Saving the Amazon must be on our to-do list - Gisele Bundchen

Gisele Bundchen - she wants us to consider
the dangers of climate change.

Until now, most people thought of the Olympics as a forum for athletic records, not temperature records. But the Rio organisers wove environmental themes into the celebration of sports, showing the dangers we face if we allow climate change to worsen. The message was clear: we may live in separate countries with unique languages, flags and medal counts, but we are all bound together by the limits of our natural world.

At no point was this more evident than when the stadium floor was covered in projected images of cities such as Lagos, Shanghai, Amsterdam and Rio being submerged by rising seas. On an otherwise joyful night, watching images of Rio, the "marvellous city", sink beneath the waves was a sobering moment I will not forget. Yes, Brazil, like the whole world, stands to lose a lot in a climate-altered world. But it's also one of the major forces determining our future: It's the home of most of the Amazon rainforest.

Read the comment in today’s Melbourne Age by Gisele Bundchen - “Saving the Amazon should be on everyone's to-do list.”

The [Olympics] Year the Rain Forest Burned

This month, hundreds of millions worldwide had their TV eyes tuned to the Olympics. But this season might be remembered not solely for the gold medal count but for foreboding events now unfolding just a thousand miles northwest of the Rio games.

With a camera on a NASA satellite that circles over Earth’s poles, University of California, Irvine professor James Randerson has spotted a near-record number of early-dry season fires burning on the southern and western perimeter of the Amazon forest, including in seven Brazilian states and swaths of lowland Peru and Bolivia.

Randerson, a biologist, has created a computer model for forecasting forest fires. Evidence from various satellites indicate that the rainy season just ended shed unusually little precipitation. “It’s the driest we’ve observed in the last 15 years at the onset of the dry season,” he says. Several weeks ago, he forecast a chart-busting conflagration later this month. The many blazes already detected appear to bear out his prediction.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “The [Olympics] Year the Rain Forest Burned.”

Climate change induced heat stress will limit Olympic venues

Professor Alistair Woodward from
the University of Auckland - he says
it will soon be too hot in most places
to stage the Summer Olympics.

Heat stress due to climate change will limit where and when the summer Olympics can be held in the future, according to new research from the University of Auckland.

The study, published in the British medical journal, The Lancet this week, looked at the impact of increased temperatures on Northern Hemisphere countries’ ability to stage the iconic Summer Olympics’ marathon.

“High-visibility international athletic events such as the Summer Olympics represent just a small fraction of heavy exertion outdoors,” says co-author, Professor Alistair Woodward head of the University’s department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

“But increasing restrictions on when, where, and how the Games can be held owing to extreme heat are a sign of a much bigger problem.

“If the world’s most elite athletes need to be protected from climate change, what about the rest of us?” he says.

By 2085 the study finds almost 90 percent of large cities in the Northern Hemisphere will be too hot and humid during the summer months to safely run the marathon.

Read the University of Auckland story - “When will it be too hot to hold the Summer Olympics?”

We heard of Pavegen, now it's a solar powered bike-path

A recent two-day Melbourne event, All-Energy Australia 2014, featured a talk by the founder and CEO of Britain’s Pavegen, Laurence Kemball-Cook.

Laurence brought to the expo news about his company’s development of an exciting concept through which electrical power is created simply by walking on tiles.

The tile-concept has been used as a trial on a soccer field where the running of the players helped generate power to charge batteries that ran the field’s lighting at night.

Pavegen’s tiles had been used to power parts of a London railway station during the 2012 city’s Olympic Games and they had been used on parts of London roadways, particularly on traffic control features such as speed humps.

And now the ABC tells us that a variation on the theme is being used to create a solar powered bike path in the Netherlands.

The story headed: “The Netherlands unveils world's first solar bicycle path” tells readers that the so-called SolaRoad bike path is made of concrete modules each measuring 2.5 by 3.5 metres, embedded with solar panels covered in tempered glass.