"You guys paid for all this"

Jeff Bezos holds Amelia Earhart's aviation glasses, July 20, Van Horn, Texas – photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

We live on this beautiful planet. We saw this – you can’t imagine how thin the atmosphere is when you see it from space. We live in it and it looks so big. It feels like this atmosphere is huge and we can use it and disregard it and treat it poorly. When you get up there and you see it, you see how tiny it is and how fragile it is.

We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space, and keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is.

Jeff Bezos wants us all to know that by flying into 'space', he is now enlightened.

I wonder if Bezos recognizes all these are connected: capitalism, droughts, industrial pollution, insurrections, tax rates, pandemics, wildfires and floods, inequality, callousness. We now know it doesn't take brains to win a presidential election, and it doesn't take vision to fly into space. In America, all it takes is money and ego.

Bezos should ask himself: how do we move all heavy industry into space without polluting? even if we got those industries into space, how do we supply them with parts and resources, or return their products to 'this beautiful gem' without polluting?

Bezos is not thinking straight. That, or he's thinking of all the money to be made shuttling people and materials up and down.

Bezos is proposing we treat our celestial shores the way we treated the waterways and oceans during the industrial revolution. History tells us there were some seriously bad consequences. Some of these are 'stabilized' now – to a point – but only after the world suffered, and continues to suffer from: diseases, human subjugation, chemical contamination, inequitable wealth distribution, environmental destruction.

Instead of prioritizing a sustainable power grid, or emissions-free transportation systems, or fair-minded global banking, or low-carbon construction and manufacturing methods – or generally reducing the amount of crap we buy on Amazon – we should just shoot all the polluted stuff into the sky. And we should listen to Bezos cause he's been there.

It's a matter of understanding all the parts before we see the whole, or consider solutions - big picture stuff. Take the recent example of Miami: the inhabitants of Miami experience increased 'sunny-day flooding', so they install pumps. The flood waters rise and the drainage system becomes a flooding system, so they add back-flow valves and treatment plants. They extend the seawall. They elevate the streets. And on it goes. Yet, the water continues to rise.

Thus, a common through-line for these species-level challenges is our inability to perceive them at scale. In terms of climate change, NY Times columnist Charlie Warzel describes our view this way:

[O]ur 21st century existence is characterized by the repeated confrontation with sprawling, complex, even existential problems without straightforward or easily achievable solutions. Theorist Timothy Morton calls the larger issues undergirding these problems “hyperobjects,” a concept so all-encompassing that it resists specific description. … We understand the contours of the problem, can even articulate and tweet frantically about them, yet we constantly underestimate the likelihood of their consequences. It feels unthinkable that, say, the American political system as we’ve known it will actually crumble.

Climate change is a perfect example of a hyperobject. The change in degrees of warming feels so small and yet the scale of the destruction is so massive that it’s difficult to comprehend in full.

One attempt to provide a high-level, long-term view is this eye-opening study: "Update to Limits to Growth", by Harvard researcher and KPMG analyst Gaya Herrington. It reexamines and appears to confirm the projections of a fifty-year-old model developed at MIT ("Limits to Growth"). The model plots several broad variables (population, food production, industrial output, resources) out forty years, and expresses the risk of a global collapse during the 21st century. The study refreshes those metrics, comparing current empirical data to the original model's 'scenarios':

BAU2 (business as usual) and CT (comprehensive technology) scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now. Both scenarios thus indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, is not possible. Even when paired with unprecedented technological development and adoption, business as usual as modeled by 'Limits to Growth' would inevitably lead to declines in industrial capital, agricultural output, and welfare levels within this century. 

I suspect both the model and the study are intended more as a warning light than a predictive tool. Herrington comments that 'collapse' …

… does not mean that humanity will cease to exist, … economic and industrial growth will stop, and then decline, which will hurt food production and standards of living, … the BAU2 scenario shows a steep decline to set in around 2040.

However, there are other scenarios, such as "SW (stabilized world)", in which growth does not hit the same peak industrial output, but plateaus at a lower level and does not 'collapse'. Unfortunately, the scenarios that avoid collapse do not align as well with the current data. 

