Now that things are finally starting to happen, I feel it’s time to commend the University of Guelph and its students (including myself, haha) for embarking on what seems to be a fairly ambitious series of energy retrofit projects. About a year ago, undergraduate students voted 64% in favour of a referendum adding $10 to each semester’s tuition for the next 12 years (around $4.3 million) - money earmarked solely for energy conservation projects and matched dollar for dollar by the University. I am happy to say that both the Graduate Students’ Association and the faculty association have since pledged comparable amounts. Staff and alumni have also already pledged upwards of $1.3 million.

The first big project is just getting underway - switching all of the main library’s lights to electronic ballasts and installing compact fluorescent lights. This project, while costing close to a million bucks, will save 2,077,000 kilowatt hours annually. At the current electricity cost of roughly 6 cents/kwh (and it won’t be here for long), that is a savings of $125,000 a year, allowing the project to pay for itself in around 7.5 years. Overall, around $12 million is going to be spent by 2018 on everything from adding compressed air storage facilities, beefing up insulation, and adding heat exchangers. Even after taking into account projects with a long payoff, the $12 million should be recouped in around 7 years - saving 8,450,000 kwh annually, or cutting back on CO2 emissions by 6900 tonnes a year.

Have I been greenwashed, or should I be proud of this initiative?

While I’m on the topic of filtering water, I recently read about the grandiosely named Lifesaver bottle, which is capable of rapidly filtering out even the smallest pathogens in water, producing 6000 L of ultra-pure drinking water over the course of its filter’s usable life. The one problem is, it currently costs £230, or $460.

I wonder if this product could benefit from the mantra “good is good enough.” While it is an impressive tour de force of engineering development, the $460 price tag is staggering, limiting its audience to the wealthy (who could easily afford to treat the disease, anyway, if it came to that). Existing commercial water filter bottles, or inventions such as the LifeStraw, may not completely purify water - but you can buy 150 LifeStraws for the price of 1 Lifesaver. And even the LifeStraw is too expensive for those who truly need it.

As with uber-supercars like the Bugatti Veyron, it’s an object that has lost all relevance in its pursuit of the ultimate.

I may be putting the case too harshly, because as the Inhabitat blogger mentions, that price must be representative of tremendous R&D investment, and genuine progress is impossible without such costs. One can only hope that the technology will filter down to future products at more sane prices.

While the concept has already been picked up by bloggers, as the designer I feel I should at least provide a brief rationale for the idea. In short, Filterbrella is an umbrella with a canopy that channels rainwater through an activated carbon filter. The handle incorporates standard-size threads so that users can screw in a water or pop-bottle to collect the purified contents to drink later. The entire umbrella is moulded of compostable polylactic acid blends to reduce plastic waste.

I should admit first of all that I never meant this to be seen as a purely utilitarian product. Rather, it is a whimsical, conceptual piece intended to get people thinking about the idea of water use in our society, and the need for (im)permanence in everyday artifacts by taking a cradle-to-cradle approach.

Part of the impetus derives from my longstanding contempt for bottled water and the environmental and ethical ills it embodies. While I recognize that people drink bottled water largely out of convenience, and waiting for a rainstorm is anything but, the Filterbrella would hopefully serve (in some limited capacity) as an everyday reminder of the manner in which we take water utterly for granted. That some sort of rainwater harvesting (or at least greywater recycling) for toilets and gardens isn’t mandatory in new construction continues to baffle me.

(And for the people who have hounded me to make the canopy design more dramatically inverted, like a chanterelle mushroom, I suspect such a shape would result in a seriously top-heavy, unwieldy umbrella, prone to dumping loads of water on the user if it were unbalanced. Not a great way to encourage adoption of the product - besides, in any reasonable downpour you should still get plenty of water.)

Exxon Mobil is continuing its slow withdrawal of funding for climate-change denying think tanks and lobby groups.

While the dollar figures the funding represents (a few million, annually) are utterly trivial to Exxon, it may be emblematic of something more significant that they are reducing (rather than intensifying) their smear campaigns, given the current political climate. The big cogs are beginning to turn, however grudgingly. I’m still not expecting any positive actions to come from the oil barons of the world, but less negativity is something, anyway.

