Until we learn to live more sustainable lifestyles, we’re going to be faced with more ‘peak stuff’, where demand for a particular resource exceeds supply. Fast Company has a nice article on this subject if you want to read more. One example is clean water. More people equals greater demand, but resources are diminishing as glaciers melt and some aquifers are depleted. Food is another one, though the system is so wasteful (in this country at least) that I’m optimistic we can make some big improvements there. Or at the least, stop burning food (turning corn into ethanol to power cars).
Where is Peak Oil?
The idea of Peak Oil, where demand exceeds supply, threatened us for a long time yet continual advances in oil extraction techniques keeps pushing that date farther and farther out, as explained in a recent article over at FastCompany (worth reading if you’re into this stuff!). Instead, we’re facing a new dilemma…we’ve gotten so good at extracting fossil fuels from the ground, that we now face the grim reality of the environmental impact of consuming the known and accessible fossil fuel reserves. If we want to stay below the internationally-agreed upon 2°C of global warming, we can dump about 565 gigatons more CO2 into the atmosphere. The problem is that current fossil fuel reserves, ignoring any future discoveries, contain about 2,795 gigatons of CO2 (source). Yeah. Not good. Either fossil fuels need to get so expensive that people stop using them, or we’re going to really mess up this planet.
Negative health impacts of too little sleep
I came across a really interesting article over at Care2 that talks about the health impacts of not getting enough sleep. I think everyone knows they ‘should’ get plenty of sleep, but why? Just to feel happier? Nope. It turns out that not sleeping enough can affect many aspects of your health:
1. Neuropsychiatric disorders, impaired alertness and cognition, and headaches
2. Vision problems, including blurred vision, floppy eyelid syndrome, glaucoma, even temporary blindness
3. High blood pressure
4. Increased levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress
5. Cancer
6. Difficulty with sexual functioning
7. Increased food cravings and hunger
8. Insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes
9. Hearing loss
10. Muscle weakness and decreased athletic performance
11. Heart disease
12. Skin problems and rashes, including eczema
13. Hair loss
14. Disrupted metabolism, weight gain and obesity
Or to put it another way…just about everything you can think of. My personal metric for whether I’m getting enough sleep, is if I wake up on my own, feeling well-rested, before my alarm goes off. For me, it’s just a matter of getting to bed at a decent time and letting the body do its thing.
MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner
Makerbot just unveiled a prototype of a new 3D scanner at SXSW, designed for the casual 3D printer users out there. It’s fast, but what’s really key is that it produces water-tight models (no gaps in the surfaces) that are ready to scale and send to your printer. At this point, details are sparse…stay tuned to this blog for updates or sign up for email updates directly from the source at Makerbot.
Comet may be visible to the naked eye
Look to the west at sunset and you might be able to see a comet in the evening sky! It sounds like the best day for viewing will be March 13th; look for it next to the crescent moon. There’s a cool animation over at phys.org showing its predicted path.
New type of bacteria discovered in Antarctica
Not surprisingly, when Russian scientists drilled into an isolated subglacial lake in Antarctica that had been sealed off from the rest of the world for thousands, maybe millions, of years, they discovered and entirely new type of bacteria that didn’t resemble anything like what’s been found on this planet so far. Amazing stuff…read more here.
Electric-powered tilt-rotor aircraft
The European company AgustaWestland has not only designed, built, and flown the world’s first electric-powered tilt-rotor aircraft, but they managed to create a design which looks freakin’ awesome. When the rotors are positioned vertically, they’re shrouded, but as far as I can tell (details are sparse), when the rotate 90 degrees for horizontal flight, they’re then unshrouded. Cool.
Even better, when parked on the tarmac, the rotors can be rotated to the horizontal position and used like wind turbines, charging the batteries from wind power! Neat. At this point, it’s only done some unmanned and tethered test flights, so don’t expect to see it in the skies over your city anytime soon.
(via Inhabitat)
Climate Change infographic
Check out this cool infographic talking about climate change and the impact it’s having on this planet. The thumbnail to the left is only a small portion, click on that for the full image.
(via LivingGreen magazine)
Can the Internet of Things help reduce global warming?
The Internet of Things is best thought of as abundant networked, communicating smart devices all around you. Sensors, mostly, that are all communicating and making available unprecedented amounts of information about objects and the environment. Houses that know what rooms people are in, what rooms they are likely to be in next, and adjust HVAC systems accordingly to reduce energy consumption, for example. I’ve loved the idea of this from a technology geek perspective, but I hadn’t considered the environmental aspect until coming across this article talking about how it could offset billions of tons of CO2 through increased efficiency. Interesting idea…and it makes a lot of sense. We’d have to also consider the CO2 impact of actually producing so many sensors and networked objects, though.
VW to start selling 261mpg car
Volkswagen unveiled the production version of its XL1 two-seater car at the Geneva Motor Show recently. It’s a diesel-electric plug in hybrid vehicle that gets about 261mpg and an electric-only range of around 30 miles! While those numbers may end up slightly lower once the car goes through the US tests (the European test cycle turns in higher numbers typically), it’s still incredibly impressive.
Powered by a .9 liter two cylinder diesel engine, it’s not especially fast, even with the electric motor assist….0-62mph takes 12.7 seconds, for example. There’s no official word on price, though since it’s a low volume, largely hand-built production car, you can expect the price to be pretty high, probably pushing six figures. Definitely an ‘early adopter toy’, but also a good example of the future of automobiles.
Read more at AutoBlog and NPR.
Video review below: