Circumnavigational Wonder

July 28, 2016 / PK Read / Leave a comment

The world’s first circumnavigation by an aircraft powered only by the sun was just completed this week.

The Solar Impulse 2, created and flown by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, landed in Abu Dhabi after 23 days of flight time – spread over the course of 17 months and 42,438 km (22,915 nmi) of Northern Hemisphere territory.

It’s a strange thing to live in an age when scientific breakthroughs seem so commonplace as to barely merit more than a passing mention before they are lost again in the onslaught of information.

Positive discharge from a wire (1899) – An early electrical discharge visualization based on experiments in electricity by William George Armstrong. Armstrong, inventor, arms dealer, scientist, was an early advocate of solar power.
Image: via Dataisnature

We spend all of a few minutes or a few hours in wonderment before moving on to the next amazing novelty. Time moves more quickly these days than it once did.

I try to imagine the days when even an innovation in clock making and mechanics could provide the discussion of an evening, or longer.

The remarkable clockwork globe here was an innovation in its own time. Its movement was built by Gerhard Emmoser, clockmaker to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and it was inspired by the words of Philip Melanchthon in contemplation of Plato:

“…the wings of the human mind are arithmetic and geometry…

Carried up to heaven by their help, you will be able to traverse with your eyes the entire nature of things, discern the intervals and boundaries of the greatest bodies, see the fateful meetings of the stars, and then understand the causes of the greatest things that happen in the life of man.”

Celestial Globe with Clockwork (Vienna, 1579), by Gerhard Emmoser.
the globe originally rotated, powered by an internal movement, and an image of the sun moved along the path of the ecliptic. Use of the mythological winged Pegasus to support the celestial sphere conveys a Renaissance idea that “the wings of the human mind” support the science of astronomy.
Image/caption: Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Solar Impulse 2 flight was 15 years in the making. Bertrand Piccard and his colleague André Borschberg shared piloting duties of a plane equipped with 17,000 solar cells. The undertaking has a dual purpose: To show that it can be done, and to inspire the ongoing pursuit and implementation of renewable energies over fossil fuels.

Exploration, research and innovation aren’t just matters of pushing boundaries of what we already know – they are about dreaming into areas about which we know nothing. The clockwork globe was no doubt inspired not only by the soaring words of Melanchthon, but by ever-growing knowledge of how the world might look from above.

Who wouldn’t want to circle the globe from the comfort of their own drawing room?

Four hundred years passed between the first circumnavigation of the world by water in 1519 (by an expedition initially led by Ferdinand Magellan over three years) and the first aerial circumnavigation in 1924 (by a the United States Army Air Service aviator team over 175 days).

Flight path of the Solar Impulse 2.
Source: The Guardian

Less than a hundred years passed between that feat and doing the same thing using only the sun as fuel.

We figured out how to harness electricity less than two hundred years ago using water power and coal; transforming sunlight into electricity happened around the same time, but the problem has always been storing that energy for use as needed.

The Solar Impulse 2, like other major achievements in science, engineering and exploration, reminds us that there is always further to go.

Just let that sink in for a few minutes, or a few days.

As Melanchthon wrote, “For I know that you are certainly convinced that the science of celestial things has great dignity and usefulness.”

Words as true now as they were over four hundred years ago.

The Solar Impulse 2.
Source: Solar Impulse

Industrial Reforestation

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 / PK Read / Leave a comment

I haven’t yet made peace with the notion of drone swarms in civilian life, whether they are for deliveries or photography or oil pipe monitoring or any number of ostensibly benign and useful activities. I suppose at some point I’ll just get used to them as they multiply, much like I did with the now-ubiquitous CCTV cameras.

However, this week I learned of a drone project that might soften my stance.

BioCarbon Engineering is a UK-based project that implements UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, to plant trees in deforested areas using what they call ‘industrial reforestation’ to counter the estimated 26 billion trees lost every year to logging, mineral extraction, agriculture, and urban expansion.

Now, the combination of the words ‘industrial’ and ‘reforestation’, used together with drones, doesn’t sound very much like it would add up to a tree-hugging approach. At least not at first. But…

The drones map terrain, the plant a diversity of tree seeds in a nature-based matrix.
Source: BioCarbon Engineering

The 1 Billion Trees A Year project proposes a three-step approach using drones: a deforested area is first mapped, then seeded, and then monitored for progress.

The challenges of seeding deforested regions are many – but one of the most daunting is the simple act of seeding out new trees. Either the seeding has to be carried out by hand, or rather, many hands, or it is done by dropping batches of seeds from the air.

The advantage of hand-seeding is that the seeds can be inserted into the soil deeply enough that they can germinate and take root. But of course, large deforested areas require the re-planting of thousands, millions of trees.

Seeding by air allows for a large number of seed drops, but many of the seeds won’t ever get far enough into the soil to establish themselves, or they’ll be scattered before they can germinate.

The Biocarbon Engineering drone, with a pressurized cannister for injecting seed pods.
Source: BioCarbon Engineering

Operating at a height of 1-2 meters (3-6 feet), drones would be equipped with pressurized air canisters that can shoot seed pods far enough down into the soil to prevent scattering. The seed pods would be small units that contain a germinated seed, a bit of moisture, and a bit of nutrition to get the seed started.

Speaking in an interview with the BBC, CEO Lauren Fletcher said that the drones can be used to cover large amounts of terrain, and can use a variety of seed types to try and re-establish a forest with a similar pattern of biodiversity as the one originally deforested.

The drone-injected seed pods hit the soil and open to release a germinated seed.
Source: BioCarbon Engineering

I wrote recently about the reverence deserved by forests. This project seems to be a very 21st century method for encouraging that reverence.

The project was a runner-up in the United Arab Emirates Drones for Good – which included a number of other promising humanitarian drone projects that might just make me change my opinion about drone use – at least some of the time.

Deforestation in Borneo.
Photo: Rhett Butler/Mongabay

The Hand Tree

June 9, 2014 / PK Read / Leave a comment

I like gadgets as much as the next person, and I certainly understand the appeal of turning to nifty electronics for green objectives. Not only do some of the gadgets look cool and do cool things, they also monetize green goals by making products that can help drive employment and the economy. All good things. Okay, so they also use resources and generate waste, but maybe there are work-arounds for those drawbacks.

The hand tree, for example, is a cool device on the drawing board that would act as a personal air purifier as well as a technological fashion statement.

The Hand Tree, a battery-powered purifier made from recyclable materials.
Design: Alexandr Kostin/Electrolux Design Lab

Conceived by students at the Electrolux Design Lab, the hand tree is a largish bangle (or other accessory form, such as a pendant or belt buckle) that filters air.

“Combining millions of personal air purifiers we can achieve the image of living in a forest,” says the web page for the project. “If every inhabitant in a big city would wear such a device, we would be all to breathe easily in smoggy air.”

Okay, this is where the cool factor rapidly diminishes for me. This is the kind of production-oriented, consumer-centered ‘solution’ that is fully in keeping with the mentality that got us into cities full of smoggy air in the first place. And that’s not the fault of the young designer who came up with this neat idea; this is how we think.

Forest pool
Artist: Aristide Maillol via Davidson Galleries

It’s no surprise that these creative futuristic designs for environmental gadgets are part of a 2013 competition sponsored by an appliance company.

Maybe I’m biased because I spend a lot of my time around actual trees, but my thought is this: How about we just plant more trees, and stop cutting down the ones we’ve already got?

They do a remarkably efficient job of purifying air with almost no production cost, when they reach the end of their life span they leave behind useful biomass, they maintain ecosystems and water tables, hold soil in place and provide a natural cooling system.

Practically the only thing they don’t do, unless they are being used for timber or packaging, is generate a profit.

And that might be their biggest weakness.

Civilization Tree
Artist: Robobenito

Catching Fog

May 2, 2014 / PK Read / 1 Comment

Photo: Nopalcactus

Fog is little more than an earth-bound cloud. When I picture fog harvesting, I have an image of people moving quietly through dense fog, using loose linen bags to scoop against the water-laden air around them. But why would anyone harvest fog? It’s not as if enough of it would ever stay in the imaginary bags to leave behind a harvested area of clear, sunny terrain.

When we talk about design engineering, it’s usually with a specific goal in mind. But sometimes the real goal isn’t apparent until the first goal has introduced a design idea. This was true of fog harvesting, which did not begin with people gathering fog in sacks to little purpose.

Fog is critical to the health of some redwood and coastal forests.
Photo: Coast Redwood & Ecology

Fog harvesting, the gathering of moisture from fog, has been around for millions of years, at least when it comes to plants. Some ferns, redwoods and berry plants absorb up to half their water intake from the moisture in fog – and that’s not from moisture that accumulates on the ground. They absorb the moisture directly into their leaves, or from the drops that collect at the base of stems.

The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) was studying the particle constituents of fog in Quebec when it created fog harvesting equipment in the 1980s. Basically, they built a stationary canvas sail with a collecting trough at the bottom – fog coalesced on the material and dripped down into the trough for examination. This technique was then re-purposed for a reforestation project in Chile, with the fog harvesting sails redesigned to irrigate hillside seedlings in a denuded area that had once been cloud forest.

