Interesting Facts

2nd February 2007 - Hundreds of scientists who had taken part in a U.N.-sponsored study concluded in a report that human activity was to blame for global warming, largely through greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.

Manchester Airport ran out of fuel today, delaying more than a dozen flights. (The airport gets through three million litres of aviation fuel a day. The fuel is pumped through a 30-mile pipeline, which is the airport's only source of aviation fuel, every day transporting the equivalent of 79 road tankers' worth of fuel, but suddenly the flow of fuel dried up as production problems at the the Essar refinery near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire meant that fuel stopped being pumped to the airport early this morning. Usually the airport has between 12 and 24 hours of spare capacity, but the Jubilee weekend had been very busy with about 300,000 people flying over the four days, and by 17:15 BST the fuel had run out.  I've only ever run out of fuel once, and it was hubby's fault.)

According to Jay Keasling, a scientist at the Aspen Ideas Festival, E.coli, the bacteria behind food poisoning worldwide, could be turned into a commercially available biofuel within the next five years. (E.coli bacteria is already used to make some plastics. Companies usually don't mention the unusual ingredients to customers. I wonder why?)

In the weirdest car recall in history, Mazda has had to recall 65,000 of its saloon cars in the US, Canada and Mexico after spiders were discovered nesting in their fuel pipes! (The first incident was spotted in October 2009, when a Mazda6 was brought to a dealer with a fuel leak. A spider had spun its web in the fuel tank vent pipe, which created a vacuum in the tank, eventually cracking it. Maybe they thought they were Lotus Spyders.) http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/04032011/36/spiders-prompt-itsy-bitsy-mazda-recall-0.html

From today all petrol and diesel sold at UK pumps has to include at least 2.5% biofuels.

Glastonbury uses 30 megawatts of electricity over the weekend - about as much as the city of Bath. (Of course there is no electricity for your tent, so don't bother taking a hairdryer, but the 200 generators, which use 100km of cabling, are used to supply most of the stages, markets and backstage portacabins. The festival is also making a big push to use renewable energy. The Green Fields - including the 1,000-capacity Croissant Neuf marquee - only use renewable energy, mainly from solar and wind power. And there are solar-heated showers (although not many visitors use them), while generators in several areas use biodiesel sourced from recycled cooking fat. Listen Here.

Fruit can be made into a 'powerful fuel'. (US scientists have said that the sugar, fructose, found in fruit such as apples and oranges can be converted into a new type of low-carbon fuel for cars. According to an article in the journal Nature, the fuel contains far more energy than ethanol. Another, British report on biofuels says all types of waste products, including plastic bags, can be used to make biodiesel fuel.)