A new article in Outside exposes the rift between enviros in favor of renewable energy plants in the countryside, and those against.
This, as many of you know, is part of my day-to-day, and not news to me. But this is still an interesting article.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
UOCP as preferred carbon strategy
I've been interested in the proposal to exorcise coal from domestic electricity production as the primary carbon reduction strategy since Jim Hansen first proposed it a few years ago.
The basic idea is, oil depletion will take care of oil within the forty-year, 80% emissions reductions time frame to 2050 in any case, so don't worry about oil, ergo don't worry about transportation: Oil price will increase inexorably over the next ten-fifteen years, and as long as the commercially viable substitutes involve less carbon, such as plug-in hybrids running on green power, or liquid natural gas, then transportation emissions will take care of themselves.
Instead regulate the emissions from the electric generation sector. You have only a relative handful of producers to worry about, less than a few hundred in the case of the USA, and so the policy is manageable and enforceable. Plus it avoids the kind of backlash politics I detailed in my own dissertation, which politics indeed came to pass, by the way, more or less as described.
One of Hansen's students, Pushker Kharecha, I believe, ran the numbers and proved the concept quantitatively in this article here.
So now Michael Levi has endorsed the proposal too.
That's a significant weight of endorsement, given the way the man's mind works. Hansen's response to these ideas, of course, was explosive and committed, and led to his arrests at the site of a mountaintop removal coalmine, and his giving evidence at the trail of the Kingsnorth activists.
I doubt we'll see Michael Levi put himself on the line quite like that. Instead, though, we have the weight of reason, which I do appreciate.
As for my own neck of the woods, it will be interesting to see what effect the Gulf oil spill will have on the next wind power planning battle here in Maine. Will the penny drop? Our home-grown anti-wind activists have passed several more ordinances, but several towns have also accepted the state's model ordinance.
For the record, and before someone decides to post a nasty comment, I remain an advocate for community-owned wind for Maine, and that's what we're working towards with our wind assessment research program.
Hopefully, in the light of the BP spill showing us just what the upstream impacts of fossil energy can be, the Maine anti-wind folks can begin to distinguish between proposals for small scale community-owned turbines and farms, such as the Fox Islands farm, and larger scale, colonial schemes.
The basic idea is, oil depletion will take care of oil within the forty-year, 80% emissions reductions time frame to 2050 in any case, so don't worry about oil, ergo don't worry about transportation: Oil price will increase inexorably over the next ten-fifteen years, and as long as the commercially viable substitutes involve less carbon, such as plug-in hybrids running on green power, or liquid natural gas, then transportation emissions will take care of themselves.
Instead regulate the emissions from the electric generation sector. You have only a relative handful of producers to worry about, less than a few hundred in the case of the USA, and so the policy is manageable and enforceable. Plus it avoids the kind of backlash politics I detailed in my own dissertation, which politics indeed came to pass, by the way, more or less as described.
One of Hansen's students, Pushker Kharecha, I believe, ran the numbers and proved the concept quantitatively in this article here.
So now Michael Levi has endorsed the proposal too.
That's a significant weight of endorsement, given the way the man's mind works. Hansen's response to these ideas, of course, was explosive and committed, and led to his arrests at the site of a mountaintop removal coalmine, and his giving evidence at the trail of the Kingsnorth activists.
I doubt we'll see Michael Levi put himself on the line quite like that. Instead, though, we have the weight of reason, which I do appreciate.
As for my own neck of the woods, it will be interesting to see what effect the Gulf oil spill will have on the next wind power planning battle here in Maine. Will the penny drop? Our home-grown anti-wind activists have passed several more ordinances, but several towns have also accepted the state's model ordinance.
For the record, and before someone decides to post a nasty comment, I remain an advocate for community-owned wind for Maine, and that's what we're working towards with our wind assessment research program.
Hopefully, in the light of the BP spill showing us just what the upstream impacts of fossil energy can be, the Maine anti-wind folks can begin to distinguish between proposals for small scale community-owned turbines and farms, such as the Fox Islands farm, and larger scale, colonial schemes.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
New Sustech jobs in Maine
The newly organized Efficiency Maine Trust is hiring for several jobs where Sustech skills are desired.
http://www.efficiencymainetrust.org/Jobs.html
http://www.efficiencymainetrust.org/Jobs.html
Monday, June 21, 2010
Portland to Portland
I'm done with travel for a while, hopefully for the summer. Thank heavens for that.
I don't particularly enjoy the part of my job that requires me to go to conferences and meetings. I never have. Other Unity College faculty, including my lovely wife, and most other professors I know, do often enjoy it. But I don't. I'm a serious homebody, and frankly if left to my own devices I probably wouldn't feel much like going anywhere except perhaps in the dead of winter.
The reason is, what place could be better than here?
All this "the grass is greener" stuff: I got over that long ago. As a young man I traveled an awful lot. Now I've settled down, I'm pretty glad to have this farm and this life and rarely wish to leave it.
The best aspect of this recent trip was not the conference, although it was fine as conferences go. It was the view out of the airplane window. Living in Maine and rarely visiting the lower 47, I'd forgotten how huge and well endowed with natural resources the American continent is. To get to where I was going, I flew from Portland, Maine to Chicago to Portland, Oregon. I couldn't see much on the first flight since I was in an aisle seat on an aircraft with six seats per row. But from Chicago to Oregon I had a window seat and likewise had one all the way back to Maine.
For those of you who've never seen it, the interior of the US is a wonder of human ecology. The first part of the Midwest, once the Chicago suburbs were past, is marked by rich flatland farms on a mile square, two or four or six farmhouses per section. The grid is completely regular. But but by bit, the central plains, where prior to white settlement, long-grass prairie was the dominant ecosystem, give way to the high plains and the short grass prairie. Yields decline too. the eastern Midwest is massively productive, with deep soils and enough water for corn and soy. The far western plains can barely grow grass, and bit by bit become a desert, except where bottomland glows green.
If we were on the ground, we'd smell the sagebrush and walk over bare rock and hear the western meadowlark and the red-winged blackbird.
Over the Dakotas and Nebraska the rich fat farmhouses thin out until eventually there's less than one per section, less plowland and fewer outbuildings, and the land becomes more and more penetrated by irregular natural features, unplowed ridge lines and tree-lined streams, slickrock and eventually patches of forest on the northern slopes of the higher ridges as the ground rises to meet the Rockies.
On this trip, we crossed the Missouri in northern Iowa or Dakota, I couldn't tell, and then followed a tributary up into the Badlands. The tributary was so heavy with silt as to be coffee-colored, and not black coffee, either, but more of a cappuccino or café au lait tint. I thought it seemed polluted, but it may have been natural: "too thin to plow and too thick to drink" was first said of the Platte, but it's true of many western streams.
