₦airaland Forum

jidowu84:
Your BBM is not correct.

Sorry pals.my bbm is 53338B16

Good day Pals..
I want to share my testimony..

First of all i want to appreciate a great man...a business man who thought it good not to keep knowledge to himself, but touch lives and make an impact by helping others grow,,,,Chuddy baba...i hail you sir..

Now straight to my story...
I had given up on importation and the like in d past due to fear and indecision, till i stumbled on this thread again 2 weeks ago, and i seemed interested again...
I have a particular product i buy from an importer in Lagos and resell, and i started having high demands..

MONDAY 29/06/2015...Suddenly my importer says he is out of stock, and doesn’t even think he will restock till further notice...Choiii...and i had some demands already..

TUESDAY 20/06/2015...i suddenly remembered this thread, and thought about trying to import myself..TSarted searching and sourcing for suppliers of the product..

WEDNESDAY 01/07/2015...I got three suppliers, and eventually got in talks with one..we negotiated...went back and forth on cost and all....and eventually at the end of the day, i couldn’t see myself doing business with them...i didn’t lose hope..i kept on researching...

THURSDAY 02/07/2015....Searching for other products that could sell well and no too expensive, i stumbled on another seller of the initial product, we got talking and i was given very good prices, and even for samples....we reached an agreement on amount, ost and shipper..

FRIDAY 03/07/2015....I paid for samples via paypal....seller confirmed receipt ...arranges my items and ships it to shipper, nonikings.(Seller is in shezhen, nonikings in guangzou, so i will get to nonikings the next day)...

SATURDAY 04/07/2015....nonikings agent confirms receipt of package via whatsapp....i informed them i want expres shipping..

SUNDAY 05/07/2015...around 4pm, i got a text from nonikings that my package i available for pickup..

MONDAY 06/07/205...i pick up my item from nonikings lagos office........wow...impressive..
Bottomline is i actually shipped in samples...and i spent about 13k(Thirteen thousand naira), AND ALL THE TRANSACTION WAS DONE ON MY ANDROID PHONE, and as at today, just a day after, i have sold almost half, and i have made over the cost price...*winks*..
Anybody can succeed in this business, as long as you are ready to take risk, research well on the product you are buying(because it must be sellable with available market) and also keep getting hints from elders in the business..
Special shoutout to my mentors...Chuddy and Ymodulus....they were always available to give advice along the way, despite their busy schedule.

I hope my story is strong enough to push someone to take that bold step
Feel free to ask me any questions...preferably on bbm pin 553338B16
PEACE

Residents of Lekki area of Lagos State are ignoring the latest warning by the state government of imminent danger from Sea Level Rise, SLR, which could lead to loss of lives and property. They have remained in their homes pretending that the warnings are inconsequential.

In the wake of fresh overflow, the state government, promptly alerted residents on possible ocean surge in Lekki beaches, stressing that danger looms in the beaches and its environs.

General Manager, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency LASEMA, Dr .Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, who gave the alert, noted that accidents and emergencies that occur during festive periods could be attributed to people’s non-chalant attitude and carelessness.

He warned residents to be safety conscious and stay away from the affected areas especially, Lekki Beach, Alpha Beach and Elegushi Beach even as he urged fun seekers not to go near the beaches to avert disaster.
He added that the tidal waves began at 3am and lasted till 6am, and said a repeat of the wave might cause damage in the beaches and environs.

According to him, “For now, those residing along the shore should stay off. Those who are close to the sea can confirm that there are times the tidal waves are on the increase but the truth is that scientifically things are changing.”

According to Mr. Kayode Williams, a resident of Jakande Estate: “I woke up at about 4.am in the morning only to be confronted with this chilling water everywhere around the vicinity. Initially, I thought, I was dreaming but the second thought and I said to myself, this is another reality of ocean surge.
“Immediately, I woke my family and alerted other neighbours on the need to get to a safer place because no one could predict what the next moment would be. Actually, in the past, we have seen the worse scenario, where people lost their lives, due to negligence.

When asked if he was prepared to relocate, Williams retorted: “To where? I have lived here for donkey years. Accommodation is quite expensive in Lagos and hard to come by. I hope on God for survival.”
Latest check by Vanguard showed that no single occupant has relocated. It was gathered that the confidence of residents was rekindled as the ocean receded mid-Friday, last week. Some of the residents were seen drying up their soaked properties in the sun, apparently, to return them when fully dried up.

