| MAKING GREEN ROOFS HAPPEN!!! FYEAH! |
[Feb. 2nd, 2006|08:10 am] |
After 60 smog days and finding out how much money
they will save... the T.dot gets greener. En Masse!
Toronto City Council approved "Making Green Roofs Happen", its green roofs strategy The recommendations that Council approved today include a commitment to install green roofs on new and existing buildings owned by the City, green roofs are to be considered for existing municipal buildings when roofs are due to be replaced. For new City-owned buildings, the Green Roofs strategy sets a target of green roofs covering 50 to 75 per cent of a building's footprint. The council also recommended that a pilot program of financial incentives be initiated this year for the construction of green roofs. City officials will also work with Toronto Hydro and the Toronto Atmospheric Fund on the possibility of offering building owners additional financial incentives for retrofits.
Joe Pantalone, Deputy Mayor and Chair of the City's Environmental Round Table said, "Torontonians have asked us to do more to promote green roofs. In response, the City has approved a comprehensive approach - from establishing standards and building our capacity to support Green Roofs at the City level, to offering education, funding, expert advice and promotion." Yeah that's all it takes, ask. Oh and save the city $300M.. The City recently commissioned a multi-disciplinary green roof benefits study by Ryerson University. Researchers found that an eight-percent coverage of existing rooftops with extensive green roofs would generate over $300 million in initial cost savings in areas such as storm water management, combined sewer overflow reduction, building energy savings, and the urban heat island reductions. Operational cost savings for the city from this level of coverage were calculated at approximately $40 million per year. So remember kids, all you have to do is ask:p Still as we say up here; Awesome news, eh?
[CNW Group] |
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| vertical axis bold as love... |
[Jan. 30th, 2006|11:29 am] |
welcome to the wacky world of
Vertical Axis Wind Turines!
treehugger has this super cute pic on their site today talking about The QuietRevolution; these really hot vertical turbines that light up at night! And, being the TH-junkie that i am, went to comment right away. And i was going to splather the comments with a bunch of links (like I often do- under my typekey pseudonym du jour) 'bout all of these different types of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines.. instead I simply wrote: "VAWTs ROCK THe HOUSE!!" and that was it(!) Besides, it was a really hot VAWT: Carbon fiber ...only one moving part... I may have a new winner in my favorite VAWT catregory.
 "
There were others... I used to have a thing for that one up there-- still do. My first vawtlove, the Windaus (which BTW STILL has the best homepage for any vawt) was a local one. But like I said, there have been others.. See, here's the deal. They make no noise (ok the mega-huge 1.5MW turbines don't iether), and kill no birds or bats --again with most new mega turbines that isn't a problem, but if you live in the country and want to have a 2KW Bergy or SouthWest Windpower, you will have noise and you will have dead birds... and you don't go to the country to hear a windmill whine.. So again, VAWTs ROCK THe HOUSE!!
...and they have cool designs like mad!! ( Read more... ) |
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| next year they oughta at least nominate Jamais.... |
[Jan. 27th, 2006|05:18 pm] |
Concrete Canvas beats Plantic for
Saatchi's prestigious World Changing Awards!
Well Saatchi & Saatchi have given the 2005 World Changing Award (a shabby $100K) to Peter Brewin and William Crawford, the engineering team from London's Royal College of Art who invented the "Concrete Canvas"-- a quick install emergency shelter system. They took the prize over a dozen other finalists who included my favorite bioplastic company (Plantic), as well as the FROZEN ARK PROJECT (Nottingham University, UK) -- Plan to save the DNA of all Earth's endangered species, BIO-SOLAR ENERGY NANODEVICES (MIT, Cambridge, USA) -- Minute solar cells that use spinach to convert sunlight into electrical energy, JOT-A-DOT (Rydalmere, New South Wales, Australia) -- The first real innovation in Braille writing in 50 years, A LENS-FREE OPHTHALMOSCOPE (Cambridge, UK) -- Simpler, much less expensive than traditional models, for carrying out accurate, highly revealing retinal examinations, SPLASHPOWER (Cambridge, UK) -- Recharges cell phones etc wirelessly when placed on mouse mat-sized pad., WIKIPEDIA (Florida, USA) -- Free-content, on-line encyclopedia, written collaboratively by volunteers worldwide, and a handful of other finalists. While David Byrne wasn't a judge this year, Philip Glass and Lou Reed were. The awards are still a little quite but I figure in a few more years these are going to be the academy awards of sustainability..... |
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| more movies!! |
[Jan. 26th, 2006|08:57 am] |
The materials can conduct an electrical current without any losses and expel an external magnetic field, making a permanent magnet levitating in free space above the surface of a superconductor.
