Chile Ditches Neck-Ties To Save Energy

From The Globe:

Santiago, Chile -- Chile's energy warriors went for the throat on Thursday, urging men to shun neckties so that offices could ease up on air conditioning.

Government workers will not be required to wear ties or jackets in summer, and officials hope the private sector will follow suit, Deputy Economy Minister Ana Maria Correa said. Chile is a socially conservative country where men typically dress formally for work.

According to the government, 215,000 air conditioners have been imported since 1997, and during the Southern Hemisphere summer from December to March, they may account for up to 60 per cent of electricity consumption at workplaces.

The no-tie, no-jacket plan was the idea of the government's Commission for Energy Efficiency.

"We recommend all male workers drop their ties and jackets," the group's director, Nicola Borregaard said at a news conference. "We hope all sectors will follow this recommendation so it will become a national habit."

I'd probably support this even if it didn't save energy. Although I can't bitch too much personally; my company went "business casual" in the 1990s as a concession to all the employees they didn't fire.

Before that time I did the whole trip with seven different pairs of identical black pants and seven identical white shirts and seven ugly neck-ties, so I never had to think about what I wore. If you've ever seen Office Space, I looked frighteningly like the character "Michael Bolten". Now, my wife says, I look like a male model for Eddy Bauer.

And I'm helping to save the planet.

Now if only they'd let me work without pants.

Republic Of Chile Inspires Ontario Green Plan

If you want to make a green political gesture that is both cheap and effective, you can't do much better than Dalton McGuinty's new "comfortable clothing" policy:


TORONTO — Ontario government workers will be allowed to wear casual clothes instead of suits and ties during the summer months.

Premier Dalton McGuinty says government air conditioners will be set to 26 Celsius this summer in order to help save energy costs.


[....]


He says he'd also like private companies to follow the government's lead and adopt a "comfortable clothing" policy.

Weirdly enough, the policy is almost a clone of the policy adopted earlier this year by the Republic of Chile, where air conditioner use accounts for 60% of energy consumption in workplaces.


Although "small bore" is definitely the way to describe it, I am entirely supportive of a move towards office casual-wear. My own company did this in the early 1990s, as a cheap concession to the employees who hadn't been downsized. Previosuly, my wardrobe had been100% black pants, cheap shirts, and ugly ties, and I looked frighteningly like Mike Herman's character in "Office Space". Ever since, my wife has been dressing me head-to-foot in Eddie Bauer gear, and the other middle-managers say that, of all the organization's office drones, I am by far the sexxxiest.









BCL As A Young Man

Giant Sloth: Its What's For Dinner

From The Archaeology News:

Most scientists agree that humans began arriving in the Americas between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago, and the Clovis people of North and Central America are generally considered the "first Americans." But new fossil evidence from a streambed in southern Uruguay could challenge such theories.

Results published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggest the presence at the site of human hunters who may have killed giant sloths and other megafauna. That itself isn't odd, but the site, called Arroyo del Vizcaino, has been radiocarbon dated to between 29,000 and 30,000 years old—thousands of years before people were thought to be there.

My favorite bit of the article is this:

The date of Arroyo del Vizcaino may make some archaeologists cringe: South America's earliest human settlement at Monte Verde in Chile dates to only 14,000 years ago. 

Because this ignores the fact that a deeper layor at the MV site was dated to 33,000 BP.  But Tom Dillehay, who has done most of the work at Monte Verde, had so much trouble getting the earlier dates accepted that he never really pushed the apparently older material.

In any case, here's what the folks at Arroyo del Vizcaino actually found:

(c) Surface modification of bones

No carnivore tooth marks were identified. Nearly 59% of the bones collected show modifications with features identifiable as trampling marks [26], with over one-third of the bones exhibiting trampling abrasion on more than 25% of their surface area (see electronic supplementary material, figure S7). Furthermore, 40 elements (nearly 5% of the identified specimens, a percentage similar to the proportion in human sites [23]) show marks that have macroscopical features consistent with human agency (figure 4; electronic supplementary material, figures S8–S13). Ten of the bones that showed little or no trampling abrasion in the studied area of the anthropogenic-style marks were examined under greater magnifications. A total of 15 marks were analysed from the selected bones. Congruent with previous preliminary findings [27], most of these marks show microscopical features described in cuts made by human stone tools, such as shoulder effects, Herzian cones and even microstriations [12] (figure 4a–e; electronic supplementary material, table S6), the latter being very rarely preserved in prehistoric material [11,26]. 

