Organic Matter - Technology

Technology Will Save Us

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:06:03 -0700

That’s a title that I would generally use sarcastically, but every once in a while we come up with a really great idea:

In the largest experiment of its kind in California, the South Coast Air Quality Management District plans to use remote sensors and video cameras to measure air pollution from 1 million vehicles as they enter freeways and navigate roads in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside.

If caught, the owners of the most environmentally offensive cars and trucks would receive letters informing them that the government would pay to fix or scrap their vehicles. The South Coast district estimates that 10,000 to 20,000 of the dirtiest vehicles would be detected. Smog regulators lack the authority to order drivers to dump dirty cars, but they can offer incentives.

In an era of government initiatives that I hate to support, it’s programs like this make me feel good about paying my taxes. Granted, it starts off sounding a little Orwellian with the secret remote sensors (the article later notes that the locations of the sensors won’t be public in order to ensure that offenders don’t simply avoid the targeted ramps). But the anti-command-and-control folks (to whom I am sometimes sympathetic) are cut off at the pass by the fact that the program isn’t regulatory in nature. Instead we’re incentivizing the retirement of some of the worst polluting vehicles on the road, and thereby eliminating a disproportionately large amount of pollution. Go go gadget economics!

Terraforming Earth

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:10:58 -0700

This post, in addition to being quite compelling, reminded me fondly of an early post here at Organic Matter – enough that I thought I’d make a note of it for anyone who didn’t catch it at Worldchanging (you mean to tell me that you don’t read Worldchanging?!?).

While I talked about the ridiculousness of talking about terraforming another planet before bothering to learn how to live sustainably on Earth, Jamais talks about terraforming the Earth itself (although Mars does get honorable mention in the comments):

[...] Even if every human and human artifact disappeared tomorrow, the changes we've made to the water, soil and atmosphere would continue to exist for decades, centuries, even millennia. The question isn't how can we stop changing the planet, the question is how we can do so more wisely, avoiding the changes most harmful to the planetary ecosystem, and applying greater recognition of the long-term effects of our changes.

[...] We're already making big changes, only without any foresight or design; to paraphrase Stewart Brand's 1968 epigram, we are already terraforming Earth, and might as well get good at it.

Each of the ideas that Jamais goes on to discuss has significant drawbacks, due to either environmental uncertainty or economic cost – or both – but the thrust of his argument is twofold:

(1) willful ignorance of our climate problem has created a situation in which significant warming is already built into the climate system, and we have no choice but to adapt to a warmer Earth regardless of the degree to which we abate carbon emissions; and

(2) the most extreme consequences of climate change are potentially so dire that we must be willing to consider measures that might otherwise seem too expensive or risky.

I don’t mean to suggest that hanging a circular mirror over 600 miles in diameter between the Earth and our sun is necessarily cost effective, but I’m always glad to know that people are thinking of innovative ways to deal with complicated problems. It’s clear that emissions reduction is our first defense against a changing climate, but we also know that we’re already guaranteed to face at least another ~0.5°C of warming, so we’d better have the technology to deal with it.

Biotech Vacuum Trees (at Sustainablog)

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 23:18:36 -0700

Well, my contribution has been posted at Sustainablog's Blogging 'Round the Clock. It's the type of thing that I usually would have posted here, but I hope everyone heads over to Sustainablog to check it out (and devote some time to the rest of the day's many, many posts as well!).

Google Earth Goes Free

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:38:47 -0700

You're all just going to have to trust me on this one: if you thought Google Maps was cool, then you must go install Google Earth.

I have a hunch that this is going to make Sprol even cooler.

In Your FACE Experiments

Sat, 21 May 2005 18:35:54 -0700

In light of some statements in articles and on other blogs about the likely effects of increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ on plant growth, I thought it might be interesting to write something up about one of the more fascinating (I think) ongoing experiments in the global climate field: Free Atmospheric CO₂ Enrichment (FACE).

Duke University's Free Atmospheric CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) experiment site. Photo by Will Owens.

But first, a little on why this is interesting…

Ghostnet Busters

Mon, 09 May 2005 10:44:14 -0700

Since there appeared to be some interest in the article I wrote about aerial and satellite imaging, I thought there might be some folks out there who might find this article interesting. Essentially, NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) scientists are using remote sensing technology to search the ocean for ghostnets – free-floating nets that have been lost by fishing boats and pose a threat to marine life and reefs.

