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Author: Neville

  • The Passivhaus’s fabric-first approach to energy efficiency

    The Passivhaus’s fabric-first approach to energy efficiency

    The building does the work, from super-high insulation to absolute air-tightness and harvesting the sun’s energy through windows

    Justine Hutton and her children at their Passivhaus in Oldham

    Justine Hutton and her children at their Passivhaus in Oldham Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

    It may sound – and sometimes look – like a facility for pacifying particularly violent criminals, but Passivhaus is in fact the gold standard for ultra-low energy homes, which is enjoying increasing popularity as heating bills continue to rise at astronomical rates. Developed in Germany in the early 90s by Bo Adamson and Wolfgang Feist, the Passivhaus Standard is based on a set of principles that mean homes should be able to remain at a comfortable ambient temperature of around 20C with a minimal amount of heating or cooling.

    It is a “fabric-first” approach to energy efficiency, meaning the building does the work, rather than relying on bolt-on renewable energy devices, like solar panels and ground-source heat-pumps. Based on the tenets of super-high insulation, absolute air-tightness, and harvesting the sun’s energy through south-facing windows, passive houses aim to keep as much heat inside the home as possible.

    They also rely on a box, usually kept in the loft: the MVHR, or mechanical ventilation heat recovery unit, a heat-exchange system that uses air from warmer rooms in the house to heat fresh air coming in.

    “There are a lot of myths around Passivhaus, like you can’t open the windows and people will suffocate if the MVHR breaks down,” says Kym Mead, director of Passivhaus at the Building Research Establishment. “It’s all nonsense – you can live in it like a normal house. It’s based on the idea of harvesting the heat that comes from occupants and their devices, like TVs, computers, cookers and showers.”

    Diagram of how a passive house worksThe first Passivhaus homes, built in a suburb of Darmstadt in 1991, look a little like a portable classroom block, a clunky aesthetic which these ultra-low energy houses have struggled to shake off since. But standards are improving as more architects take up the challenge, and some housing associations are taking the lead, with the incentive of keeping bills down.

    There are around 40,000 passive homes worldwide, with 150 in the UK, and the standard is also being applied to schools and offices – as well as an Antarctic research station.

    But many remain sceptical that Passivhaus certification, which requires it to be tested by a registered inspector, is a distracting box-ticking exercise.

    “Everyone wants a low-energy home, but people focus on accreditation criteria and lose sight of the bigger picture,” says architect Piers Taylor said: “It’s a one-size-fits-all approach, which can make you blind to the specifics of making each home appropriate to its context. A house should be simple, and allowed to breathe naturally.”

    Art Weekly
    • Bauhaus Bauhaus – Modernist Architecture and Design
      Join Mike Hope on this tour with visits to Erfurt, Weimar and the Bauhaus Museum, Dessau and its Bauhaus Museum and Masters’ House and Berlin’s Bauhaus Archive, delving deeper into the ideologies of ‘total’ works of art and art education

  • What’s Going On With The WA Senate Count Antony Green

    « Reform Options for the South Australian Legislative Council | Main

    November 03, 2013

    What’s Going On With The WA Senate Counct

    The last few days have been eventful in politics with the revelation of ballot papers missing in the WA Senate Count.

    The news broke on Thursday on the first day on an electoral law conference I was attending in Brisbane. I was one of several attendees who spent parts of Thursday and Friday on the phone trying to explain what was happening.

    Now on the weekend I’m attending a conference in Canberra on the 2013 election, so again I’ve been a bit constrained on trying to publish on the result.

    However, while I have time, here are a few comments on the WA result.

    The closeness of the WA result came about because of a critical choke-point early in the count. The Australian Christians and the Shooters and Fishers were on 1.75% at a critical count, with the Shooters and Fishers ahead by 14 votes.

    The Shooters and Fisher’s 14 vote lead resulted in the Australian Christians being excluded, and as a consequence the final two seats were won by the Palmer United Party and Labor.

    On the re-count, around 500 votes previously considered informal were found to be formal. There was also the now well publicised missing 1,375 ballot papers, of which 1,255 were above the line ticket votes.

    With these changes, the critical choke-point saw a change with the Australian Christians leading by 12 votes and the Shooters and Fishers excluded. With different preferences tickets now being distributed, the final two seats were won on the re-count by the Australian Sports Party and the Greens.

