China's New Bus "Straddles" Cars

Awesome idea. Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd, proposed the bus idea. They say the bus will travel at up to 60 km/h (about 37mph). Construction of the 186 km of rails that will carry the bus will begin at the end of the year.

And the end of the year is by no means too soon for greenhouse gas-reducing technology. In terms of CO2, we're at 380 parts per million -- that's 100 ppm higher than it was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. According to the chairman of the Shenzhen Hashi, their bus can save up to 860 tons of fuel per year, which would prevent the emission of 2,640 tons of carbon.

Climate change a scam? who'd have thought it?

interesting documentary, originally shown on Channell 4h, very well worth a watch 

Without question the most talked-about documentary of the year.

The Global Warming Swindle is the definitive rebuttal to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'.  The film examines the mass of observational data (from temperature balloons, weather satellites, ocean temperature data, ice core records and much else besides) which directly contradict the popular theory of man-made global warming.

http://www.wagtv.com/programme/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle-316.html

Can cities save our bees?

Beekeepers have discovered that bees kept in urban areas are healthier and produce better honey. Photograph: Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

For the past 10 years, colonies of bees have decreased at an alarming rate. A phenomenon called colony collapse disorder has been killing them off en masse, and beekeepers have been quick to alert the public about their high hive mortality. The bees are threatened by new andintensive farming practices (heavy usage of technologies such as pesticides and chemical fertilisers, plant growth regulators, and methods such as mono-cropping and organised irrigation), climate change and the arrival of the Asian hornet. In recent years, the mortality rate of bees has quadrupled. (more)

Shade tolerant food crops

I'm hoping to start growing some veg in my shady yard. It's common sense really... leafy vegetables are the most shade-tolerant, as they're most effective at harvesting sunlight I suppose. Those that fruit from a flower (tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplants) are the least. In between are the root vegetables requiring at least a half day of full sun: potatoes, beets, carrots and turnips. Shade tolerant leafy 
vegetables include lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, arugula, endive and radiccio. Broccoli (and its relatives) kale, kohlrabi, turnips, mustard and cabbage -- also grow in partial shade.