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Outdoor fireplaces are similar to indoor fireplaces and have stone or brick patio. Traditionally, like all fireplaces, even the outdoor ones were wood burning but these days, due to pollution and its energy efficient capabilities, or rather lack of it, has people moving towards gas. Even outdoor fireplaces require regular cleaning to maintain it.

Outdoor fireplaces using gas are quite popular these days as they provide immediate warmth, very similar to wood. Gas logs sets are used instead of wood in gas fireplaces. Gas logs are ceramic fibers which resembles wood. These use natural gas or propane for burning; as a result they do not produce carbon monoxide and also do not leave ashes. Vent free gas logs are always advisable for use.

Like for indoor fireplaces, even outdoor fireplaces will require few essential accessories. Depending on the budget, one can buy a range of fireplace accessories. Like a fireplace tool sets is very essential which contains a shovel, tongs, brush and poker. Fireplace screen, another important item prevents the sparks from leaving the fireplace and also prevents pets and children from coming in contact from fire. But these screens are useful in wood fireplaces and not in electric and gas fireplaces.

As ISRO scientists are decoding the data sent by Chandrayaan-1 from the Moon, the space agency is confident that India’s first lunar mission would reveal “unexpected results and things”.

“The data have been collected from unexplored area. We are well positioned with these data. We can tell the world that we have found many things, which no explorer has seen so far,” Chandrayaan-I Project Director M Annadurai said on Saturday, while interacting with students of Avanashilingam University for Women in Coimbatore.

Replying to a question by a student whether India can achieve any unexpected results from the mission, he said scientists were working on it (data). “It may take some more time to review, re-evaluate and publish,” he said.

Stating that the research carried out on the stone brought from the moon some 30 years ago had revealed the existence of water there only at the fag end of 2008, he said India’s data would definitely show the world something which nobody had seen so far.

To another question, he said there were absolutely no plans to bring oil or water, even if existed on the moon.

“We are not trying to bring oil, water or any other mineral except Helium-3, for utilising in the Earth. We are exploring whether humans can sustain in the conditions prevailing on the Moon,” he said. The scientists were also carrying out research on water and food habits and its sustainability as preparation for the manned moon mission planned by the country five years later, Annadurai said.

He told another student that on the whole, India was studying “what is moon, and how it can be totally utilised for the benefit of human being. All major countries like US, Japan and Europe are planning to resume their moon missions in a couple of months.”

On reports that there was a reverse brain drain to India after the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, Annadurai said though there was no largescale influx from abroad, ISRO was able to stop exodus to other areas. “Gone are the days when ISRO was searching for talents. Now many are trying to get into the organisation,” he said.

Moreover, ISRO had received messages from a lot of non-resident Indians from across the globe, stating “Today we feel proud to be Indians,” he said amidst thunderous applause from more than 3,000 students, who listened to him.

Earlier, replying to the felicitation by the university, Annadurai advised the students that the ladder was ready for them to scale greater heights and they need not wait for the 33 per cent women’s reservation, since more than 50 per cent of the opportunity in all the sectors in the country was waiting for them.

Ecologists have suggested that as a result of global warming, species will shrink in size, as bigger creatures will have more problems losing heat.

Though the effects of the climate change are likely not to be seen for many more years, it is important to consider how to preserve larger species right now.

“Our collective actions are negatively affecting body sizes of many living species,” Kaustuv Roy, a biologist at the University of California in San Diego, told New Scientist.

It is well-known that humans tend to hunt or fish larger animals, creating a selective pressure that favours the smaller ones that can reproduce while they are still small.

Several species of cod are smaller as a result of pressures of the fishing industry. The degradation of natural environments around the world is having the same effect by limiting the amount of food available to animals, meaning smaller animals that need less food have a head start.

But according to Roy, there is another factor that threatens the world’’s most impressive animals. “Global warming may reinforce this trend towards smaller sizes through the temperature-size rule,” he said.

The temperature-size rule, also known as Bergmann’’s rule, says that species size increases with latitude: they tend to be smaller in the tropics, and larger closer to the poles.

Bergmann’s rule is debated, but one explanation for it is that larger animals have a lower surface-area-to-volume ratio, allowing them to retain more heat and fare better in cooler climes.

Conversely, smaller species radiate their heat more easily and so are better adapted to living in warm temperatures.

There is also some experimental evidence that rearing animals in higher temperatures generally results in smaller individuals.

“In effect, our actions have set up a grand selection experiment where bigger is no longer better,” said Roy, who has also shown that species evolve faster in cooler temperatures.

“It makes sense to be bigger when it’s colder,” said Wendy Foden, a biologist at the World Conservation Union who is studying the effects of climate change on species. “As the world gets warmer, the converse will happen, species will shrink,” she added.

According to Foden, the most likely place to spot an animal that has shrunk in size because of global warming would be in an environment that has already experienced significant warming, and among species with short generation times.

Britain supports the European Union’s tough climate change proposals even as Europe falls into recession, the UK minister of state for energy and climate change told a conference on Tuesday.

“We do not believe the global economic downturn justifies postponing action on climate change until stability returns,” Mike O’Brien said.

