Comments SustainableGreen has made

A Lot of Agreement, and More

Hey, all:

Hey, Colin:  Yes, it is emotional, although some seem to have that portion of the brain surgically excised, or just beaten out of them by experience or education.   And you certainly do define "sustainable" in an essential way.  To many people the term is either too fuzzy to comprehend or has already been distorted by the marketing stooges.  

Thanks for the words of advice and encouragement.  I appreciate the sentiment about losing me, and about suicide, however overstated.  I may not be here, but I have been around for a long time fighting the fight, speaking truth to power, and I won't back down before an egotistical overbearing two-faced punk.  The exact same tone and content of the email I received has been here in the threads, so the 'private' issue is moot.  I did also respond to his email and  cc-ed other Grist staff, since his policy is so glaringly selective and hypocritical.

This thread is highly appropriate, since I have been 'warned' by the 3rd-grade hall monitor Roberts about referring to the Corporate Oligarchy.  Who does he think we are opposing?  Or is he so callow as to not recognize reality?  Or is he a shill?  

The destructive partnership between government and business is on parade all day every day, but is the new 'emperor with no clothes', being tacitly accepted and even supported, out of fear or ignorance or greed or a misplaced, ignorant view of coexistence.  It is just that simple.

Cheney and Bush and the entire administration, plus practically all the members of the Congress and Senate have sold their souls and ethics to business.  As one simple example, we have all heard now that the Presidential candidate who tried to pass National Health Care legislation in '93-'94 now is among the leading recipients of campaign money from the health insurance industry.  

As Roberts stumbled into in his two-faced way, Cheney and the rest are part of the same problem.  Whether it is health care, energy, agriculture, or war, they are part of the problem.  It is called the Corporate Oligarchy and its shills need to be exposed.  I refer to it often, while many others refer to other issues they focus on.  As an example, Roberts seems to love referring to Carbon offsets like they were crack.  He is two-faced.

I will humbly suggest he get some sense of self-examination.  If he dodges that, I will take my leave without regret.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On New investigative report posted 2 years, 4 months ago 14 Responses

In All Fairness

Hey, all:

In all fairness, Sarah von Schagen DID ASK the question:

"Would seeing Ben Affleck dressed as an ear of corn make you more or less interested in learning about ethanol and supporting legislation requiring service stations to sell it?"

I guess the answer from most is a resounding "NO!" But what remains is the motive, whether it was a simple sincere question, or was it just a way to promote the videos?

And as for the question, it looks like the Center for American Progress has already answered it to their shallow satisfaction--that is, if they asked themselves the question to start with.  

This is again why I have consistently stated that we need to demand much more of leaders and ourselves, we need to have and apply the highest standards, and search for the best solutions.  Half-assed environmentalism will get us to Hell soon enough.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Watch six episodes of 'Project Phin' posted 2 years, 4 months ago 18 Responses

Yes, Biodiversity Misunderstanding, etc.

Hey, all:

Hey, Canis:  Yeah, I wrote poorly when I mentioned biodiversity was not a big concern in this case.  I was speaking from the point of view of the Park personnel.  As I have said, each unit of the park System has its unique concerns and pressures related to the reason for its existence, and this is borne out in the examples you and others have mentioned.

For the record, and in all cases, universally and for eternity, if there is a conflict between humans and biota, I will take the biota's side.  I regard humans as not being inherently or intrinsically superior or more important than the millions of other species on the planet.  My human narcissism is very low.  

In fact, I perceive the third rail in these discussions to be human population control [yeah, involuntary shudder].  There are simply too many of us, and we are living on the biotic (and abiotic) savings of the planet.  The account is shrinking and we are too greedy to recognize it.  

To return to Gettysburg: the Park personnel will make sure the MBTA and ESA and other laws are followed to the letter.  They may avoid some actions on that basis but the likelihood is not great.  Impacts to biodiversity probably settled such issues decades or a century ago, i.e., any rare species are probably long long gone.  The lesson from those practices has yet to be learned in many places in the world, even including our own.  What is left is probably fairly ubiquitous in the area, and about the only action that would make a difference would be to buy up similar nearby forest area in a proportionately larger ratio, to mitigate the loss of forest due to clearing.  This area would be held intact as a sanctuary to compensate for the loss and provide biodiversity.  They should do all this, but under the circumstances--legal restrictions and administrative myopia--they probably won't.  

Hey, Wiscidea:  I enjoy reading your thoughts.  You are even more idealistic than me, although still less radical!  I have to squint when I read of your background in GMOs, and maybe one day you will reconsider.  I personally think GMO plants anywhere outside strict confinement is a disaster waiting an opportunity.  

Many years ago I read a report including a passage from a pair of early explorers and trappers (early/mid 1600s?) somewhere in the Ohio River Valley.  They were trapped in a shallow hole or bank for several days, as a herd of bison thundered past them.  They simply could not move.  I don't remember the numbers, but estimates of the total North American herd really stretch the imagination.  That we nearly wiped them out is an inexcusable disgraceful act of blind narcissism.  

I wish we could return to an earlier time, with much less population and far fewer impacts, and redressed impacts, but we are in a small minority.    The same wish applies to the megafauna, and even the less obvious and less well known.  I mentioned the Coastal Prairie of Texas, which is where Attwater's Prairie Chicken used to occur.  As I mentioned maybe 2-3% of the Prairie is left, and the chicken is near extinction.  I am not sure I even want to know how near.  I had the very rare pleasure of actually seeing them on a lek in the very early morning hours of a very early Spring day.  This lek area and the population was subsequently extirpated.  With the low light, the moisture, the distance, and their ultimate disappearance, the birds we saw were ghosts in more ways than one.  We should always be mindful that these are only visible, favored representatives of an ecosystem, and acknowledge the countless unknown and unrecorded losses.

I am not sure what Pleistocene megafauna was present 14,000 years ago when the first wave of people came from Asia.  My understanding is the diversity was not that high, since most of what we think of was probably rendered extinct in the last glaciation.  Someone can address this issue.  Still it would be nice to see what was here when Europeans arrived, since that is when the shit really hit the fan and diversity started downward.  When traveling I often amuse myself by wondering what the landscape must have looked like 100-300 years ago.  

I wonder how many Antiques Roadshow fans there are?!  I adore that show, and constantly invoke it when someone is throwing something out, and there are segments on the show that make me just bawl like a little kid when something of great interest or value is revealed.  A big big hit for me.  And that Lara Spencer--oooooh!  My heart broke when she left.

It is also gratifying to see the interest in fire ecology and prescribed burning.  The learning (and teaching!) curve is very high, especially where I live.  There are some ranchers who embrace it and some who think it is the Devil turned loose on the land.  Those I work with approach it cautiously and are amazed when the benefits appear under their feet and from the cabs of their pickups.  The older ones lose some power of speech when they say something like 'I have never seen this here before', when shown a species, a guild, or an altered restored landscape.  Very, VERY gratifying.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

  On Park Service hacks down some trees in Pa. posted 2 years, 4 months ago 29 Responses

Leading or Beating?

Hey, all:

Heh heh, I have (and have had for a long time) the same frustration about how the country is going.  Actually, being marketed to death is more accurate.  

And it appears it was the Michael Jackson reference that was over the top.  I would trade, however, the Stooge-in-Chief for The Ghost of  "Thriller" in an instant.  

Canis, you are right--every state has a mix of good and bad.  But I would disagree that it was all about 80 jobs--that was just for the public's consumption.  All the investments and political pull is the real reason.  

We really need to focus now on finding progressive environmental candidates to run and be elected in November 2008.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On It's easy being not green posted 2 years, 4 months ago 31 Responses

I Agree with Jon--What is the point?

Hey, all:

I have my own very strong opinions about my own state of Texas, but I would defend it--well, in most cases, on a selective basis.  I really see no point in castigating the entire state of Indiana.  Certainly its politicians and business leaders could be at fault, but the people themselves--what is the point?  

I drove from Texas to Michigan and back through Indiana 4 Summers ago, and one of the few times I saw a wind turbine installed at a farm was in Indiana. I stopped and had a great conversation with them.  

The politically appointed administrators of the state and Federal agencies are almost always suspect, especially when the agency operates contrary to business and industry interests.  We see it ALL the time.  It is quite possible BP shopped around the permit until they got a response they liked.  Just like one of us would do a plumbing job.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On It's easy being not green posted 2 years, 4 months ago 31 Responses

Politics and Economics

Hey, all:

I think JustLou's response (the very first) is the best, and it certainly does appear that they want their tar sands project to move forward, and the slightly displaced source of the pollution outfall and the thinly spread out jobs bait is enough to influence their position.  That's the politics.  That's the Corporate Oligarchy.  And it is probably a good example of Gobblizeation, since they can probably invoke some rule in NAFTA or other environmentally disastrous document.  

On the economics, Jon asked a very good simple rhetorical question:

"Isn't water more important than gasoline?"

Of course, this is meaningless to BP, since water is not the commodity they own and wish to promote.  If it was the other way around, or regardless of the commodity, they will try to tip things their way.  And the courts and the political appointees in EPA, as we have seen repeatedly, are all too willing to go along with them.  So it is all about money.

"BP = Bad Pollution?"  What's new?  As we have also seen repeatedly, marketing and operations are frequently completely divorced from each other.  Do anything to extract the product, do anything to cover up the process and sell the product.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!    
On It's easy being not green posted 2 years, 4 months ago 31 Responses

On Species Narcissism

Hey, all:

I guess what I'm trying to say is: Can I even help being a species narcissist? And, more importantly -- is it a bad thing?

Yes, you certainly can help being a species narcissist, just as one can 'help' being a garden-variety narcissist.  By 'help' I assume you mean preventing, or, after the fact, recovering.   And yeah, it is a bad thing--unless you want the planet entirely to yourself.  

I personally believe avoiding species narcissism is absolutely vital to survival, in both a broad inclusive way and a narcissistic way.  Humans only won the natural selection lottery.  There was no plan, no higher order--that is more narcissism, of the institutionalized, mass-hypnosis kind.  

Read a good book on the environment.  Given my bias and wildlife biology background, I can think of no better book than Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac" to start with.   Doug Adams's book "Last Chance Forever" is good.  Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Lester Brown, E.O. Wilson, Carl Sagan's book "Demon-Haunted World", Steven Jay Gould, are all excellent antidotes to human narcissism.  

Therapy for narcissism requires effort and maybe even avoiding previous practices, just like a recovering addict has to get new, better, differently-behaving friends.  It may take immersion in a new life-habit.  Come toward the Light!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On And a bit of introspection posted 2 years, 4 months ago 8 Responses

Well, Let's Have It

Hey, all:

Hey, Sarah: I'll be bold and ask to see the CV and any other pertinent information you'd like to provide--likes and dislikes, 5 things you can't do without, what sort of "green" man you are "ISO".  

I'm taking calls too.

Cameron Diaz certainly is beautiful and a good actress, but she seems about as flighty as a cave full of bats.  Maybe that is onstage nervousness, but I do wish she would settle down a bit.  Still her heart and commitment are in the right places.

Canis:  "...green leader..."!?!?! Hah hah!    

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Cameron Diaz hooks up with a hottie enviro posted 2 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

One of the Driving Forces to the Precipice

Hey, all:

This should be no surprise, folks,  Sex is a very strong drive.  I was in a bird blind watching a turkey lek years ago, and watched a frustrated subordinate male copulate with a cow pie.  Pretty strong drive.  

Continuing to focus on the lowest common denominator, marketing people have understood this for decades.  They sell sex and status as interchangeable themes.  It is one of the essential ingredients of the phenomenon of consumerism, and in fact probably substitutes for sex and status in our psychologically messed up minds and times.

It is one of the forces that needs to be short-circuited to allow us to stop and turn away from the precipice.  Otherwise it is like a brick on the gas pedal.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Are we raping the planet in some cracked attempt to look hot? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 8 Responses

So What the Hell are You Waiting For?

Hey, all:

Yeah, and ego-phones might be down to $49.95 in the same time.  Do you practice what you preach?  Are you leading or is this just talk?  Is it easier to buy offsets to cover your laziness or do you back up your words?  At $4-5 now for PV (50% more for professional installation) it is not cheap now.  If you live in a state which has incentives a great deal can be paid for with that.

I bought mine (and the Wind system) in a period 5-8 years ago, and it wasn't cheap then, but I have 98% eliminated my Carbon for electricity and water heat, and my electricity bill.

If you can see past your nose, you may see the cost effectiveness of doing it now.  Have you heard the expression "Lead, follow, or get out of the way?  How  about "Be the change you wish to see in the world."?  What about "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."?  Or are you waiting for someone else to do it?  

Maybe it would be better if the thread were entitled "THE UNTENABLY HIGH COST OF CARBON".  Would that make a difference?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On DIY solar posted 2 years, 4 months ago 7 Responses

Yep, a Simple Solar Still

Hey, all:

Yes, as has been said, any volatiles are likely to evaporate and may condense in the collector, so if the conditions are lousy and polluted (again as was said) it may not be a good idea.  If there is a sheen on the condensed product or if it smells, find other water to use.  An alternate is to dig a hole, use a 2-4' clear plastic sheet, a stone, and a collecting vessel.  Dig a slightly smaller hole in the ground in a damp area, put the vessel in the bottom, cover with plastic, weight the edges of the plastic on the edge of the hole, put the stone on the plastic directly above the vessel.  Water condenses on the underside of the plastic and drips into the vessel under the stone.

Taaa-DAAA!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Solar confusion posted 2 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

Various Policies for Parks based on Purpose

Hey, all:

The Park Service has to operate under a variety of policies that are driven by the nature of the park.  Sometimes they have to balance needs that can be nearly impossible, and if they get it wrong it can have serious consequences.  At Bandelier National Monument an ill-advised and conducted  prescribed burn caused $1 Billion+ in damages.   What applies to one park does not apply elsewhere.

At Gettysburg it should be to honor the spirit and feel of the battlefield.  How far did the soldiers have to march in Pickett's Charge?  What was the exposure at the Devil's Den? On Little Round Top?  How was Hood able to flank and to approach it?  How did the enfilade and defilade artillery fire cause such horrific death and injury?  How was "The Angle" the only place breeched in Pickett's Charge?

On the 50th anniversary of the battle, the survivors on both sides lined up as they had been.  When Pickett's men came out of the woods and started coming across the open ground, a horrified moan came from EVERYWHERE.  Being unable to grasp the significance of the charge and the anniversary, as well as the entire site, could occur if the site is not preserved.  That it be done thoughtfully and carefully is appropriate.  It seems foolish to not have properly considered this a century ago.

I personally am a little repelled at the notion of furniture made of the molecules of ancestors who died and were buried there.  'Ya know, you're sitting on your great-great-great uncle.'   Yikes. Macabre, crass commercialism should not be allowed in such cases.  Surely there are better, more tasteful ways to memorialize the soldiers.  Simply re-establishing the historic conditions in which they fought should be enough.

The area of Gettysburg was almost certainly mixed hard wood forest when Europeans arrived.  By the time of the battle, part had been cleared for agriculture.  Since "savanna" is an ecological term, and actually applied to a more xeric or mesic climate and maintained by fire, it probably is not accurate for Pennsylvania.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On Park Service hacks down some trees in Pa. posted 2 years, 4 months ago 29 Responses

Fish Offsets--Yeah, that;s it!

Hey, all:

Yeah, what we oughta do is start marketing fish offsets, so pretentious people can do nothing but what they have done, and overpay some salesman who will then pay some dumb bastard a nickel to plant fish.

Environmentalism?  Bullshit.

Laziness and Greed?  Uh, yeah.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On The continuing quest to find something, anything to bash Gore with posted 2 years, 4 months ago 13 Responses

Conserving History

Hey, all:

I have been a Civil War buff since I was a kid, and I support the historical accuracy of one of the most important battlefield sites.  Many sites have been lost to development due to to ignorance and greed.

In the case of Gettysburg, the Confederate generals were of several minds on Pickett's Charge.  Lee was overconfident, Pickett was not experienced enough to know and Longstreet (by far one of the best) strongly counseled against it, but could neither oppose Lee nor countermand the order.  When Pickett asked Longstreet for the final order to move out, Longstreet could only nod his head.  They had tried the left side, they had tried the right, only the center was left, Pickett had the only unit left unused, so in their overconfident belief they could win, they made one of the worst costliest charges in history.  They retired from the field the next day, and Gettysburg was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.  It was also where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address ("last full measure of devotion...of the people, by the people, for the people...shall long endure.")  To add to the tragedy and for context, in just 3 days maybe 9000 soldiers were killed, roughly one sixth of all the deaths from all the years of Vietnam.  

What the Park Service should have been doing is preserving the site's accuracy all along, but now they should slowly and carefully restore sections of the battlefield.  This should also be done during dormant periods, for visitation and trees.  I am surprised this report is out now, since even NPS has to observe the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, one of the oldest federal laws protecting wildlife in existence.  Mating, breeding and nesting season is expressly out of bounds for clearing, so this also directs activity to dormant times.  

I have visited a couple of battle sites and it is very revealing to consider the battle in their historic contexts.  It really has the power to take you back.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Park Service hacks down some trees in Pa. posted 2 years, 4 months ago 29 Responses

Aw, C'mon!!

Hey, all:

Can't anyone tell, we are just taking the endless, stupid Congressional bar fight out into the streets?  Great distraction.  The Hatfield and McCoys continue from generation to generation and venue to venue.  Trailer park to trailer park and gang to gang. Playground to playground.  Meanwhile they continue to fuck us over.  Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that we don't or can't LEARN a goddam thing.  

View all of these politicians as rapacious clowns, regardless of party.  This is the easiest and most accurate and honest way to analyze them.  

If they have ANY environmental conscience or positive record, consider keeping them in office.  Otherwise, kick their asses out onto the street.    Of course, they will just get a job one rung down the scum ladder and become a lobbyist, so there is no need for pity.  

Find genuine responsive progressives to help get elected.  Turn the country around in 2008.

And stop the goddam pissing contest.  It gets us nowhere.  

David    
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Who's stopping it? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 18 Responses

Another Amen

Hey, all:

Yes, she was quite a lady.  Born and grew up in East  Texas in an old family home she later regretted had been built by slave labor.  She was very close to my own Mother in age and background.  

She had a big hand in the establishment of the National Wildflower Research Center, which focuses on wildflowers but in doing so addresses habitat restoration, fire ecology, invasive species, grassland ecology, land ethics, environmental public education, and even sustainability.  The Center was built mostly of native stone and has a rainwater collection system.  They use the surrounding acreage for demonstration purposes and research.

With a nod to Don Alexander, he must know that Austin is a national leader in sustainability in several areas.  Their green building initiatives are being copied everywhere, the local electric utility has very good incentives, such that Austin is a center of residential installation of PV and Wind, the annual Renewable Energy Roundup is bigger and bigger, and the Austin music scene is among the best.  Yeah, much of the rest of Texas is full of redneck clones of the stooge in the White House (who isn't even from Texas) but Don and I know we're not all like him.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On The passing of the former first lady (sorta) missed by enviros posted 2 years, 4 months ago 5 Responses

A Simple Solution

Hey, all:

Hey, Charles:  You misunderstood, misinterpreted or distorted my comments.  I will leave it to you to sort that out:  
"David, this is not "a tax on lower income groups," who generally use public transportation rather than driving into Manhattan.  It is primarily a tax on suburbanites that will benefit low and moderate income New Yorkers by improving public transportation."

I never said it was "a tax on lower income groups", but as any flat tax, it falls regressively, disproportionately on lower groups, and consequently it has the potential to restrict access and freedom.  And I did not say it was on those who use public transportation.  My last message was titled "Pro-Congestion Relief...".

It has already been pointed out that the tax receipts would be spent on several transportation modes, not just subways, buses and trains.  Still more highways into Manhattan will not solve the problem, nor will it improve public mass transit.

I return to my original opposition on the basis of the inequity of the tax proposed, the gross criminal incompetence of government, government/business interbreeding, no-bid contracts, favoritism, cronyism, the perverse, duplicitous interest to reduce the size of government through privatization, which is all part of the Corporate Oligarchy.  

We need to return to the philosophy of "public servant", which has been replaced by the rapacious mentality of "sucking on the public teat".

Set up a lottery or other random device to distribute a limited number of vehicle access privileges.  Tax the rich to improve the public mass transit system.   With this, you have environmental, social, and tax justice.  And if the transit system is improved using tax money from the rich, maybe they will have a greater interest in its efficient disbursal.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On The connection between congestion pricing and carbon taxes posted 2 years, 4 months ago 18 Responses

Pro-Congestion Relief; Anti-Welfare for Rich

Hey, all:

I want to emphasize I agree with the need to cut down on vehicle congestion, and promote mass transit.  Both are very necessary goals, and both have the benefit of reducing Carbon.  I simply think another way is needed besides simply adding yet another tax, which will have a vastly unfair impact on lower socioeconomic classes.

Beside the intrinsic inequity in a flat tax on a vastly different income range, is the claim that the tax will be used to improve the transit system.  Fine in theory, but we all know that with the current state of governance, it is simply a joke.