The study does not preclude the BAU2 scenario from generating some amazing technologies or accomplishments, like an Alexa factory in space. It simply shows that less-managed growth will likely result in a more-damaged planet, accompanied by increased inequality and human suffering. If we build cheaper, cleaner launch vehicles to orbit communications and weather satellites, or platforms for basic science (so we can invent, say, the next transistor), or find any other useful purpose for the journey – that could be a net-gain. Why don't we just try to do that? what is the point of traveling up and down just for the hell of it?

Less growth is fine. Less money is fine. We should consider quantities that are sustainable and equitable. What more does Bezos need to fulfill his bald, evil, supervillain fantasies? isn't Amazon already printing enough money? isn't he already the richest man in the world?

Upon landing, Bezos posts a tweet that reads:

I want to thank every Amazon employee, and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this.

I'm an uneasy Amazon customer of twenty-five years. As a benefactor, let me say – Jeff, you know where you can go.

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One of the saddest stories yet of this pandemic (there have been so many) is given by Dr Brytney Cobia, of a young patient, about to intubated, begging for a vaccine. As the world approaches two hundred million total cases, it's hard to know if anyone is counting them correctly any more.

For example, recently while Georgia's published case counts are less than half the counts in Portugal, the death counts, just today, fall lower than Portugal's (a lag of about two months). How can the case counts be so much lower? is it the vaccination rates (GA: 45%, PT: 64% with at least one dose)? Recall that back at the beginning of June, Georgia was just ahead of Portugal (GA: 40%, PT: 38%). Looking at the graphs of cases and deaths, the correlation in Georgia, especially during this calendar year. is much less clear than in Portugal.

 cases: 193,375,410 global • 35,213,594 USA • 943,244 Portugal

deaths: 4,150,990 global • 626,172 USA • 17,248 Portugal

Surfside

Surfside, Florida – the name of the city is the most obvious clue, but the name of the state is the reason no one is able to declare it. Why did the building fall? Apply Occam's razor: it's built on a sinking barrier island within a rising sea. Which implies that all of Miami's trillion-dollar 'surf-side' real estate economy is at risk. But Florida state officials are required to refer to "sea level rise" as "nuisance flooding". And I wonder, how did everyone think climate change would look? the sea would gently rise, like water in a bath? buildings would remain whole and happily submerge, like Bikini Bottom?

As a trained architect listening to the reports in the news, it seems strange to me that everyone is focused on cracked and spalling concrete, and improper waterproofing on the pool deck. Those may be contributing factors, but they are not the kinds of failures that would cause a catastrophic collapse. On the other hand, hearing reports from building staff and residents that the garage regularly flooded with salt water, that gives me intense concern. Instances of corroded rebar and roof leaks seem minor compared to the effects of the sea's cyclical soaking of the foundations and tidal forces on the subsoils – in my humble opinion.

Several witness statements underscore this concern. Minutes before the collapse, the building's valet reported a 'rush of water' into the building, and residents were unable to park because the garage was 'filling with water'. After the collapse, residents escaping the building stated they 'waded through water', and others reported being blocked from escape by the flooding in the lower levels.

It is telling that these are the first thoughts of the building super from 1995 to 2000 (more than twenty years ago!), William Espinoza, after witnessing the collapse:

Anytime they would have high tides, away from the ordinary, any king-tide or anything like that, we would have a lot of salt water come in through the bottom of the foundation. And we had a huge pit in the garage that would handle two pumps in there to suck that water out. But it was so much water all the time that the pumps never could keep up with it. So we always had to be replacing pumps. And the water would just basically sit there and then it would just seep downward. It would just go away after a while. And I would think, where does that water go? Because it had to go in through somewhere. I'm talking about a foot, sometimes two feet of water in the bottom of the parking lot – the whole parking lot. …  [T]he cars would float, that's how much water was in there, they would be floating around in the parking lot. 

Salt water, yeah sure, it was coming from the ocean. I mean, I don't know, how deep does that go, but it had to go to somewhere after the fact cause we couldn't get it pumped out. … But I go, 'You know that it's endless. Every month we had a problem with this again, water and water.' And I go, 'This is just not normal. I mean, this is just too much water.'

Also telling that when the reporter mentions the cracks and patches, Espinoza essentially dismisses that ("nothing like real big cracks or anything like that"), and emphasizes the water. So, the person responsible for the building's upkeep was almost entirely concerned about underground salt water intrusion.

Also-also telling is that the portions of the building that fell were those closest to the beach.

There will be an investigation, and we will learn more. Of course, it's all so sad and shocking. But at present, it sure seems like many in the media are focusing on engineer reports, delayed repairs, and condo boards, with quite a few hinting that there is blame. I'm sure this language is making many a lawyer's heart beat fast. They are ignoring the most compelling culprit: the ocean. As the name says, it's right there.

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We are vaccinated; we have certificates and everything.

 cases: 181,854,027 global • 34,494,677 USA • 874,547 Portugal

deaths: 3,939,093 global • 619,424 USA • 17,084 Portugal

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UPDATE (July 1): Unlike June, July starts comfortably warm and breezy; great walking weather. But, Lisbon is going back into a partial 'lockdown', with early closings and limited occupancies. It feels like a pandemic-pendulum – open a little, close a little.

Today, the Washington Post reports that members of the condo board at Champlain South resigned en-masse in 2019, after a year-long attempt to raise the funds to address issues raised by the 2018 engineer's assessment. This feels like a failure of American democracy in miniature, a metaphor for the country's failure – infrastructure crumbling but cannot pass a comprehensive bill, virus variants spreading but cannot administer a vaccination program, 'the world's greatest democracy' but cannot hold a proper election or even believe it when we do. It's a little republic where, lacking an overwhelming consensus, decisions cannot be made.

This is from board president Anette Goldstien's resignation letter (September 2019):

We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning. This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.

Meanwhile, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest set stunning new records last week. On Sunday and again on Monday, the Canadian village of Lytton set national, all-time, high-temperature records. Two days ago, the village completed the trifecta. But by yesterday, Lytton was gone – burned to the ground in a matter of minutes by a wildfire. Today is Canada Day.

How do we prevent a Lytton? or a Surfside? How we do organize ourselves to fix things? manage things? as a community, or a nation, or a species? We exhaust our energy pointing fingers. We elect people to stand in circular firing squads. We leave Lytton to punch their fists at the sun, and Surfside to roar their sorrow at the sea. Nothing gets done.

The Weak Will Perish

We measure ourselves by our reactions in a crisis. Exemplifying 'what not to do', this week's Texas winter weather crisis spotlights three elected officials, at different levels of government.

Straw Man: Invent Another Threat

As the severe storm sends the infrastructure within his state towards failure, Texas Governor Greg Abbott blames 'The Green New Deal':

This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis. … As a result, it just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we'll be able to heat our homes in the winter time and cool our homes in the summer time.

The idea that these power failures are due to "frozen wind turbines" is completely refuted by the the state's power agency, ERCOT, who blamed most of the outages on the state's natural gas system. ERCOT is a non-profit ISO responsible for power management; regulation of the power grid lies with the PUC of Texas, which is appointed by the Governor – long-term planning was essentially abandoned to 'market forces' during the state's deregulation in the 1990's and early 2000's.

Gov Abbott is now blaming ERCOT and power companies instead of his own party's policies:

The companies that generate the power, their operations have frozen up or have trip-wired and are non-operational. That is the lead reason why there is a shortage of power for the people who are lacking power right now. … But we must also point out that the way that ERCOT has handled this entire situation has been completely unacceptable.

Strong Man: Blame the Victims

Rather than deflect blame, Tim Boyd, Mayor of Colorado City, TX, decides to turn the issue around and blame the people looking for help:

No one owes you are [sic] your family anything, nor is it the local government's responsibility to support you during trying times like this. Sink or swim it's your choice. The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I'm sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout! … If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your [sic] lazy is direct result of your [sic] raising. Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish [sic].

Colorado City is a very small town several hours west of Dallas; it's only Wiki-worthy historical note is the mayor's recent resignation. Following a social and main-stream media backlash, he continues to double-down:

Believe me when I say that many of the things I said were taken out of context and some of which were said without putting much thought in to it. … I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout.

Travelin' Man: Get Out of Dodge 

Sen Ted Cruz, offers yet another option; his idea is to fly off with his family to Cancun, Mexico:

With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas. We want our power back, our water on, our homes warm. My team and I will continue using all our resources to keep Texas informed and safe.

I'm not sure it's helpful that conservative media is getting behind the Senator – for example, Dinesh D'Souza:

What could [Ted Cruz] do if he were here in Texas? I’m hard-pressed to say. If he’s in Cancun, that means he’s not using up valuable resources of energy, food and water that can now be used by someone else. This is probably the best thing he could do for the state right now.

