Goede Morgen

Hi to all of you ‘n the real life!

Yes it’s been months since I’ve wrote anything on this blog… but as all of you know there is a moment to write and a moment to experience, and ’cause the days over here in the Netherlands lately have been heel veel mooi..(very very nice and long!!) it was sincerely difficult for me to stop and write something that had some sense… this is what a dutch newspaper wrote about May’s heat wave – “Mei 2008 zal de boeken ingaan als warmste meimaand ooit. De gemiddelde temperatuur kwam uit op 15,7 graden: drie graden warmer dan normaal…..” translation is useless..!
So let see what’s happened on this small planet lately!
Earthquakes…and as a geologist I should now something about them, but what’s funny to see, is this weird attitude of journalist and reporters to relate natural earth movement’s to human issues (don’t be fooled and remember THERE IS NO RELATION). I would advise you to check a web site for further details: usgs.gov, certainly one of the best available for this kind of issues.
The other world topic lately has been the fuel price surge!! Lucky enough I live in the Netherlands where I can easily go around using a fiets (bicycle) but it’s not getting easy for a lot of folks ’round our planet, expecially for the related rising food prices.
But we got some good bias too, just think of the sinking SUV market!
Quote taken from the Financial times : “Sales of sports cars fell by nearly 15 per cent year on year in May 2008, and sales of 4×4 fell by more than 18 per cent, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. The latter category includes not just Range Rovers and the other large sport utility vehicles lambasted by environmentalists but also briskly selling compact SUVs like Toyota’s RAV4.” …definitely not a bad news for our lungs!!
But it’s still a long and difficult path to recovery, from IEA (International Energy Agency) I quote: “The world needs to spend $45,000 bn on green technologies in the next 40 years, or 1.1 per cent of annual economic output, to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to accelerate development of new technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells and carbon storage.”..that’s not a big amount of money generaly speaking…just let’s do it!!!
From the Financial Times I got another original comment, Willem Buiter wrote some days ago: “If London wants to remain the world’s financial capital, there is only one choice for the UK: adopt the euro now and wonder why it did not do so in 1999.” …wow! is England seriously thinking of joining Euroland??
Ok so as you can see I’ve been mainly searching for News.
I want to end this short Post with an article chosen from La Repubblica, an Italian daily paper, regarding kites (and on this blog you can find a lot of info on this topic):”Il progetto Italiano è guidato da Mario Milanese, docente al Politecnico di Torino. A 80 metri di altitudine (l’altezza normale di una turbina) il vento spira, in media 4,6 m al sec, poco più di 16 km/h, ma sotto i 4 m al sec le turbine, normalmente vengono spente, poiché antieconomiche. In Texas l’Enel ha appena varato una centrale eolica con 21 turbine – è un’area pregiatissima, perché il vento soffia in media a 7-8 m al sec (un po’ meno di 30 km/h), considerata una velocità ottimale. A 800 metri di altitudine, il vento soffia, in media, a 7,2 m al sec. E un parametro cruciale, perché, spiegano i manuali di fisica, l’energia che si può ottenere dal vento aumenta in modo esponenziale con la sua velocità. “A mille metri di altezza l’energia che si può ottenere è otto volte quella disponibile a livello del suolo. All’idea del vento dagli aquiloni lavorano altri due gruppi, in Olanda e in California. “
So there are some good news around the world, but remember we are lacking of time, we should not waste it anymore!!
As usual I want to place some good music at the end of the post.
Enjoy this great classic frm the ’90’s!
tot ziens
ciao
d