Just as an example, look at the newest installment in Katrina news.  Ice that was purchased for the use of survivors of New Orleans almost 2 years ago now is now being disposed of, having been declared unsafe.  $36 million wasted.  Anyone guess what seasonal weather season for which we are reaching the normal peak of activity?  Or consider SAIC, a Federal contractor closely associated with the Weapons of Mass Destruction fraud, and a major beneficiary of no-bid military and CIA contracts.  What about another major transit project--The Big Dig in Boston?  Speaking of Iraq--how about the contractors paying civilian  soldiers 20x what actual military personnel receive?  What about the billions of dollars on pallets which disappeared en route to Iraq?  What about Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay?  Ted Stevens' bridge to nowhere?  Duke Cunningham?  And these are just a few of those I could think of off the top of my head, a sample that is a small portion of what is in the news, and given the corporate news, on a small sample of the actual corruption.  

So how much of the congestion tax will actually improve the transit system?  After all the overhead, profit, graft, contractors hiring subs hiring subs, overruns, incompetence, blah blah blah, how much does anyone think will actually improve mass transit?  Government, as it is now structured, is a great means for rich politicians and business people to steal money from the public.  Until accountability is restored, and politics is changed, and the term "public servant" is restored to life, none of them deserve a dime.    

Set up a lottery, or a alternate day system, or some mechanism to reduce congestion.  Tax the rich to build the subways.  Reach the goals.  We can do better.  We must do better.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
  On The connection between congestion pricing and carbon taxes posted 2 years, 4 months ago 18 Responses

Some Suggestions

Hey, all:

I didn't want to so thoroughly excoriate these 'principles' without offering what I believe to be real principles.  And to acknowledge GMunger, the real "green" literature is far more broad than I can name.  You can stick with potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and peas (organic and heirloom of course), and do quite well, but there are squash (yellow, zucchini, spaghetti, etc., etc.), Fabaceae, and all the Cruciferae you can think of, and likewise there is a rich, substantive, nutritious field in environmental literature, too.  

The problem with this and many other things is that people try to rehash and reword and update them, and at each step they lose some clarity and truth.  They also succumb to situational ethics--creeping shades of grey.  From a purist, independent, traditional, iconoclast point of view, all of this is unnecessary and unwise.  We need principles to be clear and absolute.  

So, first are some very simple ones.  Some of you may feel these are condescending, some may condescend to read them, but most will secretly knock themselves on the forehead for forgetting them.

"First, do no harm."  (From the Hippocratic Oath, for doctors, to which they need to reintroduce themselves.)

"Do unto others as you would them do unto you."  (As in the New Testament, but the principle is universal, in virtually all religions, and in most cultures, so the Bible-thumpers did not invent it--bless their hearts.)

"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any [hu]man."   (William Shakespeare in Hamlet.  This chunk of pure gold dropped out of his pocket, and can be picked by all for eternity.)

"In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity."  (Yeah, I am unabashedly borrowing this from BioD.)

"Be the change that you want to see in the world."  (Mohandas Gandhi is one of those, when you say his name, the heavens should open.)

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root...."  (Henry David Thoreau--clouds open.)

"In the end, we will save only what we love; we will love only what we know; we will know only what we are taught."  (The essence here of Baba Dioum's statement, is EDUCATION!)

I mentioned Aldo Leopold in an earlier message, and I would like reinforce my recommendation with a few of his best.  I cannot open "A Sand County Almanac" without crying, for me it is that powerful: sheer and direct strength, and unapologetic beauty.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.  It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.  That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterly forgotten."

"...[O]ur bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy."  

"An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence.  An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct."

"There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it.  Land, Like Odysseus's slave-girls, is still property.  The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations."

"Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong.  Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief."

There is a vast range and number of observations and opinions, and more detailed principles in, "A Sand County Almanac", much of it too personal for me to uncover here, as well as a good lesson in ecology.  I encourage everyone to find it and read it.  For $15-20, you'll discover it to be priceless.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On All 21 of them, from Worldchanging posted 2 years, 4 months ago 15 Responses

Pardon Me? Valuing the Rich and Elite

Hey, all:

Gee, such rich ground for elitism.  Tax a good or opportunity or service, so that only the rich and elite will be able to partake.  Squeeze out the riff-raff.  Real smart, if that is what you want.  Otherwise it is disastrously unexamined and ill-considered.  

Set up a lottery in which anyone can participate for periodic (daily, weekly, etc.) access to the area.  Be fair.  Reduce your access and cut congestion without excluding people on the basis of economics.  

Lottery no good?  Then, think of something!  Otherwise, this is just more elitism--convenience for the rich.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On The connection between congestion pricing and carbon taxes posted 2 years, 4 months ago 18 Responses

Stop the Censorship!

Hey, all:

Ah, again, another mean kid at the Wack-a Mole game.    You have said yourself that others have already pointed out ad infinitum that Hydrogen is not an energy source, but a carrier, so give the goddam Hell up.  

What is needed is open and fair unpoliticized competition among technologies, to drive them forward to solutions to kill off Carbon.  Anyone who suggests otherwise is fostering and promoting technological heavy-handed presumptuous censorship.  None of you are any sort of Techno Gawd.  

This is more of the technological territoriality turf war bullshit: badmouth other technologies so that your pet project looks better.  Yeah, squawking "science" while trying to foreclose science.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A guest essay from Geoffrey Holland posted 2 years, 4 months ago 55 Responses

Message So Nice, It's on Here Twice!

Hey, all:

I apologize for the earlier message today being on here twice; I came back several hours later to find it.

Lost in some of the hubbub (I think that's Latin) was the message entitled "Humanure" (uuugh) by Erik Hoffner (about 1/4th back) which deserves more attention.  The Project Gutenberg site has a great old title on the ancient Chinese practice of using human waste in agriculture (and lots of other stuff), that looks very interesting.  I compost all my household waste together, but because a large portion is human, I don't use it for anything that would later be eaten.  I might change my mind.  Such practices should improve sustainability in food production, whether organic or not.  

There is a convergence of ideas and trends.  If we reduce use of synthetic fertilizers, we reduce Carbon extraction; if we buy local we reduce food miles; as prices and instability of distant food sources increase; as fuel prices rise due to the 'peak' conditions in fossil fuels; as food prices rise as agro-fuels divert food to fuels; as we use  compost more thereby avoiding burdens on municipal waste facilities; as we reject GMOs and the seed companies' destructive proprietary policies, as we seek out and use heritage/heirloom varieties/species, etc.

I am often not confident that we are doing enough,  and I happen to be right, but there is a little bit of occasional hope.  I personally think that aggressive, assertive, persistent individual action, shared with anyone who will listen, showing others what is possible, and more importantly, what is actually being done.  Wiscidea's suggestion is a good one:  Just Brag About It... [Like I need to be told.] This shows some people what is possible, others how stupid and insulated and elitist they are, and I hope it scares the crap out of many of them--'your days are not long'.   Ah, well, I can hope.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On A new study puts the old canard to rest posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

I'm Envious: Would that Mean I am Green with...

Hey, all:

Aw, I wanted some of Wiscidea's praise!  Well, crap!  

Well said, Canis.

I won't comment on tone or style, since I am all over the spectrum in this regard, and substance is what matters after all.  

Amazing, I applaud your knowledge (we'll work on the fire ecology) and energy, I just think your focus could be better rewarded if applied to another aspect of the crisis--a term I fully agree with.  As has been pointed out--by GMunger and me, and others--the terrestrial Carbon cycle and GHG comprise a fungible pool of Carbon but they come from two distinct sources.  Infinitely more troubling in the crisis is the role of the Carbon we extract and burn.  Fire is natural, an integral part of nature, and humans have little  effect on that cycle.  Electrical energy, heating, fertilizers, and transportation are the predominant/egregiously wasteful uses of extracted Carbon.  We still have a long way to kill off the Carbon use in those areas.  And in case of ANY doubt, killing off the Carbon use is MY goal.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On A new study puts the old canard to rest posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

Coal with Legs

Hey, all:

Hey, Green Mom:  Yes, what you say is true, emitted not by the multinationals but by general locales.  My point is the multinationals are mobile and they will seek the best deal possible, globally in those countries.  The "deal" includes all the ingredients: labor costs, politics, regulatory freedom, etc.  

By the way, is Coal not shipped?  Does anyone know?  It occurs to me I don't know why it would not be.  They convey it in trains all across the U.S.--VA to NC is a short trip.   A power plant I know about in Texas gets a trainload every 2 days from Montana.  They flew it in planes during the Berlin Airlift.  It is barged up and down the Mississippi and on the IntraCoastal WaterWay.   So it does have some mobility, although I have simply not heard of ocean shipping.

I wish I could feel positive about the scenario you provide, especially the time frame.  My position for years has been that we have NO time to wait.   And in any case distributed wind and PV is by far the best.  Better to pass over all the intermediate market steps and go aggressively into Wind and PV.  

I guess the screen names will have to remain forever unrequited in cyberspace--and--not that it matters--it's only a cyber moon--I am happily UNmarried!  Done there, been that.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On A new Pardoner's Tale? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 30 Responses

Heh heh heh--Alas I can't--already done it.

Hey, all:

Hey, Norsk:  I applaud your solar generator.  It has been pointed out in other threads that we need to brag when we have done good, like I gotta be told, as I am one who lives off-grid with Wind and Sun for electricity and sun for water heat.  Combined, ~98% of my home energy needs are sustainably produced.  

I have never, nor will I do so now, say that this is the solution for all.  But millions can purchase PV panels and have them installed, plus solar domestic water heat is also and easy step.  In fact, domestic solar water heat is maybe one of the most cost effective.  Water heat not coal?  Odds are high it still isn't sustainable, anyway.  

Many states have incentives, there are federal tax rebates, and utilities have policies for sustainables.  

If this is not practical, look for a utility provider who certifies availability of sustainable energy.  Shop around.  

You do bring up the single best thing each of us  can do:  direct individual action to change our lifestyles.  Very good.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!    On A guest essay posted 2 years, 4 months ago 7 Responses

Aside to Roberts

Hey, all:

Roberts: "You should consider whether a relentlessly sustained tone of shrill umbrage is the best way to reach other people."

What the Hell difference does this make to the commercial, greed-driven interests?

Roberts: "I find it exhausting to read, much less reply to."

Then you you mustn't.  However, you might miss the observation that I constantly adjust my tone to the context.  Therefore, your charge of "relentlessly" and "shrill umbrage" reveals your own distortion, myopia and shrillness.  Regardless, I DO NOT WRITE FOR YOUR APPROVAL.  Carry on.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new Pardoner's Tale? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 30 Responses

"Mechanism to Assuage Guilt?"

Hey, all:

Hey, Canis: you naive fool you!  

"We are all on the same side, basically, no?  And we are all striving for some decent respective understanding, no?"

.....NAW!!......

Hey, just teasing....Idealistically, yes, you are correct, but I am finding there are a lot of commercial, greed-driven interests here, suggesting we are not all entirely on the same side--depends on what "side" means.   From time to time the good comes out though, so we should foster that behavior.

I do think, while I do not like the religious connotation of 'indulgence', it still has perfectly good secular value.  And I think it applies to many who buy them, since it compensates for their laziness.  Note I am not referring to all of them.   The way some here apparently defend the buyers of offsets, I guess I would have to say many are decent.  But, the guilt component is still in play, therefore offsets are a way of assuaging the buyer's guilt.    

Gotta luv these autistic musical offset chairs!  How many offset threads in one week can there be?
Anybody heard of CONTINUITY?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new Pardoner's Tale? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 30 Responses

Aw, shoot...

Hey, all:

I musta had some schmutz on my screen--I thought it said "...green DiRty..."  Anyway, good for 'em.  

I hope the rest will realize bioDiesel ("Yo, dood...") is a multi-billion $ boondoggle which will not help sustainability, and will cause further environmental and social damage around the world.

Still, neat little piece.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On More green musicians posted 2 years, 4 months ago 3 Responses

Oooh row houses tough

Hey, all:

Hey, Icelander:  Hey, you live above a seismic zone!  Just pipe it in!  Sheeesh!!  (Oh, the name reference is from something else?...never mind.)  

The lack of yard access is tough, but I suppose you use the basement, if someone has a portable drill apparatus, that will operate there, or a directional system into it through a basement window.  The depth and diameter needed is a problem.  Amazing, can a 2' diameter work?  I have read that the lines need to be separated by 6" to prevent energy transfer between lines, rather than between lines and substrate.  The goal is to have a heat sink/reservoir in the soil.    

There is still an option to use the front yard, if practical, since there is nothing above ground when finished--it'll just look like Hell has arrived for a week or so.  And, yer pooch can still poop in the back.  

Or, last resort, pay for new fences for your neighbors.  Who knows, over time you might actually SAVE money on their fences!  One clear rule is that unsustainable energy sources (Carbon, nukes, agro-fuels, hydroelectric, etc.) will always go up--period.  So there are tradeoffs and headscratching to do, but the goal is to be more efficient, cheaper, and sustainable.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Consumers are stingy about buying new energy-efficient appliances posted 2 years, 4 months ago 14 Responses

Some Agreement; Organic and Natural

Hey, all:

It is refreshing to hear others who understand and can articulate facts with passion.  

Hey, Amazing:  If I thought you were a stooge, like we know some are, I would not bother.  You know I have not and will not defend corporate forestry practices, just as I will not those of the larger corporate oligarchy.  

Part of the debris you refer is the fuel that promotes wildfire.  Normal more frequent natural burn cycles control the volume of that fuel, and the intensity of the fire.  The result is a rejuvenated understory and much greater biodiversity.  

I agree on several grounds, that this debris has value.  As an example, I promote and use OSB (Oriented Strand Board) exclusively, instead of plywood.  Ply uses ~45% of the wood of a tree; OSB uses ~95%?  (Someone confirm that, if you will.)  

I think the long-term impacts of GHG/GW and the long time it is taking and will take for reversal make it impossible to advise that we can suppress fire until then.  The existing terrestrial biota will suffer even more if we do that.  We absolutely do need much more aggressive actions to cut down on fossil fuels of all kinds, and beyond that, we need to aggressively move to sustainability in all areas.  

I do agree the fire issue is off-topic, but not entirely.  To the extent that "organic" and "natural" are the same, it is not off-topic.  Yes, I know I referred to it earlier, but now I change my mind somewhat.  Burning fallow fields prior to planting has been used in the past, returning minerals to the soil in a form that is easier to fix by the soil biota.  

Just like the original topic, we have gotten so far away from traditional effective practices that they are a de facto lost art.  Another word for the fashionable, hi-tech, marketing term "organic" is the term "normal".

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new study puts the old canard to rest posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

A Plea to Amazing

Hey, all:

Hey, Amazing: I grew up adoring Smokey the Bear, as many of us did.  I bought it all, physical (I had a BEAR), emotionally, intellectually.  It did not hurt that Smokey the Bear was the best marketing PR move of all time.  

When I got into biology and ecology, though, I learned differently and had to discard a lot of erroneous old notions promulgated by the timber industry and the U.S. Forest Service.  GMunger is correct on all counts: they manufactured consent by creating fear.  I am at least as dedicated as anyone here in protecting the biotic community, probably a LOT more, but when the clear abundant evidence is presented of the natural role of fire in the environment, we must ultimately accept it, the same way we struggle to prove GHG/GW.  

Fire is even widely used to restore habitats and ecosystems--I do so myself in my work.  It is reintroduced to the ecosystem, just as you would the plants and animals.  There is ~2% of the historic Coastal Prairies of Texas left, the rest lost due to entirely human activities, including fire suppression.  Fire clears encroached brush, invasives, and scarifies seeds and prompts the germination of long-dormant species native to the area.

The natural terrestrial Carbon cycle, fire as an integral part, has been going on in relative stability for billions of years.  We humans now add 5% of geologically sequestered Carbon per year, and that is the major GHG--not fire by itself.  They separate but conflated issues.

Please read up on these things.  Things as simple as wildfires in the news are a product of media mentality far beyond the real disaster, an extension of 'if it bleeds, it leads'.  Yes, there is vast fire destruction deliberately caused by humans, but their purpose is destruction as a means to another end, such as agro-fuels.  In the hands of the irresponsible and avaricious, any tool can be destructive.  It is the nature of the person, not the tool.  

It is unfortunate that we have gotten so far off-topic, but that seems to be the format here.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new study puts the old canard to rest posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

RE: Human waste and organic

Hey, all:

Hey, Wiscidea: I can't address "standards" but from a practical functional standpoint, human waste should not be used for any plants intended for food.  The potential presence of coliform bacteria, although it may be very low, is too great.

I have a dry composting toilet, and a widely segregated compost bin where the aerobic thermophilic bacteria kill all the pathogens, at least in theory, but there is still some potential.  There is virtually none of the offensive odor associated with the anaerobic fecal bacteria, and it digests for 2-4 years, so maybe I am overly cautious, but the advice I have heard is not to use it.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On A new study puts the old canard to rest posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

Conservation Lands and Fire Ecology

Hey, all:

Hey, Amazing:  I find you to be level-headed and thoughtful on most issues, so it is difficult to address you on this issue.  

You cannot treat conservation areas as mere fields to be harvested for biomass.  Such multiple use is inconsistent with its normal function.  Prairie species depend on the normal functioning and cycling of the prairie--same in any other biome or ecosystem.  Conservation is for conservation.  Other areas designated for the purpose can be used for biomass.    

In addition, mowing prairie is not a substitute for fire.  The mechanical and thermal effects and the cycling of nutrients in a fire regime are unique and cannot be duplicated by mowing.  

For anyone who wants to learn more about fire in the natural environment, just do a search for "fire ecology" (it is a big field of study), or find "Tall Timbers Research Station", which has been conducting research in effects and use of fire in natural systems for 40-50 years.  

Part of the problem is viewing agro-fuels as the solution to our energy problem.  Like junkies we want our fix from where ever we can find it, regardless of consequences.  As I said, only partly facetiously, earlier in the thread, that we could feed more people with less impact if we reduce our human population.  This benefits food and energy demand.  This would also have a number of other positive effects, including on GHG/GW.  Just simple supply and demand.

Reducing all energy use by more organic-oriented farming worldwide is a very good idea on many levels.  The energy reduction from less tilling, pesticide/herbicide/fertilizer applications would reduce energy demand worldwide.  Good thread.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new study puts the old canard to rest posted 2 years, 4 months ago 50 Responses

Visionaries or Slaves to Convention?

Hey, all:

So the number-crunching engineers or economists, accountants, or clerks, or whatever, remain slaves to such things as biofuels, offsets, cap and trade, voluntary Carbon taxes, and Carbon sequestration--patsies, shills, and stooges for the Corporate Oligarchy.  I expected more.  

Wake up--the ship is sinking, your hair is on fire, people are shooting at us, volcanoes are erupting, the sky is falling, no one is answering the phone, your families are being kidnapped and poisoned, we are being bombed.  Do you so-called experts and visionaries understand the scale of the problem?  

For whom DO you speak?  Do you understand that the old ways no longer work?  So your prescription for change is yet more half-assed, half-hearted, half-way measures?  Do you rent your spines?

Sam Wells:  Maybe Hythane produces CO2 on combustion, but hydrogen only produces H2O.  But you knew that.  Just nitpicking.  

David
Sustainablity For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On A guest essay from Geoffrey Holland posted 2 years, 4 months ago 55 Responses

We Must Go Further

Hey, all:

Yes, this is not a "birth" issue but a "death" issue.  Coal is highly destructive TO START WITH, ignoring CO2 as an end product.  Huge production subsidies, externalized costs of all kinds: pollution, health, loss of habitat, goddam stinking mountain top removal, all STILL STRONGLY indicate what the title states, but which is then ignored.

COAL is the ENEMY of the PEOPLE.  Sequestration is  an attempt at dragging out Big Coal's hold on energy.  'Clean Coal' is pure marketing PR bullshit hype.  Hire people in the Coal Belt to assemble PV panels and wind turbines.  

NO COAL.  WE must do better. We must go further.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  
On A guest essay posted 2 years, 4 months ago 7 Responses

May I Add....?

Hey, all:

From Odo through BioD:

"I'd think we should name as kings, or winners, things that are cheap and effective today ... like bicycles and Priuses."

Well, slap a big ol' sticker on me that says "Biased", but I would certainly add Wind and Sun!  And I would do so completely unabashedly!  Not as cheap as a bicycle but a lot longer lasting than a Prius!  And highly effective!  Not so biased, huh!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A guest essay from Geoffrey Holland posted 2 years, 4 months ago 55 Responses

Current, Future, Today's List, Goals,etc.

Hey, all:

Hey, Odograph:  I had to read carefully but I think I understand and I largely agree.  My understanding of the technology is that it (H2 sustainably produced) can be done now, there are pilot programs needing funding, but which of course have to compete in the market with everything else.  Stanley Ovshinsky apparently has a stand-alone H2 generator using PV.   He also has a low-pressure H2 storage tank which reduces the safety concern (as I wrote earlier).

Odo, for the sake of clarity, I would make a distinction between technologies currently available and on the market, technologies that are available but cannot get a foothold in the public, and, as you say, "future inventions".  My focus is on the second group.  I use Wind (a turbine) and Sun (PV), and although they have been around for many years, still struggle for acceptance and wide use.  I also have a solar domestic water heater.  Collectively 98% of my domestic energy is sustainable.  I keep imagining how much reductions we could realize if these technologies were more widely accepted and used.  Now, I have no financial stake in these technologies but I tell everyone I know anyway.    

At the risk of parsing your comments, there are "potential solutions" on a broad spectrum, some of which are sci-fi on one end, and therefore foolish, and overlooked and abandoned and disregarded on the other,and therefore missed opportunities.   Still, I do build sky castles--guilty.  

