Dubai Gets A Synthetic Beach

Cool sand and gentle breezes will always be available in Dubai, but vacationers will have to pay extra. The renowned fashion house, Versace, is to create the world's first refrigerated beach in a plan that has environmentalists up in arms.

According to Times Online:

The beach will be next to the the new Palazzo Versace hotel which is being built in Dubai where summer temperatures average 40C and can reach 50C.

The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface.

The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach.

The problem with the synthetic beach, however is that it's likely to draw on a lot of energy, which means a great deal of greenhouse gas emissions. Times Online quoted Rachel Noble of Tourism Concern, an organization catered to sustainable tourism:

"Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles."

Dubai, which attracts roughly 800,000 British tourists a year, is competitive market place for businesses catering to the wealthy. Versace hopes its innovative beach will keep them on the cutting edge of luxury lifestyles, and believes it can even make it sustainable. While plans on how to do that, exactly, are vague, the company is hiring Hyder Consulting, a British construction consultancy, to oversee the engineering of the project.


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Happy Holidays Everyone!

Melamine Detection Program Launched

In an effort to prevent contaminated milk products from China from harming American consumers, a new melamine detection program is being launched.

Melamine is toxic chemical used in plastics, and it is believed that it was deliberately placed in milk products to falsely increase protein levels. The tainted milk caused illness in over 50,000 infants, reaching the international marketplace and still may not be fully contained.

Humans and animals are unable to process melamine in their systems. It can lead to kidney stones, damage the reproductive system and cause cancer, and it also lead to the death of some infants in the recent contamination incident. Melamine has been found in eggs, chickens, produce and pet chow, in addition to the recent milk and formula products.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. recently launched a program that assists governments and companies in the detection of melamine in food products imported from China. Through a form of biochemical analysis known as liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry or TSQ Quantum LC-MS/MS System for short, the company plans to aid countries in detecting melamine in incoming products from China. Similar technologies are already being used to detect melamine in China.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. provides an array of scientific instruments and testing equipment to companies and governments in need of their services.

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Indigenous Tribe in Chile is on its Last Legs

Since the introduction of disease by European settlers centuries ago, indigenous peoples in the Western world have begun facing extinction. Now, in southern Chile's Patagonia region, there are only an estimated 12-20 pure-blooded members of the nomadic Kawesqar tribe.

Francisco Arroyo, estimated to be around 66 years old by a state census, is one of the last survivors of the tribe. He remembers being a boy and wending the icy channels and fjords with his father, tending a fire lit on dried earth on the bottom of their canoe and diving naked for giant mussels to survive.

Now, Arroyo hawks sea lion skin souvenir canoes and other trinkets, earning about $10. He says "It ends with our generation. We are old now. We can't go out in the channels any more. I am not sad. Life is easier now.” The region where he lives sees very few tourists, as it is accessible only by boat or helicopter.

The youngest full-blooded tribe members are two brothers aged around 40.

Arroya lives a very different life from his ancestors’, who lived in their canoes, even sleeping and cooking in them, wearing nothing other than a piece of sea lion skin on their backs and smothering themselves in grease and fat when diving for food.

Eugenio Aspillaga, a bio-anthropologist at the University of Chile, seeks to preserve the culture and language of the Kawseqars, explains the decline of the tribe, and others like them. He says, “They are in decline because the historic causes (illnesses) have continued until relatively recently." "Another factor is restrictions on their movement," he added, referring to a program in the 1960s to settle survivors in Puerto Eden. "There is a lesson in survival and human adaptability that we are losing. It is a part of humanity we neither know nor understand. Their culture is becoming extinct, and their language is also in danger," said Aguilera, who has studied the tribe since 1975. "Once the few survivors in Puerto Eden disappear, the oldest ones, then the culture will be lost and the tongue will no longer be spoken," he added.

Many of the tribe have married outside and there are an estimated 200 people of Kawesqar descent living elsewhere in Chile.

To read more about the extinction of Chile’s indigenous peoples, read the original article here.


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Global Warming Adaptation Plans Begin

Global warming is happening, and we better start preparing for it--so says new reports from the World Bank and Oxfam International. According to the World Bank study that was published in the journal Climatic Change, countries like Vietnam, Egypt, and the Bahamas are just some of the countries likely to face the most catastrophic results of rising sea levels.

The Bank says that a one-meter rise in seal level would flood more than 7% of Vietnam's agricultural land, and wreck nearly 30% of its wetlands--causing living and economic chaos. To make matters even more frightening, many climate experts think a one-meter rise by the year 2100 is a conservative estimate, and perhaps several more are to be expected at current levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study which also highlights how a one-meter rise could destroy more than a tenth of the Bahamas, as well as 13 percent of Egypt's Agricultural land, is part of a 50-page document published by the Bank last year. It's currently being used to support Oxfam International's request for at least $50 billion a year to be channeled from international carbon trading schemes into adaptation efforts.