Gloomy picture of expected sea level rise
IT was recently predicted by experts that Sea Level Rise, SLR, and flooding will have serious implication on the health and life-style of coastal dwellers.
It is estimated that 3.2 million Nigerians could be displaced from their homes by the development. Over two million of those to be affected live in Greater Lagos (Lekki and Aja axis)and other urban areas.
Unique features of Lagos State such as high and rapidly increasing population, flat topography, extensive coastal areas and a high water table, which in some areas of Lagos Island is less than 0.15 metres from the surface, are major factors that further increase the state’s vulnerability to climate change impacts.
It is expected that many will move to areas considered to be more habitable very soon. The frequency of ocean surge on residents has been a recurring decimal with attendant loss of lives and destruction of property.

Destruction of property
Residents of Lekki area and environs, Lagos Island, during the Eid-el-Fitri holidays, woke up in the early hours of Thursday, last week, to find their homes being taken over by slight ocean surge that occurred overnight.

Though, no life was lost, properties were said to have been destroyed in the process. The situation also led to panic among residents. Most of the affected areas that experienced the overflow of the Atlantic Ocean included: Alpha Beach, Jakande, Ilisan Estate and environs, located at Lekki area, along Lekki-Epe Expressway.

Particularly, the premises of SilverBird Television, was virtually taken over by the ocean water which made movement into and out of the place almost impossible with operational vehicles grounded in the water.
Some make-shift structures erected along the affected areas were uprooted and personal belongings swept away.

The incident was largely due to the effect of climate change on the SLR of the Atlantic Ocean. Meantime, the adverse effects of climate change are already being felt by almost all sectors of the economy in the state, and it’s taking a toll on the livelihoods of majority of residents.
For example, there is increased incidences of water and vector-borne diseases, which are consequences of the changing climate in the state.

Some experts, like a university don, Dr. Dupe Olayinka, have raised doubts over the safety of Eko Atlantic City, a mega project sponsored by the Lagos State Government.
They argue that an earlier surge was exacerbated by the project but this had since been debunked by state government agencies. It will be recalled that the state government, earlier this year, raised alarm over the increase in the number of abandoned vessels on the state coastline saying; “They constitute great danger, as many communities along the coastline may fail to exist.”

President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 during his visit to the state, promised prompt release of ecological fund to protect the ocean line in the state.
According to the Commissioner for Waterfront and Infrastructure, Mr. Adesegun Oniru, who raised the issue of danger to the coastline; “the increase in the number of wrecked vessels along the state coastline constitutes grave danger to the marine environment in the state. “It is causing the degradation of the shoreline and properties on the coastline. There are over 200 abandoned vessels along coastline that has been identified by the state government.”

He alleged that the Federal Government, through the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, an agency saddled with the responsibility of removing wrecked vessels, has failed to act.
Protection of coastlines

“The FG has done nothing for coastline protection without the removal of wrecks and protection of coastlines. Various letters have been written to FG since Yar Adua’s time till date and not only have we not got any help from the FG, to get a reply to our various letters is a big problem.
“This is not just a water front issue; the Ministry of Environment is also concerned. We are talking about the ecological fund as well. We have not gotten any assistance so far,” Oniru said.The commissioner lamented that the cost was huge for the state government to bear, saying “it will cost about N80 million to remove a vessel.

“However, when we realised that FG wasn’t forthcoming, last year, we began the construction of 18 Groynes, to help protect the coastlines from being eroded.
“The project is a three-year contract to terminate in March 2014. the state has constructed five of it to protect Goshen Estate and others along that coastline.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/08/nigeria-lekki-residents-ignore-ocean.html

Why eat real foods?

If your grandmother wouldn't have immediately recognized it as "food" there's a good chance it's less food and more manufactured good. Who wants to eat a manufactured good?


Real foods are the basis for a common sense diet. The only processing food needs is the cooking you do at home. Chances are, the less processing a food has been subjected to, the less energy and fewer resources have been expended manufacturing, packaging and transporting it to your grocery store. And real foods haven't had all the nutrition processed out of them.

So read labels, and look for those foods with the shortest, most direct list of ingredients. Better, choose foods without labels because the items in the produce aisle are as real as it gets.

Beijing plans to have 50,000 electric cars by 2015, 30,000 of which will be owned privately, the rest used as public transit, taxis and other public uses.
On Sunday May 19th, the first electric car rental service in Beijing opened in the Wudaokou area of the city as part of the Electric Beijing Partnership Plan, according to Caixin News, a financial news website. As part of the launch, dozens of charging posts were installed.


