Archive for the ‘Carbon’ Category

Money not only talks, it also writes legislation!

TweetI finished up UNC’s 2009 greenhouse gas inventory last month, and I’m pleased to say we had our first year of reduction since I started my job.  Better yet, it was a big reduction: 20% lower than 2008. Part of that reduction was due to some improved nitrous oxide emission factors for our coal boilers.  [...]

In the debate over man’s role in climate change, it turns out that your conclusions are more affected by your personal values than by the evidence.

If you pay someone to destroy greenhouse gases, they would never intentionally produce an excess, would they? Methinks I smell a rat.

Fire the neighbor kid and just buy yourself a goat. Your lawn will thank you.

Tweet Meet the Habbits, strangely distorted humanoids that wear their environmental impact on their sleeve whole body. Rather than limiting themselves to just a carbon footprint, Habbits have a carbon head-print, hand-print, “bum”-print, etc. The relationship goes something like this: Height – Total Carbon Footprint Feet – Transport Hands – Home Energy Mouth – Water [...]

Tweet Call me a luddite, but I just don’t know if I’m ready for Twitter.  I mean, I get the concept of micro-blogging, and I certainly have a lengthy backlog of links and stories that I’ll never have time to macro-blog about, but is there real value in the hit-and-run style of Twitter? According to [...]

TweetI love it when someone visualizes data in a new way, and if it’s IRL (in real life) rather than on the computer screen, all the better. That’s the volume of one metric ton of carbon dioxide.  27 feet x 27 feet x 27 feet. Now, I just have to figure out a way to [...]

TweetAn ecometric roundup for everyone’s favorite smoke spewing Icelandic volcano. First off, a map from the New York Times showing the airport closures and ash coverage: You’ll notice that the Icelandic airport remains ironically open. I’d be remiss if I did not at least briefly cover the climate impacts of the current eruption.  Traditionally, volcanic [...]

TweetThis just in: Smokey the Bear had it all wrong.  Now it seems that only YOU can cause forest fires. There’s mounting evidence that our fire suppression program over the last few decades has actually made forest fires worse. Instead of allowing frequent, smaller burns that remove brush and tinder from the forest floor, we allow [...]