Category: climate change

What to say to a Climate Change Sceptic:

DJ Spooky on what to say to a climate change sceptic:

“What planet are you on?”

More with the multimedia artist one critic called ‘Einstein with a better haircut’ in this Mother Jones interview.

A low impact home for under €3600

From what little I know about building permits and construction codes in Slovenia, something like this would almost certainly be a non-starter here. Anyone know for sure? This is my kind of place.

A fascinating project by Welshman Simon Dale, constructed with just a few hand tools and the help of a few friends for (so far) about  £3000, or $4600 / €3600. A few key design elements:

• Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
• Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
• Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
• Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
• Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
• Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
• Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
• Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
• Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring…)
• Woodburner for heating – renewable and locally plentiful
• Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
• Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
• Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
• Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
• Water by gravity from nearby spring
• Compost toilet
• Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

And a few more shots. More info, photos, and plans here.

All photos Creative Commons, courtesy of Simon Dale.

The Death of the Kyoto Process

How many will be in mourning? With 40 days to go before next month’s climate conference in Durban, from Spiegel, 18-Oct:

“The meeting in Durban could become an act of mourning,” warns Reimund Schwarze of the Climate Service Center in Hamburg, which analyzes climate policy on behalf of the German government.

and

To stop global warming, a much faster and greater reduction in CO2 levels would be needed than the Kyoto Protocol has produced to date. But this is nowhere in sight. The reductions in emissions so far are primarily the result of economic crises and the collapse of industry in the former Soviet bloc. Noble rhetoric aside, oil, natural gas and coal have remained the foundation of modern prosperity. Major industrialized nations like Australia and Canada have even increased their emissions.

Little has remained of Merkel’s “irreversible process” to protect the climate. In emerging economies like China, which produces consumer goods for the world market, emissions have risen to such a great extent that they now far exceed those of the United States and Europe. Despite the economic crisis, worldwide CO2 emissions resulting from energy consumption reached a new record high of 33 billion tons last year, a 45 percent increase over the 1990 level.

and

The Europeans are the only ones still fighting for new binding targets within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. Last week, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and environment ministers from the 27 EU member states agreed to campaign for more negotiations in Durban, but with a transitional period lasting until 2015, even though the CO2 reduction targets are set to expire in 2012. It is an attempt to buy time and to keep the Kyoto Protocol artificially alive, even though it’s already clinically dead.

and

The malaise began in 2009, if not earlier. At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, the Europeans, most notably German Chancellor Merkel, failed in their attempt to achieve a comprehensive climate treaty. The United States and three emerging powers, China, India and Brazil, aligned themselves against Europe in Copenhagen and blocked binding targets. None of them were willing to allow foreign countries to tell them how much fossil fuel they could burn in their factories, cars and buildings.

and

“Scientists are more and more convinced of their results, but citizens are becoming increasingly saturated,” says climatologist Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht near Hamburg. According to Storch, public concern over climate change has declined for the fourth year in a row. He also sees the apathy as a consequence of the increasingly shrill, alarmist tones with which environmentalists and even a few scientists have attracted attention to themselves in recent years.

Will the Vatican’s declaration on global warming have an impact on the overall climate debate?

Via Discover’s The Intersection:

The Pontifical Academy of Science, the Vatican’s non-denominational science panel, has declared that global action on climate change must be undertaken in order to avoid “serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases…”

Will this have an impact on the US policy? Not likely.

Painting: Fran Nordland (From Nordland), by Peder Balke
National Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden

Pretty, no?

Logic of Delusion

From The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, by Wade Davis, one of the most intriguing books I’ve read in a long while:

Our economic models are projections and arrows when they should be circles. To define perpetual growth on a finite planet as the sole measure of economic well-being is to engage in a form of slow collective suicide. To deny or exclude from the calculus of governance and economy the costs of violating the biological support systems of life is the logic of delusion.

Shocker! US House of Reps votes to defund IPCC

 

Yes, the same celebrated and internationally respected IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that won the Nobel Prize in 2007.

The actual figures are unclear, but most likely the funding amounted to less than $10 million. To call that a drop in the proverbial US budget bucket is being excessively kind.

Predictably it was more or less a party line vote (244 to 179) with supporters primarily spewing forth claims, now mostly debunked, from ‘climategate’ saga of a few years ago. Here’s an unofficial manuscript of the ‘debate’. Things could still change in the Senate.

falls lake 1, originally uploaded by pirano.

Dig it! Paris Considering ban on SUVs

 

An idea that needs to spread throughout Europe. Although given Slovenia’s collective car fetish, I can’t imagine anyone in Ljubljana with the cojones to propose it.

Via Inhabitat and Autoblog Green:

Denis Baupin, an environmental official in the mayor’s office, told RTL Radio that if you’re a Parisian with a gas guzzler, you should “sell it and buy a vehicle that’s compatible with city life. I’m sorry, but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense.”

You don’t have to own a really big brain to realize that most European cities weren’t made with big cars in mind.

Details are still pretty sketchy, but the ban could go into effect by late this year or early in 2012.

From Montmartre, originally uploaded by pirano.

Pollution in China

Some terrific –and terrifying– photos of pollution in China, by Chinese photographer Lu Guang. He recently won a $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant for his documentary project aptly entitled, “Pollution in China”. Check out more here.

Climate change denial spreading like.. wildfire.

George Mombiot writes in The Guardian:

There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.

falls lake 1, originally uploaded by pirano.