Fog water collectors on El Tofo mountain, Chile. Courtesy of IDRC / CDRI; Photographer Sitoo Mukerji

Fog water collectors on El Tofo mountain, Chile.
Photo: Sitoo Mukerji / Quemao Viejo

What happened to the fog water, though, indicated an entirely different need: the local villages of the area suffered from water scarcity, and wanted the water gained from the fog harvesting to be redirected from the reforestation project to the local inhabitants.

And out of this somewhat messy, haphazard path of discovery, the idea of fog harvesting for people in water-scarce areas came about.

These days, there are a few non-profit organizations focused on various collection and distribution methods, including the International Organization for Dew Utilization (OPUR), which sounds like a dream company out of a fog fairytale, but which is a functioning entity working to combat water scarcity.

Photo: Luc Viatour / State of the Planet

Looking at the design telescope from perspective of the end result, the idea of catching ephemeral water droplets seems obvious.

There are still issues to be resolved – how to keep the passive catchment and distribution systems clean, how to gather the maximum amount of moisture.

Fog catchers are improving in design and efficiency, but could probably still benefit from some applied design thinking to get them to work as well as your average fern.

Two workers in Bellavista, Peru, perched 18 feet (5.5 meters) high to sew nets onto a fog-collecting apparatus (2007)
Photo: Anne Lummerich / Nat Geo

The Taste of Shape

April 5, 2014April 5, 2014 / PK Read / 2 Comments

Champagne Glasses (1937)
Source: Antique Helper

There’s no denying that the utensils we use, the presentation we choose and the serving methods employed affect how we experience what crosses our palate. That’s as true for lemon tart as it is for champagne.

Champagne glasses, like those for many other beverages, have undergone a transformation over the centuries. From the mugs or goblets made of silver, to tall glasses, to the flat coupe glasses of the 19th century, to the delicately stemmed flutes that gained popularity in the 20th century but which are so difficult to wash without breaking. And now, more changes are afoot.

The flute, L’Instant Taittinger (1980s). Modern flutes have a ballooned lower section rather than the old-fashioned V or U shape.

Riedl, an Austrian company with a history almost as long as Champagne itself, wants to change the way we drink the bubbly. And not just Champagne – it wants to tailor specific glasses to specific sparkling wines.

According to Decanter.com, Dom Perignon’s chef de cave, Richard Geoffroy, advocates a large Pinot Noir glass made by Riedl if one wants to fully appreciate his house’s Rosé.

Riedl Vinum Pinot Noir XL

There’s some noise about stemless glasses. More practical, yes. But is Champagne really about practicality?

Stemless flutes. These are listed on Amazon as ‘pomponne’ style, which I think is a misnomer.

And what to make of the pomponne, the stemmed flute with no base at all, which cannot be set down until drunk empty? I feel this puts the drinker under pressure to finish a glass and find then find some safe way of putting down the glass without breaking it.

Pomponne glasses.

There has to be some balance between practicality and extremism. Surely life is stressful enough without adding more to what should be a pleasurable experience?

I guess the only way to approach this undertaking is scientifically, which I’m sure Riedl and other glass manufacturers have already done countless times. A blind tasting based not on several Champagnes, but on several glasses. Blindfolded judges who have glasses, all filled with the same Champagne, held to their lips by tasting assistants. Only then will we be able to assess which glass truly favors a specific Champagne and brings it to its full flower.

Here at ChampagneWhisky, we have our own preferences and habits when it comes to serving Champagne.

We have a set of stemless flutes, but I find that if I am deeply involved in a conversation, forget to set down my Champagne, or don’t drink quickly enough, the poor stuff goes a bit tepid.

We have perfectly serviceable, long-stemmed flutes if we have more than eight guests.

For under eight guests, we have a few collections of more or less matching 19th-century glasses which we have collected over the years. Fluted body, stout stems, like the ones above (which are not ours but are very similar).

And for days when we just don’t care: Antique absinthe glasses. Big V-shaped gems for reckless consumption. Because sometimes, it just tastes better that way.

Source: Jules Cheret

Dom Perignon‘s chef de cave, Richard Geoffroy, is another fervent critic of the flute and advocates Riedel’s Vinum XL Pinot Noir glass for DP Rose.
Read more at http://www.decanter.com/news/blogs/team/584594/my-goal-is-to-make-champagne-flutes-obsolete-says-maximilian-riedel#JeQIJYEfAAkZMmhU.99

Ode to Joy(rides)

March 16, 2014 / PK Read / Leave a comment

Ford Mustang 1, graphite on paper.
Artist: Marcus Junge

Every time I go to the Geneva International Motor Show, one of the world’s major automobile shows, I have the vague expectation that I will see something that will exceed expectations, break the rules, extend the boundaries.

So far, no luck. The 84th year of the show, which is closing today, is said to have boasted the most prototypes of any show this year. Still, there were no hovercars, and no cars that ran on water, banana peels or thorium. I also didn’t any listing for the once-touted International Advanced Mobility Forum (IAMF) that used to be held during the show to talk about other forms of transportation. So, what was there?

There’s the Tesla, which is a snazzy sedan at the cutting edge of personal vehicle battery powered transport. And at a base price of US$ 69,000, I guess the lit-up door handles are a nice perk.

Tesla door handle.

There were a number of very nice electric cars from some of the best automakers, and a number of related products boasted their environmental friendliness.

Still, the vast majority of vehicles got very low efficiency ratings.

Yokohama BluEarth tire line.

In the case of this giant tire covered in an atlas of the Earth, I’m not sure I get the symbolism. Is it Earth-friendly, is it saying that all of Earth is wrapped around a petroleum-based tire, or is it saying the tire is going to roll over the blue marble of Earth?

But mostly, as is to be expected, the car show is an orgy of attention on the biggest, baddest motors housed in the fastest, most luxurious, fantastic configurations of metal, leather and plastic one can imagine, an ode sung by hundreds of thousands to the culture of fossil-fuel powered vehicle.

Throngs watch a car turn on a pedestal.

I’m not saying the cars aren’t beautiful (some of them, anyway), or that I don’t still drive a standard-fuel powered vehicle myself.

It’s just that when I first went to the show, back in 1998, I thought by now we’d have gone a bit further down the road of harmonizing our abject adoration of cars with a few concessions to the future of sustainability.

And because it’s a glorious sunny Sunday here, I’m still going to put an an Ode to Joy in spite of this skeptical post.

Mycotecture

February 10, 2014 / PK Read / Leave a comment

Image: 123rf

A few years ago, a fellow in the French village where we live showed us his old family house and business. The large stone building, dating back to the early nineteenth century, was in two side-by-side sections. On one side, the spacious restaurant; on the other side, a three-story rustic home. The structure had been empty since the restaurant had closed eight years earlier. The family had moved up the street to a modern home years before that.

Like all empty buildings, the structure hadn’t remained uninhabited at all. Most of the floors of the old residence had been chewed away by rodents and insects, cats had the run of the place. But there was one kind of resident that took us all by surprise.

The door to the large wine cellar hadn’t been opened in at least five years. And when our acquaintance opened it to show us the cellar, we found that the entire room, from top to bottom, was blanketed in white foam. Every surface, all the wine shelves, the floor, the walls, everything with the exception of a couple of forgotten wine bottles and the light bulbs that lit the place, was covered in thick white fungus. Some of it had hardened. The neighbor quietly shut the door on the secret ecosystem and gave us a look of dismay. “I’ll have to gut the cellar,” he said. “Can’t just clean that stuff up.

Fungal blocks created by Phil Ross

He could have instead decided follow the path of several researchers, architects, material developers and artists, and use the fungus as a building block.

Mycelium, mushroom root material, can be grown to fill almost any shape or mold. Once dried and hardened, the organic building blocks display a number of features we ask of our best building materials: They insulate, they are carbon-neutral in their manufacture, they are fire and water resistant. Fungal blocks grow themselves and once we are done with them, we can compost them to make more.

Queens, New York, will host an architectural installation made of fungal building blocks this summer. I’m not sure how people will take to wandering in a mushroom tower, but if these building blocks really do fulfil their promise, your next house might just be fungal.

The Hy-Fi self-growing tower designed by architect David Benjamin, to be installed at MoMA PS1 in Brooklyn. Watch a film of the installation here.

The Hy-Fi self-growing tower designed by architect David Benjamin, to be installed at MoMA PS1 in Qieems.
Watch a film of the installation here.

Plant Plastics

November 29, 2013November 29, 2013 / PK Read / Leave a comment

An Australian company named Zeoform has been in the news recently for its patented technology of producing a new kind of plastic that uses neither fossil fuels nor toxic chemicals in its production or materials.

The input materials are water, and anything from landfill fiber-based material such as old newspapers or used clothing. The end material is both fire resistant, and compostable.

According to an article in HuffingtonPost, “Zeoform’s manufacturing process exploits the natural process of hydrogen bonding, taking a patented matrix of cellulose fibers and activating it with water (no glues required) to create a fire-resistant material that can be sprayed, shaped or molded into any form.

Zeoform guitar
Source: Zeoform

“Zeoform can also be made to different densities — from cork-like to as hard as ebony — resulting in a wide range of possibilities: home construction, plastics in the aviation and automotive industries, (and) musical instruments.”

I couldn’t find any information on the energy input necessary to make this product, so it’s hard to say what its final carbon footprint would be. It’s hardly the first plant-based plastic, but the lack of toxic ingredients is a major step forward.

Even if it would take longer than most of us can imagine, massive success of any manufacturing technology based on waste would, at some point, ideally run out of ‘raw’ materials when the waste runs out (yes, an unlikely scenario, but it’s nice to dream).

That wouldn’t be a problem for Zeoform plastic, which can use plant fiber when needed.

An interesting product, and one to watch.

Zeoform chair
Image: Zeoform

Mobile Gardens

September 10, 2013 / PK Read / 1 Comment

Bus-top gardens, the planting of gardens on the elevated flat space of urban bus tops, is a nice subversion of how we usually think of gardens.

Namely, we think of gardening as a place-specific activity. Rooted in place, not to put too fine a point on it. So why drive gardens around on the daily commute?

A Phyto Kinetic prototype bus in Girona, Spain.
Photo: Phyto Kinetic

Because in an urban setting the size of New York City, for example, landscaping on top of buses could mean 35 more acres of green space.

Marc Granan has started a new project, Phyto Kinetic, in Spain. Taking notes and learning from an earlier project in the US (Bus Roots), he utlized thin sheets of hydroponic foam reduce the overall weight of the traveling garden. Irrigation takes place using water from the vehicle’s air-conditioning system. Granan argues that bus gardens could be just the beginning – why not plant garden fleets atop city vehicles?

A Phyto Kinetic green van.
Photo: Phyto Kinetic

Bus Roots founder Marco Castro hoped to “reclaim forgotten space, increase quality of life and grow the amount of green spaces.”

Bus-top gardens might be, for the moment, a starry-eyed vision that falls into the category of ‘doing something is better than doing nothing’. But if maintenance and weight challenges can be overcome, it might help offset greenhouse-gas emissions at a key urban source, provide a bit of green magic and inspiration to city streets, and also open a whole new sector for jobs in urban gardening.

Visit Bus Roots here.

Visit Phyto Kinetic here.

HuffingtonPost article on Phyto Kinetic – Rooftop Gardens On Buses Makes Total Sense, And Here’s Why by Salvatore Cardoni

2010 Gizmag article on the Bus Roots project – Living garden on bus rooftop to add some rolling green to city streets by Darren Quick

Lion Lights & Big Enemies

March 18, 2013March 18, 2013 / PK Read / Leave a comment

“Me and the lions, we are enemies. Big enemies. We can never forgive one other anything.” Richard Turere

Sketch for Lion Light installation by Richard Turere. I note that the sketch does not include the enemy lion, only the cow to be protected.

Sketch for a Lion Light installation by Richard Turere.
I note that the sketch does not include the enemy lion, only the cow to be protected.

Richard Turere is a young Maasai boy who lives on the outskirts of Nairobi National Park, and up until recently, he was responsible for looking after the family cattle. He invented a simple and inexpensive solution to protecting the family’s wealth from lion attacks. Lion Lights, blinking LED lights connected to a small solar-powered battery, are posted on the perimeters of livestock enclosures at night. The blinking lights fool the lions into thinking that there are humans with flashlights patrolling the farm, and the lions retreat. Simple, elegant, effective (at least unless lions collectively figure out the blinking lights aren’t actually moving). The invention, which young Richard put together himself at the age of eleven, has earned him wide recognition and a scholarship to an excellent private school.

When top predators, in this case lions, come into contact with the top predator human, in the long run it almost always goes badly for the four-legged predator. Richard Turere isn’t trying to make friends with the lions, and my guess is he didn’t set out to invent Lion Lights with an eye towards conservation of an endangered top predator species. Fewer than 40 lions are estimated to currently live within the National Park. Richard’s installation is intended first and foremost to protect only the animal at the center of his sketch above, the cow.

Between the rapid growth of Nairobi, habitat encroachment for agriculture, livestock grazing and settlements, and some poor park planning from the very beginning, the harsh conflicts between top predators and humans in the National Park seem predestined even more so than other places and predators (for example, bears in Switzerland). Lions are one of the top tourist attractions in an economy in which tourism is the top industry, but that doesn’t make much difference to those who live near the lions but who don’t profit from the tourist trade.

Peace accords are easy between friends, or between a protector and a victim.

A nonviolent means of resolution is particularly welcome when it is found between unforgiving enemies.

Habari Network article – Richard Turere

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