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Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. Details recorded here should be sourced; unknown information is left blank.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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Weatherization (American English) or weatherproofing (British English) is the practice of protecting a building and its interior from the elements, particularly from sunlight, precipitation, and wind, and of modifying a building to reduce energy consumption and optimize energy efficiency.
Weatherization is distinct from building insulation, although building insulation requires weatherization for proper functioning. Many types of insulation can be thought of as weatherization, because they block drafts or protect from cold winds. Whereas insulation primarily reduces conductive heat flow, weatherization primarily reduces convective heat flow.
In the United States, buildings use one third of all energy consumed and two thirds of all electricity.[1] Due to the high energy usage, they are a major source of the pollution that causes urban air quality problems and pollutants that contribute to climate change. Building energy usage accounts for 49 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 25 percent of nitrous oxide emissions, and 10 percent of particulate emissions.[2]
Typical weatherization procedures include:
The phrase "whole-house weatherization" extends the traditional definition of weatherization to include installation of modern, energy-saving heating and cooling equipment, or repair of old, inefficient equipment (furnaces, boilers, water heaters, programmable thermostats, air conditioners, and so on). The "Whole-House" approach also looks at how the house performs as a system.[5]
Weatherization generally does not cause indoor air quality problems by adding new pollutants to the air. (There are a few exceptions, such as caulking, that can sometimes emit pollutants.) However, measures such as installing storm windows, weather stripping, caulking, and blown-in wall insulation can reduce the amount of outdoor air infiltrating into a home. Consequently, after weatherization, concentrations of indoor air pollutants from sources inside the home can increase.[6]
Weatherization may have a negative impact on indoor air quality, if done improperly, exacerbating respiratory conditions especially among occupants with pre-existing respiratory illnesses.[6] This may occur because of a drastic decrease in air exchange rate in the home, introduction of new chemicals, and poor management of indoor moisture due to a poorly performed weatherization work. Low air exchange rates may lead to higher concentrations of pollutants in the air when ventilation is not sufficiently addressed during weatherization work. However, the situation may be different in case of a house situated in an area with high outdoor air pollution levels such as in close proximity (<200 m) from a busy major road. In such a scenario, a more airtight building envelope can actually offer protection against infiltration of outdoor air pollution.[7] The same is true for the protection offered by tighter building envelopes during wildfire events that cause elevated levels of outdoor air pollution.[8]
Weatherization is a set of measures and practices aimed at improving the energy efficiency of a building or home, primarily to reduce energy consumption and lower utility bills. The main goal of weatherization[9] is to make a structure more comfortable and cost-effective to live in, especially during extreme weather conditions. It involves making various improvements to a building's insulation, air sealing, and overall energy systems.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that up to February 2018[update] over 7 million homes have been weatherized, giving yearly savings of 2.6 TWh of electricity, 7.9 TWh (27×1012 Btu) of fossil gas and 3.2 million metric tons (3.5 million short tons) of reduced carbon dioxide emissions.[10] The US Department of Energy estimates weatherization returns $2.69 for each dollar spent on the program, realized in energy and non-energy benefits. Families whose homes are weatherized are expected to save $358 on their first year's utility bills.[citation needed]
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Programs in many states work side by side with WAP to provide both immediate and long-term solutions to energy poverty.[11]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Weatherization (American English) or weatherproofing (British English) is the practice of protecting a building and its interior from the elements, particularly from sunlight, precipitation, and wind, and of modifying a building to reduce energy consumption and optimize energy efficiency. Weatherization is distinct from building insulation, although building insulation requires weatherization for proper functioning. Many types of insulation can be thought of as weatherization, because they block drafts or protect from cold winds. Whereas insulation primarily reduces conductive heat flow, weatherization primarily reduces convective heat flow. In the United States, buildings use one third of all energy consumed and two thirds of all electricity. Due to the high energy usage, they are a major source of the pollution that causes urban air quality problems and pollutants that contribute to climate change. Building energy usage accounts for 49 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 25 percent of nitrous oxide emissions, and 10 percent of particulate emissions.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP, pronounced "lie" "heap") is a United States federal social services program first established in 1981 and funded annually through Congressional appropriations. The mission of LIHEAP is to assist low income households, particularly those with the lowest incomes that pay a high proportion of household income for home energy, primarily in meeting their immediate home energy needs. The program, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is funded by grants appropriated from the federal government. Weatherization funding peaked to over 500 million dollars in 2009 and by 2014 had decreased to about 300. In 2014, it served over 80 thousand households in over 40 states, out of over 5 million in the LIHEAP program. Funding during the COVID pandemic reached $8 billion in 2021 and was about $4 billion a year during the rest of the presidency of Joe Biden. In total since 1976, weatherization assisted over 7 million low-income households, which received free home improvements worth an average of about $5,000. The most common measures were furnace replacement, attic and wall insulation, and infiltration reduction. A random trial in Michigan estimated that the measures reduced energy consumption by 10-20 % on average. In 2025, the Trump administration proposed ending the program.
