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Carbon Neutral Indoor Ski Resort Makes Everything Else Carbon Neutral Suck More

January 24, 2012 By 1 Comment

Ok, we survived Seattle’s Snowmageddon last week but Jubbling.com had to suffer another post-free week. Of course I blame my kids for this and will now find a way to put them to work furthering the Jubbling cause.
Proposed Carbon Neutral Indoor Ski Resort in Barcelona
What did we miss? How about the proposed indoor carbon neutral ski resort that is planned for 2015 in Barcelona Spain. Yes, they need snow because it’s not available year round and to appease and appeal to the green folks, they’ll make it carbon neutral by using the cool energy that is generated when sub-zero liquefied natural gas is converted back to its gaseous state. In addition to the converted natural gas, the indoor ski resort will use solar and plant waste to power the facility. Dutch company SnowWorld, builder’s of Dubai’s indoor Ski Dubai, will be construct the facility in partnership with B01 Arquitectes of Barcelona.

Jubbling’s take: Nature defying projects like this kill us. Yes, they are making an effort to consume less resources and we normally see good in those kind of efforts. But this “tickle and slap” faux environmental-sensitivity drives us nuts! Save the layer of green paint, take a step back and just admire the amount of sucking that goes into a project like an indoor ski resort built in a city that most people want to escape to during the winter months. Instead of figuring out how to build it, they should really wonder why. [Treehugger.com]

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Filed Under: Anti-Jubbling, Construction, Featured Jubbling, Fitness, Is it Jubbling or Not?, Solar, Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Dateline China: Energy Efficient 30-Story Hotel Built In 15 Days (Video).

January 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

YouTube Preview Image

Pre-Fabricated T30 Hotel By BROAD Group China

Completed T30 Hotel

Built in only 15 days by the BROAD Sustainable Building (BSB) division of the BROAD Group, which specializes in the manufacture of air conditioning units, the T30 hotel is a marvel of pre-fabricated construction. At 30 stories and with 170,000 square feet of floorspace, the T30 also claims to be 5 times more energy efficient than a comparable sized hotel thanks to features like 4 pane windows, external solar shading, and a heat recovery system. Due in part to BSB’s decision to incorporate energy efficient ideas into T30′s construction, the hotel is receiving quite a few mentions on sustainably focused websites including Treehugger, Inhabitat, and Smart Planet.

Jubbling’s take: The next time we’re in China, we’ll choose to stay in the two story hotel that took one year to build instead. No offense but after seeing the pictures below, we don’t want to take any chances. Haste makes waste.

Chinese Apartment Building Collapse 1 Chinese Apartment Building Collapse 2 Chinese Apartment Building Collapse 3

Related article: Are Skyscrapers Torpedoing the World’s Economies?

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Filed Under: Construction, Energy, Featured Jubbling, Reduce, Solar, Travel, World Jubbling Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

SavWatt CEO’s New Year’s Shareholders Message Is Awesome.

January 10, 2012 By 1 Comment

What do you put in your New Year’s message to shareholders when your stock is trading at $.0004 per share? Well the CEO of SavWatt, Ike H. Sutton, calls out the haters and basically tells them to go piss up a tree:

I have only one request for the new year that is in regards to SavWatt’s bashers on online chat boards. Ask yourself why are they bashing SavWatt? If they are shareholders, why bash? This only creates negativity in the marketplace. If they are not shareholders, why are they on the board? Are they being paid for bashing? By whom and what’s the purpose? And if they are really unhappy with SavWatt and the SavWatt team, get out of the stock and move on. Please do not listen or act based on basher information as they have an agenda of their own and provide misinformation to the determent of the company.

Ecopole by SavWatt

Ecopole by SavWatt

SavWatt’s flagship product, the Ecopole, seems like an impractical Swiss-Army green solution that was hoping for government stimulus type money and never got it.

But the rant by SavWatt’s CEO in his shareholders message is priceless and is probably not a good sign that the company is going to turn things around anytime soon. I guess if you think you’re going down, you might as well go without regret.