We saw the Black Hills and then the coal basins of Wyoming or eastern Montana with obvious strip mines, and then various "island in the sky" mountain ranges leapt out of the dry prairie. I was able to identify the I-90 freeway from Sheridan, Wyoming to Billings, Montana, and the Yellowstone River and then thickening cloud forced a loss of my bearings. The Rockies in this part of the world, as Lewis and Clark discovered, are several hundred miles wide, and one range after another would show itself beneath the cloud. I know the country pretty well, having lived there for ten years, but I couldn't figure out a single landmark after the Yellowstone. Still it was gorgeous. Thick forest on all but the steeper southernmost slopes, and plenty of snow.
I'd forgotten how late the snow lingers into the summer on the high ranges of the Rockies. That winter snowpack is the water supply for all those ranches on the high and the Oregon plains.
The best view of the whole trip was Mt. Hood, a giant ice-cream sundae, which, at this point in our flight, towered above the aircraft itself, as we had begun our descent. Trapped in my window seat and unable to make it to my backpack for the camera, I just stared in awe, eventually getting a crick in my neck as the mountain was left in our rear. I never climbed Mount Hood, although I've been on Mt. Shasta to the south, a similar volcanic peak. The Williamette valley was rich with truck farms (market gardens to the Brits who read this) and orchards, and then we were landing in the Portland suburbs.
Flying back, from Portland, Oregon to Newark, New Jersey, to Portland, Maine, the cloud was thick much of the way. I was able to identify the Columbia River Gorge though one small gap, and saw the last ranges of the Rockies and glimpses of the high plains. Then nothing until Lake Michigan. Lake Erie was free of cloud, and I clearly identified Erie, Pennsylvania and what might have been the southernmost parts of western Quebec, with the classic finger-thin fields of the habitants. I thought I could make out the Adirondack region. The Catskills were obvious, as was the meadowlands where Newark airport is located. On the last flight home we saw the Hudson River, the Connecticut River and southern New Hampshire before landing in Portland.
It's strange to me that the rest of the folks on an airplane don't stare out of the window the way I do. It seems to me that there's something wrong here. When given a window seat on the panorama of creation, how can you choose TV or a book instead? I can't understand it. And is this deficiency in attention to the vital details of landscape also somehow kin to the wasteful urge we all have to travel too frequently from our homes in the first place? Aren't these too attitudes part and parcel of the same consumer conceit, that the world is made to serve us, not for its own purposes, and so we don't have to pay attention to it whether we're at home or abroad?
I'm not trying to claim any moral superiority here. I just don't understand why people don't pay attention to sights as stunning and fascinating as these.
Enough, though. Time to get some breakfast and feed the sheep and look at the state of the weeds in the garden. The sheep are definitely in the here-and-now, as are the vegetables, and I suppose with their help so am I.
Fetch wood, carry water. No more travel for me this year, I hope.
But mother is still very sick and in hospital, so I can't say that, can I?
I don't particularly enjoy the part of my job that requires me to go to conferences and meetings. I never have. Other Unity College faculty, including my lovely wife, and most other professors I know, do often enjoy it. But I don't. I'm a serious homebody, and frankly if left to my own devices I probably wouldn't feel much like going anywhere except perhaps in the dead of winter.
The reason is, what place could be better than here?
All this "the grass is greener" stuff: I got over that long ago. As a young man I traveled an awful lot. Now I've settled down, I'm pretty glad to have this farm and this life and rarely wish to leave it.
The best aspect of this recent trip was not the conference, although it was fine as conferences go. It was the view out of the airplane window. Living in Maine and rarely visiting the lower 47, I'd forgotten how huge and well endowed with natural resources the American continent is. To get to where I was going, I flew from Portland, Maine to Chicago to Portland, Oregon. I couldn't see much on the first flight since I was in an aisle seat on an aircraft with six seats per row. But from Chicago to Oregon I had a window seat and likewise had one all the way back to Maine.
For those of you who've never seen it, the interior of the US is a wonder of human ecology. The first part of the Midwest, once the Chicago suburbs were past, is marked by rich flatland farms on a mile square, two or four or six farmhouses per section. The grid is completely regular. But but by bit, the central plains, where prior to white settlement, long-grass prairie was the dominant ecosystem, give way to the high plains and the short grass prairie. Yields decline too. the eastern Midwest is massively productive, with deep soils and enough water for corn and soy. The far western plains can barely grow grass, and bit by bit become a desert, except where bottomland glows green.
If we were on the ground, we'd smell the sagebrush and walk over bare rock and hear the western meadowlark and the red-winged blackbird.
Over the Dakotas and Nebraska the rich fat farmhouses thin out until eventually there's less than one per section, less plowland and fewer outbuildings, and the land becomes more and more penetrated by irregular natural features, unplowed ridge lines and tree-lined streams, slickrock and eventually patches of forest on the northern slopes of the higher ridges as the ground rises to meet the Rockies.
On this trip, we crossed the Missouri in northern Iowa or Dakota, I couldn't tell, and then followed a tributary up into the Badlands. The tributary was so heavy with silt as to be coffee-colored, and not black coffee, either, but more of a cappuccino or café au lait tint. I thought it seemed polluted, but it may have been natural: "too thin to plow and too thick to drink" was first said of the Platte, but it's true of many western streams.
We saw the Black Hills and then the coal basins of Wyoming or eastern Montana with obvious strip mines, and then various "island in the sky" mountain ranges leapt out of the dry prairie. I was able to identify the I-90 freeway from Sheridan, Wyoming to Billings, Montana, and the Yellowstone River and then thickening cloud forced a loss of my bearings. The Rockies in this part of the world, as Lewis and Clark discovered, are several hundred miles wide, and one range after another would show itself beneath the cloud. I know the country pretty well, having lived there for ten years, but I couldn't figure out a single landmark after the Yellowstone. Still it was gorgeous. Thick forest on all but the steeper southernmost slopes, and plenty of snow.
I'd forgotten how late the snow lingers into the summer on the high ranges of the Rockies. That winter snowpack is the water supply for all those ranches on the high and the Oregon plains.
The best view of the whole trip was Mt. Hood, a giant ice-cream sundae, which, at this point in our flight, towered above the aircraft itself, as we had begun our descent. Trapped in my window seat and unable to make it to my backpack for the camera, I just stared in awe, eventually getting a crick in my neck as the mountain was left in our rear. I never climbed Mount Hood, although I've been on Mt. Shasta to the south, a similar volcanic peak. The Williamette valley was rich with truck farms (market gardens to the Brits who read this) and orchards, and then we were landing in the Portland suburbs.
Flying back, from Portland, Oregon to Newark, New Jersey, to Portland, Maine, the cloud was thick much of the way. I was able to identify the Columbia River Gorge though one small gap, and saw the last ranges of the Rockies and glimpses of the high plains. Then nothing until Lake Michigan. Lake Erie was free of cloud, and I clearly identified Erie, Pennsylvania and what might have been the southernmost parts of western Quebec, with the classic finger-thin fields of the habitants. I thought I could make out the Adirondack region. The Catskills were obvious, as was the meadowlands where Newark airport is located. On the last flight home we saw the Hudson River, the Connecticut River and southern New Hampshire before landing in Portland.
