Its called the [1] Solar Taxi, but that is just its name. Its not a taxi and it does not run exclusively on solar power.
Louis Palmer wants to be the first man to drive around the world in a solar-powered car. He started the SolarTaxi project, which aims to circumvent the globe, meeting politicians and policy makers as they go. “With the power of the sun around the world – stop global warming! 40.000 km… 40 countries… 14 months…” (more…)
Swiss adventurer, Louis Palmer, is halfway around the world in his solar taxi, which left Switzerland in July 2007 and arrived in Perth on the 9th of March. The light-weight car runs totally on solar-generated electricity and travels at up to 90 kilometers per hour. It took three years to build and has travelled 23,000 kilometers in nine months. Mr Palmer has given lifts to Bianca Jagger, Peter Garrett a Jordanian prince and a number of hitchhikers. He was given a lift from Bali to New Zealand by Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior II.
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The Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong has handed the allocation of water rights back to the state governments. Water ministers from state and federal governments met recently to review the Murray Darling management scheme set up in the dying days of the Howard government. State governments want the right to manage the amount of water allocated to them under the scheme as they see fit. Victoria, for example, will pipe irrigation water across the state to the goldfields towns of Ballarat and Bendigo. Irrigation systems will be lined to reduce leakage and make up for the water supplied to those towns.
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NSW treasurer Michael Costa has called for Kevin Rudd to exempt coal-fired power generators from a national emission control scheme. The coal-fired generation of electricity in New South Wales produces 58 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, accounting for more than a third of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of offsetting that much carbon dioxide is in the billions of dollars. Costa has claimed that adding those costs to the price of electricity will cripple the state’s economy. Greens MP John Kaye, said that the proposal is simply to prop up the sale of the coal generating plants to balance the state budget.
A study published in late February has revealed that Arctic forests burned frequently in the last period of global warming, further increasing the load of carbon dioxide in the air and adding to the warming. The computer models used to predict the impact of climate chaos have not taken Arctic forest fires into account because they have been unknown in human history. With the Arctic ice-sheet melting faster than predicted by any of the models, it appears likely that the effect will be seen within decades.
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A sulfurous gas emitted by marine algal blooms has been found to attract fish, and form clouds. The gas is formed when microscopic plankton feed on the algae, or when the algae becomes so dense it forms a bloom. Fish are attracted to the smell because they feed on the plankton. The gas also causes clouds to form, casting shadows and slowing down the growth of the algae. The scientist who discovered the effect, Jennifer deBose, was studying its role in influencing the weather, and was surprised by its role in signalling to fish. She released the gas from large bottles in the open sea and attracted large numbers of fish very quickly. ‘The fish are using scent to "listen" to the interaction between plant plankton and their predators’, DeBose said.
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