Both year 9 and year 10 Geography students will know all about the need to develop renewable energy sources both in the UK and around the world. Doing this should help reduce the problem of global warming and climate change. But the question remains as to which of these types of renewable energy is the best for the UK? Lets take a look at the options.

First of all lets look at perhaps the most popular type used at the moment which is wind power. Wind power works in the opposite way to a fan. A fan uses electricity to turn the blades, to produce wind, whereas a wind mill use the power of the wind to turn the blades to produce electricity. The great advantage of wind turbines is that the wind is always blowing and that they do not release any carbon dioxide emissions once they are running. This has to be good news for global warming. Also the UK is the windiest place in Europe so you would think that we have the perfect climate, but there are disadvantages.

First of all they are very expensive to build. Also the actual construction and installation of the wind mills produces carbon dioxide. Many people think that they are ruin the landscape and make the environment look ugly. Personally I think they look beautiful. What do you think?

Solar Power is another source of renewable energy. This uses the energy from the sun in order to create electricity. Once again it is a good thing because it doesn’t produce any carbon dioxide emissions once running. There are more problems for the UK with solar energy. Lets face it the UK is not exactly the sunniest place in the world is it! Therefore this type of power is not always available. Also solar farms take up lots of space and you need lots and lots of solar panels to provide enough energy.

There are many more types of renewable energy options that are available for use in the UK. These include, hydro-electric power, wave and tidal power.

I think that the answer to solving the use of renewables is not to focus on one particular type but to use the appropriate type of renewable energy at the right time in the right place. Maybe only then will we be able to produce a large percentage of our power from renewable sources.

What type of renewable energy do you think we should try and where?

Hello to everyone reading this blog and welcome back to GeogBlog.  We hope that you have had a good summer holiday, and are relaxed and ready to do for the new term.

Last year the blog trial period began and proved very successful with lots of you taking part in reading and putting your comments on the blog - thank you for that.  We hope that you will continue to get involved with the stories and articles that are written on the blogs.

Watch out for many new things appearing on the blogs over the next few months.  There will be video, audio and much more and maybe even some homework set using this blog rather than the traditional methods.

Watch this space!!

Brazil, home to one of the major oxygen sources of the world and two thirds of all the trees, plants and wildlife in the world is a truly amazing environment. Lets find out more about it!

The Amazon Rainforest is also home to the mighty Amazon river, the second longest longest in the world being beaten only by the River Nile. The rainforest is very complex containing plant-life, wildlife and giving Brazil lots of economic gain.

The forest is built up of different layers of trees starting with the shrub which are small, to about 1 metre tall plants. Then the under-canopy which are about 3 to 10 metres tall is lower than the canopy which can reach up to 40 metres tall. Then at the very top are the emergent trees reaching up to 60 metres tall. The emergent tress consist of Mahogany, Brazil Nut and many other hardwoord trees. There are also vines such as the tree strangler which wraps around the larger trees in order to grow to reach the light.

The animals that the forest contains are amazing from reptiles, to mammals and insects to arachnids and many more. It is home to the joint longest snake in the world, the green anaconda which can grow to 10 metres long. The anaconda is a Boa snake and it is a very good swimmer as it lives its entire life in the swampy waters. The Amazon is also home to a wide variety of Arachnids such as the wandering spider. It has a potent venom and this can be deadly. Much of the insect life in the Amazon rainforest is probably not even known about because there is simply so much of it. There are also monkeys in the rainforest. They often scream out and can be heard from up to a kilometre away. Although there are many monkeys swinging between the trees there are no apes. There is a wide variety of birds, such as macaws humming birds and others. Humming birds are adapted so that they can hover and drink nectar with their elongated beaks. Many of these animals are becoming endangered species because of the deforestation that is taking place.

A lot of the animals in the forest are specialised or adapted to living in the rainforest. For example the sloths have algae on them for camouflage against birds of prey. The lancehead viper has one of the quickest strikes. The Anachonda have backward pointing teeth and they constrict their prey and then swallow it hole. Cayman have eyes that point out of the water even when their body is under water which means that they can see their prey without their prey seeing them.

The rainforest is also referred to as the “Earth’s Lungs” as it takes in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and gives out oxygen. The rainforest gets its name because of the high amount of rainfall that it receives. The rainforest receives over 2000mm of rain per year.

