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- Canadian Oil Sands Flyover
An aerial/telephoto exploration of the Canadian Oil Sands operations. Two trillion barrels of oil in the ground. Pyramids of sulfur and coke. Lakes of oil stretching to the horizon. At $200k/yr, it's easy to understand how one might get roped in, gold rush style. - Clean energy will unfortunately be political
Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy, as revealed by ALEC bills and other PR documents. This morning at the World Renewable Energy Forum, in response to a (long winded) question about how we might re-frame the energy discussion in light of the unfortunate hay which was made from Solyndra's failure, US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu re-iterated that clean energy should not be a political issue -- that it's just common sense. That may be true, but it doesn't mean it will remain apolitical. As Pericles once said... "Just because you do not take an interest in - The Dangerous World of Underground Chemistry
A look at the increasingly outsourced world of underground pharma. Domestic black-market chemists handle R&D and distribution, and the actual manufacturing is done in China. Seems that way with everything. - Google Street View for building energy efficiency
Essess is doing drive-by thermal imaging in high density urban areas across the US, hoping to target possible building energy efficiency opportunities. Another company is using urban satellite imagery to choose the best rooftops for solar energy siting. Big Brother may be watching you... but at least occasionally he's got the right idea. - The Neapolitan Mob’s Most Dangerous Family
A character sketch of Paolo di Lauro, one of the Neapolitan Camorra's former leaders. Southern Italy it seems, like some parts of Mexico, operates with more than one quasi-state organization governing in parallel. A tacit negotiation between the official and unofficial systems, which sometimes erupts into violence -- ironically, at those times when the so-called "criminal" organizations have become weak.
- Canadian Oil Sands Flyover
Twitterfeed
- Incredible photo essay on the Athabasca Tar Sands operations: businessinsider.com/canadian-oil-s… 4 days ago
- At a great talk about individual cities as the right scale for renewable energy systems innovation at #wref2012 1 week ago
- Heard rural Wyoming folk talking local Chinese coal/gas investments, hacking of their SCADA water system. I live in a @GreatDismal future. 1 week ago
- The tar sands have to stay in the ground. Stop the pipeline… again. And again. And again, if necessary. act.350.org/sign/kxl/ 3 months ago
- Roughly 2/3 of all the humans who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. 4 months ago
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: design
Alex Steffen’s SXSW Eco Keynote
Alex Steffen gave one of the keynotes, at the first SXSW Eco Conference this fall, talking about good cities as the single best leverage point we have in reducing GHG emissions. It’s broadly the same collection of ideas as his … Continue reading
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Tagged alexsteffen, carbon, cities, climate, design, ghg, urban
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Location Efficiency and Housing Type
According to this EPA study, regardless of the type of housing, living in an area with good transit access saves more energy than building a “green home”. Of course, living in a mixed use, transit accessible apartment that’s also energy … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, building, cities, density, design, efficiency, energy, planning, sprawl, transportation, urban
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Leveraging digital design in synthetic biology
Automatic Design of Digital Synthetic Gene Circuits from PLoS Computational Biology. They seem to be saying look, real biology isn’t generally digital, and all that continuum behavior means we need a bunch of new and complex tools to do anything … Continue reading
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Tagged bioinformatics, biology, computational, design, genetic engineering, plos, science, technology
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Into Eternity by Michael Madsen
I am now in this place where you should never come. We call it Onkalo. Onkalo means hiding place. In my time it is still unfinished, though work began in the 20th century when I was just a child. Work … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged civilization, design, energy, engineering, film, future, history, nuclear, philosophy, review, reviews, time, waste
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Construction of a Canadian PassivHaus
A great slideshow with captions showing the construction of a PassivHaus in Ottawa. Relatively high density, and relatively high end. I’d love to build something along these lines… and live in it.
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Tagged architecture, building, canada, construction, design, efficiency, energy, passive, passivhaus, solar
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The (HVAC) Elephant in the Room
A look at the difficulties of getting good HVAC design in high performance homes. Most HVAC professionals are not familiar with the design requirements of very energy efficient homes with tight envelopes. Most rules of thumb and the very basic … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, building, design, efficiency, energy, hvac
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Toward a Zero Energy Home by David Johnston and Scott Gibson
I’ve been looking, apparently in vain, for a good book (that’s not in German!) detailing Passive House building and modeling techniques. The best I’ve been able to do so far is Toward a Zero Energy Home, and it must have … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, books, design, energy, passive, passivhaus, reviews, sustainability, zero
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German Passive House building robots
A short video from German home fabricator Hanse House. They do both stock and custom homes, but both are fabricated off-site. The video shows their production facility, and some of the techniques for putting together a building in pieces. It’s … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, design, efficiency, energy, germany, hansehouse, manufacturing, off-site, passivhaus, prefab, public, robots, sustainability
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Boulder’s Passive Aggressive Building Standards
Usually when people say that “better is the enemy of good enough”, they’re pointing out that striving for perfection can be a distraction from just getting the job at hand done. There are other dynamics that involve these concepts too. … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, boulder, climate, colorado, design, economics, efficiency, energy, passivhaus, policy, public
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Links for the week of December 9th, 2010
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
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Tagged architecture, cars, china, climate, coal, design, economics, energy, gm, government, history, india, internet, journalism, law, media, newspapers, nytimes, passivhaus, policy, politics, search, streetcars, sustainability, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, technology, transparency, transportation, usa, wikileaks
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