So, my list of today's tasks contains a  item, to continue to to spread the word.  I would also like to find a Hydrogen car, since I could make H2 by hydrolysis from the waste electricity I produce--all sustainably.  I could also charge an electric car with the same waste, so I am flexible.   Does this help your frustration?

Often, government policy reflecting corporate agendas make it impossible to achieve a level field.  It seems agro-fuels now have the full domination of government attention.  All the talk of hybrids only extend the life of fossil fuels exploitation, and then the use of agro-fuels and all of the destructive potential of that boondoggle.   I think the goal is to stop the use of Carbon.  

If this is unrealistic I hope someone without an ax or agenda will correct me, otherwise you might as well save it, since if you are protecting commercial turf instead of searching for answers that will bring us sustainability, you are wasting people's time and energy.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A guest essay from Geoffrey Holland posted 2 years, 4 months ago 55 Responses

You Need Correcting

Hey, all:

Adam:  stop waffling on the words you use.  Write clearly.  Own up to what you write.  Distortions and poor writing make you look like a liar, or at best, insincere.  

You write:  "Supporting renewable energy is way more important than protecting old-growth forests."  Only then do you refer to coal.  Then you posit a title based on false choices you would ascribe to others.  

Bulldozers and deliberately started wildfires are far more immediately destructive to habitats than unsustainable energy sources.  Human encroachment into wild areas for every conceivable reason is worldwide.  The difference distills the difference between direct and indirect.  I could bulldoze and clear and cause the biodiversity of 1000 acres to crash irretrievably and forever--per day--if I wished.   Sadly, thousands of others worldwide have no qualms or hesitation to do so.  One only needs to watch the news to understand the scale of incompetently managed wild habitat and the fires that are started out of ignorance and avarice.  

The scale of actual clearing occurring right now, of all habitats, terrestrial and aquatic, around the world, is immense and measurable today--every day--in real time.  You yourself state "Unabated global warming is expected to lead to, among other things, mass extinction."    While correct, it nevertheless reveals your own poor understanding of priorities.  And here I don't need to presume: the facts are clear, as revealed by your statements.  

Protecting habitats now is the only choice.  In the time it took to write this short correction to a distorted comment, hundreds of acres of all kinds are being lost forever, along with the incalculable biodiversity they possess.  

Protecting and preserving biodiversity is a critical need.  Sustainability is a critical need.   The first more critical problem can be solved right now by acting forcefully.  The second can be solved easily too, but requires longer term efforts.  We won't be able to protect in the future what we have destroyed now.

Read some of the authors that have been presented.  

Finally, to restore the focus of the discussion, will someone (else) answer the question(s) presented?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Many offset critics appear to be shadowboxing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 76 Responses

A Demo: A Question asked and answered

Hey, all:

JMG writes:

I certainly plead guilty to thinking that addressing the climate crisis will require everyone changing his or her behavior.

What about you?  Do you think otherwise?

AS do I--plead guilty, that is.  We are all in the problem together but many, mostly in the West, but also those elsewhere who are influenced by the West, are a much bigger part of the problem.  Simple per capita overconsumption, driven up to some small amount by simply middle class people, but mostly by the rich, whose consumption most of us cannot imagine.  So, no, I do not think otherwise on this issue.

Thank you, JMG, for the timely opportunity. This is how it is done.  This is how questions are asked and answered.  

Furthermore, for those whose profligate lifestyle and consumption has made much of the problem, and made it much worse by their negative role models, more is expected.  This is why offsets are so suspect on the face of them, since they are a device of the Corporate Oligarchy.  As I tried to explain, suddenly causing Adam Stein to apparently turn stupid but certainly condescending, the progressive nature of the U.S. income tax has been completely undone, and offsets are no better, being part of the same phenomenon.  If offsets are to have any value they have to realize real reduction on Carbon, i.e., the reason for Wiscidea's and my request for substantive projects; and the value of the offsets have to  be proportional to the consumption of the individual buying the offsets, i.e., progressive.  

Real reductions come from practical doable effective activities. Speculation and hype and research and future unproven hopes do not belong in that group.  This is why agro-fuels are such a disaster on so many fronts.

Ignoring serious and sincere questions make the so-called experts look less and less qualified.  Avoiding clear and direct answers  make you the experts look condescending and arrogant.  Or it makes you look like you have a dark, ulterior, greed-driven motive, which of course you will not share.  

Give us some answers.  Wiscidea has repeated his question, very decently and honestly.  Some of the so-called experts have sought to tear down 'planting trees' (by the way, said in the most superficial blase manner imaginable, reflecting NO understanding of biology or ecology or their intrinsic non-human values), but while tearing down trees, have nothing else to propose, but vague generalities.

Come on.  My rule is simple: a type of project receiving offsets qualifies to the extent it prevents Carbon, sequestered over geological time, from being extracted and consumed.  Can't possibly rank them ("OH, dear me!")?  Just name them.

There are some excellent comments here that deserve response or at least praise, but the format and practice here seems to thwart that.  I regret this condition.

Let's have some real answers. I have modeled the process for you.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Many offset critics appear to be shadowboxing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 76 Responses

Wow, a small request is too much?....

Hey, all:

Man, the crickets and other night critters are deafening!  Or, is it, "I know you're out there I can hear you breathing."  Or maybe more appropriate to the cyber venue, "Gee, what happened--yer keyboard broke?"  

Or is it that planting trees is actually all that is available?   Now, would that be a straw man or a smokescreen?  Oh....but it was our illustrious thread author who referred to "straw men". So, what about these putative "offset providers"?  

I would sincerely like to know, is there anything beyond the sappy (ooh, sorry) idea of planting trees?   It really is a simple genuine request.

Regarding the plea from several of us here, and I suspect millions around the world, of preserving biomes worldwide, it really should be done without regard to offsets.  In reality it is an act of generosity and humility, and not an act to somehow compensate for a lifestyle.  You are not offsetting anything.

Someone here mentioned changing the name of offsets.  Taking the suggestion at face value, I would say absolutely not: change the color of the lipstick on a pig and you still have a pig.  

I mentioned, not at all facetiously, that for many, offsets are a form of distraction from the real issues.  Judging from the large number of threads on offsets here on Gristmill, one has to wonder just how the "distraction" function works, and to whose benefit.  It certainly is a distraction trying to track the threads.  Just what purpose does this serve?

Some of us await constructive honest answers.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Many offset critics appear to be shadowboxing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 76 Responses

Okay! Rank the Offsets!

Hey, all:

So far, I have virtually nothing but a litany of 'buy/plant trees', which is so vague, pardon me, vacuous, that it could have come from the Stooge-In-Chief, George Dumbass Bush.  So, someone provide a list of Carbon offsets offered, and since some of you are so proud of them, rank them by value, importance, or efficiency.  And as someone here said, the only qualifier should be to the extent that it prevents Carbon, sequestered over geologic time, from being extracted and consumed--you can't "un-ring" the bell, you can't put the Genie back in the bottle--not in the time of crisis.  All the rest is a shell game.  Let's vet them.  Go!

Oh, and a prima facie argument that offsets are a distraction:  this thread...and the eleventeen Godzillion ones before.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Many offset critics appear to be shadowboxing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 76 Responses

Yeah, but....

Hey, all:

No, perhaps not any clear evidence to support the indulgence charge, but 2 things from near the opposite ends of the spectrum.  1) You always hear of fatcats buying offsets, but 2) you never hear down at the bowlin' alley:  "Yep, got to git me some o' them offsets.  Mabel--beer me!"  Just ...doesn't...happen.

Actually David, I strongly disagree with you.  I have no cable TV to feed me talking points, and I seldom spend any time with the blogosphere.  My observations and conclusions are pretty much spontaneously my own.  

I see offsets as a clear indulgence, a device of the rich: pure and simple.   Further, it is a way, deliberate or not, but I say it is, to delay progress on sustainability.    

And every device instituted by the Corporate Oligarchy favors the....what?--Corporate Oligarchy.  The U.S. income tax used to be progressive--maybe 90% was too extreme but that is another issue.  What has happened, however, is that since the 60s the upper rates have dropped while the lower rates have changed very little.  Billionaires--that's BEEEEEEElionnnnaires--now pay the same 28% rate that school teachers and taxi cabs driver pay.  Do we not see the potential for abuse and outright fraud?  Why do we think offsets would be ANY different?  

I have done a LOT to reduce my foot-print, and continue to make incremental improvements.  Like someone here has said, we need to brag about it.  Those of us who live in a responsible way, by choice, but far more critically by necessity, are very much like small farmers who just want to get a decent return on their effort.   At the same time the fatcats are sippin' whiskey and smokin' big seegars.  

No. Sorry--it's an indulgence.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
sOn Many offset critics appear to be shadowboxing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 76 Responses

Lotsa stuff

Hey, all:

Ya know practically all of the observations David Roberts has made are universal in the U.S.?  Not to diminish his comments, but to point out that to a large extent we are much the same.  Do we not know that?  Le's see: overweight, unattentive, on the cell phone, ADHD generation children, autistic children, I-Swear-Are-Undiagnosed-Psychopathic children gone wild, children overweight, big box shopping, no Mom and Pop stores, few real local veggies/produce/eggs/anything without conducting a major search, middle class, strip malls, (strip joints), new highways to nowhere, new highways right through developed areas, potholes in both places, uniformly different, differently uniform, millions of new stick-built, alien-corporate-monster-crapping-across-the-landscape-new-housing, ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots, mirror image Wal-Marts and Targets and McDumb FatAss....  Hmmmm?  did I miss anything?  I am SURE I did....

AND... under the surface: diabetes, heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, near bankruptcy, past bankruptcy, poverty, credit cards maxed out, one paycheck from disaster, broken/decaying/neglected infrastructure, living on borrowed time, family violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, overprescribed medicine, insurance companies cleaning and moving on, declining education achievement, declining economic potential, families dissolving, ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots....  Hmmmm?  did I miss anything?  I am SURE I did....

When my daughter was very young I could be a mean MOFO protecting her, so I can really understand scolding other children when needed.  I fully embrace the "it takes a village..." rule.
I even embrace the same rule on a broader scale when dealing with parents who haven't got a stinking clue how to.  I called 911 in a grocery store several years ago and had a woman goddam arrested after she shook the Hell out of her child in front of several people.  To those who think this is bad, grow a spine for Gawd's sake, and for those who have done things like this yourselves, fight the fight.  

Atlanta is a huge metro area, with tendrils spreading everywhere (which I maintain are cancerous but that is another story).  It also occurs  to me that metro areas are a microcosm (macrocosm?) of problems everywhere.  

Vacations have great educational value, if we pay attention.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A few random observations before getting back to work posted 2 years, 4 months ago 25 Responses

Why? Corporate Oligarchy!!

Hey, all:

Hey, Jon:  It is because of their extremely conservative, jealous, protective, archaic nature.  They are protecting their financial corporate position.  I believe at its core, though, that they think only of commodities they can control.  And a physical commodity, like coal, oil, natural gas, nukes, or agro-fuels, is all they have to hold onto.  For Wind and PV, the energy itself is free, and only the equipment requires investment--a huge loss of control.  Sadly, it is still one of the best kept secrets around, despite efforts of loudmouths like me.  

I suggest the Corporate Oligarchy will hang on as long as they can while giving in a little at a time, with such stupid ideas as offsets and Carbon taxes, to milk the system, and bilk the public.    

We in the U.S. need to work hard to find and elect legislative political candidates at all levels to turn things around in 2008.  I see little happening until then.  And if we fail, we will have much longer to wait.  Much better to act on our own.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

   On Blue plus green equals sustainability posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Uh, like...What I've Been Saying

Hey, all:

Heh heh heh, nice of you folks to catch up.  Ah, cool it, I'm just gloating a little.  

I have said here several times, and elsewhere, that both PV and Wind could be manufactured on a huge scale in the U.S., just by using abandoned or unused factory floor space, and rehiring workers of all kinds.  And to be clear, I am not talking only about huge windfarm scale turbines--I have my own wind turbine out my window.  It has a 14-ft diameter rotor.  So think range of scale.   Furthermore, the first output of these factories should be placed on the very roofs (obviously when and where practical) of the factories, to help make the factories sustainable.  Then the products of the factories needs to be radiated to the local communities surrounding the factories to benefit them and their energy costs and provide buy-in and community pride.  The economic ripple effect would be amazing.  The benefit on Carbon reduction would be amazing.  The reduction of imported oil would be amazing.  The shutdown of coal mining, transportation and burning in power plants would be....wait for it....a-mazing.  Electric vehicles charged with sustainable energy would further reduce fossil fuel use.   Reduction of demand for agro-fuels would reduce food prices.  Human health, in the absence of ground level ozone and other pollutants would benefit.  Goddam nuke plants would be shut down.  

The observation on the complexity of turbines and the range and number of employment opportunities is absolutely correct.  PV, using electronics, plastics, glass and metal, is nearly the same.

Installers and technicians would have a huge thriving new industry.  Transportation and shipping of equipment would add to the economic ripple effect.  The thread here containing  among other items the auto worker who is moonlighting as a PV installer is a perfect example.  He could have more work than he could possibly handle if given the chance.  

All of this benefits reductions in GHG and slowing GW.  We move toward sustainability and  benefit biodiversity.  Still another thread here revealed that ~40% of the domestic electricity demand could  be met by using existing roofs, at a energy conversion rate of 10%.  As the conversion efficiency increases, as it is, we meet more of the demand.  

So, good thread.  Wind and PV on all scales would have a huge wide-ranging benefit on many issues.  Thanks for catching up--ah, just gloating.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On Blue plus green equals sustainability posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Sample Size, Explanations, and a Request

Hey, all:

Hey, Michael: I have to agree with Miles and Chris and some others, that your sample was small and skewed.  Gatherings of this kind tend to be stratified in many ways.  In fact, the only gatherings which include a wide age range are probably those of families.  Still, it is a jumping off point to involve more people.  

I think some of the explanations why this and that did or did not happen are really stupid and uninformed over-generalizations, however.  Instead of fighting among ourselves we need to organize, to attack the Corporate Oligarchy, and celebrate the advances this event and others have provided.  

It would be interesting to hear from the under-30s (my daughter is 21 and I am 58): if Live Earth was not the best, what kind of event--of any kind--would you support?  What would be the first, best, single way to create exposure and involvement and organization?  Here is an opportunity to really think and express yourselves.  Real or cyber, festival, music, poetry, convention, monster trucks, what-evah.   Bringing them to light is the first step in bringing them to life.  Give us your best.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Where were younger people at Live Earth house parties? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 19 Responses

Ah, but fergit wishing you didn't have to!

Hey, all:

Hey, Keith:  ONE more thing: you did GOOD by writing  and providing your letter for all to see, including--I hope, GM and the Live Earth people.  If anything, harsher stronger wider criticism of accepted, unexamined destructive practices is what is in order.  Be proud--Be assertive--Kick ass!  FAR better to do so than to look back and wish you HAD--when too late!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Again and again posted 2 years, 4 months ago 7 Responses

What I Said

Hey, all:

Well, for the first time Bailo has provided something that is not pure distractive troll crap.  His comment about the rich avoiding service in the Civil War is very close to the "rich man's war, poor man's fight" point I made in one of the other threads on offsets.  Borrowing from another Civil War theme, 'of the rich, by the rich, for the rich'. [Deepest apologies to Lincoln.]

And the obvious references to graft and abuse--precisely what I have been saying.  These ideas and their proposals need to be attacked at every opportunity, for they are wrong and have no possible benefit for reaching sustainability, and in fact will hinder progress, and further widen the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'.  

What we need is advocacy and activism, not passive   weak reporting.  What we need is fundamental change, not sucking up to the Corporate Oligarchy.  If the electricity utility you choose actually has on line sustainable electricity (from Wind or Sun), you would have the option of purchasing Green Power.  Otherwise it is FRAUD.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Breaking all the offset rules posted 2 years, 4 months ago 16 Responses

"Firestorms"? Aw, please....

Hey, all:

Hey, Amazing:  With all due respect, the use of the term 'firestorm' conjures up a little too much fear.  These are rather rare, the term overused in the media, and they usually have some topographic, fuel, or weather feature which is the trigger for the fire.  Firestorms in movies are usually in cities and caused by the uniquely human violence of war.  

One of the things we are seeing is the result of a history of fire suppression.  Studies of tree rings, and pollen and ash in soil horizons have shown that under natural conditions, fires occur much more often--in Texas most areas, regardless of historical habitats, used to burn with a mean period of ~10 years.  There are areas in the country with 100+ years of fuel--due to fire suppression--dead material of all types which otherwise would have burned decades ago.  This is what was found to be one of the causes of the huge Yellowstone fires in the Summer of 1988 and many other places.  Policies in place since then have reduced this tendency, but governments and people are slow to learn from them.  We continue to build in fire-prone areas, and act like everything is made of asbestos, and is fireproof.  

And,  please: "continuous firestorms"?  What would sustain such a sci-fi event?  Fuel supplied from the depths of Hell?  

No one here who is serious is maintaining that events have no meaning or impact.  That is indeed the province of the Cheney-minded fools.  

Events have great impact on those who are immediately affected (rivers where I live in South Texas are still at flood stage), and certainly events at the very least are data to be recorded and examined.   The global and regional weather system is probably in flux as it reacts to climate change.  This could well be due to human practices--burning previously sequestered Carbon from deep in the ground--but we are dealing with a very complex global weather system.  Time will be needed to determine if GHG and GW is the cause.  

None of this matters to me,  though, for what it is worth, since GHG/GW is already a reality.  I live with as small a foot-print as possible (off-grid, free-range chickens, composting toilet, rooftop water collection system, etc., with more to come),  and I conduct prescribed burns for clients to help restore the historic fire regime and historic habitat locally.  Since fire is an essential part of terrestrial ecosystems, the biggest danger is the foolish humans who do not know better.  Thus our fearful overreaction.      

We are certainly free to conclude anything we want from what we see, but science has to take a longer more deliberate view.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Global warming cancels 4th of July celebrations posted 2 years, 4 months ago 28 Responses

Wow, I never knew

Hey, all:

Wow, after decades of hearing that song, I have never paid enough attention to it to recognize the lyrics.  And as much as I admired Marvin Gaye in years past, it never occurred to me to check.   Now I will have to find it to listen to it. Thanks for the lyrics...and the memory.  Good song for the occasion and sadly it seems to be timeless.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On The song still has relevance today posted 2 years, 4 months ago 8 Responses

I Reply

Hey, all:

Gee, being called out by name by someone charging an ad hominem attack is a new one--and the perverse contradiction mustn't go without notice, especially since I scarcely committed such an attack.  I pretty much referred entirely to written content and not personal character.  And for the record I did pose my own rule, however facetiously on the face of it.  However, speaking ad hominem, what's this crap of using the third person?   And "not getting it"?  Someone is exhibiting both arrogance and defensiveness.

Okay, more to the topic.  I mentioned Thoreau and Muir not entirely for the broad reasons of the beauty and clarity and fundamental correctness of their writing, but they have laid down gold for us to retrieve at our leisure, and for eternity.  Here is an appropriate, huge-ass nugget from each of them:

Muir:  "We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men...trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense.  They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comings and goings are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much."  

And Thoreau:  "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

Reading the works of the authors mentioned--not suggesting it is an exhaustive list--affords us vastly more and even better rules, simply expressed and universal.  Learning, internalizing, and applying THESE rules will go much much much MUCH further, than even the best we could do.  

More specifically, the afterthought Rule 0, weakly expressed as it is, is by FAR the most important, and properly stated, observed, and applied little else is needed.  The first rule should contain the powerful essence of what we must be doing--"striking at the root".  As such, all the rest is a prime example of "hacking at the branches".  

Regarding offsets--first, they are the choice and preserve of the hypocritical, insincere, pretentious, lazy, and rich.  They are the environmental equivalent of "rich man's war, poor man's fight".  It is right in line with the rich being able to get the best health care, while billions die of the simplest of illnesses.  It is mental, emotional,63 financial social Darwinism.  

Second, since they are a construct of business, bureaucracy, and government, they are subject to incompetence, unfairness, inefficiency, and fraud.  Compare the U.S. income tax: the richest billionaires now can pay the same 28% that teachers and taxicab drivers pay--a goddam criminal act if one ever existed.  Why does ANYONE honestly think offsets will have any justice associated with them?  Even a Carbon tax has the same curse attached to it.  In fact, practically everything associated with the Corporate Oligarchy needs to be illuminated with the harshest possible light, and driven to extinction.  That would be poetic justice indeed.  "...part of the problem."

Third, they objectify, in the most typically arrogant anthropocentric way, the biotic environment.  (SEE MUIR.)  Trees (and any other biotic entity regarded as a commodity) are seen as just vessels for humans to use at their whim--standing waste receptacles for the result of human blind greed.  And as referred to here by the thread's author, the focus is only on trees, and not forests--and if YOU "don't get it", you are indeed a waste of effort.  

Both offsets and Carbon tax are the default argument of the weak and greedy.  "Indulgence[s]",  indeed.  

I will unapologetically say that my arguments, my entire approach, has an emotional aspect.  The complete lack of emotion, the cold, aseptic, self-centered greed-feeding approach we have historically used, is one reason why we are in such a goddam mess.  We need to focus on the first principle--fundamental permanent universal change in our mentality and associated lifestyle--in every way possible, until all observe and apply it in our every action, and the rest will not be necessary.  

