Seems like my country is finally doing something good to the environment. According to an article on reuters.com Norway is making plans to build enormous sea-based wind parks that will cost a staggering $44 billion. If everything works out the wind parks should be finished in 2025 and could help the European Union reaching it goal of getting 20 % of its electricity from renewable sources.
The energy produced by the wind parks would be the equivalent to up to eight nuclear power plants so this seems like a massive push for renewable energy sources in Norway.

Wind parks far out on the sea sounds like an excellent idea since the land based wind parks often look very ugly and the construction of the mills can be bad for the local environment. There has also been reports that wind mills along the coastline of Norway are killing a lot birds.
I hope they are thinking about the routes that birds use when they construct the wind parks or else we will get to see many dead sea birds.

WWF was able to capture a video of the world’s rarest rhinos, the Javan rhino, with their video trap. In this remarkable video you can see a mother and her child in an Indonesian rain forest foraging for food.
At the end of the video the mother rhino attacks the camera in a scene that looks straight out of The Blair Witch Project.

The Javan rhinos are highly endangered with only 60 rhinos living in the wild. Let us hope WWF are successful in protecting the rain forests so this will not be the last glimpse we get of the Javan rhinos.

More good news for us who cares about the environment 🙂
According to an article on timesonline.co.uk milk from organic cows are healthier than conventional milk. A study that was done in 2004 – 2005 by Newcastle University and the Danish Institute for Agricultural Science states that milk from cows eating fresh organic grass contains more good fatty acids such as omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acid known as CLA9 than milk from conventional intensive farming. The best results came from cows that were outside most of the year and had access to fresh grass. They had up to 60 per cent more CLA9.
These fatty acids are good for combating cancer, coronary heart disease and type II diabetes.

Nice to see scientific proof that organic food not only tastes better but also are healthier for us 🙂

According to this article on guardian.co.uk it seems like Germany has come to it senses and are starting to ban pesticides.
In the German region Baden-Württemberg 50-60% of the bees have died this year. 8 seed treatment pesticides that contain a chemical called clothianidin (made by Bayer CropScience) has been banned because the chemical has been found in 99% of all the dead bees.
This is not the first time Bayer CropScience are being accused of killing honey bees. Both in France and USA beekeepers have accused the company for being behind the deaths of large number of bee hives.

Pesticides has been linked to the term Colony Collapse Disorder that describes a phenomenon where bee colonies suddenly disappear. This phenomenon have dramatically increased the last few years and is worrying for farmers across the world.
Read more about Colony Collapse Disorder on Wikipedia.

In my opinion it is pretty insane to use highly toxic chemicals to fight against the nature. It is high time that the farming industry looks to alternative organic ways of farming instead of killing the nature.
Please buy products from organic farms the next time you go shopping 🙂

A couple a days ago I wrote about some depressing news that many shark species are facing extinction.

Today I found some good news from Ireland about our oceans. According to an article on Yahoo the Irish Sea Fisheries Board will start to clean up “ghost nets” in northeast Atlantic Ocean.
Ghost nets are abandoned and dumped fishing nets that are catching big amounts of fish and other marine life. The amount of deepwater sharks has declined rapidly because of these ghost nets (I would think because of overfishing too).

A study made by Irish, Norwegian and British scientists estimates that 1,254 kilometers (620 miles) of 600 by 50 meter (1,970 by 164 feet) sheets of nets are lost each year. That is a mind numbing amount!

I hope the Irish Sea Fisheries Board are successful in cleaning up the northeast Atlantic Ocean and that other governments will do the same time. The fishing industry should also look into their practices and stop dumping fishing nets.

When I walk along the coastline here in Northern Norway it is very sad to see the enormous amounts of trash that has been washed ashore. A good deal of this trash seems to be coming from fishing boats, like parts of fishing nets and rope. Trash like this can entangle and kill marine life. Smaller plastic parts are also known to be eaten by fish and sea birds thus bringing toxins into the ecologic system.
It is time to clean our oceans and stop treating them like massive waste bins!

Since this blog is called “Musings from a male knitter” I will to write about other issues than knitting that I care about. One issue that I care about is the environment as most of my life I’ve lived in the countryside very close to the nature. Anyways, enough about me and on to the issue that worries me today.

I just read an article on BBC News (best news site on the net BTW) about some shark species that are close to extinction.
According to specialists at ICUN (formerly the World Conservation Union) more than half of the world’s sharks are in danger of extinction with 11 species on the high-risk list and 5 more showing strong signs of decline.
Shockingly there are no international catching limits for sharks so the fisheries on sharks are pretty much free for all. There has also been more pressure on sharks since stock of other fish likes tuna and swordfish are on the decline, making fishermen looking for other species to catch.

So what can done about this? Obviously some kind of international regulation needs to be come into force as soon as possible! Stronger regulations are also needed for most fisheries as the fishing we are doing today are far from being sustainable.
But this up to the different governments to decide so it is hard for you and me to make a difference. One thing we can do is to join environment friendly organizations like WWF and Greenpeace that put pressure on our governments. The more members they get the more power they are able to yield.
We should also check if the fish we eat are caught from sustainable fisheries.