From sunshades to man-made sulphur-shooting volcanoes, schemes to save the planet are under a microscope

Seth Borenstein
Sun

WASHINGTON — Crazy-sounding ideas for saving the planet are getting a serious look from top scientists.

There’s the man-made volcano that shoots sulphur high into the air. The “sun shade” made of trillions of little reflectors placed in space between Earth and the sun, slightly lowering the planet’s temperature. The forest of ugly artificial “trees” that suck carbon dioxide out of the air. And the “Geritol solution” in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean.

“Of course it’s desperation,” said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. “It’s planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can’t be trusted to do the right thing.”

NASA has mapped out rough details of the sun shade concept. One of the premier climate modelling centres in the United States, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has spent run computer simulations of the man-made volcano scenario and will soon turn its attention to the space umbrella idea.

Last month, billionaire Richard Branson offered a $25-million prize to the first feasible technology to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the air.

The proposals, which represent a field called geoengineering, have been characterized as anywhere from “great” to “idiotic,” says one NASA researcher.

These approaches are not an alternative to cutting pollution, said University of Calgary professor David Keith, a top geoengineering researcher. Some scientists have worried that such schemes might distract attention from reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Here is a look at some of the ideas:

THE GERITOL SOLUTION

Planktos Inc. of Foster City, Calif., last week launched its ship, the Weatherbird II, on a trip to the Pacific Ocean to dump 50 tons of iron dust. The iron should grow plankton, part of an algae bloom that will drink up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The idea of seeding the ocean with iron to beef up a natural plankton and algae system has been tried on a smaller scale several times since 1990. It has both succeeded and failed.

Small experiments “showed unequivocally that there was a biological response to the addition of the iron,” said an international climate report released in 2001. Plankton uses the iron to photosynthesize, extract greenhouse gases from the air, and grow rapidly. It forms a thick green soup of all sorts of carbon dioxide-sucking algae, which sea life feast on, and the carbon drops into the ocean.

However, the climate report also cautioned there could be ecological consequences. For example, large-scale ocean seeding could change the crucial temperature difference between the sea surface and deeper waters and have a dramatic effect on marine life globally.

Russ George, CEO of Planktos, doesn’t want his plan lumped in with geoengineering. He says his company is just trying to restore the ocean to “a more ecologically normal and balanced state.”

“We’re a green solution,” George said.

Planktos officials say that for every ton of iron used, 100,000 tons of carbon will be pulled into the ocean. Eventually, if this first large-scale test works, George hopes to remove three billion tons of carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere.

Planktos’ efforts are financed by companies and individuals who buy carbon credits to offset their use of fossil fuels.

MAN-MADE VOLCANO

When Mount Pinatubo erupted 16 years ago in the Philippines it cooled the Earth for about a year because the sulphate particles in the upper atmosphere reflected some sunlight.

Several leading scientists have proposed doing the same artificially to offset global warming.

Using jet engines, cannons or balloons to get sulphates in the air, humans could reduce the solar heat, and only increase current sulphur pollution by a small percentage, said Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“It’s an issue of the lesser of two evils,” he said.

The results of an NCAR climate model using this method — which involves injecting tens of thousands of tons of sulphate into the atmosphere each month — weren’t cheap or promising.

“From a practical point of view, it’s completely ridiculous,” said NCAR scientist Caspar Amman. “Instead of investing so much into this, it would be much easier to cut down on the initial problem.”

Both this technique and the solar umbrella would reduce heating but wouldn’t reduce carbon dioxide. So they wouldn’t counter a side effect of global warming, a dramatic increase in the acidity of the world’s oceans, which harms sea life, especially coral reefs.

Despite that, Calgary’s David Keith is working on tweaking the concept. He wants to find a more efficient chemical to inject into the atmosphere in case of emergency.

SOLAR UMBRELLA

Last fall, University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel proposed what he called a “sun shade.” It would be a cloud of small Frisbee-like spaceships that go between Earth and the sun and act as an umbrella, reducing heat from the sun.

