Month: July 2007

The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne

This month I re-read The mysterious island, a fantastic book by French XIXth century author, Jules Verne. This is about six Northerns prisoners that flee Richmond during the American Civil War. Their escape is done by balloon and brings them to an inhabited island lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The book tells …

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Decreasing the consumption of computer screens

While browsing the Internet, I learned about an initiative due to decrease (a bit) the energy consumption of our computer screens while were are surfing the web. The world famous page of Google is in white and according to the creators of Blackle, putting this page in black would save thousands of watts per hour …

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Russia to build 26 new nuclear reactors

Some weeks ago, the Russian government decided to launch a new construction program of nuclear plants. 26 reactors will hence be built in this country by the year 2020. This is a very large plan as it will build in only 12 years the equivalent of half the amount of reactors on French soil. A …

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Paris’ bike renting program, Velib

On July 15th, the French Capital city launched an interesting public service that enables people to rent bikes to go from on point to another. This program, called Velib (a contraction of vélo, bike and Liberté, freedom) will comprise by the of the year more than 20,500 bikes dispatched in around 1,400 stations. Velib proves …

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WWF encourages people to offset their emissions

The World Wild Fund for Nature is encouraging the 10,000 athletes that will compete at the 2008 Olympic Games of Beijing to offset their carbon dioxide emissions. Each of all these athletes is due to emit an average of four tonnes of CO2 by flying to the host city. To what can be added the …

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Brazil to enrich uranium

Brazil, the leading South American economy, plans to enrich uranium and to build possibly a new nuclear plant in order to answer to the local growing electricity demand. Last year Brazil achieved oil self-sufficiency and is now willing to launch a whole uranium enrichment program, in order to manage totally this part of the nuclear …

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The Aral Sea is back

Sometimes, among the daily bad news, reasons to hope afloat. For instance today, the fact that the Aral sea is back after having been emptied by years of folly. This news were brought to me by the French daily Le Monde, a local paper called the Concord Monitor and the World Bank. This is indeed …

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California : a climate change example

Last week, the French weekly Challenges translated a very interesting article from the magazine The Economist. It handled the climate change approach of the most populated US State with its nearly 36 million inhabitants. The Golden State alone would be the eighth world economic power. California is often mentioned as an example in the fight …

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Payer moins d’impôts tout en ayant de l’eau gratuite

Selon un article publié hier sur le site du Figaro : “L’achat d’équipements destinés à récupérer l’eau de pluie pour un usage domestique donne droit à un crédit d’impôt de 25% des dépenses investies.” “(…) Ainsi, une famille de quatre personnes qui consomme en moyenne 120 m3 peut économiser 70 m3 d’eau potable par an. …

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IEA expects oil crunch worldwide

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released on Monday a study on the middle term market for oil. According to the Financial Times and Les Echos, the oil prices aren’t due to decrease between 2007 and 2012. According to the FT : “In its starkest warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency …

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