Saturday Morning Linkfest

Good morning, some articles in the past little while I've come across that I thought were interesting.

• Homes are one of the largest polluters we use in our daily lives. Understanding basic Passive House (or the original German - passivhaus) principles, whose design is to very significantly reduce or totally eliminate energy consumption. TH
• Big Shocker? Climate change increasing stress on plants, and reducing plant productivity, by about 1% over the past decade, according to NASA. No big deal, except for global population growth that is occurring at 1.3%, per annum. (via Climate Progress)
• Hate the look of wind turbines and wind farms? If you like look of grain fields, then you've got to think this futuristic wind farm design is a massive step forward on the beauty front (via inhabitat).
• In the "better than nothing category", GM has a car that gets about 1 more MPG due to "variable geometry air shutter". The Chevrolet Cruze Eco. TH
• Our highlighted article; on leadership and change. Study those who have won battles out of proportion to their base. Examine the NRAs tactics, including "building and energizing its small membership base, working to influence the outcome of critical elections, and employing bare-knuckled tactics" and apply them to the climate change battle (via Grist).
• Some good news on the renewable energy front: in Europe, renewable energy increased its footprint in 2009, at the expense of coal (which is possibly the worst carbon-cycle energy source). TH
• Should we name climate/weather disasters after climate change deniers? That's one thought out there (via Huffington Post). Maybe something better would be simply to work very hard in their district, before and after the election, to make sure they couldn't be elected even as chief peanut counter in the future.
• A United Nations study transformed how Anne Lappe thinks about the climate crisis. "In the report, researchers pegged greenhouse gases from the livestock sector at 18 percent of total global emissions. Combine this with other aspects of our food chain--from agricultural chemical production to agribusiness driven deforestation to food waste rotting in landfills--and food and agriculture sector is responsible for nearly one third of the planet's manmade emissions. Move over Hummer; it's time to say hello to the hamburger" (via Huffingon Post.)
• We needed computer modelling to tell us that we should best exploit regional resources to add to the renewable energy grid, eg wind in windy regions, geothermal in areas best suited for that approach etc.?? Apparently the utility industry did, as do our politicians (via New York Times).