Sustainability
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UN review says carbon plans fall well short of climate goals
Read the full article online at http://www.bbc.com “A UN review of national plans to cut carbon says they are well short of the levels needed to keep the rise in global temperatures under 2C. The report finds that by 2030 the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere will be some 25% above that mark. The analysis takes […]
SPACE, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND THE REAL MEANING OF THEORY
Read the full article online at http://www.newyorker.com “I used to be an astronaut, a spacewalker on the International Space Station. Naturally, most of my fifteen-year crew career was spent on the ground, working with engineers to get the Station built and fully crewed for scientific research, but the day-in, day-out flow of this ground work […]
The World’s Disappearing Sand
Read the full article online at http://www.nytimes.com “MOST Westerners facing criminal charges in Cambodia would be thanking their lucky stars at finding themselves safe in another country. But Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, who is half British and half Spanish, is pleading with the Phnom Penh government to allow him back to stand trial along with three Cambodian […]
World’s First Outside Vacuum Cleaner to Filter Dirty Air
Read the full article online at http://www.ecowatch.com “A Dutch tech startup called Envinity Group has unveiled a giant outdoor vacuum cleaner designed to filter the tiniest toxic specks from the atmosphere. The invention was presented at the Offshore Energy trade fair in Amsterdam on Tuesday. “It’s a large industrial filter about 8 meters (26 feet) long, made […]
NASA: Earth Is Warming at Rate ‘Unprecedented in 1000 Years’
Read the full article online at http://www.ecowatch.com “Another day, another dire warning about the global climate emergency. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) top climate scientist announced Tuesday that the Earth is warming at a pace not seen in at least the past 1,000 years, making it “very unlikely” that global temperatures will stay below […]
App assesses climate change contributions per car
Read the full article online at http://www.springwise.com “Consumers looking to buy a new car can now use MIT’s newest app, CarbonCounter, to check the carbon footprints of 125 cars currently on the road. The number of renewable transport options is growing, with new ride sharing services using electric smart scooters and solar-powered cars using moss to […]
Solar Cost Hits World’s New Low
“Chile awarded a contract to sell solar power for $29.10 per megawatt hour (MWh), the lowest ever across the planet. This surpasses the record set in May of a $29.90 per MWh bid in Dubai for an 800 megawatt (MW) solar project. “
Swedish apartment encourages cycle-friendly lifestyle
As cities seek to become greener and healthier places to live, cycling is increasingly being catered for. In Malmö, Sweden, this now extends beyond infrastructure like bike lanes and cycle paths, with a specially designed apartment block and hotel being built for people who wish to lead a car-free lifestyle. Designed by architects Hauschild+Siegel, Cykelhuset Ohboy will comprise 55 apartments, ranging in size from one to four bedrooms, and a “bike hotel” on street-level with 31 mezzanine apartments, all spread across seven floors. Like Foster + Partners’ 250 City Road in London, UK, it will feature space for bike storage, large elevators to accommodate bikes and a bike workshop, as well as focusing on greenery and sustainability.
Iceland Carbon Capture Project
A pilot project that sought to demonstrate that carbon dioxide emissions could be locked up by turning them into rock appears to be a success. Tests at the CarbFix project in Iceland indicate that most of the CO2 injected into basalt turned into carbonate minerals in less than two years, far shorter a time than the hundreds or thousands of years that scientists had once thought such a process would take.
Extent of America’s Landfill Problem
America, land of the … landfills? That’s what we’ve turned into since 1937, when the first sanitary landfill opened in Fresno, California. Today, there are nearly 2,000 active landfills across the country and hundreds more are at capacity, a stark reminder of just how massive our waste problem has become. This visualization from SaveOnEnergy shows how quickly landfills have boomed across the country, particularly in the past 30 years. One thing we have to remember when looking at this is that trash, and landfills, are a human invention. Waste does not exist in nature, in any form. Everything that is produced in a healthy ecosystem is consumed or decomposed by another organism, or the sun. That is because, in a natural system, everything has value to something.
