Tag: Environment

Man Grows Furniture, Art From Living Trees

It’s called arborsculpture, and Richard Reames has been doing it for years. He plants trees in patterns, and uses bending and grafting techniques to form the saplings into benches, staircases, sculptures, and an assortment of other amazing living things.

I believe that if enough people put their minds to using living trees, we can learn to grow houses. I believe that if we put our minds to it, like going to the moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t all be living in houses where the walls and ceilings are composed of living tree material and there are leaves coming out of the roof. We could accomplish this in one generation. We’d build doorways and windows that the trees would grow around, and also plumbing and electrical conduits. The trees would just swallow all the pipes. We’re going to call this “arbortecture.”

You’ve just got to see the pictures in this article!

Accelerating Developments for Green Cars

smart car
A few car makers are actively trying to make our over-reliance on oil less of an issue. The most interesting one is the car made by Tesla motors.
Here is a quick round-up of recent announcements:

Toyota is thinking of making a ethanol-powered vehicle in the “near term” and is “pursing a plug-in hybrid vehicle” for the USA’s auto market.

“DaimlerChrysler has turned its popular teeny Smart car into an EV. The electric version of the Smartfortwo will be available for lease to 100 customers in Great Britain in November.”

A car made by Tesla Motors (who gets funding from Google founders and a Pay-Pal founder) has made and electric car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about four seconds.

Go green cars go!

Organic Farming Degree Offered

Washington State University has started accepting students for their organic farming degree program. This is a first in the USA, sure two other universities offer courses in organic farming, Colorado State and Michigan State, but offering a degree is new.

“WSU has high hopes for its new organic-agriculture major, both to attract new students and meet a growing demand for experts in organic farming. In the new Organic Agriculture Systems major, students will study subjects like weed science and entomology, work on the organic farm and can specialize further in areas such as organic farm economics.

The major, announced last month, drew a handful of students immediately; a university study predicts the program eventually will have about 40 people enrolled at any one time.”

A New Way to Produce Coal From Biomass

Markus Antonietti from Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces has devised a chemical process that converts biomass like leaves, pine cones and other plant residue into wet coal (coal + water).

Good news from Germany!
Markus Antonietti from Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces has devised a chemical process that converts biomass like leaves, pine cones and other plant residue into wet coal (coal + water). Biomass goes into the autoclave, a kind of pressure cooker, water goes in, too, along with a citric acid catalyst. A chemical reaction takes place and coal is produced.

The single major by-product of the reaction is water, which can be filtered off. In contrast to other biomass techniques this reaction does not generate carbon dioxide. It also gives a higher energy product, which even smells acceptable.

We underestimated this when we started. We could calculate how much energy was stored in the sugar – in the leaf material. But the first time – as you see – we had a runaway reaction, which is obviously dangerous, so we need to carry it out under safe conditions.

-Markus Antonietti