Norway is Entering a New Era of Climate-Conscious Architecture (theatlantic.com) 119
The European Union has a target of making all new buildings zero-energy by 2020, but in Norway, carbon neutrality isn't enough. From a report: A consortium in Oslo made up of architects, engineers, environmentalists, and designers is creating energy-positive buildings in a country with some of the coldest and darkest winters on Earth. "If you can make it in Norway, you can make it anywhere," says Peter Bernhard, a consultant with Asplan Viak, one of the Powerhouse alliance members.
Bernhard says Powerhouse began in 2010 with a question: Is it possible to not only eliminate the carbon footprint of buildings, but to also use them as a climate-crisis solution? It was a lofty goal. According to the European Commission, buildings account for 40 percent of energy usage and 36 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions in the EU. But after undertaking several energy-positive projects -- building a new Montessori school, retrofitting four small office buildings, building a few homes, and breaking ground on two new office buildings -- Powerhouse has found the answer to the 2010 question to be an emphatic "Yes." In 2019, the collective's biggest project to date will open to the public: Powerhouse Brattorkaia, in the central Norwegian city of Trondheim.
Bernhard says Powerhouse began in 2010 with a question: Is it possible to not only eliminate the carbon footprint of buildings, but to also use them as a climate-crisis solution? It was a lofty goal. According to the European Commission, buildings account for 40 percent of energy usage and 36 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions in the EU. But after undertaking several energy-positive projects -- building a new Montessori school, retrofitting four small office buildings, building a few homes, and breaking ground on two new office buildings -- Powerhouse has found the answer to the 2010 question to be an emphatic "Yes." In 2019, the collective's biggest project to date will open to the public: Powerhouse Brattorkaia, in the central Norwegian city of Trondheim.
Doesn't Norway have an geothermal energy surplus? (Score:1)
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So in this case I wonder if the building is really using geothermal power, or if they are just storing heat underground and remove it when needed?
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Uh-oh . . . that triggered an annoying and frightening musical thought in me . . .
If they can make it there they can make it anywhere
It's up to you . . . Nor-way . . . Nor-way!
Carbon "negative" is easy (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called a log cabin. Literally TONS of carbon are locked away for the lifetime of the structure. The more carbon you lock away in the form of trees, the more insulation and thermal mass you have as a result.
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Now you just need to build it five to ten stories high with fireproofed wood pulp bricks, include modern HVAC, fiber and telecom, water and sewage, other machinery, maintenance, storage with optional bomb and chemical shelter space, windows and roof that can take the storms. And develop a fire proofed cellulose-nitrogen foam for the insulation. Or something like that.
Behold, they are actually doing that (Score:4, Interesting)
Now you just need to build it five to ten stories high with fireproofed wood pulp bricks, include modern HVAC, fiber and telecom, water and sewage, other machinery,...
I think you were being sarcastic but in fact they are planning to build a wooden skyscraper [fortune.com] in Tokyo.
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Logs do not have as high an R value as other materials we use.
According to the DOE [energy.gov], a log has an R-value of 1.51 per inch, including the effects of thermal mass. Or about R-18 from one foot log walls. And 12 inch logs would be considered really, really, really damn big. The same report says a typical log wall with no windows is R-8.
A 2x4 wall with basic fiberglass insulation is R-14. Spray foam can easily double that. 2x6 exterior walls are pretty common now, so that even more insulation can get shoved
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If your goal is to produce negative carbon, a 24" wall is a good thing.
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Not necessarily. Two people can carry a 6" log to put it into place. A 24" log is going to require machinery, which is probably going to be burning some sort of hydrocarbon.
There's the fuel burned in the forestry of lots of really damn big trees, which will take longer to grow than the wood used for conventional lumber.
May still be a net sink, and way better than concrete construction. But someone would have to do the math vs conventional construction.
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It's called a log cabin. Literally TONS of carbon are locked away for the lifetime of the structure. The more carbon you lock away in the form of trees, the more insulation and thermal mass you have as a result.
I do live in Norway and we did have a simple log cabin, if you were living it in all year long the firewood would completely dwarf any materials in the walls. Making the walls thicker also means you have to sink a lot of energy into heating the walls before the cabin gets warm and it would still bleed out quite quick. The ideal insulating wall has a hot side and a cold side with as little as possible in between to transfer heat, ideally you'd have a vacuum but fiberglass or foam is practically as close as y
If you can make it in Norway... (Score:2)
A lot of people think that way. "Well it works here, so why doesn't it work over there?".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The Norwegian in me sneers when you mention 60 cm thick walls. Why would you do that when you could have that wall contain a double layer insulation of Glava(glasswool) and Isopor(polystyrene foam). And still combine that with the extra thick walls?
The entire point of "zero energy houses" as they exist in Norway is to use proper insulating materials to do exactly as you talked about, except this can be applied to any type of home.
