22 Apr 08 |
Photo courtesy of hugoahlenius at Flickr.com.
The oceans are in trouble. Fish catches are starting to fall despite an increase in the number of people fishing and despite advances in fishing technology. Many fish that were once plentiful, such as cod and Chilean Sea Bass, are almost unobtainable. Due to overfishing, new diseases, climate change, and pollution, we are reaching a tipping point where many species are no longer able to replace their losses.
“Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles.”
If fish disappear from the ocean, the effects will be massive. Roughly 2 billion people rely on fish for the majority of their protein intake. Without this food source, starvation is a very real possibility for many fishing villages. Luckily, some people are looking for an alternative before widespread extinction sets in. Kona Blue is one such company - they’re spearheading a program of deep ocean aquaculture. In the words of Neil Sims (Kona Blue’s founder):
“We would have never been able to sustain our population if we had remained a hunter-gatherer society on land. And I’m not sure what makes people think we can remain that way in the ocean,”
The response from chefs is encouraging - imagine sustainable fish that tastes even better than fish from the ocean!
Photo courtesy of swee at Flickr.com.
Popularity: 7% [?]
16 Mar 08 |
Photo courtesy of fastfoodforthought at Flickr.com.
Rooftop gardens, which are also sometimes called “Green Roofs”, have been encouraged in the developed world as a way of moderating urban temperature and rain water flood surges. In India, a new program is developing rooftop gardens with different goals in mind.
Rooftop gardens offer urban farmers a chance to turn squalor into nutrition. Equally important, they offer diversity to the household income. In a country where many women and low-caste men are often shut out from job opportunities, green roofs can do more than minimize the impact of weather.
Photo courtesy of /\ltus at Flickr.com.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Photo courtesy of coolskipper at Flickr.com.
A new study shows that 40% of the world’s oceans are “heavily affected” by human activity. But what does that mean?
Human efforts are turning mangrove forests into beachfront resorts, and creating dead zones off the coast of estuaries. There are even sections of the ocean where plastic debris blocks out sunlight. It’s time for a change.
Photo courtesy of milford cubicle at Flickr.com.
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Photo courtesy of Forkie at Flickr.com.
As I write this, a large swath of China has been devastated by winter storms. Some news services are referring to this unprecedented weather as China’s Katrina.
Millions of people are without power, and essential supplies are running low due to blocked roads and collapsed bridges. There’s some worry about civil unrest throughout the country, and inflation is escaping the control of government agencies as people buy food and coal on the black market. I’d guess that a few companies who rely on Chinese factories are going to feel the pinch in coming weeks. You can see the extent of the problem on these satellite photos.
The question that comes to mind is what’s causing this crazy weather? Paradoxically, severe ice storms are one of the side effects predicted by global warming models. Other side effects include more powerful hurricanes, increased wildfires from lighting strikes, and more devastating tornadoes. One of the other paradoxes of climate change is that while some areas along the coast experience flooding, other areas my be plunged into drought.
Photo courtesy of oybay at Flickr.com.
The United States is also experiencing some of these problems. Fierce winters have dropped unprecedented amounts of snow in the American Northeast. A new study hints at direct links between rainfall in the Southwest US and air pollution. This has some interesting implications on the drought that’s gripping the region.
These ongoing events will add some fuel to the fire of the global warming debate. Considering the amount of CO2 that the US and China are responsible for, it seems almost like justice that we’re experiencing the effects. Unfortunately, climate change doesn’t affect just the people who are responsible for it. Many island nations that produce virtually no pollution are being swamped by rising sea levels. Conservationists are just as likely to lose their homes to wildfires as anyone else. Tornadoes can hit wind turbines and do more damage than they would to coal power plants.
Severe weather affects us all.
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Photo courtesy of Miguel Mc Conell at Flickr.com.
A resort in Chile just finished building the biggest swimming pool in the world- it’s a kilometer long and big enough for sailboats! The crazy thing is that it’s only about 100 feet away from the ocean. If somebody wants to go sailing, why not walk down to the beach and do the real thing?
Photo courtesy of Miguel Mc Conell at Flickr.com.
The environmental impact of swimming pools is stunning, and mega-pools are only the tip of the iceberg. Sure, they’re not as easy to see from orbit, but the volume of water in backyard pools adds up too. More and more people are moving into homes with pools our adding pools to their existing homes. “In 1950, Americans owned only 2,500 private residential swimming pools; by 1970 they owned 713,000.” There are more than 7 million private swimming pools in America today.
Photo courtesy of nina_theevilone at Flickr.com.
