"green" building at Emory University is bird slaughterhouse

back in the 1970's my family had some good friends in Birmingham, AL, who we would usually get together with once or twice a year. they had a beautiful house on a forested mountainside, with a towering A-frame front entrance with 2 panes of triangular glass which stretched to the ceiling, and this A-frame extended to the back of the house, which was a complete glass wall. you could see all the way through this house, and the view was lovely...trees, rocks, leaves...

from time to time while visiting we would hear a massive "WHOOOOMP!", and we would walk out the front door to see what kind of bird had flown into the windows this time and killed itself. i would estimate that between 1972-1976 i must've witnessed this between 10-15 times (which includes one case where two popped the glass at the same time).

flash forward to today...

Emory University's Math & Science Center is a "green-friendly" building, with soaring glass panels which aid in lighting and whatever else the environmentalists get out of it. it's a hallmark of the Atlanta school's effort to "go green"...it's also the "wall of death", as Emory Professor of Environmental Studies John Wegner charmingly put it in an atlanta journal-constitution story. he estimates that the building, whose windows reflect the forest in front of them, killed at least 60 birds in it's first year (2002) alone. he made a stink about it from the beginning, but, according to the story, it wasn't until he rammed some dead birds into his pockets and whipped them out in a meeting with his boss that he finally got some attention.

it's interesting that "green buildings" all share this glassy template. this bird deal is not isolated to Emory. in addition to my anecdote above (from 30 years ago, mind you...), just a casual coupling of "birds + buildings" in Google found this letter to the editor in a University of Saskatchewan campus newspaper, admonishing the school administration to take care of the same problem.

in the AJC story, they interviewed ornithologist David Klem, a professor who has "studied the problem for decades", and says that between 100 million and 1 billion birds die every year in the US by flying into glass windows. he seems to blame ARCHITECTS for the problem, because of the glass which has become such an integral part of "green" construction. by the way, according to the story, "buildings that earn LEED certification, the brass ring of environmentally sustainable construction, are often largely made of glass". the "brass ring", huh? i was thinking that the LEED certification was mainly an industry thing, but apparently environmental organizations such as the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) have endorsed this certification.

this whole thing begs so many questions for me...this all has to do with universities and public buildings efforts at environmental "sustainability", which i just blogged about. universities are filled with professors and scientists, right? my roommate, who works in a chemistry lab at the University of Florida, constantly lectures me about the sanctity of research which comes out of universities (as opposed to business-sponsored, which is defiled by $money$) because it is subject to "peer review".

somewhere, when it comes to this "sustainability" movement, this "peer review" seems to overlook the most obvious things--birds run into glass...you might want to mention this to architects--that even a stupid kid from alabama that i was could see as plain as day...

algore celebrates a touchdown! UF/FSU game to go "green"...

this is surreal.

they want to highlight the "fact" that football games produce a ton of greenhouse gasses. to help combat this problem,

...UF and its partners, the Florida Forestry Association and Environmental Defense, are arranging for approximately 18 acres of rural North Florida land to be set aside and managed as a pine plantation forest for 10 years. UF calculates that this is an acreage and period of time sufficient to absorb all the carbon emissions from the game.

according to Deedee Delongpre', director of UF's "Office of Sustainability",

At 18 acres for one game, some quick calculations reveal that we would need 126 acres to be managed for 10 years just to offset our football program for one year,” she said.

in a statement released from his office, Governor Crist approves, and will attend the game.

this is being hyped as the "first" carbon-neutral game ever. with 3 losses, i guess it's nice to be "first" in something...

go gators.


3 A.M. update--i can't sleep, this stuff is really bugging me. the more i read of this "office of sustainability" at UF, the more i want to puke. what a commie front. i'm going to this game tomorrow, and these whiners want to make me feel bad about it? i think a good old-fashioned protest could be in order...

University of Delaware: PC Indoctrination program

Dear dorm residents,
agree to this, or take a hike:

“[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

thank you,
the administration

RELATED: NAME (National Association for Multicultural Education) national convention in Baltimore:

• "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Dismantling White Privilege and Supporting Anti-Racist Education in Our Classrooms and Schools." Taught by a professor from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, this session "is designed to help educators identify and deconstruct their own white privilege and in so doing more deeply commit themselves to anti-racist teaching and critical multicultural teaching."