The partnership between Yika Car Rental Service and Beijing Automotive Group, or BAIC Group, one of China’s largest state-owned automakers, has rolled out the first batch of electric cars, 15 vehicles produced by BAIC.

According to Legal evening news, a Beijing newspaper, this is part of the initiative to popularize electric cars in Beijing, in the hopes of alleviating the city’s infamous congestion and pollution problems. It further states that the plan is to have 50,000 electric or hybrid vehicles in Beijing by 2015, which will include 30,000 private vehicles, 8,000 public buses -- a third of the total number of buses in Beijing -- 10,000 taxis or government vehicles and 2,000 for uses in logistics, environmental, postal and rental sectors.

“BAIC has made a promise to the city of Beijing to launch electric cars in the first half of 2013,” said Lin Yi, the Managing Director of New Energy Automotive, Ltd., a subsidiary company of BAIC. “We are now looking for volunteers to purchase the first batch of electric cars in Beijing; there will be dozens of them in the first half of the year.”
To promote electric vehicles, the city and the central government are each offering a 60,000 yuan ($9,800) subsidy to private citizens willing to purchase an electric car. Anyone can sign up to test-drive electric cars on evbeijing.cn.
Cost is a central concern for consumers who are considering electric cars. An electric vehicle retails usually for more than 200,000 yuan. With the 120,000 yuan combined government subsidy, a consumer can expect to pay a price par with the cost of a traditional vehicle.
“The front-end cost is about the same, but an electric car and a traditional car have vastly different maintenance costs,” Xu Heyi, the president of BAIC, said. “A traditional car will run around 20,000 kilometers (12,430 miles) per year and cost 20,000 to 30,000 yuan to maintain. One of BAIC’s electric cars, however, only costs 12 yuan to run 100 kilometers, so the cost of maintaining an electric car for a year will only be 2,400 yuan.”
As an extra incentive, Beijing has just built the largest electric car charging station in the world. The station can service and charge up to 400 electric vehicles per day. Beijing boasts of four other charging stations and 15 groups of charging posts around Beijing, Legal Evening News reports.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/beijing-targets-50000-electric-cars-by.html

If you were to travel from the United States of America to Japan, you would most likely encounter what could be described as the world’'s largest waste dump: a 100,000 tonne expanse of debris floating around a large region of the Pacific Ocean. The total area of this phenomenon has been said to equal the size of continental U.S., but the truth about its true size remains unknown. This ‘pacific garbage patch’ was first discovered by Captain Charles Moore in 1997.


Plastics, which is a useful product, constitute 90 percent of all trash in the world's oceans with 20 percent of this waste being dumped from ships and oil platforms. The rest comes from land. Its durability and stability deem it troublesome in marine environments. According to Moore, the polypropylene and the polyethylene that make up the majority of floater plastics and consumer plastics are just a little bit lighter than water. So if it's rough they get pushed down under. When it's really calm, all these bits and pieces can float to the surface,

To Moore, it is clearly a land-based problem and he believes that what drives the market and what subsequently runs off the streets into our oceans is all part of the same problem.
A one-liter plastic bottle, when in seawater, can reduce to so many small pieces that it is possible a single fragment could be found on every beach in the world. The entire marine food-web is suffering as a result. The breakdown of plastics into small pieces allows them to mimic the prey of all marine animals, from zooplankton to whales. When plastic is so prevalent that it fills up a creature's stomach, it turns off the desire to feed. If an organism doesn't put on fat stores for reproduction and migration, its population will crash. Floating plastic will even act as transport for some organisms, introducing them to areas where they could be problematic to resident species.

Seventy percent of the plastic waste sinks to the ocean floor and this mass of waste causes considerable damage to bed-dwelling organisms. In the worst case scenario—suffocation.
Plastics are also very good sponges, as such they are often used in oil clean-ups. But Moore explains that "petroleum-derivative toxins are sticking to these plastics, delivering these toxicants to marine creatures from the very base of the food-web to the top, in addition to killing millions by entanglement".

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/pacific-ocean-houses-worlds-largest.html

This solar charger is obviously the first of its kind, considering its portability, convenience and easy use. It offers a neat way to harness solar energy and use it as a plug socket. So far we have seen solutions that act as a solar battery backup, but none as a direct plug-in. Simple in design, the plug just attaches to any window and does its job intuitively.

