The Uwharrie River

I have a rule, not to use fossil fuels for recreation. I allow myself to drive the 1.5 miles to where I launch my kayak on my local creek, but only because I can’t think of a safe, practical alternative.

So, it was a really big deal for me to take a canoe/camping trip on the Uwharrie river, which is about 200 miles away. I didn’t just bend my rule, I shattered it. I suppose most people wouldn’t see it as any big deal. My car gets about 32 MPG. It may just be an obsession of mine. I work from home to avoid commuting, and I try to make only one trip into town each week.

In any case, the river was beautiful. My only regret was that I had to leave there so soon. I could have stayed a couple more days. I had a dear friend with me, which made the trip all that much more special. I don’t think she realizes how wonderful she is to me. When she is with me, everything is better. Sigh.

When we arrived at the national forest, we dropped off the boat and some equipment at our put-in, and we drove to our take-out and left the car there. We had to walk just over 3 miles back to the boat, carrying lots of heavy camera gear, because neither of us can go anywhere without our DSLRs and a selection of lenses. Of course, I only used one lens the entire trip!

Once we got on the water, it was all downhill. The weather was fairly cool, but it didn’t rain on us and the sun peeked through from time to time. The section of the Uwharrie that we paddled doesn’t really have rapids, so to speak. It has rock beds and ledges that can be a little challenging. Mostly, the river is just shallow and rocky. The water level was about perfect. We never had to get out and walk, and we only scraped over a few rocks.

We traveled about 5 miles by river. We were surrounded by beautiful scenery the entire time. There were forests of green, high rock walls, crazy looking sedimentary rock formations, and my friend even saw a bear. I love the sound of water, cascading over rocks. It’s a sound I could never grow tired of. I did a little wading in the river during our paddle, and I took a dip in Moccasin Creek before we left. Even in cool weather, I love to get in the water.

So, that’s my happy report for the month. There will be more doom-and-gloom next week, I’m sure!

Do the Math premiere

You can (and should) view the “Do the Math” movie on-line on YouTube. The movie was produced by 350.org. The movie is a call to action to stop or substantially reduce carbon emissions before our planet warms more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

On a lighter note, solar panels (photovoltaics) can now be purchased for under $1/watt with a 25 year warranty. That is a pretty good deal, even without government subsidies. I have never filed for tax rebates, as a matter of principle. But, I digress …

I’ve been looking into adding a wind turbine to my energy production. The turbines that sell for under $1000 do not impress me. They have small blades and only produce any real power in high winds (25 mph+). It is getting windier, where I live, but a turbine that could harness a 15 mph wind would serve me much better. I’m looking at building a turbine, specifically designed for lower wind speeds. I’m also thinking of purchasing some additional solar panels. At $1/watt, I can’t go wrong. The catch is that my charge controller would need to be replaced, and I might have to add some batteries.

I just got a letter from my electric utility. Electric rates are going up 5% in May, and the facilities charge (a fixed monthly fee) is also going up. I’ve been debating a grid tied inverter, so I could make better use of my photovoltaic output. As it is now, I have excess capacity most afternoons; especially on sunny days. With the increase is the monthly connection fee, I’m tempted to invest my money in going off grid, completely. Going off grid is an attractive idea, but the ramifications of going off grid are nothing to sneeze at. I would have to be able to provide for peak demand, and I’d have to have backup power for when the sun didn’t shine and the wind didn’t blow. For now, that is just not an option. For now, the goal will be to get the electric bill as low as possible.

On an unrelated note, I found time to rebuild my robot car. It’s been fun, writing the software for autonomous navigation. I’ll have to return to my robo-car in a future blog entry. That’s a lot more fun than talking about the destruction of our planet.

Home, the movie

I have had “Home” on my DVD wishlist for a while, so I was very excited to find it on YouTube.com. The movie opens with some background on how our ecosystem formed. It’s not a detailed account of all 4 billion years, but it hits the highlights; especially the ones that are important for understanding the rest of the movie. After that, the movie talks about the humble beginnings of homo sapiens, from hunter gatherers, to subsistence farmers, and on through the industrial revolution. Then the movie expounds on the many ways in which man has changed the environment to suit himself, with many devastating effects. It paints a sad picture of a planet being consumed at an unsustainable pace. Home ends with signs of hope, and a call to action.