    However, it appears that the missing votes disadvantaged the Shooters and Fishers. If you include the original polling place results for the missing votes, then the Shooters might have just finished ahead, something that would have changed the result again.

    But we can’t know that because the votes are not available for re-counting. Which is why the whole matter is going to the courts.

    One question I have been asked is why the AEC has declared the result if it knows there is a problem?

    The answer is simple. The electoral act specifies that Court of Disputed Returns challenge cannot begin until a result is declared. Having spent the last week trying to locate the missing ballot papers, the AEC had little choice but to declare the result so that the Court of Disputed Returns process could begin.

    Another question I have been asked is why can’t the original votes now be used in the count?

    The answer is again legal. If the AEC decides to re-count votes, it has to use the re-count figures. It is not allowed to mix and match the counts. The Court of Disputed Returns might choose to do so, but the AEC cannot.

    Yet they Court may not, because if the old tally is included, the result could again change but the result be so narrow that any possible error could have invalidated the result. Any errors in the missing votes, any multiple votes, any voting irregularities could be seen as critical in such a key result.

    With such a close result, the Court may rule it has no confidence in deciding the result on the available ballot papers and order a new election.

    The Court will have to expedite a hearing and decision on this. There is still time to conduct a re-election for Senators to take their seats on 1 July, but that means holding the election by the latest in early May.

    The election would go through exactly the same procedures as a general election. Writs would be issued, a 33 day campaign would follow, a polling day would be held followed by a count. Unless the High Court surprisingly decided differently, new nominations would be called for. Unless the High Court ruled that the roll as at 7 September be used, there would be a new close of rolls.

    New nominations would almost certainly see a huge increase in the number of candidates. Once again we would see intricate preference deals.

    Would all six seats be up for re-election? Perhaps the Labor and Liberal Parties might argue the three elected Liberal candidates and first elected Labor candidate should not have to face re-election.

    However, the Roberts Woods case in the 1980s and Heather Hill case in the 1990s shows the High Court accepts the election is for six Senators elected together. You can’t break the elected candidates into groups.

    Any election for two Senators would deliver a fourth seat to the Liberal Party so every other party would argue against a two vacancy election.

    So there is much at stake in the looming Court of Disputed Returns decision. The last disputed case was in 2007 and heard by a single Federal Court justice, no constitutional issues being in play, as occurred previously when single High Court justices sat as the Court.

    It may be that in considering the WA appeal, the Court will sit in full to consider parts of the case because some constitutional matters may need to be considered in addition to simpler legal issues concerning the Electoral Act.

    The court will be forced into trying to choose between deciding the result based on a count with known errors, or letting the electorate re-decide for itself.

    It promising to be an interesting case, and if a re-election is held, and even more interesting election with vital importance given it will affect the future balance of power for the Senate.

     

  • PETER LLOYD: A remote town in Western Australia has recorded the country’s hottest October in history.

    rsday, October 31, 2013 18:50:00

    PETER LLOYD: A remote town in Western Australia has recorded the country’s hottest October in history.

    This month, Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley has had an average maximum temperature of 42 degrees. It’s the highest for October in any Australian town since records began.

    Caitlyn Gribbin reports.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: The outback WA town of Fitzroy Crossing is home to about 1,200 very sweaty people.

    Aaron Jacobs thinks over the past month he’s seen most of them at the local pool he manages.

    AARON JACOBS: Oh, it’s relentless (laughs). You don’t really get too much of a chance to cool off. I mean, your minimums get down to, say, 26. So, you know, six o’clock in the morning you walk out and it’s still quite warm. And your evenings sit up around 35. You just really don’t get that break.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: The Kimberley town is infamous for its sweltering weather. It’s already held the record for the hottest October in Australia – that was set in 2002.

    But this record-breaking October surprised even the most experienced weather observers.

    Glenn Cook is from the Bureau of Meteorology.

    GLENN COOK: Fitzroy Crossing’s had a very warm October and in fact their average maximum temperature for the month has been 42 degrees exactly and that actually breaks the Australian record for the hottest October on record anywhere in the country.

    Essentially our records started in the late 1800s and early 1900s and no particular location has recorded a maximum temperature across the whole month of 42 degrees since our records began.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: Local Indigenous woman Joelene Cotterill says the heat is challenging for people who live in the Aboriginal community out of town.