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Filed Under: Featured Jubbling, Reduce, Renewable Energy, Solar, Wind Power Tagged With: , , , , ,

Greenpeace Used Facebook To Get Facebook To Stop Using Coal Power

December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

At Greenpeace headquarters…Greenpeace Over Facebook
…at Facebook.Facebook benefits from Greenpeace "Boycott" or is it a Boynott?We posted an article about this back in Feb 2011 but it looks like Greenpeace is happy now that Facebook is moving toward renewable energy to drive their data centers and unfriending coal. And who knows, maybe the Rainbow Warrior Powered By Facebook is around the corner. But what gets me is how this was a reverse boycott – kind of a boynott – where Greenpeace and thousands of their supporters pushed for Facebook to make this change by using Facebook which in turn, consumed more coal-powered electricity.

It’s interesting that this worked or did it? Maybe now, Facebook will piss off more people by dropping a deuce on their causes in order to drive more traffic to the site. Mark Zuckerberg might go on a elephant hunting trip with the GoDaddy CEO and drive even more activity on Facebook when people use his site to protest his actions. What a dilemma – finding new ways to create controversy and generate more traffic. (A couple quick suggestions: “Facebook for Bachmann” or “Facebook Presents Family Planning Corner with the Duggars.”)

Imagine if all the groups that oppose Walmart decided to send them a message by telling people to shop there and let them know what they didn’t like about their practices. Walmart would make some changes but whenever they needed a spike in revenue, they could release new information about something else they’re doing bad in the world.

So maybe next time, Greenpeace and like organizations that are not happy with Facebook will encourage their members to remove their profiles from the site in protest instead of spiking their traffic and benefiting Facebook. As I concluded in my previous post about GP and FB, a true boycott is not likely to happen but it sure seems like a better way to send the message.

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Filed Under: Energy, Featured Jubbling, Reduce, Solar, Technology, Wind Power Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sunlounge Tanning & Spa In Los Angeles Gets 15-30% Of Their Power From Solar. Is That Bad?

December 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sunlounge Solar Powered Spa and Tanning SalonSunlounge Tanning & Spa’s own website refers to their role as the “sun’s middleman” and that’s because they get 15-30% of their electricity from solar power. It seems more than a little crazy that people would seek out the artificial sunlight from a tanning bed that is powered by solar panels versus getting it directly from the sun; it’s like choosing to pay for a knockoff when the actual product is free. But according to Sunlounge, there are many good reasons why you should artificial over organic sunning.

Grist.org posted a tongue in cheek story about Sunlounge and how it was possibly inspired by a Photoshop contest for stupid technology. But Jubbling thinks that other than trying to over-leverage the “going green” message, Sunlounge is doing something positive by using solar power. Doesn’t take the all the crazy out the idea but I have to admit, because of the solar and not the going green message, Sunlounge would be first tanning salon in Los Angeles that I’d think of when I wouldn’t go tanning.

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Filed Under: Featured Jubbling, I'm sexy, Jubwinked!, Reduce, Solar Tagged With: , ,

Facebook’s Prineville Oregon ‘Open Source’ Data Center

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Facebook Prineville Oregon Data CenterWired.com has a great article about Facebook’s new data center located in Prineville Oregon. The article focuses on General Manager Ken Patchett and his efforts to create a more efficient data center and his desire to share the information with other companies. From the article:

“With some companies I’ve worked for, your dog had more access to you than your family did during the course of the day. Here [at Facebook], my children have seen this data center. My wife has seen this data center…. We’ve had some people say, ‘Can we build this data center?’ And we say, ‘Of course, you can. Do you want the blueprints?’”

Some of the ways Facebook created a more efficient data center is by building their own larger and easier to cool servers, using outside air and captured water for cooling and generating some of their electricity via solar. And now Facebook wants to share their energy efficient data center design ideas with their competitors through the Open Compute Project. It could be considered a challenge or an olive branch but since it’s about increasing energy efficiency, Jubbling thinks it has to be good. [Wired.com]

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Filed Under: Computing, Energy, Featured Jubbling, Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, Solar Tagged With: , , , , ,