It's strange to me that the rest of the folks on an airplane don't stare out of the window the way I do. It seems to me that there's something wrong here. When given a window seat on the panorama of creation, how can you choose TV or a book instead? I can't understand it. And is this deficiency in attention to the vital details of landscape also somehow kin to the wasteful urge we all have to travel too frequently from our homes in the first place? Aren't these too attitudes part and parcel of the same consumer conceit, that the world is made to serve us, not for its own purposes, and so we don't have to pay attention to it whether we're at home or abroad?
I'm not trying to claim any moral superiority here. I just don't understand why people don't pay attention to sights as stunning and fascinating as these.
Enough, though. Time to get some breakfast and feed the sheep and look at the state of the weeds in the garden. The sheep are definitely in the here-and-now, as are the vegetables, and I suppose with their help so am I.
Fetch wood, carry water. No more travel for me this year, I hope.
But mother is still very sick and in hospital, so I can't say that, can I?
Portland to Portland
I'm done with travel for a while, hopefully for the summer. Thank heavens for that.
I don't particularly enjoy the part of my job that requires me to go to conferences and meetings. I never have. Other Unity College faculty, including my lovely wife, and most other professors I know, do often enjoy it. But I don't. I'm a serious homebody, and frankly if left to my own devices I probably wouldn't feel much like going anywhere except perhaps in the dead of winter.
The reason is, what place could be better than here?
All this "the grass is greener" stuff: I got over that long ago. As a young man I traveled an awful lot. Now I've settled down, I'm pretty glad to have this farm and this life and rarely wish to leave it.
The best aspect of this recent trip was not the conference, although it was fine as conferences go. It was the view out of the airplane window. Living in Maine and rarely visiting the lower 47, I'd forgotten how huge and well endowed with natural resources the American continent is. To get to where I was going, I flew from Portland, Maine to Chicago to Portland, Oregon. I couldn't see much on the first flight since I was in an aisle seat on an aircraft with six seats per row. But from Chicago to Oregon I had a window seat and likewise had one all the way back to Maine.
For those of you who've never seen it, the interior of the US is a wonder of human ecology. The first part of the Midwest, once the Chicago suburbs were past, is marked by rich flatland farms on a mile square, two or four or six farmhouses per section. The grid is completely regular. But but by bit, the central plains, where prior to white settlement, long-grass prairie was the dominant ecosystem, give way to the high plains and the short grass prairie. Yields decline too. the eastern Midwest is massively productive, with deep soils and enough water for corn and soy. The far western plains can barely grow grass, and bit by bit become a desert, except where bottomland glows green.
If we were on the ground, we'd smell the sagebrush and walk over bare rock and hear the western meadowlark and the red-winged blackbird.
Over the Dakotas and Nebraska the rich fat farmhouses thin out until eventually there's less than one per section, less plowland and fewer outbuildings, and the land becomes more and more penetrated by irregular natural features, unplowed ridge lines and tree-lined streams, slickrock and eventually patches of forest on the northern slopes of the higher ridges as the ground rises to meet the Rockies.
On this trip, we crossed the Missouri in northern Iowa or Dakota, I couldn't tell, and then followed a tributary up into the Badlands. The tributary was so heavy with silt as to be coffee-colored, and not black coffee, either, but more of a cappuccino or café au lait tint. I thought it seemed polluted, but it may have been natural: "too thin to plow and too thick to drink" was first said of the Platte, but it's true of many western streams.
We saw the Black Hills and then the coal basins of Wyoming or eastern Montana with obvious strip mines, and then various "island in the sky" mountain ranges leapt out of the dry prairie. I was able to identify the I-90 freeway from Sheridan, Wyoming to Billings, Montana, and the Yellowstone River and then thickening cloud forced a loss of my bearings. The Rockies in this part of the world, as Lewis and Clark discovered, are several hundred miles wide, and one range after another would show itself beneath the cloud. I know the country pretty well, having lived there for ten years, but I couldn't figure out a single landmark after the Yellowstone. Still it was gorgeous. Thick forest on all but the steeper southernmost slopes, and plenty of snow.
I'd forgotten how late the snow lingers into the summer on the high ranges of the Rockies. That winter snowpack is the water supply for all those ranches on the high and the Oregon plains.
The best view of the whole trip was Mt. Hood, a giant ice-cream sundae, which, at this point in our flight, towered above the aircraft itself, as we had begun our descent. Trapped in my window seat and unable to make it to my backpack for the camera, I just stared in awe, eventually getting a crick in my neck as the mountain was left in our rear. I never climbed Mount Hood, although I've been on Mt. Shasta to the south, a similar volcanic peak. The Williamette valley was rich with truck farms (market gardens to the Brits who read this) and orchards, and then we were landing in the Portland suburbs.
Flying back, from Portland, Oregon to Newark, New Jersey, to Portland, Maine, the cloud was thick much of the way. I was able to identify the Columbia River Gorge though one small gap, and saw the last ranges of the Rockies and glimpses of the high plains. Then nothing until Lake Michigan. Lake Erie was free of cloud, and I clearly identified Erie, Pennsylvania and what might have been the southernmost parts of western Quebec, with the classic finger-thin fields of the habitants. I thought I could make out the Adirondack region. The Catskills were obvious, as was the meadowlands where Newark airport is located. On the last flight home we saw the Hudson River, the Connecticut River and southern New Hampshire before landing in Portland.
It's strange to me that the rest of the folks on an airplane don't stare out of the window the way I do. It seems to me that there's something wrong here. When given a window seat on the panorama of creation, how can you choose TV or a book instead? I can't understand it. And is this deficiency in attention to the vital details of landscape also somehow kin to the wasteful urge we all have to travel too frequently from our homes in the first place? Aren't these too attitudes part and parcel of the same consumer conceit, that the world is made to serve us, not for its own purposes, and so we don't have to pay attention to it whether we're at home or abroad?
I'm not trying to claim any moral superiority here. I just don't understand why people don't pay attention to sights as stunning and fascinating as these.
Enough, though. Time to get some breakfast and feed the sheep and look at the state of the weeds in the garden. The sheep are definitely in the here-and-now, as are the vegetables, and I suppose with their help so am I.
Fetch wood, carry water. No more travel for me this year, I hope.
But mother is still very sick and in hospital, so I can't say that, can I?
I don't particularly enjoy the part of my job that requires me to go to conferences and meetings. I never have. Other Unity College faculty, including my lovely wife, and most other professors I know, do often enjoy it. But I don't. I'm a serious homebody, and frankly if left to my own devices I probably wouldn't feel much like going anywhere except perhaps in the dead of winter.
The reason is, what place could be better than here?
All this "the grass is greener" stuff: I got over that long ago. As a young man I traveled an awful lot. Now I've settled down, I'm pretty glad to have this farm and this life and rarely wish to leave it.