The Guardian quoted Heather Coleman, a senior climate change policy adviser with Oxfam:

"Helping vulnerable people cope with the effects of climate change is desperately needed today because they already face increasingly severe and ever-worsening climate change impacts...

"With a global financial crisis unfolding, these mechanisms could raise enough money from polluters without governments having to dip into national treasuries," Coleman says. "Many negotiators agree that this is one of the more practical approaches. Billions of dollars can be raised and invested to prevent future climate change and to help poor people adapt to the negative impacts of global warming."

Oxfam suggests these countries could prepare themselves with upgraded national flood early-warning systems, plant mangrove "bio-shields," along coasts to diffuse storm waves, and grow drought-tolerant crops. The charity argues that there is little evidence that the international community has seriously considered the implications of sea level rise for population location and infrastructure planning in many developing countries. And since many of these countries cannot afford to fully help themselves, it should be a responsibility of rich countries to avoid catastrophic losses of life.


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Gifts for Guns

Since 2005, Gifts for Guns has allowed residents of especially violent areas to trade in guns for gift cards, but this year, the most popular cards were for grocery stores, not retail stores, like in prior events.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department allows residents to anonymously relinquish firearms in return for $100 gift cards for Ralphs supermarkets, Target department stores or Best Buy electronics stores. Assault rifles double the amount

The event took place in a grocery store parking lot in the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles, an area with a long and notorious history of violence and gang-related incidents. Although in the past, most guns were turned in for gift cards to Target and Best Buy, this year the cards of choice were to Ralphs. Sheriff's Sgt. Byron Woods explained, "People just don't have the money to buy the food these days.” "One guy said he had just got laid off from his job," Woods said. "He turned in five guns and said it would really help him to put food on the family's table."

About 1,000 weapons were expected to be collected and 590 guns and two hand grenades were handed in during the last weekend in November, more than the total collected in any year and eclipsing last year's 387 guns. The event also turns up antique weapons and one man brought in a Soviet-era semiautomatic carbine.

The drive was started after an increase in killings in 2005, which has since tapered off. After first checking to see if any weapons were used to commit crimes, the firearms were destroyed.

Similar events are held in New York and San Francisco.


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Look for a Green Gift at the Eco Gift Festival

The Eco Gift Festival is the largest environmentally conscious consumer gift show in the world. Sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, this year’s event, held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, will bring together more than 15,000 consumers and 200 environmentally conscious vendors under one roof from Dec. 12th- 14th from 11 am - 8 pm.

The Eco Gift Festival includes an array of eco-conscious gift options as well as live entertainment, socially conscious speakers, an organic food court and on-site eco gift-wrapping and shipping.

Notable speakers at this year’s event include Arianna Huffington, Shallom Berkman of the Urth Caffe in Los Angeles, Seane Corn, the "National Yoga Ambassador" for YouthAIDS as well as a multitude of other experts on sustainable and socially-conscious living. Exhibitors at the event are all companies and businesses with green or organic practices and range from cosmetics companies to coffee to clothing to companies with a message or green interest.

The event strives to be a zero-emissions event and employs green event experts to continue to achieve their goal. A percentage of the profits received goes to various charities.

Although the event is currently only held in Los Angeles, there are hopes to expand it so that similar events are held internationally, as early as next year.

Tickets are $10 per day/$20 per weekend pass and free for children under 12 and seniors over 65. More information about the unique event can be found at www.ecogift.com.



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Paralyzed Guitarist Gets Bionic Hand

When guitarist Dorian Cox lost the feeling of his right arm, one of his first thoughts turned out to be the most crushing: "I might not be able to play anymore." The UK musician suffered from a stroke this previous summer, and when his body became partially paralyzed, it forced his band, the Long Blondes, to break-up.

Cox is about to rise again, however with the help of a new glove that works and resembles something like a "bionic hand." Made by the PhysioFunction center in York, England, the SaeboFlex glove is entirely mechanical and uses springs and levers instead of electricity. It works out the weakened muscles in the wrist, hand, and fingers--spurring Cox to remark, "It's almost like a gym for my hand."

While the musician still lacks the strength to play guitar at the moment, the glove is helping him regain the ability to grasp and release objects again. "I know things might never be the same again and nobody can give me a definite answer about whether I'll play guitar again but I'm getting back on track," Cox told the Guardian.

The Long Blondes were an up-and-coming band from England, who built a loyal fan base over the course of two albums. Cox's stroke came entirely unexpectedly, causing a major upset amongst indie rock fans across the globe. But hopefully, not for much longer.


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