With a nice driving bass theme, here's the latest movie from the Sustainability Office.
It makes recycling seem the super trendy, rockin' thing.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Quote of the day...
From Philip D. Gardner, director of research at the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University
"There are really "only two choices" for graduates who want a lot of options, "to be a technically savvy liberal arts graduate or a liberally educated technical graduate."
"There are really "only two choices" for graduates who want a lot of options, "to be a technically savvy liberal arts graduate or a liberally educated technical graduate."
More supergrid ideas -- amazing
Little by little, news (or speculation) of the scope of plans for various undersea "supergrid" investments in the North Sea area trickles out. Google, of course, has proposed a similar interconnector for the US east coast.
I find the scale of the proposed wiring staggering. Eight hundred tonnes of copper per kilometer? I'd love to know what wire gauge that reflects.
(Perhaps I can assign this as a problem in class -- after all, the main datum is the mass of copper per unit length -- the rest can be worked out.)
Imagine the impact on the world's already-stretched copper resources. The only way that kind of abuse could possibly be considered sustainable is in the context of a low or no growth "steady state" economy. If we were to imagine ourselves as setting up the conditions for that kind of economy, then it might make some kinds of sense to do this.
To some extent, these proposed investments reflect European desire to reduce climate emissions, but more than anything, I think they reflect fear of being in hock to the Russians for all that natural gas that Europeans use for space heating.
I can understand that. Transferring vast wealth in terms of gas revenue, and at the same time handing massive market power on a plate to the Russians, while they remain a neoczarist dictatorship, is a ticking geopolitical time bomb.
The sooner the west gets off that bandwagon, the better.
I do hope we seal and insulate all those Euro-houses, and switch out all the old Euro-fridges for new low-energy consumption ones, before we go out and mine all this copper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/11/iceland-volcano-green-power
I find the scale of the proposed wiring staggering. Eight hundred tonnes of copper per kilometer? I'd love to know what wire gauge that reflects.
(Perhaps I can assign this as a problem in class -- after all, the main datum is the mass of copper per unit length -- the rest can be worked out.)
Imagine the impact on the world's already-stretched copper resources. The only way that kind of abuse could possibly be considered sustainable is in the context of a low or no growth "steady state" economy. If we were to imagine ourselves as setting up the conditions for that kind of economy, then it might make some kinds of sense to do this.
To some extent, these proposed investments reflect European desire to reduce climate emissions, but more than anything, I think they reflect fear of being in hock to the Russians for all that natural gas that Europeans use for space heating.
I can understand that. Transferring vast wealth in terms of gas revenue, and at the same time handing massive market power on a plate to the Russians, while they remain a neoczarist dictatorship, is a ticking geopolitical time bomb.
The sooner the west gets off that bandwagon, the better.
I do hope we seal and insulate all those Euro-houses, and switch out all the old Euro-fridges for new low-energy consumption ones, before we go out and mine all this copper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/11/iceland-volcano-green-power
Monday, April 9, 2012
Our easter lamb
Here's a link back to our farm blog for students interested in animals. Pictured below is wee baby Samson, born in the middle of the night on Saturday, after a fairly hard labor for his mother Quinn.
Gross National Happiness
...and other revised measures in national accounts are all on the agenda for this week's economics classes. While Environmental Sustainability students are revisiting American values and governance, a related topic.
Student Government President Amy K. is in econ, and sent in this article from The Atlantic Monthly.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/is-gross-national-happiness-is-a-better-measurement-than-gdp/255542/
Student Government President Amy K. is in econ, and sent in this article from The Atlantic Monthly.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/is-gross-national-happiness-is-a-better-measurement-than-gdp/255542/
Friday, April 6, 2012
More of the real work...
Regular readers will know that I'm a fan of helping students become as useful as possible, including learning to do things with their hands, especially when the things they do save energy and climate emissions.
In this most recent case, students in Energy and Energy Efficiency class helped lower our campus wind testing tower to fit a new safety cable and a pyranometer (AKA solarimeter) to measure the solar power available on site next to the large 5KW solar array on the Unity House.
The safety cable will be used to check students of Unity College and KVCC on industrial tower climbing safety and technique.
The pyranometer will measure the watts of sunshine per meter squared per hour and log those data every ten minutes to a computer memory card. We'll be able to match the data against production data from the Unity House. In particular, we'll be able to tell when the solar array is not producing what it could be producing, because it's a fixed and not tracking array.