I await more ill-considered 'rules'.  Save us from engineers.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Offsets should be the last thing you need to turn to posted 2 years, 4 months ago 31 Responses

More Gee Whiz extremes

Hey, all:

As a further example of anecdotes not being data, and therefore not being valid for reaching conclusions, my area has now received over a year's worth of rain, assuming the local mean annual rainfall.  And our rainiest period of the year, August and September,  with the tropical activity, is still ahead of us.  And this afternoon it rained again like a big sumbitch.    

One piece of valid folk weather wisdom is that "extreme conditions tend to end extremely".  As an example, today as I write the same low pressure system that has been over the Southern Great Plains for maybe a month has now moved to the East over Arkansas and Louisiana and an outflow boundary of thunderstorms is clobbering Alabama--one of the states with the worst drought conditions 2 weeks ago.  I hope they don't experience too much flooding and any loss of life.  

It may have helped earlier in the discussion to point out that although there seems to be some correlation between the current extremes and GW, this does not establish cause and effect at all.

Meanwhile the tank for my rooftop water collection system is full--my cup runneth over.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On Global warming cancels 4th of July celebrations posted 2 years, 4 months ago 28 Responses

A Hodgepodge of 3 Rules? Geez....

Hey, all:

So Rule 1 is stentorian, stilted, superficial, harsh, misguided, and sprinkled with hubris, Rule 2 is a backtrack on Rule 1 disguised as 'exceptions', and Rule 0 (?) is an afterthought inserted at the start.  And the response reveals little if any consensus, to be mild.  

I propose Rule 3 (actually the fourth rule, but who's counting?): Ignore Rules 0, 1, and 2, and instead carry out a careful thoughtful accurate rewriting of the Rules.  Rule 3 Part A--don't call them 'Rules'.

It appears to me there is an overabundance of engineering, yet alarmingly, a real lack of understanding of the less tangible, more basic qualities of nature.  I strongly suggest some authors to correct that lack of understanding.  Writers such as Thoreau, Leopold, Muir, Wilson, Abbey, and many that others can suggest, will provide a great deal of understanding, in an engaging, non-threatening manner.  Of course, reading without reflection and internalization is useless, so real effort will be needed.  

If done correctly, many of the appropriate principles for survival, of the entire biotic and abiotic community, will suggest themselves, and be the basis for ideas much better than mere "Rules".

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On Offsets should be the last thing you need to turn to posted 2 years, 4 months ago 31 Responses

Whose Fault?

Hey, all:

Gee, first I think Van Fossen is the smartest of the bunch, well ahead of the curve.  If he were to get a break and find that there are more meaningful incentives for sustainable energy, he could hire away some of his colleagues on the assembly line.  

Second, I feel worst for the wage workers although they are the product of a union which has historically reached too far and has now lost much of its strength.  Many laid off still receive very high levels of pay while there is no work, adding to the cost of cars.

But whose fault?  AS has been said, it is the senior managers in the marketing and design departments, with their archaic, backward, timid lack of vision.  It was their stupidity to focus on huge SUVs and PUs and to ignore fuel efficient vehicles while the Big Auto Detroit lobby fought against progress in CAFE standards, and Japan, Korea and now China are kicking our asses.  The managers  might as well have their feet in cement, except that they will drag down and drown entire communities and industries with their sloppy intransigence.  

Being worker-owned might be among the best solutions, provided the senior managers are booted the Hell out, preferably without a golden parachute, which will never happen.  Two of the worst drains are institutional costs, and a lack of innovative responsive efficient vehicles.  They need to kill the big stupid PU/SUV TV ads.  Hydrogen, electric cars, and hybrids all need to be vigorously researched, designed, tooled up for, and put on the road.   Waiting 'til 2011 for the Volt is stupid and terribly inefficient.  The survival of the domestic industry depends on action and innovation and progress.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Do higher MPG cars mean fewer jobs? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Origin of...erp..."Clean Coal"...gag....

Hey, all:

Hey, Dave G&R: I would bet, like I said before, the term came right out of the butt of the Big Coal marketing department.  It is probably intended as a sterilized update of the old "King Coal" term, in use for generations.  The National Mining Association, which is the advertising/lobbying/political slush fund organ of Big Coal, might very well have come up with the term.  And, I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled it out of their butts without a clue or a hope of a program or technology to tie it to!  

And thanks, Erik, for the names and links!  Useful!

Now, if if I may be excused, I gotta go hurl.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On For shame posted 2 years, 4 months ago 29 Responses

More on Laughing Falcon

Hey, all:

You both are right on the money.  The bird is an example of convergent evolution, in which a falcon has adopted both the appearance and feeding behavior of an accipiter.  My old Peterson guide states: "unfalconlike in flight".  And the Herpeto- prefix does refer to its diet of reptiles.  Related overlapping species, in range and habitat, are Collared Forest Falcon Micrastur semitorquatus and Barred Forest Falcon M. ruficollis.  

These species (and many others) get as far North as the northernmost cloudforest in Mexico at Rancho del Cielo Preserve, where the clouds from the Gulf of Mexico collide with the Sierra de Tamaulipas.  

I wish I could be more positive about their status, and the others you pictured, but with population increases, development pressure, habitat fragmentation, etc., etc., etc....  Sometimes I think pictures and skins and other preserved specimens are all we will have left.  Sorry for the depressing note....

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Some good news and some bad news posted 2 years, 4 months ago 9 Responses

Gallons per 60 miles?!

Hey, all:

Lest we enter into a new era of using whatever statistic or rate we want whenever we want it, much like Humpty-Dumpty uses words, I think we need to stamp out this silly attempt to substitute an inane measurement for a simple, widely used, understood and accepted one.  

Otherwise I propose a new system of length measurement: quarks, larger quarks, really large quarks, and 'blow-yer-mind big-ass quarks!  

The entire discussion here hinges on the validity of mileage ratings, when what matters is real-world mileage.  Either EPA needs to test real cars in controlled tests on public roads, or they need to collect legitimate mileage experience from consumers.  The "rating" practice is fraught with bullshit and distortion and does not serve the public.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On Consumer Reports' real-world mpg figures make the Prius even more appealing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Who are the 6 top environmental groups?

Hey, all:

Does anyone know who these are?  It would be interesting to find out how they have responded to Markos's book and the charge that they have become part of the problem.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On For shame posted 2 years, 4 months ago 29 Responses

Oh Gawd please!

Hey, all:

"Clean Coal" is a tortured lying oxymoron smoke screen of the Big Coal marketing department, and those who use it apparently possess no independent thought.  We might as well embrace murder, ala the Sopranos, and every street gang, as a means to an end, the end being greed and profit all all costs to others.  Coal IS the enemy of the people, but above all to the biotic community.  Coal is poison from start to finish.  

Kos is absolutely wrong in endorsing Montana coal and its governor's support of it.  This is different from endorsing true conservative positions, and not the authoritarian bullshit ideologues of the Neo-Cons and PNAC.  He and all the rest do indeed need more information.  

I do, however, also happen to deplore the provincial selfish behavior in the environmental community.  Far more sharing is indicated, and delaying cooperation will only delay progress.  It may even prevent it.  To have wasted the resources and opportunities is inexcusable.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On For shame posted 2 years, 4 months ago 29 Responses

Yes, A Cliff but by a Different Name

Hey, all:

We sure are rushing blindly toward a cliff, but its name is "Non-sustainable expensive commodity energy with no installed alternatives and a lifestyle propelling the societal vehicle at top speed".  (No, not exactly bumper sticker material.)  

We all talk about fossil fuels (and nukes), ignoring that they are unsustainable in all aspects and inevitably rising in cost, but most importantly that they cause environmental destruction and wars.  We have slavishly accepted the mentality as electricity as a commodity, for some to monopolize and others to pay for.  We have done nothing to systematically address the crisis of overconsumption, and instead wring our hands over emerging economies wanting to capture and mimic our Western wasteful egocentric lifestyle.    

Regarding precipices, Amory Lovins wrote "Soft Energy Paths" in 1977, in which he states:

....  Perhaps we are approaching a new vision, a new synthesis.  As we start to see, in Alwyn Rees's phrase, that when we have come to the edge of of an abyss, the only progressive move we can make is to step backward, we begin to realize that we can instead turn around and step forward, and the the turning around--the transition to a future unlike anything we have ever known--will be supremely interesting, an unprecedented central project for our species.  

Faust, having made a bad bargain by not reading the fine print and so brought disaster on the innocent bystanders (Gretchen's family), was eventually redeemed and accepted in heaven because he changed his career, redevoting his talents to bringing soft technologies to the villagers.   We need, like Faust, to refashion hubris into humility; to learn and accept our own limits as a fragile and tenuous experiment in an unhospitable universe; and to grow content to live as a people, not as gods.  Our choice of the "road less traveled" can truly make all the difference.  But if we wish to have the chance to tell of our choice, "somewhere ages and ages hence." then we must chose soon, and choose wisely, for all the ages.  

As beautifully and as passionately as Lovins writes, one would think we would have gotten the message, but we are still waiting and wasting time--30 years and counting.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Parsing 15 years of electric data posted 2 years, 4 months ago 14 Responses

Poor Arguments

Hey, all:

As usual, people mistake events and anecdotes as trends and data, respectively, which they are not.  At the same time many areas are experiencing droughts, the south central U.S. (areas of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma) are experiencing record rainfall.  Last year, up until late September, I had recorded 7" of rain in my area of Texas, then got 5 more inches in 3 days.  This year, my area received by May the same amount through all of September last year.   Now on 4 July we have already had a full year's worth of rain, assuming the mean annual rainfall here of 27.5".

None of this (or the anecdotes in the lead message) either prove or disprove droughts or periods of abundant precipitation.   We disparage the unsophisticated global warming denialists and their narrow ill-considered arguments, and then we use the same narrow arguments ourselves.  

We really should do better.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Global warming cancels 4th of July celebrations posted 2 years, 4 months ago 28 Responses

"The Dark Lord ..." How DID we ALL know?

Hey, all:

As evil as the real Darth Vader was, it is highly appropriate the truly evil real-life Dick Cheney has taken over the nickname.  He really is evil personified, and the true "Decider".  IN fact, his hand and arm is so far up Bush's ass, ol' George is just a puppet, which of course is all he has ever been, but the cheap puppeteer's curtained stage has been knocked down.  Together they will go down in history as the worst Presidential administration in history.  What we have to do for now is to limit the damage they can yet do.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Vader, Cheney, same same posted 2 years, 5 months ago 9 Responses

Another Critique from a Critic

Hey, all:

These are some very persuasive comments from Russ George.  "Slick" is the word that comes to mind, but despite that there is some substance here as well.  It does need careful examination, though, and there are some glaring weaknesses and missteps.  

First, you better step away from calling people "fringe environmentalists".   This will get you shot down faster than just about anything.  This attempt is pejorative, prejudiced, a little desperate, and seriously mars your position.

Second, as already referred to, the term "mudslinging" also has no place here.   If you learned all you should from the experience you catalog, and based on the initial suggested quality of your comments, you would not resort to such foolish immature attempts to characterize the genuine, informed, earnest observations, research,  and conclusions of others, whether in the scientific or the environmental community.  

Flowery speech substituting for substance is a trick employed by politicians and marketing types, designed to flatter, threaten, and persuade.  There is a difference, however, when sincerely presented and backed with substance.  It remains to be seen which is the case here.  

As examples of the apparent weaknesses here, I had a great deal of difficulty finding out anything about the HaidaClimate project, beyond the PR hype.  It was difficult, for example, just to find out what the Hell, and where the Hell this is.  On a basic level, it would be very easy to offer an easily accessible online citation that would provide some technical and scientific background for the project, absent the PR crap.  We all can tell the difference between thorough planning in documentation for real habitat restoration projects and projects intended to establish mono-sylviculture stands.   Give us some citations.  Refer us to some photos to show evidence of progress or succession.  This is a widely used tool to document change in habitats over time.  Just as a simple example of the level of effort that should be expected, I live on 32 acres of brush, and have cataloged 315 species present thus far.  I have done it, and continue to do so, as part of my own work in prescribed burning, habitat management and restoration, and it preserves and maintains my property tax status.   I would expect a much more thorough comprehensive effort for such an extensive and intensive project as yours.  Give us some documentation.  

Regarding the proposal to seed the ocean with iron to promote algal growth and carbon sequestration, we should expect some similarly high-quality, substantive supporting results available in documentation.  One thing that seems completely out of place and therefore questionable is the assertion that "it is clear the single most critical ocean issue is the decline of available iron..."  Greater than overfishing?  Greater than habitat loss?  Greater than pollution?  Greater than filling of estuarine habitats?   Greater than the loss of freshwater inflows?  Greater than any of the externalized impacts of industry and urbanization and agriculture and war?   And how have humans so seriously curtailed the creation and deposition of dust in the environment that it threatens the marine environment?  Provide some accessible proof.  

As presented, this all sounds like using yet more untenable technology devised to chase destructive technologically-caused mistakes.   So, in fact, it is not a bunch of "fringe environmentalists" as you so glibly characterize us, as it is real substantive problems with the proposal and the use of questionable, troubling technology.  

Cut the rhetoric and provide the proof.  "...and effectively sequestering fossil carbon for millennia."  How long have you been collecting data?  

I would reiterate and second the comments that Nick Berning and Bart Anderson offered.

Carbon sequestration without first cutting off the source of the Carbon is like trying to apply the brakes on a runaway train while we still deliberately have the throttle wide open--sheer ignorance resulting in displaced wasteful focus.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On In an op-ed, Russ George claims his company has been unfairly maligned posted 2 years, 5 months ago 29 Responses

How About an Online Calendar?

Hey, all:

Hey, Lindsey:  Thanks for reviving a worthwhile thread.  Looks like you have a HTML nested blockquote command.  

I agree with what you say, as well as the broad approach to the movement.  This is bigger than any single focus, with tremendous synergistic potential.   And checking your website on the planned marches gives me the idea that an centralized online calendar of events of all types from all organizations would be an excellent, low-rent, but highly effective resource, and a very useful first step in a broader, more effectively organized movement.  

I keep asking, When will the movement truly start?  Who will do it?  Do the 'leaders' deserve the title?  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On To act not to act posted 2 years, 5 months ago 20 Responses

More On Organization Beyond Fasts

Hey, all:

Jon, if I may, let me address the details of your last message, and how they tie in with my last message.   Parenthetically, much of this has already been covered here in other threads--by dozens if not hundreds--but the organization of this website doesn't help this effort.  

I do understand none if this is easy.  If that were the case it woulda been done already.  And yes, there is a lot of jealousy, territoriality (the house cats), money issues, etc., which is why I think a new separate umbrella entity is needed.   This avoids some of these things.  I am not aware of the pessimism on size you mention, and I would counter that under the circumstances, large scale is what is needed, but better organized in any case.  I think the "right chord" has to demonstrate to all that everyone has to be involved and have central access to information.  E.g., if you had not mentioned the scheduled fast here, which is at least somewhat a spontaneous action on your part, many may not ever know about it.   It seems trite and overused, but Knowledge indeed is Power.  

Maybe the lack of financial and people resources can be overcome by not creating a new physical entity as such, but by existing organizations designating existing money and associated personnel to a "cyber organization" whose physical presence only starts out as a website--"Seeding" if you will.  Once established, it should (must) stand on its own, and with support it would take off like kudzu (oops, not the the best simile).  

And why is 'calling' needed?  Aren't email and text messages far more efficient?  And Internet and RSS?  Given that there are many overlapping memberships and signups, if each organization were to turn over their membership lists (with the individual permission of the members) would not the result be exponentially more powerful?  What if that membership in the millions were to be contacted, and every possible conceivable media outlet, and a mere 5% (or Hell, 1%!) of that membership suddenly showed up in front of a refinery in Sudan, or a coal-fired power plant in China, or a polluting mega-farmer in Chicago, or a manufacturer of land mines in Croatia, or the GE building in Manhattan, or any seat of corrupt government (ooh, that's redundant!) anywhere, or any other of the thousands of places where they are needed--what would happen?  What if it were on the SAME DAY?  This CANNOT HAPPEN without scale and without organization.  

A couple of years ago there was a news report of someone who organized an "action", to use a vague generic term for lack of more accuracy, where people were notified by text message to show up somewhere (I think) in NYC.  Bang!--they descended like locusts and caused some joyful disruption, and then as if by magic they left.

WiserEarth has over 100,000 organizations registered worldwide, Avaaz has many thousands of members signed up, and there are dozens of others I simply don't know about--and it is not for want of knowing, either.  

And although not specifically focused on the same specific issue, we can all help each other.  Social justice, environmental justice, economic justice, health justice, biota justice, and  educational justice ALL benefit when ONE benefits.  And geography and localized issues need not be isolated, since it is all united anyway, so the isolation is in fact an artifact of human provincialism--jealousy.  

I do agree that Gristmill is helpful in developing ideas, but the design of the site actually contributes to a 'memory hole' phenomenon, where ideas seem to disappear with no notice.  If it is not "Topic du Jour" it quickly falls out of sight.    

I have made my own efforts  to approach some of the leadership by email, with mixed results, and with no real positive responses.   Still, the time is now.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On To act not to act posted 2 years, 5 months ago 20 Responses

Organization + Real Protest = Success

Hey, all:

Hey, Jon:  Thanks for the responses.  I wish thousands of involved people would make a similar admission about the stage of organization, for that is the first step in correcting it.  

The framework of an organization can be created overnight--OVERNIGHT.   What is needed is a single universally encompassing entity, avoiding all the parochial egos in separate organizations, combining instead the talents of all the organizations.  This is what I was referring to previously:  a single powerful worldwide organization that many millions of people worldwide can embrace and be embraced by.  

This could be done overnight by the 100s of leaders of the various groups, communicating by email to set up a name, an organization, funding sources, and a budget.  We know who they/we are (or we have failed yet again) and they do, too.  As it is now, however, we are like hyper autistic territorial house cats who nevertheless know the value of organization.  

I don't wish to disagree, but I can not agree that fasting is state of the art in protest, when billions fast all the time by default.   I am sorry, but it really is a vacuous, insipid action under the circumstances.   Delaying breaking out the steaks, pasta, veggies, and wine for one day (or the fast food or the slow food) really has to be among the most superficial of protests.  

I do agree fasting has value in principle, but it needs to be highly public, prolonged, and it needs to involve many many many participants worldwide.   Highly public to gain exposure and support, prolonged to reinforce the commitment of those involved, and with millions worldwide to reinforce the global scope of the problem and the commitment of the participants and organization.

You mentioned "Rising Tide", which is a model of action I would endorse, absent destruction of property.  Destruction of property is a great tool the opposition uses to shut down an action, and it is against the principles of civil disobedience.    And "Rising Tide" has growth and organization challenges and it competes with, but hardly complements, other similar organizations.  On the other hand A single organization promoted by all has near-instant exposure.  

I would also submit that organization and protest has to precede electoral success.   In fact, electing responsive, progressive, populist, environmental politicians is an intermediate goal, not really a starting point.  And indeed the very success in the 70s you mention was preceded by organization and protest.  

I saw on PBS just the other night about a women's right-to-vote protest in 1913 in DC with thousands the day before the inauguration of Wilson.  This is a quintessential example of creative organization and protest, and they had no E-MAIL!!  

We really MUST do better--and the time is now.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On To act not to act posted 2 years, 5 months ago 20 Responses

Mislabeled Thread

Hey, all:

Sorry, but this is mislabeled.  This should read "...Contrived Ignorance/Drink the Neo-Con Kool-Aid base...".  I actually possess some conservative positions (conservative in the original sense), so attributing racism and frank ignorance behavior to 'conservatives' is insulting.  

Having people who slavishly follow the Neo-Con lead is a triumph of the Straussians.  Assuming every conservative thinks that way is our own mistake.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Take a National Review cruise to find out posted 2 years, 5 months ago 22 Responses

Lifespan of Windfarms?

Hey, all:

Hey, Gar:  You wrote: "Wind farms last twenty years or more."

Don't you actually mean the components of installed equipment have a useful lifespan of ~20 years, requiring replacement or overhaul after that time?  

Otherwise I completely agree with your position--add PV distributed to every rooftop possible and practical and you have the best solution!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On We don't need to keep burning coal, oil , and gas for electricity posted 2 years, 5 months ago 37 Responses

A Predictable Condition

Hey, all:

Sadly, Obama has now begun the dance that they all do in order to get elected at any cost, clearly appealing to no one on substance but to all purely on style.  

I had hope for him, thinking maybe he might be willing to have principles, but I find I was wrong.  He is no better candidate for improvement in the system than any of the rest.    

They all seem to wish to offer nothing while offering everything, parsing and shading every last thing until it has no substance at all.

An interesting comparison is the article elsewhere here that severely questions U.S. coal reserves, while at the same the Illinois lobbyists claim 200 years reserve.  Lies are the coin of the realm.  And politicians and lobbyists have all the money.

JMG: I would bet that worldwide the planet has many 'PACs' of a sort but all have their own specific  purpose.  WiserEarth has over 100,000 organizations worldwide, but getting a consensus on action is harder than herding hyper cats.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On It ain't working posted 2 years, 5 months ago 6 Responses

That's all.

Hey, all:

Hey, Tom:  Aw, gee, I did read the message, thank you, and I had no intent to criticize you, but to point out the duplicity of BushCo. and Big Ag.  And we both know you don't have to be explicit about assumptions, rather they can be a priori.  

