tolerated by the authorities, no matter what you feel about whaling.” The three activists will soon be placed on the international wanted list once the arrest warranst are obtained. They are suspected of jamming a ship’s propeller with a rope to prevent whaling.
Environmentalists the world offer are troubled over the issue of whaling as it violates the 1886 global moratorium on commercial whaling. However, the Japanese say in defence that whaling is part of their tradition and they only perform it for scientific research.
Yep, the reasons are vague!
Via enn

The fish are dying. It may be shocking but the truth is, 25% of the world’s known fish species, especially tuna and cod, are at the brink of extinction. The oceanic ecological balance has gone berserk and as a last minute preventive measure, governments have banned fishing in certain areas. Apparently, EU pays 61 million dollars to Greenland every year so that Germany can continue fishing in its waters. Incidentally, Germans like their fish frozen thereby giving fisherman a lot of time to fish and ruin the ecological system even in far off areas.
Most developed countries and third world nations are to be blamed for this. The European Union’s strategies have been one of hypocrisy. In the garb of being green and environmental friendly, it has been allowing governments and industries to undertake large-scale fishing in foreign seas as well. This probably could be due to the free trade policies and also due to globalization that fishing companies have brazenly continued to exploit the oceanic populations. They need to be put a check on. Rising sea temperatures themselves have done a lot of damage to oceanic fauna.
Via greendiary

The expression ‘Mozart’s sadness runs like a wind, his tears never catch up with it’ gives us an idea of melancholy depicted in Mozart’s music. The grief that runs through Mozart’s Requiem is often associated with human life, but two of the works in this year’s Mostly Mozart Festival explore a different kind of loss: environmental.

The pieces represented a shift from life to death that Mozart would never have considered. They addressed issues of climate change, rising sea levels and other threats to the earth. The works, one by the choreographer Lemi Ponifasio and the other by the artist Lynette Wallworth, use the problems facing the natural world to touch on the theme of the festival, loss and transformation, in unexpected ways.
Both Ponifasio and Wallworth hail from the Pacific Rim, and their relationship with that region very much informs their work.

Ponifasio, from Samoa, explores Oceanic cultures and their philosophies and genealogy in his choreography and his “Requiem” builds on those interests. Commissioned by Peter Sellars for the New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 2006, it doesn’t contain a note of Mozart. But Ponifasio sees the work as being on a gamut with the 18th-century masterpiece.

It is the members of this group who are faced with the ecological transformations explored in the piece. Many of Mau’s members come from the Kiribati islands, where sea levels have been rising. At an environmental conference in New Zealand in June, that tiny nation said that the water threat due to climate change was making its lands uninhabitable and asked for help with a migration plan for its citizens.
To make ‘Requiem’ itself “is to think about the departure of life in terms of all the islands of the planet,” Ponifasio said.

In the piece, which seems to suspend time, bodies travel very slowly across the dramatically lighted stage to spoken words, chants and natural sounds. The dancers undulate and articulate different muscles from across the shoulders to the fingertips in a kind of ceremony for death. Figures occasionally come forward or separate from the group to communicate to the audience with both abstract and traditional gestural movements.

For Mau, as for most Pacific Islanders, environmental issues are a matter of daily life. The islands, while culturally dynamic, are fragile ecologically, Ponifasio said. He added that pollution, nuclear experiments and spacecraft debris are among the problems facing the region. “Things like that all accelerate what’s going on,” he said. “It’s not something that we are waiting for. It’s something that is already here. Already homes have been destroyed, people have moved out.”

The Pacific is far from the Lincoln Center office of Jane Moss, artistic director of the festival. But from her perch overlooking the campus’s redevelopment construction, she said the two pieces, which she first saw at the New Crowned Hope, fit with the festival’s overarching theme of transformation.
Whether art can serve to effect change, environmentally or otherwise, is always debatable. Ponifasio has his own ideas on the subject.

Via NYT

Environmentalists the world over are perturbed over the breaking of a large ice shelf extending to about 8 square miles from the 150 square miles large Ward Hunt area in Canada. The cracks in Ward Hunt indicate chances of more breakage following later this year. One can imagine the catastrophe in store for the earth’s inhabitants as this 3000 years old mass broke up and began slowly drifting into the Arctic Ocean. Findings indicate that temperatures in the Arctic have risen faster than the global average in recent decades. Yep, the root cause is global warming. Very few of us know that the rise in temperature of the earth over the last 100 years has not been duplicated over a history of 650000 years. And the first to melt because of the heat are the ice caps causing a rise in the water level. Apparently, every year we are crossing new thresholds in environmental change which will lead to huge repercussions in the near future.

And people were carefree thinking that melting of the mammoth sized chunks would take ages but the Canada episode of ice suddenly slipping into the oceans has shaken those myths. Probability of sudden avalanches and submerging of icebergs have increased tremendously that will eventually devour cities altogether.

Via GreenDiary

A whole eco- development plan is being put forward by Fosters+ Partners for the Italian coastal town of Rimini. In this age of emerging mega cities with their jaw-dropping architectural planning and futuristic buildings worldover, Rimini might just be the next addition. The renowned architectural firm has plans to renovate the waterfront of this town putting it on the map of eco-tourism.

The proposal bears the nouveau development plan comprising of a brand new seafront promenade that links to Rimini’s existing green boulevards. Fosters+ Partners have envisioned a hotel tower located 300 meters into the ocean. Not only this, there will be a long pear that will extend from the hotel to the pedestrian link. The whole concept involves developing and planning the new waterfront by making use of latest technologies like rainwater collection and solar photovoltaics.

The plan sounds wonderful and the designs prepared by the firm look great, the long-term eco-sustainability and other environmental strategies for a better tomorrow are still under consideration. A lot of rigorous testing will be done before the plan actually starts transforming Rimini’s beachfront. Till this happens you may wonder at the designs.

Via Inhabitat

Looks like the noble intentions of the scientists trying to save Antarctica are adding to the poor continent’s troubles. Right now, the sun is shining high in the cold continent and 4000 scientists are lodged there to research on the condition of polar ice and are surveying the population of the new born penguin chicks. All this is being done to protect the fragile Antarctic environment but studies show that these scientists are contaminating Antarctica by their very presence.
PBDEs have been found in the wildlife living near the McMurdo base where the wastewater is discharged as per a member of the U.S. National Science Foundation Researchers. Rob Hale of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, Stacy Kim of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and their teams have brought to light the unexpected environmental impact of human habitation on Antarctica. They have focused their energies towards PBDE flame retardants, these bear a structural similarity to thyroxine, a thyroid harmone known to interfere with early neurodevelopment. Many PBDE compounds have been included in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).
Read