Turns out I've written about Giant Sloths on previous occasions.  Here, for example.

Brad Trost Brings The Logixxx

The United States is a more socialistic country than Canada. Surprised?

Tory MP Brad Trost is not.

What I find interesting about the ten freest economies in the world is that all the countries on the list have one of two qualities: either the nation is one of the world’s richest (Switzerland and Denmark) or the economy has grown dramatically in the past couple of decades (Chile and Ireland).

This clearly demonstrates that freedom brings prosperity.

I could argue with this, but why the fuck bother? I will just point out that Brad Trost, while not officially gay, is hot enough to make the cut. His ass is so firm you could bounce a dime off it. Not that anyone has, as far as I can confirm.

Suzuki Vs. The Canadian Senate

Amidst all the rhetorical hippy kicking and general wingnuttery in the Senate over Northern Gateway and the tar sands recently (for example Senator Finley and his "It should never be considered a charitable act to attack Canada's oilsands" line), Tory Senator Larry W. Smith issued a press release (on March 7, to be exact) from which I excerpt the following:

“This debate is about Canada’s economic sovereignty” stated Senator Smith. “The question we face is fundamental. Do we with natural resources that form 9.5% of our economy’s GDP, have the right to decide how we develop the riches our nation is blessed with,” questioned Senator Smith. “Or, are we willing to abdicate that right and grant it to those in other nations?”

“US foundations gave 1.5 million to David Suzuki’s group to produce a brochure called “Why You Shouldn’t Eat Farmed Salmon”. Is it a coincidence that Statistics Canada reported a 22.5 million dollar decline in BC salmon fishing revenue in 2009? Think this is just about the environment? Think again. This is about business. It is about promoting American business” stated Senator Smith.

The notion that a single pamphlet from Suzuki and co. could bring about a decline in the B.C. Salmon fishery is ridiculous on the face of it.  However, the foundation decided that a response to Senator Smith was in order. 

Senator Smith's news release also contained numerous errors. His claim about declining revenues from salmon fishing demonstrates confusion between salmon fishing and salmon farming. In fact, much of the drop in revenue from salmon fishing has been attributed to the rapid drop in world salmon prices caused by the glut of farmed salmon that entered the marketplace in the 1990s. If the Senator meant to refer to drops in salmon farming revenues, he should know that those have been driven by oversupply in the marketplace by the salmon farming industry in Chile and by global economic crises, not by environmental concerns.

A lot of foaming and empty threats from the Senate, methinks,signalling their own frustration with the way the pipeline wars have been going lately rather than any serious attempt to change tax laws regarding Canadian environmental groups.

Scrapping Over The Black Liqour

America's weirdest "green" initiative threatens to trigger a trade war:

Canada has threatened trade action against the United States over a massive "black liquor" tax credit to its pulp and paper industry that has distorted global pulp markets.

In a statement Thursday, International Trade Minister Stockwell Day said Canada has joined the European Union, Brazil and Chile in demanding that the credit, estimated to be worth between $4 billion and $8 billion, be withdrawn.

If you remember, this is the "alternative tax credit" buried in the 2005 highway bill that subsidizes American pulp & paper companies for dirtying up their production processes by adding diesel to the lignin sludge their mills produce as a by-product and then recycle as a clean-burning fuel.

Rather disappointing is the fact that yankee enviros have written very little about this issue (other than a few short pieces I remember seeing at Grist). Don't know if its because it has gone under the radar in all the struggles over Waxman-Markey, or whether there's a little bit of protectionism in their mental makeup.