Celsias Expert Articles

Germany's Cube House Wins at Solar Decathlon

The Biennial Solar Decathlon, which pits some of the world’s best engineering students against one another, has culminated with Team Germany’s “Cube House” being declared the winner, says an October 16 press release from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“This competition to build zero carbon homes has been a tremendous undertaking and we have seen terrific efforts by all the teams,” Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman said. “The ingenuity that comes from individual effort is the promise of our future.”

Team Germany, comprised of students from Darmstadt, Germany, took first place for the second time in ...

Fremen Cities Coming to Nevada in a Future Near You

In a warming world, dominated by excessive rain in some areas and drought in others, arcology designers propose a Nevada city that would rely on landscapes right out of Frank Herbert’s classic novel, Dune (which was made an equally classic film of the same name).

The Sietch, Nevada urban prototype, a cellular system of subterranean enclaves, provides a defense against arid climates and an urban landscape atop a network of canals connecting the city with vast aquifers deep underground which deliver both transportation and agricultural irrigation.

The Sietch project envisions a densely packed honeycomb of underground canals flanked by ...

Why Demanding 'Political Will' is Lazy and Unproductive

I find myself getting increasingly exasperated by the term ‘political will’. Let me explain. The standard NGO shtick, whether on development, environment or pretty much anything else, is a three partner:

a) description of the problem
b) clever proposal for solving the problem
c) call for leaders to show ‘political will’ in adopting the proposed solution

A talk on climate change I attended recently followed this pattern, with some consumer action thrown in on point c. What’s wrong with that? After all, leaders are there to solve problems and some show more determination (‘will’) than others in doing so ...

Death Denial

Why the sudden surge in climate change denial? Could it be about something else altogether?

There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere which 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.

A survey last month by the Pew Research Center suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there’s solid evidence that the world has been warming over the past few decades ...

Road to Copenhagen - Part 5

Big Hairy Audacious Leadership vs. Nattering Nabobs of Negativism*:During his 10 months in office, President Barack Obama and his team have assembled a respectable list of accomplishments on energy and climate policy. One might conclude the President has done about all he can do with the powers of his office.

One would be wrong. What energy and climate security require – what the future of the American Dream demands – is audacious big-picture ideas that capture the imagination, stir the emotions, speak to the souls, rally the support and win the involvement of the American people. That’s been lacking so ...

Bolivia: The Necessity of Adaptation

Oxfam’s messages on the battering effects of climate change on poorer countries continue with the publication this week of their report Bolivia: Climate Change, Poverty and Adaptation. Poverty and injustice in many countries of the world is what Oxfam works on, and this focus has inevitably led to concern about what climate change is adding to the problems faced by the poor.

This report, like their others, includes a number of interviews with local people whose livelihoods depend on the food they grow. It can be argued that this is anecdotal evidence of climate change and not to be ...

Playing the Futures Game

During moments of idleness I’ve often dreamt of seeing into the future. I have been known to ponder frivolously who’ll win a World Cup Final or the US Masters but other times it’s a lot more prosaic; what will happen with a new initiative at work? How should I respond to comments on a research paper? Shall we go for coffee? And so on.

We all draw on as much knowledge as we can to answer these sort of questions, but there’s often moments when we need to make a decision quickly; where time is of ...

Forecast

“The future of our planet can be found now, on the frontiers of climate change.” That’s how freelance journalist Stephan Faris frames his new book Forecast: The Surprising – and Immediate – Consequences of Climate Change. He visits and talks with people in regions already experiencing some of the early effects of a changing climate and looks to what might lie ahead for them as the change gathers momentum.

It’s a varied picture. The fearful upheaval in Darfur has many strands, but until the rains began to fail nomadic herders and settled farmers lived without conflict. Faris acknowledges that the ...

Road to Copenhagen - Part 4

A New Social Contract: As we approach the climate conference in Copenhagen, politicians are balking and diplomats are burning the midnight oil, deprived of sleep. But we can take heart. Some unlikely new heroes may come to the rescue.

One prospective hero is The Citizen-Consumer. Consumers are not the first group that pops to my mind when I think about environmental leadership. Unbridled consumption without regard for consequences has much to do with the mess we’re in.

Then came a poll by TIME magazine over the summer. It found that nearly four of every 10 American consumers over age ...

Road to Copenhagen - Part 3

Re-Tooling Industry: In case we need more evidence that an urgent economic transformation is required to avoid catastrophic climate change, it can be found in a new study commissioned by World Wildlife Fund International.

Conducted by Climate Risk Pty. Ltd. of Great Britain and Australia, the study concludes:

Runaway climate change is almost inevitable without specific action to implement low-carbon re-industrialization over the next five years (emphasis mine)…World governments have a window that will close between now and 2014. In that time they must establish fully operational, low-carbon industrial architecture. This must drive a low-carbon re-industrialization that will be ...

