Inhabitat's Week in Green: Flaming turbines, seven eco-chic gifts and a winter wonderland of LED
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.
The past week saw several groundbreaking developments in climate news as the Chinese government said that it will control rainfall to generate 10 percent more precipitation by 2015. Stanford researchers developed a new type of concrete that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and Facebook teamed up with Greenpeace to power future data centers with renewable energy. Japan also announced the cold shutdown of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the US solar industry got a giant boost as it grew more in the third quarter of 2011 than in all of 2009. Wind power in Scotland had a rocky week as a turbine burst into flames during hurricane force winds.
In other news, it was an intense week in the world of architecture as renowned firm MVRDV apologized for its "Cloud" skyscrapers, which many people found to resemble the form of the exploding Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks. We also brought you two high-profile architecture interviews - one with Gensler's Chris Chan on the tallest skyscraper in Asia and one with HOK's Bill Odell on the world's largest LEED platinum project. Meanwhile, BIG unveiled a luxury resort topped with a functional ski slope and we saw a winter wonderland of LED topiaries pop up in Atlanta's botanical garden.
As the holiday shopping season reached its peak we also highlighted some of our favorite green gadgets - don't miss these 10 great green gizmos and these 7 eco-chic gifts for techies. We also shared an exclusive tutorial on how to make your own pair of texting gloves, and we checked out Pong's iPhone and iPad cases, which reduce exposure to cell phone radiation. Finally, we saw scientists in Japan create the world's first renewable bio-based polyester and we brought you N-product's iPod watchbands, which are made from discarded backpacks and inner tubes.