• "Talking About Religious Oppression and Unpacking Christian Privilege." This session, taught by a team of professors, "will examine the dynamics of Christian privilege and oppression of minority religious groups and nonbelievers as constructed and maintained on three distinct levels: individual, institutional and societal. A historical and legal lecturette will be presented and participants will engage in interactive learning modules."

• "Beyond Celebrating Diversity: Teaching Teachers How to be Critical Multicultural Educators." Taught by NAME regional director Paul Gorski, founder of the activist group EdChange, this session will start from the premise that multiculturalism's greatest danger "comes from educators who ostensibly support its goals, but whose work - cultural plunges, food fairs, etc. - reflects a compassionate conservative consciousness rather than social justice. This session focuses on preparing teachers, not for celebrating diversity, but for achieving justice in schools and society."

hat tip to Neal Boortz...

Norwegian school encourages masturbation...*but not while eating...*

Pia Friis, leader of the popular Bjerkealleen Barnehage ("barnehager" = "kindergarten") in Oslo, has some "interesting" ideas which are causing debate and uproar in this historically open-minded country:

Children, she said, should be able "to look at each other and examine each other's bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate.

"But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don't want to."

thankgod.
full story here...according to the story, children in Norway typically attend these kindergartens from the ages of 1 to 3...wow. i never masturbated until i was 15. of course, this probably explains a lot...

hat tip to weaselzippers

British flooding shows global warming is here?

this picture,
as the author of this article states, is only a product of "cinematic trickery". but, in order to BEAT THE MESSAGE INTO OUR STUPID SKULLS, it's got to be used in order to show WHAT COULD HAPPEN if we don't start listening to the global warming crowd and start doing what they tell us we need to do. (btw...is that photo from "An Inconvenient Truth"? i never saw it.)

(environmental editor for the Telegraph.co.uk) Charles Clover's article is interesting...in my opinion for how he manages to undercut his argument. for example, while he warns that this flooding is caused by global warming, he writes:

"Of course, nowhere in the country are flood defences built to a higher standard than in London, because of the value, strategic and otherwise, of what lies behind them, so Trafalgar Square is unlikely ever to be as vulnerable as Tewkesbury, even though most of the capital is on a flood plain.'

i've never been to England before, so i don't know this for sure, but i would guess that these "defences" have been around for awhile. i would also guess that, given London's age, that it has been known forever that it was built in a "flood plain"....which, suggests that these floods are not really all that weird, huh? Clover continues:

"We now know that the storm of last Friday was the worst summer flood since the early 19th century. For the counties affected it was as bad as the spring floods of 1947."

does he mean the early 19th century when we didn't burn fossil fuels or run air conditioning and whatnot?

the global warming crowd claims that it uses predictive models which tell us of the upcoming danger our planet faces. but, even according to his own article, the weather service in Great Britain had a tough time even giving Brits a heads-up about the upcoming storm:

It was on Monday last week, July 16, that Met Office forecasters studying computer models of what the weather over the Atlantic might have in store for us began to believe that this summer's second burst of exceptional rain might be about to strike somewhere in England and Wales, bringing with it severe flooding.
Even though the Met Office did not have satellite images of the clouds forming until Thursday, by Wednesday night its computers had predicted accurately that severe weather would hit the south-west Midlands last Friday. By Thursday they knew we would be getting at least 4in (100mm) of rain.

then, on cue, the GOVERNMENT stepped up to the plate:

The Environment Agency flood-warning centre, which works with the Met Office, went into action and from late Thursday duly began delivering its automated alerts to people in high-risk areas who had signed up for them. Only 40 per cent of those living in high-risk flood areas had, but 123,000 people were successfully warned.

good job, GOVERNMENT. maybe you could try a bullhorn next time, or use TV or radio...

the story continues:

But it was only at 2pm on Friday that the order was given to take the large temporary flood barriers that protect properties on the banks of the River Severn out of their store in Kidderminster and to take them north to Upton upon Severn.

