Think electric powered vehicles are a recent invention? Think again. Planes, trains and automobiles, boats, trams, motorcycles and even rockets have all had versions powered by electricity. The interest now is due to concerns over use of fossil fuels and climate change, although there was a time when electric motor cars were more popular and reliable than petrol-driven cars.

Electricity was first known to be written about around 600BC when static electricity was described after amber became charged when rubbed. An English scientist, William Gilbert came up with the word electricity in 1600 from the Greek for amber. People like Ben Franklin, Galvani and Faraday experimented further and eventually William Sturgeon invented an electric motor in the 1830s.

Once we had the motor, the possibilities were endless, even space was not safe from adventuring men in their electric machines.

The first electric vehicles were trains. Clearly not a passenger vehicle, this design by Hungarian inventor Anyos Jedlik in 1828 helped move the world forward by inspiring others.

Jedlik’s electric car in 1828, Hungary.

Britain and America led the way with miniature railways and life size passenger lines opening up in the 1830s and 40s. Claiming to be the worlds oldest operating electric railway is Volkâ??s Electric Railway in sunny Brighton.

Many trains remain electric powered now and may use overhead power lines, batteries or a third rail. Coal mines used electric powered railways as they were non- polluting, a fact particularly noticed in tunnels and underground. So subways began to spread their electric tentacles under cities across the world.

Back on the surface, trams and trolley cars took off with electric overhead lines and other means. Just as underground rail systems were being laid out, on the street roads were being ripped up to lay down tram and trolley car cables and tracks. St Petersberg was once the holder of the title the worlds largest tram system. Today Melbourne, Australia maintains the claim that it is the biggest tram network on earth.

A Melbourne Tram

Electric cars were fairly reliable in the early days. They were easier to use and less noxious than petrol powered cars, they were quieter and cheaper too. In recent years, towns have trialled electric buses and hybrid cars are again making a silent splash on streets.

Thomas Edison and an electric car in 1913

As humans started to travel faster on land in these new fangled machines, the need for speed on the water led to the inevitable production of electric powered boats. Boating on the Thames in the late 1890s was no longer a sedate pastime. From launches to giant passenger ships, the river was clogged with more and more boats following the American invention of the outboard motor. Elsewhere, canal boats took some on leisurely jaunts along the nations waterways, while their daredevil counterparts began defying speed records with increasingly souped-up, pared-down speed boats. The worlds biggest cruise ship, Queen Mary 2 is a hybrid powered vessel.

Queen Mary 2

Not to be outdone, the electric motor went under water as well, powering submarines. Many still have their electric silent running capacity as part of a hybrid system that may include nuclear the other so-called green power, until it breaks…

Motorcycles are really all about speed whether running on electricity or not. Running on batteries in the past, new technology is bringing a hybrid motorbike to a busy road near you. Electric bicycles are just plain silly and noisy. Pedal you lazy things!

The only way left was up and the early flying machines with electricity were the airships. Large, graceful and unfortunately combustible, they eventually gave way to propellers and better engine technology. Most aircraft powered by electricity these days are model planes and unmanned craft.

Satellites and space craft have used battery powered propulsion systems to go further into space or stay in orbit. Scientists around the world are currently researching electric propulsion systems and are joined in their discussions by arm chair geeks and science fiction enthusiasts through forums and societies.

For me, though, the ultimate electric vehicle still to be invented would be the shopping trolley, complete with dodgy wheel for authenticity. Ah wait a minute, its been invented already. Its called online shopping.

Guest Post: Midge is an active blogger and has been guest blogging for a number of years now, her interest in this topic came from a post she was writing about electric vehicles and if electric cars can really change the future for the planet.

