Comments rivergal has made

When I was growing up in Australia, our wall outlets did not have these switches.  However, I have a feeling that the reason they are now being used has something to do with the fact household current in Australia and NZ is about double the voltage of that found in most of N. America and Europe.  This makes it extremely lethal if you poke a paper clip into an active wall socket in NZ or Oz.  But presumably it's possible to add switches to US outlet boxes.  Just be aware that anything mechanical can and will fail on occasion!

Another plastic solution!

We bought a house previously occupied by a couple with a huge carbon footprint and are still adapting it to our more thrifty ways.  Among other things it has a "fireplace" consisting of some ceramic logs surrounded by natural gas piping in what was once an open hearth, with a large pilot light.  The damper is designed to be left partially open to vent the pilot's combustion products, which could include deadly CO, so until we re-engineer the fireplace (are looking into wood or pellet-burning inserts but Anchorage AK has lousy wood compared to Vermont where I hail from), we are using a black plastic garbage bag to reduce air leaks.  The colder it gets, the more strongly does this cheap rectangle of heavy mil plastic suction itself over the decorative glass fireplace door.

We could replace the pilot with an electronic ignition system and shut the flue completely (maybe by using a plastic ball!), but since we can't bring ourselves to enjoy watching the heat from hundreds of cubic feet of gas go straight up the chimney, this seems counterproductive.  Instead we'd like to use the fireplace for a back-up heating system so that when the power goes out for a week after our next 9.2 earthquake, we'll still be able to heat parts of the house.  Temps average below freezing from late September through late April here, i.e. over 1/2 the year, so backup power, heat and water is important!On Umbra on unused fireplaces posted 1 year ago 2 Responses

Women and Hg

Too bad the report apparently omitted the two states with by far the highest per capita consumption of seafood.  

Can you guess which states these are?  (Hint: one has a longer coastline than the other 49 states combined and both celebrate their 50th anniversary of statehood next year.  Also, neither of them fit conveniently on a map of the Lower 48 and one of them has a governor who's McCain's running mate.)

Sure hope you've figured it out by now . . . as a woman who lives in one of these states, eats a lot of fish, and who lived in New England and the Maritime Provinces for a total of 25 years, I'd kinda like to see more about my state's risk!On Snippets from the news posted 1 year, 2 months ago 1 Response

Aluminum . . .

is the most common metallic element on earth.  Compounds of aluminum are found in most soils, so your body is exposed to Al pretty much any time you get your hands dirty or get dust on your skin or in your nose.  Please don't spread the unsubstantiated myth that Al causes breast cancer.  There is no scientific (as opposed to urban legend) based evidence that it does.

Those deodorant crystals you all like contain Al in the form of alum or bauxite. Alum is used by many municipal water treatment plants to purify drinking water.  It's not dangerous!

The reason all those "eco" deodorants don't work is that they don't stop perspiration, which eventually overwhelms their scent-masking abilities.  If you want to favor what's "natural" over what isn't, the function of axial sweat glands is VERY natural -- it is a secondary sexual characteristic that "Nature" intended to help us attract appropriate mates.

My advice: use an "invisible" commercial antiperspirant and deodorant and focus your healthy lifestyle behavior on your diet, weight, stopping smoking, getting enough exercise and sleep, driving non-agressively, and wearing your seatbelt.On Making a stink about green(ish) deodorants posted 1 year, 3 months ago 36 Responses

Pets, children and basement cooling

I've got a pet.  But then I live in AK where we've only had one day over 70 F so far this year.  I don't have any children, by choice.  A single child would use far more energy than my dog does.  And I only weigh 110 lbs so I myself use far less energy than the average overweight to obese 50 y.o. American woman.  I think I can get over any guilt I might otherwise feel about my dog.

As for bringing cooler air up from the basement: I used to do this all the time when I lived in un-airconditioned older houses in eastern MA.  Most basements in such houses have at least one window that opens, or a walkout door.  If you open that window or door in the evening, open the door to the basement, and put a strong window fan in an upstairs window, directing the air OUT of the room (i.e. on the exhaust setting), you will feel cool air flooding your house from the ground floor up.  Even in dwellings without basements a window fan set in the upper part of a double hung window can help bring cool evening air in while exhausting hot interior air.  While cold air is denser than warm and will not rise without help, a fan can easily overcome this density differential.

