Cluster: Science

New forestry action plan presented

This content was published on Dec 1, 2008 In a statement on Monday the Federal Environment Office said wood should be used more often as a building material, in composites and finally as a renewable energy source. “Wood should be utilised to extract a maximum value from it,” the office said, which is launching a four-year forestry management action plan. The goal is…

Climate solutions

360 million tons of material consumed annually

This content was published on Nov 25, 2008 Figures on Tuesday revealed that the Swiss use a total of 360 million tons of matter, an amount that would fill roughly three train carriages for every person in the country. Around 90 million tons of emissions were released into the air. About a third of materials were directly consumed. Of that amount, just over…

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Big business doing little to reduce emissions

This content was published on Nov 24, 2008 That was the main finding of a second climate change survey released on Monday by the private bank, Pictet, and the foundation, Ethos. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) survey was distributed to Switzerland’s 100 biggest listed companies. Of the 50 largest, 23 have a concrete plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but only four have…

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Winter onset causes disruptions

This content was published on Nov 22, 2008 Snow blanketed the country on Friday night, blocking various roads in the Valais and Jura cantons, and a number of minor accidents were reported. There were several electricity outages in the eastern canton of Graubünden, with unusually wet snow causing trees to fall on to power cables. Rail links to the canton were severely disrupted…

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Toilets are not to be taken for granted

This content was published on Nov 19, 2008 An exhibition entitled “Sanitation is Dignity” showed people the grim reality of life without proper sanitation, as part of the Swiss participation in World Toilet Day. More than one third of the world’s population lives without toilets and every year two million people fall victim to diarrhoeal diseases caused by the lack of sanitation. The…

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Right to eat comes before fuel, minister says

This content was published on Nov 18, 2008 In an interview with swissinfo, Environment and Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger explains the Swiss position: that the right to food comes before the right to mobility. Organised by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the conference has attracted representatives of all United Nations member countries as well as scientists, academics, and business owners. The…

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Foreign invaders threaten native Swiss species

This content was published on Nov 18, 2008 A project at Bern University has allowed scientists for the first time to take a sweeping look at the types of plants and animals that have moved to Europe from far-flung places. Such an inventory, which relied on more than a hundred scientists and three years of collecting data, has never been done before on…

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Climatologist asks for ban on coal investments

This content was published on Nov 17, 2008 A top climate scientist widely respected for work against global warming has asked the Swiss government to stop investments in coal-fired power plants abroad.

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Climate prediction remains an inexact science

This content was published on Nov 11, 2008 Almost all scientists agreed that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by humans were mainly responsible for global warming, but opinions differed on future levels of warming. Professor Reto Knutti of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Gabriele Hegerl of Edinburgh University’s School of Geosciences studied climate…

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Adventurer demands more green action

This content was published on Nov 10, 2008 Piccard, who plans to fly around the world in a solar-powered aircraft, spoke out on Monday against industrial opponents of energy reforms aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Switzerland. Piccard made his comments as Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger visited the Solar Impulse aircraft project at a military airbase in Dübendorf, outside Zurich. “We can…

Cluster: Science

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