One of the problems with the oil (kerogen) in oil shale is that it is not mature enough (i.e. close enough to being an oil) that it will easily flow through the rock. In earlier parts of this particular theme, I have written about mining the rock and then heating it in retorts as a way of transforming the kerogen and recovering it for use. I have also, somewhat tongue in cheek, discussed using nuclear weapons to heat the rock so that the transformation can take place without moving the rock, while breaking the rock at the same time, and the unlikely potential for burning some of the oil within the deposit to power the transformation of the rest. While it might work in a heavy oil sand, is not likely to be realistically practical for the finer grained shales. But there are ways of adding somewhat less heat to the rock than using a nuclear bomb, and that will be the topic for today.

This is a continuation of the technical posts that I usually write on Sundays.

While I am largely going to bypass the use of nuclear power (apart from that of providing electrical power) in this piece, the potential use of nuclear power to heat penetrators that allow rapid drilling of weak rock has been partially demonstrated. As I have mentioned previously, Los Alamos National Lab, in looking at different methods for drilling, had come up with the idea of using a small nuclear reactor to provide sufficient heat to a ceramic probe that it would melt its way into the ground, pushing the molten rock to one side, and providing a glass lining to the resulting tunnel.

By the way, this has not been used to create the network of tunnels under this country in an idea beloved of some, it has been demonstrated. Not with a nuclear source, but with more conventional heating, Los Alamos drilled drainage holes at the Tyuoni pueblo plaza for drainage in 1973. A total of eight drainage holes were drilled at this archeological site in the Bandelier National Monument.

The first significant step in the Subterrene technology transfer program occurred when eight water drainage holes were melted with a field demonstration unit at the Rainbow House and Tyuonyi archaeological ruins at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico in cooperation with the National Park Service. By utilizing a consolidation penetrator, the required glass-lined drainage holes were made without creating debris or endangering the ruins from mechanical vibrations.

At around the same time Dr George Clark, at what was then the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology) had used ceramic electrical heaters in rock to raise rock temperatures enough to fracture and break out blocks of granite.

Field tests have therefore been able to take rock up to temperatures that are high enough to melt rock, using electrical heaters placed in holes in the rock. Which is a good introduction to the Mahogany Project in which Shell have been using electrical heaters to heat oil shale in place, to high enough temperatures that the kerogen transforms into a light oil. The investigation has been going on for some 25 years starting in the laboratory, and has progressed through an initial field trial.

Small holes are drilled down through the rock to house the electric heating coils, which slowly raise the temperature of the rock to between 600 and 750 deg F, at which temperature the kerogen will convert, depending on what is there, to a mixture of light oil and natural gas. These fuels can be recovered by drilling conventional wells into the rock, with typical depths at the test site being in the 1,000 to 2,000 ft range.

The Shell Mahogany Technology

The field trial placed heaters in a grid over a 30 ft by 40 ft test area and found that a third of the volume produced was natural gas was produced from the lower grade layers of the shale above the layers with the highest concentrations of kerogen (the Mahogany layer) which produced the light oil.

Array of heaters at a Shell test site

A total of 1,700 barrels of the light oil was recovered during the test period.

Production from the Shell test wells in oil shale

While the Bureau of Land Management has approved further sites for tests, the program is waiting to see what happens to the price of oil to determine whether or not the program will be sufficiently economically viable to move forward. At present this decision is anticipated to be in the middle of this decade, by which time it may be a little clearer whether the Cornucopians or some of the rest of us have been more accurate in our predictions on the future availability of sufficient oil to meet global demands at an affordable price. But it is the level of that affordable price that will decide whether the oil shale program is viable.

The costs of the project will not just have to cover the heating of the rock. One of the problems with the site is that there is some migration of water through the rock, and this can create two problems. The first is that it pulls heat away from the transformation process and the second is that it can interfere in the overall process itself. To stop the water flow (and concurrently the risk of transformed oil and gas migrating away from the collector wells) Shell has been looking into building an ice wall around the site to hold the water back.