They never made it. Even though the agency vehicles carrying them had police outriders as they raced up the M5, they were caught in a tailback. A flash flood had preceded them and the carriageway was blocked.

i'm guessing that the term "outriders" is akin to what we call "escorts" here in America...but, that's neither here nor there. the end result is that lives were lost and billions of dollars damage occurred which the police couldn't prevent. an apt metaphor...

why didn't the british gov't act on these weather forecasts sooner? was it a bureaucratic snafu, or is the credibility of weather forecasting agencies on the line?

remember, this was forecasting for a few days out. and, apparently, scientists were fully aware that there was an uncommon atmospheric condition:

But it was more exceptional than that because it happened in the summer. Meteorologists say that in the short term the rain was caused by the jet stream, the ribbon of very strong winds in the upper atmosphere that largely determines where weather systems will bring rain across western Europe.

For much of the summer the jet stream has been further south and stronger than in a typical summer.

Clover did not blame the position of the jet stream on global warming. he instead uses journalistic sleight-of-hand to get us to "the big question":

The big question is not just why it rained but why the rainfall has been so intense. Is it within the range of past events, or are we in new territory thanks to man's influence on the climate? And if so, what are the implications for future flooding and, more widely, for the way we live?

one could argue that, well, "duh!"...these things have happened before! and they'll probably happen again!!

this after-the-fact "blame it on global warming" game is getting old. who can forget that on the day that Hurricane Katrina smashed into Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, causing widespread catastrophic damage,
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was gleefully posting over at HuffPost that Mississippi gov. Haley Barbour should accept some of the blame:

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

not to mention that when that treaty was sent to the US Senate in 1997 it went unratified, to put it lightly. to put it more blunt, it got skunked 95-0. about a year and a half later, then VP Algore symbolically signed the protocol...

if global warming is such a slam dunk, why are the believers using kids (as i've written on before here on NGNG), hollywood types, and rock stars to warn us? how about some debates featuring real scientists who may have differing views? no, i guess that would be impossible. instead, we get this cabal of marxists, washed-up pols, and UN-sanctioned scientists that are going to tell us how we're bad people.

this speech by author Michael Crichton on the subject of global warming skepticism is interesting. and his book, "State of Fear", should at least be on as many schools' required reading lists as Algore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is required viewing...but, oh, i forgot: Crichton is "Big Oil's" favorite journalist...

Schoolkids warn us about "global warming"

is it just me, or does anyone else feel deep down in their gut that if "global warming" was as serious or as fixable or as scientifically-based as the followers of the Goracle tell us, would we really need to have schoolchildren...4th Graders...give us the warning...and also propose "solutions"?????? that's just what these 4th Graders up in maine have done.

how do they come to accumulate such a vast "wealth" of scientific knowledge? as this comment on the article states more eloquently than i can:

leddie27
Jun 17, 2007 4:52 AM
These children are 9 years old. What could they possibly know about "strange weather"? Are they comparing it to way back when they were six? Or, are they simply being indoctrinated (and scared to death) by another incompetent teacher?

in canada, a writer asks this question:So how did An Inconvenient Truth become required classroom viewing? the piece begins:

First it was his world history class. Then he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth shown to him by four different teachers this year.

canada's pretty hopping...apparently, a consortium of global warming activists and green corporate CEOs have combined forces to provide a DVD of "an incovenient truth" to every single public school classroom. here in the U.S.A., the kids are "taking it upon themselves" (yeah, right) to educate us dumb adults about this "threat".

listen, i think it's great that the kids are "getting involved", but a little bit of balance might be nice...for instance, haven't we been hearing lately from scientists in the national hurricane center and NASA telling us that it might be silly to overreact to natural temperature fluctuations? hotshot meteorologist guru Bill Gray just recently characterized global warming as "a scam". maybe these kids should hear from someone like him from time to time.

or, maybe they should just concentrate on reading and writing and stuff like that, and less on propaganda. or else, we'll probably end up with more cases like "Jason".