The article is also a gigantic black hole, since its all buzzwords.
The buildin
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Re: Heat (Score:3)
Heating is *much* cheaper, and easier, than cooling.
That may or may not be true, but it also has no relevance to what humans actually require. It is far cheaper to cool down a house in the middle of summer on the equator than it is to heat the same house in the middle of winter in the north.
That's because the temperature differences are massive. The hottest place on earth has a record high of around 57 degrees, which you would need to cool down by about 33 to make it comfortable. The coldest temperature recorded in Toronto was -33 degrees, which you would
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Re: Heat (Score:2)
No just no.
Yes just yes.
Re: Heat (Score:2)
Oh, I see the problem. You're retarded.
Hint: the human body produces an average of around 300 BTU. That's about the same as one or two of those crappy little tealight candles.
Stop getting your science from The Matrix.
Compressed Earth Blocks (Score:1)
Stop extracting and selling hydrocarbons? (Score:2)
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Can you care to share how that would have even the slightest impact in our global carbon emissions? By refusing to sell oil from existing developed assets they would be doing little more than virtue signalling. But I'm sure it would appease the USA which would ramp up some exports.
Who pays for retrofitting? (Score:2)
Are the new energy costs so large that new spending on retrofitting is the only way to keep the cost of energy low?
How about getting low cost energy for everyone in Norway and not having to pay for "retrofitting"?
Put that "retrofitting" money to some other better use? Like making energy low cost so existing buildings don't have to pay extra for new "retrofitting"?
Low cost energy would be great for al
US needs new regs (Score:2)
Instead, they should have required that all new buildings of 6 stories and under have enough on-site unsubsidized AE to => the HVAC's energy usage. This way, it gives developers choices on where to spend, be it LED lighting or better, more insulation, better windows, and/or ideally a geo
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Would you rather have it around blockchains or bitcoins?
Perhaps we can have it like Slashdot back in the late 1990's A dozen articles a day mostly based on Linux, 3 of them are dupes, 1 is about a minor kernel upgrade, and 3 about some sort of Windows manager. 4 on the Evil Mean Old Microsoft, and 2 on some programming langue authors latest GNU Rant (for or against), then a something else.
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the iPod brought more influence on Apple. However I think what really did it in was the iPhone and Android phones. Where these consumer devices started to hit the tech news cycle.
Re:Daily Bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, yes, I would like more stories like that
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And don't forget: one reader poll!
I miss those polls.
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4 on the Evil Mean Old Microsoft
You mean we don't have to write it as "Micro$oft" any more?
Re:Daily Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
It's news for nerds. Science has revealed that we have a planetary-scale crisis on our hands, and the only way to save Earth is to make scientific and technological breakthroughs while evading the dumb bullies trying to stop us, it doesn't get a whole lot nerdier than that!
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The climate doesn't have to be static but we do have to keep it in a range that works well with our established civilization, so in the far future it may indeed be necessary to geoengineer our way out of natural climate change. There's nothing wrong with that and it's not counterproductive to solve our current problems because of it.
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Who are you to decide what the range should be? When the planet was hotter and had higher CO2 levels, plant life was in much more abundance, so was animal life. Your myopic view point is the temperature must be where it has been most of your very short life (in a geologic sense), where you are comfortable. Seems a bit arrogant to be deciding for all life on Earth, doesn't it?
Re:Daily Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not being chosen based on any individual's comfort level, it's being chosen based on the last couple centuries of explosive construction and population growth around the world. We have cities and farms in certain regions and we don't want them to be turned into salt marshes or deserts.
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Who are you to decide what the range should be?
The humans who, y'know, live here and grow food here.
When 150 million people start to migrate north to escape warming and famine you can bet the USA and Canada will have to sit up and take notice.
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we do have to keep it in a range that works well with our established civilization
See, you're doing it wrong. We keep civilization in a range that works well with the climate. You dream about affecting the entire globe's climate good luck to you. I'm sure the planet has a few surprises in store for you no matter how smart you think you are.
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The trouble is that trying to adapt civilization to the climate causes those wars and refugee crises and famines we're talking about. It will be very bad for non-human life too, ocean acidification could lead to an oceanic mass extinction if unchecked, just for starters. It's easier to fix the climate than to fix the civilization and non-human life, smarter people than us have considered this and come to that conclusion, but I encourage you to consider it for yourself too.
Re: Daily Bullshit (Score:2)
If they were really that smart they would have put their money and energy into geoengineering research instead of screaming about carbon taxes. Since we all apparently agree that we will eventually need geoengineering to deal with natural climate change anywa, it is utterly idiotic to ignore it for now and just focus on curbing emissions.