Ground freezing is growing more popular as a tool for dealing with water underground. It has been used, for example, to stabilize the ground while the Boston Big Dig (the Central Artery/Tunnel project) was built and in stabilizing the ground for some of the underground stations in the London Tube network (including the collapse of one of the excavations). It has been used to hold back the water while uranium ore was mined at MacArthur River. Simply described, a dual pipe system is placed in vertical holes, and a freezing solution (usually a brine) is circulated through them, lowering the temperature of the rock to the point that the water freezes. Since the lowered temperature is distributed around the holes, there is no need to intersect any of the fractures, or voids, and the frozen water also helps to strengthen the rock where needed.

For the Mahogany Project test, which began in 2007, the freezing liquid was ammonia, and the test used a pattern of 157 holes drilled eight-feet apart, to a depth of 1,800 ft. The test removed the groundwater from within the well, but did not heat the rock to produce the oil and gas.

It will be interesting to see how this project turns out. It has been suggested that the technology would need a dedicated power source of some 1.2 gigawatts, in order to yield a production of 100,000 bd. Shell estimates it will yield 3-4 energy units for every unit consumed.

Layout of freezing pipes for the Shell Mahogany tests.

As usual with these technical posts, they can only briefly outline a process, if something is not clear please ask in comments, or if there is more information available, we all gain from reading of it.

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In the resource depletion soup, one ingredient looms large ? social equity. Equality is a function of population, social status aspirations and resources. With a small population, everyone can have reasonable equality. With unlimited resources, the same (although the amplitude generated by law of large numbers will exert outsized social pull from the top). But with large populations AND limits to resources, equity can only be reasonably attained if the activities that generate rank are not resource intensive. Via globalized markets, the cross border pursuit of profits has gradually morphed into a cross border pursuit of goals – money has become a global proxy for power and thus for status and money (profits) is a resource intensive international goal. Tonight’s campfire takes yet another look at one of my oft-written about oildrum topics: how we compete for social status while facing limits to growth.

“Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.”
H. L. Mencken

Between at least Jason and myself, there have been over a dozen posts on TheOilDrum relating to status, resource competition, being happier with less, and changing societal carrot away from Veblen goods and conspicuous consumption. It seems a general theme is that once basic needs are met, relative status matters much more than absolute. I apologize I can’t neatly compress all this into a concise post, but here’s an update: (and here is a primer on the Psychological Roots of Resource Overconsumption, itself in need of an update).

In a new study on the rank income hypothesis a team led by psychologist Christopher Boyce studied over 80,000 people, their incomes, and overall life satisfaction. The researchers found that the ranked position of an individual?s income predicted life satisfaction, whereas absolute income and reference income had no effect. This should be no surprise to any biologist familiar with the concept of relative fitness or sexual selection, but zero of the 30 references in the paper referenced biology or any of the evolutionary explanations of our neural penchant to compare ourselves to others.

Our study underlines concerns regarding the pursuit of economic growth. There are fixed amounts of rank in society?only one individual can be the highest earner. Thus, pursuing economic growth, although it remains a key political goal, might not make people any happier. The rank-income hypothesis may explain why increasing the incomes of all may not raise the happiness of all, even though wealth and happiness are correlated within a society at a given point in time.

Although general intuition tells us that having a good social standing makes us feel good, the idea that a good reputation is a ‘reward’ just like money has long been just an assumption. Recent neuro-imaging experiments however have shown that both reputation/rank and monetary rewards are processed in the same brain region – the striatum.

“We found that the brain reacts very strongly to the other players and specifically the status of the other players,” Zink says. “We weren’t expecting that profound a response,” she adds, noting that the subjects seemed to be concerned with the hierarchy within the game even when it was of no consequence to how much money they could make.

These types of economic studies showing that relative vs absolute levels of consumption/wealth are potent drivers have been studied for a long time, since the Easterlin Paradox became a hot topic in the 1970s. One example was economist Robert Franks simple study asking people if they would prefer living in a 4,000 square foot house where all the neighboring houses were 6,000 square feet or a 3,000 square foot house where the surrounding houses were 2,000 square feet ? the majority of people chose the latter ? smaller absolute but higher relative size. Though high perceived relative fitness is a powerful behavioral carrot for individuals, the inevitable resulting inequality has pernicious effects on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, and excessive consumption. Health steadily worsens as one descends the social ladder, even within the upper and middle classes. These are just some examples of the growing research highlighting not only that we care enormously about our social pecking orders but the wider the variation in rank the worse of we are.

