Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Sturdy wild wheat and barley are essential for humanity’s survival. New study shows we are losing genetic diversity
Israel’s wild wheat and barley are known to be the ancestors of our modern grains. When Man cultivated them, their genetic resistance to drought and disease carried over to cultivated varieties. This aided mankind’s struggle to grow predictable harvests and put fresh bread on the shelf every day. Great, but all that’s history, right? One would think that with the modern world’s stores of cultivated grain, and seed banks to back up those supplies, our future food sources are safe. At least in regard to that essential staple, bread.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell parents living in Gulf countries that their kids are getting fat because they’re being fed too many McDonald’s burgers, and have them respond by adding some greens to their diet? But this isn’t what happens. Even though a 2010 national school health survey in the United Arab Emirates revealed that 40% of school-aged children are obese because their parents feed them poorly, no effort has been made to change these behaviors.
So, the Ministry of Health has resorted to making feeding children junk food a violation of federal law, which the Ministry of Education will be required to monitor in public and private schools across all seven emirates.
When BrightSource withdrew its IPO this month, the death knell for solar was sounded, as always. The truth is more mundane.
According to the always inquisitive Katie Fehrenbacher over at GigaOm who managed to snag a Q&A with the company, BrightSource just doesn’t necessarily need the extra money right now. Its Ivanpah solar thermal project is already fully funded with project financing from NRG Energy and Google.
Any additional funds from an IPO at this point would just have gone toward things like continued research and development, project development (other ongoing permitting work) and international expansion. And with market conditions as they are a quick cost/benefit analysis in the last days found an IPO not needed.
Greenhouses will sprout in Aqaba’s desert under a pilot called The Sahara Forest Project – led by Norway.
The ambitious Sahara Forest Project (SFP) aims to revegetate areas of desert and create green jobs through production of high-value crops and biomass. And, in the process, generate clean energy and fresh water. Farming the Jordan’s deserts as it’s to be done in Qatar sounds like a fantastical solution for Jordan’s resource problems.
“We aim to use what we have enough or too much of — saltwater, sun, arid land, and carbon dioxide — to make what we need more of — clean energy, fresh water and food,” Sahara Forest Project CEO Joakim Hauge told the Jordan Times.
How do you build a biomachine?
The Norway-based company operates on a threefold premise: construct saltwater-cooled greenhouses, generate electricity from concentrated solar power (CSP), and reintroduce desert flora. The technologies are complementary, and integrated to work as a holistic “biomachine”.
The first concept study of SFP was launched in 2009 at the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen. The developers boldly assert that their engineered oasis has potential to produce enough energy for the Middle East – North Africa region and all of Europe.
Saltwater will be used to provide evaporative cooling and humidification within the greenhouses. Seawater will also be tapped as interstitial coolant within the walls, producing distilled water as a byproduct. Potable water requirements are thus minimized, while maximizing crop yields.
The results of the studies were announced last week at a seminar that Hauge says, “…marks the start of a dialogue between international and Jordanian experts and policy makers, which we believe will establish the necessary framework for establishing a test and demonstration center in Jordan.”
That proposed center will serve as a testing ground, and as the project’s educational and innovation epicenter. This micro-Masdar will be sited at an unspecified Aqaba location, approximately 15 km inland and 40 m above sea level. The 20 hectare pilot center will be designed to allow easy expansion to a 200 hectare commercial facility.
Support for the Jordan project will be via private and public funding: total price tag is estimated at $105 million. A pilot project is also underway in Qatar.
Downsides to the Sahara Desert Project
The project sounds logical. Seawater greenhouses and CSP (concentrated solar photovoltaic) technologies are well-suited to work in hot, dry climates.
It’s also impractical. Generating energy so far from end-users will never be a winning cost model: that’s one of the biggest challenges facing wind and wave technologies. Same argument works against commercial crops: these ultra-organic and carbon neutral veggies will be priced out of most Jordanians reach. Shipping produce to urban centers will raise its carbon footprint up a few shoe sizes.
And as for assisting local populations with green jobs? Consider instead training local farmers how to preserve and store water and employ efficient irrigation. Enact a program of biochar soil enhancement: desert land that’s useless for farming can be converted to rich agricultural land over time through this technique. Commence reforestation even on the smallest scale, efforts, irrigation infrastructures and micro-manage erosion.
Greening up the world’s deserts is simply fantastic – in the most literal sense.
In the Middle East and North Africa, although it’s still possible to shop in the slow, traditional way – to buy fresh food from the butchery, the dairy and the bakery – it is sadly becoming less common. This is especially true in the big cities, where people live high-flying lifestyles and prefer one-stop-shopping. Izmir in Turkey lies somewhere in-between these two extremes.
With a population of nearly 4 million, the Aegaen city is a thriving metropolis and a holiday destination but people still make the effort to spend quality time together. To capitalize on this and promote some kind of outdoor engagement, Tabanlioglu Architects has designed the new Asmaçatı Shopping Center as a modern gazebo covered not in real green ivy, but a striking metal roof featuring leafy cutouts.
You see all kinds of weird transportation in the Middle East: but the worst is drifting where young Arab males purposefully “drift” their cars into crowds of people.
I don’t understand the lust for cars. I’m unresponsive to the siren call of Formula 1, NASCAR, and Top Gear. I think commuter trains and subways are the greatest invention since – well – the wheel. So, last week, I shrugged off reports that the Grand Mufti of Dubai proclaimed it a sin to violate traffic rules. No worries for this straphanger. My soul keeps its new car smell.
In other Gulf news, a young Saudi was sentenced to 150 lashes for “drifting” his car after police repeatedly caught him driving like a maniac. Police Director Maj Yehya Al-Biladi urges young men to abstain from drifting, and guarantees severe penalties for future offenders. He told ArabianBusiness it was a “completely wrong” concept that Islam discourages seat belts “as safety is in God’s hand.”