Casa Huerta: Scaleable Greenhouses for Urban Environments

Casa Huerta (Orchard House) is a small scale greenhouse / vertical farming system proposed to better life in the poor areas of the world’s cities. Developed by a group of Argentine architects, the project combines a number of important trends related to the future of urban living – low cost, portable, modular, scaleable and living (simultaneously creating access to food and improving local air quality).

Casa Huerta’s individual modules are designed to be flexible solutions, essentially metal frameworks that can be used to grow a variety of plants and vegetables using cultivation techniques ranging from hydroponics to substrates and easily ...

350 Barcelona Update (+ Video)

The last official UN negotiating session prior to climate talks in Copenhagen this December, has been taking place in Barcelona this week.

Some of the 350 crew are over there ensuring delegates from around the world are aware of their cause and the aims of the organization. Their actions are also keeping up the momentum created by the hugely successful climate action day in October.

350 have a display situated in the central square of the conference venue displaying photos from their previous events. According to their newsletter, repsonse from delegates has been positive.

Teresa Nino, of 350 says:

"Delegates ...

Climate Change and Public Health

Last May I wrote a story based on a report on the “climate gap, “ based on a report by researchers at three California colleges that focused on how climate change will disproportionately affect the poor and minorities, especially those living in low-income, urban neighborhoods.

In October, Trust for America's Health (TFAH), an advocacy group focused on disease prevention, released a new report, “Health Problems Heat Up,” showing only five U.S. states have published strategic climate change plans than include a public health response.

The study, funded by the Pew Environmental Group, looks deeper into the public-health implications of ...

Now or Never

“It is all too possible that we will fail to achieve sustainability, and that the blind watchmaker will once again...reset the balance of a severely diminished living Earth.”

That’s the possibility that Tim Flannery hopes we can yet avoid. He makes the statement early in his essay Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future, in the course of setting out his view of Earth as a living whole, following James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis.

The evolutionary process has arrived at a system in which humanity can contribute intelligence ...

Wicked Cool World of Organics - Edition 34

This week's dose of organic headlines, updates, resources, goodies, and recipes courtesy of Doug Snodgrass...

If you're compelled to take action based on the following, here is the online petition.

Pesticide-Industry Rep Picked for Trade Post Draws Fire

A coalition of advocacy groups launched a campaign today opposing President Obama's choice of a pesticide industry official to represent U.S. interests in agricultural trade negotiations.

The 85 groups -- including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the Organic Consumers Association, th e National Family Farm Coalition and dozens of state farm worker groups -- sent a letter today to the Senate ...

Road to Copenhagen - Part 2

Risky Business: The evidence is irrefutable: Climate change poses enormous risks to economic stability, public health, ecosystem services, and national security, as well as to the environment.

How should we manage those risks? The first step is to acknowledge them. The second is to start listening to the experts who manage risks for a living.

Over the past two months, I’ve attended several meetings of military and civilian experts in security, intelligence and risk assessment. They were unanimous in concluding that 1) the risks of climate change are growing rapidly; 2) those risks are routinely underestimated by policy makers ...

One Year After His Election, Obama on Verge of Fulfilling Promise as Green FDR

Arianna Huffington posted “Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing. HuffPost asked for replies. Mine is here and below. I welcome your thoughts. My bottom line: On climate and clean energy policy, he has been anything but timid!

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn’t stop catastrophic climate change — Hell and High Water — then all Presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so.

In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in ...

The BrightBuilt Barn Sets Sustainability Paradigm

In 2006, Keith Collins approached Kaplan Thompson Architects, about tackling sustainable home construction in the form of a studio/workshop for himself and his wife. This led to the development of the BrightBuilt Barn, a beautiful 700-square-foot home constructed on the Collins property in Rockland, Maine, a climate known for its high heating costs and low temperatures.

But this humble prototype is really much more than energy efficient. In fact, it must be understood as an Open Source format paradigm for building “green” housing.

Being offered in studio, one bedroom and two bedroom designs, this project now gives consumers access ...

Three Models of Social Change

Can we change fast enough? When thinking about the enormous need for social change as we attempt to move the world economy onto a sustainable path, I find it useful to look at various models of change. Three stand out. One is the catastrophic event model, which I call the Pearl Harbor model, where a dramatic event fundamentally changes how we think and behave.

The second model is one where a society reaches a tipping point on a particular issue often after an extended period of gradual change in thinking and attitudes. This I call the Berlin Wall model. The ...

Artificial Glaciers Help Farmers Battle Global Warming

To offset the disruptive irrigation effects brought on by global warming, the small village of Stakmo, India has been developing a method for creating their own artificial glaciers.

The process involves diverting unused autumn and winter runoffs into specially constructed rock reservoirs that hold the water. As the weather grows colder, the collected water freezes, maintaining the supply of water until spring when it begins to melt.

This innovative technique provides water to farmers during the planting season when natural glaciers still haven’t thawed due to their higher elevations.

You can watch a short video about the process here ...