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Energy conservation gets gamified

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 24, 2012

Energy conservation gets gamified

By Lisa Hymas

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OMG, I just saved way more energy than you.

Continuing its long tradition of reporting on trends long after they’ve become trendy, The New York Times has a big story today on gamification: “a business trend — some would say fad — that aims to infuse otherwise mundane activities with the excitement and instant feedback of video games.”

[D]igital technologies like smartphones and cheap sensors have taken the phenomenon to a new level, especially among adults. Now, game concepts like points, badges and leader boards are so mainstream that they have become powerful motivators in many settings, even some incongruous ones. At a time when games are becoming ever more realistic, reality is becoming more gamelike.

A lot of gamification is aimed at getting us to buy junk. The BBC quotes one critic within the gaming industry:

Ian Bogost, co-founder of the game design company Persuasive Games, … calls Gamification a “marketing gimmick”. And, in another blog post, took his critique one step further, describing it as “exploitationware” and “bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business …”

But some people are trying to harness the trend for good instead of evil. From the Times:

More than 75 utilities have begun using a service from a company called Opower that awards badges to customers when they reduce their energy consumption. Customers can compare their progress with their neighbors’ and broadcast their achievements on Facebook.

“I’m not going to lie — I hate those online game apps on Facebook. I delete them,” said Brett Little, who works for an environmental nonprofit group in Grand Rapids, Mich., and has been known to share his energy-saving progress online. “This one I really enjoy.” …

“We have a tendency to be dismissive about games, but what we’re learning is that games in general are wonderfully powerful tools that can be applied in all sorts of serious contexts,” said Kevin Werbach, an associate professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who teaches a course on how businesses can use games and recently wrote a book on the subject.

We reported on Opower’s Facebook app and other conservation-focused games this past summer and last year. We even dabbled in some green gamification of our own way back in 2009. Grist: more trend-attuned than The New York Times.

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The apocalypse is here: FDA clears way for fast-growing GM monster salmon

by Myrna Posted on December 21, 2012

The apocalypse is here: FDA clears way for fast-growing GM monster salmon

By Susie Cagle

The Food and Drug Administration has a special present for you this holiday season: genetically modified salmon that have been developed to grow at twice the usual salmon speed. What, you didn’t put that on your list? Well, surprise!

rogergolub

Run, little salmon, the monsters are coming!

USA Today reports:

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday released its environmental assessment of the AquaAdvantage salmon, a faster-growing fish which has been subject to a contentious, yearslong debate at the agency. The document concludes that the fish “will not have any significant impacts on the quality of the human environment of the United States.” Regulators also said that the fish is unlikely to harm populations of natural salmon, a key concern for environmental activists.

The FDA will take comments from the public on its report for 60 days before making it final …

Experts view the release of the environmental report as the final step before approval.

The fish was first invented (invented!) in the ’90s but has been swimming around in regulatory limbo for the last two years, with some skeptical it would ever see a dinner plate. From Slate:

[W]ithin days of the expected public release of the [environmental assessment] this spring, the application was frozen. The delay, sources within the government say, came after meetings with the White House, which was debating the political implications of approving the GM salmon, a move likely to infuriate a portion of its base …

When asked about the holdup, FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said, “I recommend you talk to the [Office of Management and Budget] or the White House. That’s all I’m willing to say.”

AquaBounty, the company that developed and essentially owns the monster salmon, says there’s little to no risk of fish escaping their growth pens and mating with wild salmon. Food Consumer did its own math:

Ninety-five to 99 percent of AAS [AquAdvantage salmon] are sterile, said AquaBounty at FDA hearings in 2010, so they are unlikely to breed and threaten wild salmon stocks if they escape. (If they did breed, though, it could be Jurassic Park-like since AAS eat five times more food than wild salmon and have less fear of predators, according to background materials.) Nor is 1 to 5 percent a small amount considering the 15 million eggs AquaBounty plans to grow: that could amount to 750,000 fertile fish.