“It really is just like turning down the knob by two per cent of what’s coming from the sun,” he said.

The nearly flat discs would each weigh less than 30 grams and measure about a metre wide with three tab-like “ears” — controllers sticking out just a few centimetres. Rockets would be used to deploy them in space.

About 800,000 of the discs would be stacked into each rocket launch. It would take 16 trillion of them — that’s 16 million million — so there would be 20 million launches of rockets.

It would cost at least $4 trillion over 30 years.

“I compare it with sending men to Mars. I think they’re both projects on the same scale,” Angel said. “Given the danger to Earth, I think this project might warrant some fraction of the consideration of sending people to Mars.”

ARTIFICIAL TREES

Scientifically, it’s known as “air capture.” But the instruments being used have been dubbed “artificial trees” — even though these devices are about as tree like as a radiator on a stick. They are designed to mimic the role of trees in using carbon dioxide, but early renderings show them looking more like the creation of a tinkering engineer with lots of steel.

Nearly a decade ago, Columbia University professor Klaus Lackner, hit on an idea for his then-middle school daughter’s science fair project: Create air filters that grab carbon dioxide from the air using chemical absorbers and then compress the carbon dioxide into a liquid or compressed gas that can be shipped elsewhere. When his daughter was able to do it on a tiny scale, Lackner decided to look at doing it globally.

Newly inspired by the $25 million prize offered by Richard Branson, Lackner wants to develop a large filter that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

Another chemical reaction would take the carbon from the absorbent material, and then a third process would change that greenhouse gas into a form that could be disposed of.

It would take wind and a lot of energy to power the air capture devices.

They would reach about 60 metres high with various-sized square filters at the top. Lackner envisions perhaps placing 100,000 of them near wind energy turbines.

A filter the size of a television could remove about 25 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is about how much one American produces annually, Lackner said. The captured carbon dioxide would be changed into a liquid or gas that can be piped away from the air capture devices.

Disposal might be the biggest cost, Lackner said.

Disposal of carbon dioxide, including that from fossil fuel plant emissions, is a major issue of scientific and technological research called sequestration. The idea is to bury it underground, often in old oil wells or deep below the sea floor. The U.S. government, which doesn’t like many geoengineering ideas, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on carbon sequestration, but mostly for power plant emissions.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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As rural areas decline, B.C. has become the most urban province in Canada

Frances Bula, with files from Peter O’Neil
Sun

We think of ourselves as living in a province of forests and fish, mines and ranches, with towns and cities to match.

But we’re really city and suburban people surrounded by mostly empty mountains, according to the census snapshot from Statistics Canada.

B.C., which has broken the four-million mark in population, is the most urban province in the country, according to the 2006 census statistics released Tuesday.

Only 15 per cent of its population now lives in rural areas, and residents are draining steadily away from the former thriving resource towns of the northwestern B.C. and the central coast.

The province has grown by 5.3 per cent, thanks mainly to immigrants from outside Canada, since B.C. has the lowest birthrate in the country.

However, those immigrants, along with younger people from the declining northern towns, are going almost exclusively to B.C.’s growing urban regions, with places like Kelowna and Abbotsford among the fastest-growing cities in the country.

The result is that most of the people in this huge province are increasingly shoehorned into a few valleys along major highways: The Greater Vancouver region, which has now gone over the two-million mark, the Central Okanagan, and the Vancouver Island east coast from Victoria to Nanaimo.

The Yamashitas of Terrace see that story played out in their family.

Their ancestors came to B.C. at the turn of the century, settling in Port Essington near Prince Rupert with other Japanese immigrants to fish the Skeena River.

Tosh Yamashita, a child of the post-war generation, worked in Terrace as a planner for the past 25 years.

Now, his three boys, all in their 20s, are living in the Vancouver region: Jason is studying law; Kasel is working at a lumberyard; and Kory, the youngest, is finishing his engineering degree.

Only Kory plans to return, wanting to live where the traffic and house prices are reasonable and where he knows everyone in town.

But he’s an anomaly, says his brother.

“People don’t go back because there’s no jobs there. The pulp mill is suffering, the sawmill is closed,” says Jason, now 28. “The vast majority of my graduating class is in Prince George, Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto.”

That’s a story being told throughout the north, with Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Quesnel, Terrace and Williams Lake showing the biggest population losses of all mid-size cities in Canada.

University of B.C. geography professor David Ley says that north-south divide in B.C. is the most striking story in the statistics.

“This is quite a novel demographic moment,” said Ley, noting that cities have seen striking changes, with Prince Rupert losing 12 per cent of its population and Kelowna gaining 10 per cent.

“These are big numbers in a very short time. It does tell a tale about job loss in the resource industry. There’s quite an inequality between the two regions.”

One area of northern B.C. that is bucking the trend is the northeast corner, where population grew slightly because of jobs in the oil industry. That likely helped, in part, reverse the trend that showed up in the 2001 census, which saw B.C. losing population to other parts of the country.

This time, B.C. went back to its traditional pattern of attracting people from other provinces.

The trend of population movement toward cities is prevalent across Canada.

Canada’s six largest cities — Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary and Edmonton — are home to 14.1 million people, or 45 per cent of the total population.

Just over two-thirds (68 per cent) of the population lives in Canada’s 33 census metropolitan areas.

But B.C. is slightly more urbanized than the national trend, with 85.4 per cent of people living in urban areas here compared to an 80-per-cent average for the country.

That’s likely due to the province’s geography, economic context and its immigration pattern, experts suggest.

B.C. is more dependent on overseas immigrants than any other part of the country, says Ryan Berlin, an analyst with the Urban Futures Institute.

“We’re not seeing immigrant families going straight to Kitimat,” said Berlin. Instead, they are clustering in particular sectors of the Lower Mainland.

Statistics Canada noted that “between 2001 and 2006, an average of 25,000 immigrants a year settled in the Vancouver area. Because of international immigration, Vancouver continued to experience a higher population growth rate than the provincial average in the 2001 to 2006 period (6.5 per cent versus 5.3 per cent).”

As well, B.C.’s mountains produce a different population distribution.

People here aren’t spread out on the kind of farmland that southern Ontario or the Prairies have.

“We are seeing all the growth being concentrated along the Trans-Canada Highway corridor and the Island Highway,” says Berlin.

Finally, rural cities and towns have always been more dependent on the fluctuations of the resource industry, rising and falling with the ups and downs of mining, forestry, fish and oil.

The northeast sector is booming now. “But if oil falls back down to $30 a barrel, there’ll be an exodus,” said Berlin.

The Greater Vancouver region saw 6.5-per-cent growth, lower than in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto, but higher than the national average.

Its growth was uneven, however, with suburbs like Port Moody and Surrey gaining population at Calgary-like rates, while others — Delta, West Vancouver, Langley city, Coquitlam, and North Vancouver — showed little or no growth.

Like the province, its growth is shaped by its geography and transportation lines.

“The urban spread in Vancouver is uniquely influenced by our terrain and the SkyTrain and West Coast Express,” said Jerry Page, the director for Statistics Canada’s western region.

B.C. GAINERS

Biggest gainers in actual population

2006 2001 Change % change

Surrey 394,976 347,820 47,156 13.6%

Vancouver 578,041 545,671 32,370 5.9%

Kelowna 106,707 96,288 10,419 10.8%

Richmond 174,461 164,345 10,116 6.2%

Burnaby 202,799 193,954 8,845 4.6%

Abbotsford 123,864 115,494 8,370 7.2%

Langley 93,726 86,896 6,830 7.9%

Chilliwack 69,217 62,567 6,650 10.6%

Maple Ridge 68,949 63,169 5,780 9.2%

Nanaimo 78,692 73,000 5,692 7.8%

B.C. DECLINERS

Biggest decliners in actual population

2006 2001 Change % change

Prince Rupert 12,815 14,643 -1,828 -12.5%

Prince George 70,981 72,406 -1,425 -2.0%

Kitimat 8,987 10,285 -1,298 -12.6%

Terrace 11,320 12,109 -789 -6.5%

Port Hardy 3,822 4,574 -752 -16.4%

Quesnel 9,326 10,044 -718 -7.1%

Mackenzie 4,539 5,206 -667 -12.8%

Fort St. James 1,355 1,927 -572 -29.7%

Lillooet 2,324 2,741 -417 -15.2%

Houston 3,163 3,577 -414 -11.6%

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Windfall for Victoria in good-behaviour incentive

