Green Options » April Fool's

How Much Carbon Does Your Carbon Footprint Calculator Produce?

Philip Proefrock — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:21:27 +0000

Over at Treehugger today, architecture writer Lloyd Alter has written an eye-opening piece about the shockingly high carbon footprint of online carbon footprint calculators.

Not only do the calculators themselves have an impact, but they are just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.

Beyond that, the thousands and thousands of pages that link to them also contribute to the total impact these carbon calculators are responsible for.

Link to full article.

Image source: Kim Hansen/Wikimedia

New Levels of LEED

Philip Proefrock — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:58:00 +0000

A new top-level LEED classification called Unobtanium is being proposed to replace the currently proposed Protactinium level, leading to a possible schism in the growing green building rating system. Whether Protactinium or Unobtanium becomes the new top-level of the LEED rating system…?

Earlier this year, officials proposed a new level of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) that is higher than the current top-end Platinum rating. The new Protactinium level introduces more stringent requirements to ensure the purity of the design team and to verify their worthiness to obtain such a noble rating for their building.

Scientists Clone New Food Industry

Beth Bader — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:35:25 +0000

In an unusual twist, biotech scientists have decided that focusing on creating hybrids of new animals and plants is just thinking too small. “We realized that if we were to try and fix all the ills in the current Big Agriculture system, we’d be cloning for the next millennium” said Irving Pinkel. “So, we figured maybe it would be easier to just start from scratch.”

According to Pinkel and his lead associates, the galvanizing moment came after an experiment with cloning a round worm gene into pigs that would make the resulting pork “heart-healthy” and containing more Omega-3 acids. Three of the piglets had to be euthanized due to heart defects.

“Well, the irony of the situation set in,” said Pinkel. “We were all out and maybe had a few too many beers. One of the guys said, ‘You know, I bet if we just fed them [pigs] a natural diet, that would fix the whole meat thing without cloning. Could you do that?’”