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Start your leg engines
Catherine McAloon, ABC – Gippsland (Australia)
Forget petrol fumes and exhaust smoke, pedal-power will set the pace at a race of human-powered-vehicles in Wonthaggi this weekend.
More than eighty vehicles will hit a south Gippsland racing circuit this weekend for a 24-hour Grand Prix race that will test the vehicles’ speed, endurance, design and construction. But dispel visions of grid girls, smoking exhausts and petrol fumes – this is a race of pedal power.
The drivers – secondary students from schools across Victoria and from South Australia – will use their own muscle-power to propel their vehicles.
… Allan says with increasing carbon emissions and depletion of peak oil, there is a need to start exploring other ways of getting around.
“If you can make a little car that you are able to get into and ride down to the corner store to get the bread and milk and be able to bring it back without having to use any oil then you are not polluting, you are not using up the energy resources – that’s the idea.”
(28 February 2008)
World’s First Wave Powered Boat
Justin Thomas, MetaEfficient
Ken-ichi Horie, a 69 year old Japanese sailor, is planning a solo 4,350 mile trip from Hawaii to Japan using an innovative wave powered boat. If successful, the trip would earn him a Guinness record while simultaneously proving the viability of wave powered propulsion.
His boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, turns wave energy into thrust using two fins mounted beneath the bow. These fins move up and down with the waves and use them to generate “kicks” that propel the boat forward. Another green element of the journey: all of the radios and electrical equipment are solar powered.
The fins will only garner a top speed of 5 knots, so his trip will take about three months.
(28 February 2008)
Contributor JMG writes:
Dmitry Orlov’s perfect post-crash boat. Awesome.
A revolution in the skies… a disaster for the planet
Simon Calder, The Independent
Cheap flights. More flights. Multiplying routes. At the end of a week that has seen protests against airport expansion, predictions of further airport chaos, and record oil prices, British travellers are showing no sign of shaking off their addiction to CO2-heavy cheap flights.
A record number of new air links will open from the UK to Europe this summer. The Independent has identified 100 entirely new short-haul international routes to be launched from Britain when the summer schedules begin at the end of this month.
(1 Mar 2008)