What I loved most about the movie was the beautiful cinematography. The movie is mostly a series of high definition aerial clips that are sometimes breathtaking, and sometimes bleak. I imagined, while watching it, that some people might come away with a sense of pride, at how much we’ve “accomplished”. There are many shots that illustrate the power and ingenuity of our species. I, however, felt a very strong sense of doom. When I see giant machines, I see massive destruction. When I see a precisely engineered military weapon, I don’t see national security, I see death and suffering. In my experience, machines have the potential to improve our lives in many ways, but they are usually deployed by soulless corporations that are motivated only by profit.

But, I digress. The mid segment in Home brought tears to my eyes. The movie did end on a high note. I suppose that’s a good thing, but it may not be realistic. It sure looks like the Keystone XL pipeline is going to get approved, and the tar sands of Canada will be exploited at any and all cost to the environment. I hope I’m wrong, and Transcanada gets stopped in their tracks. However, as I write this, the US Senate is drafting legislation to do an end run around the President. It may save face for Obama, if they can pass it over his veto, but the end result will be devastating for Alberta and the entire world.

The other thing that made be sad, while watching Home, was the shots of the elephants. Elephants are such amazing, intelligent, and social creatures. They have extended family systems, they care for their own, and they mourn their dead. Yet, they are being slaughtered for their ivory in record numbers. The number of elephants in the wild has reached an all time low, and they could be wiped out in 10 years, if the current rate of poaching continues. How can people buy something made of ivory, knowing that a majestic, sentient creature was slaughtered for it? Maybe it’s just ignorance. If it is, I hope people wake up before it’s too late. If we’re the caretakers of this planet, we’re doing a piss poor job.

On a final note: I highly recommend the movie, “Home”. It covers a lot of ground in 90 minutes. I think everyone who lives on this planet should see it.

The Headwaters

Check out this TED talk by Wade Davis about the pristine wilderness that will be in jeopardy if the tar sands industry has it’s way. There are some very beautiful images.

Sadly, if people don’t wake up soon, there won’t be a place on the planet that will go untouched. There are diseases ravishing northern forests, as those diseases migrate north with warmer temperatures. Permafrost is melting, glaciers are disappearing, and polar bears are starving. And that is before the miners and oilmen arrive to decimate the landscape.

Yet, there are people living near me, on the beach, who don’t believe the sea level is rising. I understand why people are skeptical. These changes are happening over decades, and short term cycles often mask the long term trends. Unfortunately, if we wait until we can see the tsunami coming, there will only be enough time to run for our lives. There will be no time to save our homes and our homeland.

If we do leave some natural resources in the ground, and take a more conservative approach to life, and we discover that there is no global crisis, after all, what did it hurt? Where is the harm in preserving our beautiful planet? Why must we blow the tops off of mountains, dump our waste in every river, and drill for every drop of oil? Can we never be satisfied?

Forward on Climate Rally in DC

The Forward on Climate rally was yesterday in Washington DC. Somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people attended. I would say it was a grand success. The best coverage of the rally that I’ve found is here.

I know there are lots of reasonable people who believe that the Keystone XL pipeline is going to help with our economic prosperity. I can even understand their reasoning. However, I firmly believe that the benefits do not outweigh the long term costs. Today we got confirmation that the tar sands tailings ponds are leaking toxins into the ground water. The Canadian government had denied that any chemicals were leaking from the ponds, but zero leakage seemed unlikely to me.

I’ve spoken before about the externalized costs of fossil fuels. Here are a couple of articles that go into more detail on that subject, and provide sources for further research.

