Category: The Weekend Wonk

The Weekend Wonk: Dessler vs Lindzen Debate

Get that cup of coffee now, and make sure you are comfortable.

What’s worthwhile here is the first part of the presentation, where Andrew Dessler, the noted Texas A&M atmospheric expert, explains, among other things, why climate science is not, in fact, based on models, but in the actual behavior of the planet throughout history.  Warning, there are equations, but listen carefully and Dessler walks you thru them, explaining the rationale.  There will not be a quiz – this is for background only.

Dessler (an adviser to this series) has been in the news in the last week, having published a paper directly attacking denialist darlings Roy Spencer and the above mentioned Lindzen.  Since Spencer had just been humiliated as the editor of Remote Sensing, venue for Spencer’s most recent paper, resigned – saying Spencer’s paper  was so bad, it should not have been published – this seemed like kicking the poor guy when he was down.

Now if you got thru that, and drank entirely too much coffee, — here is Dessler commenting on this week’s paper.

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The Weekend Wonk: Alex Steffen on the Shareable Future of Cities

How can cities help save the future? Alex Steffen shows some cool neighborhood-based green projects that expand our access to things we want and need — while reducing the time we spend in cars.

More here:

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The Weekend Wonk: Brought to Life by a Spear in the Chest

Ray Anderson has died. NYTimes:

Ray C. Anderson was chairman and chief executive of the world’s largest carpet-tile manufacturer when he read a book that described people like him as thieves and plunderers of the planet. He saw the author’s point. He even wept. Then he set out to change things.

Mr. Anderson, an avowed “recovering plunderer” who re-invented his worldwide factory operation to reduce its environmental impact and became one of the nation’s most effective corporate advocates for environmental sustainability, died on Tuesday at his home in Atlanta. He was 77. His family said the cause was cancer.

Starting in the early 1970s, Mr. Anderson built a company based in Atlanta, Interface Inc., into a $1.1 billion a year concern manufacturing carpet, fabric and upholstery used in offices and commercial buildings.

(buy your Interface sustainable carpet here, at flor.com)

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Those efforts drew praise from environmental organizations and earned him an appointment to a White House environmental commission under President Bill Clinton.

They also helped his company’s bottom line. “What started out as the right thing to do quickly became the smart thing,” he told a business group in Toronto in 2005. “Cost savings from eliminating waste alone have been $262 million.”

In his speeches, Mr. Anderson credited that book, “The Ecology of Commerce” by Paul Hawken, with changing his perspective. He described reading it as a “spear in the chest experience.”

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Biomimicry: Building the Way Nature Builds

Biomimicry is design inspired by nature’s problem solving techniques. It allows, as the video explains, increases in efficiency of 10x, 100x, even 1000x.

This will be a key characteristic of the emerging renewable energy economy.

At TEDSalon in London, Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun.