Morts Musings

While most people would likely agree that real flowers are far superior to artificial ones, the same may not be true for artificial trees. At least not from an environmental science perspective.

This article on the BBC site caught my attention today; It not only appeals to my inner tree-hugger, but also to my geeky science streak too.

The piece looks at the possibility of using “artificial trees” as a method of carbon capture- one of our best options for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and thus reducing anthropogenic climate change. Carbon capture isn’t a solution in it’s own right, in the longer term we need to look at developing energy generation methods which don’t spew CO₂ out into the atmosphere, but, in the shorter term, while new technologies are being developed, it could be a valuable weapon in the fight against “global warming”.

The theory behind the artificial trees is that a large surface area is coated in a substance which will readily react with atmospheric CO₂ to form a solid compound, thus removing it from the air. The chemistry behind the process is pretty simple, in fact anyone who remembers using Lime Water as a test for CO₂ in science at school has used exactly the kind of process that we’re talking about here. (The cloudiness which one sees when CO₂ is bubbled through lime water is due to the formation, & precipitation, of insoluble calcium carbonate.)

Dr Klaus Lackner, the man behind the idea, reckons that each of these artificial trees could capture up to 90,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year, the equivalent of the 15,000 cars’ exhaust fumes, and if the idea is adopted it’s best use might very well be to line the sides of busy roads. Industrial plants have other options for carbon capture, and possibly more efficient ones than removing CO₂ which has already made it’s way into the atmosphere.
With motor vehicles though it’s simply impracticle to try and capture CO₂ as it’s produced. For a start burning 14g of petrol produces 44g of CO₂, meaning that any carbon capturing vehicle would get heavier during the course of a journey, and as a result loose fuel efficiency. Clearly a non-starter.

Before you all rush out and start buying shares in artificial tree companies, it’s only fair to point out that it’s not likely to be a panacea for all our climate change woes. The biggest sticking point at the moment seems to be the question of renewing the “trees” once the CO₂ binding chemicals have been used up; This in itself could be a logistical nightmare, and could potentially make the idea a non-starter, unless a cost effective, carbon neutral, method of collecting and cleaning the artificial trees’ foils can be found.

Obviously, Dr Lackner and his team continue to work on these details, and personally I hope they do manage to find a viable way to implement this technology. In theory it seems like it could be one of our best approaches to tackling excessive atmospheric CO₂ levels in the time frame we have.
If you want to know more about the theory behind Dr Lackner’s artifical trees this BBC article goes into a bit more detail than the one I linked to at the top of the page, or if you wanted to get into serious levels of detail you could read his paper on Capturing CO₂ from Air.

Healthcare Charity Campaign to Raise Blood Pressure Awareness

Over the course of the past eight years’ annual national blood pressure Testing Weeks, held in the second week of September every year, over a 1.5 million people have had their blood pressure measured for free.

The campaign has been so successful that the campaign was a winner at The Charity Awards 2008 for its work on the Awareness Week.

Health professionals, including pharmacists, nurses and occupational health officers, will run well over a thousand official venues which have signed up  to offer free blood pressure checks during the event, on behalf of the charity to help test the nation’s blood pressure and educate people about what their numbers mean.

Are You 1 in 3?

This year’s theme asks  ‘Could you be the 1 in 3?’.  One in three adults has high blood pressure and it’s the biggest cause of death and disability in the UK through the strokes and heart attacks it causes – and although reports of recent research has lead some healthcare advisors to encourage everyone to take blood pressure lowering drugs it is still vital that people have their readings taken regularly in oreder to detect any increases early.

When & where can I be tested?

The awareness week runs from 7-13 September 2009. To find out where you can have your readings taken visit this page and enter your town or postcode to find the nearest venues and opening times.

Healthcare Appeal

On the run up top the event BBC Radio 4 will broadcast actor Timothy West highlighting the tragic consequences of undetected high blood pressure and describing his own experience of the condition in a special broadcast on the  Radio 4 appeals page

What should I do if I have a raised reading?

If you have a raised reading, don’t panic. It may mean that you have high blood pressure, or it may be a one-off raised reading. The important thing is visit your GP to have it checked again to find out more. If your GP diagnoses you with high blood pressure, it can be treated and controlled, through changes to your lifestyle and, for some people, also with medication.

