First Wolves Tagged for Satellite Tracking in Turkey
A new project to follow wolves as they roam through the wilds of eastern Turkey will help determine how much space is needed to protect them and how conflicts with people can be reduced.
A new project to follow wolves as they roam through the wilds of eastern Turkey will help determine how much space is needed to protect them and how conflicts with people can be reduced.
50-Acre Pile of 250,000 Tires Could Lead to Prison Time
The man responsible for a 50-acre pile of 250,000 tires in rural South Carolina could spend a year in prison.
Cyber Monday Boasts Green Beauty Deals
Take advantage of green beauty deals with Naturopathica and Juice Beauty on Cyber Monday.
Is This North America’s Greenest Building?
JR: The University of British Columbia makes its case for North America’s ‘greenest’ building in this video and the following news release. Feel free to link to other buildings that might vie for this title. South America’s green building of the moment is here.
The University of British Columbia has opened the most sustainable building in North America, a $37-million “living laboratory” that will help to regenerate the environment and advance research and innovation on global sustainability challenges.
The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is one of only a handful of buildings worldwide that will provide “net positive” benefits to the environment. It reduces UBC’s carbon emissions, powers itself and a neighboring building with renewable and waste energy, creates drinking water from rain and treats wastewater onsite.
CIRS will be an international centre for research, partnership and action on sustainability issues, including green building design and operations, environmental policy and community engagement. Researchers will study users’ interactions with the facility to improve building performance, maximize the happiness, health and productivity of its inhabitants and advance best green building practices at UBC and beyond.
“With the world’s urban population projected to jump by two billion people in 20 years, universities have a crucial role to play in accelerating solutions for the sustainability challenges facing society,” said UBC President Stephen Toope. “CIRS is a flagship project in UBC’s ‘living laboratory’ concept, where researchers, students, operational staff and partners develop sustainability innovations on campus to be shared with society.”
Partners have committed more than $23 million in support for CIRS, including the federal government ($8.4 million), the provincial government ($5.7 million), BC Hydro ($5 million), and Modern Green Development, China’s largest green real estate developer ($3.5 million). CIRS also has strategic partnerships with corporations such as Haworth, for adaptable workspaces, and Honeywell, for building controls and automation – both of which made in-kind contributions to the facility.
“Our Government is pleased to be celebrating today’s opening of the CIRS,” said the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, on behalf of the federal government, which provided support through the Canada Foundation for Innovation ($4.5 million), Sustainable Development Technology Canada ($2.4 million) and Western Economic Diversification Canada ($1.5 million). “This facility will be crucial to the continued growth of our emerging clean technologies sector as a driver of the Canadian economy, opening up new avenues of opportunity, creating jobs and delivering environmental benefits.”
“B.C. is a climate-change leader, and CIRS brings together the people and the technology to take that leadership to the next level,” said Dr. Moira Stilwell, Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Research and Innovation, on behalf of the B.C. government, which contributed $5.7 million from the B.C. Knowledge Development Fund ($4.5 million) and other grants. “Our investment in CIRS will pay dividends in jobs for British Columbians as new technologies are developed, and improved environmental stewardship the world over.”
Built to exceed LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge standards, CIRS is one of the few commercial buildings constructed primarily of certified wood and beetle-killed wood (currently B.C.’s largest source of carbon emissions). Its wood structure locks in more than 500 tonnes of carbon, offsetting the GHG emissions that resulted from the use of other non-renewable construction materials in the building such as cement, steel and aluminum.
Major features of the four-storey, 60,000 square-foot facility include: the BC Hydro Theatre, which has advanced visualization and interaction technologies to engage audiences in sustainability and climate change scenarios, the 450-seat Modern Green Development Auditorium, indoor environmental quality and building simulation software labs, a building management system that shares building performance in real-time and a café that uses no disposable packaging and serves local and organic food.
Designed in collaboration with Perkins+Will architects, CIRS will house more than 200 inhabitants from several academic disciplines, including applied science, psychology, geography, forestry and business, and such operational units as the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI), which works collaboratively to integrate the university’s academic and operational efforts on sustainability. CIRS website makes building technical information and performance available to the public.