Besides their massive food consumption and lack of fear (!), the FDA’s report found that the AquAdvantage salmon had a high level of infection and “jaw erosion.” There’s also a disturbingly detailed protocol for how to dispose of a whole lot of dead fish in deep “burial pits” that would be covered with plastic. Hungry yet?

With frankenfish now set to be mingling with wild and farmed varieties at the market, the next question is: How will we know? Not that they’d be required to label the stuff, but I hope AquaBounty is so pleased with its frankenfish market dominance that it’ll plaster its name all over these monster salmon meats …

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Obama doubles size of California marine sanctuary, adorable otters rejoice

by Myrna Posted on December 20, 2012

Obama doubles size of California marine sanctuary, adorable otters rejoice

By Susie Cagle

President Obama has proposed that more than 2,700 square miles off the coast of Northern California be added to the national marine sanctuary system, which would protect the area from oil and gas drilling permanently. It would be the biggest addition to the 40-year-old system in 20 years, doubling the total protected sanctuary area. The otters are so excited you guys.

mike baird

From the San Jose Mercury News:

“This is a matter of economic common sense. Jobs and livelihoods hang in the balance,” [said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D)]. “No one is going to vacation on the Sonoma coast if they are looking at oil derricks.”

I like her logic, even though lots of people vacation along the California coast within view of all kinds of offshore drilling equipment. (Ahem, Santa Barbara.)

In recent months, Woolsey, who is retiring from Congress on Jan. 3, urged Obama to use his executive authority to create a new national monument along the scenic Sonoma coast. Obama, however, stopped short of creating a monument, opting instead to use the NOAA administrative process, which triggers public hearings in Northern California early next year, along with detailed environmental studies. It is expected to take up to two years to finalize …

“This is one of the crowning achievements of the coastal protection movement in California,” said Richard Charter, a senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation in Washington, D.C. “This is a permanent ban on offshore drilling, forever, at a time when Congress has not been particularly interested in conservation.”

The Sierra Club said, “President Obama gave Californians and all Americans a tremendous gift today.” But this is particularly great news for nature, which would really prefer to do whatever the hell nature wants.

While Northern California’s coastal sea otters are poised to get an expanded sanctuary, earlier this week Southern California’s otters got some good news too. The federal government is officially abandoning its effort to keep otters near a remote island — an effort that resulted in most of the otters dying — and will now let them float free. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Trying to tell a marine mammal to stay on one side of an imaginary line across the water was a dumb idea,” said Steve Shimek, executive director of the Otter Project.

Shimek said the otters’ new freedom will help restore the coastal ecosystem of Southern California (near those offshore drilling operations, natch).

From KPCC:

Otters are good for kelp forests. And kelp forests, called the “redwoods of the sea,” are home to hundreds of species valuable to a biologically diverse coastal ecosystem.

Things are looking up for this Christmas, Ma and Emmett Otter!

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U.S. cities are getting denser

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 20, 2012

U.S. cities are getting denser

By Susie Cagle

The U.S. EPA released a report this week on how our cities are growing. So there’s the first good news: They’re growing! But you knew that already. Other good news: Nearly 75 percent of major metro areas saw a higher proportion of housing being built in already-developed areas (“infill” in planning jargon) from 2005 to 2009 compared to 2000 to 2004. The bad? From sea to shining sea, we still really love to sprawl. Almost all major metro areas continued to grow outward faster than they grew inward.

