Thermal Inertia for Free Heating and Cooling

How does not needing an air conditioner or a furnace sound? To me, it sounds great.

The Enertia home uses thermal energy to cycle cooling and warming the house. It achieves this by delaying the thermal patterns of the planet, it’s like slow motion but in real life.

Once completed, even before you move in, these new homes will have come alive with a natural atmospheric cycle, like the Earth, on which they are based. A built-in “biosphere,” in gradual but constant motion, draws energy from the sun, and geothermal stability from the ground, creating a temperate climate that buffers the primary living space.

Toronto Begins Implementing Clinton Cities Challenge

Shortly after returning from the meeting of 16 mayors who are getting support from Clinton et. all to green their cities, Toronto mayor David Miller has announced a hybrid car campaign. Toronto will begin testing plug-in hybrids to test the feasibility of a mass rollout of the cars. The testing phase will start small but get progressively larger over time.

“The key purpose is to determine if plug-in hybrid technology is suitable to Toronto’s climate
and roads,” Miller said in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Saturday, at the launch of the program.

There are suggestions that the converted vehicles would be able to feed electricity back into the grid, serving as mobile power stations to homes during a blackout. Or they could be plugged into the electricity grid during periods of peak demand to supply power and prevent blackouts.

U.S. stops breeding chimps for research

Good news for those who like animals! The U.S. National Institutes of Health has decided to stop breeding chimpanzees for biomedical research. Chimps that are already being used for research remain as test animals, but the fact that more chimps won’t be used in this way is a step in the right direction for the ethical treatment of animals.

“This decision is a huge step towards a day when chimpanzees are no longer used in invasive biomedical research and testing,” Kathleen Conlee of the Humane Society said in a statement.

Cut Risk of Getting Gout be Drinking Coffee

Apparently drinking coffee lowers your risk of getting the gout. I’m going out for some coffee right now!

In this study, American and Canadian researchers tracked almost 46,000 men for 12 years. The men were ages 40 to 75 at the start of the study and had no history of gout.

The researchers found that men who drank six or more cups of coffee a day were 59 percent less likely to develop gout than those who never drank coffee, while the risk was 40 percent lower for men who drank four to five cups a day.

Building a Green Home in the Land of Oil

Calgary is absolutely flush with oil and oil-related wealth, it is also the last place in Canada that you’d think you would find a green huose being built.

Well, the Ramsay House Project is a project that a family of Calgarians are undertaking to live in a sustainable way. It’s great to see that in a province that hates the Kyoto Accord that people are still caring for and about the environment. You can follow the Ramsay House Project at their site and they also include information on how to build green into your house (if you have one) too!