Along the way to completing these tasks students learned some basic metalwork. Several were checked out on they various shop tools such as the machine hacksaw and the drill press. They also learned some more advanced skills such as drill sharpening and the use of pilot holes for proper drilling.
I'm looking forward to seeing the view from the top of the tower next week when the safety line work is done.
Monday, April 2, 2012
A professor gets a complaint...
Fascinating. Mankiw is the economist for the Republican National Committee, so there may be more than a little politics to this, but nevertheless, he should have taught at least some Keynes, considering what's going on in the world right now. Otherwise how are students to evaluate the ongoing debate over spending?
This is an open letter, so no-one should complain if I republish it here.
Here's the url:
http://hpronline.org/harvard/an-open-letter-to-greg-mankiw/
And the letter:
Wednesday November 2, 2011
Dear Professor Mankiw—
Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University, and our greater society.
As Harvard undergraduates, we enrolled in Economics 10 hoping to gain a broad and introductory foundation of economic theory that would assist us in our various intellectual pursuits and diverse disciplines, which range from Economics, to Government, to Environmental Sciences and Public Policy, and beyond. Instead, we found a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today.
A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.
Care in presenting an unbiased perspective on economics is particularly important for an introductory course of 700 students that nominally provides a sound foundation for further study in economics. Many Harvard students do not have the ability to opt out of Economics 10. This class is required for Economics and Environmental Science and Public Policy concentrators, while Social Studies concentrators must take an introductory economics course—and the only other eligible class, Professor Steven Margolin’s class Critical Perspectives on Economics, is only offered every other year (and not this year). Many other students simply desire an analytic understanding of economics as part of a quality liberal arts education. Furthermore, Economics 10 makes it difficult for subsequent economics courses to teach effectively as it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand. Students should not be expected to avoid this class—or the whole discipline of economics—as a method of expressing discontent.
Harvard graduates play major roles in the financial institutions and in shaping public policy around the world. If Harvard fails to equip its students with a broad and critical understanding of economics, their actions are likely to harm the global financial system. The last five years of economic turmoil have been proof enough of this.
We are walking out today to join a Boston-wide march protesting the corporatization of higher education as part of the global Occupy movement. Since the biased nature of Economics 10 contributes to and symbolizes the increasing economic inequality in America, we are walking out of your class today both to protest your inadequate discussion of basic economic theory and to lend our support to a movement that is changing American discourse on economic injustice. Professor Mankiw, we ask that you take our concerns and our walk-out seriously.
Sincerely,
Concerned students of Economics 10
This is an open letter, so no-one should complain if I republish it here.
Here's the url:
http://hpronline.org/harvard/an-open-letter-to-greg-mankiw/
And the letter:
An Open Letter to Greg Mankiw
The following letter was sent to Greg Mankiw by the organizers of today’s Economics 10 walkout.Wednesday November 2, 2011
Dear Professor Mankiw—
Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University, and our greater society.
As Harvard undergraduates, we enrolled in Economics 10 hoping to gain a broad and introductory foundation of economic theory that would assist us in our various intellectual pursuits and diverse disciplines, which range from Economics, to Government, to Environmental Sciences and Public Policy, and beyond. Instead, we found a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today.
A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.
Care in presenting an unbiased perspective on economics is particularly important for an introductory course of 700 students that nominally provides a sound foundation for further study in economics. Many Harvard students do not have the ability to opt out of Economics 10. This class is required for Economics and Environmental Science and Public Policy concentrators, while Social Studies concentrators must take an introductory economics course—and the only other eligible class, Professor Steven Margolin’s class Critical Perspectives on Economics, is only offered every other year (and not this year). Many other students simply desire an analytic understanding of economics as part of a quality liberal arts education. Furthermore, Economics 10 makes it difficult for subsequent economics courses to teach effectively as it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand. Students should not be expected to avoid this class—or the whole discipline of economics—as a method of expressing discontent.
Harvard graduates play major roles in the financial institutions and in shaping public policy around the world. If Harvard fails to equip its students with a broad and critical understanding of economics, their actions are likely to harm the global financial system. The last five years of economic turmoil have been proof enough of this.
We are walking out today to join a Boston-wide march protesting the corporatization of higher education as part of the global Occupy movement. Since the biased nature of Economics 10 contributes to and symbolizes the increasing economic inequality in America, we are walking out of your class today both to protest your inadequate discussion of basic economic theory and to lend our support to a movement that is changing American discourse on economic injustice. Professor Mankiw, we ask that you take our concerns and our walk-out seriously.
Sincerely,
Concerned students of Economics 10
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