Ice Care 2, the start ...

On the 7th Dec. starts the Copenhagen Summit and the Ice Care team will be on its way to the Mount Kilimanjaro. On the 11th Dec. the International Mountain Day will be highlighted (www.fao.org/mnts/intl_mountain_day_en.asp) and, with some luck, precisely on that day we will reach the top of Africa (5.896m) and its glaciers, adding even more symbolism to the second Ice Care expedition.
The departure of the team takes place on the 4th of Dec. We will be 7 members, including the anthropologist Joana RP, who will guide us through the visit to the Maasai people to understand their problems resulting from the climate changes, the HPP Health doctor Cristina Pereira, and 3 participants on our ‘social program’, that will help us to register the receding of the Kili glaciers.
Meanwhile, China was promising to lead the reduction on the greenhouse gases effects through the next decade. India wanted to play game, and the USA could not stay behind …
After the impact of the movie presented by Al Gore, now was the time for the photographer James Balog, whose video (19 min.) is worthwhile to watch. Balog shares new image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_balog_time_lapse_proof_of_extreme_ice_loss.html

Climate changes and energy efficiency

The UN brought together in Geneva 2500 experts from all over the world for the World Meteo Organization conference to discuss the future of the Quioto agreement. Meanwhile, in Tripoli (Líbia), the countries of the African Union took a comum position to the Copenhagen summit, in December: “the poor countries need to get financial aid, to get ajusted” (DN, 02.09.09). A UN report estimates on 600 billion dolars (1% of the world’s GDP and 30 times more than what has been spended with the problem), the ammount needed annualy, for poor countries to adopt the technologies that allow to reduce the gases that provoce the greenhouse effect, “responsible for the climate disturbance on the planet”. The authors defend a “massiv support”, with world wide investments, to achieve a sustainable and cleaner growth.
At the same time, in Nepal, the countries of the himalayan range were discussing the riscs of climate changes to the mountain glaciers. This is also the alert that the Ice Care project aims to achieve. Our next expedition, to the Kilimanjaro glaciers in África, is planned to start precisely at the same time as the Copenhagen summit.
The Dirigir magazine (2nd trimester 09) puts the focus on several ‘green ideas’ and ‘tendencies’ that will contribute to soften the paradigma of century – “improve the quality of life without destroying the environment in the attempt” (NG 2008, ‘El pulso de la Tierra’): an airport in Liverpool wants to try a revolutionary technology, by recycling the air exaled by passengers and convert it in biofuel to use on diesel vehicles; a company developed the concept of ‘solar road panels’, to pave roads in a way to store solar energy to supply commercial and residential units (www.greencarcongress.com/2009/02/solarroadways.html); investigators found a way to produce hidrogen with normal temperatures using aluminium aglomerate (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SiteinovacaoTecnologica/~3/AVwrWUDdlGo/noticia.php). The USA developed energy efficient programs that, if applied, would lead to reductions of 22% on the use of energy growth rate, in 2030; in 2005 the swedish government ordered a study aiming its independence from the use of oil (http://www.leonardo-energy.org/). Recently, also “Eslovenia announced that 2/3 of its territory are protected areas, and the Maldive islands decided to totally abandon the use of fossil energies” (from my new book ‘The new explorers and the adventures of senses’ - http://aventuraaomáximo.blogspot.com/).