I enjoy your writing and your position, but the overriding problem is the soulless crooks in charge.  That's all.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Time to kick it old school on the farm bill. posted 2 years, 5 months ago 22 Responses

Is There an Error Code for this?

Hey, all:

Hey, Tom:  At the risk of seeming rude, I should point out the glaring errors that render all of what you say fruitless.  By the way, I have the Jun/Jul 2007 issue of MEN with your and Willie's articles--and you are in the very best of company.  

The errors are assuming that BushCo. and Big Ag care about "ag policy as if people mattered", or that they tell the truth.  While I agree in principle with with the ideas you present, nothing the political appointees or the Big Ag reps can be trusted--nothing.  

I have heard in the past couple of days about a move to extend the current Farm Bill.  It probably is just as well, to take it up again in Spring 2009, after we work our asses off and create some larger, populist, progressive change in the government.  

Again, I am sorry to dismiss your thoughtful efforts, but there are such fundamental problems with the band of criminals in charge, that until we address those problems, any and all honest efforts to get things done will be pretty much wasted.  There are roots of evil to be attacked.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Time to kick it old school on the farm bill. posted 2 years, 5 months ago 22 Responses

Infinitely worse than a foot-dragger

Hey, all:

Yep, what Jo said, but even more--Bush is a liar, willing to say anything for corporate political authoritarian benefit.  COUNT ON IT.  History will record it as such--plus, that he and his administration are the worst in U.S. history.  The many millions of human lives and uncountable lives of the Earth's biota, let alone entire species, plus trillions of dollars misspent on their narcissist exercises, only has yet to be written up.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Hold the applause on the administration's posted 2 years, 5 months ago 9 Responses

Clarifiication on Percent

Hey, all:

The percent references I used are confusing.  The statement in the other thread was that at 10% efficiency, and using all the roofs, PV would cover 55% of electricity demand.  Increasing PV efficiency increases coverage of demand.   As efficiency increases to 15-20% we begin to approach 100% coverage of demand.  The statement has nothing to do with the theoretical limit on PV,  but the information is helpful.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind  and Sun!  On A man ahead of his times posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Decoupling and Recoupling

Hey, all:

Hey, Spaceshaper:  

You said:

"this is a decoupling I cannot support. I take it as axiomatic that our sustainable well-being in harmony with all our sibling species in this once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity world of ours is supported on a stable tripos of economics, ecology and social justice or it is not supported at all.

The decoupling that is necessary is the association of economic growth with economic well-being. I enjoy reading Kunstler because he is so very clear on showing that economic growth pursued as a value in itself is in fact a source of major economic disbenefit.

I greatly agree on the inclusion but I guess I don't understand how we can include ecology and social justice without disengaging from economics to make space.  Care to elaborate?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Are the two inextricably linked? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses

Edison: Abused and Ahead of his time

Hey, all:

Yeah, I really should find a good biography of Edison.  He really seemed to have a populist approach to inventing, thinking in terms of the common person's needs.  

I did read somewhere that of the 100s of patents he had only a few are still currently (oooh pardon) in use, one of them being one of the least efficient, the incandescent bulb.  I was shocked (ouch sorry).  

He did work on the 3 things mentioned here: wind turbines, solar, and electric cars.  But I think his employers and stockholders were more interested in what they could make money on in perpetuity, hence the 'electricity as commodity' mentality that stills hypnotizes us, rather than really on improving people's lives.

I sincerely hope the charge has now gone down (oh darn it!) on the 'electricity as commodity' mentality and we can get to distributed generation.  On another thread, at current efficiencies of 10%, PV on roofs would cover 55% of electricity needs.  Efficiency on some types of  PV panels is in the range 15-20% so soon we could approach 100%.  In the meantime, any percent is that much less GHG.   And between Wind and Sun, I get to waste electricity.  Yep, PV and/or wind could do a lot more.  

It's those damn neighbors and that damn corporate oligarchy!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A man ahead of his times posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Decoupling further

Hey, all:

Then the next thing should be to decouple "well-being" from "economic", so that we realize other tangible and many intangible components of well-being.  Full citizenship/rights for all classes in all cultures, maybe?  Transforming the U.S., who spend more on health care per capita than any country, but who have the worst health care system just about in any developed country?       Reducing the spread between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'?  Are those means or ends?   Hmmmmm....

We really have to get started on that pesky corporate oligarchy!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Are the two inextricably linked? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses

My Apology to Erik

Hey, all:

Hey, Erik:  

I wrote my last message without seeing your message ("thanks") and I apologize for misrepresenting you.        

To set the record straight,
Erik Hoffner's comments do not reflect those of the Orion organization.

If I wasn't such a militant or didn't have so many scars, much of this ignorance and superficiality would not matter.  Several people here immediately reveal their stark deliberate ignorance of ecology and the destructive scale of human impacts. There really is no excuse.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On They may not all be bad. posted 2 years, 5 months ago 82 Responses

Uh, like ya know, I mean cause and effect?

Hey, all:

Yeah, real rigorous science goin' on here.  We might just as well blame this on Castro or Chavez.     Far more likely is a shortfall in municipal or NGO  budgets affecting neutering services.  Hey, It's Okay to be paranoid if you know they are after you, but sometimes paranoia is just stupid.  And still other times, it is a useless distraction.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On I'M IN UR PLANET, GETTIN ALL HOT N BOTHERED posted 2 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

Yeah--How about platforms without blinders?

Hey, all:

As others have already said, looking only at AGW reveals severe myopia.  There is a very broad sweep of environmental issues.  Sustainability may the THE most important, since it covers so many other issues.  The candidates only respond to what the demand is.  This is not leadership.  We need to not let them get away with it.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A guide to their positions posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

A quick criticism of the writeup

Hey, all:

Hey, Canis:

I referred to the study that was cited and the writeup here as a 'logical black hole', because neither made a lot of sense.  I read the short condensation of the study which left lots of stuff out.  Two serious apparent flaws--there were no control plots or base line data referred to, and seem to be absent.  The other is they did not address the simultaneous changes in nitrogen levels in the Chesapeake during the study.  Those are concerns specific to the study.  

The other logical issues are specific to the writeup here.  I am concerned that Orion's director took such a blase stand on the entire issue of invasives.  I would expect a much more robust critical stand, since this is one study of one species in one area that by many accounts is flawed.  Even if it wasn't defective, the study does not invalidate a host of observations and studies that prove the global destructive character of invasives.

We really do need to make clear the distinction between natural species spread and the human-caused kind.  The natural kind is how we have the global species richness present before humans started to travel.  But since humans and the other hominids moved out of the Rift Valley, and then later the Euphrates, we've been doing two highly deleterious things--exterminating natives and introducing non-natives, and these can be completely independent or intimately joined.  

We've known about the ecological destructiveness of invasives for much longer than we've known of GHG and AGW, yet it is responsible for a great deal of global biotic depauperization, perhaps even magnitudes more, and in spite of this many of the same people who champion reductions in GHG and AGW apparently could not care less about the great damage from invasives.  We could reverse AGW and still have an 80% loss of species richness.    

We have tremendous global anthropogenic destructive forces actively causing loss of biodiversity.  Attempting to dismiss any of these great destructive forces seems like a useless distraction.  At the very least the writeup should have been much better done.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On They may not all be bad. posted 2 years, 5 months ago 82 Responses

Can't Get Over It

Hey, all:

I have resisted getting into this since it seems like a black hole of logic, and has has been pointed out, there are some problems with the study.  

I grew up, as many people did, with the most successful PR image in U.S. history--Smokey Bear.  
Fire was my mortal enemy.  Smokey did his job, and I bought it.  Through school, I ultimately learned the place of fire in the natural landscape, and gradually turned my back on Smokey.  I now conduct prescribed burns as part of my profession.  Quite a turnaround!

But at the same time I learned about invasive species and the destructive impact they have.  So while I abandoned Smokey, I developed a fierce distrust of invasives.  For this reason, I can't get over what appears to be some inconsistencies and weaknesses.  I'll just say this about Hydrilla--for any isolated, questionable study I'll raise you hundreds of square miles of impacted wetlands, ponds, lakes, etc., weakened biodiversity, extirpated species, loss of habitat, etc., due to Hydrilla.  I'll do the same with hundreds of invasive species in all taxa.  To attempt to suggest that this means invasives are not a serious environmental issue is doing a severe disservice to the truth.  This is flawed research.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On They may not all be bad. posted 2 years, 5 months ago 82 Responses

Timeless and Critical to Me

Hey, all:

Hey, Colin:  I sit here right now writing, since I too feel the "verge".  I have the utmost respect for those who give birth--this stuff is hard!  [To be clear, my respect is constantly high regardless.]  I have been contacting some groups and acting on other suggestions, and trying to flesh out the ideas.  I'll have something current  in an hour or so.  So, for what it is worth, stand by!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Reality checking the polls posted 2 years, 5 months ago 43 Responses

WE are ALL steenkeeng rich....

Hey, all:

That is a very good perspective, BioD.  I had tried to find a calculated value for the amount of area occupied by rooftops in the U.S., as a maximum potential area, but have not been able to, but if you squint your eyes while looking at the appropriate squared area you can imagine it dispersed across the the country on rooftops everywhere.  The individual pixels representing even large urban areas would just about get lost on the screen.  

I will acknowledge that once our friend Sunflower clarified that being "rich" was based on a global spectrum, he/she is right--we are all rich.   But I will point out that while PV is not the 'be all/end all', it is a big part of the cumulative progress we all need to make to achieve the reductions we all need--again leading by example.   The vast majority of the burden is properly on us.

We are losing habitat globally and locally everywhere you look.  What is left has far greater value by default and is the wrong place to deploy direct solar energy collection devices of any kind, given that they require area, and the available unused area already taken out of productive biotic function.    If we do this, as has been pointed, there would be zero net loss of land area for solar.  I am extremely protective of my desert, and the sandhills, and the woods, and the grasslands.  We have to change our approach entirely, and consider the full spectrum of consequences of our actions.  This is an extremely important aspect of sustainability.  The bar is high.

I have had a problem for a long time with the mentality, which seems very good at perpetuating itself, that electricity is only something that only someone else can make and you have to buy.  This "electricity as commodity" mentality I suppose would qualify as a meme, since it reinforces itself efficiently, is selfish, with little external value, and has had a lifetime of several human generations.  How about we render this one extinct, too?  In fact, the meme of the topic of the thread and this one are related and maybe even mutually dependent and reinforcing.  Can memes "have each others' backs"?

Just like Sunflower, I will retire at this point.  Best regards to all.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Why we gotta knock solar? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 35 Responses

Still part of the problem

Hey, all:

There are several reasons why the way is not yet clear to have democratic (that's a small "d") legislation possessing transparency and accountability.  One is simply the margin with which Democrats control Congress, a margin that is quite small, so political wheeling and dealing still prevail to get votes.  Another reason is the ridiculous riders that bills are burdened with, the addons and pet projects that are unrelated to the subject of the bill, but from my viewpoint the core problem is elsewhere.

Regardless of which party is in control, each of the elected officials has an army of lobbyists representing the Corporate Oligarchy assaulting him/her.  And all the lobbyists are tied eventually to the contributors who make it possible for those running for office to pay for campaign ads and activities.   Finally, while there are few in office who are clearly there due to fraudulent, unverifiable election results, this potential still looms in the backs of the minds of many people around the country.

In order to really have straightforward honest democratic legislation that addresses people's concerns, we have to first address these three things: Campaign Finance, Lobbying, and Election Fairness and Verification.  True reform of these laws will help reduce the power of the Corporate Oligarchy, and give us back the legislative process.    

'Pre-emptive' language should be struck from all the legislation, but it seems a favorite of bidness interests, so it will be a struggle.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Threatening local control in our food system posted 2 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

GAWD, please--AREA not LAND!

Hey, all:

What MUST be killed is this ignorant assumption that LAND must be covered!  Please for GAWD's sake, look down on some rooftops--huge, empty, heat-emitting/sunlight-absorbing expanses of seldom-used space going to waste!   Put PV on the goddam roof!  Covering up land--anywhere--is sheer ignorance and damages terrestrial ecosystems.  I would oppose any PV being placed on virtually any land area.  Doing so would be as stupid and ignorant as me taking my own PV off my own roof, and covering the yard.  

We have to end this stupid stupid stupid notion that sustainability has to be in the hands of some electric utility, or IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!  Why does this mentality of 'electricity as commodity' persist?   Is everyone a shill for $ mega-million electricity providers, to continually reinforce this mentality?  Will SOMEONE answer this?--when millions of people can make their own electricity on THEIR OWN ROOF!

Distributed generation of electricity on millions of roofs:  residential, business, warehouse, schools, shopping goddam malls, is a simple sustainable energy solution.  

THIS is the archaic, 19th Century, industry-induced, society-blind-to, meme that must be killed!

PUT THE PV ON THE ROOF!  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Why we gotta knock solar? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 35 Responses

Not Non-Native!

Hey, all:

Ouch!  Barred Owls are not non-native, but are in fact found in many many areas throughout boreal North America, even surrounding the ancient forests.  They are much more successful and adaptable than Spotted Owls, and that is the reason why they encounter each other. In fact, habitat destruction impacting Barred Owl habitat can cause their extirpation, forcing them into Spotted Owl habitat.  So that part of the report is absolutely right, and BushCo. gets another demerit.  Of course, after millions of demerits, what difference does it make?  What we oughta do is impeach the lying thieving criminals.  Sad to say, not much will happen 'til then.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Raptor 'Round Their Fingers posted 2 years, 5 months ago 2 Responses

Donut bacon wrap

Hey, all:

This is like the "large" person on an exercise bike  sweatin' and peddlin'--at the same time eatin' a donut wrapped in bacon.  Yum.  No goddam self-discipline or even self-awareness.  

And the high-tech, 'trust-us-we-know-what-we-are-doing' shills are those who in a former life were the ones who put the horseshoes on the broke-down horse we rode into town on, and now they want to sell us another identical horse.   Yet more subsidies or research competition, when the problem is HOW TO CUT DOWN ON CARBON PRODUCTION.  The throttle is stuck full open, and all some people can think of is trying to slam on the brakes.  

This is not sustainable.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new solution from a plasma physicist posted 2 years, 5 months ago 15 Responses

Gettin' Hives

Hey, all:

All this reveals the reality that all of us have tastes and preferences that can dictate where we live, or at least where we would if we could.  Some people really thrive in the country; some can't wait to get the Hell out.  Some people buy rural places and pinch themselves for years thinkin' they be dreamin'; some sell out in months.  

I had to laugh when I read the bit about getting nauseous when out of contact with concrete: I get hives when I am in too much contact with concrete!  No, really!   I live in an area that is truly rural (the phone lines were installed under contract with Alexander Graham Bell himself!) with a density not higher than maybe 30 people per square mile.  I can go days without hearing a vehicle, partly due to the isolated nature of my place.  

Another thing: until 9 years ago I lived all my life in an urban environment (horizontal and not vertical, however), and moving to the country was one of the best things I have ever done.  It sounds like Wiscidea may feel the same.  I am sure millions feel the same.  

But as Wiscidea says "The problem, in my opinion, is people who move from urban areas and then try to bring it all with them. I'm not sure why they move to the country if they then proceed to mow down nature, poison the water supply, and fill the air with noise from their leaf blowers."  Mine is an area with a lot of high dense brush due to brush encroachment over 100 years of fire suppression.   A 30-acre tract near me was being looked at by a family and they said the first thing they would do is bulldoze the whole thing and plant flowers and grass.  Fortunately they didn't buy and the brush remains.   Unfortunately millions of acres are bulldozed annually anyway.  This illustrates what Wiscidea said so well.    

Still, I appreciate urban culture as well, but I can control the dose (to prevent the hives) so it works out well.  And if there is a function or activity to go to in my own 250,000 city, I try and plan it so I can take care of other tasks or errands as well.

There is another troubling feature here that hasn't been brought up, and that is the phenomenon of 'pioneers' opening up unoccupied areas, which then attracts others, ultimately leading to the destruction of the original attractive qualities of the area. 'We destroy what we love.'  Some people seek that proximity they see to start with, but of course over time the proximity turns into density.  

There probably is a continuum of human population density and associated problems from zero to millions per square mile.  And the same density in one culture would certainly present different problems in another culture.  A Western suburb may have transportation problems, whereas an African slum may have disease spread/hygiene as the biggest problem.    

I am very intrigued by the notion that loss of fossil fuels may cause people resort to manual small scale farming.  And people say I am so out of touch!  Hah!

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Images of dense development posted 2 years, 5 months ago 28 Responses

"Pre-emptive Preambles"

Hey, all:

First time I heard about this threatening troubling language was either the Federal Medicare Bill (another so-called "REFORM" law), or a law on medical policy for Big Pharma (another egregious bit of cooperation between business, bureaucracy, and politics = Corporate Oligarchy).  In this case it states that 'no one has any legal recourse in a case of incompetency or criminal act once this law is passed'; i.e., 'SCREW YOU!'

That's your Corporate Oligarchy in action.  So it is used to screw states and individuals as they please.  How the Hell did we let things get this far?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Threatening local control in our food system posted 2 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

Subsidies and Change

Hey, all:

Yes, BioD, and so many of the subsidies are in entrenched fossil fuels, nukes, and the newcomer, biofuels.   And of course all come from the entrenched interests of the corporate oligarchy.   And I see no other way to change things without first changing the Big 3:  Campaign Finance, Lobbying, and Elections.   These 3 perpetuate the oligarchy, and their continued existence threatens out future.  

Change those laws, avoid at all costs the "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" scenario, and then reorder the priorities on subsidies.  Of course, unlike Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Nukes, and Big Agri-Bidness, all these subsidies would have an expiration date, since all the created energies and industries would be expected to be self-sufficient, sustainable.   After all the ultimate feedstock--the sun--is free.

Interesting ideas here.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On A new idea for how to transport the stuff in cars posted 2 years, 5 months ago 28 Responses

Small wind? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Hey, all:

I am pleased, believe me, at the increase in utility scale wind power.  I do have a continuing concern about the process, though: when a windfarm is completed, the environmental responsibility is assumed to be complete.  Even in an area such as near where I live, at the convergence of the Central and Mississippi Flyways (the "neck" of an immense, continent-wide funnel), planners will not acknowledge the potential to avoid avian deaths, and the very real possibility of using operators who can feather and stop turbines when necessary.    They are proud of their very low projected rate of deaths, but that number will spike when a large flock goes through.  

The title here however refers to an interest in seeing small residential and commercial installations increase.  Of course, these would compete with utility wind, so maybe I am wasting my breath.  However, if the goal is sustainability , and not just business as usual, every path we can take to get there should be taken.  

Money for loans and consulting for residential and commercial wind applications would allow many more people to supplant fossil power and nukes, in places where windfarms would not work, due to size and environmental constraints.  Lead time would be minuscule.  Loans for these installations would allow owners to reduce costs for utility power, speeding up payback.  

It seems like such a no-brainer.  So, Huh? Huh? Huh?  Who best for this but the people with the expertise and the money?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On An insider's view of the wind industry posted 2 years, 5 months ago 6 Responses

Re: "Too Late" for What ? Hear Hear!!

Hey, all:

DAMN stinkin' skippy!!  I feel my radical blood rising, and it feels GOOD!  An' le's all hork some big fat loogies at defeatism!  Ser-i-ous-ly!

Thank you, Bill.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Scientists weigh in posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses

Ah, Country Livin'

Hey, all:

Hey, Jon and Wiscidea:

First, Wiscidea, I meant no disrespect and it appears you answered your own question in that you are certainly an exception--not part of the vast group whose house would be found in a photo like the sprawl shot shown here.  And furthermore, in many ways we are the same exception--I live out in the country as well and have taken steps similar to yours--I have restored native habitat through prescribed burning, and it do the same for ranches in my area as part of my profession.

Still my criticism of the sprawl mentality remains, if for no other reason, the ubiquity of the aerial photo shown here, along with all its consequences.  You are correct, though, people need to learn of improved means of living, as you suggest.    

Jon, I'll answer your question if you will, since I fit the 'no-concrete' mold (ha ha!).  I used to commute to work 100 miles round trip, for 3 years after I bought my place, but I knew when I did I was going to change my professional focus and I did so.  I seldom drive now without combining tasks and destinations so my driving is greatly reduced.  If roads were better/safer I could bike some but not for now.  If I am not on a job which requires driving, I only drive for groceries, etc., no more than once per week, sometimes less.  I probably buy more per capita each time, but buy less often.  May be I can find an electric or hybrid car I can plug it in to my off-grid power and drive my already small Carbon footprint down many more sizes!

I also have the space and interest to raise some of my own food (free-range chickens for meat, eggs, insect control, grass control, fertilizer), and veggies and fruit (by the way, here is a secret that Big Pharma would probably kill to suppress: celery contains a compound that lowers blood pressure! 3-n-butyl phthalide--pass it on!), all of  which greatly reduces Carbon production for several reasons, starting with you are not buying produce potentially transported halfway around the world, and you ain't travelin' to buy it.  Mine is also organic.  This was part of my point earlier when I criticized the lawngrass mentality, which is highly resource intensive but yields little more than cosmetic appearance.   The satisfaction of raising the food, washing it, preparing it all by yourselves for yourselves, is very satisfying--plus I trade things with neighbors, which improves community.  

I absolutely agree with "That's one reason why global warming is not the only consideration in terms of fossil fuels."  Higher fuel prices will impact poorer people far more than the wealthier, and because there are probably more poor people in rural areas than suburban, the wealthy and commercial needs will probably keep demand up.  After all, the trend in fuel prices over time is always UP.  