Is it an advantage to live in a light blue state? (GINI in graphic is GINI *100)

The GINI coefficient is a measure of wealth or income equality – a GINI of 1 means one person has all the wealth and everyone else has nothing – a GINI of 0 means everyone has the same wealth. In addition to having an interest in this type of research, I also happen to experiencing it in real time. I make less money now than I have in 20 years (actually I make no money and am drawing down savings and at this pace I estimate I’ll go broke in September of 2016). But this would just be broke financially – I’m now surrounded by a social group that cares about non-pecuniary pursuits and accomplishments. Sure – none of us are starving or broke, but the day to day pressure of keeping up with the Joneses by getting on the financial/Veblen good treadmill are absent in my geographic circle. Jones lives in my neighborhood as well, but his signals are absent. (I remember sitting in a cubicle with 10 other guys at Salomon Brothers 11 hours a day cold calling billionaires. The neural correlation between ‘rank’ and ‘money’ was about 99% back then. The main lessons I learned then were a) the wealthy were no happier than the clerks processing their trades, b) status and wealth were cumulative but the dopaminergic reward pathways reset every morning and c) those who achieved power and status would not give it up without an intense fight.)

In a society with significant overall surpluses, people who actively lower their own economic and ecological footprint might get by very well, because their relative status – which is typically above average – allows them to make those reductions without reaching limits that compromise their well-being. These people have an opportunity to redefine what sort of ?capital? we compete for ? as they allocate time and resources away from financial marker capital and towards social, human, built and natural assets. These people above the median in social status can make better choices for their own lives, though in the end the odds are that what we compete for will not change by volition but by circumstances.

And, on the flip side of the ‘less-is-more’ bandwagon, is the fact that biological organisms, including and especially humans, always consume surplus resources (Maximum Power Principle and all that.) Total equality in resource use is as much of a myth as a benevolent dictator telling us our optimal allocations. We will always seek status and have social hierarchies in human society. And higher ranking males and females, on average, will have higher respect, admiration and as a consequence, higher/more mating opportunities, consistent with the evolved raison d’etre of rank.

In my career as a trader and consultant, I often witnessed that the seemingly most unacceptable solution ended up being the best. Perhaps the fact that 80% of resources are being consumed by 20% of the people would be improved in aggregate if we went towards less equality and had 90% of resources consumed by 10% of people, as long as it killed the aspiration of others towards conspicuous consumption (well, it might not kill the aspiration, but perhaps the means). Although I understand the academic arguments of both sides and the historical importance of equality, I sometimes wonder if pursuing a blanket policy of more equity would be worse for the planet. Certainly it would if economic growth continues as an objective as many more people are joining the party very late in the game. In any case, unless we first understand and then integrate demand side constraints such as the ‘rank income hypothesis’ into our policies, culture and institutions, sustainability will be another receding horizon.

Finally, the biggest aspect of ‘rank’ that concerns me now is the large swaths of demographics that are in fear of their social rank vis-a-vis their fellow Americans (or Earthlings) changing due to new political rules, bailouts, regulations etc. I don’t agree with what our government is doing right now either, but I wish people that respond to change like Tea-Partiers or health-care rioters, etc. would understand the broader backdrop of our running into exponential growth limitations will require across the board sacrifice and reduction of living standards in aggregate. Unfortunately, without this knowledge of ecological limits, all sacrifice and lower living standards, both within and between nations, are likely to be ‘perceived’ as relative rank drops for those affected. And we’re already seeing hints of the likely responses.

Our government (and others) continue to at least attempt to level the playing field via what can best be described as stealth nationalization. Increasingly the government trough is making up a larger % of the feedlot, both on the wage side and on the debt side. At each new turn however, spreading the social equality safety net wider is taking another hefty chomp out of our currency and sovereign health. What I hadn’t realized before but that is taking on increasing relevance, is that the coming debt deflation and currency reforms are likely to automatically lower the GINI, as significant paper wealth will eventually disappear. Instead of viewing currency reform and a reshuffling of claims as either inevitable and/or frightening, perhaps we can come up with a creative, not-too-disruptive plan where financial descent is paired with aspiration descent so that energy descent is more manageable.

I don’t know but am open to suggestions.

===========================================================================================
Campfire Questions

1. How can we use our increasing understanding of status, resources, and the neuroscience of human behavior to influence/create a more benign future?

2. Competition with con-specifics is part of our heritage. But so is cooperation and empathy. What level of wealth disparity would be healthy and/or tolerable for future of US society? Might less equality be a good thing?

3. How might the debt/financial crisis be an opportunity towards making headway on issues of social equity, both within the United States, and between the United States and other, less well off countries?

4. Any good ideas on how to change our status/aspiration metric away from conspicuous consumption?(this has been asked before but is important enough to throw out to this lateral thinking crew, on occasion).

5. Can you think of creative ways to downsize your own aspirations by changing social groups?

Answer any/all you’d like to. I’ll kick off the discussion by quoting from one of Herman Daly’s guest posts on theoildrum, on this same topic.

Limit the range of inequality in income distribution?a minimum income and a maximum income. Without aggregate growth poverty reduction requires redistribution. Complete equality is unfair; unlimited inequality is unfair. Seek fair limits to the range of inequality. The civil service, the military, and the university manage with a range of inequality of a factor of 15 or 20. Corporate America has a range of 500 or more. Many industrial nations are below 25. Could we not limit the range to, say, 100, and see how it works? People who have reached the limit could either work for nothing at the margin if they enjoy their work, or devote their extra time to hobbies or public service. The demand left unmet by those at the top will be filled by those who are below the maximum. A sense of community necessary for democracy is hard to maintain across the vast income differences current in the US. Rich and poor separated by a factor of 500 become almost different species. The main justification for such differences has been that they stimulate growth, which will one day make everyone rich. This may have had superficial plausibility in an empty world, but in our full world it is a fairy tale.

Liev Schreiber was spotted biking around the SoHo section of New York City Wednesday afternoon. The eco-friendly actor can next be seen in the thriller Repo Men alongside Jude Law and Forest Whitaker.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was on hand earlier this week to promote a new state rebate program offering a $1,500 rebate off the purchase price of qualifying electric motorcycles. The brand that Schwarzenegger chose to promote at the event was CA-based Zero Motorcycles â?? whose models can travel 40-50 miles on a single charge.

Said Governor Schwarzenegger:

â??Zero electric motorcycles are very important technology and this is great for California because this is an ideal place to ride motorcyclesâ?¦ I love the financial side of these motorcycles because they cost less then one cent per mile to operate and you get a 10% federal tax credit plus a California rebate of $1,500. That equates to a 25 percent price reduction making these electric motorcycles affordable for anybody. Itâ??s part of our overall strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020.â?�

To see more photos, hit the Zero Motorcycles website.

via autobloggreen

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Jeremy Dean is an artist that set out on a unique mission: Take a massive HUMMER H2 and convert it into a horse-drawn carriage. The goal? To show just how screwed and unsustainable the auto-industry has become.