Right, what could a Senator do for his state during a regional emergency? Why elect anybody to do anything? The answer to D'Souza's question might come from Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped raise over a million dollars to provide relief in Texas (she represents Brooklyn); or Beto O'Rourke, who organized a phone bank to check-in on nearly eight hundred thousand seniors (he does not currently hold elected office). Meanwhile, Sen Cruz rationalizes:

I understand why people are upset. My intention was to take care of my family.

If you vote for 'limited government', you might not be surprised if your governor, mayor, or senator is unable to help you when there's a real crisis: no power, no heat, no water, three dozen deaths, broken pipes, widespread property damage. But, you should to be desperately disappointed if your elected leader turns out to be callous, abusive, or cynical – a liar, a brute, or a coward.

Our thoughts are with all those dealing with the aftermath of these storms.

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On Wednesday, the US passed half a million total deaths due to COVID-19. The world-wide death total holds just below two and a half million; the US accounts for more than twenty percent.

Portugal's daily death total is in the sixties (67) for the first time since New Year's Day (66). Portugal's seven-day average for COVID-19 cases (1,935.1) is below two thousand for the first time since October 18th (1,901.9). The seven-day average has shot from below three thousand (2,920.1) on December 28th, to nearly thirteen thousand (12,890.6) on January 28th, to today. To illustrate this drop, I stitched together the graphs since my last post on February 10th – so the last ten days.

Yesterday, Portugal's seven-day average for covid-19 deaths (124.1) fell below Georgia's (127.1) as well, for the first time since late October. Today, that average is lower still (112.4); it was nearly three hundred on the first of the month (290.9).

cases: 111,095,358 global • 28,576,763 USA • 794,769 Portugal

deaths: 2,458,686 global • 506,750 USA • 15,821 Portugal

Land of Promise

LNU Lightning Complex Fire, Napa County, CA.; Noah Berger/AP

Eighty days ago, at the beginning of June, President Trump stood in front of a church in Washington DC and held up a bible. Upside-down. He also told the governors they "have to dominate" the protestors, and a moment when events in the US became really dark. There were nearly two million cases of COVID-19 in the US (now there are nearly six million). It was an image and a marker in time that allowed me to reflect on the eighty days prior to the beginning of June:

Time shrinks, and it is incredible to consider the last three months: coronavirus, financial crash, pandemic, lockdown, armed 're-open' protests, record unemployment, a self-medicating president, locusts, murder hornets, a super-cyclone, racially-suspect police brutality and killings, protests against racism and police brutality, looting, more police brutality, more protests against racism and police brutality, loss of autonomy in Hong Kong, a 20,000 ton Arctic oil spill, mass graves, nation-wide memorials and funerals, and (now) executive threats of martial law. 

Less than three months, really.

None of those horrible things from March-April-May have necessarily gone away, especially with the ever-increasing pandemic totals and the recent shooting in Wisconsin. But, for June-July-August, we must add to the preposterous list: massive lightning storms sparking dozens of devastating wildfires in California, an unprecedented double-hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, the intentional destruction of the US Postal Service, severe weather and historic flooding in China, an explosion in the port of Beirut setting off a wave of violent government protests, an oil tanker's grounding and splitting near Mauritius, the poisoning of a leading critic of Russian leader Putin, an illegitimate election in Belarus and the violent suppression of protests, Trump's threats to shut down TikTok and WeChat, lawsuits against the Trump Administration by TikTok and WeChat, and an asteroid's passing anxiously close to the Earth on the day before the US elections.

While facing these calamities, Trump's selfish inaction and divisive 'domination' only serve to worsen the effects and create an atmosphere of hopeless panic. Knowing you're not the only one freaking out while Trump golfs provides some comfort. Here are some sobering but good reads:

• My Son Is Looking to Me for Answers—And I Don’t Have Them Anymore, Uri Friedman, The Atlantic
• I’m a Mail Carrier, and Trump Is Definitely Trying to Affect the Election, Anonymous/Editors, LEVEL/Medium
• The American Dream, Ashleigh Kane, Dazed & Confused ("Obituaries" website)

Taking a bright neon-yellow hi-liter to the divisiveness is a recent poll from CBS News. The results quantify and provide scale for the political and cultural schism in the US. There are two Americas and two national realities, and the differences between them are now enormous:

For most Republicans, America is a nation where the economy is still fairly good, where the effort to handle the coronavirus is going at least somewhat well and the president is doing a very good job on it. For them, the virus elicits less concern in the first place. They believe the 170,000 fatalities is an overstated count and one which, for many, can so far be considered acceptable. And it is a nation where, for an overwhelming number of Republicans, there has been too much focus on racial discrimination of late.

