The mission of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy is almost unimaginable—an open, clean and alive Gowanus Canal Watershed—but thankfully there are people who can imagine it. They're having a party to support the conservancy on January 30 at Littlefield. Tickets start at $20.
It sounds crackpotty, but: Cheese Power! Cheese is actually helping to create electricity. Whey, a by-product of the cheesemaking process, is usually considered waste material. Add bacteria to it, however, and methane is produced, which is used to heat water, and thus to generate electricity. It's not a theory, either. The power station in the Savoie town that produces delicious Beaufort (a princely $44.99/lb at Murray's) turns the whey into electricity for 1,500 people.
Block Island Wind Farm, America's first offshore wind farm, is under construction. When it goes online later this year, Rhode Island residents are expecting a 40% drop in their energy bills.
As part of their Value of Food exhibition (through April 3), St. John the Divine is holding a seed-saving workshop, Thursday, January 28, 7-8:30pm, free but RSVP.
A way to help Flint.
The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé, is a most interesting mix of science, agriculture and personal narrative. The importance of healthy soil, replete with diverse microbes, comes into relief for the authors when illness reinforces the analogous importance of the human microbiome.
A tad funereal as depicted, perhaps, but ThermoWood looks to be a promising heat treatment that improves the insulating properties of wood without chemicals.
Project Sunroof is a Google project that uses using Google Maps data to give you info on what you could save by installing solar panels on your home.
Seems a strangely heavy lift: convincing presidential candidates to talk about science, health, tech and environmental issues. This petition urges the candidates to have a presidential debate on those topics.