When it comes to emissions from fuels methane is amongst the worst. The so-called natural gas is incredibly bad for the planet because it’s so effective at accelerating the greenhouse effect that is warming the Earth. Methane is an easy target as nations around the world are looking to reduce
Continue readingAuthor: Adam Clare
Things Are Good: Let’s Mine Landfills for Profit
Extracting resources from under the ground is an expensive and environmentally harmful thing to do. It’s also political challenging in many places to open (or expand) new mining operations, the recent court ruling in Panama demonstrates this. For decades we’ve been tossing perfectly good metals into landfills, so why not
Continue readingThings Are Good: We Will Triple Renewable Power Global by 2030
With renewables already cheaper than fossil fuels it’s not surprising that uptake in renewable energy is increasing. The benefits of renewable aren’t just a clean source of energy but also a cheap source of energy. Some countries around the world are on track to more than triple their renewable energy
Continue readingThings Are Good: To Increase Equality Tell People the Rich Don’t Have to Work
The rich keep getting richer because we think they work for it. The thing is, they don’t work for their wealth that separates the wealthy from everyone else. What allows the rich to keep increasing their wealth is capital gains instead of money earned though labour. Most of us have
Continue readingThings Are Good: Connecting People, Knowledge, and the Environment in Remote Canada
The Torngat Mountains are gorgeous and after reading this article I now have another place on this beautiful planet that I want to see in person. The article isn’t just about the landscape, it’s about the land and water. There’s currently an effort underway to catalog all the knowledge of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Iraq Looking to the Sun to Power its Future
Iraqi oil fields have a lot of fossil fuels ready to be exported, and that’s a problem. The Iraqi population, like many oil states, don’t benefit from the cheap oil that corporations extract and export. As a result Iraqis have now turned to solar power for their local energy needs.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Reducing Food Waste by Setting Goals
The best way for a regional government to reduce food waste is to set goals. Previous and common efforts focus on messaging and even in increasing the cost of managing food waste for households. New research shows that simply setting food waste reduction goals is enough and even better than
Continue readingThings Are Good: Figuring Out AI Consciousness
AI generated image Artificial Intelligence keeps popping up everywhere from generative AI which created the image above to the financial sector. What AI is currently doing is copying and reformatting data into new patterns (but still using the inputted patterns), meaning that currently AI is not conscious and is not
Continue readingThings Are Good: This Northern Canadian City is Investing $100 million into Cycling Infrastructure
People opposed to efficient transportation systems argue that cycling infrastructure doesn’t work in the winter, and anybody not suffering from car brain knows that people can ride bikes in cold weather. The city of Edmonton, located in the northern half of Alberta, has launched a great new initiative to promote
Continue readingThings Are Good: New Sail Technology Saves Money and Reduces Emissions
In the early days of this site we posted about a company that was adding sails to giant freighters and how this hybrid approach would save money and fuel. The testing of the sails did show positive results, however the cost of operating them and the potential problems they caused
Continue readingThings Are Good: A New Guide to Science Advocacy
Scientists used to think that sharing the facts and evidence of an issue was enough to sway policy makers and the general public. Unfortunately, with many issues facing us today there are vested interests looking to derail civil discourse around topics like climate change and vaccines. Today Evidence for Democracy
Continue readingThings Are Good: Memes Saved the Lives of Anti-Vaxxers
COVID brought forth more than just a disease of the body, it also raised the profile of anti vaxxers so much so that they shut down Canada’s capital for weeks on end. How can we get this group of people who are opposed to critically thinking to actually, well, think?
Continue readingThings Are Good: Rethinking Assets can Alter Our Political Equation of Climate Change
They emphasis the need to address asset revaluation concerns in the context of climate politics and suggests that a focus on domestic politics is crucial. They also discusses the role of obstructionist interest groups (like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) and their influence on climate policy, pointing out that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Kenyan Farm Foments Fossil Free Fertilizer
Yes, fertilizers exist that don’t make use of fossil fuels; however, the use of petoreluaem based fertilizers have become a mainstay of modern industrial agriculture. This use of fossil fuels for fertilizer has led to the agriculture sector’s carbon footprint being as large as it is. The transportation of the
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Fence Tourists Love to See
Down in New Zealand there’s a fence that people go out of their way to see. This fence was the first of its kind and was built to keep invasive predators out while conserving native species. The fence was built a couple decades ago and was specially designed to protect
Continue readingThings Are Good: In Cold Weather, Heat Pumps Outperform Fossil Fuel Furnaces
If you don’t already have a heat pump then you’re going to want one ASAP. These machines that act as heaters in the winter and air conditioning in the summer are already more efficient than traditional AC units. Now, the current version of heat pumps even outperform fossil fuel furnaces
Continue readingThings Are Good: Desalination on the Cheap for the Masses
Water water everywhere and plenty of drops to drink. Researchers from MIT have found a way to passively convert seawater into drinking water using a setup so simple it seems too good to be true. Their device basically uses heat from the sun rays and a siphon. The apparatus produces
Continue readingThings Are Good: Be My Eyes, Be My AI
The visual impaired population is getting more support from AI to help them ‘see’ the world around them. The already very successful human-powered app Be My Eyes (we’ve covered it before) has launched Be My AI, an automated tool that can help in certain circumstances. Using an AI trained to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Expand Houses by Shrinking Lanes
Seemingly everywhere there’s a crunch on housing and there’s a surplus of roads, so let’s change some car space to sleeping space. If we take away even just one lane of parking for cars we can create towers of housing for people. Cities can benefit from increased revenue since housing
Continue readingThings Are Good: It’s Time to Embrace that Boys do Cry
Boys will be boys, as in they will need emotional support and when they are babies they will need more of it than girls. The approach to raising boys who are “tough” and need to “man up” only leads to machismo and other societal ills. So let’s raise boys with
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