Raptors and deer were among species saved from the Carmel Forest Wildfire
50,000 dunams of the Carmel Forest, or nearly half, have been destroyed in the massive wildfire raging in northern Israel since Thursday. The fire is under control but officials said Saturday that it could take dozens of years to rehabilitate the area.
Authorities erroneously killed two sharks not responsible for the Red Sea attacks last week
Last week off the coast of Egypt’s tourist resort town Sharm al-Sheikh, three snorkellers were attacked by an Oceanic White Tip shark. Scientists claimed that such attacks are extremely rare for this species and sought to investigate the cause of its aberrant behavior.
Officials also promised that the shark would be captured and then released away from tourist areas in the Gulf of Suez. Instead, Egypt’s park authorities killed two sharks – one Mako and one Oceanic White Tip, neither of which is believed to be the shark responsible for the attacks.
It appears as though the Israel Carmel Fire sparked two cases of arson, stoking the flames even higher.
After the first fire broke out in the Mount Carmel region, two additional fires in separate locations started consuming acres of forest land in Israel, investigators are reporting at a press conference. While the first large fire was believed to be caused by negligence (2 teen boys), the fire brigade is not ruling out arson. Suspicious objects at one of the two other fire focal points include an abandoned bike and a wig.
Yay, I used to say as a kid when we’d get snowed in for school. A surprise overnight “dump” could paralyze our small town as they called in ploughs from less icy regions in our Canadian province to salt the roads.
But in Tehran, it’s an environmental problem keeping the kids from school, and their parents from work – a “smog holiday.”
Costing 130 million dollars a day, NPR reports, Tehran is experiencing, for the third workday in two weeks an unhealthy blanket of smog.
Tehran was effectively shut down Thursday because of “unhealthy” pollution levels. This meant Government offices, schools, banks, factories and many other sites were ordered closed to try keep the eye-stinging cloud from growing any worse. I’ve felt eye-stinging in the polluted streets of Amman, Jordan, and it’s really nothing new to the people of Tehran, home to more than 12 million people, round-the-clock traffic jams of more than 3 million cars and buses.
Mehrdad, Green Prophet’s Iranian reporter, says that 27 people a day die in Tehran from air pollution, and the smog is only getting worse.
An urban landmark is the city’s giant air quality gauge. These days though, the smog is looking worse than ever.
There’s no shortage of pollution-busting plans, though. They run from the obvious — such as expanding public transportation and encouraging natural gas heating systems — to the much more exotic.
The head of Iran’s environmental protection agency said government researchers are studying ways to try to shake up the atmosphere to bring rain. Or perhaps create manmade wind corridors to blow away the smog.
But wait, Tehran has another decidedly brilliant idea: mass migration from Tehran to pollute another unspoiled tract of land. (Tehran was originally chosen by its early rules because of its healthy climate).
Wake up people: Clean your cities. Overhaul your public transportation system. Get old cars off the streets. Ride more bikes. Problem solved.
On the other side of the Middle East, Israeli university students are experiencing a “fire holiday” at the University of Haifa – another environmental catastrophe that has jarred people from their every day routine.
::NPR
Read more on sustainable Iran:
Iran Looks to Create Biofuel
Iran Inaugurates Its First Solar CSP Plant
Celebrate Spring and Iranian New Year
Ancient farmers used indigenous knowledge to sustain communities at Avdat in the central Negev as many as seven thousand years ago. That wisom may hold the key to the future according to specialists.
I visited Avdat this August on one of the hottest days of the year when temperatures soared well above 40 degrees. Then, atop the ruins of the ancient settlement astride the Spice Route in the Negev Highlands it was difficult to understand how a community – at its peak 12,000 people – could sustain itself on the desert mount.
Visiting the site again in early November as part of the recent Drylands, Deserts and Desertification conference sponsored by Ben-Gurion University’s Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, the key to how Nabatean, Roman and Byzantine societies survived under the spartan conditions at this UNESCO World Heritage Site became apparent: the application of indigenous knowledge, ancient wisdom that, enabled settlers to cultivate crops and herd small flocks using ingenious technologies adapted to harsh conditions.
Middle East cities started “compact” and dense but now suffer from the same problems as the west.
Tehran’s recent Smog Holidays show’s us something is wrong in Middle East cities. “Is compact urban growth good for air quality?” The research conducted by Brian Stone, Adam C. Mednick, Tracey Holloway, and Scott N. Spak in 2007 is one of the researches that give a straight “yes” answer to the above question. Their paper, which was published in the journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 73, no. 4 showed that a 10% increase in population density can be associated with 3.5% reduction in household vehicle travel and emissions.
How does a compact city work?
David Brand (pictured above in the middle), Head Forester of KKL-JNF and Israeli delegate to the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, gives us an insider perspective on the conference.
Delegates from all over the world have gathered at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico (COP16) for almost a week now, and discussions will continue until December 10th. COP16/CMP6 is the 16th edition of Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) and the 6th Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP). After many environmentalists were disappointment with the previous UN conference on climate change, many are hoping that some more drastic measures will be taken in Cancun.