The best aspect of this recent trip was not the conference, although it was fine as conferences go. It was the view out of the airplane window. Living in Maine and rarely visiting the lower 47, I'd forgotten how huge and well endowed with natural resources the American continent is. To get to where I was going, I flew from Portland, Maine to Chicago to Portland, Oregon. I couldn't see much on the first flight since I was in an aisle seat on an aircraft with six seats per row. But from Chicago to Oregon I had a window seat and likewise had one all the way back to Maine.
For those of you who've never seen it, the interior of the US is a wonder of human ecology. The first part of the Midwest, once the Chicago suburbs were past, is marked by rich flatland farms on a mile square, two or four or six farmhouses per section. The grid is completely regular. But but by bit, the central plains, where prior to white settlement, long-grass prairie was the dominant ecosystem, give way to the high plains and the short grass prairie. Yields decline too. the eastern Midwest is massively productive, with deep soils and enough water for corn and soy. The far western plains can barely grow grass, and bit by bit become a desert, except where bottomland glows green.
If we were on the ground, we'd smell the sagebrush and walk over bare rock and hear the western meadowlark and the red-winged blackbird.
Over the Dakotas and Nebraska the rich fat farmhouses thin out until eventually there's less than one per section, less plowland and fewer outbuildings, and the land becomes more and more penetrated by irregular natural features, unplowed ridge lines and tree-lined streams, slickrock and eventually patches of forest on the northern slopes of the higher ridges as the ground rises to meet the Rockies.
On this trip, we crossed the Missouri in northern Iowa or Dakota, I couldn't tell, and then followed a tributary up into the Badlands. The tributary was so heavy with silt as to be coffee-colored, and not black coffee, either, but more of a cappuccino or café au lait tint. I thought it seemed polluted, but it may have been natural: "too thin to plow and too thick to drink" was first said of the Platte, but it's true of many western streams.
We saw the Black Hills and then the coal basins of Wyoming or eastern Montana with obvious strip mines, and then various "island in the sky" mountain ranges leapt out of the dry prairie. I was able to identify the I-90 freeway from Sheridan, Wyoming to Billings, Montana, and the Yellowstone River and then thickening cloud forced a loss of my bearings. The Rockies in this part of the world, as Lewis and Clark discovered, are several hundred miles wide, and one range after another would show itself beneath the cloud. I know the country pretty well, having lived there for ten years, but I couldn't figure out a single landmark after the Yellowstone. Still it was gorgeous. Thick forest on all but the steeper southernmost slopes, and plenty of snow.
I'd forgotten how late the snow lingers into the summer on the high ranges of the Rockies. That winter snowpack is the water supply for all those ranches on the high and the Oregon plains.
The best view of the whole trip was Mt. Hood, a giant ice-cream sundae, which, at this point in our flight, towered above the aircraft itself, as we had begun our descent. Trapped in my window seat and unable to make it to my backpack for the camera, I just stared in awe, eventually getting a crick in my neck as the mountain was left in our rear. I never climbed Mount Hood, although I've been on Mt. Shasta to the south, a similar volcanic peak. The Williamette valley was rich with truck farms (market gardens to the Brits who read this) and orchards, and then we were landing in the Portland suburbs.
Flying back, from Portland, Oregon to Newark, New Jersey, to Portland, Maine, the cloud was thick much of the way. I was able to identify the Columbia River Gorge though one small gap, and saw the last ranges of the Rockies and glimpses of the high plains. Then nothing until Lake Michigan. Lake Erie was free of cloud, and I clearly identified Erie, Pennsylvania and what might have been the southernmost parts of western Quebec, with the classic finger-thin fields of the habitants. I thought I could make out the Adirondack region. The Catskills were obvious, as was the meadowlands where Newark airport is located. On the last flight home we saw the Hudson River, the Connecticut River and southern New Hampshire before landing in Portland.
It's strange to me that the rest of the folks on an airplane don't stare out of the window the way I do. It seems to me that there's something wrong here. When given a window seat on the panorama of creation, how can you choose TV or a book instead? I can't understand it. And is this deficiency in attention to the vital details of landscape also somehow kin to the wasteful urge we all have to travel too frequently from our homes in the first place? Aren't these too attitudes part and parcel of the same consumer conceit, that the world is made to serve us, not for its own purposes, and so we don't have to pay attention to it whether we're at home or abroad?
I'm not trying to claim any moral superiority here. I just don't understand why people don't pay attention to sights as stunning and fascinating as these.
Enough, though. Time to get some breakfast and feed the sheep and look at the state of the weeds in the garden. The sheep are definitely in the here-and-now, as are the vegetables, and I suppose with their help so am I.
Fetch wood, carry water. No more travel for me this year, I hope.
But mother is still very sick and in hospital, so I can't say that, can I?
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Edible schoolyarding
I'm at the Association for Environmental Sciences and Studies Conference in Portland OR.
There's a lot of interesting presentations, but this one was very cool and our Unity gardeners will be interested.
http://theedibleschoolyard.blogspot.com/
There's a lot of interesting presentations, but this one was very cool and our Unity gardeners will be interested.
http://theedibleschoolyard.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Zero Carbon Britain released to Guardian headliner
While we were at CAT earlier this year they were anticipating this release and we got to read the report ahead of the rest of the world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/16/centre-for-alternative-technology-eliminate-carbon-emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/16/centre-for-alternative-technology-eliminate-carbon-emissions
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Back to the present
I'm back in the US after an emergency family visit which left me with more free time on my hands while in the UK than at any point I can remember in decades. Quite the luxury, really. Visits home are usually very busy with visiting family and driving, or visiting research centers and field sites and driving. Either way there's usually a lot of driving. The UK has become like the US, impossible to navigate without a car on many levels. This time I took the train for my longest trips, to and from from Heathrow, reserving the motoring for local running about, and it was much more pleasant.
I always enjoy trying out one or more of the economical European car models, though, while I'm there. This time I rented a Citroen C1, a tiny runabout that seemed to get about 55 miles per Imperial gallon, or about 45 miles per US gallon. I drove about 300 miles for 25 liters of gas, mostly suburban and rural driving.
According to Wikipedia, this is the second most economical production car available, after the Prius.
I also made good use of this time as far as academics is concerned. I visited a lot of historical sites and parks with some relevance for Unity College. Mostly, I delved into history and medieval human ecology. I spend a lot of time reading history, thinking of the past as window into the present. I didn't have to go far. Britain is steeped in history. All the sites were within 30 miles of my parents retirement bungalow in the Rhondda.
But now I'm back in my own den, in my own home, on my own farmland, and it's time to get back to the present, even if that means cutting the grass, paying the bills, and hoeing the vegetables as first priorities.
Sustainability begins at home.
President Obama will address the nation by radio tonight on the topics of energy and economic recovery. As a second priority, if my chores are done, I want to hear what he has to say. I'm looking for ideas and policies that will break the logjam on deploying renewables and efficiency, while adding jobs.
