@amandadsmith
Energy nerd, former engineering academic, scientist, analyst, climate educator. 🇺🇸🏳️🌈🌱🐈🐕📖🌲🍄🥾🥟 "The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom." - Ursula K. Le Guin linktr.ee/amandadsmith
"High-emitting sectors warrant more attention and creativity."
Love this.
Imagine what we could do if all the smart, caring people were unleashed on improving our buildings while reducing cement use or changing transportation to be safer and more equitable while reducing fossil fuel use.
LED lighting has been a game changer, slashing energy consumed for lighting, and is taking off worldwide.
It's so efficient compared w/ 20th century lighting that switching incandescent to LEDs will actually decrease your cooling load (or increase heating)
Solution assessment by Dr. Henry Igugu ⬇️
We need a part-time researcher to help expand the Drawdown Explorer! This is a 6-mo contract fellowship for analyzing climate solutions related to #PowerGeneration #CleanEnergy & #ElectricityGrid with our all-virtual team.
Read the job description and apply at drawdown.org/careers/rese... by Nov 2.
Buildings claiming to be #netzero #emissions wind up with a very narrow system boundary or offsets, although they usually are much better than those built w/ common practices! We need new practices, a radical 🌿 shift in how we create and interact with buildings to protect our #climate and ourselves.
Wow, just realized I was on @apnews.com video talking about the impacts of #AI #DataCenters and #electricity sector! Using #FossilFuels to meet these demands hurts people closest to those plants as well as the climate.
Great, more detailed info on gas & nuclear from Prof. Lee comes after my clips.
This graphic illustrates a core issue with “net zero” claims: offsets may balance the equation on paper, but don’t eliminate the most difficult emissions tied to construction materials, energy systems, and building ops 🏡💨.
👉 Read the full insights post by @amandadsmith.bsky.social: bit.ly/4mwRtTp
We do actually have evidence about how to make transit better for people and less harmful for planet. It's both simpler and more complex than you think.
I've learned a lot from former Drawdown climate solutions research fellow Dr. Cameron Roberts and hope you will too. Join next Weds at 10am PDT:
Image taken from: www.pinterest.com/pin/33368865...
Full text and video of Le Guin's speech: www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal
It seems the financial prospects of AI tech changed suddenly, especially in the US.
The tech didn't change that suddenly. The financial system is entirely made up.
Whether something is cost-effective or profitable cannot be the main factor guiding any of our decisions as we build a better world.
I spend a lot of time putting together numbers and analyzing other people's calculations. We should run numbers.
But calculations that don't honor our personhood, emotions, and capacity for love should only be used to support a decision-making process that is fully human and not fully 'rational.'
excerpt, p. 215: "'Calculable rules' also is of paramount importance for modern bureaucracy."
excerpt, p. 216: "The more the bureaucracy is 'dehumanized,' the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation."
Modern bureaucracy requires 'calculable rules' in order to work, and the more those rules are divorced from our humanity, the more 'calculable' things become and the more optimized we think our bureaucracies are.
(Max Weber in translation, openlibrary.org/books/OL6498...)
How does the climate system relate to disasters like wildfires in the US?
Check out this chapter of the National Climate Assessment. I'm proud to know and trust the Chapter Lead Author ⬇️.
And this ain't the IPCC, it's very readable.
They even have art: nca2023.globalchange.gov/art-climate/
Key points on masks for wildfires:
-N95s only capture particles, but wildfires have toxic gases, too
-there are masks (respirators) that capture both particles and gases
-here’s what they look like
-here’s what you should look for: P100+ organic vapor
-you can buy on Amazon and at Home Depot
It's not on you! I love that you actually looked for the source.
Same same
Even mentioning the title would have undermined the headline. As others have noted, it's an *association* study.
Key conclusion: "findings indicate that semi-skimmed milk consumption may be linked to a lower risk of depression and anxiety."
Freely available research paper w/ limitations section 👏
Very few news articles link to the study they're referencing (or even name the lead author) - it's a huge pet peeve of mine!
This one mentioned participant # and journal (Frontiers in Nutrition) so it's this: www.frontiersin.org/journals/nut...
As usual, news article misrepresents what it says...
@davidzipper.bsky.social is...well, on fire today 🔥
I didn't care about Big Tobacco when we got smoking out of our buildings and I don't care about Giant Car now.
I do own a truck. I don't want to kill anyone.
We can do better. See @lloydalter.bsky.social: lloydalter.substack.com/p/its-time-f...
A way to think about "AI" is that it's like single-use plastic: Super-convenient, sold as disposable, designed to be used without much thought, and while it's easy to get annoyed with your mom for using it, the real problem are the dudes destroying the planet in order to keep shoveling it out
Criminalizing homelessness doesn't address the problem.
But we do have evidence about what does and doesn't work.
@michaelhobbes.bsky.social explains how we make it worse: www.huffpost.com/entry/homele...
Poverty, By America shows us 🇺🇸 it doesn't have to be this way: bookshop.org/p/books/pove...
+1 AND your ability to remain here should not be tied to the whims of one particular corporation.
Just like a graduate student's ability to remain in the country should not depend on the good graces of one particular professor.
Come join our growing team!
Project Drawdown seeks
- a new Director of Private-Sector Partnerships (full-time, US based)
- several part-time research fellows (part-time, US or international)
Drawdown.org/careers
beautiful book from an ethical online bookstore: bookshop.org/p/books/a-fe...
free online article (not quite the whole essay): commongood.cc/reader/a-few...
PDF of original: antiableistcomposition.com/wp-content/u...
Book lying open with highlighted passage: "There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be."
Grateful for whoever put this in the Q&A box during my last webinar:
"There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be"- Octavia Butler
Yes.
That's right.🙏
I will keep coming back to this.🕯️
Read the whole essay - it's short! ⬇️
A while ago I bought "climate neutral" tweezers.
Manufactured metal. Plastic wrapped. Shipped to my store.
Not sure why they annoyed me so, but I kept complaining.
Then got into a chat w/ a brilliant creative communications colleague that turned into something real to say about climate marketing: