Source: NBC The 10! Show
As I along with Rob Fleming and Chris Pastore catch up on things, here are links to items of interest.
Looks like the climate models are improving and are in line with observations (good for the models, not for us)
Fryer and Pastore on local TV news magazine discussing green lifestyles and the carbon spending plan
Could this be the future of green materials? Local manufacturing, DIY
Is there a way to get climate hawks and deficit hawks together?
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guardian.co.uk
Dubbed the “Electric Razor”, The Strata Tower is another first for London Architecture. It’s a residential building, with below-market-rate units mixed with market-rate units. It is linked with mass transit, too. By the way, it’s in Elephant & Castle, Southwark, London. You can read more here.
Will this be a new trend in green architecture? Leave your thoughts below.
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image by media.lehighvalley.com
I like baseball, and very much enjoy the statistics that can derive from so many events. During today’s game they were talking about the Earned Run Average of pitchers over the past few decades. (For those who don’t follow baseball, this is a measure of how many runs a pitcher gives up in a standard game.)
I wasn’t happy with just seeing a summary of ERA per decade, so I went to baseball-reference.com and got the yearly data from 1944 until 2009. This is the average ERA of every pitcher in MLB for a given year.
Below is a plot of that data. You can see there is no obvious trend here – it goes up, down, up again… Some people might say it has a “hockey stick” like shape.
Avg. ERA MLB Pitchers Over Time - Data From baseball-reference.com
It got me thinking about global average temperatures. We see data like this regarding the earth’s temperature – it goes up and down, and has been increasing lately. One of the big questions to me is whether this is caused by random phenomenon, human activity, or some natural variation. Sure, it is probably a combination of all three, but the degree of human participation is the key question.
Instead of trying to answer that question, as I am not a meteorologist nor a climatologist, I decided to see if there was any correlation between global temperature and ERA. I went to NASA for the temperature data and average May through September for each year to reflect just the baseball season temperatures.
Here’s what I got from the correlation, plotting the temperature change (compared to 1964) with the corresponding year’s league average ERA.
Correlation Between Avg. ERA MLB Pitchers and Global Avg. Temp. - Data from baseball-reference.com
It’s not a perfect correlation, of course, but it does seem to show a trend! Could it be that in fact homeruns are the cause of global warming?
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by pppspics
Abiotic Oil
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has brought up a renewed interest in “abiotic oil” (or “abiogenic oil”).
Most of us learned in high school that oil is a “fossil fuel.” It is the result of extremely long pressure and heat changing biological life into petroleum. We think in terms of hundreds of millions of year, and consider our current oil to be ultimately derived from dinosaurs and such. This theory has been associated with Georg Agricola who proposed it in the 16th century.
Alexander von Humboldt, in 1804, was exploring Venezuela and wrote petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie. He considered the source of petroleum to be inorganic, not biological.
In 1951, Nikolai Kudryavtsev developed the modern theory of abiotic oil based on his studies of oil reserves in Alberta, Canada. In a very simplified explanation, the early earth methane atmosphere became condensed and eventually led to oil pockets – based on carbon content long before any life formed on earth. Some consider the high methane content in the Gulf oil to point to abiotic origins.
Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, is one of the leading specialists in the theory of abiogenic oil. He recently said:
What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.
(Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight.)
If Khutcherov is correct, this is bad news and good news. The bad news is that this oil reserve may be extremely large, and will continue to leak for a very long time. The good news is that if he is right, the concerns about “peak oil” are all wrong – there is plenty of oil to last for a very long time.
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by theboybg
Over the years I have found architects generally resistant to change. Starting with the huge fight against computer aided design to the bemoaning of ADA requirements, to the outright negativity towards sustainability, to the bashing of LEED and lastly, to the criticism of the integrated design process.
Sometimes referred to as a design charrette, the integrated design process features groups of stakeholders working collaboratively to literally design a building (at least site location and parti). This process almost always includes the end users, community members, engineers, designers and of course architects.
Over the last ten years I have had the pleasure of participating in several of these events – some moving forward like clockwork leading to a wonderful design scheme as built through the consensus process and others were more like train wrecks with battling egos and side squabbles that ultimately derailed projects. So, while the process is by no means perfect, the promise of a collaborative multi-disciplinary process is evident. I
n one case 40 people gathered to design a YMCA building on an underused, but much loved farm near Philadelphia. After one week of constant discussion, drawing, arguing and shouting and storming out of rooms, the client decided not to build the project.
That sounds like failure, but how many times have architects spent 6 months to design a wonderful building only to find out that the project must be shelved for either financial or political or financial reasons? The charrette process worked.