The key feature of any new energy and economic policy that could succeed will have to be a carbon price. No command-and-control system, or cherry-picking of technology, or anything really but a carbon price will do the job.
I'm hoping to hear that the White House will spur Congress to bite the bullet on at least one of the tabled bills that contain carbon pricing measures.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Gelligaer and LLancaiach Fawr
My historical ramblings have fast-forwarded three centuries.
Now we're in the period of the Civil War.
The first one, that is. The English Civil War. Which as it turns out, impacted South Wales and the valleys too.
This is Llancaiach Fawr, meaning the big house by the river, which stands in a tributary valley to the east of the Rhondda. It is a fortified manor from the earlier Tudor period, and was the family home of the Prichards, which itself is an Anglicanism of the Welsh patronymic ap Richard or "son of Richard."
The Gaelic speaking countries all used patronymics rather than surnames, and only switched to surnames on Anglicization.
The owner at the time of the Civil War (1642-1651) was Colonel of militia Edward Prichard, a noted Puritan. As the local magistrate as well as the military authority, he did his share of running out of office the lax priests of the loyalist party, who, the Parliamentarians thought, were slipping back to the days of Catholic corruption.
If you were a Roundhead, the nickname for members of the parliamentary party, you were for the more developed forms of biblical Protestantism then appearing, most likely the Puritan version of Anglicanism, which of course led to the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist traditions in the United States, as well as other evangelical denominations that are descended from these, such as the African Methodist Evangelical tradition. You were for the Bible in English, accessible to the lay folk. You were for the plainer ceremony of the Book of Common Prayer. You may, like Prichard, have been an Anabaptist.
Economically, you were for the new forms of industry and mercantilism and against the big landowners. Politically, you were for the new democratic tradition then emerging from feudalist dogma in the Mother of Parliaments. You were for the parliamentary liberties enshrined in Magna Carta and the Provisions of Oxford. You were against the great feudal overlords and their serfdom.
Two or three decades earlier, if you were an especially radical Puritan, when persecuted by the King, you might have chosen to emigrate to Massachussetts as part of the Great Migration.
Where, a century later, there would be another war, this one a Revolutionary War, where you would again be on the side of the rebels against the King's Party, for the rights of common individuals and political representation in the new Parliament, the Continental Congress.
A century after that, there would be a third round, an American Civil War, in which the question of feudal slavery was settled once and for all, by force.
So all in all, says Kevin Philips in The Cousin's Wars, there were three Anglo American Civil Wars. These three wars together defined the scope of liberty and civil rights in all the English speaking countries, for what became law in England in 1688, when the Bill of Rights that settled the questions for which the English Civil war was fought was finally passed, was then law in Canada, and eventually became the law in Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and so on.
While in the United States, the Bill of Rights was extended twice, by the Revolutionary War, and then the Civil War.
For his part, Edward Prichard of Llancaich Fawr marched for Parliament and took part on the battle of Saint Fagans and the siege of Cardiff Castle.
For which service we latter day Roundheads, who enjoy the rights to free speech, to vote, and to hold land free of feudal obligation, thank him by visiting and admiring his beautiful but well-defended house.
I guess a Welshman's home is also his castle.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Medieval Wales
I'm doing a lot of small touristy things, using my parents house in Wales as a base. I've been here many times before, of course, but never with quite as much personal time on my hands. My sister and I visit our mother in hospital in the afternoons, but there's nothing much else to do.That lets me please myself for more than half of each day, so I go out and about. Not far, but to places I've never had time to see before.
This time I went to Comeston Lakes Park and medieval village. The park itself is a reclaimed limestone quarry, and I've often seen gravel pits and limestone quarries in Maine that could be similarly re-purposed and used for conservation and recreation.
In this case, the limestone quarries have become lakes and marshlands, with habitat for thousands of kinds of species, including some quite rare plants and insects, while around the lakes are broad gravel paths for walking, cycling, and horse-riding. If South Wales got reliable snow I'm sure there would be Nordic skiing and sledding. There were a lot of walkers and joggers there, starting quite early in the morning.
Old photographs at the visitor center show the place as a dump during the 1950s and 1960s, so the transformation is remarkable. Nature did a lot of it herself, of course, but human planning and strategically chosen work projects helped guide the outcome.
We really need to have a class at Unity College that covers the more nuts-and-bolts aspects of ecological restoration. Usually that term is taken to mean habitat restoration including mostly biological actions, digging, cutting, culling, planting, reintroducing species, and the like.
In this case, landscape planning and heavy equipment were probably just as, or more, important.
It would be important for an ecological restoration specialist to know what bulldozers and backhoes are capable of contributing to restoring a quarry or a landfill.
One species unremarkable to Britons but rarely seen in Maine are these beautiful wild swans. They're only part-wild of course. They get a feed subsidy from the rangers and visitors. They certainly came right up to me seeking a handout, but that allowed me to get a good look at them.
The medieval village part of the park is an historically authentic reconstruction of an abandoned village that was discovered from aerial photographs. It was abandoned after the plague passed through in the fourteenth century.A lot of British villages were similarly abandoned, and in fact it was this desertion that led in part to the founding of America, for the unoccupied community-run subsistence farmland was taken up by sheep farming for the lucrative continental wool trade, which combined with Protestantism, led to the development of a widespread individualistic and capitalist ethic in the British Isles in the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries, many years before such ideas became widespread in southern European regions.
That capitalist ethic led to the joint stock companies that founded British America, the Plymouth Company, the Virginia Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and so on. Americans busy panning BP might do well to remember that British corporations founded America.
Prior to these developments, villages were part communally-run subsistence agriculture operations and partly feudalistic organizations.
At Comeston the guides and reenactors seem to emphasize the military aspects of feudalism over the agriculture, which is somewhat the wrong order. Most of the time these villages were peaceful communal farming operations. But the swords and arrows keep the kids interested, and the place does a steady trade in school visits. While I was there these kids were all dressed up in pseudo-medieval tabards, ready to play a historical game.
Whatever works. Maybe Unity's medievalist, Doctor Murphy, should employ some reenactors? Hire the role-playing game students and buy them some costumes and put them to work pretending to whack off each others arms and legs.
But it's true that the tradition of the Fyrd, the ancient feudal militia, was important.
In return for their land, which they received from their lord, who in turn owned it by right of grant from the king, feudal vassals owed different kinds of service to their local lords, among which was military service.
Welsh archers in particular were prominent in battle in the 14th and 15th Centuries. Together with English archers, they won the day for at Edward III at Crecy and Henry V at Agincourt.
I doubt that the villagers of Comeston, who were Anglo-Welsh, part English, part Welsh and probably bilingual, were very warlike. The place was probably moderately prosperous as these villages go. The local limestone, which is soft and shears on a horizontal plane, and so is very easy to cut into rectangles, probably made for easy building of relatively commodious houses and would have also provided for a fertile, non-acidic soil. It's one of the reasons that the park has so much biodiversity today, when it was a sterile wasteland thrity years ago. I expect these folk much preferred to spend their time growing food and drinking ale and mead.