From MRIs to MAGLEV 500 kmH trains to High Energy Particle physics.. super-
conductivity, magnets and wild magnetic fields are very important. If you want to brush up on your superconductivity, or have some questions, check out the bar ilan institute of superconductivity or the good folks at Penn State. But if you really just want to see something wiked kewl and stare in awe at some of our future technologies, then click on this here link and watch a 2 minute movie where you can see the magic behind the 500KmH trains.. |
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| Toto, I think we are in kansas still |
[Jan. 25th, 2006|01:27 pm] |
In Lawrence Kansas, Plans for a $75 million sewer plant considered crucial for future community growth may be delayed while city leaders learn all about living machines
“I think it would be easier on the river and the environment,” said Tom Bracciano, a member of the Public Advisory Committee and facilities planning director for the Lawrence school district. “Anytime you can use a natural approach, that’s good.” they are actually going ahead with this! Makes me so happy! |
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| DAMOCLES |
[Jan. 24th, 2006|07:17 am] |
"Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities
for Longterm Environmental Studies"
 
OK it's no secret that i love WorldChanging, and today's article by Jamais cascio on DAMOCLES is a perfect example of why-- not only does he show us this amazing new tool but he brings it up in the light of MashUps and that just rocks! MashUps as you probably know, used to be audio and video collages where two predominant cultural artifices (say, a Madonna song and a song by Young Buck) get spliced and mixed together to create a synthesis of the two in a new and funny way... Well the MashUp Jamais is talking about is a little different, but amazing!! He brings our attention to DAMOCLES, a project by the Technical University of Denmark to provide compelling and useful information on the effects of climate change on Arctic ice. DAMOCLES adds satellite and ground-level sensor data to Google Earth polar maps, providing daily-updated readings of ice motion and thickness. Wow! so you can now see whats happening in real time (almost, you can see the Total ice concentration image, 3-day ice drift vectors from Global Monitoring Mode data of ESA's ENVISAT ASAR, Location and drift track of the Russian North Pole 34 manned ice drift station, and Location of a number of drift buoys in the Arctic region. Most of these buoys are deployed as part of the International Arctic Ocean Buoy Project. Updated daily, Data supplied by the AARI (Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute) in St. Petersburg. ).
Love it!!! forget video games, this is the real deal..... |
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| .....enlightening |
[Jan. 23rd, 2006|08:51 am] |
Levitating wirelessly powered lightbulbs!
Jeff Lieberman, MIT PhD student showed off this beaut recently, and posted about it on his website. he invented a lightbulb that gets its juice wirelessly... not only that, but as you can see, the lightbulb levitates(!) As he explains on his website (which has some groovy movies about the experiments); "Lightbulb explores two phenomena I find interesting, the stabilization of unstable systems using feedback, and wireless power transmission. Feedback systems often levitate objects, stabilize inverted pendulums, and the like. Wireless power transmission has been around since Tesla's invention a century ago, although it is still not widely utilized. I wanted to explore these effects together." I think it's a great first exploration! Check out the movies as the text is a little techy.... not only is this waykewl-- the implications of these experiments are far reaching.... |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 19th, 2006|03:35 pm] |
Michael Reynolds and Gang take reuse to the nth
Ok, so this may be old hat to many of you-- but to some of you, this may come as one more inspiring evidence of our evolution, and people turning a negative into a positive! So lets go. No doubt you're aware that there are around 4 billion used tires in North American Dumps, we throw out close to 300 million a year, and Europe isn't that far behind. From the micro swamp breeding grounds for west nile and (increasingly) malaria, to the horrendous tire fires, this is a huge problem that won't go away on its own. But here's Michael Reynolds to show us how problems are sometimes solutions in waiting....
( prepare to be dazzled.... ) |
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| reGrowing the RainForests |
[Jan. 18th, 2006|01:34 pm] |
meet my bud Ranil. He proves that nothing is impossible!
I've been meaning to write about this for some time now... and today i guess is the day... because everyone needs some good news now and then... So sit back and enjoy. And if you only take one thing from this tale, please know that nothing is finite. People will try to make you feel bad and helpless, and say stuff like "once the Rainforest has been cut down it can never grow back!" And the point is, that is just plain not true. Over the past two decade, Ranil, um, Dr. Ranil Senenayake has been re-growing rainforests. He, and his army of forest gardeners have been proving just how resilient our planet is. And the positivity is infectious!
Ok the ¿HOW? first:
What they do (Analog Forest gardeners) is go to a place where a rainforest once was (and of course cleared for burgers, car paneling, or guitars...). They find out from the signs there (pollen...) what the trees were that were living there before the devastation. And they get baby trees, the same as were there, or analogous to those, and replant those trees in the groupings as before. Of course the baby trees, in a real rainforest have a shady setting in which to grow, so what the forest gardeners do is plant shade producing crops around the trees (like tomatoes, yerba, yucca, and other things to eat). And i tell you, it's magic! Within a few years they can no longer grow the vegetables because the trees are already tall and even producing things (cinnamon, nuts, avocados...). At this point the forest gardeners have ample produce to gather and actually earn a decent wage. Beyond that what the trees bring, somehow, is the rest of the forest; I don't know how, but they bring back the flowers, medicinal herbs, clingy vines, birds... i swear you look at a 15-20 year old analog forest and you will be shocked that it was once a clearcut!
Additional !Wow! Factor:
So, here's Ranil's story: When he was growing up in Sri Lanka, Ranil got a job as a lizard-catcher. Obviously, with some time to enjoy and appreciate nature, he started to tinker on his analog systems where the tea plantations had abandoned lands they previously sucked the life out of with Monoculture and NPK. He got really excited when he saw the results and tried to alert the authorities that there was a way to bring the Rainforests back to life. But no one in the government would believe a lizard catcher. so Ranil, see he's cool enough not to be deterred, ended up getting accepted to UC Berkeley, and in the late 60's at the Haight of radicalism, Ranil received his PhD in Systems Ecology. He returned to Sri Lanka where all of the sudden everyone wanted to know how they could revive their rainforests.
Now, a few decades later, Dr. S has spread his system to Brazil, Costa Rica, the Philliipines, Canada, and many other places around the globe. you can join in the fun! In Sri Lanka you can stay at a hotel in the middle of a revived analog Rainforst, you can take take courses in the North to then implement elsewhere, and you can support companies that not only work spreading the good news of Dr S, but also sell products from the Forest Gardeners.. Learn more about it from this awesome primer Ranil helped write, and of course, if Sri Lanka is too far, you can always check out the new forests in costa rica! |
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| Organic + Solar = $1/Watt |
[Jan. 18th, 2006|12:14 pm] |
"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.....
...Or, more roll-up solar materials for funky clothes!
..So, this company in Pittsburgh called Plexatronics just got $1Million dollars from the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority to pursue the development of their printable organic solar cells. They have this stuff called PlexCore PV which, they say, will bring the price of solar panels down to a dollar a watt!
Plexatronics has been a leader in RFID technology, printable electronics and some way-kewl light emitting polymers (with the catchy acronym, PLEDs, but hey that's nothing. who coined their Highest Orbital Molecular Orbital energy levels, really?) Anyway, the Plexicor is a (printed organic polymer) P-Type semi-conductor (gathers the positives) backed with "Bucky" Fullerene on the back which is an N-Type semi-conductor (yeah you got it, gathering the positives...)
 (bonus points for using Bucky Balls!). The grant's not huge, and the technology is in it's infancy, but seriously we're going to have recharging jackets and bags in no time!!! |
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| ..advanced generation of living machines |
[Jan. 17th, 2006|08:36 am] |
...from designer microbes, to the waste eating kind...
..the news today is that the Living Design Group has launched a new generation of Living Machines. Now, even more simple to operate, cost effective and aesthetically pleasant! As opposed to the first generation of (greenhouse enclosed) Living Machines, this Advanced Generation of Living Machine systems require no environmental enclosure in moderate climates, and can be integrated seamlessly into the working green space of a variety of project types and scales. In addition, they do not produce bio-solids (sludge) and can withstand large variations of loadings associated with seasonal uses.
Just to back up a little, Living Machines, invented by Dr. John Todd, use plants and microbes to clean water instead of chemicals. They can handle household waste, and easily tackle industrial wastes, turning 600 to 750,000 gallons of waste per day into hyacinths and snails... Dr. Todd (a student of Bucky Fuller BTW), has been working with Living Machines for decades has found that there are certain plants or small animals that love certain kinds of waste. What he does is let the water run through a series of cisterns with different plants in each. What one plant likes to eat, it turns into other forms of waste, so in the next cistern he has the plant that considers that waste food. By the time the water comes out, it's 5 times cleaner than traditional waste water treatment.
For communities, Living Machine systems are an alternative to dependence on municipal wastewater treatment facilities and provide a cost effective and smart growth alternative to extending existing municipal sewer lines. In addition, they can be designed and expanded in a modular fashion so that wastewater treatment is consistent with the needs of a growing community.
the LDG is based in Taos NM (what a wild place!!) and while Dr. Todd is not actively involved in the Group (he teaches at UVM, it's a little far) he is in their hearts, that's for sure... they (LDG) also do have a pretty active blog, so you can follow the advancements of this technology, sure to spread around the globe to anywhere where.. where we can use clean water! |
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