• The true cost of producing electricity with coal and natural gas
• Fossil Fuel Generated Energy has Real External Costs

I also got some very bad news on the state of the arctic sea ice, this week. It looks like the arctic will be ice free in the summer by 2020. That doesn’t bode well for the gulf stream, which is already slowing down. That seemingly insignificant fact could have catastrophic implications for the east coast of the United States. The slowing of the gulf stream will add to sea level rise here, on the east coast. It could mean as much as a meter of extra sea level rise, over and above the global sea level rise. That could spell disaster for many coastal communities near my home.

I warned you, a couple of posts back, that there would be more doom and gloom. I’m afraid the news from this past week is even more dire than I had anticipated. I sure hope Obama decides to scrap the Keystone XL pipeline. We don’t need more pollution or more CO2. Jobs are no good to us, if our food supply is devastated by drought, or the Mississippi river dries up, or our rivers die from toxic pollutants. Our children deserve a healthy planet. Our economy is already being severely burdened by the cost of health care, and skyrocketing food prices. We can’t survive in a toxic environment.

Just say “No” to Keystone XL. Forward on Climate!

A Competitive Regulatory Environment?

The hawks would have us believe that the EPA is driving all of our manufacturing jobs to other countries. They want to do away with the EPA and all environmental regulations. I would argue that the low cost of labor is probably a more significant forcing than EPA regulations, but for those who still think EPA regulations are unnecessary, you may be interested to hear that Beijing’s air pollution was 40 times the World Health Organization’s limit on January 13, 2013.  (ref: http://ecowatch.org/2013/china-coal-consumption/)

Here is what that looks like (photo linked from the cited article on EcoWatch) …

Is this really what you want for our children? Also, before you get feeling all smug about being an American and having clean air to breath, don’t forget that America is a huge importer of Chinese goods. If we hadn’t exported our dirty manufacturing to China, and our consumption of useless plastic crap was as high as it is, we’d have those low paying jobs and high polluting factories here on our soil, and we’d be breathing this smog. As long as we continue to thoughtlessly consume Chinese goods, we are partly responsible for the pollution. (The Story of Stuff)

On a related note: There have been recent discussions about the dangers to birds, posed by wind farms. If this photo is the result of burning coal to produce electricity, I can imagine this would make flying very hazardous; not to mention the damage to the bird’s respiratory and cardiovascular system.

Back to Doom and Gloom

It seems the anti-green people will go to great lengths to resist sustainable solutions; in this case, a wind farm. An offshore wind farm is being sited about 35 miles from me, not too far from Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. The opposition have recently decided that the wind farm might get in the way of military training exercises. They say there is a chance the air station may be closed in the future, due to limitations imposed on it by the proximity of the wind turbines.

First, let me say that the Federal Government (i.e. the Marine Corps) had veto authority on the siting of the wind farm, and they did not veto it. It is obviously not in their critical flight path. Next, I’d like to talk about the bigger picture. If you accept the best science available to us, today, if we don’t do something to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we’re going to see more than a meter of sea level rise on our cost in the next 50 years. We’ve already had 8 inches of sea level rise, here on the North Carolina coast. A meter of sea level rise would be devastating to our coast and our coastal economy. Even the military bases would be impacted. It seems to me that the wind farms are, at least, symbolic of our attempt to prevent an ecological and economic disaster. That, in my opinion, trumps a perceived, potential threat of a base realignment that would result in the closure of the air station.

People probably get tired of hearing me say this, but if we’re going to head off an apocalyptic climate disaster, we’re going to have to get serious. That means everyone has to do their part. Individuals, governments, and commercial entities must all find ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Many of us will have to make sacrifices. I have made sacrifices, and I expect to make more.

On the flip side, wind farms are hardly a sacrifice. The wind industry creates jobs and spurs economic growth. It helps us reach energy independence without polluting our precious environment. Wind farms even save millions of gallons of water. Developing better renewable energy technologies will help the U.S. remain competitive, and help us balance our trade deficit. If you’re against subsidizing industry, then stop subsidies to fossil fuel companies and balance the playing field. Also, make the fossil fuel companies pay to clean up the messes they create, and the health problems associated with their pollution.

The days of cheap energy are coming to an end. Investing in sustainable, clean technologies just makes sense to me.