No, this won't work in dense urban areas where nighttime temps never drop below 80.

Just don't do what a former roommate of mine insisted on doing: opening her bedroom windows wide all day to the hot outside air while leaving a powerful room fan on while she was out at work.  No surprise that her room was at least 10 degrees hotter than the rest of the house by 5 PM . . .

All other thing being equal, a large, high ceilinged room, or a shady porch, will feel cooler than a small low room at the same temperature because our bodies actually absorb long wave radiation coming off solid objects like walls and ceilings.  It's time we started designing buildings with some thought about climate and comfort.  Time to bring back the screened porch for summer sleeping and after dinner living!On Umbra on fans versus AC posted 1 year, 4 months ago 19 Responses

Camelbaks etc.

I'm a professional environmentalist who also spends lots of time in the backcountry.  I have two science degrees and my course and thesis work included graduate level biochemistry and statistics.  Personally, I will continue to drink from my Lexan bottles in winter (they fit nicely within my OR bottle cozy which keeps them from freezing here in AK), store my earthquake water in 1-gallon milk jugs, and use my Camelbak hydration bladder on summer hikes hikes and backpacks.

Over the course of my lifetime, the amount of water I'll drink from Lexan or my Camelbak will be negligible compared to the fluids I get from other containers, so even if there's a little BPA leaking out of the Lexan, or microbes in my Camelbak, this will come nowhere near to the health risks I incur every day when I drive, walk through a building with new vinyl flooring, or inhale woodsmoke from a neighbor's woodstove, etc.  BTW since I have a healthy immune system and am diligent about cleaning out my Camelbak after every use, I'm not worried about getting sick from it.  Folks, there are bacteria and viruses everywhere but with a little common sense our bodies are amazingly able to keep the bad stuff out and the good stuff in.

I will only use my earthquake water -- changed every six months and sanitized with chlorine bleach -- if there's another major earthquake here in Anchorage that puts my house well offline.  Again, drinking a few gallons will present a negligible risk to my health at a time when there will be bigger challenges to healthy living.

BTW Camelbak sells a (very overpriced) plastic device that fits through the opening and expands to help the inside walls of the bladder air dry.  I hang my Camelbak from my kitchen pot rack using this device when not in use, and take the hose off to dry separately.  There is no off taste associated with my Camelbak nor any visible mold growth etc.  It's as clean as the ceramic and glass containers I drink from and eat off of.  I bought my Camelbak dryer at REI.

In summary, although I'll do things like use an inverted bowl on a plate to microwave food instead of using plastic, I do not see a big enough risk to justify giving up all plastic use, especially where there is no practical alternative (metal bottles are NOT practical for backpacking).  OTOH I don't smoke, eat lots of wild salmon and vegetables, always use my seatbelt, get tons of high intensity exercise, get 8 hrs of sleep almost every night, and my BMI (I'm a 52-y.o. female) is under 20.  By making these lifestyle choices I have vastly reduced my risk of heart disease and driving fatality, which kill more women my age than all forms of cancer.  I think if most people understood the true comparative risks of occasionally drinking from plastic v. being overweight, inactive, living in a smoggy city, not getting a colonoscopy at age 50, etc., they would lose this silly obsession with Lexan.On Umbra on Camelbaks posted 1 year, 10 months ago 16 Responses

Respect for the interdependent web . . .

As both a UU and a biologist, I agree with Umbra that Didi did the right thing.  It should be obvious that there's a huge difference between relocating/dumping surplus pet carnivores like dogs and cats in natural areas, and relocating the odd native mouse or two.  Dumped pets will have a tough go of it, and if they survive it may be at the expense of local prey, reducing the food supply for native predators. The mouse is already part of the local ecosystem and will likely either survive for a year or two or become food for an owl or weasel. This is better for the "interdependent web of all existence" than is flushing a mouse carcass down the toilet or burying it in a landfill.

BTW, rhkennerly, the town of Harvard MA is pretty rural (it's not the same place as Cambridge, where Harvard University is located).  And, Umbra, most UUs don't believe in heaven.  Furthermore, while we love talking to our ministers, we don't expect them to tell us what to believe, theologically speaking -- instead we rely on our own "free and responsible search for truth and meaning."  I.e., we're empowered to make rational, science-based decisions.On Umbra on live trapping posted 2 years, 1 month ago 28 Responses

Ruminating on rumination

I think all ruminants produce methane as a byproduct of their digestion, which relies on fermentation to break down hydrocarbons.  So, while there may be good reasons to avoid grain-fed beef, I'm not sure GG impact is one of them.  Gmunger is right that we should differentiate between cycling carbon and fossil carbon, although I think the case could be made that carbon cycling between CO2 and plants has a lower impact than carbon cycling between plants and methane does.  Methane is a really major GG.

I don't eat a lot of meat but I do like wool (produced by ruminating sheep) and other natural animal-based fibers.  I also like the idea of restoring bison to the Great Plains, having moose in my yard, and protecting herds of ungulates elsewhere.  If we can't have beef because of methane, does that mean we should also discourage large populations fo these other animals?On Too, Too Sullied Flesh posted 2 years, 4 months ago 3 Responses

Fish and Bush Meat Are not the Same

As an aquatic scientist living in Alaska, I vehemently disagree with CyberBrook's sweeping generalizations about whether it's OK to eat fish.  I am not a vegetarian.  But neither do I think eating "bush meat" is a good thing, though I note most critics of this practice are not indigenous people looking for protein for their families in some of the world's most impoverished countries.

When you kill a chimpanzee or forest ungulate in the prime of its life, you destroy that individual's ability to propagate. However, when I eat a wild Alaska Sockeye, caught on its spawning run, I destroy only a single individual's reproductive potential out of a local spawning population of thousands of fish.  Since productivity in most rivers is limited by spawning habitat rather than spawning returns, as long as there are enough other adult Sockeye making it up the river, my harvest has no effect on productivity.  Alaska has a well-managed fishery and few if any obstacles to migration, unlike the N. Atlantic, site of first the Atlantic salmon crash (due in part to dams) and then the Cod and Haddock crash (due to overfishing) that occured while I was at a Nova Scotian grad school.

Maybe CyberBrook and other readers don't know this, but Pacific salmon die soon after spawning.  So the salmon I catch would be dead within a week or too anyway, very likely without spawning successfully.  Meanwhile, many of the alternative foods CyberBrook suggests I eat to get my Omega 3s etc. are grown thousands of miles from AK, and consume massive amount of fossil fuels in their cultivation and transport.  In contrast the nearest salmon-bearing stream is 1/4 mile from where I sit in a downtown Anchorage office building.  I can walk there on my lunch hour.

I will stick to Alaska salmon and halibut -- poor CyberBrook doesn't know what s/he is missing!On All you need for summer seafood splendor posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Double Dipping

Let's see, these farmers are asking us taxpayers to continue to pay them annual rent for keeping part of their farms in conservation cover crops, but they want to use the same land to grow corn (not a conservation cover crop) that they can then sell for more cash?  I don't think so.

The CRP program is voluntary.  It's supposed to be used to pay farmers to establish "long term covers" (think healthy plant communities that stabilize the soil and do not require annual cultivation, weeding, fertilizers, etc.) to benefit soil conservation, wildlife, water quality, etc.

Corn is planted annually, either by plowing and harrowing the land or by using "no till" techniques that require massive amounts of herbicides to keep weeds at bay.  It is one of our most chemical-intensive crops.  There is no way I'm going to let the government use my conservation tax dollars to subsidise farmers for profitable cultivation of their land that has negative conservation impacts.