It can be used anywhere available to charge with solar energy such as on an indoor window in a place, car, ship or outdoors.
The solar energy supplied for charging is converted into electric energy through a converter. When charging is complete, you can use it anywhere electricity is needed.
According to the designers, Kyohu Song and Boa Oh, its intended to enable one use electricity freely and conveniently in a space restricted in the use of electricity such as in a plane, a car or outdoors. It is thus meant to draw out a socket used indoors outward. It is designed in such a way that it can be used without any special training.

It has solar panels behind which is used to charge with solar energy. The supplied solar energy is converted into electrical energy through a converter. The charger takes up to 5-8 hours to be fully charged and the socket could be used for up to 10 hours.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/04/introducing-portable-solar-window-socket.html

More than 2,000 people gathered outside the Yunnan provincial government headquarters to demand greater transparency about the environmental risks the 20 billion yuan (£2bn) facility – which will produce gasoline and petrochemicals such as paraxylene (PX), used in making fabrics and plastic bottles – may pose.


This makes a second protest against the planned plant and highlights the increasing willingness of the country’s emerging middle class to challenge authorities.

The planned petrochemical plant, which would be built about 18 miles outside the city centre, would annually produce 500,000 tonnes of PX, a suspected carcinogen, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. Local residents fear the plant would pollute the city’s air and water supplies.

In the wake of the first Kunming demonstration on 4 May, local government officials and the powerful state-controlled PetroChina Co (which has proposed the plant), held a series of public meetings and pledged that operations at the refinery would be environmentally sound. However, officials have also said the project’s environmental evaluation report will remain confidential.

According to Steve Tsang, of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, “The protesters do not believe that the environmental downside will be handled properly, but they are also financially comfortable enough to accept the economic costs to the city/region for rejecting a major industrial facility that can provide considerable local employment opportunities.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/chinese-oppose-planned-petrochemical.html

A 24-year-old doctor and environmentalist from Nigeria has won the 2013 World Environment Day blogging competition after picking up almost half of the close to 70,000 votes cast in an online vote organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Charles Immanuel Akhimien was one of ten short-listed bloggers whose entries were posted on the World Environment Day website (www.unep.org/wed) where WED followers could choose their favourite entry. After securing first place with over 31,000 votes, Charles will travel to Mongolia in June 2013 to report on World Environment Day (WED) 2013.
“As a doctor, I have found that the state of our environment is directly related to our personal health, so I have decided to champion environmental issues,” said Mr. Akhimien
“I look forward to seeing some of the two million trees planted across Mongolia’s vast desert regions since 2011, and to observe how Mongolia is using renewable energy by exploiting its huge solar power potential,” he added.
Over 100 international bloggers submitted entries to this year’s UNEP competition on the theme of food waste. The competition was held in support of the ‘Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Foodprint! campaign launched by UNEP,the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other partners earlier this year. Food waste and food loss is also the theme of WED 2013.
For the final phase of the competition, Mr. Akhimien wrote a blog on the role of social media in encouraging sustainable consumption.
In his entry, Charles emphasized the power of social media in ensuring conscious consumption. He satated that Social media today is an exceedingly powerful tool in the 21st century, as it has become more than just a fad, as it aids the starting of trends by influencing people to change their behavior.

Previous winners of the WED Blogging Competition have reported from Rwanda, India and Brazil.
World Environment Day – organized by UNEP - is the single biggest day for positive action on the environment worldwide. It is celebrated each year on 5 June. Organizations and individuals across the world are encouraged to carry out an environmental activity in support of World Environmental Day.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/24-year-old-nigerian-doctor-wins-unep.html

Thames Water, the company that provides drinking water for the city of London, has unveiled a new long-term strategy that will recycle sewage to provide drinking water for the entire population. The strategy looks to address the challenges the city will face in the next 25 years as the population the company serves grows from 9 million to 10.4 million by 2040. This will increase demand by between 230 and 340 million liters per day, with about 80 per cent of this rise expected in London.


As an added result, the population in London’s wastewater area is forecast to rise from 14 million to 16 million over the same period. This will put more pressure on Thames Water‘s sewage works and will increase the volume of sludge they will need to treat and recycle.

Unsurprisingly, this plan has not sat well with everyone, however as Simon Evans, a Thames Water spokesman said to The Guardian, “It’s all about making sure there is enough water to go around, now and in the future.”