The pig in the picture above was also a reenactor. There are several on-site. They're crossbred Tamworth/wild boar sows, and working hard here to replicate the behavior of fourteenth century Welsh pigs.
It's a hard job, but some pig's got to do it.
I keep trying to plug in all the links to the various Wikipedia and web pages for my sources for this article, but this British Telecom "BT Fon" neighborhood internet system is not working for me. Not recommended. Expensive and unreliable.
What is it about firms with "British" in their name?
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Museum of Welsh Life
I'm still in Wales for a family visit. Caught with some time on my hands, and seeking a peaceful place, I went to the Museum of Welsh Life at Saint Fagans Castle, just down the road from my parents house in "the valleys," the Welsh coal-mining area.My family is part Welsh, but we're from Macynlleth in the west, not the valleys. My parents moved here thirteen years ago to be close to my sister, and I've been coming to Saint Fagans ever since to keep up with the changes and updates at the museum. It's one of my favorite places in the world. An open-air museum, Saint Fagan's consists primarily of buildings taken down from all over Wales and reconstructed in their natural settings, each set to a particular time period.
This visit, my priority was to see Saint Teilo's church. This medieval church was recently dismantled and rebuilt on the Saint Fagan's site. As the archeologists and conservators worked on the church to dismantle it, they discovered the medieval wall paintings under several coats of lime wash.
Prior to the Reformation, medieval churches, which would have course all have been Catholic, were gaily decorated. Wall paintings depicted scenes from the New Testament for illiterate parishioners to learn from, a kind of medieval graphic novel or comic story.
It was only after Wales became Protestant and in fact evolved its own highly developed style of plain Protestant churches and chapels that such frivolities became frowned upon. The Puritan movement within the Anglican church was largely responsible for eradicating church decorations in England and Wales.
I had seen the outside of the church several times before but this was my first chance to go inside. The paintings took my breath away.
I also wandered around some of my old favorite exhibits. I particularly enjoy the farm and garden set-ups, especially the animals. Thes pigs may not know it, but they are important museum employees and reenactors.
As a human ecologist my business is to know how people make a living from the environment and how they impact the environment and how the environment impacts them. One of the things that we've forgotten as we raced to a globalized industrial society is how to adapt to the local environment. We're going to have to remember how to do this, because climate change and energy problems make it clear that we need to work on decentralized and bioregional energy and agriculture solutions.
I don't for a minute expect that we'll all begin living in houses made of Welsh cobb or slate, and raising pigs in the backyards of suburban tract houses, but there are things to be learned from the old ways.
The humble pig, for instance, is a woodland animal. Few of us know or remember this today. But a pig in a woodlot is a happy and productive creature. He will root around for tasty nuggets underground, turning over the soil, aerating, fertilizing, feeding himself, capturing sunlight.
I think we might do well with a few more woodland pig operations in Maine.
This fourteenth century house is another favorite. It dates back to the times when the animals lived in the house with the people, sharing warmth, but also sharing a lot of other things perhaps, parasites and diseases.
You go in the door and the byre is on one side, the main kitchen/living space on the other. A farmer myself, I could appreciate how easy it would be to feed stock in winter.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Community gardens in the UK
Britain has an impressively well-developed tradition of community gardens, or as the British term them, "allotments."In the UK for another family visit, I was able to spend an hour touring allotments in South Wales with some family members. I've wanted some good pictures of the UK allotment system for a while, to show to our sustainable agriculture students, but also for my own interest. I was really pleased to take this tour.
This is an award-winning allotment system in Abertillery, in the county of Blaenau Gwent. Apparently every year it wins the regional award for the best system.
Pictured are my cousin David Womersley and his wife Beverly and their particular allotment patch, which provides food for Salvation Army activities. David is the local Captain of the Salvation Army.
While we were touring, a student group from the local primary school came through. Earlier they had had a work day and planted some seeds; now Beverly was showing them how the seeds had grown.
Not unlike our own Unity College activities with "Veggies for All" and the local primary school, led by Sarah Trunzo.
British allotment gardening differs from American community gardening in that organic methods are usually not used. Allotments are associated with industrial towns, and really large quantities of manure have not been easily available for many generations. There would have been a time in Abertillery that manure from Welsh pit ponies (used to drag coal carts underground) and other draft horses would have been easily available.
Here in the US, particularly on our
own farm, but also in the UC Community Gardens, we have large quantities of manure and other compost inputs, but that's at least partly because we also have relatively easy access to tilling machinery and pick-up trucks and the like. If the only way to get manure to a community garden was in the back of a small car or in 50 pound bags, perhaps we'd consider artificial fertilizer, or at least more concentrated organic inputs such as cottonseed meal would be used.David and Beverly compost plant wastes and reincorporate them, but they don't add a lot of organic matter from outside. Instead they use artificial fertilizer.
Another difference is that American community gardens typically used the raised bed system, a variant on the "French Intensive" or biodynamic system.
British allotments tend to have plants in rows.
We used to use only the raised bed system on our own farm, but recently I've found myself planting in rows with a string for a guide, the way my grandfather, a Yorkshire master gardener and long-time allotment holder, taught me. It's just easier to weed and to work and even to plant. I've decided that while raised bed yields can be higher, the yield per unit work is higher when using rows.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
On the oil spill
Part of the purpose of this blog is of course to watch the environmental news and post links and comments for students, faculty, staff, alumni and external visitors. The other purpose is to create connections between these groups, particularly in relation to our education, research and service work in sustainability.
So far I've refrained from commenting on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn't for the want of news and concern. Obviously the media abound with news, and also with concern about the situation, perhaps too much of both. Manufactured concern is part of the political process in this country and most other democracies these days, and the mainstream media tend to offer up a distorted mirror to the people, just in effect parroting various viewpoints and sound bites. And from this we're supposed to come up with enough information to participate, so enough information to vote, for instance. Obviously it rarely works well, and a lot of folks have ideas and opinions that are just plain unsound. Where's the real news in that?
I've been unwittingly complicit in some of this. Reporters call or email me from time to time to get information, and like most academics, I usually oblige. It's hard not to give out information when that's your job. But the results rarely feel like I've made a contribution to sound discourse.
Two recent examples stand out in terms of how little they helped with rational discourse: Before the spill occurred, a reporter from California spent nearly 40 minutes with me eliciting information about oil drilling potential on land in the lower 48. Like most workers who have any knowledge about the situation, I directed him to consider gas exploration, by far the greater part of terrestrial drilling in the lower 48, particularly coal bed methane, and also gave some technical details about directional drilling as it's used in methane extraction. Turns out that what he really wanted was a sound bite saying that the reason the earlier Obama drilling direction didn't include California's coast was purely political. It was and is, of course, but the guy clearly wanted that line and only that line and the minute he got someone with an energy-related PhD to say it on the record, all the other ideas, knowledge and considerations I gave him, which of course were considerable, fell by the wayside.