    JOELENE COTTERILL: At the moment we haven’t got too much of our water holes around the rivers. Gets very difficult for people who don’t have vehicles or anything ’cause then, you know, they can’t go anywhere. They’re just stuck in your household. Poor darlings. All you see mostly is they’re all just outside their verandahs, kneeling with the taps on, trying to cool down.

    Like not really so much worried about the weather itself, but if you haven’t got too much water holes around, there’s not much you can do.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: Belinda Bonfield, who’s originally from Queensland, works in an air-conditioned building, so feels pretty lucky.

    BELINDA BONFIELD: For me it’s been pretty easy ’cause I’m in the office during the day, but for people out there in the heat it’s very hot. The kids are not wanting to walk to school, they’re wanting to get driven to school. Fair enough. They come home pretty exhausted in the afternoon.

    We moved over from Queensland eight years ago now, so we’ve acclimatised to Fitzroy weather but certainly the kids – I’ve got four children and they certainly have felt the heat in the last (inaudible).

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: The Bureau’s Glenn Cook again.

    GLENN COOK: The last time the record was broken was by Fitzroy Crossing back in 2002, so it’s taken 11 years to break that record again. And with temperatures rising around the world and around Australia, that’s the sort of thing we’d expect to see.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: What other Australian towns are also in the running to, maybe one day, beat Fitzroy Crossing to this record?

    GLENN COOK: It’s hard to see anywhere beating Fitzroy Crossing because Fitzroy Crossing and the community to the west, Camballin, have had that record since the ’60s and it’s fairly unlikely, I guess, apart from some very unusual event, for anyone else to break this record.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: Fitzroy Crossing pool manager Aaron Jacobs says he’s in the right place to deal with the heat.

    AARON JACOBS: This is definitely the best job in the community to have in these extreme events.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: What temperature is the water in the pool when it’s at least 40 degrees outside?

    AARON JACOBS: The water temp sits around 31 degrees and if you add bubbles, it’s pretty much a spa. You can really feel it once you start doing some laps. You can actually feel yourself sweating while you’re doing laps.

    CAITLYN GRIBBIN: You’re sweating while you’re in the water?

    AARON JACOBS: Yes, you can feel it. Once you do about four laps, you start picking up that heart rate and you can really start to sweat. It’s quite difficult to put up with sometimes.

    PETER LLOYD: And they still have summer to look forward to. That’s the Fitzroy Crossing pool manager, Aaron Jacobs. Our reporter is Caitlyn Gribbin.

  • Study to focus on Arctic after Greenland Sea found to have warmed 10 times faster than global ocean

    Study to focus on Arctic after Greenland Sea found to have warmed 10 times faster than global ocean

    ABC By Phoebe McDonald – November 2, 2013, 4:57 pm

    A crew member lowers a CTD probe - which measures conductivity and temperature - into the Greenland Sea.
    ABC A crew member lowers a CTD probe – which measures conductivity and temperature – into the Greenland Sea.

    Scientists have revealed plans to examine temperature changes in the Arctic Ocean after a long-term study found the Greenland Sea is warming 10 times faster than the global ocean.

    Scientists from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) analysed temperature data from the Greenland Sea between 1950 and 2010.

    Their results show that during the past 30 years water temperatures between two kilometres deep and the ocean floor have risen by 0.3 degrees Celsius.

    Dr Raquel Somavilla Cabrillo, AWI scientist and lead author of the study, says researchers are surprised by the results.

    “For a long time it was considered that the deep Arctic region was in a stationary state …[but] much more than we thought is changing,” she said.

    Dr Somavilla says that the contribution from the Greenland Sea to global rising sea levels is greater than expected, and that scientists must now examine the Arctic Ocean in more detail to fully understand how the world’s oceans react to climate change.

    “Because the changes in temperature are so fast – faster than the average of the rest of the ocean – then the contribution [to rising sea levels] is larger than expected for this region,” she said.

    “That is the reason that we have to look to the rest of the Arctic, because it may be similar, and then we will have to recalculate the contribution of the whole area.”

    Dr Somavilla says warmer water has been flowing from the Arctic Ocean into the Greenland Sea and the new research will focus on this area.