The Weather Underground was an American Marxist militant organization active from 1969 until 1977. Originally known as the Weathermen, or simply Weatherman, the group originated as a faction of the national leadership of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The group adopted the name Weather Underground Organization (WUO) in 1970. Its members advocated revolutionary struggle against the United States government and described their politics as anti-imperialist and anti-racist. The group's ideology was influenced by Black Power and the anti-war movement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarded the WUO as a domestic terrorist group. The Weather Underground took its name from Bob Dylan's lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965). They took this line as the title of a position paper distributed at the SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a "White fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical movements to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world". The "Days of Rage", a riot orchestrated by the WUO in October 1969 in Chicago, was timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the U.S. government under the name "Weather Underground Organization". That year the WUO took part in Timothy Leary's escape from prison. In the 1970s, the WUO conducted a bombing campaign targeting government buildings and banks. Some attacks were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with threats identifying the particular issue that the attack was intended to protest. Three members of the WUO were killed in an accidental explosion in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1970, but no one was killed in any of the bombings claimed by the group. WUO targets included the Marin County Civic Center (1970), the United States Capitol (1971), and the Pentagon (1972). The WUO began to disintegrate after the U.S. reached a peace accord with Vietnam in 1973, and was defunct by 1977. Some members of the group joined the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO) and continued their activities until that group disbanded in 1985. Due to misconduct by the FBI, Weatherman's leadership was largely able to resume normal lives after the group dissolved, without being prosecuted or serving jail time. Some members of M19CO who were involved in the 1981 Brink's robbery, in which three people were killed, served lengthy prison sentences.
Weather is the state of the Earth's atmosphere at a specific place and time, typically described in terms of temperature, humidity, cloud cover, and stability. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers to day-to-day temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions, whereas climate is the term for the averaging of atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time. When used without qualification, "weather" is generally understood to mean the weather of Earth. Weather is driven by air pressure, temperature, and moisture differences between one place and another. These differences can occur due to the Sun's angle at any particular spot, which varies with latitude. The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the largest scale atmospheric circulations: the Hadley cell, the Ferrel cell, the polar cell, and the jet stream. Weather systems in the middle latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet streamflow. Because Earth's axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane (called the ecliptic), sunlight is incident at different angles at different times of the year. On Earth's surface, temperatures usually range ±40 °C (−40 °F to 104 °F) annually. Over thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbit can affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by Earth, thus influencing long-term climate and global climate change. Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. Higher altitudes are cooler than lower altitudes, as most atmospheric heating is due to contact with the Earth's surface while radiative losses to space are mostly constant. Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. Earth's weather system is a chaotic system; as a result, small changes to one part of the system can grow to have large effects on the system as a whole. Human attempts to control the weather have occurred throughout history, and there is evidence that human activities such as agriculture and industry have modified weather patterns. Studying how the weather works on other planets has been helpful in understanding how weather works on Earth. A famous landmark in the Solar System, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is an anticyclonic storm known to have existed for at least 300 years. However, the weather is not limited to planetary bodies. A star's corona is constantly being lost to space, creating what is essentially a very thin atmosphere throughout the Solar System. The movement of mass ejected from the Sun is known as the solar wind.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
