Twister

Just for S1 who will be looking at this next week.


Some good pictures in this one.

China changes the Weather-possibly.....

The snow that fell on Beijing last week was the heaviest for many years. It was also, China claims, man-made. Some areas of farmland in the north of China were suffering because of drought. So on Saturday night China's meteorologists (weather experts) fired 186 explosive rockets with chemicals to "seed" clouds and encourage snow to fall. The US has tried this in California. The chemicals fired into the sky, usually dry ice or silver iodide, are supposed to provide a surface for water vapour to form rain. But there is little evidence that it works – after all, how do we know it would not have rained anyway? Such doubts have not stopped China claiming tha they did control the weather. Officials said the blue skies that were over Beijing's parade to celebrate 60 years of communism were a result of cloud-seeding. In 2008, more than 1,000 rockets were fired to ensure a dry night for last year's Olympic opening ceremony. As interest grows, so does concern about whether such techniques, known as geoengineering, are good for the planet and humans. "If climate change turns ugly, then many countries will start looking at desperate measures," says an energy expert ." Geoengineering worries experts for two reasons. First, the massive side effects; what it could do to the world's rainfall, for example. Second, once started, geoengineering would probably have to be continued, as stopping could bring lots of changes in climate.
With a lot of potential disasters some say, there must be a law against geoengineering. What do you think?

Underwear and the box

The BBC Box has arrived back in the UK. It left Scotland full of whisky and travelled the world. The recession hit the journey too. Listen to the story here.

Fighting Malaria

A good site here mentioned in Ollie Bray's blog here. This is a topic covered by Higher and Intermediate geography. Well woth a read. link here.

Just because.....

I can

Tornado in a bottle experiment

One for S1 to try before we start the next unit on Weather extremes. Make sure it doesn't leak or you make a real mess in the kitchen - no irn bru please!

Chocolate week

It's Chocolate Week, in case you needed an excuse for more chocolate. Here’s some information about different types we have mentioned in class.
• Traidcraft has been fighting poverty through trade, with all its profits going back to the producers. It has made a commitment to convert to sustainable palm oil for all of its products. Good news for the orang utangs.
• Divine Chocolate Kuapa Kokoo, the farmers' co-operative that produces the cocoa for Divine.
Outside of these ethical leaders, the chocolate trade is anything but sweet. More than a third of cocoa traded globally comes from Ivory Coast recently 54 children were rescued from slave labour, from its plantations. Violence in the country since 2002 has also been called the "chocolate war, with hundreds dying in conflicts over the cocoa trade.
In February, the Gates Foundation pledged £14.4m to examine conditions in the west African trade. Hershey, Kraft Foods and Mars have pledged a further £26.3m to the project. And since Cadbury's Dairy Milk brand went Fairtrade – things are perhaps looking up for these children and adults.
Chocolate is a good example of how ethical consumption can change things in the world. Even before Dairy Milk's decision sales of Fairtrade chocolate in the UK grew from £1m in 1998 to £26.8m in 2008. Cadbury's will be supplied by Kuapa Kokoo, the co-op that co-owns Divine. If it hadn’t been for Divine spending years working with farmers and educating people like us about this issue, there's no way Cadbury's could have changed to Fairtrade.