In another Charrette held in Center City Philadelphia, the team decided that a geo-exchange system was necessary to achieve a net zero operation. However, there was no open space for drilling. Answer: call in a geo-exchange expert during the charrette and attack the problem.
The result was 6 standing water columns 1,500 feet deep right through the sidewalk on 15th street.
Over these same years I have repeatedly heard from architects, who once again are losing territory to other professions, that “a horse, designed by committee is a camel.” And then laugh and walk away.
Now, let’s put that comment in perspective. It is true that the potential for compromised aesthetics and unconventional functionality can emerge from a design by committee, but isn’t that exactly what our society needs right now? We need buildings that are designed for performance as much as they are designed for aesthetics.
A camel is a remarkable animal capable of traveling over a hundred miles through desert heat on one fill up of water. A horse in the desert under those conditions is dead. 20th century-aesthetically-driven-design is basically a dead horse. We need the design of architectural camels, buildings capable of functioning on little to zero energy, buildings capable of harvesting and utilizing rain water, buildings that defy convention, buildings that may, at times look odd, but nevertheless provide some sorely needed societal benefit.
This of course assumes a context for design and construction that is, in effect, a desert. Given the harsh realities of peak oil, global climate change, scarcity of materials and challenging economic times, can we afford to continue to build beautiful race horses designed for the sprint?
Or, is it incumbent upon us to design camels to venture into the societal desert upon us and last for the long marathon?
Therefore, we must embrace the integrated design process, learn about its nuances and complexities so that we can begin to find new ways to innovate and create buildings that will be both aesthetically pleasing that also bare functional fruit for years to come.
“But green buildings are ugly,” is a comment I heard on Friday from a very intelligent colleague. I wonder if she really meant that green buildings are different – like a camel looks different.
And finally I wonder if camels are considered beautiful in desert cultures that rely on them for transportation. I bet if we looked really close and examined the camel with an open mind – its beauty will be apparent.
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Mikey Da Photographer
SHOCKING! In case you haven’t noticed, what people say and what people do are often very different.
Ok, so human nature is not new, but the Shelton Group’s Eco Pulse 2010 is. And its findings on the public’s view of the environment and green products are . . . surprising.
Now, being a student of psychology and communication (otherwise known as education) – I like to think of this as a starting point. This is not a fixed opinion, but is open to persuasion.
But to persuade, you first have to understand your audience. What are their biases, their preferences, their viewpoint?
1. Choosing what’s easy instead of the the big wins. To impact people’s decisions, it’s essential to realize: we are not wholly rational beings. Most of us will agree that the environment is something to protect, that it’s the “right thing to do”, but that doesn’t mean we will respond to a logical analysis of our home by installing an energy efficient furnace. We must connect emotionally first before convincing with reason.
To have a big impact on your own lifestyle, it is ESSENTIAL to identify the big wins. We are so subject to the emotional appeal of peer pressure and marketing that it’s hard not to choose what’s easy. But, as I outline in the Smarter Living Framework, the big wins must be emotionally meaningful to start to have an impact, let alone last for years. The only way to do this is to integrate sustainability with the life goals you already have.
Ask yourself, have you completed a personal Green 101 Course? Look at the right sidebar of this web page. Have you done the top 10 things listed there? Have you automated your house, so you minimize your impact without thinking about it?
2. Doing what’s right means a drop in the quality of their life. If you value showing your children how to do the right thing, if you value a healthy home, then consciously arranging your lifestyle to align with these does not mean a drop in your quality of life, it actually means an increase in it!
The quality of your life is improved when you are making conscious decisions on how to allocate and use your resources, like time and money.
3. Believing the price is not worth the value. If you think that your iPod provides more value than the environment, then you are not (yet) being convinced by the price/value argument you’re presented with right now. The iPod is valued because so many people that you know have it, because it’s easy to upload any music, because it’s easy to carry around, and because it’s beautiful. But deep down what makes an iPod so successful is because the value it really provides is freedom. Music while roaming freely. Freedom to choose the music. You can tell a lot about a person by the music they have on their iPod. The iPod signifies your identity, but gives you a platform of free choice on how to do it.
What value does living a green lifestyle provide?
Truly empowered people know that they have limited resources and focus it on the things that matter. Beginners try to use tips on everything and make very little impact. In fact, using tips without a strategy actually sets you up for failure.
Where do you see yourself? Are you able to overcome what’s easy to make an important impact? What would your response be if your child asked you, “What are we doing to protect the environment?”
Before you go, leave your answer to the question above: “What value does living a green life provide?”
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D'Arcy Norman
Now is the time for going green
. . . at least as far as your house is concerned. There has never been and, perhaps, never will be a better federal incentive programs than right now. The window, though, is closing fast (pardon the pun). The federal government will offset your costs for home improvements that meet some very basic requirements. For example, you can get a 30% tax rebate on energy efficient windows up to 1,500 dollars. Installation is not included. The windows must be rated at a ‘U’ value of .30 or lower. Average windows have a u value of .5 or so. So that means that the energy efficient windows will perform 20% better.
That does not mean, however, that your entire house will perform 20% better. Your home’s performance is based on many factors of which windows are just one part. For example, if you buy really good windows but install them poorly as in allowing lots of air in and out, then you have defeated the purpose of buying the windows in the first place. Beware of advertisers making false claims about the impact of windows upon your energy bills. The same is true for insulation, which also qualifies for a tax rebate. If the insulation is installed poorly, it is a waste of money.
It has an Initial Solar reflectance of .27 which means that the roof reflects heat better than a typical roof shingle. The word initial is there because roofs lose their ability to reflect heat over a given period of time. So the shingle must be of high quality to maintain good performance. Our family’s roof cost $12,500 dollars. $5,000 dollars was used to purchase the shingles. 30% of 5,000 dollars = 1,500 dollars which is the maximum allowed for the federal tax credit.
According the rules as I understand them, that is the maximum we can get total for the current rebate program (not including solar and some other high end technologies). The roofer explained that our shingle selection added $2,000 dollars to the project, which was then offset by the $1,500 dollar rebate. We are not sure how long it will take to repay the $500 dollar difference. We hope to see a reduction in air conditioning use this summer, but already the temperatures in Philadelphia have been record breaking, so the AC has been on. We will be comparing last year’s electricity use and temperatures versus this year. Stay tuned for updated numbers.
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NWFblogs
This is Andrew Sullivan’s take on the BP Oil Spill:
Oil companies failed to report fully what they were planning, and permits were approved with almost absurd speed. In the Deepwater Horizon case, a permit was approved a mere 10 minutes after it was submitted. Obama did nothing to stop this syndrome when he came in, and his interior secretary, Ken Salazar, is well known for his cosiness with big oil. That will change now.
Alas, what won’t change is the oil addiction that has forced the US to drill deeper and deeper in more and more treacherous waters, where techniques carry more risks precisely because the terrain is brand new. If you want to assign real, structural blame, it belongs in the end to the American people, who simply refuse to wean themselves off carbon and want to continue having the cheapest petrol in the West.
This habit bolsters America’s enemies, empowers oil-rich Islamic states and is slowly cooking the planet. Meanwhile, the climate change bill passed in the House of Representatives remains stalled in the Senate. Because deep-sea oil exploration was a key way to get some Republicans on board for the package, the bill that might in the long run have prevented the same thing happening again has been killed by the BP gusher and a suspension of deep-sea drilling.
The obvious solution — some kind of carbon tax — remains anathema. Remember that America is a country whose de facto leader of the opposition, Sarah Palin, ran on a slogan of “Drill, baby, drill!”
Which means that it’s not just a question of when this ghastly gusher is stopped; it’s a question of when exactly this will happen again.
Do you think this is over the top? Leave a comment below!
Oil companies failed to report fully what they were planning, and permits were approved with almost absurd speed. In the Deepwater Horizon case, a permit was approved a mere 10 minutes after it was submitted. Obama did nothing to stop this syndrome when he came in, and his interior secretary, Ken Salazar, is well known for his cosiness with big oil. That will change now.
Alas, what won’t change is the oil addiction that has forced the US to drill deeper and deeper in more and more treacherous waters, where techniques carry more risks precisely because the terrain is brand new. If you want to assign real, structural blame, it belongs in the end to the American people, who simply refuse to wean themselves off carbon and want to continue having the cheapest petrol in the West.
This habit bolsters America’s enemies, empowers oil-rich Islamic states and is slowly cooking the planet. Meanwhile, the climate change bill passed in the House of Representatives remains stalled in the Senate. Because deep-sea oil exploration was a key way to get some Republicans on board for the package, the bill that might in the long run have prevented the same thing happening again has been killed by the BP gusher and a suspension of deep-sea drilling.
The obvious solution — some kind of carbon tax — remains anathema. Remember that America is a country whose de facto leader of the opposition, Sarah Palin, ran on a slogan of “Drill, baby, drill!”
Which means that it’s not just a question of when this ghastly gusher is stopped; it’s a question of when exactly this will happen again.
Visualizing the current extent of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – check it out
Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan
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