Thursday, August 23, 2007

Norway : The Wind beneath the Moose


Mylanta?? worth a try ;)


Source: News.com.au

Burping moose add to global warming

From correspondents in Oslo

August 23, 2007 08:52am

A GROWN moose belches out methane gas equivalent to 2100kg of carbon dioxide a year, contributing to global warming, Norwegian researchers say.

That is more than twice the amount of CO2 emitted on a round-trip flight across the Atlantic Ocean from Oslo to the Chilean capital Santiago, according to Scandinavian Airlines.

"An adult moose emits about 100 kilograms of methane gas a year. But methane gas is much stronger than carbon dioxide, so to get the equivalent you have to multiply by 21,'' professor Odd Harstad at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences said.

With an estimated 140,000 moose roaming Norway's forests, that is a total of of 294,000,000kg of CO2 per year.

But Prof Harstad said that was no reason to begin killing off the entire moose population.

"Moose have very important functions in nature. They are ruminants that eat the grass. If we don't have ruminants, we have too much grass and that changes the landscape and has consequences for the flora and fauna,'' he said.

Prof Harstad said the figure of 100kg of methane gas was a rough estimate based on earlier calculations for beef cows in Norway.

As is the case with cows and other ruminants, methane is produced from the microbes in the moose's stomach which help break down the roughage they eat.

Because methane gas is stronger than carbon dioxide, it is considered even more harmful to the environment. Both methane and carbon dioxide are so-called greenhouses gases, one of the main causes of global warming.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Allen promotes Australian Festival November 2007 at Greater Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida, USA.


Loopyplus featured 91 year old Alan Waddell a little while back, here he is again.

A perfect fit as a Wortley Street, Balmain, fence cuddles its tree friend.

Alan is wearing a T-shirt kindly supplied by the wonderful people organising the Australian Festival - Celebrating The Land Down Under - to be held November 2-4 in 2007 at Greater Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida, USA. Their website is well worth a look. Alan is helping them promote both Australia and walking.

Source http://www.walksydneystreets.net/media_press_radio02.htm

In brief

Alan Waddell was encouraged by his doctor to take up walking. After a while, repeating the same route every day became boring. So Alan Waddell decided to walk every street in his own suburb.
In December 2002, this idea of walking every street was expanded to include neighbouring suburbs and so his odyssey began.

Alan's site WalkSydneyStreets is primarily about an unusual collection of 815 photos of Sydney taken whilst walking every street, lane, bush track etc in 244 suburbs (so far) of Sydney. There have been over 1,068,000 pages viewed by over 348,000 visitors from 163 countries (latest new ones are Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Guyana, Iraq, Mali and Montenegro) - see Visitor Countries for full list.

Below are a couple of Sydney Suburbs more colourful Murals from Alan's photos.

More of these at
http://www.walksydneystreets.net/surprises_paintings01.htm
http://www.walksydneystreets.net/surprises_paintings02.htm




Saturday, August 11, 2007

Howard targets church vote

JOHN Howard is going to spend $189 million on "cleaning up the internet" for Australian families, blocking pornography, upgrading the search for chat-room sex predators and cutting off terror sites.


Like what's wrong with educating users on how to not end up at these type of sites? filters get real
just take a gander at what audience Johnny chose.


Full article and comments here