Elemental

I’ve added a few more blogs to the blogroll. I feel blogging in the industry slumped somewhat over the past 2 or 3 years, but we’re seeing a revival of sorts now. I’m not sure if Twitter is to blame, but it’s a good thing in my book. I do enjoy blogs more than magazine articles, and comments (either on the blog or twitter) are the most enjoyable part of blogging for me.

Anyway, here’s three blogs to tide you over whilst I’m on holiday for the next 2 weeks:

Rory Bergin – I tend to attend the same events as Rory and his office is just up the road from where I live, yet we’ve still never actually met properly. I’m sure our paths will cross soon. He’s the Head of Sustainability & Innovation at HTA.

oCo Carbon blog by Jamie Bull. Jamie is also on twitter and is good mates with my colleague T. It is a small world. Recommended reading, especially his recent EROEI posts.

Last, and by no means least, Bling No More by my ex-colleague Doug King. I worked with Doug at Max Fordham’s back in 1997/98. He’s infamous for saying Eco-Bling to journalists, and doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to opinion.

admin Diversions blogs

RSA have animated Dan Pink’s talk on motivating employees. Well worth 10 minutes of your time to watch…

admin Diversions motivation

You may have seen the lovely infographic from Information is Beautiful comparing the daily CO2 emissions of the Iceland volcano to European air emissions earlier in the week?

I couldn’t help thinking how it compared to the UK Non-domestic buildings daily emissions (as you do).

Doing a quick back of the envelope calc for UK non-domestic buildings (1.8m non domestic buildings from the recent Carbon Trust figures in Building the Future Today) at 106MtCO2 per year is equivalent to 290,410 tonnes per day, which lies about halfway between the planes and the volcanoes. My first attempt at an infographic follows:

So as one smart arse in the office pointed out, if we stop flying, we’re all out of a job (tongue firmly in cheek there!).

admin Diversions carbon emissions, volcano

I’ve been very remiss and forgot to mention my blog has been listed in Online Engineering Degree’s Top 50 Environmental Engineering Blogs. I’m honoured. I’m listed on the Industry Insider area. From the dip in traffic I usually suffer in July and August I suspect I have a few student readers out there who will find the list useful.

admin Diversions blogs

Hattie over at AJ has an update on our favourite eco-Hobbit House, which I originally posted in January 2007. The post is in my top ten most popular, so maybe the market for such dwellings is growing?

Still no word on how it passes Building Regs, but good to see the movement growing – the builder will be assisting 11 others to build a house each in a settlement in Wales. A refreshing change to the UK standard volume housebuilder offering.

admin Diversions hobbit, Housing, self build

Another great short video from TED – this time on plastics in the ocean.

“Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest”

Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

admin Diversions Charles Moore, ocean, plastics, waste

Thanks to whoever alerted me to this great, short TED video. The goal is to harness wind power at 1,000 – 15,000m in the troposhere (much above where wind turbines currently operate). Which reminds me, I must dig out the flexifoil now the evenings are brighter…

Saul Griffith: Inventing a super-kite to tap the energy of high-altitude wind

admin Diversions kite, renewables, Saul Griffith, TED, wind

I hate starting posts with apologies, but here goes. I have a list of posts I want to write and I just don’t have time to write them. Rather than let them sit in my mental inbox until I forget about them, I’m doing a quick update without fleshing out the bones so to speak.

Firstly, I’ve been to some rather excellent events hosted by wise women in London as of late, organised by the anything-but-lazy Polly who blogs over at the Lazy Environmentalist.

The three events have included a talk by Rob Hopkins of Transitions Towns and The Transition Handbook, a talk by Oliver Tickell on Kyoto2 and a fascinating evening on CSP introduced by Katherine Hamnett* and including talks on Desertec from trec UK and an intriguing proposition from Seawater Greenhouses. Polly is also heading up a campaign for Planetary Rights (like I said, anything but lazy!). I urge you to go check out the links and if you’re in London, try to get along to some of the Wise Women events.

Secondly, I’ve been to my first Sponge event. Again, check them out – great to put faces to names and to meet with some old acquaintances and ex-colleagues.

Thirdly, I was at the Sustainability and Economics event Phil blogs about here. Hilarious panel discussion, completely off topic (the phrase “spectrum of evil” was bandied around!). I have some notes and thoughts about the morning and if I ever get a chance I’ll try to blog something.

Finally, there are a few new blogs and twitterers (tweeters? twits?) to check out:

• Guy Battle at Guy’s blog (blog not associated with Battle McCarthy, but rather Planet Positive)
• Derek (a fellow CIBSE member) at Keeping ahead of the Oil Curve
• Su Butcher (twittering) of Barefoot and Gilles architects
• Shari Shapiro twittering and blogging at Green Building Law, who is just back from greenbuild, as are fellow tweeters Preston, Elaine and Pam.

Enjoy!

*I turned to my colleague and said the Katherine Hamnett to be met with a blank face – well, I was impressed and slightly starstruck…

mel starrs Diversions Katharine Hamnett, Kyoto, Oliver Tickell

Image via Wikipedia

I am fascinated with cognitive biases. I’ve mentioned the confirmation bias before and whilst reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicolas Taleb (who is a big fan, as am I, of Kahneman & Tversky), I was reminded of the following statistic which I found in Mintzberg’s Strategy Bites Back by Spyros G. Makridakis (pg. 168): believers remember 100% of confirming evidence but only have 40% accuracy when recalling disconfirming evidence. On the other hand skeptics can recall 90% of both confirming and disconfirming evidence.

A fact worth remembering when you’re next reading something

mel starrs Diversions Amos Tversky, Black Swan, Cognitive bias, Confirmation bias, Daniel Kahneman, Economics

Not often I back a winner…

mel starrs Diversions US presidential elections