 

 

I suppose we should not be surprised, as the RNC kicks off its Convention this week, under the theme "Land of Promise", and then announces that there is no 2020 Party Platform. So, aside from adding another term for Trump, the RNC is not promising anything. Besides, what good is a promise from a liar and a cheat? What good is a platform if the party cannot see the world's problems honestly or clearly? With each action and speech, Trump breaks our founding promises: form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.

Up is down: the world is flat, the media is fake, hundreds of thousands of pandemic victims is 'acceptable', the police don't have a problem with racism, face masks are a violation of our civil rights, Democrats are a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals, America is great again. This is not a random roll-call of oxymoronic garbage-thoughts. It's a truthful accounting of some of the things that actually divide us. How are these the things that divides us? But, there are people who sincerely believe these things – and one of them is President.

reporter: During the pandemic, the QAnon movement appears to be gaining a lot of followers. Can you talk about what you think about that, and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now?

Trump: Well I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement. I have heard that it is gaining in popularity and, from what I hear, these are people that … don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland, in places like Chicago and New York, and other cities and states. And I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it. So I don't know, really, anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.

reporter: At the crux of the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind?

Trump: Well, I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? [reporters gasp, laugh] If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are actually. We're saving the world from a radical-left philosophy that will destroy this country. And when this country is gone the rest of the world would follow.

cases: 23,965,703 global • 5,940,765 USA • 55,912 Portugal

deaths: 820,527 global • 181,958 USA • 1,805 Portugal

The End of Time

It's the last day of civilization, and there are a few things I'd like to get off my chest.

First, let me credit The Verge for this article. There are a lot of doomsday articles out there, but this one allows the voices of the survivalists to come though without too much bluster - they are not voices that I take seriously, but they are interesting voices. Two things that I truly enjoyed: 1) the comments made by Larry Hall at about the 5:30 mark, affirming his belief that climate change is the result of the cyclical movement of our solar system through the Milky Way - the evidence is in the ice core samples, and 2) at 11:50, the walk we take with Edward Peden down a long corrugated steel tube to a doorway with faux stonework, porch lights, and a brass knocker - I'm trying to picture someone using that knocker.

"Hey Edward. It's me. I brought pie."

I don't believe in paying for TV, so I get all my stations over the air. When we moved to Berkeley, one of the first local images I saw was Harold Camping's, the guy who infamously predicted the end of the world on May 21, 2011. His broadcast company, Family Radio, ran (runs) a local TV station on which he would sit and sermonize to the camera; and since the East Bay is home base to his company (and him) we got rather a full dose of his nuttiness. Though he now admits he was wrong regarding the end of days, I'm thinking he may have really helped ease the panic and drama that the world might have felt today had we not already experienced an appointment with the apocalypse.

Anyway, I've been considering him today. While the Mayans are all gone, this guy is still around, still living with the thought that he was completely wrong about something he sold as a certainty. It's one call you don't want to get wrong; he did not have the foresight to pick a date beyond his lifetime.

At the Museum here in Oakland, we have an installation called Aristotle's Cage by Michael McMillen. Enter a small, dark room through a tattered screen door, and a diorama is presented behind a wire cage: in the foreground is a small trailer with an intense internal light, cars and debris are purposefully stacked into the distance, a far-off tiny town and the mountains beyond glow with the red dawn, and hovering above are the skeletons of a man and a dog. You hear the faint tones of a fuzzy radio.

The Museum provides a single wooden chair in the small viewing space, and when the Museum is quiet, I like to sit there in secret and silent isolation; it's a great place to answer email.

I don't think it's ironic that the world should end during the holidays, astronomical and prophetic days. Plus, I guess folks will be in a better mood, so that works out. I like the way music selections that you hear in stores, on TV, and even around the office suddenly shift for Christmas. It's an artificial mood shift delivered on airwaves and PA systems everywhere. I've decided that  What Child is this? / Greensleeves by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is the best holiday song ever. I like the solemn melancholy and the thoughtfulness of the show, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and this song seems to sum it up. Digging into the recording's history, we learn that the longer Greensleeves track was an alternate take added to the soundtrack re-release in 1988, which appears to be the version of the album I have. Digging further, we find that the original lyrics for Greensleeves list (possibly) the protestations of a man rejected by a prostitute. Take that Handel.

