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Human Sewage to Power Buses in Norway

January 30, 2009 / Klint Finley

It is available for free in huge quantities, is not owned by Saudi Arabia and it contributes minimally towards climate change. The latest green fuel might seem like the dream answer to climate crisis, but until recently raw sewage has been seen as a waste disposal problem rather than a power source. Now Norway’s capital city is proving that its citizens can contribute to the city’s green credentials without even realising it.

In Oslo, air pollution from public and private transport has increased by approximately 10% since 2000, contributing to more than 50% of total CO2 emissions in the city. With Norway’s ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2050 Oslo City Council began investigating alternatives to fossil fuel-powered public transport and decided on biomethane.

Biomethane is a by-product of treated sewage. Microbes break down the raw material and release the gas, which can then be used in slightly modified engines. Previously at one of the sewage plants in the city half of the gas was flared off, emitting 17,00 tonnes of CO2. From September 2009, this gas will be trapped and converted into biomethane to run 200 of the city’s public buses.

Full Story: EcoWorldly

(via Appropedia)

Ignite Portland 5 speakers announced

January 30, 2009 / Klint Finley

Legion of Tech announced the Ignite Portland 5 speakers. These sound amazing!

Isaac Potoczny-Jones – Open, Mobile, and Linux: A basic introduction to Android G1 development

Dr. Jayson Falkner – Science. It works, bitches. DNA Edition.

John Metta – How to creatively destroy pesky, non-moneymaking community efforts

A. L. Venable – Fashion! Music! Intrigue!: Why You Should Be Riding the Bus

Tara Horn – How to be a Refugee: Several not-so-easy steps from oppression to resettlement

J-P Voillequé – Not your grandma’s game: Why you should be playing bridge.

Russell Senior – Why Publicly Owned Fiber is the Answer to our Broadband Needs

Kate “The Great” Folsom – the basics of writing good shit that people enjoy reading

Chris Sullivan – Ham Radio: It’s not about talking to pork products (but we’re working on that)

Sarah Gilbert – Hacking life with kids, but without a car

Jerry Ketel – How to know if you are a Narcissist.

Selena Deckelmann – How to kill three chickens in three years

Pete Grillo – Omelettes: Winners and Losers

Full Story: Ignite Portland

Technoccult is a proud sponsor of Ignite Portland.

Wind jobs outstrip the coal industry

January 29, 2009 / Klint Finley

Here’s a talking point in the green jobs debate: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.

Full Story: Fortune

(Thanks Biohabit)

There’s Mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup, and the FDA Has Known for Years

January 27, 2009 / Klint Finley

But as it turns out, the HFCS industry has been hiding some major skeletons in its closet — according to the IATP study (pdf), over 30% of products containing the substance tested positive for mercury.

What makes this news truly shocking is not just that the manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup would put consumers’ health at risk, but that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew about the mercury in the syrup, and has been sitting on this information since 2005.

Here’s the connection, according to the IATP press release (pdf): The IATP study comes on the heels of another study, conducted in 2005 but only recently published by the scientific journal, Environmental Health, which revealed that nearly 50 percent of commercial HFCS samples tested positive for the heavy metal. Renee Dufault, who was working for the FDA at the time, was among the 2005 study’s authors. In spite of Dufault’s involvement in the study, the FDA sat silent on this one for three years, and in fact last August, allowed manufacturers to call the sweetener “natural.”

Full Story: Huffington Post

(Thanks Biohabit)

Update: a representative from the corn syrup lobby has weighed in with a response (As far as I can tell the comment from “FT” is real).

Tree Deaths Double Across Western US

January 23, 2009 / TiamatsVision

“The majestic old trees of the western US are disappearing twice as fast as they were three decades ago, and climate change is most likely to blame, say scientists. Philip van Mantgem of the US Geological Survey and colleagues collected data from 76 plots on the west coast – from California up to British Columbia, Canada – and in Idaho, Arizona and Colorado. These are plots without any direct human management, so any tree loss is not due to logging.

The team focused on old forests, where many of the trees were at least 200 years old, and sometimes as much as 1000 years old. In 87% of the plots, trees are disappearing faster than new trees are springing up. Death rates varied, but the trend held whether the trees were old or relatively young, big or small, high up in the mountains or down in valleys.