Besides waste water recycling, Thames Water in the next 10 years will also be involved in fixing leaky pipes, installing water meters and encouraging people to get their 160 liters-a-day usage down to 150 liters, but after 2025, they believe more drastic measures will be needed. This could involve building new reservoirs, or transferring water from the Midlands, the north or parts of Wales, according to Evans.

Speaking to The Guardian, Dr Andrew Singer, a microbiologist at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said, “If there is no further treatment of the sewage before they inject it into the rivers, that could have implications for things that live in the river. The drinking water facility would have to be aware that they are starting off with so much more sewage – the pharmaceuticals in sewage are quite resistant to breaking down, so they would have to work that much harder to make sure the drinking water doesn’t have these chemicals in it. It’s a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. Whether the rivers are any better off for it, you can look at it two ways – the river will have more water in it, which is a good thing, but the water is going to be from sewage effluent and that’s more of an unknown.”

Thames Water are testing public opinion. "The fact we're having this conversation a good 15 years before this would even happen is a good thing because people would get used to it," says Evans. "It's all about public perception, that's the main hurdle here."

http://inhabitat.com/thames-water-to-transform-londons-sewage-into-drinking-water-for-entire-population/
http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/london-set-to-drink-recycled-sewage.html

While cooking can be considered a safe practice in most of the Western world, it is a potential lethal activity in other regions.
“Cooking a meal is the biggest environmental health risk in the world,” said Radha Muthiah, executive director at Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
Her organization estimates that three billion people around the world rely for cooking on solid fuels like wood, coal, charcoal, and animal dung.
“Three billion people risk death, sickness, and injury from a number of issues associated with the seemingly simple act of cooking. Four million people die annually—meaning that after high blood pressure, alcohol, and tobacco, household air pollution from cooking smoke is the biggest killer in the world,” Muthiah said.
Coal is the most commonly sold fuel when it comes to household energy and solid fuels are mostly burned in open fires and other primitive stoves with inadequate ventilation, which expose the families to toxic indoor smoke, according to an article in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The primitive stoves also affect global warming, as millions of tons of soot are spreading into the atmosphere.
A clean cookstove can reduce carbon emissions by up to three tons per year, according to the Global Alliance of Clean Cookstoves.
“With women serving as the cooks in most developing countries, usually with their small children at their side, household air pollution (HAP) causes a range of cancers, heart and lung diseases, cataracts and developmental and neurological impacts,” Radha said.
Women and children are also spending a lot of time collecting fuel, one of the duties that makes them too busy at home to attend school. Girls spend as much as twenty hours per week collecting fuels.
In many Sub-Saharan African countries, almost every household rely on solid fuel and also in South Asia and Southeast Asia a lot of people use these primitive stoves. In India, household air pollution from cooking is the leading health risk factor.
Various experts and governments have tried to tackle this problem with various results and in 2010, secretary Clinton launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves led by the United Nations Foundation to deal with this problem.
“Today, the alliance is made up of more than 650 partners across six continents, all working toward the goal of hundred million households adopting clean cookstoves and fuels by 2020,” Radha said.
To reach this goal, various actions have taken place, such as commissioning research to underscore the problem, and the solutions that are proven to work; establishing the first-ever international standards to define cookstove safety, cleanliness and efficiency; conducting in-country market assessments; supporting testing centers worldwide; linking investors with cookstove entrepreneurs and many other activities.
“The countries in which the Alliance has targeted its resources at this stage include Bangladesh, China, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda,” Radha said.
Changing to cleaner stoves will have a huge impact on both people and the environment. It can reduce fuel consumption and exposure to cookstove smoke, which will lead to a much better health and a healthier environment.
“By involving women in every aspect of the cookstoves value chain,” Radha said, “we can spur the level of adoption of clean cooking solutions that is necessary to one day move from saying ‘cooking shouldn’t kill’ to ‘cooking doesn’t kill.’”