“This is a place for big ideas with global impacts,” said USI Executive Director John Robinson, a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore in 2007, and the leader behind CIRS creation.
“Unsustainable buildings are 100-year mistakes that affect us all, so accelerating the adoption of green building practices is crucial,” added Robinson, a professor in UBC’s Dept. of Geography and Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability. “CIRS will serve as an agent of change, providing cities and builders a model to learn from, improve on and ultimately surpass.”
CIRS is one of four flagship projects – valued collectively at more than $150 million – of UBC’s transformation into a living laboratory for sustainability. Innovations that result from CIRS and other UBC sustainability projects will help UBC to achieve the most aggressive carbon-reduction targets at any major research university: a 33 per cent reduction in Vancouver campus institutional GHG emissions by 2015, a 67 per cent reduction by 2020 and 100 per cent by 2050.
Related links:
- CIRS multimedia, with embeddable video and high-res photos: http://cirs.ubc.ca/about/media
- CIRS website: http://cirs.ubc.ca
- UBC Sustainability website: www.sustain.ubc.ca
Quick facts about CIRS:
- Natural lighting: CIRS’ U-shape design maximizes natural daylight and fresh air for inhabitants, who control their environment (light levels, temperature) with their computers.
- Flexible workspaces: With power, data and ventilation under modular floorboards (instead of through walls or ceilings) at each workspace, offices can be reconfigured overnight.
- Green IT: CIRS has no desktop computers or servers guzzling energy. Inhabitants “remote access” into desktops, drives and servers, which are stored “in the cloud” instead.
- Psychology: One of many research projects is a study of CIRS’ influence on thoughts and behaviors and science-based methods for encouraging people to act sustainably.
- Earth-friendly eats: At CIRS’ Loop Café, you stir your coffee with dry linguine, which composts faster than stir sticks. There is no disposable packaging onsite.
- Cost comparison: CIRS cost 25 per cent more than an equivalent LEED Gold building, which is standard at UBC. The university is projected to recoup the extra cost in 25 years or less through reduced operation, maintenance and energy costs –and reap significant cost savings over the building’s project 100-year lifespan.
CIRS’ “net positive” environmental impacts:
- Energy: By capturing energy from the sun, the ground and the nearby Earth and Ocean Sciences (EOS) building, CIRS heats itself and returns 600 megawatt hours of surplus energy back to campus.
- Operational carbon: CIRS’ operations require no fossil fuel and the surplus energy CIRS returns to EOS removes an additional 150 tonnes of GHG emissions annually through reduced natural gas use.
- Structural carbon: CIRS’ wood structure locks in more than 500 tonnes of carbon, offsetting GHG emissions from non-renewable materials used in the building’s construction, including cement, steel and aluminum.
- Water: CIRS will satisfy the water needs of 200 inhabitants, plus hundreds of auditorium and café users, by capturing rain and treating it onsite. Water that can’t be used for drinking will recharge the local aquifer.
Backgrounder
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is one of North America’s largest public research and teaching institutions, and one of only two Canadian institutions consistently ranked among the world’s 40 best universities. Surrounded by the beauty of the Canadian West, it is a place that inspires bold, new ways of thinking that have helped make it a national leader in areas as diverse as community service learning, sustainability and research commercialization. UBC offers more than 55,000 students a range of innovative programs and attracts $550 million per year in research funding from government, non-profit organizations and industry through more than 7,000 grants.
Modern Green Development Co. Ltd. is an international property development company and one of the largest green building developers in China. With a special emphasis on comfort and energy efficiency, Modern Green has invested more than $100 million CAD in supporting green building research and development. In cooperation with the world’s leading architects, builders and scholars, the Beijing-based company has developed more than 10 million square feet of green buildings in China, with annual sales of more than $500 million CAD. Modern Green has green development targets of 6 million square feet per year. For more information, visit: www.chinamg.com.cn/english/chmoma.jsp
Haworth, Inc. is a global leader in the design and manufacturing of office furniture and organic workspaces, including raised access floors, moveable walls, systems furniture, seating, storage and wood case goods. Family-owned and privately held, Haworth is headquartered in Holland, Michigan and serves markets in more than 120 countries through a global network of 600 dealers. The company had net sales of US $1.21 billion in 2010.
Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader, serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; turbochargers; and specialty materials. Honeywell is dedicated to protecting the environment with a comprehensive and contemporary commitment to address some of the world’s toughest challenges. Honeywell helps its customers conserve energy, reduce waste, and become more efficient and productive.
Perkins+Will Canada is an integrated architecture, interiors, and planning firm recognized for its leadership in Corporate + Commercial + Civic, Healthcare, Higher Education, K-12 Education and Science + Technology. The firm is committed to sustainability and high level green building design, creating modern, functional, and flexible spaces, utilizing the latest, most efficient technology and sustainable design principles.
– University of British Columbia
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Record Number of Monarch Butterflies Hit California
This year has been a record year for Monarch Butterlfies, including the first genome sequencing of the insect.
Georgia Business Declares New Company Policy: ‘We Are Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone’
A business owner in western Georgia instituted a new company policy recently: “We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”
Bill Looman, who owns U.S. Cranes, LLC in Waco, Georgia, explained that while “I’ve got people that I want to hire now,” he didn’t think he would be able to foot the expense “unless some things change in D.C.”
Not content to simply implement the new policy internally, Looman decided to plaster it on all his company’s trucks. He did so, as 11Alive noted, “for all to see as the trucks roll up and down roads, highways and interstates.” Watch it:
The notion that President Obama’s economic policies preclude small businesses from hiring new workers isn’t the only ludicrous claim Looman pushes. A cursory glance at Looman’s public Facebook page shows he is prone to anti-Obama conspiracy theories. Earlier this month, he posted a false report that Larry Sinclair – the man who claimed he did drugs and had sex with President Obama – had died and implied foul play, writing “MAKES YOU WONDER HUH?” Looman’s page is also riddled with pro-confederate and anti-Muslim postings.
More importantly, Looman’s assertion that he would be able to hire more workers but for Obama’s economic policies defies reason. In the last few months alone, Obama has proposed giving major tax credits to businesses that hire new workers, including a $4,000 credit for hiring the long-term unemployed. Just this week, Obama signed a law to give additional tax credits to businesses that hire veterans.
Ironically, despite the fact that he claims to want to hire new workers, Looman’s anti-Obama anti-hiring stance will prevent his business from enjoying any of these new incentives.
Freight Farms Grows Organic, Local Produce in Recycled Shipping Containers
Freight farms equips recycled shipping containers with hydroponic organic local gardens.
Great Email Commentary: Who Are the Real Sceptics?
Frankly, it warms my heart to read about scientists critiquing their colleagues’ work ruthlessly. I like my scientists second-guessing themselves. I also like them doing what they can to stamp out any interference in their research by the militantly ignorant.
– Matt Bush in a repost
Did you hear about this Climategate 2.0 bullshit? Why are journalists not getting fired for all this ridiculously irresponsible misreporting?
Over the last couple of days, we’ve been graced with the news that 5,000 personal emails exchanged by climate scientists have been leaked to the public. These aren’t recent emails, mind you, these emails cover the same time span as those released in the last ‘shattering’ leak. So hack journalists and parties with vested interests are forcing us to discuss yesterday’s news today.
The mass media is once again doing the public a gross disservice through an unbridled flexing of staggering incompetence. Many reporters are defiantly refusing to even look beyond the now infamous text file (itself consisting almost entirely of shamelessly mined quotes) when writing their stories. What makes this myopia so damning is that in most cases, a fucking glance at the actual email the mined soundbite came from will lay the context bare – effectively refuting the entire article.
There are countless examples of such vacuous hype on Google News. No doubt you’ve already seen some. If you haven’t, you can start with this gem (shared courtesy of none other than Rupert Murdoch’s own glorified histrionic soap box). All we have here are the veritable peacocks of mindless dogmatism splaying dazzling shows of confirmation biases in defence of their stock holdings.
Even the better articles succumb to the deluded trap of giving ‘the opposition’ a voice on matters of science. If high school science was taught the same way, it would sound something like this: “That’s chemistry for today, class; now don’t be late for alchemy after the break!”