As you may know, pools use a lot of water to fill and maintain. For example, the typical uncovered pool in Arizona loses 4 to 6 feet of water a year to evaporation. Since water supplies are running low throughout the country, it would help if more people used pool covers to reduce evaporation and conserve water. Chemicals also evaporate away and pool covers reduce the need for additional chemicals too.
Pool covers reduce the amount of make-up water needed by 30 to 50 percent and reduce chemical consumption by 35 to 60 percent. Reflective pool covers can also be used to reduce the amount of light reflected by the average pool (a significant factor in urban heat islands). In cold areas of the country, dark pool covers are useful in reducing heating costs (because they warm up in sunlight). Oh, and properly designed pool covers can even prevent children and small animals from drowning in the pool!
If you have a pool, here are 8 ways to conserve water and electricity:
1.) Install a pool cover. As much as 70 percent of a pool’s heat loss is caused by evaporation. It also will keep your pool or spa cleaner and reduce the need to add chemicals.
2.) Reduce your pool’s water temperature and the number of months you heat your pool. This lower energy use will reduce your carbon footprint and cut your bill down to size.
3.) Keep your pool’s cleaning and heating equipment clean and lubricated . Well maintained equipment is more efficient and will last longer before it needs to be replaced.
4.) Switch your pool filter and sweeper operations to off-peak hours. When it’s hot outside, air conditioners suck a lot of power out of the grid. During these peak times, many electric companies have to run dirty backup generators and they also charge higher prices. If you have a time-of-use meter, running your pool equipment only during off-peak hours can save you money. Off-peak times are generally between 6 p.m. and noon weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday.
5.) Install a new water-saving pool filter. A single backflushing with a traditional filter uses 180 to 250 gallons of water.
6.) Shorten the operating time for your swimming pool filter and use the automatic cleaning sweep. In the winter, two hours a day of filtering could cut your filter’s energy use by 40 percent to 50 percent, without any noticeable difference in clarity or sanitation.
7.) Create a windbreak around your pool with native plants and shrubs. This wind break will prevent breezes from reaching your pool and keep hot, dry air from sucking away moisture. It also makes the pool a more attractive and enjoyabe place to relax.
8.) Use a “green” pool cleaning service. The traditional way to clean a pool is to drain all the water, acid wash the lining, and then refill the pool with thousands of gallons of additional water. In drought stricken Phoenix, a company came up with a way to save water during the cleaning process! Calsaway Pool Service pioneered a cleaning method that filters the pools contents and then pours the water back in! Their process also takes less time, and because it conserves 10,000-30,000 gallons of water per pool, it offers massive cost savings too.
There are even bigger changes you can make to you pool to save water, reduce chemicals, and minimize electric costs. Salt water pools are one option - they have slightly lower evaporation rates and use fewer chemicals than other pools. Whenever I use a pool with heavy chlorine, I always have to go take a shower to keep my hair from turning green. So, salt water pools reduce water use in that way too!
Photo courtesy of milksss ×Þ at Flickr.com.
You can even do away with your pool altogether! Drain that pool, and you’ve got a half-pipe for skateboarding…
Photo courtesy of db_cooper at Flickr.com.
…or an oversized planter for gardening! If your yard doesn’t have room for a vegetable garden, think about streamlining by filling your pool with soil. You don’t even have to tear out the concrete lining, just add dirt and - viola! - you’ve suddenly got the biggest planter on the block (although you may want to layer the bottom with crushed rock to ensure proper drainage)!
Photo courtesy of larry st at Flickr.com.
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Flickr photo courtesy of Hesiem.
We’ve been reading a steady stream of news stories from the New York Times about the mind-bogglingly large environmental problems in China. This latest article talks about a looming water crisis resulting from a combination of pollution, waste, mismanagement and population and economic growth, and it’s pretty alarming.
From the article:
For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere.
China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.
China’s disadvantage, compared with the United States, is that it has a smaller water supply yet almost five times as many people. China has about 7 percent of the world’s water resources and roughly 20 percent of its population. It also has a severe regional water imbalance, with about four-fifths of the water supply in the south.
Mao’s vision of borrowing water from the Yangtze for the north had an almost profound simplicity, but engineers and scientists spent decades debating the project before the government approved it, partly out of desperation, in 2002. Today, demand is far greater in the north, and water quality has badly deteriorated in the south. Roughly 41 percent of China’s wastewater is now dumped in the Yangtze, raising concerns that siphoning away clean water northward will exacerbate pollution problems in the south.
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Photo courtesy of Flickr.
If you want to read a depressing account of China and the environment, look no further than this long, comprehensive New York Times article about the toll that China’s industrialization is taking.
