Greenbuild International Conference & Expo ||

Greenbuild International Conference & Expo explores new ways of sustainable building and design. Sustainability is at the forefront of Greenbuild, Mccormick Place, Chicago, Illinois | November 14th - 16th, 2018 ||

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How London-based studio Made Thought incorporated sustainability and circularity into the core of their work, without sacrificing content or style ||

Sustainability, recycling, and circularity are without a doubt the biggest trend of the year in design. From the Salone del Mobile manifesto decreeing that sustainability was the name of the game at this year’s Milan design week, to David Attenborough’s gut-wrenching Blue Planet II, suddenly we all care about waste. It’s not yet clear if all this recent environmental virtue signalling will result in widespread cultural change, but  there are significant studios taking steps in the right direction.
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Refocusing the full potential of science & technology for achieving sustainability goals |

Harnessing the full potential of science and technology to promote sustainable development requires that more researchers target a significant portion of their efforts on sustainability problems, and that those efforts become more effective in producing knowledge that is truly useful - and used - for achieving sustainability goals.  Read More:

Sustainability, astrobiology illuminate future of life in the universe and civilization on Earth |

Two astrophysicists show how habitability studies of exoplanets hold important lessons for sustaining the civilization we have developed on Earth. This “astrobiological perspective” casts sustainability as a place-specific subset of habitability, or a planet’s ability to support life. While sustainability is concerned with a particular form of life on a particular planet, astrobiology asks the bigger question: what about any form of life, on any planet, at any time? “If they use energy to produce work, they’re generating entropy. And that entropy will almost certainly have strong feedback effects on their planet’s habitability, as we are already beginning to see here on Earth.”

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This is a schematic of two classes of trajectories in SWEIT solution space. Red line shows a trajectory representing population collapse whereby development of energy harvesting technologies allows for rapid population growth which then drives increases in planetary forcing. As planetary support systems change state the SWEIT population is unable to maintain its own internal systems and collapses. Blue line shows a trajectory representing sustainability in which population levels and energy use approach levels that do not push planetary systems into unfavorable states.

The 9.7 Trillion Dollar Question | Cyclones and Climate Change |

Humanity and cyclones are no strangers to each other. Roughly 35 percent of the world’s 7 billion people are in the path of cyclones and coastal populations are expected to swell in the coming century. To understand the future damage that cyclones could inflict on ever-growing coastal cities, two researchers looked at 60 years of cyclone and economic data in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study.  You can do a lot with $9.7 trillion: buy all the real estate in Manhattan 12 times over, purchase 22 carbon copies of Apple, or an absurd quantity of apples.
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Image shows Hurricane Sandy debris & parts of destroyed houses on 11/12/2012 in Queens, N.Y.

Study shows how to power California with wind, water and sun

A new Stanford study finds that it is technically and economically feasible to convert California's all-purpose energy infrastructure to one powered by clean, renewable energy. Published in Energy, the plan shows the way to a sustainable, inexpensive and reliable energy supply in California that could create tens of thousands of jobs and save billions of dollars in pollution-related health costs.
"If implemented, this plan will eliminate air pollution mortality and global warming emissions from California, stabilize prices and create jobs – there is little downside," said Mark Z. Jacobson, the study's lead author and a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering. He is also the director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.


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Digital Age Enigma

The Information Age [also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age] is a period in human history characterized by the shift from traditional industry that the industrial revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information computerization. Holding a dominant position or a monopoly of a market is often not illegal in itself, however certain categories of behavior can be considered abusive and therefore incur legal sanctions when a business is too dominant. The onset of the Information Age is associated with the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age.
The Information Age formed by capitalizing on the computer microminiaturization advances, with a transition spanning from the advent of the personal computer in the late 1970s, to the Internet's reaching a critical mass in the early 1990s, and the adoption of such technology by the public in the two decades after 1990.
During the second industrial revolution: Who designed, developed or for that matter, built the tracks for the steam engines, the roads for the first automobiles or airport runways for our aircraft?
The enigma of the Digital Age is that much of the business emphasis is placed on digital expansion and real world economics [curb side] is being disregarded and gradually becoming unstable.

Founded in 1609 Albany was known as Fort Orange and was then renamed "Albany" in 1664 to honor the Duke of York and Albany. It is the capital (1797) of the state of New York, U.S., and seat of Albany County (1683). It lies along the Hudson River, 143 miles north of New York City. In 1689 one of the first intercontinental conventions was held in Albany to discuss a system of mutual defense. The city was one of the first in the U.S. to establish a commercial airport (1919). It is also a site of the first railroad in the U.S.

Sustainable Supercar With the i8 Project

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT called the practice of architecture "sublimated mathematics," and I invite you to think of car design the same way. Beneath the wind-raked, time-traveling skin of the BMW BMW.XE -0.31% i8 luxury hybrid lurk a lot of large and unaesthetic numbers. The biggest is the daily parts per million of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere, now over 400 and going nowhere but up. European car makers are under social, political and regulatory pressure to reduce greenhouse emissions. Read More:

The Economics of Sustainable Development

History | Sustainability is not a new issue in economics. The 18th century English philosopher and economist Thomas Robert Malthus expressed concern about sustainable growth in his 1798 work, "An Essay on the Principle of Population."
Identification | Sustainable development, as defined by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, refers to resource use and allocation that meets present human needs without negatively affecting the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

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Are the latest workplace productivity trends sustainable |

While many employers are concerned about the skills gap in this country, there's another gap growing in today's workplace: a performance gap. According to a 2013 workplace survey, workplace performance has gone down 6 percent since 2008, due largely to a decrease in employee focus. Perhaps that's why some employers are taking some unconventional measures to increase workplace productivity and re-engage their teams. But are they sustainable? Behavior and Productivity Management

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In spite of American ingenuity the repairs to infrastructure, in the face of global climate change are barely sufficient.