The Pacific Northwest, including the pine trees of British Columbia, were the worst affected – death rates there are doubling every 17 years.”

(via New Scientist)

Paul Stamets interview in Mother Earth News

January 23, 2009 / Klint Finley

paul stamets

To the best of our knowledge — and I must emphasize that more studies are needed — it appears the mushrooms coming from oil-contaminated soils are edible. However, a major problem is that with oil spills, heavy metals and other toxins also co-occur, so it is safer to let the mushrooms rot and return into the soil food web rather than cooking them for dinner.

Full Story: Mother Earth News

Six Reasons Why Nuclear Power Won’t Get Us Out of This

January 14, 2009 / Klint Finley

1. Length of time to come on stream

2. Insurance

3. Waste

4. Cost

5. Peak Uranium

6. Carbon Emissions

Full Story: Chelsea Green

Pelicans Fall Out of sky from Mexico to Ore.

January 10, 2009 / TiamatsVision

“Pelicans suffering from a mysterious malady are crashing into cars and boats, wandering along roadways and turning up dead by the hundreds across the West Coast, from southern Oregon to Baja California, Mexico, bird-rescue workers say. Weak, disoriented birds are huddling in people’s yards or being struck by cars. More than 100 have been rescued along the California coast, according to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in San Pedro.

Hundreds of birds, disoriented or dead, have been observed across the West Coast. “One pelican actually hit a car in Los Angeles,” said Rebecca Dmytryk of Wildrescue, a bird-rescue operation. “One pelican hit a boat in Monterey. While some of the symptoms resemble those associated with domoic-acid poisoning — an ocean toxin that sometimes affects sea birds and mammals — other symptoms do not. Domoic acid also apparently has not been found in significant amounts offshore, although more tests are needed.

Rescuers are wondering whether the illness is caused by a virus, or even by contaminants washed into the ocean after recent fires across Southern California. Many of the birds also have swollen feet.”

(via The Seattle Times)

The Edge question of the year: what will change everything?

January 1, 2009 / Klint Finley

Stewart Brand, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Douglas Rushkoff, Garret Lisi and about a bazillion more weigh in on this year’s Edge question:

New tools equal new perceptions.

Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves. But until very recently in our history, no democratic populace, no legislative body, ever indicated by choice, by vote, how this process should play out.

Nobody ever voted for printing. Nobody ever voted for electricity. Nobody ever voted for radio, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television. Nobody ever voted for penicillin, antibiotics, the pill. Nobody ever voted for space travel, massively parallel computing, nuclear power, the personal computer, the Internet, email, cell phones, the Web, Google, cloning, sequencing the entire human genome. We are moving towards the redefinition of life, to the edge of creating life itself. While science may or may not be the only news, it is the news that stays news.

And our politicians, our governments? Always years behind, the best they can do is play catch up.

Nobel laureate James Watson, who discovered the DNA double helix, and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, recently were awarded Double Helix Awards from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for being the founding fathers of human genome sequencing. They are the first two human beings to have their complete genetic information decoded.

Watson noted during his acceptance speech that he doesn’t want government involved in decisions concerning how people choose to handle information about their personal genomes.

Venter is on the brink of creating the first artificial life form on Earth. He has already announced transplanting the information from one genome into another. In other words, your dog becomes your cat. He has privately alluded to important scientific progress in his lab, the result of which, if and when realized, will change everything.
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
“What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

Full Story: Edge

Very nice to start the year with advice from Taleb

Top Ten Green Architecture Projects Of 2008!

December 31, 2008 / TiamatsVision

Top Ten Green Architecture of 2008, Green Building, Green Architecture, Green Design, Eco Architecture

“As the holiday season winds to close we’re counting down the days to the new year with a look at some of Inhabitat’s most exciting stories of 2008! It’s been an outstanding year in green building and today we’re looking back at ten of the most impressive green architecture projects of 2008. From LEED platinum superstructures to innovative recycled and reclaimed buildings to ground-breaking monuments that integrate incredible new technologies, read on the year’s best and brightest developments!”

(via Inhabitat)

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