Diagnosis of High BP

High blood pressure cannot be diagnosed after a one-off reading.  If the first reading is raised, it is recommend that  a follow-up check with a GP is done soon afterwards.

Measure Blood Pressure at Home

The purpose of the week is not only to identify those with high blood pressure but to educate and empasise the imprtance of  regularly getting your blood pressure checked – as a result more and more people are buying home monitors and following correct procedures to measure their blood pressure at home – studies show that measuring at home more accurately reflects your true readings. No longer do you need to use the old fashioned cumbersome sphygmomanometers and  take awkward, inaccurate readings with a stethoscope – there are many affordable clinically validated automatic monitors on sale to the public.

I saw this piece on the Guardian’s Ethical Living Blog, and thought it worthy of Mort’s Musings treatment.

It highlights a small company with lofty goals; They aim to change, through example, the way that the free market operates, and all via the medium of fairtrade pants! Pants to Poverty are attempting to carve out a niche for themselves by selling quality underwear sourced from fair trade cotton grown without the use of pesticides, and, in the process, demonstrate that it is possible to run an ethical, & profitable, business. It may seem like an ambitious, maybe even eccentric, plan, and with a price tag of £8 on their undies they’re clearly going to have trouble winning over the Primark, £1 a pair, brigade, but, then again, anyone shopping at Primark probably doesn’t have ethical sourcing of their clothes as a top priority.

They are clearly going for a more discerning market, but, as such, they’ll be competing with established names of the underwear world, such as M&S who, to some, are almost synonomous with lingerie. Competing against big, well known, brands is never a simple task for a small start-ups, but in PtP’s favour they do have the one thing which any business in this position needs in order to give itself a chance: a niche, a specialism, something the big names aren’t offering. By choosing to target the “ethical market” they are setting themselves apart from other underwear retailers.

Personally I wish them all the best, I doubt they’ll catalyse the change in global business practice they’re aiming for, but it’s great to see people of principle put their money where their mouths are and give it a go.

Of course cynic that I am I do wonder, if it turns out that there is a market for ethical undies, whether one of the big names won’t just jump on the bandwagon and use their economies of scale to out-compete the small guy. I hope not, but sadly that seems to be the way that business works.

When someone mentions second hand bookshops my first thoughts are of establishments, which look more like someone’s front room than a business, chocked full of shelves filled, floor to ceiling, with musty old tomes. That and, of course, the famous old Yellow Pages ad which chronicalled one man’s quest to obtain a copy of “Fly Fishing” by J R Hartley.

However, I noticed these two articles in the Guardian and thought they raised an interesting quandry. The nub of the first piece is that Oxfam’s second hand books business is putting independent second hand book stores out of business, even going so far as to call the charity “the Tesco of the secondhand book world,” while the second piece, written as a response to the first, takes a more balanced view, in my opinion.

The first piece contains a comment from a representative of the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association that “Oxfam is a worthwhile cause but they are now acting more like a business than a charity and that is a concern.”
While I can absolutely understand that it would be a concern for someone who’s livelyhood is being threatened, I’m not sure, objectively, that there’s anything at all wrong with a charity running it’s fund-raising operations as a business. That’s essentially what they are. They are in the business of raising funds to support the charity’s causes, and to me it seems somewhat asinine to suggest that, just because they’re a charity, they should operate in anything other than the most efficient way possible. Not to mention that charities get all sorts of flak when they’re deemed to be wasting funds which could instead be spent on charitable causes.

Having run my own business, for a number of years, I do have some sympathy for the small book shop owners who are finding it hard to compete with Oxfam’s operation; not only do Oxfam have economies of scale on their side, their charitable status also gives them an edge over other businesses in terms of reduced business rates, & means that they benefit from having volunteer workers, further cutting the running costs of their outlets. All of that has to be hard for a small “one man band” to compete with, and on an individual level I feel for small business owners who are out-competed by the big players.
Unfortunately though, that is the nature of business, and short of introducing legislation to protect small business, which in wider economic terms would be a disaster, (you can’t expect an economy which penalises successful, growing, businesses to flourish,) there’s not a lot that can be done to level the playing field between big & small businesses.

The answer really has to come from the small businesses themselves. Their owners need to be realistic about their business models, and need to be able to adapt it to find a niche that the “cookie cutter” business models employed by multi-outlet operations aren’t able to cater to, or, in other words, they need to specialise, to be able to offer something which the big names can’t.