And I am pretty guilt-free, so fuggitabatit.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Images of dense development posted 2 years, 5 months ago 28 Responses

Lower case "c" conservatism smeared

Hey, all:

I honestly don't think this guy has the depth for anything requiring thoughtful authenticity, intelligence, or hard work.  Much better between "Action" and "Cut".  His record as a Senator was a snooze.  

And this really is not conservatism.   It is anti-knowledge, dismissive elitism sucking up to the corporate oligarchy--the Fundamentalist, knowledge-snubbing, what's-in-it-for-me? Republican elitist base.  

Real conservatives--with lower case "c", reacting to the fear-based authoritarian tactics, ought to be running for the hills.   We'll see.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Fred Thompson delivers rational, informed, passionate speech about the need for immediate action to posted 2 years, 5 months ago 6 Responses

Here come the distractions/distortions.

Hey, all:

Immediately we get distracted into Boron and nuclear power.  Nuclear power is not sustainable, and concentrates power and money in the corporate oligarchy.   What part of SUSTAINABILITY don't you GET?  What a goddam joke.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A new idea for how to transport the stuff in cars posted 2 years, 5 months ago 28 Responses

Environmental/Sustainability Movement

Hey, all:

Very useful comments, from many of you.  Colin, Spaceshaper, and Canis provide excellent counsel.  I appreciate it when genuine thoughts are fully explored and expressed.  It is even more greatly beneficial when those thoughts can be found in one focused, quality thread!  

I had expressed an idea of a structure of a movement that has 3-4 levels or approaches, including the gurus and policy experts, organizers, and the good, vast numbers of people who have the most to gain from an improved future.  These levels blend one into the other. Each one is vital to the others. All need to be focused, energetic, inviting, and fun.  

It also occurs to me that there is a wide range of issues, in the field of environment and sustainability, that can be brought under the same umbrella.   If we just look at the topics that get exposure here in the Gristmill: overfishing and subsidies, greenhouse gases, farming, urban sprawl, energy sources, migration due to environmental displacement, loss of biodiversity, mass transit, bicycle-friendly communities, creating communities, and on and on, a selection of this full range becomes evident.  Many of us here are already well-versed in many of these issues, so we recognize the umbrella.

We can all contribute to the overall goal of protecting the environment and improving the level of sustainability in a cooperative effort in all these issues, because all of these separate issues have at their core the environment or sustainability.  As examples that have already been mentioned, slavery is not sustainable, nor is denying a social group the right to vote, or economic freedom.  All of these issues, wherever they are still practiced, are still ours.  If they are still uncorrected, they are still ours.  No justice, no peace.  No freedom, no peace.   No safe future, no peace.  

It makes our numbers much much greater and therefore much harder to ignore.  It is a "numbers game" and together we do have the numbers, we just need better organization.  

I have commented on the desire for a MoveOn-type internet-based approach to communicate all these issues to people, enlist them, and carry out the full range of what I agree should be nonviolent.  Note I am not talking a 'cyber-protest', since this is too abstract--only cyber-organized.  If anyone has any ideas on how this can be achieved, as Ross Perot says, "I'm all ears!"  And if someone has a better model to promote or investigate, please bring it up.  This is no time for silence or timidity.  

Paul Hawken and associates set up the website WiserEarth, which now has over 100,000 groups worldwide.  I don't know how many of those are in the U.S., but there must be many thousands, with maybe millions of members.   The potential is great. What is needed is a mechanisms to get them together, which the WiserEarth model has done, and to turn them into activists, which MoveOn did in their efforts.  

Sunflower and SMLowery referred in sequence to radicals and the 60s, and that applies to me.  I ranted a little in the thread on the magazine article tailored to the AARP, which touched a nerve.  If we had the Net back then, and cell phones, etc., along with the committed non-violent radicals that we were, things would have happened much more vigorously, and maybe with quicker results.  

Thank you all for the excellent comments and ideas, and let's keep up the focus here.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Reality checking the polls posted 2 years, 5 months ago 43 Responses

Viability of the Dead, and the Sun

Hey, all:

From the intro:

"That is the best way to maintain coal's viability in a carbon-constrained world."  

Did no one see this statement?  Since we need a "Carbon-constrained world", to reduce Carbon production and energy costs, why the Hell do we want to "maintain coal's viability"?    Isn't there a foolish disconnect between needing to stop, but stomping on the brakes AND the gas at the same time?  Wouldn't that guarantee at least a worn out vehicle/system with NO guarantee of avoiding a disastrous result?  

And little gray Hydrogen-blind parrot,

At least we agree on something, that the Sun is the best source.  PV and wind, powering solar Hydrogen and batteries for transportation, distributed generation of residential and commercial electricity, plus solar domestic water heat everywhere,  would ALL--ALL--be very worthwhile applications.  But now you'll parrot some chart for the 100th time.  

Solar has vanishingly small environmental impacts, provided already altered ground surface is used (open land is far too valuable, even as green space, to be covered by PV panels), its materials are highly recycled and recyclable, it is egalitarian, universal, and free.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!    On A new report posted 2 years, 5 months ago 39 Responses

Revulsion, etc., and Electrical Utility Strikes

Hey, all:

Hey, Canis:

Please don't for a minute think I was offended by your reference to environmentalists as missionaries.  It stems from my personal revulsion to religion, given my interpretation of history, plus personal experience and observations.  And you are probable right, Islamic missionaries past and current are no better than the Christians.  I do understand your message as well--"missionary zeal" is a well-understood concept, and there is some of the 'this is for your own good' mentality, which may be a subset of an elitist mentality.  We need to avoid the 'TIFYOG' approach in any case.

Hey, Amazing:

While I certainly like your spirit, and I had not thought of  such a strike, it suffers from a paradox.  First, as Spaceshaper says, the numbers are very small, but more importantly, the potential participants are in the wrong places.  States that have incentives such as net-metering and net-pay have all the gird-connected energy sustainability customers who would disconnect without energy penalty, vice versa in the states that would be the preferred targets.  

A strike would need a great deal of sympathy participation from others including some who would like the incentives, but if they shut down, there goes the AC and fridge.  Others would benefit from reduced rates due to competition, but getting the word to them is difficult because they are an entrenched part of the 97%.  

Please don't be dissuaded, but these are some issues to address.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Start with CFLs, and let the lightbulb go on posted 2 years, 5 months ago 25 Responses

We'll need Federal and state subsidies

Hey, all:

This is indeed part of the solution, but transit authorities everywhere will need subsidies to replace fares.  

Maybe after we have paid off the $2.2 trillion ($2,200,000,000,000) bill for Iraq.  Or maybe we can put it on a card.  

I don't mean to be critical, just that it won't be easy to do.  We should also expand mass transit greatly, but intelligently, with the goal of reducing Carbon production.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On It's not part of the precipitate, it's part of the solution! posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Frustration of excellent parallel threads

Hey, all:

This is a very helpful thread, with many useful thoughts.  I find in the last couple of days this can be said of several threads, all having at least some overlap on the subject of communication with the rest of the public who are not yet participating, and the appropriate mechanisms for making that happen.  This overlap sometimes happens despite the title or topic of the thread, so it frustrates the potential that having a cohesive thread might have.  

Fear is an extremely important topic, since although there is legitimate fear of an unaltered future, and that fear should be expressed, it needs to be done in a balanced manner.  To me, there are two obvious problems: overstating the fear, leading to dismissal by those we most need to reach, and falling into the trap of using fear as a form of manipulation and authoritarianism.  

A couple of stand-out ideas for me are "The 5% Solution", the SMART acronym, and the "I will" slogan.  These need to be promoted widely, as well as others, since most of us agree the abstract but still numerical "20% by 2020" and "80% by 2050" will pretty much guarantee declining interest and commitment.  

It has been pointed out, here and elsewhere, that we are products and creators of habits, and since it is hard to change those habits, some discipline or a ritual to replace habits is very helpful.  Radical change without an obvious threat is difficult.  Simple change is, also, without some mechanism to ease and remind.  "One a Week" or "One per Month" used to help promote a sequence of improvements seems to help, because just making one small change and calling it good is no progress at all.  

Gee, Canis, when I read your title I got a tinge of revulsion,since I have learned a little about the violent exploitative history of missionaries, especially Christians in the era you refer to.  I have worked on environmental issues since I was a kid, so even having the 2 terms mentioned together is a little upsetting.  I hope as we continue our mission (ooh, sorry) we can avoid any historical comparisons.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Start with CFLs, and let the lightbulb go on posted 2 years, 6 months ago 25 Responses

Some vague answers and more thoughts

Hey, all:

Hey, Colin:

Thanks for the feedback on the idea.   I have contacted some people on the idea of an environmental/sustainability MoveOn-style organization to give a movement some structure.  MeetUp, Step it Up, WiserEarth, all have some characteristics that recommend them, as well as Grist.  I have mentioned Grist as an obvious choice before.  

What I remember of the origin of MoveOn is that it came about in the late 90s as a nonpartisan attempt to "move on" from the nonsense of the Clinton impeachment.  It still had some nonpartisan feel in 2000 as I remember, but by 2002, it was left of center.  I get emails from them everyday, on U.S. legislative issues, someone to contact, issues to consider, people to meet and watch a documentary video, and discuss its content, etc.

It occurs to me after reading a part of Paul Hawken's new book, "Blessed Unrest", that such a centralized organization could help get a lot done.  With all the numbers Hawken states, the potential is huge.

I wrote on another thread that a movement of this kind would have 3 or 4 functions, with gurus handling the large public issues, activists such as us helping with communication and organization, and but the meat of the movement would be to rapidly increase the 3%.  And yes, it has to be intellectually and "emotionally accessible" in order to connect with people and get them to act.  This would be a mainstream component to reach the everyday person, both for personal lifestyle changes and to effect improvements in government.  Part of it is building community, which is a benefit of MoveOn on a million local scales.  

This is a movement with many parts, as the threads here indicate.  Because of this, there will be many themes and many subsets of interest.   From agriculture to zoology, we need to be inclusive yet still maintain focus.  

I mentioned fear, but the context I was referring to it has to do the manufactured irrational fear used to manufacture consent by the current administration.  This leads directly to Iraq, the Patriot Act, and violations of FISA.  

There is legitimate fear, without a doubt, but that fear can be rationally expressed, avoiding the excesses we now have.  

There will be some feedback soon on the contacts I mentioned, and I am continuing to look to see if there might be an existing organization or one in the works, so there will be more news.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Reality checking the polls posted 2 years, 6 months ago 43 Responses

Who Will Step Forward?

Hey, all:

I concur with Colin, that we should focus on educating the other 97% since the 3% is the choir.  And that is the precise point of the surveys, that the great majority of people either don't know or care.  For many it is just too abstract an issue to understand, which is why I have repeatedly suggested some key simple steps people can take.  Although understanding is best, it is not always necessary to understand the issue before the layperson acts.  

Authoritarianism and fear are the last techniques we should be using.  Those are the bankrupt lies of the conservative right and the corporate oligarchy, and they have no place in the truth.  Substituting new lies for old is a big step backward.  

In fact, many of the factors people bring up in the polls are precisely the distractions created by fear, which divert us from the real issues.  They are created and manipulated by those who would achieve just that.  

Been saying this for a while now, what is needed is a broader more active online network, a progressive environmental version of MoveOn.  I have asked this before and gotten no answer:  Who will step forward to do this?  When?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Reality checking the polls posted 2 years, 6 months ago 43 Responses

Heat Pumps, Birds, Corporate Oligarchy

Hey, all:

I wish could understand why folks are drooling over this.  Its range on batteries is 40 miles?  The EV1 was ~200?  The Volt doesn't rid of us of either fossil- or bio-fuels, and it is called a "world changer"?  Bullshit.  But, I guess the propaganda has had its desired effect.  Big Oil and Big Agri-Bidness are breathing a sigh of relief--and seeing continued dollar signs.  

On the other hand, there are maybe 4 models of plug-in all-electric cars scheduled to be released in a year or so, which have had little or no coverage here--only the Tesla that I have seen, it is well out of the range of most buyers, and there will not be very many produced.  Not much of a solution, but at least people will be able to buy and not just lease it.    

Hey, Amazing:

I agree with some of what you say in "Died", especially about energy source solutions, but I have to correct the information on what you call "geothermal" heat pumps.  I am sorry to get off-topic (but being off-topic seems to be the standard here).  The term "geothermal" needs to be stomped out of the vocabulary for this use.  "Geothermal" properly applies to heat from seismic substrates and other sources.   What you are referring is much better called an earth- or ground-coupled heat pump.  There are a host of references on the Web that confuse the terms, so it is a widespread mistake.  The big difference in a heat pump is whether it is air-coupled  or earth-coupled.   Air-coupled heat pump simply has a blower (familiar to everyone) as medium and heat sink.   Earth-coupled uses glycol in plastic lines as medium and the soil as heat sink.  

The other part that needs correction is the temperature.  It is not 50 deg F unless your Mean Annual Air Temperature (MAAT) is 50 deg F.  The rule of thumb is that the soil temperature at the site at a depth of 6-10 feet is approximately equal to the MAAT or MAT of the site.  I live at 28 N latitude and my MAAT is 74 deg F.  Canada is, what?, 30 deg below zero?--(Okay, I'm kidding!)  

The MAAT affects the efficiency, design, and use of the earth-coupled heat pump and how much it may have to be helped do its job by other means.   It cools less well in my high MAAT region, and it heats less well in cold climates.  

None of this is to imply that I don't like them, because I do.  They work well, provided they are specified and installed correctly.   They cost more initially but are more energy-efficient, and they last longer and are virtually silent.   Just get a professional who knows how to do them.    

Little grey tweet:

No, instead, when I think of unsupported and unattributed graphs and charts on someone's own website, that is when I have a rancid taste--like when a Blue Jay tries to eat a Monarch butterfly--but mostly I ignore it.  And I didn't bring up Hydrogen here--you did.  Sticking your head in the sand like an Ostrich by foreclosing research into sustainable energy sources, such as distributed solar Hydrogen, out of extreme bias is very limiting and it stalls progress--a real turkey--at the same time you crow about cutting edge research into batteries.  All of your biased, blind objections and your distractions (like a Killdeer) and diversions into fossil fuels have been addressed.  Often, the chickens who stall are the ones who wind up first with a visit to the abattoir.  Why don't you pick up a hobby?  What is your agenda?  

For myself, I support parallel lines of research into truly sustainable energy sources, which will end reliance on Carbon, including solar Hydrogen.  This would be in opposition to the selfish, genocidal, anthropocentric, archaic, destructive (and parroted) edicts of the corporate oligarchy.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Looks like the plug-in might actually happen posted 2 years, 6 months ago 55 Responses

NO GMOs: Amen

Hey, all:

Yep, Sam, Monsanto and crew have the perfect business model.  First they develop and sell Roundup, and tell people to 'dose 'em real good!  We'll make more!'  Then when dose rates started killing crop species the mad scientists and soulless marketers developed Roundup-ready crops.  Yay!  Now to counter the new set of Roundup-resistant crops and target species we now arrive at the next generation of Roundup!  

The combination of a long history of high dosing, resistant crops, and target species have seriously degraded a lot of ag land to the point where it is   a toxic or sterile medium--biodiversity of a parking lot.  

There have also been very troubling advances in GMOs, and the response from the mad scientists and soulless marketers has been Terminator technology, which they say will prevent GMOs from escaping.  Yeah, right.  

We need to outlaw all of them.  Period.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Pesticide efficacy is decreasing posted 2 years, 6 months ago 22 Responses

Your picture is in bad taste

Hey, all:

Grist, I would ask that you not caricature Lincoln that way.  It really is in bad taste.  You can do much much better and not be offensive.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Be there! posted 2 years, 6 months ago 2 Responses

EV1, parallel, and serial

Hey, all:

I mentioned the greater complexity of the Volt compared to the EV1, and the response was "oh no it isn't!".  Good retort....

Parallel systems are highly complex, since two separate drive systems have to be joined before the power reaches the wheels.  Series systems have power losses with conversion steps.  Both systems are at least twice as complex and in each, both of the parts are roughly half their optimum size.  

The EV1 was killed by politicians and industry. Period.  Explain that away.  Practically all first  production efforts are troubled with reliability in the field, and even more so when it is groundbreaking technology. When the company behind the product is forced to do provide it, these issues become suspiciously magnified, as if sabotaged.  

Used with a sustainable electricity system, either stand alone or grid, emissions of electric  vehicles would be magnitudes less.  Rebut that.

Hybrids using fuels, either fossil or biofuels, will only extend and exacerbate the problem of Carbon production.  And Big Auto, Big Oil, and Big Coal are the beneficiaries, and the gift comes from the corporate oligarchy. Distract attention from this.  

Among the offspring of this 'appointed royalty' inbreeding are goofy ideas in which to sink billions of subsidies, such as Carbon sequestration, CO2 being justified as gas lift technology for stripper wells, charcoal being plowed into farmland, and GMO trees modified to grow with the speed of kudzu.  

There is a 1000-pound gorilla at the tea party and everyone is talking about cake recipes.

Hell is much too good for all of us.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind  and Sun!  

  On Looks like the plug-in might actually happen posted 2 years, 6 months ago 55 Responses

"No Gobbleization here!" ...

Hey, all:

...As they wipe their chins, pick their teeth, and hide their grins.  Gee, the cynical part of my brain lights up when I see 'corporate' and 'climate' together on the same day, much less in the same phrase.  Remember, "Greed" is the name of the broke-down horse we rode into town on.  And we expect the global corporate oligarchy to come to our rescue?    

I suggest it is much more likely that the fat old grey men will do what they can to avoid responsibility, twist things to their advantage, equivocate, divert, delay, distract, and obfuscate.  Their words and their deeds do not match.  Loss of stock value has a paralyzing effect on Big Bidness, and virtually no one will move unless everyone moves.  

I do admire other countries who are at least somewhat ahead of their peers in the U.S.A., and this is likely to continue and the gap even likely to grow.  After all, government in the U.S.A. is now an extension of the corporate oligarchy.  And at the same time, we have countries such as China and India who have no want, need, nor understanding of restraint and sustainability.  Being the most populous doesn't help, either, in fact it is antithetical to sustainability.  And countries like Brazil who are determined to obliterate much of the richest biogeographical region on the planet, for money.  

What is needed is a sense of responsible informed populism, in which business answers to the public rather than the current arrangement.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On A conference for green money types posted 2 years, 6 months ago 4 Responses

Satisfaction or Sucking up?

Hey, all:

Yeah, now GM has released a vehicle that will satisfy Big Oil, and Big Auto, since obviously they couldn't do it with the EV1--in fact, quite the opposite.  Practically all the statistics on driving provided here were fulfilled by the EV1, as a commuter car.  Those who leased the vehicle knew the it had the range limitations since there was no infrastructure beyond that range. Yet they crushed them to ensure no one would ever have the benefit of them.  

The Volt (a name ignoring its other means of propulsion) will extend Big Oil's life, and provide a complex vehicle that will have lotsa headaches and repairs for its paying customers, giving Big Auto reason to smile.  It also has the potential to satisfy Big Agri-Bidness, when they get ethanol shoved down our throats.   It will also help Gobbleization, since they can import ethanol from Brazil, at the expense of the richest biogeographic region in the world.  The line between satisfying and sucking up can be vague, but given the facts, it is pretty sure this was a marketing and political decision.  

If the EV1 had been allowed to survive I could have plugged one in and charged it on the excess power I generate from Wind and PV--  7-8 years ago.  Now after all this time I can do that with an inferior efficiency, far more complicated vehicle.  Such progress.  GM is right on the ball.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Looks like the plug-in might actually happen posted 2 years, 6 months ago 55 Responses

A Sand County Almanac

Hey, all:

There are, of course, many good new books out there, and I recommend them and in turn receive recommendations.  But my favorite book of all, in any field, is "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold.  It was first published in 1949, but it has staying power and universality like nothing else.    It is also extremely uplifting, but sober, and beautifully, incandescently, but simply written.  

It is on my reading list for all seasons.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Pick-me-up books needed posted 2 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

Dare I say it? Organization...

Hey, all:

From Spaceshaper:

The wrong things get the public attention. What can we do about this?

As I have been saying a lot since 2000, we need to organize in a politically knowledgeable way, if not a politically polarized way, so that people have information to act on and targets of action who need to hear our case.  

In other words, not all of us have the same politics, so  what others decide their position is on an issue may not be the same as mine--that is the difference between knowledgeable and polarized.  But however you decide to act, having the information, and knowing who would be best to know about your position, would be very extremely beneficial.  This is less politically polarized than MoveOn, for example, but their model of communication and a single identity is one that could easily be copied.  

As I have asked here, who will do this?  Who will provide the website and the people power to do it?  I suspect that if someone were to start, they would have in a week, hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of email addresses, gathered from hundreds of contributing organizations of all kinds.  Energy, transportation, farming, sustainability, peace, foreign policy, architecture, green this, green that, and many other interests would respond.  

Spaceshaper, does this answer your question?  Is there something we CAN do about it?  Is this it?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with  Wind and Sun!On There's a connection between energy waste and our military adventurousness, so let's stop the draft posted 2 years, 6 months ago 9 Responses

Uh, Organization...Organization

Hey, all:

From D.R.:

"Why on earth would Congress do something so criminally stupid, so manifestly against the public interest? Why do they ever?

    Coal industry lobbying has reached a fever pitch. The industry spent $6 million on federal lobbying in 2005 and 2006, three times what it spent each year from 2000 through 2004, according to calculations by Politicalmoneyline.com.

There's your civics lesson from today's NYT, kids:

    * Energy efficiency: a financial boon and a cheap, fast way to reduce carbon emissions. But: no big industry lobby. Thus: ignored by the feds.
    * CTL: a financial boondoggle with few energy security benefits that will aggravate climate change. But: big industry lobby. Thus: plied with billions in taxpayer subsidies.

Looking for something to chat about with your Congressional representative? This seems like a good place to start."

This is a perfect illustration, yet another reason why we need a single strong central organization to cover all environmental fields to provide issues and a means of focused political action.  How about it?  Who has it?  Where is the environmental "MoveOn"?  Who'll set it up?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Hint: We're talking about Congress here posted 2 years, 6 months ago 17 Responses

Okay, back to Organization

Hey, all:

Hey, D.R.:

All I am seeking is some results from all the chaotic democracy, and it is my own fault for daring to bring up any discipline.  

So...Can we focus on the idea of organization, ignoring the regressive results of regressive people who also organize?  Can we distill an approach and establish an entity to offer a central organization to provide some real results?  To rally people at all levels and offer them something tangible, purposeful, cumulative, and progressive to do?  Isn't that the goal of so many of these threads and participants?  Is there no one individual or group with that leadership?  

Again, what are we waiting for?  Could we have succinct on-topic answers to these questions?  

At a certain point, 'recursive' becomes a supreme waste of time, energy, and talent.   Let's move on to some actions that yield results.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Taking on the belief that technotoys will allow the status quo to continue posted 2 years, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Uh, like, what? [Shakes head again]

Hey, all:

Uh, sorry, I don't get it.  Not...at...all.  Someone wants to partly burn biomass, to create charcoal ,or suck CO2 out of the air, and produce Carbon out of that, and then plow it into soil somewhere?   With what energy--where--at whose expense--and at what cost?  

The South Americans who created Terra Preta did it over thousands of years, strictly with manual labor, and we expect something similar in...Ohio?  Utah?  South Carolina?  In 50 years?  Where--what--will contain and transport this additional, highly capital-, energy-, land-, and labor-intensive activity?  

This sounds an awful lot like monster repellent from the makers of the monster.  This is a repeat of the Monsanto business model, wherein the world was given Roundup, then Roundup-ready crops, and then the next generation of Roundup.  We must give credit to Monsanto for the "Perfect Business Plan".  Kudos!

And labor--are we envisioning recreating the Native American model and have people turning over soil by hand to incorporate the Carbon?  How big a 'Guest Worker' Program will that require?  

And what blinders we must have--the least among us--people--sit in a squat and sift through ashes in the Sahel region of Africa, looking for unburned bits of wood to use for cooking, and we want to synthesize the same material, manufacture at enormous cost what they crawl on the ground for, so we can bury it?  

Honestly this sounds like an industry idea from people who are desperately determined to make money with any idea possible, at any cost possible, in any way possible.  It is too bad narcissism, greed, marketing, and blindness don't meet in self-annihilation.

The simple act of putting Carbon into the ground may be a Carbon-positive act, but beyond that it becomes another shell game.  "Clean Coal" must be jealous.  And they dig this stuff up in Brazil and haul it off for sale?  There is another business plan right there!  

Hell is much too good for all of us.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  
On We haven't quite figured it out yet posted 2 years, 6 months ago 35 Responses

Off-the-shelf Technology

Hey, all:

Hey, Amazingdrx:

Remote operation is imminently doable.  It can done from in the windfarm itself or half-way around the world--real-time, with practically instantaneous commands--one operator.  The only lag is that of the blades slowing.  You can have an operator in Beijing or Delhi watching windfarms in CA or TX--and given the 'gobbleization' trend, it ain't a bit out of the question.  

And bird/bat flock detection is called R-A-D-A-R.  If you go back to the invention and development of RADAR, you'll see that operators were constantly mystified by tremendously varied unexplained objects on scopes.   I don't know if it was religious fervor, religious butt-covering, or tongue-in-cheek, but they called them "ANGELS"!   This was in the late 30s, and it wasn't until the mid 50s that they conclusively figured out they were birds!  Much of the technology after that was for filtering what they now considered noise.  Add newer technology such as microphones and infra-red sensors, and a dragonfly would not get through without detection.  In fact, these are some of the research tools used to assess potential sites.  

And with respect, what small wind needs is financial, governmental, and public support first, even if what you suggest is also needed.  There could be hundreds of thousands of small turbines on factories and warehouses alone, with no aesthetic or noise concerns needed.  NIMBY issues were dispensed with long ago, all with negative impacts (habitat loss, pollution, urban squalor/sprawl, etc.).  Turbines are a positive impact.    

As you imply, where NIMBY issues do exist, more needs to be done, but we should not focus only on that aspect.  There are plenty of "low-hanging fruit" to be picked.

Thanks for the response.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Wind-loss, wind-gain posted 2 years, 6 months ago 5 Responses

Big Loss For Small Wind, and Apathy

Hey, all:

There are two things missing here.  First, generation of electricity with small, distributed  wind turbines is completely dismissed, this from a government that purports to support small business entities:  'Small business is the backbone of America...blah blah blah blah stinkin' blah.'  'Reduce the size of government.'--empty talk and outright lies.  If it ain't BIG Bidness, it ain't worth shit.  If we want ANY SORT of a populist movement, we have to foster it, support it, understand it, embrace it.     Big Government, hiding behind the curtain of conservatism, will NEVER NEVER NEVER do it.    

The second thing missing here is any elaboration or discussion of the full process of creation and operation of a wind farm.  The report refers to one aspect--siting.  Apparently ignored are two other important features: turbine layout and turbine design.  Completely ignored and almost universally dismissed is the fourth feature: operational controls.  It really is simple: if you are in heavy traffic you slow down; if you are operating a wind farm and a flock of birds or bats approaches, you slow or stop turbines. They are so proud of their low mortality calculation; the likelihood and mortality of an avian interaction with an unmoving blade is virtually zero.

It is time to improve the technology and environmental responsiveness.

DavidOn Wind-loss, wind-gain posted 2 years, 6 months ago 5 Responses

Lose the Ads on Your Own

Hey, all:

This is somewhat off the specific subject of greenwashing but I never see the--whatever--bouncing lumps of coal(?), because I block all ads.  If you use Firefox you can get the Adblock add-on program and it kills virtually anything you don't want displayed.  I live off the grid with only a very slow dial-up modem connection, so I get rid of everything that slows down the process.  

I don't know what other browsers offer but you can check and find out--or switch.  Start with your own browser.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Not always, but green branding has potential to connect consumers to their 'inner green' posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

Is Our Vision Clearing?

Hey, all:

I agree the discussion has regressed into favorite agenda snipping.  So, okay, let's get back to the slogan/vision thang.   I have a problem with the tendency, as someone here expressed it, with the 'elitism' that can creep in.  This is why I think the "20% by 2020" and the "80% by 2050" are too abstract for the kind of future Jon Rynn is talking about.  By the way, Jon, we agree on that vision, especially the economic democracy aspect.  

It was also mentioned that even wanting the government to put the PV panels on roofs or by extension put the battery powered cars on the road is not the best way to proceed.  If we wish not to proceed that way, we need to end the subsidies and legislative favoritism that Big Oil/Big Coal/Big Nuke/Big Auto get from the government.  Then, we need a populist movement to achieve the fine goals that Spaceshaper points out.  If a populist movement is the answer, we need a slogan that people can understand on a PERSONAL basis, and I don't think "20% by 2020" and the "80% by 2050" are easily acted on by the individual person or family.  They are too much "top down" slogans rather than "bottom up" slogans.  

These are by no means meant to be real candidate slogans, but they have the 'Every [Hu]man' tone I refer to:

"Put Yer CAR on a CARbon diet!"

"Your current car: Batteries NOT included."

"Hold your face up to the Wind and Sun and feel the FREE energy."

"Paper or plastic?" "No, Thanks, I always have my own shopping bags."

"Support global Carbon reduction AND make a friend today--carpool."

"Wanna finish that book this morning?  Take the bus!"

"Scientists have now calculated how many American soldiers it takes for one barrel of oil, but they are now in hiding!"

"Your bicycle is lonely.  Make it up to it, put some air in the tires, and give it some love."

"If that apple you are eating came from Chile, did it need a passport?  Do you know if it is healthy?"

"Support global Carbon reduction--buy produce from your local farmer."  
"Ya wanna to tell your electric utility to shove it and reduce global warming?--Put PV panels on your roof!"

"My wind turbine is bigger than yours!"  [Hey, it really is!]

"A lot of the fruit and vegetables at YOUR grocery store REALLY needs to rest--it just completed a LONG TRIP--halfway around the world!"  

"Anybody know what 'wheat gluten' REALLY IS?  Support local organic agriculture!"

"Get the cattle out of the ghetto/barrio/slums!  No more factory farms!"

Yeah, now that everyone has finished laughing (or rolling your eyes, or shaking your heads, or....), these are just examples--your actual mileage may vary.

It seems to me these are far more immediate and tangible, something the average person has more direct connection to, and can act on more readily.  

If we have an effort that works from the bottom up, simultaneously with the top down approach, many we can realize our goals more rapidly.

This is also why "Be the change...." has so much power and resonance.  It empowers us all to be examples of local, individual, everyday change.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Continuing the debate posted 2 years, 6 months ago 78 Responses

More on PV and roofs

Hey, all:

Hey, Jon:

Yes, I appreciate that you don't expect me to answer all your questions, heh heh.  But I can at least answer some generally.

Much of the potential PV installation I refer is on existing structures, which obviously were not designed with PV or even solar domestic water heat in mind.  As such though they can be widely used for those purposes.  The weight is not an issue, but for other uses of roofs, such as gardens or other planted areas weight can be.  Water logged soil is very heavy and roofs need to be properly constructed for that use.   They typically are not.  We all have heard of roofs collapsing under the weight of water in storms, so that is an issue.  Planted roofs are nonetheless a valid use for otherwise wasted space, and they also have the value of less heat gain while also providing thermal mass.

Roofs angled to the South in the Northern Hemisphere (opposite in the Southern) are in fact ideal.  Flat roofs generally require brackets or other framing to present the panels more perpendicular to the sun angle, being more critical with higher latitudes: flat roofs on or near the Equator are ideal, having no such requirement.  

There are manufacturers who have designed PV panels which are incorporated into gable roofing so they can actually take the place of composite shingles. And some that can be rolled out on existing roofs.  (Yeah, rolled!)  And where you have conventional gabled roofs the one side facing the Sun is the place to focus on.

Awning style PV on the sides of building is appropriate, providing daylighting or view is not compromised, and there are a lot of examples in use.  Secure attachment is extremely important, but architecturally difficult though for new construction, unless the architect has the imagination to incorporate the PV into the design.

I read somewhere an urban planner saying that in the U.S. we have covered over an area equal to the state of Ohio, so we can easily imagine the potential area.  The portion of that  space that is unused must be vast, and again, anyone who can look down from a high vantage point over any city (not to exclude small towns) can easily appreciate that vastness.  

A point I have consistently made here and elsewhere is while research in efficiency continues, there is no reason to wait.  If the U.S. had waited for cars to operate at 100 mi/gal, there never would have been an auto industry.  Plus, solar and wind are FREE resources and all we need are the collection, conversion, and storage devices to take advantage of them.  Wind and Sun are also egalitarian and universal, and practically infinitely sustainable.  Emergy and financial costs are far better than anything else we got.

I hope this helps.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Continuing the debate posted 2 years, 6 months ago 78 Responses

Okay... And...

Hey, all:

*Network of destination-tied walking/biking "streets", not just mere recreational "trails"
*PV on every roof
*Distributed decentralized generation of electricity
*individual small wind turbines where practical
*Wind farms carefully located and responsibly operated
*Chicken in every pot (organic free-range of course)
*Solar domestic water heaters on every roof
*Residential areas promoting produce gardening plots

Hmmm... no numbers....

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Continuing the debate posted 2 years, 6 months ago 78 Responses

"Abstract Numbers Glaze Eyeballs"

Hey, all:

"Film at 11."  

I just left a message on the '20% by 2020/vision thing' thread, so felt compelled to throw my 2 cents in here, too.

When I was in graduate school I did substitute teaching 3 days a week.  I came to the conclusion that everyone should perform that duty for one week, and the revelation would inform their attitude for the rest of their lives.  School administrators should be required to do it for one month every year, for their entire careers, for the same revelatory education.  

My point is numbers need to apply to real, practical things that the average person can act on.   We as planners and advocates lose sight of that need and should take a week to re-educate ourselves.  How big is a 'light-year'?  What is a 'parsec'?  How long was the Silurian?  All of these are completely mind-numbing abstractions, guaranteed to glaze eyeballs.  

How does the individual help achieve 20% by 2020,  or 80% by 2050?  What practical steps can the individual take?  Use all the numbers you need--but make the nouns and verbs real world terms.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Continuing the debate posted 2 years, 6 months ago 78 Responses

An Obvious Question

Hey, all:

I am glad I read the entire intro, since I was unaware that everyone is so fond of Carbon sequestration.  

Just for my own edification, isn't CCS just a means of continuing the use of fossil fuels, and the continued lining of corporate pockets?  Pardon my naivete.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
  On BP pulls out of its one actual carbon sequestration project posted 2 years, 6 months ago 8 Responses

PV Spreadsheets and Batteries

Hey, all:

Hey, GtoeOne:

I missed your question about a spreadsheet for PV but the one you offered looks as good as any, and coincidentally comes from the same state as I live in, which is also one of the worst for supporting sustainability.  I would suggest one that adds possibility of wind in the mix.

Before anyone makes any PV or any other similar purchase, though, is that a home (or office/business) energy efficiency makeover should be done.   This will result in a smaller outlay for sustainability products.  The general rule is that each $1 spent on efficiency saves $5 in system cost.   Weatherizing, thermostats, light bulbs, appliances, even landscaping, etc., all drive sown system costs.  Search for "home energy budget" or similar terms to find things on the net.  You can plug all your numbers into either type of spreadsheet and learn a lot about the trade-offs, like the "$1 for $5" issue.  By the way, it looked like the defaults in the one you provided can be changed, either that or they certainly should be.

Maintenance specifically for batteries is actually very low.  Water level in lead/acid batteries should be checked monthly or so, and filled when needed.  Cost of distilled water is maximum ~$2/gallon, and you might spend $20/year on water.  Most other types of batteries have zero maintenance.

Replacement cost is significant but is not the biggest initial expense, nor does it make the investment unwise.  Lead/acid batteries will last 7-10 years depending on use and how you treat them.  Stable temperature in the mid 70s is best, and the less depth and the fewer times you discharge them the longer they will last.  Other battery types last longer but cost more.  I have $3,000-3,500 in batteries, and mine pay for themselves in 2-3 years, so I have 4-8 years cost-free.

Batteries are not necessary if you wish to only have the grid for backup.  If you have reliable Sun or Wind 24/7 you don't need them, but this is quite rare.  Less rare is the opportunity to use microhydro, a small turbine in your own fast-flowing perennial stream.    

I hope this helps, and adds to the green-collar jobs outlook.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On A hearing in the House shows promise posted 2 years, 6 months ago 13 Responses

Anderson and Hawken

Hey, all:

Thanks, David, for reminding us of Ray Anderson's actions.  He gave an interview several years ago in which he said that an employee gave him Paul Hawken's book, "The Ecology of Commerce" (from 1993 but still ahead of its time) and reading the book was a revelation (and it is).  

Among things he had done was hire Amory Lovins as a consultant; Interface leases floor coverings to clients and reclaims and recycles that covering at the end of its life; and they have a program for use of biogas from landfills.  These are just a couple of things off the top of my head.  Anderson is also a pleasure to listen to, for his honesty and ideas, and his genteel Southern accent.  He is NOT the archetype of the callous, greedy, corporate businessman.  

This also allows the incremental character of sustainability to be reiterated.  Some have criticized the futility of small actions, especially for the public at large ('paper or plastic' vs. durable shopping bags comes to mind), but it almost always is a cumulative effect that has to be relied on for results.  Criticizing someone for not losing weight overnight is overbearing and counterproductive; so it is with sustainability.  Constant encouragement and support, and a positive model are what are needed.

Ray Anderson has made a lot of difference incrementally, will continue to do so, and offers a much better archetype for business to adopt. Paul Hawken deserves a lot of credit.

"Be the change...."

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On The carpet company and its visionary CEO in the NYT posted 2 years, 6 months ago 2 Responses

The Distributed Antidote to Nukes

Hey, all:

Hey , Jon:

I understand your use of private vs. public, corporate large utility holdings vs. individual producers.  As money makers, electrical utilities are like cash cows to the corporate oligarchy.  Plus, they deal in fear, and have made themselves absolutely essential, so we have a big task to rid ourselves of self-destructive instincts, and make it public and transparent.  

I had not seen the topic on GW and vision, but I also advocate wide use of PV and wind, and now rather than later, ignoring all the poo-poo-ing about efficiency, since it is a FREE resource.  So what if PV efficiency is 10-20%?  It is 10-20% of a FREE resource!   The same principle applies to Wind.  And I agree about the funding task--I only half-joked on the thread on the Federal farm bill, by saying the first item on the bill should be to switch total budgets between USDA and DOD.  I thought it was an elegant solution.  

I do advocate that where practical, PV and wind can be used in many many more locations than presently considered.  Like I have said before here, my own system is in a location which is not best for either PV or wind--but together I get to waste electricity.  Clearly not all dwellings and buildings are great candidates for PV and wind, for example shaded or poorly oriented.  And turbines are more problematic, but on a very large flat factory or warehouse roof several smaller units could be placed if the roof was not already a good PV candidate.  Even so, and consistent with safety needs, wind turbines could be placed along the northern portion of a roof so they don't shade PV panels.  Solar collectors for heat are not so picky about partial shading, so can be placed more flexibly.

Residential areas using turbines is more problematic due to height requirements to reach clean reliable strong winds, and many people would resist them.  Turbines directly on homes can be a bad idea since they often create resonance with the building structure.  Some vertical axis turbines turn at much slower speeds, and avoid this problem.  And PV can be a challenge where significant shading exists.   Solar domestic water can go in many places.

Flexibility, together with an intensive and extensive program of production and deployment actually are keys to success.  Like I have said, Sun and Wind are sustainable, egalitarian, and universal, and would help improve the status of lower income classes, and reduce atmospheric heath problems.   They are most at risk from these threats.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!   On Using high gas prices to push for a rebirth posted 2 years, 6 months ago 74 Responses

Charming Naivete

Hey, all:

Oh, you naive impressionable people!  Whoever said biofuels were a mechanism to ease poverty?  Who even wondered for a moment what the effects of biofuels would be, except on stock prices and other benefits to Mega-Agri-Bidness?  The assumption that they care is charming.  

Canis candida's offering of the Edward Hoagland quote deserves a spotlight, actually a floodlight, since it covers a big picture of irreversible impacts.  Many have already said that the only impacts of biofuels agriculture will be to further raise food costs and further reduce biodiversity--and add to human misery.  All other impacts, such as increased water demand, are subsets of the above.  

The only biofuel that has any value is bioDiesel made from waste vegetable oil (WVO), which can only replace ~5% of the fossil Diesel use.  The WVO would otherwise be dumped or recycled for use in animal feed, neither of which being a positive.  

It appears very unlikely that any biofuel development or mechanism can avoid the impacts mentioned above.  Until then, the only expenditure should strictly be for research and development.  In the meantime, cut out the 'middle person' and use PV and Wind for electricity for transportation.  We are much closer to that, with far fewer negative impacts.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On The former: Not good for the latter posted 2 years, 6 months ago 26 Responses

Urban sprawl and CO2

Hey, all:

Hey, Hibiscus:

With all due respect, I in turn wish educated people like you would observe the rules of capitalization.  E.E. Cummings could get away it as a feature of style, and Don Marquis could get away with it as an endearing fictional mechanism.  None of the rest of us have that luxury, and for the rest of us it looks pretentious or lazy.  When we want to get our point across, distractions make this goal less likely.   I pass over such writing simply because it is more difficult to read, which brings up a very practical reason for the conventions of sentence structure.  You command more respect for your writing when it shows a certain level of structure and formality.  Please take this advice seriously, to be taken seriously.  

Much of the problems of urban sprawl are a function of philosophy and mentality in the West.  When Europeans came here the vastness and the need to travel easily, plus the spirit of individuality probably is what leads to such open, unplanned, urban structure.  Property rights and the influence of profit-driven developers fills out the picture.

Simply getting people to drive less without alternatives is pretty fruitless, as your numbers suggest.  Since travel is so important in our culture and economy, mass transit of people in the form of light rail is needed and has been shown to be among the best solutions.  Power for the light rail system needs to be a form of sustainable electricity, either by PV or wind powering trains directly, charging batteries, or hydrogen fuel cells.  

The rest of people transit needs to be modified to reduce CO2 production by use of battery or hydrogen fuel cell cars charged by distributed PV and wind.  All other forms of transit are ultimately unsustainable.  