Bringing the merits and techniques of earth architecture to those unable to travel to the California Institute of Earth Architecture founded by Nader Khalili in 1986 was always the internationally-renowned architect’s priority, and it finally came to fruition in 2011 at the first six-day onsite International Workshop in Australia.
Now Hooman Fazly and Robert Gordon from Cal-Earth will be conducting an afternoon lecture tomorrow at the Khaldiya Campus of Kuwait University, where they will team up with Principal Architect Waleed Shalaan to teach students about the eco-dome.
Israel works to create a buffer zone around Egypt and Gaza fearing rare strain of foot and mouth disease will spread.
With vaccines in short supply the Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations warn that animals should not be moved around Gaza to stop the spread of a new strain of foot and mouth disease. The UN body says international efforts need to step in to stop the virus from spreading further in the Middle East and North Africa.
Following outbreaks of the SAT2 strain of the virus in Egypt and Libya in February, fears that it might jump to neighboring areas were confirmed on 19 April when sick animals were detected in Rafah, a town in the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt. The SAT2 variant is new to the region, meaning that animals do not have any acquired resistance to it.
Sudan’s Mohammad Baloola says his invention can eradicate an emerging Gulf disease: diabetes.
As a biomedical engineering student at Ajman University of Science and Technology, Mohammad Baloola found homegrown inspiration for his final year project. Four members of his family are diabetic, a collective muse for his ingenious artificial pancreas. The pancreas is the body’s sole provider of insulin, its functionality critcally linked to diabetes.
From urbanisation in Morocco to lake shrinkage in Iran, these shocking NASA photos prove how this region is in dramatic ecological flux.
Unless you have been living in a consumer-induced coma, it will not have escaped your attention that the world is under serious environmental stress. And a large chunk of that stress has been human-induced. Whilst the exact influence of human behaviour is hard to measure, the carbon we keep pumping into the atmosphere is definitely not helping.
Indeed we are seeing more floods, droughts, melting ice, desertification and a continued gutting of our seas. The Middle East is no different and NASA has the pictures to prove it. So brace yourself – this is not going to be pretty.
Turkey has started exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the town of Iskele in northern Cyprus (red arrow), angering the government of the Greek-controlled southern region.
The Turkish Petroleum Corporation began onshore drilling operations on April 26 at a 3,000-meter-deep well, named “Türkyurdu-1” (“Turkish Homeland”), which Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız called a “force for peace in Cyprus.”
So far, however, the well has proven to be just the opposite.
One cow produces up to 120kg of methane each year, and there are 1.5 billion of them on the planet. This is serious, because as we demonstrated in Giant Plumes of Gurgling Methane Could Fastrack Planetary Warming, methane is 21 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, and by 2050, livestock production is expected to double.
Black smoke billows out of Karantina dump tire fire, near Beirut this weekend. Green groups think the fire was set to pull metal from the rubber tires.
Landfills and garbage dumps in Lebanon have had their share of environmental issues. This reality is an ongoing problem for environmentalists there, and involves giant, smelly garbage mounds in cities like Sidon, as well as garbage trucks dumping their loads straight into the sea.
Giant landfills often contain all kinds of waste items, including discarded appliances, construction materials, and especially old tires form both both cars, trucks, and buses.
Twelve new UAE graduates have been employed to work with the Masdar Institute.
In 2010, Emiratis made up only 13% of their own country’s population. The oil industry and Dubai’s construction boom attracted millions of foreigners, including Indian laborers that just two years ago comprised a whopping 50% of the population, resulting in a tragic dilution of local culture and tradition.
In an interview last year, the Green Sheikh identified restoring the Emirati identity as an important priority and the Masdar Institute is leading the charge with Madeem – a sustainable, skill-based Emirazation Program.
Researchers in Israel have developed a new green plastic for irrigation pipes
Drip irrigation is currently one of the most effective ways for farmers and gardeners to save water. But the method relies on plastic pipes and routinely creates non-recyclable waste. Recently Israeli scientists and professors from the Plastics Engineering department of Shenkar Art School in Tel Aviv collaborated with drip irrigation company Netafim to invent a new biodegradable plastic.This plastic, made from substances such as sugar, corn or lactic acid, is durable enough to make pipes for drip irrigation and yet is still completely compostable.
“When they are put in the ground bio-organisms in the ground begin to dismantle them and thus closes the circle of nature. The goal is to avoid polymers produced by fossil carbon,” said Prof. Shmuel Kenig, dean of Shenkar College of Engineering.
Creating this plastic substance has taken nearly a decade. Developers expect it will take several years until their product can be mass-produced. But when it does hit the market it has the potential to revolutionize sustainable agriculture.
Today, about 40 percent of water used in agricultural irrigation is wasted because of unsustainable practices. Drip irrigation has proven to be among the most feasible, water conserving methods for commercial agriculture. But the byproduct of used, plastic piping that cannot be recycled and needs to be ripped out of the ground each season, is currently one of the method’s greatest downfalls.
According to Avi Schweitzer, VP of Development at Netafim: “The patent application is still far away…It will take a few years before we reach commercial distribution.”
Sturdy wild wheat and barley are essential for humanity’s survival. New study shows we are losing genetic diversity
Greenhouses will sprout in Aqaba’s desert under a pilot called The Sahara Forest Project – led by Norway. 
You see all kinds of weird transportation in the Middle East: but the worst is drifting where young Arab males purposefully “drift” their cars into crowds of people. 
Israel works to create a buffer zone around Egypt and Gaza fearing rare strain of foot and mouth disease will spread. 