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Walmart bribed its way around Mexico’s environmental rules

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 19, 2012

Walmart bribed its way around Mexico’s environmental rules

By Susie Cagle

BREAKING: Walmart did another terrible thing!

grass_stained_feet

The retail giant is not just the biggest employer in the U.S. — it also dominates Mexico with 2,275 outlets. And it got there by playing very, very dirty. According to the second part of a New York Times investigation, Walmart de Mexico routinely bribed officials not just to get its plans bumped to the top of the pile, but to “subvert democratic governance.” This is how the company successfully built a Walmart in a Teotihuacán alfalfa field a mile from ancient pyramids that draw tons of tourists. (Now those tourists get a view of a boxy Walmart supercenter when they climb to the top.) The local leaders said no, so Walmart de Mexico paid a guy $52,000 and redrew the zoning map itself.

Frankly, this is not very surprising. But it’s damning as hell. From the Times:

Thanks to eight bribe payments totaling $341,000, for example, Wal-Mart built a Sam’s Club in one of Mexico City’s most densely populated neighborhoods, near the Basílica de Guadalupe, without a construction license, or an environmental permit, or an urban impact assessment, or even a traffic permit. Thanks to nine bribe payments totaling $765,000, Wal-Mart built a vast refrigerated distribution center in an environmentally fragile flood basin north of Mexico City, in an area where electricity was so scarce that many smaller developers were turned away.

But there is no better example of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s methods than its conquest of Mrs. Pineda’s alfalfa field. In Teotihuacán, The Times found that Wal-Mart de Mexico executives approved at least four different bribe payments — more than $200,000 in all — to build just a medium-size supermarket. Without those payoffs, records and interviews show, Wal-Mart almost surely would not have been allowed to build in Mrs. Pineda’s field.

The Times seems eager to point out that this is a Walmart problem, not a Mexico problem. These bribes were not, as Reuters puts it, “routine payments.” Except that in effect they actually were.

Walmart now says it’s all kinds of ready “to fully cooperate with the competent authorities in whatever investigation,”  Fox helpfully reports (even though the company abandoned its own internal investigation years ago). Perhaps this is because it could be facing “sizable fines.”

This is both vindicating and infuriating, like most times Walmart gets caught doing something terrible. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice might be investigating, but they aren’t commenting on the story, at least not yet. Meanwhile, shares of Walmart’s stock rose 30 cents today.

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San Francisco’s private-public spaces go public-public

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 18, 2012

San Francisco’s private-public spaces go public-public

By Susie Cagle

It may be one of the most expensive places to live in the country, but San Francisco is still sticking to its hippie roots and trying to look out for its commoners. A city mandate requires that downtown developers include a space in every new building for the city’s scruffy thousands who can’t afford Financial District condos. Some of these privately owned public spaces, or POPOS, look especially nice and fancy. Some have weird but glorious monster head sculptures. All languish relatively unused — but that may be about to change.

Scott Beale

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The provision of privately owned public open spaces is governed by the city’s 1985 downtown plan. The formula “to meet the needs of downtown workers, residents and visitors” requires 1 square foot of public space per 50 square feet of office space or hotels.

At least 15 such spaces have been created since then because of the program. In addition, at least two recent projects not covered by the downtown plan include distinctive publicly accessible spaces: the San Francisco Federal Building with its three-story “sky garden” cut into the 18-story tower, and an expansive landscaped passage between the clover-shaped towers of the Infinity condominium complex. …

The 1985 plan states that when public spaces are located within or on top of buildings, “their availability should be marked visibly at street level.” But because the guidelines are so vague, it’s easy to fulfill their letter but not their spirit.

C’mon: If you were a downtown developer, would you want the street rabble accessing your luxury loft building’s glorious roof garden, even though the city requires it? Hell no. They must build it, but they can make it very difficult for you to come. ”Stay in the streets, plebes!” the developers cry as they ash their cigars off the 101st floor.

But not anymore! An update to the city’s ordinance now requires much clearer signage for the public benefit. From Atlantic Cities:

“It should create a branding to get to the question, ‘does the public understand what these spaces are?” [city manager of legislative affairs AnMarie] Rodgers says. “It should really help people to see it as not just one space, but a network of downtown open spaces.”

A new online tool maps all the POPOS and lets you sort by open hours, food availability, and public restrooms. Many have seating and views of the city, and some even have power outlets for your new pop-up flash-mob coworking space.

Can you imagine if all cities did this? We’d have public bathroom maps for every downtown!

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Tiny twisters could power your town — someday

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 14, 2012

Tiny twisters could power your town — someday

By Susie Cagle

You thought you were cool with your wind turbines, hippies? Canadian inventor Louis Michaud sees your wind turbines and raises you a freaking tornado.

m_bridi

Yes, climate change may be unleashing monster tornadoes upon us now, but those aren’t the tornadoes Michaud wants to “control and exploit.” Today the inventor won a grant through the Thiel Foundation’s “revolutionary” Breakout Labs to develop power-generating twisters.

The Toronto Star reports:

[B]y today’s measure, Michaud’s idea is the definition of radical. Through his company AVEtec — the AVE standing for “atmospheric vortex engine” — the long-term plan is to take waste heat from a thermal power plant or industrial facility and use it to create a controllable twister that can generate electricity.

Here’s how it works: Waste heat is blown at an angle into a large circular structure, creating a flow of spinning hot air. We all know heat travels upward and as it does it spins itself into a rising vortex.

The higher the twister grows, the greater the temperature differential between top and bottom, creating stronger and stronger convective forces that act like fuel for the vortex, eventually allowing it to take on a life of its own.

The result is that hot air initially blown into the bottom of the structure starts getting sucked in so forcefully that it spins electricity-generating turbines installed at the base …

Given the destructive history of naturally formed tornadoes, many people might be freaked out by the thought of having man-made tornadoes intentionally scattered near cities and power plants.

Michaud assured that his twisters are much safer to operate and control than, say, a nuclear plant. And because they’re fuelled by the waste heat that’s initially supplied, all the operator has to do is throttle back or cut off that heat to weaken or stop the vortex.

True to its self-proclaimed radical spirit, Breakout Labs has also backed meat and leather 3D printing from Modern Meadow. Essentially it funds magic.

So hey, is anyone out there working on a protective forcefield for cyclists …?

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Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 13, 2012

Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

By Susie Cagle

You may not be at all surprised to learn that pesticides are bad for us. No, but, like, really bad.

jetsandzeppelins

A couple of months ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned about the effects of pesticides on kids. Today’s kids have grown up with a new normal of pesticide-laden food and increased food allergies (up 18 percent in the U.S. between 1997 and 2007). According to a new study, those two things might be connected. From Mother Earth News:

The study reported that high levels of dichlorophenols, a chemical used in pesticides and to chlorinate water, when found in the human body, are associated with food allergies.

“Our research shows that high levels of dichlorophenol-containing pesticides can possibly weaken food tolerance in some people, causing food allergy,” said allergist Elina Jerschow, M.D., M.Sc., ACAAI fellow and lead study author. “This chemical is commonly found in pesticides used by farmers and consumer insect and weed control products, as well as tap water …

“Previous studies have shown that both food allergies and environmental pollution are increasing in the United States,” said Dr. Jerschow. “The results of our study suggest these two trends might be linked, and that increased use of pesticides and other chemicals is associated with a higher prevalence of food allergies.”

Eat all the organic apples you want, but there’s no escaping pesticides. The New York Times’ Mark Bittman had some strong words about that this week:

[T]he most striking non-event of the last year — decade, generation — is how asleep at the wheel we have all been regarding pesticides. Because every human tested is found to have pesticides in his or her body fat. And because pesticides are found in nearly every stream in the United States, over 90 percent of wells, and — in urban and agricultural areas — over half the groundwater. So Department of Agriculture data show that the average American is exposed to 10 or more pesticides every day, via diet and drinking water.

This shouldn’t be surprising: pesticide drift is a term used to describe the phenomenon by which almost all pesticides — 95 to 98 percent is the number I’ve seen — wind up on or in something other than their intended target. (This means, of course, that in order to be effective more pesticides must be used than would be necessary if targeting were more accurate.)