I'm not familiar either set of words, and that helps me, perhaps, sense the spirit of the song. Maybe that's why I tire so quickly of other Christmas songs. The words are running through my head: flying reindeer, talking snowmen, and fat elves making toys, who have all conflated "holy" with "magical" and have been endowed by their savior Jesus Christ with these incredible holiday super powers. Those are the worst.

Unconsciously Green

I filled the TT's tank with gas yesterday; for the first time that I can recall, it cost me more than $50. But, I hadn't bought gas since December 1st - three full months. I used the gas to visit my brother in the South Bay. He just bought a house and was going to rent it out, so I was going to help him clean it up. But when I got there, the new tenants were already moving in! The tenants had just moved from England, and needed a new (left-drive) car. They bought a BMW M6 convertible; EPA says 11 miles per gallon city, 17 highway. Damn.

When I was living in suburban Boston, I filled the tank once every other week, almost without fail. Now, living in Berkeley, I've now driven a total of 1,000 miles since moving in June. When Donna and I moved, I know we had hoped to reduce our carbon footprint, and I think it has been a tremendous success. What's great is that we really don't think about it, or even go out of our way to be "green". Our life style is simply more green, mostly because it asks less of the world: we need less heat, we need less gas, much more of our food is locally grown, and my commute is a two minute walk.

In all the recent talk about climate change and alternative energy, I still don't feel like there's been a strong call for conservation. Maybe cause I remember the days of Jimmy Carter and gas lines there just doesn't seem to be any kind of public urgency. Though there has been talk of CFL bulbs and hybrid cars, I still don't think there has not been a big and specific call for energy conservation. One big reason, I suppose, is that the "economic climate" has taken the headlines, and forced a kind of built-in conservation; when people save money, they save energy. But, I also have a hard time imagining pulling out a this economic recession tail-spin without spending our way out.

But I still have this big fear that there are those who believe we can spend our way out of this climate crisis, rather than save our way out. In other words: drive a more efficient car, not fewer miles; change your hardware not your software. And while I agree that we need to have more efficient "life accessories" (houses, cars, big appliances), ultimately, we need to change the way we approach life.

We did recently rent a Prius Hybrid, and I am convinced that these hybrid drives are not the answer. Perhaps because we drive so little now, that we barely felt the "upgrade" from 25 to 40 mpg. But the car felt cheap, and it drove like a bus; it did not have the feel of a better product. And I know that the petroleum "investment" in this product has got to be significantly higher than in other products because there is more in it: batteries, rotors, control systems, etc. Whereas the car we have does not require very much more investment in the product itself, other than, perhaps, getting new tires and filters. From every angle, I think our best economic and climatic choice is to keep our cars, keep them in good shape, make them as efficient as possible, and drive them less.

We may have arrived at these "tipping points" simultaneously, creating a situation in which good decision-making is much harder. My conclusion is that this is truly a fork in the road: our economic activity imperils our planet's health and we may have to choose one or the other. We cannot have both, and my concern is that at this point, we are all going to choose the selfish, "short-term gain" path of economic growth. If this is the case, I believe that conservation is going to be even more important down the road - but we need to be talking about it now.

Hottest Weather Ever

The NOAA has released it's summer report for weather in the US in 2006. It's conclusion? A very warm December pushed 2006 past 1998 as the hottest calendar year ever recorded. Check out this map -- no one near normal. In 112 years, almost every state is showing a triple-digit (one of the 13 hottest years). Hot.


"The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record and nearly identical to the record set in 1998. Based on preliminary data, the 2006 annual average temperature was 55°F, 2.2°F (1.2°C) above the 20th Century mean and 0.07°F (0.04°C) warmer than 1998."

And for the first time ever the US Historical Climatology Network calulation for average annual temperature broke the 55-degree (F) barrier. If the mean is just below 53-degrees, aren't we now officially two degrees into "global warming"?

The State of the Arctic

A stunning update to the arctic climate research going on at the NOAA reinforces all the recent news that climate change at the poles is accelerating.


