The Engineering EcoWarrior

Two headlines caught my attention today. The first was from Tuesdays Glasgow Evening Times: Save water plea ... after wet summer It was about Scottish Water's recently launched campaign to encourage people to save water. The reason for this campaign is not a shortage of water but a drive to save energy in treatment and pumping of the water. While I do support any measures that we can take to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, I feel that this is Scottish Water trying to pass the responsibility on to the public rather than dealing with their own wasteful inefficiencies.  They lose more water through leakage than the total domestic consumption, as noted here , so whatever individuals do to save a little bit of water is nothing compared with the amount leaking from pipes.  The volume of water lost through leakage will not reduce even if the volume used by consumers is reduced significantly, in fact it may increase as the pressure in the sy...

Another  landslide closes the A83 Rest and Be Thankful with the road expected to remain closed until at least Friday.  This time debris has not landed on the road but the remote monitoring system triggered an emergency closure. This landslip occurred after nearby Tyndrum recorded 54mm (2") of rain in 24 hours. Also announced today is a project to remove a bottleneck on the A82, which is the main route from Glasgow to the west highlands and the diversionary route when the A83 is closed. Related post: Rest and be Thankful, but not about Climate Change

At seven o'clock this morning around 100 tonnes of debris fell on to the A83 near the Rest and be Thankful in Argyll.  The alternative route is between 30 and 50 miles longer depending on how much you need to double back at either end.  Similar landslips have happened on the A83 before but only recently, in 2007 , 2009 and now in 2011 , all preceded by periods of prolonged heavy rain.

Over the past month I've tweeted frequently and blogged on water and sanitation , conservation of rhinoceros and tigers and solar electricity feed-in-tariffs , all of which are important issues in themselves but perhaps more important are the links between them. China is now the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels as a direct result of our drive to reduce carbon emissions, for example by using subsidies such as the UK's feed-in-tariff system. This is part of the exponential growth in manufacturing in China and south east Asia to satisfy our demand for cheaply  manufactured products with off-shore carbon footprints. This growth has created many wealthy individuals, some of whom are using their newly found disposable income for the purchase of  traditional   medicines  such as rhino horn and tiger parts . Of course such remedies do not work, but that knowledge hasn't stemmed demand. Crossing the Indian Ocean to Africa and we find many people trapped...

WaterAid charity says global efforts to increase access to clean water ignore those most in need Sanitation leads to cleaner, healthier water, leads to less disease and pollution, leads to less medical aid and vibrant self-sustaining communities, leads to better quality of life and a more just society. We can't be having that can we? No. We need to give the aid to countries that can afford to improve their own sewerage systems. That way they can use their money to buy goods and services supplied by more developed countries such as those in Europe and the US, to help stimulate the economy. We will probably ask them to use the aid money to buy design and construction services from the donor country. And let's face it: we don't want to be sending our people into countries that don't even have running water, do we?

Over the past couple of I weeks I've been asking new followers what they perceive as the biggest challenges we face. There has been a spread of topics reflecting the diverse range of interests in the environment including: Human stupidity/politics/corruption Pollution Water shortages Food shortages Floods & unpredictable weather Global Warming Population Methane Poor urban environments Thanks to all of you who contributed, posts are below in acknowledgement.  If you would like to add your thoughts on the biggest challenges faced by humanity and planet earth, the please either tweet me @EcoWarriorMe or comment below. In my opinion, there have been a couple of omissions so far: energy and poverty.  Are they too obvious, or not really that important? T rinityTrove_HR Global warming, landfill toxins, water shortages, and Congress. designal exable The biggest challenge is human stupidity. Man regularly makes horrible mistakes, from ...

The West of Scotland has seen one of the wettest Mays on record, with over double the average rainfall , and June looks to be heading the same way. Not a good omen for hiking and camping in Argyll with children but we persevered. To a point. Our first ambition was to climb the second lowest Munros, Ben Vane, which at 915m just makes it onto the list of Scotland's 3000 ft mountains.  We started out from the National Park's Visitor Centre at Inveruglas and hiked up access track leading to the hydro electric dam at Loch Sloy before starting up the mountain itself.  After a total of two hours walking in persistently heavy rain, with little prospect of improvement or of a view at the top we had enough of nature and turned back. While the outcome for the day was disappointing, it did show why this is such a good place for a hydro-electric scheme.  It is no surprise that over a third of Scotland's renewable electricity comes from hydro schemes, some dating bac...