There are so many astounding facts that it’s hard to choose what to quote from the story, so I’ll just make a bullet point list of quoted facts from the article.
Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says.
Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.
For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies for about two-thirds of its energy needs.
Chinese industry uses 4 to 10 times more water per unit of production than the average in industrialized nations, according to the World Bank.
Chinese steel makers, on average, use one-fifth more energy per ton than the international average. Cement manufacturers need 45 percent more power, and ethylene producers need 70 percent more than producers elsewhere, the World Bank says.
Chinese buildings rarely have thermal insulation. They require, on average, twice as much energy to heat and cool as those in similar climates in the United States and Europe, according to the World Bank.
All these new buildings require China to build power plants, which it has been doing prodigiously. In 2005 alone, China added 66 gigawatts of electricity to its power grid, about as much power as Britain generates in a year. Last year, it added an additional 102 gigawatts, as much as France.
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Planeta.com is hosting a gallery on Flickr.com devoted to water conservation and recreation. These compelling images (although there are only a few right now), have the potential to help us view water in an entirely different way, and in cultural contexts we are unfamiliar with.
If you have some unique images of water from your community, feel free to share them on their website.
Read more about water resources issues and ecotourism at Planeta.com.
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It seems to me that an amazing amount of water gets flushed unnecessarily down public urinals and toilets. Not to gross you out or anything, but whenever I use a public urinal that doesn’t have one of those automatic flusher things on it, I always practice the rule of “if it’s yellow, let it mellow…” What’s the point of flushing? I figure I’ll do my part to save water this way, even in public places.
The problem is, I wonder about the next guy who comes along. Does he get grossed out and flush, then again after he’s finished?
This goes for regular public toilets to. “If you pee, leave it be, if you strain, pull the chain!” But does some dude go and flush it twice?
Of course, things get complicated for the ladies. And these days, in airports and other buildings there are those damn auto-flushers that trigger even if you go in a stall just to change your shirt.
These are my thoughts as I ponder a third cup of coffee this afternoon and a fourth trip to the bathroom of the coffee shop I’m sitting in….
What do you all have to save about the subject?
Don’t be shy, leave a comment! It’s only natural!
Popularity: 4% [?]
I noticed last week that the first Zero Energy home built up in Frisco, Texas (an exurb / suburb north of Dallas) was on the market. So over the Memorial Day weekend, I went up to take a look at it and see what I could learn about green building techniques.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, my company is doing a green renovation project with an existing commercial building, so I have been looking around the Dallas area to see what other people and companies are doing to see what we can learn from it and implement ourselves.
A zero energy home is designed so that it theoretically uses close to no energy from the utilities over the course of a whole year. It’s still hooked up to the electric grid just like every other house. But it also has solar panels and an extremely well insulated and efficient design that uses the amount of electricity of a house a third of its size. When you factor in the energy that the solar power generates and the the efficiency of the house, you end up with a net energy cost of running the house that is near zero dollars over a year.
The builder of this house has a web site that explains the concept in more detail.
You could write a book about all the features of this home, so I’m just going to cover some of the features that I thought were cool.
This photo was shot from an upstairs window, looking down into the back yard. You can see one of the solar panels on the roof, and you can also see one of three giant water tanks that collect rainwater for the irrigation system of the home. The home uses native and Texas-friendly landscaping that does well with low amounts of water. And then, the house uses ultra efficient drip irrigation to keep it watered. See a photo of the irrigation below.
One of the issues that most homes out in Frisco have to deal with is the oppressive Texas heat in the summer, combined with the fact that there aren’t many trees that are old enough and big enough to provide shade to the houses out there. You combine this with the typical high ceiling design, the 4,000 plus square foot footprints of a Frisco home, and some of the highest electric rates in the country, and you can imagine the monster electric bills that most Frisco residents face.
Since there were no existing trees on the lot of the zero energy home, the architect and builder designed the home in a way to take advantage of the solar orientation and the natural breezes. There is a totally awesome shaded, screened porch that would be a really nice place to spend time.
But you can also see how the builder created a lot of roof overhangs that shade the windows of the home from direct summer sunlight, while still allowing plenty of natural winter light to light up the home and keep it from looking like a cave inside.
This house is currently for sale for $750,000. It is a 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3,800 square feet home.
One last thing. This isn’t really related to zero energy at all, but I can’t mention Frisco real estate without mentioning my friend Geoff Davis, the Frisco mortgage broker who has helped me out several times. He works all over the Texas area, as well as covering several other states. He’s helped me finance the last four homes I have bought in Dallas, so I figure he deserves a mention.
Popularity: 9% [?]