I nearly stopped feeding the birds after being greeted in my yard by a particularly loud cardinal singing overtop hundreds of other avian creatures on a March day where the mercury rose close to 80.
Whether that particular bird sang for a mate, I do not know. Frankly, I'm not 100 percent sure the practically glowing red bird was a cardinal, because by the time I got my wife's attention to bring the binoculars, it had flown.
It remained brightly at the edge of my vision while perched. The information coming from heights of the tree on my neighbor's property reached my ears better than my eyes.
Whatever it was, the bird had a long, loud and persistent call for those minutes. It sang like I've never heard.
The effect of all the songs arrested me in mid dog walk. I don't think I've ever noticed as many calls before, not even in the deepest depth of woods.
The same day, not wanting to get behind in the yard any more than I already am, I grabbed my shovel to work on one of my many earthmoving projects.
Beginning as more cleanup of one of last year's projects than anything else, I still threw dirt around for several hours, not only moving dirt so that it sloped away from my foundation, but also trying to step down the hillside for eventual planting.
I had lots of little companions.
My basket-shaped birdfeeder stood on its shepherd's crook at the corner of the house, and persistent little goldfinches kept swooping down on it.
The farther I moved from the feeder, the more they came — wearing their duller winter colors, drab grey with streaks of white and black.
In summer, goldfinches remind me of escaped parakeets, having molted and grown vivid yellow feathers back. They're not called goldfinches for nothing.
I see a lot of goldfinches year round. Members of this species best realized that my plantings of sunflowers and allowing volunteer thistles to grow in spring and summer came from my desire to benefit wildlife. And goldfinches similarly started descending first to eat the sunflower seeds that I filled up my one feeder with.
For weeks, I saw no reason to feed the birds this winter until the temperature dropped to the teens and stayed there.
Slate-sided juncos joined goldfinches on the ground under the feeder at first. They disappeared and left mostly finches and a few common sparrows.
While digging there, I noticed my shovel turned up a profusion of worms. I figured that with the almost "summery" days and with more food becoming available soon, that it was okay just to let the birds peck the last few seeds out of the feeder and call it a season.
Well, an online link to eNature.com sent to me from the National Wildlife Federation arrived in my inbox just in time to tell me that I couldn't be more wrong.
"March is the most difficult month of the year for birds to find adequate food to survive winter in most of North America," the article said. "That’s because the supplies of natural food....last year’s seeds, fruits, berries and insect eggs and larvae...are at their lowest levels after months of birds feeding on them."
All of last year's seeds and berries have been eaten by this time, it goes on to say. I can confirm that in my yard — with birds having to compete for food not only with each other, but also with deer that consumed berries on my holly shrubs by starting with the leaves and branches and chewing every morsel off right to the stem. Little if any food is left.
So armed with the correct information, I've happily filled my birdfeeder several times since and watched as finches flocked to it. Too many for the seeds supply, in fact, so I've also scattered some on the ground, too.
I'm going to have to stop being so measured in putting out birdseed and show greater empathy for the creatures in their toughest month of the year.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Making of a LEEDer
Builders dedicating green structures will reap rewards while minimum-effort developers will pay the price in Portland, Ore., under a new sustainable building proposal.
Officials in the West Coast metropolis (formerly nicknamed as Stumptown for its active timber sector) want to green new large-scale developments through a system of fees and rebates based on attainment of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, also known as LEED, according to sustainablebusiness.com
Developers working on sizable commercial projects could, under this proposal, put up new structures to merely satisfy the minimum Oregon building code, the article states. But those who only meet minimums like that would have to pay a fee to the city of up to $3.46 per square foot in the building.
As this so-called "feebate" structure would apply to commercial buildings of more than 20,000 square feet, the costs of those bare minimum improvements would prove a significant financial penalty for the developer.
A commercial building at 20,000 square feet would tack another $69,200 to the project under this program.