You have to stand in awe at the scandalous behaviour of these so-called ‘journalists’. I would love to see a dump of their leaked email exchanges. This is intellectual suicide at its most intrepid.
What can’t be disputed is that the the biggest sceptics of man-made global warming appear to be the scientists themselves, and that’s the way it should be. This is how science is done. We wouldn’t know that the planet is warming if no one tried to disprove it. Thankfully the scientists attack the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis at every angle, and they do so thoroughly; and to our collective despair, AGW has repeatedly proven itself bulletproof.
Frankly, it warms my heart to read about scientists critiquing their colleagues’ work ruthlessly. I like my scientists second-guessing themselves. I also like them doing what they can to stamp out any interference in their research by the militantly ignorant.
Only a public horribly ignorant of the methods of science could possibly be taken in by such a travesty of lazy, biased reporting.
The timing of the leaks is obviously calculated to disrupt the upcoming UN climate change conference in Durban. Representatives of developing countries already affected by global warming are considering ‘occupying’ the talks to try to push for an international action plan. That this isn’t getting more coverage alongside the leaks is another media scandal.
With each new piece of data in the public sphere, I find myself even more dumbstruck by the sheer selfishness of the denier project. Irresponsible reporting makes journalists part of the problem. It’s no wonder that journalists are the least trusted group of professionals in Australia.
That a few people seem to think climate scientist Phil Jones is an incompetent dick is hardly newsworthy, and it says a lot less about the validity climate science as a whole. Phil Jones has already responded to the latest leaks.
Have the media already forgotten that massive independent study – funded by deniers – that was published last month and showed unequivocally that the planet is inarguably warming? Earlier this month, more data was released indicating that we only have another five years to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions if we want to avert catastrophic global warming.
The current fixation on what was happening in the world of climate science last decade is also plainly ridiculous. Science isn’t static. Anyone who thinks it is simply doesn’t know anything about science, and therefore isn’t qualified to make credible comments on the work of scientists.
It’s also interesting to note that the contents of the dump totalled at around 5,000 emails. Perhaps the most brazen demonstration of the stupidity of the leakers isn’t that they intentionally quote-mined emails they released alongside the original emails, but that they added this little nugget to their maliciously deficient little text file:
The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons.
We are not planning to publicly release the passphrase.
Why the fuck not? I’m sceptical; I want to know these ‘various reasons’. They saw fit to include emails containing little more than holiday greetings and similar banalities. How do these disingenuous tools decide on which emails to withhold? 220,000 emails is an awful lot to withhold.
Even the worst of the so-called deceptions alleged to have been perpetrated by the scientists at the centre of the current propaganda campaign are nothing on those perpetrated by their denialist detractors. I covered some of these demonstrable crimes in my defence of the science behind anthropogenic global warming, which you can read here.
Urgh.
I invite you to look through the emails themselves here. There is a remarkable preponderance of no absolutely evidence of scientists trying to mislead the public. In fact, they appear to have been making every effort to not mislead the public. I know, right?
You can read some worthy coverage here and here.
Update: Check out the RealClimate team’s responses to this whole drama here.
– Matt Bush is a journalism student at Swinburne University. He is also a raging godless progressive, a satirist and a science geek. He blogs at Entropy & Iteration.
Arab League Approves Sanctions On Syria
The Arab League today approved financial sanctions on Syria after the Bashar al-Assad regime’s failure to end the violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists there. Nineteen of the organization’s 22 members voted to support the sanctions, which “include a travel ban on senior Syrian officials and a halt to commercial flights to the country. Dealings with Syria’s central bank would be halted, but basic commodities needed by the Syrian people would be exempted from the list of sanctions.”
Update
The BBC obtained exclusive access to the Syrian Free Army, a group of rebel fighters and Syrian regular army defectors.
Maybe the best retail ad ever
Patagonia's home page this weekend
In the midst of the madness of black Friday, and this weekend of American consumerism run amok, come a few wise words from the outdoor retailer Patagonia.
In a full-page ad in the New York Times, the privately held company asks shoppers to think more carefully about what they purchase, and the real cost of all the things we buy.