Old Ice vs New Ice - 1988, 199, 2001, 2005
[ download the PDF here ]

This AP article summarizes the basic conclusions, adding to the drum beat that we are heating things up:

"Signs of warming continue in the Arctic with a decline in sea ice, an increase in shrubs growing on the tundra and rising worries about the Greenland ice sheet.

"There have been regional warming periods before. Now we're seeing Arctic-wide changes," James Overland, an oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Washington state, said Thursday.

For each of the last five years it was at least 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above average over the entire Arctic over the entire year, he said.

The new "State of the Arctic" analysis, released by the U.S. government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also reports an increase in northward movement of warmer water through the Bering Strait in 2001-2004, which might be a factor in continuing reduction of sea ice."

But there is some interesting cross-currents in the data, from the LA Times article by Robert Lee Hotz:

"Yet the researchers also found new patterns of cooling ocean currents and prevailing winds that suggested the Arctic, long considered a bellwether of global warming, may be reverting in some ways to more normal conditions not seen since the 1970s.

Taken together, these findings may be evidence, the researchers said, of the region struggling to keep its balance, as rising temperatures slowly overturn the long-established order of seasonal variations.

'This is a region that is fighting back,' said lead author Jacqueline Richter-Menge, a civil engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. 'There are things that showed signs of going back to norms, trying to right themselves under very dire circumstances.' "

The dude's name is Hotz.

Massachusetts is the New South Carolina

A new comprehsvie climate survey from the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment that shows how the cliamte here in Massachusetts will soon (by the end of this century) be on par with the climate that we're familiar with in South Carolina (from Boston.com):


"The study also predicted less snow, more extreme storms and frequent droughts -– key events that could harm tourism, agriculture and the region's economy.

'The very notion of the Northeast as we know it is at stake,' said Cameron Wake, an author of the report and an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Climate Change Research Center. 'The near-term emissions choices we make in the Northeast and throughout the world will help determine the climate and quality of life our children and grandchildren experience.' "

Global warming study: Boston temperatures could mirror highs in South

The report is available from the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment -- the report in PDF form:

Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast, a report of the NECIA

Peak Oil Is No Myth

A very interesting debate between progressive thinkers on Peak Oil going down -- Greg Palast and Richard Heinberg:

Why Palast Is Wrong

An Open Letter to Greg Palast on Peak Oil

I guess this is in anticipation of a new book from Palast -- the BBC reporter who did so much work to get at the facts of the Florida Election debacle (in his earlier book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy "). It sounds like Greg is splitting hairs on this, but it reminds me a lot of the spin-spin and counter-spin that added to the confusion around, for example, Global Warming (oh, it's not real, scientists disagree about it, it's effects are exaggerated for political reasons, etc.).

Cause it sounds like they agree on the big issues: conservation, alternative energy sources, environmental impact of a fossil fuel economy. Palast simply seems not to buy the fact that we are quickly running out of crude -- the rest appears to be a conspiracy (oil co's, govt, etc).

It's clear: the last barrel of oil is gonna be a whole lot harder to get than the first. Peak Oil is the point at which we have consumed as much as is left in the ground -- but we'll never get the total of the "second half". It seems important to understand this if we are to plan and manage a better scenario for the future. Even if we don't agree with an "oil crash" or other slightly more "apocalyptic" future-views, we can see the very serious implications of a country like China or India driving energy markets to price extremes that will make our economy strain.

While it's important to manage our fears, and check our businesses and government; it's more important to stay clear about the facts and focus on the truth. Eyes open folks; keep em open.

A Movie with Gore

Went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" tonight. A great movie and a great story. I had discussed the movie previous to seeing with a friend who was rather annoyed by two things: that it was "all about Al Gore" and that Gore used a Mac -- the constant product placement. Well, of course, Al Gore happens to be on the board at Apple Computer, so the product placement is rather a given (especially since the movie is basically about the "slide show" he has on his computer). But the personal stuff is the story in the movie -- I don't think the movie would have felt like a movie without that narrative. It would have felt like a slide show.

The scariest thing was the data graph showing the rising levels of CO2 -- when Al Gore gets on this electric lift so he can point out the "spike". Here is the study, conducted by a group from the University of Bern, specifically cited by Gore:

From a BBC News article:
"We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years." (Thomas Stocker, study leader)

CO2 levels are higher than at any time in the last 650,000 year. Ack! And not just a little bit higher, but nearly 30-percent higher than at any time during that period. This is not a piddling look back a few hundred years, or even a few thousand years -- but over half a million years. Our civilization is just over 2000 years old. Our species is likely about 200,000 years old. We have never ever faced a crisis like this. Ever.