We won't be unmaking our cites and contracting them to a smaller footprint in any short time span.  We are much better off extending rail systems and greatly curtailing the construction of more and more super 12-lane highways.  None of this is a quick fix since we painted ourselves into a corner a very long way away from the door.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On How to reduce your household energy consumption, easy-like posted 2 years, 6 months ago 30 Responses

No. Perhaps the "Special Needs" Home.

Hey, all:

This is yet another example of a little bit of knowledge combined with an impertinent denialist troll (and I am using the valid noun form of 'troll').   So-called "geothermal" home systems are sadly and erroneously named, by Gawd knows whom.  Pretty weak, from someone who supposedly professes to know language and its evolution.

These systems are not at all the same as geothermal energy systems used for generation of electricity or even heat.  These are more properly called "earth-coupled" or "ground-coupled" and are in fact a variation of a heat pump.  A heat pump is designed to, uh, pump heat from one place to another.  An air-coupled heat pump simply uses the air as heatsink or source, is very conventional and have been around a long time.  Earth-coupled technology is newer but simply uses glycol-filled lines in the soil at a depth of several feet.  The temperature at 7-10 ft depth approximately matches the mean annual temperature of the site.  They cost more initially but use much less power and last much longer, and make little noise.

True utility geothermal systems have their own problems, such as thermal gain, water pollution, and water use.  Again, this is another manifestation of 'electricity as commodity'.  Great for investors, lousy for end users. Let's all be slaves to the electric utility.

I must be living in a time warp, since I have had PV and wind for 9 years and yet everyone says it has no future.  Hidden, tortured, contrived agendas, anyone?  As the monsters and masters of fossil fuels and nukes duke it out, my system blissfully purrs along.  It's nice not to be part of the problem.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On Using high gas prices to push for a rebirth posted 2 years, 6 months ago 74 Responses

Uh, 'large-mouth bass' and 'big-mouthed advocates'

Hey, all:

Hey, G.R.L.:

And second, your insult is weak, misdirected, and incorrect.  And what is your agenda, revenue or reducing GHG?  Or future tech boron?  And your own subsidies?    I suppose if someone wants to slavishly adhere to the mentality of 'electricity as commodity' you would be a perfect candidate.

I find it amusing and also highly disingenuous that anyone would maintain that nukes get no subsidies, in view of government policy since the Manhattan Project, up to and beyond Yucca Mountain.  And I see others have offered a quick and effective redirect.  

Hey, Karen:

Forgive me, but given your argument on efficiency of solar, the same reluctance could have been applied to the development of the automobile, and  no one would have ever bought a car until fuel mileage had topped 100 mi/gal!  "Well, I am just not going to get one until they get the efficiency up.  Until then I'll just use this ox cart."

I will offer some of my own numbers, and reiterate I am not talking about large scale utility wind farms and PV facilities.  I am talking about rooftops and distributed generation.  

I live in an area that is not the best for either wind or PV, so I have both to provide an overlap in sources.  I spent $15-20,000 between 8 and 10 years ago, and it paid for itself monetarily in about 6 years.  The embodied energy in the system was recovered in 2-4 years.  I have replaced my batteries once and will have to again in 6-10 years at a cost of $3-3,500 each time.  That cost is recovered each time in less than two years.  The batteries have very little embodied energy in them since they are highly recycled--plastic, lead, acid--virtually all of it gets recycled.  

The standard warranty for PV panels is no less than 20 years and most state 25 years.  They are warranted not to lose more than 20% of their rated power in that time.  However, most PV panels will last well in excess of 30 years with the same power.  My own PV panels have withstood golf ball size hail with no damage at all.  

My wind turbine will operate sometimes 24 hours a day in my less than optimal location.  It may last 50 years, although there are other units from other manufacturers that have already been around for 75-80 years and only require new off-the-shelf bearings and springs to be put in use for another 75-80 years.  

By the way, Karen, your message on wind characteristics is full of erroneous generalities.  No useful wind when hot or cold?  No useful wind except at night?  Many, many areas oriented near coastlines benefit from the unequal diurnal heating of land and water, which results in what is called a "sea breeze" which starts during the daylight and typically peaks late in the afternoon, matching the peak electricity demand period.  And speaking of cold, have you ever seen anyone knocked over by a high wind in a blizzard?  Such generalizations.  

I also have a solar domestic water heater that takes care of 95-97% of my water heating needs on an annually basis.  If I had a larger tank I would be pushing 100%.  

The Sun and Wind are free, infinite and sustainable, egalitarian, and universal.   The equipment needed is really only for collection, conversion and storage--nothing terribly high-tech anymore.  Which is one main reason why many people oppose it.  Wind and solar cannot be treated as a commodity, a revenue generator for some pencil pusher.  

If some of the huge, multi-BEEEEELLION dollar subsidies and tax breaks doled out to Big Nuke, Big Oil, Big Auto, and Big Coal were instead offered to homeowners all the negative pencil pushers would in deed look like chumps.  

And GHG would start dropping much sooner than any nuke plant could accomplish, since the PV and wind would be up and running immediately, years before the first cement truck would start rolling to construct a nuke plant.  

If I suffer a blackout it won't be due to the blind greedy incompetent stranglehold of the corporate oligarchy.  That will be the reason for most of the rest of you.  Such is the cross of 'electricity as commodity'.

The future is now.  "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Using high gas prices to push for a rebirth posted 2 years, 6 months ago 74 Responses

Apply the Same Argument to Solar and You Have It

Hey, all:

Rising fuel prices and AGW are both very powerful arguments for sustainability through solar and wind on a distributed basis.  It also has the benefit of being available NOW, not in 10 years, which is the likely lead time for nukes.  It has the added benefit of reducing CO2 output NOW, with a percent that would rise more rapidly than nukes could offer.    

So many of the other hazards, costs, concerns, arguments, would disappear with distributed solar and wind.  

Of course, not a single goddam piece of this can be done on a national basis with the current administration and corporate oligarchy in place.  Probably the earliest would be mid 2009, after the Nov 2008 U.S. elections.  Until then, the only avenue available is state, local, and individual action.  

While many of us are against one thing or another, I find a lot of involved people who don't know what they are for.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
On Using high gas prices to push for a rebirth posted 2 years, 6 months ago 74 Responses

Re: No Metaphor

Hey, all:

I wrote my previous message without seeing Wiscidea's message, and I agree that there really need not be a separate metaphor--they all tend to break down at some point, anyway--and we are our own metaphor.  

In fact, this is transcendently summed up by a 'possum:

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."  --  Pogo

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On No more canaries in coal mines, please posted 2 years, 6 months ago 31 Responses

Re: Sarcasm?

Hey, all:

Hey, mythical dog Canis candida:

Gee, I simply did not detect any sarcasm at all, so it would indeed be a big assumption.  If one wishes to use sarcasm one needs to leave a hint or two of that sarcasm.  I mean, what do you want me to do, be a mindreader?! [<---  See--like that!]  

Actually I am far more partial to the idea that corporate lawyers are now using the technique the corporations have long protested--lawsuit abuse--under which they suffered so greatly and unfairly--all they wanna do is make a few [billion] bucks.  [<--See--again!]  

Okay, sincerely, I think the same argument could then be made about all milk containers--they all suspiciously have similar themes and words and illustrations--like, oh, I don't know...cows, pastures, children with milk mustaches, "milk", "pasteurized", etc.  Oooops, maybe I should keep quiet about this, lest I start another phenomenon of big corporations suing littler ones over contrived, imagined, manufactured similarities [Oh, darn, I did it again!]  

Coincidentally, I was in a store recently and saw the products on the shelf, and they ALL have the same similarities, but out of necessity, and all are different, again out of necessity.  I hope this chicken sh*t lawsuit gets canned, along with a corps of lawyers.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A David v. Goliath story posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

A redirect

Hey, all:

From Helios47:

"You will see that the two products in this picture look virtually identical. Anyone could easily buy the product thinking it was miracle-gro. Environment-friendly products speak for themselves. Cheap tricks like that just hurt the environmental cause."

I will presume you make this statement out of ignorance or a fit of hyperbole, as it is clearly in the class of "nothing could be further from the truth."

Otherwise, talk about cheap tricks.  And hurting the cause of truth, which is integral to the environmental cause.    

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On A David v. Goliath story posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

Oooooh, Population AND Religion!

Hey, all:

Wow, a thread that touches on population as a topic in environmental impact, and also the role of religion on the same impacts.  Where to start, oh, where?

I came up with a simple empirical formula a while back

Consumers X Consumption = Impacts

that expresses the combined role of population and consumption on the environment.  So population has an essential role.  We ignore it out of concern for being charged with being crypto-eugenics stooges, or simply fear of being politically or socially  incorrect.  But it is a real issue and must be addressed.  

Religion is mythology elevated to the level of institutionally accepted lies.  It is a veneer to try and enforce morality, but over time the morality slips away and only the empty veneer of religion remains.  Religion is responsible for a host of crimes--e.g., "[G]od is on our side...."  

Yeah, I was once in a cage, actually OF religion, but I eventually saw the bars.  I then thought I only needed another cage, thinking perhaps others would not actually be cages.  I looked at cage after cage, but discovered the duplicity, hypocrisy, hatred, arrogance, and xenophobia of all of them.  I am now out of all cages, and can think far more clearly and independently.  

We would all be much much better served to abandon all religions as the crippling modern mythology that they are, and realize we've been duped.  God cain't help us, 'cause god don't exist.  

Just "Imagine"  --  John Lennon

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

 On Green the Pope way posted 2 years, 6 months ago 29 Responses

PV + Roofs = free sustainable energy

Hey, all:

The finite nature of all the fossil fuels and the inevitable increase in GHG and then AGW, and the problems with other technologies,  reinforce, at least for electricity, but even secondarily for transportation, the value of photovoltaic. Even with conversion efficiency of 5-10% they are cost-effective, and some are up in the 15-20% range.    They can now be made integral to the roof material or rolled out onto the surface.  

PV uses free limitless clean sustainable energy.  It sounds corny I admit it, but go out on a sunny day, and hold your face up to the free energy!  PV technology has been around for 50 years. What is the hold up?

If we are smart we could prevent the economic displacement of fossil fuels workers by building (or reopening) factories in coal and oil communities, fill each factory roof with the first 3,000 PV panels from each factory, and then put them on every roof in every local community.  Once that is done we export the HELL out of them.  

It would be a long time before we reach Peak PV, and it would be a happier historical footnote.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Yeah, that's running out too posted 2 years, 6 months ago 9 Responses

Wind of Change

Hey, all:

To keep things on-topic and get past the constant ignorant petulant desperate drivel, another answer to the question of the headline is for everyone to simply support the economy of sustainability. This is in keeping with 'being the change' we wish to see.   We do this by taking real steps to reduce our footprint.  Ask yourself when engaging in an activity 'does this contribute to sustainability?'   When the answer is 'no' the solution is to find sources or habits that are.  When we do this we support the sustainable economy.  We find stores or other outlets whose products or services have less embodied energy ("emergy") or nonsustainable resources in them.  This can apply to the often-overlooked "Reduce-Reuse-Recycle" practice.   There is a huge range of activities that can be changed with this approach.   The result is a smaller footprint, perhaps by small increments.

Kit:  By "nation" I gather you mean the political leadership of the U.S.  I personally think that virtually nothing will happen among the so-called "leadership", especially what passes for it in Washington, DC, until Jan 2009.  That is still a pig in a poke.  The better approach is for everyday people to change, and not wait on politicians, whose daily bread comes from the corporate oligarchy.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Will it be adaptation, mitigation ... or neither? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Science, Intelligence, caution, Neo-con hypocrisy

Hey, all:

I wrote a little about this elsewhere, referring to the book by Ron Suskind "The One-Percent Doctrine" and the suspiciously, artificially bizarre caution that was applied to concerns over weapons of mass destruction by the Darth Vader of the neo-cons, "Penis" Cheney.  

If BushCo. had applied the same paranoid caution to AGW we would have invaded and captured every PV, Wind, Hydrogen, battery, insulation, fuel cell, CFL, LED, etc., source or supply--then we would have pissed it all away by complete, metaphysically total incompetence and ignorant greed.  And it would have cost the U.S. half a trillion dollars and turned the world against us.    

So epistemological standards mean nothing to these political stooges.  Whatever standard or rule fits the political corporate oligarchy goal, is the rule they will use, and then blink at you without a hint of intellectual recognition, when you try to explain to them why they are dumbasses.  History nor psychology nor political science doesn't offer any help either.

So, it really ain't so arbitrary as it is sloppily, offhandedly calculated for political gain.  And sadly, for the same reasons it ain't about epistemology. And gee shit, it ain't about standards.  

How can they know what they know, when they don't know anything?  How can it make any difference when the lying liars and the lies they tell (apologies to Al) pervade their thought processes?    Who can reasonably assume they have scientific standards given our knowledge of the techniques of the corps of denialists?  

David Roberts, I know I am not answering the question you pose, since it triggers my frustration over the corporate political structure
we face, so I must apologize.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  On Why must global-warming science produce certainty? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 17 Responses

Well, Podnahs, It's about Tahm!

Hey, all:

Going back quite a few messages, Sunflower is correct that there are more cost- and energy-efficient techniques than PV for energy and electricity.  But it is also correct that as Green Engineer said many of those techniques are less available as retrofits to existing construction.  New green sustainable architecture is an extremely useful field for reducing emergy outputs of all kinds.  

And the notion that land is the best place to put PV arrays is total foolishness.  Rooftops, rooftops, rooftops.  Those who support putting PV arrays on land need to be on a high place and look down on all the empty rooftops in any urban area. which is where the electricity from the PV is to be used.  Putting PV panels on empty land defeats the simple goal of distributed generation.   Such ignorance.  People who want to put PV arrays on land want to control the electricity produced, perpetuating the mentality of 'electricity as commodity'.  

One of biggest ironies here is that the newspaper story David Roberts uses here comes from one of the worst states in the country for residential energy sustainability.  Texas is second in population and about 25th in number of incentive programs, and about 31st in the value of these incentives.  

However, there are bills currently in the Texas State Legislature,
HB 2226 from Rep. Coleman and matching bill SB 1357 from Sen. Ellis for the Creation of a Tex Sun solar energy Rebate Program.  You can read the bill here:

www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/doc/HB02226I.doc

If you live in Texas, contact your State Rep. and Senator and tell them to support these incentive bills.  

The payback time for the emergy in PV and all the supporting equipment is 3-5 years and the financial payback, as has already been said, ranges from 2 years to 20 years, depending a huge range of factors, such as design, efficiency, incentives, use, etc.  

PV is clean, safe, very small ecological footprint--tell your electric utility to shove it.  PV and wind are collection devices to collect FREE sustainable energy!  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On All signs are positive posted 2 years, 6 months ago 22 Responses

Tol' ya so--from a cynic

Hey, all:

While Barack Obama is engaging and interesting, no one should be surprised that he is more interested in being elected than doing the right thing.  Also, no one should be surprised by the reality that these are two different often conflicting modes of behavior.

In fact, Obama is placing himself well to move up in the corporate oligarchy, political branch.  To do so, he has to suck up to Big Coal, and to Hi-Tech.  

This same comment could just was well apply to any of the Presidential candidates, so it should not be seen as applying uniquely to Obama.

The revolution will have a hard time getting started until Campaign Finance and Lobbying laws are completely overhauled, to return choice to the people.  Throw in being able to vote and knowing  how your vote was recorded for good measure.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
   On That's what his support for CTL shows posted 2 years, 6 months ago 74 Responses

Some Alternative Thoughts, and a Great Book

Hey, all:
Hey, Fergus:

I respectfully disagree with you, but in doing so I allow myself to be drawn into the dichotomy argument.  

Before I go much further though, it should be pointed out that environmental ethics ain't so new--Aldo Leopold wrote about it in an incandescent, transcendent manner in "A Sand County Almanac" published in the late 1940s.  EVERYONE should read this book, if you read nothing else in your life.  

First, I think both of you are correct in the excerpts provided, and why I said we need to act on both fronts seamlessly.   A complex problem (or enemy) requires a complex solution (or attack).  Problems are solved by many researchers on many levels working in parallel on many aspects--and by activists, politicians, teachers, academics, plumbers, salespeople everywhere.  Wars are won with intelligence, spies, the homefront, underground resistance, artillery, grunts in foxholes, generals, bombers, missiles, navies, etc., etc.  

Second, I do believe one universal rule is true: We MUST be the change we wish to see.  This means we MUST lead by example.  We have to first put our convictions into action for ourselves.  Otherwise it is sheer hypocrisy, and as with anything that is "sheer", people are gonna see through it, and others are gonna use it against us.   This is THE FUNDAMENTAL change we should ALL make to our approach to the problem we seek to solve.  David Roberts refers to "exemplars"--we must be the exemplars of sustainable living.  

Third, I agree with those who think that more and more technology is NOT the sole answer, and is often not even a very good answer.   In many ways, technology is the broken-down horse we rode in on.  It is an institutionalized part of the problem.  An example is the mentality we are not even aware of, that being the mentality of 'electricity as commodity', a resource or service that 'someone else' owns, that we can only rent on a monthly basis.  Distributed generation is one antidote to this mentality, but even this does not go far enough.   Billions of people in the world can produce their own electricity on a small scale, just as billions produce hot water in their own homes.  PV and wind can make a huge dent in several issues, as simple as household economics, as common as losses in transmission, and as global as GHG emissions.  Of course, this is using technology, but technology that has been around for 50 years and not future promises.  

Our current situation is everyone's fault, as we all are witnesses to the crimes, even if we do not realize what we witness, and everyone has a place and a stake in the solution.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Technoscientific and ... not posted 2 years, 6 months ago 35 Responses

An Apology and Some Ideas

Hey, Steph:
Aw, gee, three strikes....

Wow, I never even had the thought that "Steph" was anything but an unusual form of Stephen/Stephan.  My deepest apologies.  I was very thoughtless.

Hey, all:

I am extremely interested in the issues of farming politics, and would be very interested in knowing what the priorities are for environmental activists concerning farming.  I know little about it, and was hoping many others would venture their ideas, but from my neophyte perspective there are several things my farm bill would have in it (and I AM swinging for the fences):

*Give the USDA budget to the Pentagon and give the Pentagon's budget to the USDA. Just swap out. (How is that for a start?)

*Do what the EU has at least to some extent and outlaw all GMOs.  A-L-L  O-F  T-H-E-M.  

*Outlaw Monsanto.  (Well, I would want to.)

*Outlaw ADM.  (Well, ....)

*Outlaw Terminator technology.  

*Establish in perpetuity the right to save seed.

*Cap maximum payments to Big AgriBidness based on the size of the company, and reduce year by year until in 10 years conglomerates are forced to break up just to get payments.    

*Protect farms in suburban areas from property tax
increases and from pressure to sell out for more subdivisions, convenience stores, streets named for golfers and golf courses, and big box chain stores.

*Set up loan program for small farms to get better financing on materials, equipment, irrigation, transportation, insurance--everything.

*Increase by at least two magnitudes the number of food inspectors to reduce Escherichia coli, Salmonella, avian flu, pesticide potential in food.

*Put state-of-the-art irrigation technology to work to reduce irrigation demand, and its negative cascading effect on biodiversity.  Use some of the former Pentagon budget to push new research into sustainability in agriculture, starting with irrigation.  

*Outlaw CAFOs.

*Pay premiums to farmers who will raise/produce heritage species.  

*Put Public Service Announcements out everywhere you can possible look that say, "Your Mother was RIGHT--eat your vegetables!"  

*Support increases in organic farming.  

*Add, oh, I don't know, a 20% surcharge on every processed or fast food sold in the U.S., and use the proceeds to promote natural organic whole unprocessed slow foods.  

*Add a rating system to chicken eggs for the brightness of the yolks, based on how many leaves, flowers, seeds, and bugs the chicken ate.  

*Increase farm wages so Americans can and will work on farms again.   This one simple action will solve so many other problems, such as crime, the medically un- and under-insured, local economic recessions, education, etc.  

*Put a progressive fee on farm produce based on the distance it travels to the market.  Use that fee to finance local agriculture.  

Hey, call me a romantic, call me an optimist, but if we don't act to improve things, who will?   When?   Please feel free to add your own ideas to the bill, and modify those as needed, but I will filibuster any removals.  Got it?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! On Reps. DeLauro and Gilchrest want to invest in local infrastructure. posted 2 years, 6 months ago 13 Responses

So the refrigerator wasn't so much about water

Hey, all:

Sorry about that, got caught up in the description.  

But, here is something to consider:

A one inch rainfall on 1000 sq. ft. ~ 623 gallons of water.

How big is your roof?  What is your mean annual precipitation (MAP)?  

Surface area(sq ft)/1000 X MAP(in) X 623 = gals mean annual water collection potential  

The result could be very impressive, and comes with little or no energy use.  The emergy of a system can be compensated for very quickly.  Purification can be simple or complicated, from using it raw, provided the roof and equipment are clean, or use multi-stage filtration and UV purification.  Pumps, UV power can all be done with PV or wind.  

Not too terribly high-tech, I am afraid, so maybe it won't appeal to a lot of people.  And it is not the huge scale of a mega-bucks desal plant, which will not appeal to still more.  

On the other hand, run the water through a greywater setup, water the plants or yard, wash the car, have it do double duty.  

Thumb your nose at your city water utility. Make your own ecological footprint smaller.  "Simplify, simplify."

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!On Material intensity in water use posted 2 years, 6 months ago 25 Responses

In Response to Ralph (Re: SustainableGreen....)

Hey, all:

Ralph, in the spi