That's how you know that AGW is an ideological battle rather than any kind of rational discussion. One side wants to ignore it completely, while the other side wants to i
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Reducing and eventually reversing fossil carbon emission IS THE MOST IMPORTANT geoengineering effort, and carbon taxes are how it will be paid for! *epic facepalm*
Re: Daily Bullshit (Score:2)
Nonsense. It's too slow and inefficient, and it requires global buy-in. Even assuming we can get everyone on board, what are you going to do if we need to heat things up in the future? Start lighting oil wells on fire and burning down forests?
We need better tools than that. Regulating CO2 levels is only "good" in the absence of other options. Nobody who was actually serious about being able to regulate the global climate would look to CO2 as the sole/default method. Plus, as a side benefit, if we can
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You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. It's not too slow if we act soon, and yes global buy-in is needed, and if Steve Bannon doesn't get too many more denialist centipedes elected that can be had (usually the number of denialist governments is 0 or 1, but now with Brazil there are 2). If we need to heat things up in the future we may indeed have to bring fossil fuels back into grid power, although we'll more likely rely on intentionally releasing other greenhouse gases like methane and nitroge
Re: Daily Bullshit (Score:2)
You clearly have no idea ... blah blah blah
I like how you say I have no idea, then go on to agree with me on every point except one.
Regulating CO2 levels is the best and by far the most important control on the climate we have in this situation
Again, nonsense.
we'll walk right into an oceanic mass extinction through ocean acidification
Maybe, maybe not. Certainly some sealife would die out. However 150 MYA the CO2 content of the atmosphere was 4 times higher than today, and the sealife of the time did just fine. Life will evolve as it always does.
and eventually into a global decrease of human cognitive power
Right, if we continue current trends, we only have 800 years to avoid that problem!
Trying to solve global warming by fiddling with anything but CO2 levels is just treating a few of the symptoms while the disease slowly but surely eats the planet alive.
Trying to force-fuck global industries into reducing CO2 output is just pretending to do something useful.
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So you are willing to risk an oceanic mass extinction to avoid moving to the cleanest and what's rapidly becoming the cheapest form of energy, duly noted. Evolution can't outrun anthropogenic climate change though. [smithsonianmag.com] This isn't your cretaceous grandaddy's climate change.
We know that the optimal temperatures are just slightly above pre-industrial levels and well below where we are now, no more work needs to be done there. You can't escape the issue that CO2 is the most important and practical control, nobody c
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"Your great grand children are going to look silly when despite all the "breakthroughs" the climate just goes ahead and changes anyway"
Well, it is one possibility. And if that it true, I think, our children will look back on the knowledge that we have now, and understand why we came to the wrong conclusions, and be glad that they are better informed than we are.
Or, alternatively, they will look at the knowledge that we had, that we knew what we are doing, and decided to carry on doing it, because we were to
Re:Daily Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense.
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org]
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That's an expected part of a natural cycle you asshat, even WaPo could tell you that:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
But apparently you only read and mindlessly parrot climate conspiracy blogs. And even with this cooling, 2018 is on track to be the 4th hottest year on record:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/st... [carbonbrief.org]
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The dire global warnings cause most people with a memory to roll their eyes now.
https://www.wnd.com/2018/12/de... [wnd.com]
It's possible and probably helpful to ourselves and the planet to make the world cleaner - I mean who doesn't want to be clean? But tying it end to end of the world warnings is just exhausting. And the more exhausted people are, the less they have energy to care.
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The dire global warnings cause most people with a memory to roll their eyes now.
Only if those people's memories are composed entirely of cherry-picked bias confirmation material from conspiracy websites. See this post:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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I posted people forgetting what the former vice president and one of the more vocal leaders of the global warming community stated and you linked to your own post.
We all look for stories that prove our points GameboyRMH. The trick is to also read the stuff sent by others that try to refute it.
Reading an article about cherry picking doesn't really refute anything.
Maybe it's time for the global warming crowd to publicly disavow Gore so they can spent more time preaching and less time defending that man. As
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Personally I don't care about Al Gore. Picking out one of his quotes is useless irrelevant cherry-picking. His foundation has done less to combat global warming than his heated pool has done to worsen it. I haven't and don't defend him. And yet, I still have to deal with cherry-picked beefs about his quotes from you and the rest of the deniosphere.
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I criticizing the end of the world chicken little crap. Enough high profile people make the claim and it comes out false or grossly exaggerated, the less people will react if the claim is ever true.
You can bitch about how unfair that it, but it's the truth.
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Well nobody can stop celebrities from babbling, but I place blame on people who take celebrity babble more seriously than science.
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That's funny. Most people that I know off worry quite a lot about the future of our planet and what we are doing to it. I do see quite a lot of eye-rolling, but this tends to happen when we hear some nonsense about how "we need more research", or how a government is looking to roll back environmental standards.
We are losing many of the things that make this world valuable. It is not enough to want to be clean. We have to put the (massive) resources into it that it will take.