These are recorded levels (the lift is used to get to the predicted increase over the next fifty years); it gets pretty vertical!

Reading some of the blog posts in reply -- some millions or billions of years ago, CO2 levels were thru the roof. Al Gore is a nut case; he's Chicken Little. But the 650,000 year time frame is pretty much coincident with the appearance of our "species branch": modern man. Homo sapiens heidelbergensis dates back to approximately 800,000 years at the extreme. We have never lived through a geologic change of this scale.

The question is: why should we not do everything we can to assure that our species survives? That civilization can move forward beyond the next two generations? Why dismiss this?

One scene in the movie, Gore shows a slide that he says was from a Republican "slide show". It shows a scales with the word "Balance", and in one pan is a pyramid of gold bars, and in the other is the globe (I think representing "environmentalism"). Economy vs. ecology. Will some please explain to the Republicans how this is supposed to balance?

In the end, this is a very personal story; the movie was right about that. Even though it is a story that may touch and affect more than 9 billion people in less than fifty years, it is personal on a global scale. Each of our actions will have an intense and direct affect on everyone else. The politics of this are clear, too; as Robert Green Ingersoll famously said, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” The scale of those consequences are now readily apparent.

So I take the story very personally, too. And, hey, I get to write this blog on my very own PowerBook -- looks just like Al's.

Planet TV on Global Climate Change

I got hooked on this video podcast show some months ago cause it was funny and truly interesting. I was discussing global dimming with some colleagues, and one of my co-workers suggested I check out the show.

Admittedly, sometimes, they have crazy robot projects or people retrofitting jet engines on motor scooter. But Episode 172 was different -- an editorial on Gloabl Climate Change.

There’s a lot of head-in-the-sand behavior going on about so many things. The legacy we’re leave to the next generation is shameful — and I mean our environmental, ecomonic, and political legacy. And more so because we have been *consciously wreckless*.

If this doesn't explain the issue and the imperative for a change in our behavior as a species, then nothing will. Check out this show:


Click to watch the QuickTime movie
Transcript here.

Kunstler's Long Emergency

Just finished reading "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler, a very-very dark look forward to a time when we begin to run out of oil; ie. in about thirty years.

We will soon (or have already) gone past the point of "global oil peak" -- the halfway mark when we have consumed as much oil as is left in the ground. but, as Kunstler points out, the half we got is the easy half, the second half is going to be harder to extract and of much lower quality. There are no "hybrid" airplanes. Everything that's made from plastics or machined with power tools is about to become much more scarce. Our global economy is about to hit a giant speed bump.

When oil was first pumped in 1859, the poluation of the US was around 30 million, and the world population was around 1.2 billion. The population of the US has increased ten-fold in 150 years. The world population has about tripled. Kunstler makes it clear: these increases are sustained only by the massive use of cheap oil. The loss of fossil fuel on a population totally dependent on it results in: famine, disease, strife, and unrest. The past gave hints of the future: remember the gas lines? rolling black-outs? What happens to people working or living in 30-story skyscrapers when the power goes out?

Before we started pumping it, there were about 2 trillion barrels of oil in the planet. The world currently consumes about 84 million barrels per day; it will consume 103 million barrels per day by 2015, and 119 million barrels in 2025. At some point it will take more energy to extract the oil than is recovered; at which point we will be, essentially, out of oil -- we will never really recover all the oil in the planet. This oil was like an endowment; we could have invested it in something that would generate some kind of return -- we could have developed and built wind, solar, or geothermal technologies. Instead, we basically drove around a lot and burned away our inheritance.

Which sucks cause I really do like driving around a lot.

Kunstler takes it a step further -- a return to a regional economy, regional self-reliance, and regional governance. It sounds a bit like the Dark Ages run with computers. The loss of plentiful oil is double-compounded by the environmental legacy of our oil consumption: both the natural environment (global warming, industrial farming) and our built environment (suburbia, lack of mass transit). In 30 years, by the time the Long Emergency is in full swing, the world's population is expected to surpass 8 billion. One of the most thought-provoking books I've read in some time. Here's a good sampler:

An exceprt on the Rolling Stone Web SIte

Don't believe Kunstler? -- how about believing Chevron:

"It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30."