Dubbed the â??Futuramaâ?�, Dean sees it as a symbol of where weâ??re headed unless things change drastically. From his site,

â??As I see it, this is a time machine from the future, from a world destroyed through over consumption. This is my equivalent of GM?s Futurama and the logical conclusion of that thinking, the new ?Brighter and better world of tomorrow. Come lets journey into the future? What will we see?? In this future world we will have learned little from the mistakes of the past, repeating the cycle of historical amnesia, human nature will once again be the strongest motivating factor.â?�

â??In this apocalyptic world there will be a massive equality gap between the haves and the have-nots. A small few will possess all the wealth and will desire the best of the best. Energy will be scarce and expensive, but of little concern for the elite who travel in lavishly styled horse carts, a throwback to the Depression Chariot, and an earlier time in history; all of humanity is moving backwards.â?�

Check out a video of the â??Futuramaâ?� in action after the jump below:

Related Reading

The EIB have just given around 800 million to fund green technology development for Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan’s British factory. This is on top of Jaguars loans from the government expected to be around 500 million. Nissan have been awarded the fund for their work in the development of green technologies which i agree is a good support for their efforts and a significant boost for their UK workforce, but the only thing that’s green about Jaguar Land Rover at the moment is ‘the famous colour’.

Lord Mandelson said that the loans were good news: â??For Nissan, it is recognition of their commitment to a low-carbon future in the UK and is a particular boost for their workforce. For JLR, it is a welcome step forward.

“a welcome step forward…” I won’t even touch upon that fact that while all this money is flying around, the British tax payer is bailing out the banks and helping them get their ‘well deserved million pound bonuses’, we are now bailing out the car industries ‘yipee’, i dont even drive a friggin car. Why are these car factories who have been well aware of the impact of the air pollution they have caused over the past fifty so years, taken steps back in the 1990’s to develop green technology, why have they waited for government hand outs in the middle of a recession, to do these developments. Could it be that before enough people started to shout about it, that it just wasn’t a priority… or is… erm as for the green money and you get over 900 million to play with and .. hey they might look at making a start on that, greener fuel thing. I checked on Jaguars website to see any mention of this great eco cause they are planning and found nothing.  Athough they have just won, What car of the year award, which is nice.

I won’t hold my breath, the adverts for “jaguar are planning… are thinking…. are considering…” are worthless… lets see if they put their green were their mouth is over the next two years huh? or maybe they can leave it until the last minute and turn their hand to land rafts.

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National Express the Green way

I do almost all of my travelling by train and bus, the main reasons being that the public transport where I live in Brighton is very good, with buses running every 2mins and the cost of parking extreamly high. When I visit my parents or pop into London for the day I take the train, and although i think that prices of train travel are far too high, it is the greenest way to travel by far.

Green train travel

• It is Greener, a plane trip from London to Newquay produces as much as 135kg carbon dioxide, but if you travel by train you use just 72 kg of carbon dioxide.

• The train takes you exactly where you want to be. Stations are nearly always in the centre of town; airports are usually on the outskirts, making another journey essential to get to your destination (and adding more carbon).

• You can watch the world go by, not just clouds.

• You can stretch your legs, sit opposite someone and have proper chat, surf the internet and use your phone.

• You can take as much luggage as you like, including your bike, often at no extra cost.

• You don’t have to check in hours ahead.

• Some trains have FREE WIFI allowing you to work in compfort and prepare for meetings and conferences.

Taken from the friends of the earth book… “how can i stop climate change?”

Bacteria generally gets a lot of very bad press; if it isnâ??t in the news for causing an outbreak of Salmonella itâ??s wiping out whole farm communities livelihoods, by destroying their crops and livestock. But, there is another side to our familiar little friends; bacteria can be good. It can do marvellous things from cleaning the atmosphere of pollution to cleaning our bodies of unwanted toxins.

Ironman

In the following list we have researched a few of what are considered the heroâ??s of the microbe world and have explain a little bit about their super powers so you can understand them better;

Name: The Masked Microbe (microorganisms, fungi, green plants & enzymes)

Super-power: Cleaning of polluted soil (bioremediation)

Bioremediation is a process whereby microorganisms or fungi consume dangerous chemicals present in soil and water, thereby removing them and leaving the natural environment free of contaminates such as oil, pesticides, solvents and metals.