And a BBC reporter recently, based in India, spent another forty-fifty minutes on the telephone with me to write an article evaluation airborne wind turbines. Forty-fifty minutes included a lot of discussion about the inherent physical limitations of such ideas: Betz law and the Power Law, and so on. Airborne turbines are very unlikely to produce significant amounts of energy for these very basic technical reasons, and any reasoned person would wish to know that. Kinetic energy extraction is inherently based on moving large masses, and fixed-wing flight, powered or otherwise, depends on reducing the ratio of mass to airfoil surface. This is an inherent contradiction that would limit airborne turbine output. And I explained this, of course, at length. But part of the job of the press is to boost ideas on behalf of entrepreneurs, and in this case partisan Indian entrepreneurs, so what appeared in the piece was one quote on tether lines and safety. I expect some poor fool who doesn't know physics very well will invest, and Indians in general may feel for a moment like their country has more of a stake in "the new green economy," which I think might be a good thing for them and everyone else, but come on! We're not going to get there by ignoring the laws of physics.
I expect that every reporter in the country that is assigned to the Gulf is similarly looking for a unique angle and a line or two to do some political work on behalf of the reporter or the outlet's own biases, despite the scientific and technical facts.
I'm not really sure I want to contribute to that. And as an educator and an academic working in what has come to be known as sustainability, do I have anything useful to contribute?
In a word: perspective.
If we were being serious about things and really trying to solve the problem, we'd be terribly concerned about the oil spill, but we'd be much more concerned about how, as a society, we got to the point whereby we passively accept the obviously unsound economics of drilling in 5,000 foot deep water for a dirty nasty product that will definitely help us get around and heat homes and run factories, but that will also pollute our skies, add to political destabilization all around the planet, and that is contributing to climate change.
Clearly the costs outweigh the benefits. And that's the greater problem, from which we are distracted by all the media hype.
How can I say this and still consider myself an environmentalist? Shouldn't I be jumping on the bandwagon for all it's worth, like the leaders of the so called "Group of Ten." ? Well, I'm a scientist and policy analyst first and foremost, not an environmentalist. And I know something about the science and economics.
Knowledge is power. In this case the power to avoid despair.
First the ecology: The Gulf itself will get fairly dirty and polluted for a while, and some of that pollution may even spread out of the Gulf. It's unlikely, because of the way that ocean currents work, to make it to Maine, although some local Maine journalists looking for an angle have suggested that. And the situation in the Gulf itself will eventually recover, ecologically speaking. Particularly the deep water oil plumes. The chances for oil at that depth to break down rapidly are actually much greater than on the surface, just because of the kinds of critters that live in that environment that eat this kind of stuff. On the surface things will take a while, but time and tide, weather and shoveling, will take care of much of the pollution.
As to the capping of the well, it would be better to get it capped right away but if that is difficult or impossible, the flow of oil will eventually stop by itself or slow to a ecologically meaningless trickle. Even if BP doesn't succeed in capping the well or drilling the relief well. The current buzz in the media seems designed to promote despair, that this will never stop.
Does the press honestly believe that oil wellhead blow-outs, "gushers," run for ever?
If they did, we wouldn't be worried about oil depletion. (Although I'd be terrified for our climate.)
So, if dear reader, I can get you for a moment to assume that what needs to be done, and physically can be done, by the government or BP, is being done, might we consider things in greater perspective? I tend to expect that this is close to the truth anyway. And can we disregard for a minute the local and regional short term impacts, which I concede are awful for the locals?
What is the real long term national and international significance of the oil spill? What should we really learn from all this?
The first thing I would say, is we learn that ordinary people and the media lack knowledge about energy and this is hurting us very badly. We need to know much more, as a society, about what energy really is and where it comes from. So we can make some better decisions at local, regional, statewide and national levels.
If we did, we'd be able to notice, for instance, that we can save energy, even oil, quite easily with basic conservation measures such as weatherization, insulation or using programmable thermostats. Here in Maine, we might save up to 20% of the oil-fired heat load of thousands of our houses just by fitting $42 thermostats.
And there are dozens of examples of other energy savings.
The next thing we should know is that we're surrounded by useful, clean energy all the time, if we would only care to use it instead of oil and coal. Sunshine, wind, geothermal heat, even in Maine, in winter. Careful modern solar building design, careful deployment of distributed wind and solar power, use of ground source heat pumps, moderate use of biomass, and sensible financing of all of the above, can reduce our need for fossil energy by a massive percentage, and with the development of a reasoned base load technology such as thorium "trailer" reactors, as well as electrical and hybrid vehicle systems, we can be done with oil completely, should we wish.
Of course, we'll have to teach some science to some people who currently don't know very much science, ordinary people, politicians, and particularly some of these journalists, to succeed in this. And we'll have to make some strategic decisions about who gets to bear the impact on energy extraction. Will we for instance, have coal mines destroying mountaintops in West Virgina, or wind turbines on mountaintops in Maine?
This is asking a lot of reason and politcs, I know, but I think we are up to it. A good kick in the pants, as this oil spill undoubtedly is, will help. The bottom line, of course, is that as long as we are willing to pay $60,70,80 or more dollars a barrel for oil, our ignorance is expensive. And BP, like any business, will take risks to win those profits.
On the sidelines of all this reality in the "reality-based community," our media is becoming a huge hindrance to discerning reality.
I'm really, really, starting to detest the modern journalist.
The only thing about current journalism that gives me any hope for our ability to reason out energy problems is that the Internet now offers a way for folks with knowledge and ideas to bypass these so-called professional journalists. Such as this blog.
So far I've refrained from commenting on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn't for the want of news and concern. Obviously the media abound with news, and also with concern about the situation, perhaps too much of both. Manufactured concern is part of the political process in this country and most other democracies these days, and the mainstream media tend to offer up a distorted mirror to the people, just in effect parroting various viewpoints and sound bites. And from this we're supposed to come up with enough information to participate, so enough information to vote, for instance. Obviously it rarely works well, and a lot of folks have ideas and opinions that are just plain unsound. Where's the real news in that?
I've been unwittingly complicit in some of this. Reporters call or email me from time to time to get information, and like most academics, I usually oblige. It's hard not to give out information when that's your job. But the results rarely feel like I've made a contribution to sound discourse.
Two recent examples stand out in terms of how little they helped with rational discourse: Before the spill occurred, a reporter from California spent nearly 40 minutes with me eliciting information about oil drilling potential on land in the lower 48. Like most workers who have any knowledge about the situation, I directed him to consider gas exploration, by far the greater part of terrestrial drilling in the lower 48, particularly coal bed methane, and also gave some technical details about directional drilling as it's used in methane extraction. Turns out that what he really wanted was a sound bite saying that the reason the earlier Obama drilling direction didn't include California's coast was purely political. It was and is, of course, but the guy clearly wanted that line and only that line and the minute he got someone with an energy-related PhD to say it on the record, all the other ideas, knowledge and considerations I gave him, which of course were considerable, fell by the wayside.
