Resources and Reflections

August 3rd, 2009
About half of the car trips in the U.S. are less than five miles—a distance easily navigated by walking or cycling. Reducing short-distance car trips has many benefits—it decreases car accidents, has positive benefits for the environment and increases physical health and activity, says communication professor Edward Maibach of George Mason University. An expert in climate change communication research, Maibach says that community leaders should make promotion of physical activity a priority.

“There are lots of proven low-cost options that communities can use to encourage people to get out of their cars and walk or ride instead,” he says. “Use of these options helps people remain healthy (by promoting physical activity and reducing obesity) and helps reduce heat-trapping pollutants that cause global warming.”
In a recent article in the journal Preventative Medicine, Maibach suggests that policy makers and government officials at all levels should look at communication, marketing and policy enhancements that can be implemented with relative ease to promote active transport.
Maibach cites the Web site Active Living by Design (http://www.activelivingbydesign.org/) as showcasing many examples of successful programs such as city-bike sharing, customized walking or cycling maps and grassroots campaigns.
“One of my favorite examples is ‘walking school buses’ in which children and a few parents walk together to the local school,” says Maibach. He also suggests policy changes such as reducing speed limits, giving cyclists priority at intersections and closing some roads to cars, can also encourage people to consider alternative ways of commuting.
“There is no one magic bullet. All of these examples can be effective here in the U.S., and all should be implemented in as many communities as possible. The more that are implemented, the more we will wean people away from sole reliance on their cars when they could be walking and/or riding, and improving their health as a result.”
Source: George Mason University

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Source; PhysOrg.com

University has grand designs to build a house of straw (w/ Video)

July 27th, 2009

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Professor Pete Walker and Dr. Katharine Beadle are investigating the use of straw bales as a low carbon building material. Credit: Nic Delves-Broughton, University of Bath

Could straw houses be the buildings of the future? That’s what researchers at the University of Bath will be testing this summer by constructing a “BaleHaus” made of prefabricated straw bale and hemp cladding panels on campus.

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And people around the world will be able to watch its progress online via “Strawcam” from Monday 20 July at: www.bath.ac.uk/features/balehaus/
- part of a site which will also feature blogs, videos, photos and lots of other information about the project.

Straw is the ultimate environmentally-friendly building material since it is renewable and is a by-product of farming.

The crop used for the straw can be grown locally, and because it absorbscarbon dioxide as it grows, buildings made from it can be seen as having zero, or even a negative carbon footprint.

Could straw houses be the buildings of the future? That’s what researchers at the University of Bath will be testing this summer by constructing a “BaleHaus” made of prefabricated straw bale and hemp cladding panels on campus. Straw is the ultimate environmentally friendly building material since it is renewable and is a by-product of farming. The crop used for the straw can be grown locally, and because it absorbs carbon dioxide as it grows, buildings made from it can be seen as having zero, or even a negative carbon footprint. Credit: Sacha Goodwin & Myra Lee, University of Bath

Also, due to its high insulating properties, houses made of straw bales need almost no conventional heating, keeping running costs low and minimisingenvironmental impact.

The research team will be assessing straw bales and hemp as building materials so that they can be used more widely in the building industry for housing, helping the UK achieve its targets for reducing carbon emissions.

The two storey BaleHaus to be built on campus will be made using ‘ModCell’ – pre-fabricated panels consisting of a wooden structural frame infilled with straw bales or hemp and rendered with a breathable lime-based system.

ModCell is the creation of White Design in Bristol and Integral Structural Design in Bath. Other partners on the research project are Agrifibre Technologies, Lime Technology, Eurban, the Centre for Window & Cladding Technology and Willmott Dixon.

Some of the building has already appeared in the media spotlight. Last year the team helped Kevin McCloud, presenter of Channel 4’s Grand Designs programme, to build an eco-friendly house in six days using ModCell panels for the Grand Designs Live exhibition.

All the wall panels used for the ground floor of the Grand Designs house are being reused for the BaleHaus at Bath.

Read the full article at; PhysOrg.com

<Editorial commentary>

So, I guess this means that, yet again, Science is catching up with common sense. Given the old maxim that “Science changes one funeral at a time” it’s then reasonable to presume that someone IMPORTANT must have died. On a lighter note, the combination of straw and hemp is highly appropriate for Mendocino County in particular and northern California in general. Moreover, no matter how commonsensical a technology may be, there’s nothing like a couple (hundred) PhD research papers to legitimize it in the eyes of bankers, lenders, and engineeres. This and other similar efforts could make it easier to get approval for “alernative” methods from agencies, institutions and the powers the be. I call it a good thing.

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Pacific Northwest forests could store more carbon, help address greenhouse issues

July 2nd, 2009 PhysOrg.com

The forests of the Pacific Northwest hold significant potential to increase carbon storage and help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in coming years, a recent study concludes, if they are managed primarily for that purpose through timber harvest reductions and increased rotation ages.

In the complete absence of stand-replacing disturbances – via fire or timber harvest – forests of Oregon and Northern California could theoretically almost double their carbon storage.

Although it isn’t realistic to expect an absence of disturbance, the estimates were based on average conditions up until now that include variation in forestbiomass, age, climate, disturbances and soil fertility. If all forest stands in this region were just allowed to increase in age by 50 years, their potential to store atmospheric carbon would still increase by 15 percent, the study concluded.

That would be a modest, but not insignificant offset to the nation’s carbon budget, scientists say, since this region accounts for 14 percent of the live biomass in the entire United States.

The findings were made by scientists in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, as the result of almost two decades of analysis of 15,000 inventory plots in a large region, through several different projects, as part of the North American Carbon Program. The scientists, who said they have often been asked what the theoretical potential was for storing carbon in these forests, conducted the analysis using inventory data that captured current variation in biomass due to many factors

Read the whole article on PhysOrg.com

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Fire Mitigation Work In Western US Misplaced, Says New Study

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Some Biofuels Are Worse Environmentally Than Fossil Fuels, Analysis Shows

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Wind Farms Impacting Weather
Environmental Engineers Detect Turbines’ Turbulence Effects

October 1, 2005 — Wind farms may have an impact on local weather patterns. As environmental engineers have discovered, wind farm propellers create a lot of turbulence in their wake, mixing air up and down with effects that can be detected for miles. But more efficient rotors may significantly reduce this problem. 

DURHAM, N.C.–You’ve seen the prices at the pump go up and now home heating costs are on the rise. And scientists are looking to the wind for a much needed alternative to fuel.

They’re the things that fuel our lives, but what fuels them is running low. Scientists may have found an answer with wind farms. Somnath Baidya Roy, from the department of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University in Durham, N.C., says, “It’s very clear to everybody that we have to move away from conventional fossil fuels like coal and oil and look at alternatives.”

With a new power source comes an impact to our environment. Roy says, “Large wind farms can significantly affect local meteorology.” He studied these massive machines and believes wind farms can actually impact our weather because wind turns the blades of the turbine around a rotor, which helps generate electricity the blades create a lot of turbulence in the wake

Duke University

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