A massive explosion tore through East Harlem in New York City, leveling two five-story buildings filled with apartments. Most people don’t even know when these pipelines need replacing, and there are no beautiful renderings of the result. According to a report by the Center for an Urban Future released just this week, “many critical components are past their useful life and highly susceptible to breaks and malfunctions.” It’s not until something terrible happens--like hurricanes or explosions--that basic repair projects to shore up infrastructure become a top priority. It’s not just a problem in Manhattan, New York. It’s a problem all over the country, and the world. Story Continues:

Why Facts Matter: Science Is Not an Opinion |
~Jeff Schweitzer [Scientist and former White House Senior Policy Analyst; Ph.D. in marine biology/neurophysiology]

Preserving Company Benefits:

Regenerating and using reclaimed materials are key steps for preserving the benefits that companies receive from the natural world, such as clean water, healthy workers, and moderate weather.

Making Obsolescence Obsolete

Physics may be esoteric in conception, but this charmingly illustrated video gets us through a few hundred years of scientific discovery.
BBC Science Club - Physics from Asa Lucander on Vimeo.

The light-harvesting states of photosynthesis are highly efficient in many species, and happen extremely fast |

Inspired by nature | Through billions of years of evolution, life on Earth has found intricate solutions to many of the problems scientists are currently grappling with. Physicists at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory are trying to unravel nature's secrets to develop new energy-generating technologies for a more sustainable future. "The light-harvesting states of photosynthesis are highly efficient in many species, and happen extremely fast – within a nanosecond, if not picoseconds," said Chin. "We're very interested in that efficiency and how it's managed. Biology has evolved phenomenally subtle systems to funnel light energy around and channel it to the right places. It has also become incredibly good at building tiny devices that work with high efficiency, and at replicating them millions of times." Read More:

Red Cedar Tree Study Shows That Clean Air Act Is Reducing Pollution, Improving Forests |

The research team -- which included Jesse Nippert, associate professor of biology -- spent four years studying centuries-old eastern red cedar trees, or Juniperus virginiana, in the Central Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia | Story Continues:

Star birth unveiled |

All the stars we see in the sky were born in star birth nurseries — giant clouds of gas and dust. These nebulae aren’t the brightest things in the sky, and to see most of them you need binoculars or a telescope. But, they’re worth searching out because they show us what our own sun might have looked like as it was being born, around 4.5 billion years ago. Story continues polycyclic aromatic nitrogen heterocycles| Life's Building Blocks 'Abundant in Space' Read More:

How improved farming benefits the Earth |

What we depend on to sustain our quality of life ..

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — Keeping the Earth, our life support system, in terms of supporting humanity: Continue Reading:
Loss of biodiversity increasingly threatens human well-being [Research] Continues:
Yale study concludes public apathy over climate change unrelated to science literacy: Read More:

How Tribalism Makes a Risky Word Even More Dangerous |
Our instinctive need for social cohesion easily overwhelms morality and reason.
This fact is often cited as evidence that tribal peoples saw only the members of
their own tribe as "people," and denigrated all others as something less. In fact,
this is a tenuous conclusion to draw from the evidence. Many languages refined 
their identification as "the true people," or "the real people," dehumanizing the other
people or simply considering them inferior. The more driven we are to circle the wagons in 
pursuit of the safety of social cohesion, the more we abandon reason, intellect 
and evidence-based analysis, the more closed our minds become.
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The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks|
Kahan’s paper reinforces several current bodies of research that try to understand human cognition more holistically. First, it supports Kahan’s own work on Cultural Cognition theory, which finds that though we employ facts as weapons in our battles over issues and ideas, the real war is about tribal identity and cohesion | Continue Reading:

Jeff Schweitzer ~Scientist and former White House Senior Policy Analyst; Ph.D. in marine biology/neurophysiology

Why Facts Matter: Science Is Not an Opinion | Faith and Reason: We have come to this tragic conclusion about our future because fact and opinion today are considered of equal validity. But how did we arrive here? Why did this happen? How did two plus two equals four become liberal conjecture? Why do we dispute the obvious? Because our society has been infected with the deadly disease of faith-based reasoning.

Clean energy is a selling point

"This is the beginning of a new chapter in the industrial life of Iceland," Foreign Minister Ossur Skarphedinsson said. "The greatest advantage in the future will be green, renewable energy with no carbon."

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Energy Future lacks staying power:

If we do not aggressively change direction by 2020, it will be too late and we will be taken, by default, down the fossil fuel path. Sure, we have lots and lots of fossil fuel, enough to cover our needs for the next 500 years. Or do we? We geologists know that the concept of peak oil and peak gas referred only to conventional fossil fuel with standard methods of extraction. Peak is now irrelevant in the face of huge reservoirs of the so-called “unconventionals”, i.e., tar sands, gas shales and heavy oils, with the concomitant new methods of extraction to recover them including dangerous solvent injection and hydrofracking. We cannot ignore the horrendous environmental and health costs of a fossil fuel-dominated future because these costs are real and someone has to pay them. These very dirty “unconventionals” will not peak until far into the future, well past the next major global demographic and environmental tipping points that will alter our future beyond recognition.

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