BarkBarkBark » environment

The Most Prettiest Humidifier Ever

Kevin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:18:05 +0000

Is it any surprise it’s Japanese? This beautiful fusion of form and function is the product of designer Shin Okada and craftsman Masuya Koubou.

Made from cypress wood, the humidifier works to evaporate water into the air through capillary action rather than using a fan, as your common electric version would. Clever, no?

If you can navigate the online store to purchase this (it’s in Japanese only), send one my way

My My, It’s Warm Out

Kevin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:42:44 +0000

In recent days a follow up of sorts to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report—the Nobel Prize winning report on the most up-to-date climate change science—has been published by a group of leading climatologists, over half of which are from the IPCC. The aptly named Copenhagen Diagnosis is an update to IPCC4 with the most recent numbers, many of which surpass the reports projections.

The update of figures is less than comforting. In short, the new projections spell out death and destruction for us all lest we make actual advances in the areas of climate change legislation and real-world steps to reducing our carbon emissions. For instance, the IPCC4′s prediction of a 13 inch average sea level rise by 2010 has been updated to a 33 inch rise. As Ben Jervey notes in his GOOD article, that new limit is near two metres—that’s going to prompt a redrawing of maps, people.

President Obama has recently decided to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen much to the annoyance of the GOP, which is certainly a step towards fulfilling his campaign promises to make the climate a serious issue for his administration. And on the lighter side of things there are moments like this with Al Gore bringing the issue to wider audiences, via NBC’s “Green Week”:

But this is a serious issue which demands serious discussion by serious people in serious positions. So why does there seem to be so little forward progress in the United States? This isn’t something we can escape from and throwing money at think tanks to think about it isn’t going to help. We need to make real progress on this issue and adopt policy changes that will not only reduce our contribution to global climate change, but save us money and create new jobs. That’s where economic recovery lies, in new infrastructure and green jobs.

Then again, perhaps we should be taping toy guns to trees.

Forget the Cruise!

Kevin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:45:07 +0000

While browsing the Arcitecture category over at Superuse.org I came across The Rig hotel. The concept behind this, and indeed the entire Superuse site, is simple: recycle everything. And why not? According to the article “there are approximately 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico varying in size, depth and mobility that will be decommissioned within the next century. If a deck on one of these rigs is about 20,000 square feet, then there is potentially 80 million square feet of programmable space just oft the coast of the United States.”

The obvious concern here is what to do when the next major hurricane bombards the gulf. Well, there’s an interesting solution to that… Fill the centre of the rig with water. Indeed “spaces are organized around a core of water, which allows light to penetrate to the center of the rig. The core of water acts as ballast to stabilize the rig during ocean storms, and reduce the effect of seasickness.” Eureka! I have absolutely no clue how that would work, but they also propose the centre core of water could be used for underwater Cirque Du Soleil shows, and I’m all about some Cirque!

Read the entire article, including the PDF, over at Superuse.org.