News
Weekly Linkfest – Edition 008
Welcome to round eight of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.
I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculturenews.org with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.
Off we go:
Good News (coz we all need it):
- The best use of a backyard pool that I’ve ever seen! It feeds a whole family – a very clever little permaculture design. See more on this topic here.
- Driling bid in the arctic blocked – something good to come from the shear scale of damage in the gulf no doubt.
- Roundup creating superweeds… but I put it in the good news section because the article talks about their first supreme court case and the growing awareness that we can’t keep doing this sort of stuff.
- Book for download: Teaming with microbes, a gardener’s guide to the soil food web.
- The once popular homegarden is making a comeback.
- 5% solar coming to Victoria, Australia by 2020. There is room for an increase there as Victoria has some of Australia’s dirtiest coal plants but we have to start somewhere.
- This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled "Archimede", the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage.
Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):
- Housing affordability taking its toll in Canada.
- Looks like Saudi Arabia wants to keep their oil in the ground for future generations, which is good for them, but unless we mobilise yesterday to kick the habit it’s going to make it tough for everyone else.
- Australia: More delays on climate action with the Prime Minister promising to form a community advisory panel post-election to decide whether it’s worth acting on climate change.
- Sudden Oak Death threatens British trees. A new disease that can attack and kill more than 100 varieties of plants and trees is sweeping across Britain, leaving a trail of devastation in forests and gardens.
- The price of BP’s dispersants.
Just plain interesting or odd (coz we’re curious creatures):
- Gadget that turns toilet water into electricity.
- While on the toilet theme: An outdoor toilet gallery.
- First there was Spaceballs: the Movie. Then, of course, Spaceballs: the T-shirt, Spaceballs: the Coloring Book, and Spaceballs: the Flamethrower. Now scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope (and possibly the Schwartz) have discovered real spaceballs, aka buckyballs, the mysterious form of pure carbon they’ve sought in space for some 40 years, according to a new study.
- Caterpillars Crawl Like None Other: Unique Means of Animal Locomotion Has Implications for Robotics, Human Biomechanics.
- Boffins develop greenhouse invisible to night-vision goggles.
Don’t forget to send me your links for next week’s linkfest!! – editor (at) permaculturenews.org
Great!
Good news, Plastiki has arrived in Sydney: https://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/explore/plastiki
Bad news, global phytoplankton decline over the past century: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/abs/nature09268.html