We were fortunate enough to have David Brand, Head Forester of Keren Kayemet Le Israel-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and one of the Israeli delegates to the conference tell us a little about himself, his environmental background, and his experiences in Cancun.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUEqbLVfpGc&feature=fvsr[/youtube]
A private American company has sent the world’s largest firefighting plane to help Israel fight the Carmel fire.
The international community has poured out assistance to Israel as it struggles against the worst fire on record. Turkey, Greece, the United States, Russia and Britain are among thirteen nations that have demonstrated their support. As the fire that has engulfed over 10,000 acres rages on, the United States has dispatched the most sophisticated firefighting tools available.
Just in time for an overheating planet, Israeli solar thermal air conditioning company Linum Systems gets an audience with US clean tech investors
Stealth start up Linum Systems, founded just last year by Yuval Berson and Amir Hirshfeld, and discovered here by our own Green Prophet in June, was the only Israeli company selected to present their advanced green technologies to the ARPA-E sponsored NREL Clean Energy Opportunity Forum in Denver, Colorado this Fall. Only 34 companies made the cut.
Under the Obama administration; ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) was set up within the Department of Energy, to advance potential major clean energy solutions to the climate crisis. Only super high-risk, high-reward clean energy technologies are selected.
The forum gave the 34 selected presenters a chance for one-on-one ten minute pitch time with 45 key clean tech investors, ranging from California VC superstars like Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers – to California electric utility PG&E.
But actually, a utility considering VC funding is not as strange as it seems.
An unprecedented absence of rain in the Middle East has Jordanians praying in Amman
As the water crisis in Jordan deepens, the country’s ministry of religious affairs is urging citizens to hold special prayers for rain. The move comes after a significant delay in the rainy season and five successive years of limited rainfall which threatens the country’s water supplies.
Jordan has no significant rivers or lakes of it own and so relies on rainfall to replenish underground aquifers and reservoirs for water. The special Muslim prayer called Salat al-Istisqa, which has been practised since the time of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) who would pray for rain in Mecca whenever the rainy season was late, is being carried out in the water-dry country.
Green Prophet hosts the Green Business Blog Carnival. Step right up for hot green business news.
A travelling circus is our chance for a brief moment in the year to see sights, sounds and acts from far and oft. For a week or more the old dusty parking lot near the strip mall is transformed into a exhibition of dazzling lights, smells and people – that draws in the entire community, young or old.
And if the circus is really good we learn something about human nature and ourselves. This week Green Prophet is host to a carnival of sorts, the Green Business Blog Carnival where we pick up the big carnival ferris wheel, spin it, and show our faithful readers some highlights from green business blogs that are reporting from around the world. We find eBay e-cycling, Facebook smart gridding (?), and some surprising “for prophet”, we mean “for profit” eco-villages. Check out the news below.
The fire rages on in Israel’s Carmel Mountains, a nature reserve.
With untold damage to wildlife and one of Israel’s only forests, Friday morning in Israel a wildfire that broke out yesterday at noon, still rages out of control, picking up speed as it rips through the western part of the Carmel Mountains teetering on the edge of the city of Haifa. Fourteen thousand people have been evacuated and 14,000 dumans (3,500 acres) have been decimated. It’s the worst fire in Israeli history and international support including a pledge from Barack Obama has come in to offer to help Israel fight the fire.
“As rescuers, firefighters are continuing their work, the United States is acting to help our Israeli friends in this time of disaster,” he said during a Hanukkah lighting ceremony of 500 people at the White House.
Carmel fire at sunset, as seen through the lens of a police photographer
Israel’s worst forest and brush fire in modern history continues to rage on and at this writing, “is completely out of control by our combined fire fighting units” according to Haifa Fire Department spokesman Hezi Levi. Speaking to reporters of Israel’s Channel 2 TV station, Levi added that “this is the worst fire disaster since the founding of the State of Israel. It’s not going to take hours to extinguish but days.” He said that all of the 200 tons of fire extinguishing chemicals held in reserve has been used up and more will have to be brought in from abroad.
Besides the resort community and kibbutz at Beit Oren, the artist colony at Ein Hod is also under serious threat. Ein Hod, and neighboring Arab village Ein Hud, have experienced fires in the past with one that occurred back in 2007, destroying part of the artist village.
Israel may lose one of its most precious nature reserves to wildfire ripping through the Carmel Mountains, killing people, animals and trees.
“We have completely lost control of the fire,” Hezi Levy, a spokesman for the firefighting service in Haifa told Globes business newspaper an hour ago, speaking of the fire currently destroying a nature reserve and villages in Israel: “I call on all 1500 firefighters in Israel to contact their units and come to the fire in an orderly fashion. The fight for the Carmel is now a fight for Israel.
“Currently, the State of Israel has no firefighting material. It’s all finished.”
Israel’s Innowattech is engineering piezoelectric technology for trains.
This time, in conjunction with the National Railway Company, they are testing the efficacy of their piezo-electric technology for use on railway tracks to gather data automatically. For the test 32 existing railway pads were replaced with Innowattech’s electricity generator pads to measure how well they produce electricity. The installation is almost amusingly fast, simple and uncomplicated. Innowattech’s identically sized pads, embedded with piezoelectric elements were just swapped out for the original railway pads.
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