Archive for the ‘climate change’ Category
July 25th, 2007 | 
Author: Friday evening in Ekenäs (Tammisaari in Finnish) archipelago while waiting for the sauna to warm up.
I spent the weekend in my familys cottage enjoying the surroundings and the stillness of nature.
The water level this weekend is the highest I’ve ever experienced out here, it’s been very high on all occations I’ve visited the archipelago this year. This however does not yet reflect from ice sheets melting on Greenland or anywhere else. It does however show us the difference in landscape we will have to become used to in the near future as the climate is warming.
The high waterlevels (according to The Baltic Sea Portal) have during July been up to 30 cm (1ft) above normal in the Bay of Finland (Hanko and Helsinki are the closest). For a short explanation about what affects sea levels, have a look at the Finnish Institute of Marine Research‘s pages.
More pictures on Flickr among them the tallship Europa we met in the archipelago.
Posted in The freedom of recreational seagoing is in the same class as travelling by motorcycle. However, some facts about gasoline/petrol and oil consumption of atleast older engines (there are alot of them still out there). A 20 horsepower outboard motor uses about 10 litres/hour, a 35 hp about 15 l/h and a 90 hp about 35 l/hour, these numbers are by no means fact and could vary immensly but for the three engines I’ve been using in the past years in different kind of weather. They are also ofcourse on different boats and used for different purposes so this would also affect the outcome quite naturally.
The trip we took from Kökar to Hitis was a 4 hour trip times 15 litres per hour should make about 60 litres in total the total length was about 90 km => 1,5km/litre! Comparing with the motorcycle of 0,045 litres/1km or 4,5l/100km. Throwing into this mixture that outboard motors need about 2% of oil in the petrol to run properly thats another 1,33 litres of motor oil in 100km. Oh yeah btw if you don’t want to do the math for the 35 hp old Evinrude it came out to 66,6 litres/100km. 666.
Not very sustainable at all…
To be continued…in one form or another =o)
I see I haven’t posted anything for a month I need to start posting from the road as well I’ve been on a trip to Scotland and will be telling you about that wonderful corner of the world soon. However not to my hometown of Åbo (Swedish) Turku (Finnish) The Turku chapter of the Friends of the Earth are “arranging/taking part in” A critical bike trip for a better Turku (their post in Finnish).
Even though we rate high in SD, innovation, education and what-not-indicators I have to say that living in Finland can be VERY frustrating sometimes. I just read about the scheme in the UK to give real-time-electricity-cost-meters to the consumers. A way for people to follow their energy consumption and that it costs right now. This scheme has been used with success in Ottawa, Canada for example with the total reduction of energy usage being 6,5%. In a high-tech country like Finland, what do the politicians do …they build nuclear power plants, oh yes that’s technology too… but how about not using the energy in the first place…*shrug* C’la vie =o)