“The case for strong and early action remains robust under the current economic situation.”

The EU Commission’s climate change and energy package tabled in January, dubbed “20/20/20 by 2020,” seeks to reduce European carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, to increase energy efficiency by 20 percent and to source 20 percent of power from renewable energy like wind or solar.

The plan bolsters the 27-nation bloc’s Emissions Trading Scheme by calling for an increase in the number of emissions permits to be auctioned to industry from 2013, including full auctioning to power generators.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shocked other EU leaders at a summit last month by unexpectedly threatening to veto the plan unless its concerns about the impact on domestic industry were met.

Italy’s employers lobby, Confindustria, has the plan will cost the country up to 27 billion euros ($34.76 billion). The EU Commission has estimated Italy’s cost at less than one-half of that amount.

Poland and six other European Union newcomers also oppose the plan, saying it is too costly for their industries.

“The UK is strongly resisting any suggestions that the package should be delayed or watered down,” O’Brien said, adding that some of the other member states had been “doom mongering.”

Much of Eastern Europe relies on carbon-intensive coal for power generation, meaning coal plants will be forced to buy all of their emissions permits under full auctioning.

“We believe auctioning is better than free allocation, because it strengthens incentives to reduce emissions and reduces windfall profits among companies. We want 100 percent auctioning by 2013,” O’Brien told the conference, hosted by Marketforce and the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Britain held its first permit auction last week, raising more than 80 million pounds ($120.9 million) for government coffers.

Morality should be a spur for stronger action to fight climate change, which threatens food and water supplies for the poorest in Africa, a group of Christian activists said on Saturday during U.N. climate talks.“We hear about climate change as a political issue, an environmental issue and an economic issue. We want to press the point that this is a moral issue,” said Marcia Owens, a minister in the Florida branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

She and a group of Christian activists told Reuters they were lobbying delegates at the August 21-27 U.N. talks in Ghana to work out a strong new treaty, due for completion by the end of 2009, to slow global warming.

In Uganda, once predictable rains in mid-August are now often arriving late, killing off seedlings of crops such as beans, groundnuts or maize in what many local people believe is a sign of global warming.

“The crops die. Farmers then have to plough and plant again,” said Rosemary Mayiga, a Ugandan Catholic and rural economist. “It is not moral for some people to go to bed with a full stomach when others go to bed with their stomach empty.”

“Rivers are drying out where we get water and fish,” Daniel Nzengya, a Kenyan Christian who is also a lecturer at Africa University in Zimbabwe. “The walk to collect water is increasing as wells dry up.”

The Accra talks are the third this year in a series partly spurred by findings by the U.N. Climate Panel last year that it is at least 90 percent likely that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are the main cause of a recent warming.

The panel projects that between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa could suffer stress on water supplies by 2020. And in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

“It is very easy to forget the human dimension. There are people today whose lives are being disrupted by climate change,” said John Hill, a Methodist who works for a group on economic and environmental justice with the U.S. National Council of Churches.

Many of the world’s religions argue that God has given humans a role as stewards of the Earth.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, agreed that there was a moral dimension. “This is a moral issue in the sense that rising emissions in rich countries should not lead to rising poverty in others,” he told Reuters.

Olympic host Beijing enjoyed its cleanest air in 10 years this month and will adopt strict new measures to ensure its notorious smog does not return, a top environment official said on Tuesday.Over the past 18 days, air quality in the capital ranged between excellent and fairly good on China’s index, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters.

And he pledged good conditions would continue.

“Beijing will be built into a liveable city,” Du said. “We will take some new measures to ensure that air quality will reach a new level after the Olympic Games.”

Du said those measures would be announced after the Games end on Sunday, once officials had studied Beijing’s “successful experiences”.

“Whether it is automobile emissions reduction, or construction site dust reduction or coal pollution reduction, I believe that the requirements will be more stringent,” he said, naming three of the top sources of the air pollution that has bedeviled the fast-growing city of 15 million.

Dirty air was one of the biggest worries in the run-up to the Games and the opening ceremony on August 8 was held in a swirl of hot haze.

Hundreds of factories in Beijing and surrounding provinces have closed temporarily in a crackdown on polluters. And traffic has flowed unnaturally swiftly since late July, when the city adopted even-odd license plate number restrictions aimed at taking half its 3.3 million cars off the roads each day.

Three days of rainfall had also helped clear the haze since the Games started, Du said, and he confirmed more showers were forecast for Wednesday and Thursday.

While a cloudy day is predicted for the Games closing ceremony on Sunday, artificial cloud seeding that helped ensure a rain-free opening may also be used before the finale in the roofless Bird’s Nest stadium, Du said.

To reassure anyone fearing that the clearer, fresher air would vanish along with the athletes, Du stressed officials were committed to a long-term assault on pollution.

“We have noticed overseas and domestic public opinion has pinned high hopes on the efforts,” he said.

Over the past three years, China has added each year new coal plants equivalent to Britain’s entire electricity-generating capacity. India has approved eight “ultra mega” plants which will add nearly half again to its present generating capacity.

Elsewhere in Asia, Indonesia is cranking up its coal-fired power generation by 40 percent and Vietnam plans to quadruple electricity generation by 2020, almost all from coal according to a source at a European utility investing in Asian power.

In Africa, South Africa is suffering crippling power shortages and racing to build new coal-fired plants, using abundant indigenous supplies. Mozambique, Botswana and Nigeria all plan new coal plants.

Even in the oil-rich Middle East, the United Arab Emirates ordered the Gulf’s first coal plant last month.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080805/t…

Really are we just disadvantaging our selves as a nation?

You don’t have to be brilliant at mathematics to figure out there’s not enough coal to support this kind of expansion over a significant period of time.

The only way the UAE is going to invest in coal power is if the price of oil keeps rising which is quite frightening. (Sell the oil to buy the coal and make a profit or it isn’t worth doing.)

Green energy isn’t going to meet demand so it’s up to the government to start investing in nuclear and make it a national asset, not some private investors cash cow.

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China also has really bad pollution problems, right now they are more concerned with raising their standard of living than with the environment but for a developed country that kind of pollution would really do some damage to the health system (which would have to treat people).

The developed world needs to switch to nuclear power and also needs to help the developing world move towards nuclear power as well (so that they don’t have to burn coal).

BTW: Those who think coal is going to run out soon are very much wrong there’s a lot of the stuff left (and that’s the problem, if it were running out there’d be no one building new coal power plants).

Yes and no. 100 years ago it was no problem not to have a car and most people didn’t have one or really need one. But since then, since WWII especially, we have been spreading out to the suburbs, distributing ourselves over the land in a way as to make public transportation less efficient and convenient and make a car more of a necessity. We can begin to reverse this process but it didn’t take place in a day and it will take a while to change.

In the meanwhile there are lots of things we can do to cut our energy consumption by half or more. For starters we could stop buying ginormous SUVs and get back into small, efficient cars. We could share cars for commutes. We could begin rebuilding the public transportation infrastructure we destroyed in the 20s, 30s and 40s. We could give people incentives to buy scooters and motorcycles.

and don’t say electric car because they normally have the power of a wet fart i mean something ground breaking a new fuel, is it because the oil company’s have great power over governments

One great scientist that has developed the best engine I have seen is Dr. Mark Hoseapple who is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M. His revolutionary Starr Rotor is only restrained due to lack of commercial development funding. This engine operates at a proven fuel to energy ratio greater than any Auto,Rankine, or Brayton Cycle system known todaay. I believe you can access his data at Starrotor.com. It is the wave of the future in transportation.

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There are electric motors powering army tanks! Some of the fastest vehicle on the planet are electric powered! Ground breaking would be if even one of the major car companies actually focused on electric powered vehicles and came up with an affordable vehicle with a solor recharge system. But as long as the oil companies are feeding them under the table they won’t change.

www.oraclegreen.tv

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Electric cars? Power of a wet fart? In that statement you have answered your own question. People (like you) just will not accept the changes in technology.

I used to work in a factory, and they used electric fork trucks. These trucks were 5-10 times heavier than a car, and could pick up a car and travel at 30 miles per hour on flat land with the car on them. The batteries had to be changed for fully charged ones about every 8 hours. Then the battery had to charge for about 12 hours, and took 15-30 minutes to change the battery. The battery alone weighed about the equivalent of a car today.

They were not built for speed, they were built for power. Build a car using what we know about electric forklifts, and there you go. instead of building it to move mass amounts of weight at low speed, build it to weigh less, and move at a higher rate of speed. Forklifts were built heavy on purpose to counterbalance the weight of a pallet sitting on the forks which extend out in front of the front wheels.

The reason scientists have “not came up with the technology” is simply because the critic (that’s you) pass judgment before becoming even slightly educated about what they are judging.

Do you drive your car 8 hours a day? Most people just drive them to work, and to run a few errands, and don’t really need all the power from a vehicle that they think they do.

My car has a 20 gallon gas tank. I use about a tank a week. at $4 a gallon that’s $80 a week on gas. Unless I am traveling I use my car for 4 hours a day tops. Ok so I’ll go ahead and switch the battery out every day for a recharge. That’s 1/2 hour a day (on the high side) so 3 1/2 hours a week spent changing batteries. Now divide $80 by 3 1/2 hours is $22.85 an hour I am saving by taking the time. in a 4-week month $320 saved on fuel. Let’s say the charger cost me $100 a month in electricity. That still leaves me with $220 more going into my vacation fund each month. $2,640 a year. Vacation time I’m getting on the intestate so I will rent a car. $2,640 is enough to pay for that and still leave a surplus of cash to spend.

All because I was willing to make a sacrifice in my daily life. And your asking why the scientists haven’t came up with a better energy source? I think your question should have been “Why haven’t I just accepted some change in my day to day life to save me a ton of money?”

Now get on your phone, and call your local DMV and find out if they will let you put license plates on your forklift so you can drive it to and from work every day, and when your friends car breaks down, pi

ck it up with your forklift and carry it home for him

all they realy want is 99% less people on Earth

Are you aware that there is even a group of people with the goal of making humans go extinct?