Name: Captain Micro Algae

Super-power: Creating Biofuel

The latest bio technology is algae fuel or oilgae; it is created by harvesting algae from lagoons and mudflats and the carbohydrate content fermented to produce bio fuel. The great thing about this fuel is that it can be created on land that would be otherwise unused, and as it doubles its size several times a day, can be grown quickly without using up any valuable farm land.

The only negatives with this fuel is that can be difficult to store for long periods of time and it is costly to develop.

Name: The avenging fungus (White-rot fungus)

Super-power: Eating explosives

Yes it is true; itâ??s a fungus with a taste for high explosives, a bit like a mushroom version of Iron Man without the Hollywood charm. The reason the fungus was developed was to deal with the danger of explosives used for mining and demolition that are buried in rubble after failing to detonate and cannot be found, thus posing a threat to the local communities.

The way it works is that the dry fungus spores are placed in the explosive charge before they insert the wick. Then if the explosive does not detonate as intended, moisture will naturally work its way into the explosive causing the spores to germinate and in turn devour the explosive charge. This process can take as little as 30 days and after that time the devices are harmless.

Name: LS9

Super-power: Excreting crude oil

Bio fuel was a word banded around in 2008, although I think this idea which blows bio fuel out of the water. A company based in Silicon Valley has created a bug that literally pooâ??s crude oil or as the oil has been christened â??Oil 2.0â?�. The tiny bugs, named LS9â??s, are the billionth the size of an ant and are fed a mixture of wood chips and other agricultural waste full of yeast and non pathogen E-coli which their bodies ferment making them excrete an almost fuel pump ready crude oil. The process is made easier by the fact that crude oil is merely a few stages removed from the fatty acid secreted by Yeast.

The other great thing about the LS9 bugs is that the oil they create is carbon neutral and a renewable source of energy.

Name: The fantastical Ems (effective micro-organisms)

Super-power: From boosting human / animal immune systems to composting waste

Effective Micro-Organisms (EM) arenâ??t a creation of any lab, they in fact occur naturally and have simply been harnessed to do our bidding. They improve the natural resistance to impurities of humans, animals, plants, water and soil and they do this in five ways:

The EM office model

1. Photosynthetic bacteria â??The Office Managers of EM – use sunlight to synthesize useful substances from plant and organic matter and spurn the growth in good bacteria.
2. Lactic acid bacteria â?? Are the Office Workers of EM – encouraging quick breakdown of organic substances to get the whole process working effectively.
3. Yeasts â?? Are the office canteen – Feeding the Lactic acid bacteria and the Actinomycetes so they work faster.
4. Actinomycetes â?? Are the Human Resources of EM – getting rid of the harmful bacteria and bringing harmony to the Lactic acid and Photosynthetic bacteriaâ??s.
5. Fungi â??Are the Office Cleaners â?? They target suppressing smells from the work of their bacterial colleagues and prevent the damage of plants and animals from harmful insects.

The other great thing about EMâ??s are that they can replace toxic chemical substances that would normally be used the protect crops or clean our homes and have a harmful affect on the environment and organic life.

I hope that you have enjoyed this tour through the world of amiable germs and friendly fungi and that next time you drive your car to work or pack your shopping trolley with vegetables, spare a thought for your microscopic friends and the hard work they do on your behalf!

Find out more about the topics mentioned above from the sources below:

• Affective micro-organisms
  
• Land remediation
  
• Bioremediation explanation
  
• Bugs that excrete petrol
  
• explosive eating fungus
• Algae fuel

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As you are probably aware, the government has approved that third runway for Heathrow airport.

But it’s not over.

As Greenpeace says:

Regardless of what the government has said today, this new runway is far from inevitable and with you’re help we are going to confront them every step of the way. We already have over 13,000 people signed up as beneficial owners on the plot of land on the third runway site and we won’t be giving it back anytime soon. ["Government gives green light to third runway", Greenpeace]

So sign up now for your piece of the plot – just because the government has lost it, it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. I’ve got mine piece – get yours now!

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