Kelpie’s Recent Comments

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  Kudos to Umbra for zeroing in on the most important factor in the population problem - the oppression of women. As long as the Pope runs around Africa telling people that condoms cause AIDS and contraception is a sin, it's going to be hard to make any progress in Africa or here in America where our teenagers have been denied good information about sex and contraception to satisfy religious zealots. As for the Hampshire College folks, they are well-meaning but they are not seeing the whole picture. There are not enough resources on this planet to bring 9 billion, or even 6 billion people up to even a modest, European lifestyle (it's a given that the high-flying, SUV-driving American way of life has got to end). Also, it's not just the poor countries that are overpopulated. Look at the UK - more than 60 million people on a small island. Without fossil fuels, how could they feed themselves? Climate change, water scarcity and other kinds of environmental degradation are likely to reduce agricultural output well before 2050. That said, we can feed everyone today and we must end hunger now. It really is the first step to ending population growth. No argument there. But in their extreme denial of overpopulation as a problem, the Hampshire College group are a classic example of the thinking of Leftists stuck in the nineteenth century. Please see my article at Alternet http://www.alternet.org/environment/135518/have_we_hit_the_limits_of_human_population/?comments=view&cID=1186370&pID=1186301#c1186370 This article looks at the historical reaction of progressives to the Malthusian idea, showing why they were right to hate the man but wrong to hate his basic concept, which is what Darwin based his theory of natural selection on. We need to take a better look at history and realize that in the ancient past, pre-patriarchy, women did control their reproduction and societies everywhere had population limitation programs. See also my feminist population manifesto, The Lysistrata Strategy, originally published by Wild Earth and available at my website: http://www.kelpiewilson.com/1998/01/the-lysistrata-strategy.html This topic is so gnarly and deep that I have also turned to fiction as a way to grapple with it. My novel Primal Tears is about a human-bonobo hybrid girl who saves humanity from overpopulation. More info here: http://www.primaltears.com/ And I have some interesting stories and myths about abortion and overpopulation at http://www.earthislandangels.com/. OK, that's all for now!On Umbra advises on population posted 7 months ago 35 Responses

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  stirling engines and biochar

  X - my dream is a pyrolysis burner that heats water and runs a free-piston stirling engine to generate electricity. I like the CO2 exhaust in the greenhouse idea.

  Here's a report on some new biochar stoves:

  Check out my blog at http://www.greenyourhead.com

  On If Obama stops dirty coal, as he must, what will replace it? An intro to biomass cofiring posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 17 Responses

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  biochar and biogas

  Dr.X,
  Biogas is great for wet biomass. For dryer stuff, biochar is better. There are some low tech stoves and kilns being designed now that are very clean because they burn the smoke they produce.

  The study you refer to on charcoal in boreal forest soils is inconclusive as far as the net carbon or GHG effect. Biochar researchers do not find it discouraging for several reasons - one of which is that biochar may have its best use in very different carbon poor soils in Africa and other tropical areas.

  A biochar program could certainly end up producing charcoal that people burn for fuel rather than putting it in soil. But if a biochar program provides cleaner more efficient charcoal-making technology, at least the charcoal fuel is cleaner and less wasting of biomass.

  Check out my blog at http://www.greenyourhead.com

  On If Obama stops dirty coal, as he must, what will replace it? An intro to biomass cofiring posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 17 Responses

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  what about biochar?

  If you co-fire biomass with coal, any ash or char produced will be contaminated with heavy metals and other toxins from the coal and will be unusable for agriculture. Instead of a valuable soil amendment you get a toxic waste disposal problem.

  Also, central power plants mostly waste the heat. If we are going to go to all the trouble to dedicate biomass plantations (and I could easily see replacing, say, the turf grass farms of the Willamette Valley with poplar plantations), then we should make better use of the tree flesh than co-firing it with coal. Small biomass co-generation units that make heat, power and biochar are the highest use of plant-captured solar energy.

  Check out my blog at http://www.greenyourhead.com

  On If Obama stops dirty coal, as he must, what will replace it? An intro to biomass cofiring posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 17 Responses

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  Buy Me a Bus, Barack

  I tried to send this letter to the President, but the comments at Whitehouse.gov are limited to 500 characters!!! At change.gov you could actually communicate with the team. Now they are in the White House, they don't want to hear from us anymore? Anyway, here it is:

  Republicans love to say that they oppose tax increases because the people should be in charge of spending their own money, not the government. But realistically, what were our spending options for that $300 tax rebate we got last summer? It did very little to "stimulate" the economy, probably because most of us used it either to pay bills or to buy some cheap imported consumer item. I don't want another silly toy, I want a bus.

  By cutting taxes, government does not increase our options, it reduces them. I can't afford to buy a better transit system by myself, and that's what I most want right now. I wish I could get on a bus in my small rural town and travel quickly and safely to Portland or Seattle or beyond, but that is not an option at the moment because mass transit in general in this country is lousy. I want an infrastructure!

  Unfortunately, one third of the nearly trillion dollar stimulus package now working its way through Congress consists of tax cuts. Rachel Maddow reports that this is apparently the work of your economic advisor Larry Summers. According to my congressman, Peter Defazio, Summers hates infrastructure. He is after stimulating a consumer driven economy, not a public investment driven economy.

  Obviously Summers needs to do the math. DeFazio says that last year's stimulus bill gave less than a one percent boost to the economy, so why are we repeating the tax rebate/cut mistake? Ironically, Larry Summers is the guy who had to leave his post as president of Harvard University for outraging female faculty members with his assertion that lack of innate math ability is a major reason women are underrepresented in Harvard's math and science departments.

  Please Mr. President, take back those tax cuts and spend it on mass transit. DeFazio says that Chicago alone has a 6 billion dollar backlog of transit improvements that are "shovel ready," but the stimulus package would provide only 2.5 billion. Hasn't Larry Summers ever heard of the multiplier effect? Not only would fully funding Chicago's transit needs provide jobs in that city, but it would immediately create 3000 new jobs in Minnesota building the buses.

  Please Barack, buy me a bus, and while you're at it, please feel free to - metaphorically speaking - throw Larry Summers under the bus.
  

  Check out my blog at http://www.greenyourhead.com

  On On Maddow show, Oberstar DeFazio fingers Larry Summers as destroyer of transit spending posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 15 Responses