tonyhaile.com » Environment

tony — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:16:14 +0000

Will Ferrell does a devastatingly accurate impression of the president in this global warming skit.

tony — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 01:23:41 +0000

The first seven months of 2006 were the warmest such stretch in the continental United States for any year since climate record-keeping began in 1895.

tony — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:03:30 +0000

Article on ~~buying~~ funding a Global Warming sceptic.

Depriving the Deniers

tony — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:19:45 +0000

For the last few years Climate Change deniers (when they are not suggesting that Carbon Dioxide is the stuff of life and we should all be chugging on exhaust pipes) have been misquoting science reports to try and make their case. One of the most common is that Antarctica is getting cooler not warmer, so everything is fine, Huzzah!

Today Peter Doran, who wrote the original research that the CC-deniers quote, had an op-ed in the NY Times. He confirms that Global Warming is real and talks about how his research was twisted and misquoted to fit the arguments of those paid to be believe nothing is happening. Go take a read.

To understand and protect our home planet

tony — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:54:10 +0000

Nasa has quietly changed its mission statement to eradicate any mention of its original responsibility to understand and protect our home planet.

Old Version

“To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.”

New Version

“to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

Not only does the government doubt that important changes might be happening to our planet, they want our best scientists to stop studying it completely. This seems to be just the latest in a series of interventions aimed at subverting the work of Nasa and I have to say it makes me a little mad. Nasa should be the crucible of our learning and our inspiration, it should be our vehicle for understanding not only space but our unique place in it, Nasa should be the last place we should try to corrupt with political machinations and supression. To do so is to corrupt our future.

World Changing has more.

tony — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 10:49:44 +0000

Bjorn Lomborg is sometimes characterised as a climate change denier. He’s not, he just thinks battling it isn’t the most cost effective way to spend our money. See if you agree.

tony — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:06:34 +0000

Ok, forget Al Gore, I’ve just watched Majora Carter give one of the most inspiring and heartfelt talks of my life. If you do nothing else of importance today, watch this speech.

Al Gore, Comedian

tony — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:39:06 +0000

I’d always gone along with the idea that Al Gore was pretty much the way the media portrayed him: stiff, bureaucratic and a little inhuman. However, TED have begun putting some of their talks online and Al Gore has just blown me away. And it’s not just his passion for his subject, who’d have thought he could be that funny? One can’t help but think what the world would be like if he had been president. To find out, watch this clip from SNL.

tony — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:00:56 +0000

The world’s first hydrogen-powered city?

A building like a tree, a city like a forest

tony — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 11:15:33 +0000

Imagine a textile factory where the water comes out purer than when it went in, imagine an auto plant roofed with meadow grasses that is the home of nesting wild birds, imagine a home that produces more energy than it uses where the very concept of waste is unknown. Bill McDonough is the design genius behind these.

Bill is an architect who approaches sustainable design from a very different angle. Instead of looking at how we reduce waste, why don’t we find a way to destroy the concept of waste. Instead of classic recycling, which merely turns a high-end product into a low-end product and delays the journey to the landfill, why don’t we design our products for infinite usage so that they never see the inside of a dump?

By thinking of products as containing either biological or technical nutrients, Bill looks at how, by replacing current toxins and heavy metals that retard our ability to reuse resources and are often carcinogenic to boot, we can create products that, upon reaching their end of their lifecycle, can be returned to the factory and broken down again into materials that will create the next generation of product with no diminishment of quality.

One key example is a carpet that you lease instead of buy. The rubber mat is a biological nutrient that you could potentially throw out in your garden and instead of polluting the land would nourish it as it degraded, the top fibres are a technological nutrient that when returned to the factory can be broken down and used as raw material for a new carpet of similar quality. This design process works for the company as the reduced scarcity of materials makes for a lower cost base and works for the consumer who is no longer bringing carcinogenic toxins into their homes.

I love the way Bill attacks this problem because it fits perfectly with big business. He shows that ecologically intelligent design should not constrain but free companies. Bill’s world is one of no regulation (who needs regulation when you’re not producing any pollution) and plentiful resources.

Fittingly, after showing a distaste for taking something that accrues solar energy, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distils water, creates microclimates, produces complex sugars and self-replicates, and knocking it down and writing on it, his book Cradle to Cradle is made of an infinitely reusable polymer. It is a book that just might change not only your life but that of your great-grandchildren.