And a BBC reporter recently, based in India, spent another forty-fifty minutes on the telephone with me to write an article evaluation airborne wind turbines. Forty-fifty minutes included a lot of discussion about the inherent physical limitations of such ideas: Betz law and the Power Law, and so on. Airborne turbines are very unlikely to produce significant amounts of energy for these very basic technical reasons, and any reasoned person would wish to know that. Kinetic energy extraction is inherently based on moving large masses, and fixed-wing flight, powered or otherwise, depends on reducing the ratio of mass to airfoil surface. This is an inherent contradiction that would limit airborne turbine output. And I explained this, of course, at length. But part of the job of the press is to boost ideas on behalf of entrepreneurs, and in this case partisan Indian entrepreneurs, so what appeared in the piece was one quote on tether lines and safety. I expect some poor fool who doesn't know physics very well will invest, and Indians in general may feel for a moment like their country has more of a stake in "the new green economy," which I think might be a good thing for them and everyone else, but come on! We're not going to get there by ignoring the laws of physics.
I expect that every reporter in the country that is assigned to the Gulf is similarly looking for a unique angle and a line or two to do some political work on behalf of the reporter or the outlet's own biases, despite the scientific and technical facts.
I'm not really sure I want to contribute to that. And as an educator and an academic working in what has come to be known as sustainability, do I have anything useful to contribute?
In a word: perspective.
If we were being serious about things and really trying to solve the problem, we'd be terribly concerned about the oil spill, but we'd be much more concerned about how, as a society, we got to the point whereby we passively accept the obviously unsound economics of drilling in 5,000 foot deep water for a dirty nasty product that will definitely help us get around and heat homes and run factories, but that will also pollute our skies, add to political destabilization all around the planet, and that is contributing to climate change.
Clearly the costs outweigh the benefits. And that's the greater problem, from which we are distracted by all the media hype.
How can I say this and still consider myself an environmentalist? Shouldn't I be jumping on the bandwagon for all it's worth, like the leaders of the so called "Group of Ten." ? Well, I'm a scientist and policy analyst first and foremost, not an environmentalist. And I know something about the science and economics.
Knowledge is power. In this case the power to avoid despair.
First the ecology: The Gulf itself will get fairly dirty and polluted for a while, and some of that pollution may even spread out of the Gulf. It's unlikely, because of the way that ocean currents work, to make it to Maine, although some local Maine journalists looking for an angle have suggested that. And the situation in the Gulf itself will eventually recover, ecologically speaking. Particularly the deep water oil plumes. The chances for oil at that depth to break down rapidly are actually much greater than on the surface, just because of the kinds of critters that live in that environment that eat this kind of stuff. On the surface things will take a while, but time and tide, weather and shoveling, will take care of much of the pollution.
As to the capping of the well, it would be better to get it capped right away but if that is difficult or impossible, the flow of oil will eventually stop by itself or slow to a ecologically meaningless trickle. Even if BP doesn't succeed in capping the well or drilling the relief well. The current buzz in the media seems designed to promote despair, that this will never stop.
Does the press honestly believe that oil wellhead blow-outs, "gushers," run for ever?
If they did, we wouldn't be worried about oil depletion. (Although I'd be terrified for our climate.)
So, if dear reader, I can get you for a moment to assume that what needs to be done, and physically can be done, by the government or BP, is being done, might we consider things in greater perspective? I tend to expect that this is close to the truth anyway. And can we disregard for a minute the local and regional short term impacts, which I concede are awful for the locals?
What is the real long term national and international significance of the oil spill? What should we really learn from all this?
The first thing I would say, is we learn that ordinary people and the media lack knowledge about energy and this is hurting us very badly. We need to know much more, as a society, about what energy really is and where it comes from. So we can make some better decisions at local, regional, statewide and national levels.
If we did, we'd be able to notice, for instance, that we can save energy, even oil, quite easily with basic conservation measures such as weatherization, insulation or using programmable thermostats. Here in Maine, we might save up to 20% of the oil-fired heat load of thousands of our houses just by fitting $42 thermostats.
And there are dozens of examples of other energy savings.
The next thing we should know is that we're surrounded by useful, clean energy all the time, if we would only care to use it instead of oil and coal. Sunshine, wind, geothermal heat, even in Maine, in winter. Careful modern solar building design, careful deployment of distributed wind and solar power, use of ground source heat pumps, moderate use of biomass, and sensible financing of all of the above, can reduce our need for fossil energy by a massive percentage, and with the development of a reasoned base load technology such as thorium "trailer" reactors, as well as electrical and hybrid vehicle systems, we can be done with oil completely, should we wish.
Of course, we'll have to teach some science to some people who currently don't know very much science, ordinary people, politicians, and particularly some of these journalists, to succeed in this. And we'll have to make some strategic decisions about who gets to bear the impact on energy extraction. Will we for instance, have coal mines destroying mountaintops in West Virgina, or wind turbines on mountaintops in Maine?
This is asking a lot of reason and politcs, I know, but I think we are up to it. A good kick in the pants, as this oil spill undoubtedly is, will help. The bottom line, of course, is that as long as we are willing to pay $60,70,80 or more dollars a barrel for oil, our ignorance is expensive. And BP, like any business, will take risks to win those profits.
On the sidelines of all this reality in the "reality-based community," our media is becoming a huge hindrance to discerning reality.
I'm really, really, starting to detest the modern journalist.
The only thing about current journalism that gives me any hope for our ability to reason out energy problems is that the Internet now offers a way for folks with knowledge and ideas to bypass these so-called professional journalists. Such as this blog.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Interfaith Power and Light and the Gulf Oil Spill and Mountaintop Coal
I'm not a supporter of very many groups. Not really a joiner -- years of working in what should be the open-minded, disciplined-thinking setting of academia and other personality tendencies have made me very wary of "group-think," and individualistic and self-contained in many ways.
I tend to identify fatal flaws in the thinking of whatever groups I encounter, from the Sierra Club to the Tea Party.
But I've always been quite fond of Interfaith Power and Light. This group, which was part of the study for my PhD dissertation (on religious groups and climate mitigation), works to encourage members of the mainline religious denominations to consider climate change and energy problems.
Here's the latest news, whereby they attempt a petition drive to Congress and the President to say "enough is enough."
I tend to identify fatal flaws in the thinking of whatever groups I encounter, from the Sierra Club to the Tea Party.
But I've always been quite fond of Interfaith Power and Light. This group, which was part of the study for my PhD dissertation (on religious groups and climate mitigation), works to encourage members of the mainline religious denominations to consider climate change and energy problems.
Here's the latest news, whereby they attempt a petition drive to Congress and the President to say "enough is enough."
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