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/3-billion-at-risk-when-cooking-meals.html

If we want to satiate the world population’s ever-growing appetite, insect farming should be the next global foodie fad. Or at least that’s the gist of a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The thorough 187-page report published Monday, covers everything from different cultures’ attitudes towards eating insects to farming methods to tips for using insects as emergency food during disasters.
Benefits of bug munching are manifold: The report points out that farmers can raise insects on human and animal waste, they emit fewer greenhouse gases and produce less pollution than cattle or pigs, and they use substantially less land and water than other livestock.
From the report’s foreword:

Land is scarce and expanding the area devoted to farming is rarely a viable or sustainable option. Oceans are overfished and climate change and related water shortages could have profound implications for food production. To meet the food and nutrition challenges of today – there are nearly 1 billion chronically hungry people worldwide – and tomorrow, what we eat and how we produce it needs to be re-evaluated. Inefficiencies need to be rectified and food waste reduced. We need to find new ways of growing food.
Edible insects have always been a part of human diets, but in some societies there is a degree of distaste for their consumption. Although the majority of edible insects are gathered from forest habitats, innovation in mass-rearing systems has begun in many countries.
More than 1,900 insect varieties have been identified as sources of human food around the world, the report notes. The most frequently consumed insects are (deep breath) beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, cicadas, leafhoppers, planthoppers, scale insects, termites, dragonflies, and even regular old flies.

If your mouth isn’t watering yet, read this passage from The Guardian’s report:
“In the past there has been a tendency to say insects are for primitive, stupid people. This is nonsense, a misconception that must be corrected,” says lead author Arnold van Huis, who has helped write a Dutch insect recipe book that includes mealworm pizza and locust ravioli.
Westerners barely know what they are missing, he suggests. Dragonflies boiled in coconut milk with ginger are an Indonesian delicacy; beekeepers in parts of China are considered virile because they eat larvae from their hives, and tarantulas are popular in Cambodia. Europe gave up eating them centuries ago, but Pliny the elder, the Roman scholar, wrote that aristocrats “loved to eat beetle larvae reared on flour and wine” while Aristotle described the best time to harvest cicadas: “The larva on attaining full size becomes a nymph; then it tastes best, before the husk is broken. At first the males are better to eat, but after copulation the females, which are then full of white eggs,” he wrote.
Mealworm pizza and locust ravioli are all fine and good, but beetle larvae infused with flour and wine? That’s haute cuisine.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/un-to-world-eat-your-insects.html

For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.

These conditions are expected to return in time, with devastating consequences for civilisation, unless emissions of CO2 from the burning of coal, gas and oil are rapidly curtailed. But despite increasingly severe warnings from scientists and a major economic recession, global emissions have continued to soar unchecked.

The world's governments have agreed to keep the rise in global average temperature, which have already risen by over 1C, to 2C, the level beyond which catastrophic warming is thought to become unstoppable. But the International Energy Agency warned in 2012 that on current emissions trends the world will see 6C of warming, a level scientists warn would lead to chaos. With no slowing of emissions seen to date, there is already mounting pressure on the UN summit in Paris in 2015, which is the deadline set to settle a binding international treaty to curb emissions.

The extreme speed at which CO2 in now rising – perhaps 75 times faster than in pre-industrial time – has never been seen in geological records and some effects of climate change are already being seen, with extreme heatwaves and flooding now more likely. Recent wet and cold summer weather in Europe has been linked to changes in the high level jetstream winds, in turn linked to the rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic, which shrank to its lowest recorded level in September.

http://greenalerts..com/2013/05/global-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere.html

The world’s first algae-powered building just opened in Hamburg! Dubbed the BIQ House, the project features a bio-adaptive algae facade and it will serve as a testing bed for sustainable energy production in urban areas and self-sufficient living buildings.

International design firm Arup worked with Germany’s SSC Strategic Science Consultants and Austria-based Splitterwerk Architects to develop the BIQ House, which launched as part of Hamburg’s International Building Exhibition.
Arup predicts that buildings will fundamentally transform over the next fifty years due to developments ranging from jet-powered maintenance robots to high-rise farms and photovoltaic paint, all of which are already in development. But first and foremost, Arup envisions a movement towards living buildings that respond and adapt to the conditions around them. “The urban building of the future fosters this innate quality, essentially functioning as a living organism in its own right – reacting to the local environment and engaging with the users within,” contends Arup. The BIQ House is the first major step towards that vision.
According to Arup, the facade of the BIQ House is designed so that algae in the bio-reactor facades grows faster in bright sunlight to provide more internal shading. The ‘bio-reactors’ not only produce biomass that can subsequently be harvested, but they also capture solar thermal heat – and both energy sources can be used to power the building. This means that photosynthesis is driving a dynamic response to the amount of solar shading required, while the micro-algae growing in the glass louvres provide a clean source of renewable energy.

www.greenalerts..com