(By the way, if anyone remembers the scandalized Heartland Institute, Exxon once funded them, but stopped as of 2007.)

I was at the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies today, working with our wind-tunnel model, and in the downtime while epoxy was curing, I managed to catch a lecture that was part of a seminar on aviation and climate change.

The lecture I saw was an overview of the mechanisms behind climate change related to jet emissions, and despite my lack of background in science (these were lectures given largely by engineers to engineers) I found it really fascinating. I had read that jet flight produces an overall climate impact disproportionately greater than its CO2 emissions alone might indicate (potentially double, or even more), but had no idea about the particulars.

The lecturer, an atmospheric scientist (who I suspect had worked with the IPCC, from what I was able to glean) drew a lot of interesting connections, not only in the realm of science, but also between science and policy. In addition to CO2 (which is largely understood), he spoke of jets’ nitrous oxide emissions and their effect on ozone and methane in the stratosphere, of the effects of contrails, of particulate emissions and their impact on cirrus cloud formation, all of which subtly affect the atmosphere.

Rather than being dogmatic, he was very candid about the many uncertainties involved in the modeling of these extremely complicated dynamic systems (though at the same time, was optimistic that they were eminently solvable challenges, given sufficient research). Given that open acknowledgment, it makes me wonder how many climate change skeptics, especially ’scientific conspiracy’ theorists, have actually heard a credible expert speak on the subject.

Beyond just the science involved, however, one of the points that seemed most urgent to him was the importance of open dialogue, not only between scientific experts in various climate metrics, but between scientists and policymakers. Right now there is a disconnect between the analysis of emissions and climate models and what potential impacts those may have in the real world, or that are happening even now. While the IPCC continues to summarize its research for policymakers, the dwindling role of direct scientific advice in government is happening at exactly the wrong time.

It’s crucial for scientists, engineers, and policymakers to come together and present a snapshot of what we would like the atmosphere to look like in the future, and develop cohesive strategies for bringing that to fruition. While damage has already been done, between research, technology, and policy, there’s tremendous opportunity now to mitigate future calamity. A disjointed effort undertaken by any one party is bound to fail, and that is a failure we may not be able to afford.

I think this is Sarracenia purpurea, but I’m not entirely sure. Saw this in the swamp at the Guelph Arboretum, and I always have to stop to admire plants that consume animals. It just seems like a great metaphor - I’m not sure what for though.

Continuing growth in the field of eugenics is raising some interesting moral questions pertaining to one’s legal human rights. To illustrate this point, I dug up this ancient news relic from 2002, wherein a deaf lesbian couple effectively chose to have a “deaf baby”. Obviously lacking in some of the necessary plumbing, these women found little help from sperm banks that screen out disabilities from their donor pool. Turning to a friend who had 5 (five!) generations of deaf children due to some genetic anomaly, they magically transformed his manbutter into two (otherwise?) healthy deaf children for themselves.

Many people view this story as a tragedy – in their eyes, parenting is a responsibility that involves making one’s child physically and emotionally prepared for a life of independence. Condemning one’s offspring to a life of hardship (deafness is undeniably, in absolute terms, a more difficult existence than being of hearing) by removing a natural faculty may very well seem unforgivable. This accusation is not necessarily a fair one, as the sperm used in this case would never have made a baby capable of hearing – the mothers didn’t build a broken baby, they just used a different set of blueprints. The couple counters that this makes their child a member of their world, and more personally and emotionally connected to the experiences of its parents. They also said they were part of a generation that viewed deafness not as a disability but as a cultural identity, which honestly sounds more like post-modern university babble than cognizant parenting.

Legally, nothing could or should be done to these women. The law has been used to systemically oppress and control women’s bodies since time immemorial, and their autonomy cannot be paternalistically usurped for the rights of a hypothetical and non-existent child. Advances in medicine may have us one day re-examine when personhood begins, but restricting a woman’s right to do whatever they please with their fetus is a dangerous slippery slope.