Using data from several satellites, scientists from the NOAA Satellite and Information Service and the NOAA Fisheries Service tracked the Pacific convergence zone through the winter. The data they collected were combined with more recent satellite data to determine the most likely areas to find aggregations of debris.

In late March and early April, Churnside headed a field survey of areas in the Pacific from a NOAA P-3 Orion Aircraft based in Honolulu. The survey was joint project of NOAA and Airborne Technologies, Inc. of Wasilla, Alaska.

Over three days, the plane overflew the convergence zone to allow scientists to make visual observations and to use an electronic imaging system with automated pattern recognition to determine how much and what kinds of debris had accumulated.

The bad news is that they’ve found far more debris than expected, which means either that oceanic convergence zones are more efficient collectors of garbage than was expected, or that there’s just much more trash out there than we thought.

Via WorldChanging.

Remote Sensing for the Masses

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 01:48:02 -0700

Some readers have probably already stumbled across Google Maps, a new free web interface with a low-resolution version of Google’s Keyhole technology. When I first stumbled upon it, I saw it as a fun distraction, but others immediately saw it as much, much more. This post at Mezzoblue discusses the technology in greater detail and goes on to use it to look at clearcutting in British Columbia.

Aerial image courtesy of Google Maps via Mezzoblue.

Vitamin C Hand Shower???

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 15:09:28 -0700

You really have to just go see this for yourself.

According to the website:

The Features of Vitamin C Hand Shower
1 Perfect Chlorine Removal.
2 Change the Water(weak acid)
3 Water Saving (50%)
4 Convient to use in low water pressure.
5 Anion radiation.

Vitamin C Hand shower is effective for
* Atopy skin and allergy sufferers
* Infant and children
* Asthma sufferers
* Irritated-eyes after shower
* Shining your hair
* Women and children with sensitive skin
* Skin disease
* Who dyes hair often

F--k for Forest

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:56:13 -0700

I thought long and hard (pun intended) about posting this, decided not to, and then couldn’t help myself. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you F--k for Forest. Don’t worry, the link just goes to an article at the San Francisco Gate; it didn’t seem like a wise idea to be sending referrals to a porn site, no matter how altruistic its aim.

I would have more to say, but FFF is a pay site, so my “background research” proved less fruitful than I had originally hoped.

A la the Daily Show, your moment of zen – be sure to check out the drawing in the background.

RFID, OLED, Organic Semiconductors and Electronic Ink

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:35:27 -0700

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a system of remotely storing and retrieving it using devices called RFID tags/transponders. An RFID tag is a small object, such as an adhesive sticker, that can be attached to or incorporated into a product that contains a unique identifier. The RFID transponder then read the tag wirelessly via radio frequency. You've most likely to have come across them as anti-theft tags on DVDs in the form of a square sticker that has a spiral shaped metal foil inside, cards you hold up against a reader to access secure areas (ex: buildings, parking lots, rooms, etc), or electronic highway toll payments (ex: EZ Pass, FasTrak, I-Pass, etc). RFIDs are currently being researched as a potential replacement of UPC (Universal Product Code) barcodes. The idea being that if every item in a store/warehouse had a RFID one could in theory have a real time inventory of what is on the shelf/warehouse and what needed to be stocked/reordered. The biggest constraint keeping retailers from using RFID at the moment is the cost, currently a RFID tag costs about $0.40 each. Ideally if the cost dropped below $.05 it would become more economically viable and adopted.

Get into my belly!

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:35:02 -0700

New York City is trying out a new high tech trash called "Big Belly" that runs on solar power, automatically compacts trash to 1/4 of its size, displays a red light when its full and wirelessly calls the to get emptied when needed. In theory these "smart trash cans" would be more efficient and reduce the consumption of diesel fuel used by only being picked up when full.

Cell Phone to Sunflower?

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:35:16 -0700

Cell Phone Turns Into Sunflower
A materials company, Pvaxx Research & Development, and the University of Warwick in the UK have developed a biodegradable polymer and used it in a prototype cellphone case. The cover of the case has an actual sunflower seed embedded in it. Theoretically, when you're trading up to a new phone, you plant the cover of the case and it provides nutrients to the seed as the gigantic sunflower grows. Of course, the rest of your phone still goes to a landfill where it leaches out heavy metals into the municipal water supply while the "green" cover is grabbing all the media attention on CNN.