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To be fair here, it will take far worse than even the worst foreseeable global warming to make this planet actually uninhabitable for us.
It's not human *life* that is not sustainable the direction that we are going, it is the developed country life-*style* that is not sustainable.
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Please just go away.
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I picked up on the sarcasm of this statement just fine:
The implication in this, however, is that continuing to ignore the problem might actually ultimately render this planet *UN*inhabitable.
Which is not the case, and suggesting that it is so is hyperbole.
It's serious. It's damn serious. And I'm not for a seco
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I've had it up to HERE w
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Not in any global warming scenario that has ever been realistically projected.
Everything else in your post, I am entirely on the same page as you about...
But because there's a whole lot more to being alive than just mere "survival".... projecting some kind of hypothetical worst case scenario that doesn't have any actual scientific justification to trigger an emotional response doesn't really help the science that shows that this is something we still really need to fix.
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The "developed country lifestyle" is of course very sustainable, keeping it so is an engineering problem with known solutions. We have essentially infinite energy supply on this earth, an ocean full of water, resources that magically DON'T leave the planet after use, 20+ miles of the earth's crust for "rare earths" we've barely scratched, helium that mostly is just vented from natural gas wells instead of being captured at all, etc.
In short, the chicken-little flailing of arms and wailing is just silly.
Re: Daily Bullshit (Score:2)
It's not human *life* that is not sustainable the direction that we are going, it is the developed country life-*style* that is not sustainable.
Oh, that's also quite sustainable; it's simply not sustainable with the current size of the global population. You could implement China's one-child policy on a global level and fix the problem in a couple generations ... but since that seems unlikely, we will probably fix it the way we usually do: through war and mass starvation.
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Funny, as China's one-child policy did not actually stop their population from growing It slowed the growth rate down, but you said the problem was the size of the population, not its rate of growth (which, incidentally, is only just beginning to slow down now in developed countries anywa
Re: Daily Bullshit (Score:2)
which by definition is an admission that it isn't actually sustainable in the first place.
Duh. Nothing is sustainable as long as the population continues to grow.
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You are moving the goalposts of your position, which was originally that there were too many people to begin with, not that the population was growing without being checked.
But to address that point, as I had already said, in developed nations, the growth rate is already starting to slow down... and this is not happening because people are dying or because people are being forced into having smaller families.
Re: Daily Bullshit (Score:2)
You are moving the goalposts of your position, which was originally that there were too many people to begin with, not that the population was growing without being checked.
Not moving the goalposts even an inch; the current rate of growth should have been an obvious part of the original statement. Why in the world would you assume I was talking about the global population as if it were static?
If you really want to be a dick about it, sure, go ahead and plant the goalposts where you like. Even assuming zero growth, the situation isn't sustainable regardless of whether people live a first world or third world "life style". The only difference is that with zero growth it might
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Because that's what you said:
(emphasis mine).
Anyways... to your next point
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you commit the fallacy of asserting a consequent that is quite impossible. stick to social issues, you know nothing of science or engineering.
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I never said to ignore "the problem". You keep assuming and asserting things that are false. This shows a common mindset among self-imagined "greenies" that have no conception of reality. Your world view can't work, won't work in reality.
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You need an education in critical thinking before your spread the misinformation you where fed and have bought hook line and sinker.
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Why would anyone find an article about people in another country taking action on energy efficiency and climate change to be scary? At worst this this would mean some new Norwegian buildings are a bit over-engineered.
Finding this news somehow frightening or offensive suggests that your feelings are... well, irrational. Either way -- scientific truth or Chinese hoax -- climate change is the biggest science and technology of the day. If you don't want to read about it, that's your business. If other people
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Seriously.. Do we need 3 scare articles per day about Global Warming?
No. We are only delivering 3 scare articles per day. Evidence suggests we need a shitload more to get the point across.
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Also constant wars, famines, refugee crises, and more powerful and frequent natural disasters (contributing to the prior 3).
Elevate yourself 5 inches above that shit, smart guy.
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Also constant wars, famines, refugee crises
Story of the human race. You're a fool if you think that's going to change ever.
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Yes there will likely always be wars, famines, and refugee crises, but the number and scale can be affected. The presence of one small example of each is not as bad as a thousand large examples of each, for example.
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BOO WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE MOTHERFUCKER THE OCEAN LEVEL IS GOING TO RISE A WHOLE 5 INCHES IN THE NEXT 500 YEARS!
I feel like you have severely underestimated the sea level rise. [psu.edu] However, the more important thing is that areas of arable land will begin shifting locations or disappearing from parts of the planet. This will inevitably result in hunger, famine, death, conflict and mass migration. If you don't like the balance of immigration in your country now then how will you feel after a hundred million people start migrating because their country became a total wasteland because you didn't give a shit?
We're not all
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