Jim Jamieson
Province

Victoria has yielded to pressure from the construction industry by allowing a “grandfathering” period for a controversial new tax rule relating to windows.

As part of last month’s budget, Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced that double-glazed windows and related products would no longer be eligible for exemption from the seven-per-cent provincial sales tax.

To get the exemption, only windows built to the higher Energy Star standard would qualify.

Stakeholders in both the residential and commercial construction industry were unhappy that there was no notice of the change and no transition period to protect developers and builders who had already signed fixed-price contracts based on the previous exemption.

Late Monday, the Ministry of Finance decided to allow a transition period to the higher standard.

Contractors, businesses and individuals who entered into agreements before Feb. 21 will quality for a sales-tax refund. Only products purchased from Feb. 21 to March 31, 2009, to fulfill those agreements, will qualify.

“From B.C.’s tax point of view, we are firmly committed to using the tax as an incentive for environmentally positive behaviour,” Taylor told The Province yesterday. “This was an effort to incent behaviour toward Energy Star windows.

“Members of the [construction] community came forward and we felt they had a legitimate concern, so we brought forward an amendment,” Taylor said.

Todd Domstad, president of the Glazing Contractors Association of B.C. and an owner of Surrey-based Nu Glass Projects, said he was concerned the refund process will be “an accounting nightmare.”

“It’s good to see the government responding to us,” he said. “But why collect a tax and have a slew of problems refunding it, when you could just not collect it in the first place?”

Others — in the commercial building sector — will lose their exemptions because the large glass installations in tall office towers don’t line up with Energy Star specifications.

It will become a moot point after March 31, 2009, when Energy Star compliance for window products will become part of the B.C. Building Code — so even that tax exemption will go away.

It shapes up as a tax windfall for the B.C. government.

According to the glazing association, a recent survey of 15 companies showed they had $106 million worth of contracts on their books, including $58 million in glass products that mostly had been tax exempt. It’s not uncommon for the glass contract in a large commercial tower in downtown Vancouver to cost $10 million — the majority of which would have been tax exempt.

“Removing the exemption completely just takes away any incentive to put higher-end energy efficient products in a building,” said Domstad.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Paul Luke
Province

Yankee, please don’t go home.

Canadian hotels will emerge from red ink this year but will continue struggling with a drop in U.S. visitors, the Conference Board of Canada says.

The industry will make a modest profit of $236 million this year, bouncing back from a loss of $87 million in 2006, the board said yesterday.

“Most of the improvement in profitability will be the result of growth in demand for travel both by Canadians and by foreigners travelling to Canada,” the board said.

But profit margins will remain thin this year and profits will shrink in 2008 as U.S. passport requirements expand to cover anyone travelling to or from the U.S. by land or sea, the board said.

Stephen Pearce, Tourism Vancouver’s leisure travel vice-president, said the U.S. and Japanese markets will remain challenging for the Greater Vancouver industry this year.

U.S. and Japanese overnight visits are expected to fall by one per cent each in 2007, Pearce said.

The strong loon has hurt Canada in those markets, coupled with U.S. passport rules and growing Japanese interest in Asian destinations, Pearce said.

Canada is losing its share of outbound U.S. business because it is being outgunned by other global destinations willing to spend more on marketing, Pearce said.

Still, overnight visits in the Vancouver area should grow by two per cent this year, thanks to strength in the Canadian, Chinese and Mexican markets, Pearce said.