The rainforest is under threat. Many activities are destroying the trees and plants, such as logging, ranching and mining. These need to be stopped or slowed in order to save this ecosystem.

Although we know a lot about the Amazon, we are not even close to knowing everything about it. We have been studying it for years and years however we only know very little as it is such a big place. I feel that we need to stop using fossil fuels to power our lives and find other sources of cleaner power and then we could conserve our rainforests and the life inside them, or they will soon be gone and we won’t be able to bring them back, ever.

Written by Lewis Pilling, year 9 and parts adapted by Mr M.D. Wilkinson

There are many different types of TVs available to buy in theshops, but it is the Plasma and LCD televisions that are selling more and more. A report this week has suggested that we should tax these TVs, but why?
An ordinary television will use electricity each year that will emit around 100kg/year of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. On the other hand a Plasma TV will emit around 4 times as much from the power that it uses. Using a Plasma TV will on average emit around 400kg/year of carbon dioxide. Therefore it is environmentalists that are suggesting this tax as there every increasing use in homes around Britain are contributing to global warming or climate change.

So what do you think? Do you have a plasma TV? Should we be taxed for them?

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BBC News Report

Yes it is true, the UK has suffered from a reasonably large earthquake. On Saturday April the 28th an earthquake measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale truck in the county of Kent on the south coast.

So why did this earthquake happen? Earthquake and volcanoes, collectively known as tectonic activity usually only happen, where the earth’s tectonic plates meet on what is known as the plate boundaries. The UK doesn’t lie on one of these boundaries unlike countries such as Italy and Japan. Therefore is was unusual for a quake as large as 4.3 to hit the UK. There are however many fault lines (breaks or weak points in the rock) that run up and down the UK and also in the English Channel were it is thought this earthquake started. What happens is that over time as the rocks move pressure is built up and this causes movement once the pressure gets too much. This results in an earthquake which is what we saw on Saturday.

According to the latest news reports there have been no fatalities from the incident however there were around 200 calls to the emergency services requesting assistance. The quake is also thought to be quite costly to people as they will need their insurance policies to pay out in order to repair the damage that the earthquake has caused.

This is largest earthquake to occur in the UK since 2002 when a similar sized quake hit the Birmingham area. Have you every been in an earthquake? What do you think it would be like?

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BBC News Report about the Earthquake
The Kent Earthquake Q&A

It seems with the resources that we use to create our electricity running out (such as North Sea gas) we are going to have to turn to alternative sources of fuel in order to meet our needs. One of these alternatives in Wind Power using windmills. However the ongoing debate continues. Are the beautiful or an eyesore?

These windmills are extremely large. They are the height of about 2 or 3 houses and they always have 3 large blades. In the right windy conditions they will rotate at around 20 - 30 revolutions per minute. It is this rotation that is used to create the electricity that we demand ever more in out everyday lives. There have been a number of these windfarms built in the UK. But there are many people who are oppose to the wind farms as they believe that they luck ugly and that they ruin the landscape. They do have considerable benefits over using other sources of energy such as gas and coal.

The main reason they are good is because they emit no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere once they are up and running. This is good because it should help reduce the UKs impact on climate change.

So what do you think? Are they a good idea? Do you think they are beautiful or do they riun the landscape? Where should we put them?

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BBC Guide to wind power

In a BBC news article yesterday it was announced that an American company (ConocoPhillips) is going to start producing diesel from pig fat. Sounds bizarre? Well by the end of the year people in America could be using this product to power their vehicles. So how does it work and why is it better for the environment?

The fat that is left over from the pigs will be transformed into diesel and also cows and chicken will be transformed to power motor vehicles. The fuels that are produced are more environmentally friendly as they have lower carbon dioxide emissions and also they are sulphur free - these are two of the harmful substances that are causing environmental concern.

This all sounds very interesting however several groups have voiced their concerns over the issue, perhaps most notably the vegetarian groups. This is because the ‘pig fuel’ will simply be mixed with normal diesel and therefore customers will not know whether the fuel they are putting in their vehicle will be of animal origin or not. Vegetarians are not happy about this as they do not want to be associated with these animals products in the same way that they do not want to eat any animal products.

What are your thoughts on this idea? What are the benefits? What are the negatives? Would you like to ride a car that is powered by animal fuel?

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BBC News - Pig Fat to be Turned into Diesel