The noive of some people . . .On 'Cause what else can we feed our cattle? posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

Home hot water taps

Rebekka,

One of the first things I did when I moved into my current house is to unplug the 190 degree F hot water tap that was installed on my kitchen sink.  Such devices are basically mini hot water heaters, sans any insulation, that keep a cup or two of water at a constant sub-boiling temperature.  They consume enormous amounts of electricity.   Even if you are home all day and consume frequent hot beverages, this is like keeping your electric kettle on simmer 24/7. IMHO, the convenience of having such instant hot water is not worth the impact on the planet.

Anyone who thinks they might consume more than one cup of hot beverage in a sitting might want to try making a bigger batch and using a thermos to keep the stuff warm. That or an old-fashioned tea cozy over the teapot.  BTW I once won a "Queen Mum" lookalike contest wearing such a tea cozy as a hat!On Umbra on boiling water for tea posted 2 years, 9 months ago 23 Responses

Stop funding schools using property taxes

and inner suburbs and cities will start becoming more attractive for families with school-age children.  We can create all the open space and neighborhood amenities we want, to attract the middle-class back to our cities, but until we stop linking the quality of public education to the value of local real estate, many parents will choose the expensive, tiring, and environmentally bad commute in order to live near decent schools.On Suburban commutes are money-losers posted 3 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

Still Waiting For John Stossel's Concession Speech

Stossel gave Michael Crichton's book "State of Fear" much more attention than it deserved, bloated, sensational, poorly researched tome that it was.  I generally avoid Stossel as much as I avoid Easterbrook (couldn't Brookings find a better scientist?), so maybe I've missed something, but I don't think Dave has jumped on the "me too!" bandwagon yet.On Easterbrook accepts global warming posted 3 years, 6 months ago 8 Responses

Congress can allow drilling virtually anywhere!

While I'm vehemently opposed to drilling in ANWR (I live in AK and work for a national land-managing agency), I'm not sure Robert Fischman's premise is valid.  He seems to be arguing that opening up the "1002" area of ANWR creates a new, negative precedent for all national wildlife refuges.  This isn't really the case.

ANWR was created by an Act of Congress.  Congress also does things like create national parks and designated wilderness.  Anything Congress does, it can undo.  It can authorize oil and gas drilling on federal lands virtually anywhere in the country if it wants to.  This would include other national wildlife refuges and even national parks.  No, it wouldn't be politically easy for Congress to allow drilling in parks, but it could be done, legally, by de-authorizing the park or by making drilling an excepted use within the park.

Congress has not yet authorized drilling in ANWR.  But the prospect of this has been around since before 1980, when the law that created ANWR and many other federal protected areas in Alaska was passed. That law was ANILCA, and it instructed the Department of the Interior to study the oil and gas potential of the so-called Section 1002 area of ANWR.  ANILCA also said that new Congressional action would be needed before oil and gas development would actually be allowed.  That is what is being debated now.

So, does the current debate create a legal precedent for drilling elsewhere?  I'd say not, especially for federally-protected areas that do not have ANILCA-like language in the statutes that created them.  The vote on ANWR would only undermine protection for other refuges or parks if Congress explicitly added these areas to the drilling approval bill.  Meanwhile, courts could not rely on Congress's ANWR decision to allow drilling elsewhere.

National parks, wilderness, and wildlife refuges are Congressional constructs.  It's not a precedent in the legal sense of the term when Congress changes its own laws.  In this case, it's still a bad idea, however.On Arctic Refuge drilling debate misses the big picture posted 4 years, 7 months ago 7 Responses

Trifecta?

I live and therefore vote on the other side of the divide (continental) but I have a feeling that's not what you're referring to, Da Silva.  (Aside -- do you think many Grist readers actually vote for the other team???)  Nonetheless, I feel the same way about the BoSox's wicked good routing of the evil Yankees last night.  (Another aside: I also feel good about living in a time zone where the game ended at 8, not midnight.)

I'm hoping for a trifecta: A Red Sox World Series win for the first time since 1918, my candidate (also from Massachusetts) for Prez, and my local former Guv (from Oklahoma of all places, but he went to Yale with Bush) for Senator.

RG

(Ripken: the Dent "nutmeg" was in '86, not '78.)On Paper beating scissors posted 5 years, 1 month ago 15 Responses