Much damage has been done, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

It sure is — and not just for humans. R.I.P. bees.

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King tides give California coast a taste of warmer, wetter future

by Myrna Posted on December 12, 2012

King tides give California coast a taste of warmer, wetter future

By Susie Cagle

THE KING TIDES ARE COMING. Through the end of the week, California will be experiencing its highest tides of the year, the “king” kind, that come around each winter. It may be galactic gravity that’s pulling the water closer, but it looks a lot like climate change! The tides will be as high as +10.1 feet in some places.

SantaBarbaraOceanGirl

From The San Jose Mercury News:

“Flooding would be a concern if we had a storm system coming through,” said Matt Mehle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey. Instead, the rising water will offer a teachable moment, scientists say. Already, the ocean off California has risen 8 inches in the past 100 years. As the earth warms, polar ice melts, and the warmer ocean water expands, increasing sea level. That rate of sea level rise is accelerating. A National Academy of Sciences report in July found that, relative to sea levels in 2000, the California coast south of Cape Mendocino is projected to experience sea level rise of 1.5 inches to 11.8 inches by 2030, and 4.7 inches to 24 inches by 2050, and 16.5 inches to 65 inches by 2100.

Just because the Golden State won’t have a Sandy-sized catastrophe doesn’t mean there can’t still be a lesson in all this. The Mercury News calls this “a giant science project” but I call it “scaring people into better behavior.” The California King Tides Initiative is collecting citizens’ photos of the tides in an effort to educate the public about what higher sea levels might actually look like.

These photographs help us visualize the impact of rising waters on the California coast. Our shores are constantly being altered by human and natural processes and projections indicate that sea level rise will exacerbate these changes. The images offer a living record of the changes to our coasts and shorelines and a glimpse of what our daily tides may look like in the future as a result of sea level rise. Photos taken during king tide events document impacts to private property, public infrastructure, and wildlife habitat across the state.

For locals still set on taking a long walk on the beach, the king tides also bring extremely low tides in midday, but the California Coastal Commission has a friendly suggestion for the rest of us.

Just a thought … California’s next king tides will hit in 2013: Jan. 9-11 and Feb. 7-9.

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People aren’t connecting extreme weather to climate change — at least, not on Google

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 12, 2012

People aren’t connecting extreme weather to climate change — at least, not on Google

By Philip Bump

This morning, Google unveiled its “Zeitgeist 2012″ report, a look at what the world searched for over the past 12 months. (Well, over the past 11-and-a-third months, anyway.) The No. 1 trending thing people searched for was Whitney Houston, which: OK. But when it came to news events, the most captivating thing was Hurricane Sandy.

Which got us thinking: Did those searches for Sandy prompt more searches on climate change? And the answer is: yes, but not many.

Here’s what search traffic for “Hurricane Sandy” looked like over the course of the year, across the globe. (In all graphs, 100 represents the peak search volume.)
And, here, searches for “climate change” and “global warming.”

See that tiny little tick up at the end of October? Yeah, that’s correlated to Sandy.

The searches for “Hurricane Sandy” were, predictably, centered on the East Coast.

Interestingly, searches for “climate change” were centered in Australia …
… and those for “global warming” in Southeast Asia.
Australia, of course, was battered by floods, as was the Philippines. The only places in the United States that saw much traffic for either term were in the Northeast.

We also wondered if the drought caused any splash on Google. And it did, exactly when you’d have expected.
No doubt thanks to the size of the state’s cities, the searches were centered in Texas.
Google is as close as we can get to gauging the public’s thinking. What we learn, then, is that extreme weather events don’t prompt an immediate, online connection to climate change; or, at least, no connection to the desire to learn more about the issue.

And, if you’re wondering who’s searching for Grist?
Not nearly enough people.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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