The headline: Don’t Buy This Jacket
“We ask you to buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else,” the company says.
The rest of the ad is worth reading, and thinking about, so I’ll copy the text here:
It’s Black Friday, the day in the year retail turns from red to black and starts to make real money. But Black Friday, and the culture of consumption it reflects, puts the economy of natural systems that support all life firmly in the red. We’re now using the resources of one-and-a-half planets on our one and only planet.
Because Patagonia wants to be in business for a good long time – and leave a world inhabitable for our kids – we want to do the opposite of every other business today. We ask you to buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else.
Environmental bankruptcy, as with corporate bankruptcy, can happen very slowly, then all of a sudden. This is what we face unless we slow down, then reverse the damage. We’re running short on fresh water, topsoil, fisheries, wetlands – all our planet’s natural systems and resources that support business, and life, including our own.
The environmental cost of everything we make is astonishing. Consider the R2® Jacket shown, one of our best sellers. To make it required 135 liters of water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60% recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.
And this is a 60% recycled polyester jacket, knit and sewn to a high standard; it is exceptionally durable, so you won’t have to replace it as often. And when it comes to the end of its useful life we’ll take it back to recycle into a product of equal value. But, as is true of all the things we can make and you can buy, this jacket comes with an environmental cost higher than its price.
There is much to be done and plenty for us all to do. Don’t buy what you don’t need. Think twice before you buy anything. Go to patagonia.com/CommonThreads or scan the QR code below. Take the Common Threads Initiative pledge, and join us in the fifth “R,” to reimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace.
That’s good environmental messaging. But is it good business for a company to urge people to buy less? Moreover, is there a disconnect between this ad and Patagonia’s own plans for grow, open new stores and mail out more catalogs?
Patagonia responds in a blogpost about the ad:
The test of our sincerity (or our hypocrisy) will be if everything we sell is useful, multifunctional where possible, long lasting, beautiful but not in thrall to fashion. We’re not yet entirely there. Not every product meets all these criteria. Our Common Threads Initiative will serve as a framework to advance us toward these goals.
Patagonia, to its credit, is pushing us (and its own people) to think about what sustainable consumption might look like. There’s nothing inherently wrong with buying stuff–without consumption, we’d have no jobs or economy–but our goal should be to buy stuff with the lowest possible environmental footprint, stuff that is produced and transported using renewable energy and stuff that, when it’s no longer useful or needed, can be turned into something else. Consumption, in other words, that is part of a zero-waste, zero-emissions economy.
It’s a long, long way from here to there, but we need to start down that path down, and we need visionary companies, as well as visionary environmentalists and politicians, to help us figure out how to get there. In an industry where lots of companies (notably Nike and REI) are thinking hard about sustainability, for obvious reasons–their business depends on the outdoors–Patagonia is leading the way.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to become a more responsible holiday shopper, check out the NRDC and its Green Gift Guide (plant a tree in Costa Rica, adopt a wolf in Yellowstone), which features some mildly amusing celebrity videos from people like Kyra Sedgwick and Tony Shalhoud on bad gifts. Worth a look, too, is the Simplify the Holidays challenge from the invaluable Center for a New American Dream which suggests gifts of time or hand-made gifts.
In another bit of encouraging news, those Thanksgiving Day store openings that I blogged about last week [See my blogpost Thanksgiving Shopping Madness and especially the comments) have generated more than the usual backlash. Yesterday, the New York Times’ James Stewart did a terrific column about Anthony Hardwick, whose change.org petition challenged Target to give workers Thanksgiving Day off.
Then again, there was this:
At a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles, one woman seemed to take her position in line very seriously. Authorities said 20 people at a Wal-Mart store suffered minor injuries when a woman used pepper spray to gain a “competitive” shopping advantage shortly after the store opened on Thursday evening.
Ah, the spirit of the season.
Berlin: the City is Wild
Tourists and natives alike know that Berlin is a wild city. But do they know just how wild?
Four Percent Uptick In Trash Tipping Rate An Indication Of Improving Economy?
Trash generation rate correlated with economic activity at State level.