More interestingly, this raises the question of what “responsible” fertilization could one day entail. The couple compares their decision to choosing a black or gay child, and the analogy is a reasonable one. Blacks and homosexuals have effectively created different representations of their own cultures (however heterogeneous they may be), and choosing a child that fits these definitions may be desired. Resultant children would reside within a social context that may very well be prejudiced against their minority status – are the parents irresponsible for “choosing” these respective interpersonal conflicts for their offspring? Should they have instead chosen a blond, blue-eyed bambi with sparkling teeth and a perfect complexion? Should they have a choice?

With assistance from the Ontario government, Wal-Mart and Menova Energy have signed a $5.9 million deal to install modified solar panels on the roof of one store to provide electricity, solar water heating, and light (through fibre optic cables). Better yet, Menova has partnered with Woodbine Tool & Die to manufacture these solar panels. I say better yet because Woodbine historically has produced automotive parts, and has been crippled lately as the auto industry has fallen into the shitter. As president Tibor says,

“To support that level of demand [hypothetically outfitting 25% of Wal-Mart stores over 4 years, pending the results of this test installation] Woodbine Tool & Die’s operations in Ontario would grow by 85 employees and spin off another 240 indirect support jobs in primary metals and installations.”

Take that, all you pessimistic ‘tards who say going green harms the economy somehow. As the decline of North American manufacturing shows (to me anyway), business as usual is what doesn’t work. And if we don’t get on creating “green” jobs, those damn socialist Scandinavians will steal all the potential. I just think it’s funny that big bad Wal-Mart is involved with this… just goes to show that the crossover point of economic viability has already been reached in some areas…

In a 5-4 split decision, the Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that young offenders no longer have to prove that they are, indeed, deserving to be treated like young people. Previously, any youth alleged to have committed a serious offense was automatically tried as an adult; The onus was on them to prove that they in some way “deserved” to be treated like a child. The challenge centered around s. 7 of the Charter, arguing that this reverse onus represented an unwarranted infringement of one’s liberty contrary to the principles of fundamental justice. S. 7 is notoriously vague and open to discretionary measures, but this isn’t just another move by “activist judges” looking to clutter our streets with young hooligans (snicker snicker). The courts have repeatedly ruled that youths require a separate line of rehabilitation measures and the state has a responsibility to young offenders to prove this shouldn’t apply.

Right-wing media is already clamoring on that this just further proves the Youth Criminal Justice Act is inadequate in stopping a supposed “rise in violent young thugs”. This kind of language is preposterous. Despite yearly fluctuations in violent crimes, the trend across nearly ALL types of such incidences have plummeted over the past couple of decades. This is true for young offenders as well.

More importantly, this ruling comes at a time when the Harper government is actively attacking the discretionary power of judges. The current government is proceeding with legislation to impose mandatory minimum sentences for petty and moderate drug offenses, irregardless of individual circumstance. While one can understand the need to cut off the supply of cocaine and heroin traffic within our urban communities, the idea of an arbitrarily imposed prison sentence for someone growing a single lonely pot plant in their backyard doesn’t sit well with me. This would have been an even bigger problem without this recent court ruling, as we’d be having 16 year old potheads getting 3 year adult prison sentences for having a personal stash in their car. That is not justice.

While Andy and I have been (rather lazily) maintaining this site for more than a year, and I regularly try to read and participate in a variety of blogs, the true potential that the Internet has as a medium for intellectual synthesis never really sank in for me until I saw it first hand this past week.

I’m alluding, of course, to the discussion that has cropped up in response to my airship thesis. Once Engadget picked it up, the trackbacks started to really go wild, and it’s been really fascinating to see the different perspectives that people have based on where they’re coming from. The post has even been translated into Spanish and Chinese, and in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, it’s been eye-opening for me to see the sense of urgency that many commenters have about the idea. The humanitarian nature of the project has really galvanized discussion about the technology in a way that I would have never expected.

What I’ve found most heartening, though, is the sheer volume of ideas and applications that people have posited to build on and shape the concept. The Internet has the capability to link so many different people and points of view, and when you throw them all together in one place, you’re bound to get something out of it.

By glaring contrast, it’s got me thinking about the nature of the design industry, and how fiercely protective young designers are about their ideas, when realistically everyone would stand to benefit far more from collaboration. I think there could be real potential in an open-source design project, or at least a ‘net-wide brainstorming session to kick off a competition.

Maybe in the not-too-distant future, pulltheskydown should host one?