“It’s reasonable to think we’re going to be capitalizing on interest in the Olympics a little sooner than we thought originally,” Pearce said.

Last year, Greater Vancouver posted 8.7 million overnight visits, up from 8.6 million in 2005.

In a vote of confidence in Vancouver, Los Angeles-based Kor Hotel Group said yesterday it will soon launch the $35-million Loden, the first new hotel in downtown Vancouver in five years. The 14-storey, 130-room hotel in Coal Harbour opens in late summer.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

GILLIAN SHAW
Sun

SECURITY If you want to stay out of trouble on the World Wide Web, steer clear of Romania and Russia.

These two countries, found at websites ending in . ro for Romania and . ru for Russia, are the r i s k i e s t fo r l a rge country domains, according to a survey by McAfee SiteAdvisor, a service of security technology company McAfee Inc.

But while Russian and Romanian sites are dicey, there’s an even more dangerous place in cyberspace — and that originates with Tokelau, a tiny island of coral reef formations north of Western Samoa identified on the Web by its domain “. tk”.

A whopping 10 per cent of all websites ending in . tk lead to pages that are filled with malware — malicious software that can infiltrate a computer and wreak havoc.

The SiteAdvisor codes sites with green ( clear of malware), yellow ( be cautious) or red ( don’t go there) and also ranks domains — both those that are countrybased and others such as the generic . com.

These ratings might make you want to pull the plug on the Internet, but Mark Maxwell, senior product manager for McAfee SiteAdvisor, said that risky websites represent only a small percentage of total Internet traffic.

 

“ Our fundamental belief is that the Internet is a great thing and should be open to everyone and safe to everyone. But the reality is there are different neighbourhoods, if you will, where users should proceed with caution,” he said.

Those are the neighbourhoods McAfee SiteAdvisor found when it crawled to the darkest and seediest corners of the Web and came back with a warning for surfers about where they are most likely to run into the ripoffs, the spyware, the spam, viruses and other maleficent mischiefmakers who populate cyberspace.

While the SiteAdvisor, which is a real- time, free service for consumers , found the horror hotspots on the Web, they only amounted to 4.1 per cent of all the sites tested, meaning the majority of websites get a green rating and are not considered risky.

Want to play it safe? Stick to Finland at . fi, or Ireland at . ie — both domains were found to have the lowest ranking when it comes to websites that are responsible for spyware, spam and other scams.

Among the generic domains, . info is the worst. An e- mail address given to a random . info website gives you a 73- per- cent chance of receiving spam in your e- mail inbox.

The ubiquitous . com address is the second- riskiest generic domain. Among the . com sites registered, some 5.5 per cent we re p e g g e d a s r i s k y by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor.

North American domains are relatively safe, with the survey finding less than one per cent of sites in Canada earning a red or yellow rating. The U. S. came in with the most questionable sites in the region — 2.1 per cent.

Maxwell said the safety ratings on country domains can be attributed to the regulations, or the lack thereof, surrounding registration. He used the examples of Australia and Singapore, which he said have among the most stringent registration rules, requiring applicants for websites using their country domains to prove who they are and why they should be allowed to use that domain in their web address. There is also a cost associated with it.

By comparison, anyone who wants to register a website address using the freewheeling Tokelau domain of . tk, can do so without authorities asking them difficult questions.

“ Guess where the bad guys are going to want to go. Where it is easiest for them to set up camp,” said Maxwell.

In Canada, registration for the . ca domain was administered by volunteers at the University of B. C. starting in 1988. But as the Internet grew and became more commercialized, that task was turned over to the not- for- profit Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which is responsible for operating the . ca Internet country code Top Level Domain. A TDL is the last part of an Internet domain name, and can include such classifications as a country code and generic TDLs covering everything from . com to . gov to . biz, . edu, and many others.

CIRA registration has an extensive list of rules, policies and procedures for individuals, businesses and organizations wanting to use the . ca designation. They are on the Web at www. cira. ca/ en/ documents/ 2007/ PRP- registrationrulesv3.8. pdf.