    Degree of warming a cause for concern

    Dr Somavilla says the Arctic region is a leading indicator of climate change.

    “It has one of the highest sensitivities to climate warming, that is clear,” she said.

    “It is suffering sea ice retreat, sea surface temperature is warming faster than in other areas, so the sensitivity is higher than in other places.”

    She says a deep water temperature increase of 0.3 degrees Celsius may sound like a small number, but it needs to be seen in relation to the large mass of water that has been warmed.

    “The amount of heat accumulated within the lowest 1.5 kilometres in the abyssal Greenland Sea would warm the atmosphere above Europe by 4 degrees Celsius,” she said.

    “The Greenland Sea is just a small part of the global ocean. However, the observed increase is 10 times higher than the temperature increase in the global ocean on average.”

    Dr Somavilla says deep oceans are heat buffers for climate warming and have the capacity to regulate temperature increases experienced on land.

    “The warming that we can expect as a result of the increase in greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere can be accumulated in the atmosphere, in the upper layers of the ocean or in the deep ocean,” she said.

    “We have to keep in mind, that 90 per cent of all this warming that we are generating is accumulated in the ocean.”

    Temperature increases related to convection and inflowÂ

    Dr Somavilla says the rise in temperature is caused by the inflow of warmer water from the Arctic Ocean as well as the cessation of deep convection in the Greenland Sea.

    “Until the early 1980s, the central Greenland Sea has been mixed from the top to the bottom by winter cooling at the surface making waters dense enough to reach to sea floor,” she said.

    “This transfer of cold water from the top to the bottom has not occurred in the last 30 years.

    “After the ’80s it seems that winter heat losses – how much heat is lost from the ocean to the atmosphere – has decreased.

    “The waters at the surface are lighter during the wintertime than before. They don’t reach the necessary density to reach the bottom of the Greenland Sea.”

    Dr Somavilla says observations made during the last 100 years reveal rates of deep convection in the Greenland Sea are cyclical.Â

    “There were previous cycles when deep convection was more intense or less intense. But it seems that this cycle is the longest of all of them and the temperature increase has also been the highest of all them,” she said.

    She says if current trends continue the density, temperature and salinity levels of deep water in the Greenland Sea will reach the same levels of those in the Arctic Ocean.

    “The Greenland Sea is getting lighter … It will reach the same density of the waters that are coming in,” she said.

    “When they reach the same density we don’t know what will happen. [Temperature and salinity] are the same. They will keep increasing until they reach the same level … [then] they will probably continue rising, but at other rates,” she said. Â

    The AWI study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

  • Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future

    Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future

    — Nov. 2, 2013 5:37 PM EDT

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    Home » Business » Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease already lead to human tragedies. They’re likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change, a leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts.

    The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report next March on how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income. A leaked copy of a draft of the summary of the report appeared online Friday on a climate skeptic’s website. Governments will spend the next few months making comments about the draft.

    “We’ve seen a lot of impacts and they’ve had consequences,” Carnegie Institution climate scientist Chris Field, who heads the report, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “And we will see more in the future.”

    Cities, where most of the world now lives, have the highest vulnerability, as do the globe’s poorest people.

    “Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger,” the report says. “Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality.”

    For people living in poverty, the report says, “climate-related hazards constitute an additional burden.”

    The report says scientists have high confidence especially in what it calls certain “key risks”:

    —People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

    —Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

    —Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

    —Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

    —Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

    —Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.

    “Human interface with the climate system is occurring and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems,” the 29-page summary says.

    None of the harms talked about in the report is solely due to global warming nor is climate change even the No. 1 cause, the scientists say. But a warmer world, with bursts of heavy rain and prolonged drought, will worsen some of these existing effects, they say.

    For example, in disease, the report says until about 2050 “climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist” and then it will lead to worse health compared to a future with no futher warming.

    If emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and gas continue at current trajectories, “the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year will compromise normal human activities including growing food or working outdoors,” the report says.

    Scientists say the global economy may continue to grow, but once the global temperature hits about 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now, it could lead to worldwide economic losses between 0.2 and 2.0 percent of income.

    One of the more controversial sections of the report involves climate change and war.

    “Climate change indirectly increases risks from violent conflict in the form of civil war, inter-group violence and violent protests by exacerbating well-established drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks,” the report says.

    Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the international study team, told the AP that the report’s summary confirms what researchers have known for a long time: “Climate change threatens our health, land, food and water security.”

    The summary went through each continent detailing risks and possible ways that countries can adapt to them.

    For North America, the highest risks over the long term are from wildfires, heat waves and flooding. Water — too much and too little — and heat are the biggest risks for Europe, South America and Asia, with South America and Asia having to deal with drought-related food shortages. Africa gets those risks and more: starvation, pests and disease. Australia and New Zealand get the unique risk of losing their coral reef ecosystems, and small island nations have to be worried about being inundated by rising seas.

    Field said experts paint a dramatic contrast of possible futures, but because countries can lessen some of the harms through reduced fossil fuel emissions and systems to cope with other changes, he said he doesn’t find working on the report depressing.

    “The reason I’m not depressed is because I see the difference between a world in which we don’t do anything and a world in which we try hard to get our arms around the problem,” he said.

    ___

    Online:

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch/

    ___

  • Greens candidate Scott Ludlam wins Senate spot after WA recount

    Greens candidate Scott Ludlam wins Senate spot after WA recount

    Updated 8 min ago

    Still of Greens Senate candidate Scott Ludlam giving press conference
    PhotoGreens candidate Scott Ludlam has won a WA Senate spot after a recount, but the result is expected to be challenged in the Court of Disputed Returns.

    ABC News 24

    Greens candidate Scott Ludlam has won a Federal Senate spot after a WA recount, while Labor and Palmer United Party candidates have missed out.

    The results announced this afternoon, which will be challenged in court, resulted in a change to the final two seats.

    Australian Sports Party candidate Wayne Dropulich claimed the fifth spot, while Mr Ludlam claimed the final seat.

    Earlier in the recount it emerged that the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) had lost 1,375 votes, which remain missing.

    Labor’s Louise Pratt and Palmer United Party’s (PUP) Dio Wang have missed out on a seat.

    PUP leader Clive Palmer says the missing votes cost his candidate a seat and he intends to launch a challenge through the Court of Disputed Returns.

    Labor’s WA secretary, Simon Mead, has also confirmed the party will lodge an appeal against the decision.

    In announcing the results this afternoon, AEC spokesman Phil Diak said the next step was the formal declaration of the poll, which will take place on Monday.

    Mr Diak says the AEC will closely examine the Senate outcome and any potential challenges.

    He says the investigation into the missing votes, led by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty, is now starting.

    “So we’ll be looking at those things,” Mr Diak said. “But from here, we will be declaring the poll and then returning the the writs to the State Government of Western Australia.”

    ‘I’m delighted with the outcome’: Ludlam

    Mr Ludlam has welcomed the results of the recount after earlier missing out.

    “I would like to thank the work of the Electoral Commission and in particular, my scrutineers,” he said at a press conference.

    “I’m delighted with the outcome.”

    Mr Ludlam also warned that the Senate race may not be over yet.

    “We know of course that other parties are likely to take a very close look at the numbers,” he said.

    “They obviously would be keeping their options open.

    “The Electoral Commission also indicated that they may consider a referral to the Court of Disputed Returns.

    “Hopefully this allows us to get on with our jobs with a degree of certainty. But I’m also well aware there could be a few twists and turns in this yet.”

    Shortly after the announcement Greens leader Christine Milne congratulated Mr Ludlam.

    Congratulations @senatorludlam fantastic result for the Greens in WA recount but the saga is not over yet

    — Christine Milne (@senatormilne) November 2, 2013

    Palmer vows court challenge

    In a statement, Mr Palmer said his party would challenge the results and the loss of ballots was either incompetent or criminal.

    “The AEC has got this wrong on so many levels, which I’ve been saying for the last eight weeks,” the statement said.

    “How they can lose 1,375 votes is simply beyond belief and demonstrates incompetence or criminal conduct.

    “The original count should stand as it is the only count where we’ve had a full count of all votes.”

    Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek earlier said WA residents would be disappointed with the missing votes.

    “I think that there’s a level of exhaustion really in the West at the number of times that people have had to go to the polls here recently over the last few years,” he said.

    “But I would just caution against imagining that this is something that is common or happens all the time, we need to take a sober and sensible approach to what happens next.”

    Yesterday, the Federal Government said it was unlikely “skulduggery” was behind the