Today is Blog Action Day, and the issue this year is climate change. As I was thinking about what to write, I stumbled upon a really cool, innovative competition happening right now in Washington D.C. called the Solar Decathlon.
What is it, you ask? It’s a competition hosted by the Department of Energy for college and university students to create their own solar-powered house. In addition to raising awareness about the benefits of energy-efficiency and green technologies, the competition also aims to promote a new approach to green housing. This approach includes aesthetics and comfort as well as energy-efficiency into the house designs. The Solar Decathlon caught my attention because students from the University of Minnesota have built a house for the competition—they are currently in 5th place with the winner being announced tomorrow.
What’s so cool about the Solar Decathlon is that it makes student innovators focus not just on green components of the house, but on the house as a green system. Being a college student myself, some of the neat, crazy things these fellow students have come up with boggles my mind! MinnPost reports that the lighting and temperature of many houses can be change remotely with an iPhone app, or that houses can adjust interior conditions using weather data to tint electrochemical windows.
The idea behind the house-as-a-system approach is simple—they save energy, but by focusing on aesthetics as well as energy efficiency the houses seem more livable.
"A lot of people have been saying that they could see themselves eating breakfast in this corner, that the house feels livable," said Melissa Sander of Iowa State University as she guided visitors through the house. Their house placed 3rd in market viability.
What these students are doing has led to some pretty incredible innovations in the solar energy industry, such as creating a heat-absorbing lining made of insulating pizza boxes material. Their contributions are going to improve our green economy and increase green jobs across the country.
With all the new and exciting innovations happening within the green industry, we must also be aware of the real world negative impacts of global warming. The Center for American Progress has compiled a list of the top 100 effects of global warming which range from having to say goodbye to many wines to more stray kittens. It also confirms something Stephen Colbert has been saying for a long time: that bears are the #1 threat to America. Global warming has apparently made the winters in Russia too hot for bears to hibernate. As a result, they have become unusually aggressive, so the emergency ministry has warned the citizens to beware of brown bear attacks. Colbert, your mistrust of bears has finally been justified!
We are participating in Blog Action Day 2009, this is the first of several posts on climate change issues we'll be putting up here today...enjoy.
When people start talking about the early signs of climate change's impact on our planet, they usually point to the ice caps. With recent reports predicting that the North Pole could experience an iceless summer within years and the big time ramifications of the ice caps melting, it's completely understanable. But we here in Minnesota do not need to look so far outside of our own backyard to see the problems being created by global climate change.
I present to you the moose, Minnesota's answer to Alaska's polar bear. These huge and magnificent creatures are already starting to come under a great deal of pressure both directly and indirectly from rising global temperatures. Minnesota is also one of the few places in the U.S. where you can find a stable moose population, though we don't have as many as Maine and Canada. From the Huffingtonpost:
Minnesota has an estimated 7,600 moose, nearly all in the forests of northeastern Minnesota, where plentiful swamps, lakes and streams provide good habitat. Yet they're beleaguered by increasingly warm weather and parasites such as brainworms, ticks and liver flukes...
Warmer weather is considered one of the main reasons for the near-disappearance of moose from northwestern Minnesota, where their numbers have plunged from at least 4,000 in the early 1980s to fewer than 100. The advisory committee's report warns that they may never recover to significant numbers.
Though infections and parasites (the brainworms, ticks, and liver flukes) come up as the cause of population decline, the driving factor for the deterioration of the moose population in Minnesota is climate change. Warmer weather equals more deer, which equals a faster spread of parasites that can kill the moose. With projections for temperature increases by 2050 to look like the image below (without action) the prognosis for the moose in Minnesota does not look good.
Protecting the moose population is one of the millions of reasons why action is urgently needed. Head over to to 350.org and check out some of the thousands of events happening on October 24th, a day packed full of calls for international climate action. Sign up for one or plan one of your own, and most importantly, spread the word.
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