Miro Cernetig
Sun

VICTORIA – The days of smokers huddling around the doorways of public places are numbered after the provincial government announced Tuesday it will ban lighting up in public places or near the entrances to such places by 2008.

The new regulations, which the Canadian Cancer Society has been demanding for years, will also ban smoking in school yards by September. The government will also place further restrictions on tobacco advertising in stores, to help prevent children falling into the habit.

Reversing the government’s earlier view that such a smoking ban would be hazardous to the province’s hospitality industry, Health Minister George Abbott said that by early 2008, no-smoking buffer zones will be established around windows, entrances and air intakes to public places.

The goal is to limit second-hand smoke, which the government estimates kills about 140 British Columbians annually.

The government, which in 2001 rejected a proposal by the Workers Compensation Board for a similar crackdown, says it will consult the public over the next few months to determine how far smokers will need to stand away from entrances. But Abbott noted a three-metre buffer zone is required in some provinces.

“We’re delighted,” said Barbara Kaminsky, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society’s B.C. and Yukon division. “I wouldn’t say these are the toughest regulations in Canada but it certainly allows us to catch up with the other provinces.”

New Democrats criticized the government for not banning the sale of tobacco products in pharmacies, as other provinces have, or banning smoking on the patios of bars and restaurants.

“It’s a mid-range effort,” said NDP health critic Adrian Dix. “Other provinces have done better.”

Smokers, 14 per cent of B.C.’s population, aren’t likely to be happy, given the wet winters. The regulations will ban workplace smoking rooms.

But they get little sympathy from the Canadian Cancer Society or the government, which estimates smoking kills 6,000 British Columbians a year and sucks $2.3 billion out of the economy. “Where are the smokers going to go?” asked Kaminsky. “There’s still the outdoors. Their homes. Their cars.”

Abbott, a non-smoker, agrees smokers will still be able to use tobacco on sidewalks and on patios in bars and restaurants, providing they aren’t around doors or windows. But, he added, there are limits to smokers’ rights.

“In society, these things are a balancing act,” he said. “You don’t want to have those who choose to smoke imposing the health consequences of their choice on others.”

The government will also outlaw the display of tobacco products in any retail space accessible to anyone under 19. It will ban tobacco ads from store ceilings or countertops and will ban tobacco-related ads anywhere outdoors.

The rules will also end smoking on school property. “Schools need to be healthy and safe places for students and staff,” said Education Minister Shirley Bond. “By banning smoking on all school property, the province is teaching our young people about the dangers of tobacco use and encouraging them to make healthy choices that will last them a lifetime.”

Perhaps the only smokers who won’t be taking Tuesday’s crackdown too hard are those at the B.C. Automobile Association.

When the organization made its building smoke-free in 1992, it found some employees headed to the sidewalk and into a nearby bus shelter when it rained. Bus drivers and passengers weren’t amused.

“When it was raining they went to the bus stop,” said Terry Switzer, who manages the building. “The drivers would think there would be half a dozen people waiting to get on the bus and it was just our people smoking. So we built them a 120-square-foot cedar shack. It’s pretty nice and out of the way and you can’t see anybody inside, except for the smoke that’s billowing out of the top.”

The government said that “smoking shack” may be permissible because it is outside the BCAA building.

TARGETING TOBACCO USE AND SALES

Amendments to B.C.’s Tobacco Sales Act will ban smoking in:

– All indoor public spaces, including restaurants, pubs, private clubs, offices, malls, conference centres, arenas, community halls, government buildings and schools.

– In public doorways, and “near” the doors, windows and air intakes of any building accessible by the public.

– Tobacco sales will be barred in public hospital and health facilities, universities and colleges, public athletic and recreational facilities and provincial buildings.

– The display of tobacco and related products will be banned in stores accessible to anyone under age 19.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Oz non-stop a Vancouver first

Gordon Clark
Province

Air Canada will soon become the world’s first airline to offer daily, non-stop service between Vancouver and Sydney, Australia.

The service, scheduled to launch Dec. 14, was among several routes announced yesterday that will be served by the airline’s new fleet of 18 long-range Boeing 777-200LR and 777-300ER aircraft.

Daniel Shurz, Air Canada’s vice-president of marketing, said the new planes are among the most advanced wide-body aircraft currently flying, offering ranges of up to 17,446 kilometres, tremendous fuel efficiency and luxurious new appointments, such as business-class seats that convert into lie-flat beds — a first for a North American airline — and personal seatback entertainment systems for each passenger.

“They are very efficient aircraft,” Shurz said of the twin-engine aircraft that airlines are using to replace less fuel-efficient four-engine jets such as Boeing 747s and Airbus A340s.

He said the lie-flat beds and personal video systems that provide 80 hours of video and 50 hours of audio on demand should ease travel on flights that can exceed 14 hours in length, such as the new Sydney run.

The new non-stop flight, which will take about 15 hours southbound and 14 hours northbound, cuts three hours off the current routing with a stop in Honolulu.

But the business-class price of $5,808 for a one-way ticket to Sydney will make lying in the new bed-seats an expensive night’s sleep.

Air Canada will launch Boeing 777 service out of Vancouver in July when a pair of the aircraft enter service on the Vancouver-Tokyo run.

Other routes that will be served by the new aircraft include Toronto-London Heathrow, beginning next month, Toronto-Frankfurt and Toronto-Tokyo, beginning in June, and Toronto-Hong Kong, beginning in August.

The new aircraft — which will have 42 business-class seats and either 228 (200LR) or 307 (300ER) economy-class seats, will replace Air Canada’s current fleet of Airbus A340s, which will be phased out of service over the next 13 months. In addition, Air Canada has 14 Boeing 787 aircraft on order that will begin delivery in 2010.

In November 2005, a Boeing 777-200LR set a new world record for distance travelled non-stop by a commercial jetliner, travelling 21,601 km eastbound from Hong Kong to London on a flight of 22 hours and 42 minutes.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

Kim Davis
Sun

Think that going green means fewer options? Think again when it comes to flooring. From carpet, wood, bamboo and cork to linoleum, rubber, glass and stone, innovative manufacturers are offering a growing array of high-performance, competitively priced floors that are eco-considerate as well as healthier for inhabitants.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when looking for eco-savvy treads, as well as a brief review of some of the products you might find under foot.

CHECKING FOR CREDENTIALS

Like all products that purport to be green, it can be difficult to discern which floors walk a truly sustainable walk. Third-party certification systems such as GREENGUARD, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and Canada’s Environmental Choice Program (EcoLogo) can help you identify products that meet higher environmental and health standards.

For example, EcoLogo promotes products that, in addition to meeting or exceeding accepted industry performance standards, aggressively use recycled content, reduce undesirable chemicals, and conserve resources.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Environmental beauty may prove little more than skin-deep if toxic binders, glues and finishes that release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) gaseously, or contain high levels of known carcinogens like formaldehyde, are used to manufacture, finish, or maintain your floor.

Select products that utilize water-based, solvent free adhesives and finishes made from natural ingredients, which provide protection and durability without a plastic shine or noxious fumes.

When it comes to carpet, be sure to ask about the underlay, product backings, and the pad or cushion.

In addition to better adhesives, some of today’s carpet backings are made with recycled content (including car windshields!), and/or with natural fibers such as jute and natural rubber.

B.C.’S HOT NEW WEED?

Used for centuries to make everything from spoons to buildings, bamboo flooring is quickly becoming one of B.C.’s hot design trends.

Solid and engineered bamboo flooring products are created by slicing round bamboo shoots into strips, and boiling and treating them with a preservative.

The strips are then dried and laminated into solid boards and milled into standard strip flooring profiles.

Valued for its purported hardness, and resistance to water, mildew and insects, bamboo is available naturally and in a range of pre-finished colours. It can also accept many different stains and be installed, sanded and refinished like hardwood.

Environmental Building News notes that “environmentally, it’s hard to argue with a wood substitute that matures in three years, regenerates without need for replanting, and requires minimal fertilization or pesticides.

However, as harvesting and manufacturing practices can vary widely, and there is no official grading system like FSC for bamboo, consumers should consider inquiring about the source of any product they purchase.

Reports on the hardness of bamboo, an attribute widely touted by vendors, range from as soft as fir to harder than oak.

It typically comes pre-finished in planks, including a floating floor type that clicks together with tongue and groove construction negating the need for glue or nails.

TOAST OF THE TOWN

Harvested from the outer bark of the cork oak tree, cork is waterproof and airtight which makes it resistant to moisture and decay.

The natural elasticity of cork makes it especially comfortable underfoot, as well as a good acoustic insulator.

It is durable, and contrary to what one might think, recovers well from marks left by furniture or high heels. Cork floors are also hypoallergenic, fire-resistant, and naturally resistant to insects.

Recent news regarding the wine industry’s shortage of corks has some people wondering how cork can be considered sustainable.

According to the Environmental Home Center in Seattle, however, while the surging popularity of wine has resulted in a shortage of natural wine corks, the “waste” cork that derives from the making of corks, and which is used to create is much cork flooring is readily available.

Cork comes pre-finished, in tiles (which must be glued down), floating plank systems and most recently small mosaic tiles.

It can be found in a range of neutral tones and styles–from taupe and corkboard-like, to dark chocolate and an almost leather look.

A RECIPE FOR DURABILITY

So durable that ferry boats reportedly use it, linoleum is a completely biodegradable material made from a mix of all-natural materials such as linseed oil, wood flour, rosin, jute and limestone. Linoleum is inherently anti-bacterial, hypoallergenic and antistatic. The latter of which repels dust and dirt making, which makes it easy to clean without the use of soaps and very little water. Sold in rolls, tiles, and now floating planks, linoleum comes in a wide range of colours and patterns.

SOY BETWEEN MY TOES

No longer limited to simply colour and pile height, carpets can now be found in a wide range of natural and recycled materials. From recycled bicycle inner tubes, inspired by the sheer number of bicycles in India, to soy fibre that offers the sumptuousness of cashmere, velvet and alpaca all rolled together (for a comparably luxurious price). Sisal carpets, made from the rope-like fibers of the agave cactus, like wool are naturally flame retardant, anti-static and sound absorbent.

YET TO BE FLOORED

To learn about more flooring options, including more traditional grains like wood, check out woodfloorrg.com on the Internet.

A great resource for nearly everything you would want to know about eco-friendly wood, including a helpful product selector, is edcmag.com on the Internet.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Province

TORONTO — Ontario is considering becoming the first province to follow Australia’s lead in banning old-fashioned light bulbs, Environment Minister Laurel Broten said yesterday as the province draws up a plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Opposition parties and environmental groups are urging the government to ban incandescent bulbs in favour of energy-efficient ones, saying it’s the push people need to save electricity and a move that would eliminate some of the province’s dependence on coal-fired power plants.

“There are a lot of great ideas out there and that’s one of them,” Broten said. “Everything is on the table.”

No one in Ontario should underestimate the importance of replacing standard bulbs with more energy-efficient ones, Broten added.

By Premier Dalton McGuinty’s estimate, replacing every old-fashioned bulb with an energy-efficient one would allow the province to shut down one coal-fired power plant.

“It is so important that Ontarians change those light bulbs,” Broten said. “We’re looking at other jurisdictions and the success that they’re having.”

Australia is banning the bulbs and says it will cut the country’s emissions by four million tonnes by 2012. The move will also cut household power bills by up to 66 per cent.

California, which is widely considered to be on the leading edge of energy policy in North America, is debating a similar ban.

Julia McNally, of Ontario’s Conservation Bureau, said many provinces are trying to educate people about switching to energy-efficient bulbs. That’s a good start, she said, but it doesn’t change behaviour permanently.

“You need a ban,” she said.

© The Vancouver Province 2007