Earth Hackers

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  • Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?

    Next time you enjoy your toast, think of the energy required to generate the electricity to actually toast that toast!

    World famous track cyclist Robert Förstemann battles a 700w toaster. Can he, with his 74cm legs, generate enough energy to create a golden-brown toast? Please like, share and comment! The challenge was set up to show how much energy we humans consume compared to what we can generate. This is a graduation project from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts filmed in Stockholm, Sweden. The finishing examples estimate how many Roberts that would be needed to power either a petrol car consuming 6,5l/100km for one hour, or a one-hour Boeing 737-800 flight.

  • The Guardian: Is This the End of Forests As We’ve Known Them?

    Trees lost to drought and wildfires are not returning. Climate change is taking a toll on the world’s forests – and radically changing the environment before our eyes.

    Read full article

  • Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy – BBC News

    European scientists say they have made a major breakthrough in their quest to develop practical nuclear fusion – the energy process that powers the stars.

    The UK-based JET laboratory has smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it can extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen.

    If nuclear fusion can be successfully recreated on Earth it holds out the potential of virtually unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy.

    The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds, more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997.

  • 50 Years Ago, This Was a Wasteland. He Changed Everything.

    Almost 50 years ago, fried chicken tycoon David Bamberger used his fortune to purchase 5,500 acres of overgrazed land in the Texas Hill Country. Planting grasses to soak in rains and fill hillside aquifers, Bamberger devoted the rest of his life to restoring the degraded landscape. Today, the land has been restored to its original habitat and boasts enormous biodiversity. Bamberger’s model of land stewardship is now being replicated across the region and he is considered to be a visionary in land management and water conservation.

  • The mission to restore an Australian wetland – BBC News

    Walker Swamp had been artificially drained and farmed for 150 years, but it is now welcoming new life once more, after a huge restoration project.

    Its revival is one “message of hope” amid so much grim environmental news, ecologists tell the BBC.

  • How Scientists Are Restoring The Great Barrier Reef

    Over the past couple of years, coral on the Great Barrier Reef has regenerated and local scientists have developed innovative ways to foster coral growth both in and out of the water.

  • Furniture waste: Popular in the pandemic, mass-produced furniture could soon be clogging landfills.

    Americans bought piles of furniture during the pandemic, with sales on desks, chairs and patio equipment jumping by more than $4 billion from 2019 to 2021, according to a market data company. And a lot of it won’t survive the decade.

    Many of the Ikea beds and Wayfair desks bought during the Covid-19 lockdown were designed to last about five years, said Deana McDonagh, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “I relate to fast furniture like I do to fast food,” Ms. McDonagh said. “It’s empty of culture, and it’s not carrying any history with it.”

    Fast furniture, which is mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, is easy to obtain and then abandon. Like fast fashion, in which retailers like Shein and Zara produce loads of cheap, trendy clothing that’s made to be discarded after only a few wears, fast furniture is for those looking to hookup but not settle down. It’s the one-season fling of furnishings.

    Read ‘Fast Furniture’ Is Cheap. And Americans Are Throwing It in the Trash. on NYTimes.com

    What to do?

  • Returning Chicago’s shoreline to a natural state

    Chicago has a number of experiments underway to find the most effective ways to return its shores to nature. This video, by the Architecture with Stewart YouTube channel, explores a few sites and the techniques being employed to return them to a natural state.

  • Windcatchers – An ancient method for cooling air.

    How they work, from the History with Kayleigh YouTube channel.

    “A wind catcher is never by itself, but always accompanied by at least one other wind tower on the same building. The Wind catcher catches the wind, which is then funnelled down and will flow throughout the building, the cool air will flow underneath the warm air, and the pressure will push the warm air upwards which then rises and flows throughout another wind tower which in turn releases the warmed up air.”

    Could this be used in modern construction to cool buildings?

    There are interesting comments posted with this video that are worth checking out.

  • Microfibers are being shedded from your clothes and fabric. It’s a big problem. Here’s what you can do.

    • Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that measure less than 5 millimeters in length
    • There are few places on earth where they haven’t been found

    “We have a plastic pollution crisis,” said Alexis Jackson, a marine biologist and scientist with the California chapter of the Nature Conservancy, an environmental advocacy organization. “The face of that crisis looks a lot different [than we thought]. It’s not just plastic bags and soda bottles. It’s all of these microplastics that you can’t see with the naked eye that are pervasive in the environment.”

    Read Your Laundry Sheds Harmful Microfibers. Here’s What You Can Do About It from the New York Times.