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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… 5 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: transportation
Location Efficiency More Important than Home Energy Efficiency
How important is Location Efficiency? Median US home price: $175k. With a traditional 20% down 30 year mortgage, total loan payments amount to about $350k. Utilities over the same timeframe are around $75k. And the cost of commuting from suburbia? … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, cities, energy, finance, oil, planning, suburbia, transportation
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Seville on how to be bike friendly
Seville, Spain has gone from 0.4% (essentially zero) to 7% bicycle mode share in 5 years. Boulder’s bike share is something like 9% and we’ve been at it for 20-30 years. This suggests to me that we are being too … Continue reading
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Tagged bicycle, europe, infrstructure, paths, separated, seville, spain, transportation
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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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Population Growth vs. Migration in Boulder and the World
The Boulder Blue Line has a short post entitled This Law Cannot Be Repealed by Albert Bartlett, who is an emeritus professor of Physics at CU, and who is most well known for speaking about the absurdity of “sustainable” growth … Continue reading
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Tagged bicycles, boulder, cities, growth, non-linear, planning, population, transportation, urban
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Green Manhattan
A good piece from The New Yorker on what makes dense urban areas intrinsically better for the environment than suburbia or back-to-the-land fantasies. More people closer together need less transportation to go about their daily lives. High density buildings need … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, cities, energy, planning, sustainability, transportation
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Understanding the Republican Party’s Reluctance to Invest in Transit Infrastructure
A great look at the geography behind the Republican demonization of mass transit. To a large degree in the US cities are democratic and the exurbs and hinterlands are republican. Since so much of our transportation funding gets funneled through … Continue reading
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Tagged cities, congress, density, funding, geography, politics, taxes, transportation, urban
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Hackable Cars
A study of the security (or lack thereof) inherent in today’s highly computerized vehicles. Not much better than voting machines overall. We’re connecting dangerous things to our networks much faster than we’re learning how to keep them from blowing up. … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, hacking, sabotage, security, technology, terrorism, transportation
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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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Links for the week of December 3rd, 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 activism, apocalypse, architecture, assange, assassination, carbon, cars, climate, coal, design, energy, government, greenpeace, internet, iran, israel, law, lifecycle, nuclear, passivhaus, politics, privacy, rail, research, science, stuxnet, sustainability, technology, terrorism, transparency, transportation, travel, wikileaks
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Links for the week of November 26th, 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 australia, bicycle, boulder, cars, china, cities, climate, coal, economics, electricity, energy, infrastructure, netherlands, planning, policy, politics, safety, sharing, suburbia, sustainability, technology, trade, transportation, urban, wto, zipcar
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