However, developers that go the extra mile and get levels of LEED certification on their buildings could have the fees waived or even get a rebate for earning the highest efficiency ratings for the facilities, the article says.
Those that install enough features like on-site renewable energy generation, water-efficient landscaping, controls on the heat-island effect or light pollution, use certified renewable lumber, choose suitable land and earn enough points on the LEED scorecard to reach the second tier of certification, or silver, won't have to pay extra fees.
And those developers who earn the gold or platinum LEED certification would get a financial reward from Portland, described as rebates ranging from $1.73 to $17.30 per square foot.
Multifamily residential developments would face similar disincentives for taking the easy route in construction and similar incentives for building better than required.
There rebates could range from 51 cents to $5.15 per square foot, depending on LEED ratings.
Portland officials would like to see a green revolution in single-family homes too.
The proposal states the city would set a goal of 20 percent of new home construction that earn LEED certifications in 2009.
If that goal isn't met — and if the number of new homes with LEED ratings doesn't jump again to 40 percent in 2011 — the city will apply the same feebate system as on commercial structures to residential homes.
Officials from Portland, which has adopted the motto "The City that Works," told Sustainable Business they expected the fees gathered from underperforming buildings would pay for the rebates to the certified LEED buildings.
Still in public hearing mode on the proposals, the reactions have been overwhelmingly supportive, the article says.
"About half the respondents in a public comment period think the policy is appropriate for the city," it quotes an official from the city's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. "Another 40 percent say it's not stringent enough, and about 10 percent don't support the policy. "
The motivation to implement the incentives comes from the fact that Portland cannot enforce building codes more stringent that Oregon's.
LEED ratings come from the U.S. Green Building Council, and participation is voluntary.
The council calls LEED standards "the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green building."
LEED, they say, "promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality."
Making LEED certification more attractive to the mainstream not just the "greenies" through incentives serves as Portland's real innovation here.
Earning rebates or avoiding fees will make more developers cognizant of LEED building practices and increase the program's everyday relevance.
That's makes Portland a real leader in terms of sustainable development.
More cities should consider following the feebate path that Portland has blazed.
Officials in the West Coast metropolis (formerly nicknamed as Stumptown for its active timber sector) want to green new large-scale developments through a system of fees and rebates based on attainment of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, also known as LEED, according to sustainablebusiness.com
Developers working on sizable commercial projects could, under this proposal, put up new structures to merely satisfy the minimum Oregon building code, the article states. But those who only meet minimums like that would have to pay a fee to the city of up to $3.46 per square foot in the building.
As this so-called "feebate" structure would apply to commercial buildings of more than 20,000 square feet, the costs of those bare minimum improvements would prove a significant financial penalty for the developer.
A commercial building at 20,000 square feet would tack another $69,200 to the project under this program.
However, developers that go the extra mile and get levels of LEED certification on their buildings could have the fees waived or even get a rebate for earning the highest efficiency ratings for the facilities, the article says.
Those that install enough features like on-site renewable energy generation, water-efficient landscaping, controls on the heat-island effect or light pollution, use certified renewable lumber, choose suitable land and earn enough points on the LEED scorecard to reach the second tier of certification, or silver, won't have to pay extra fees.
And those developers who earn the gold or platinum LEED certification would get a financial reward from Portland, described as rebates ranging from $1.73 to $17.30 per square foot.
Multifamily residential developments would face similar disincentives for taking the easy route in construction and similar incentives for building better than required.
There rebates could range from 51 cents to $5.15 per square foot, depending on LEED ratings.
Portland officials would like to see a green revolution in single-family homes too.
The proposal states the city would set a goal of 20 percent of new home construction that earn LEED certifications in 2009.
If that goal isn't met — and if the number of new homes with LEED ratings doesn't jump again to 40 percent in 2011 — the city will apply the same feebate system as on commercial structures to residential homes.
Officials from Portland, which has adopted the motto "The City that Works," told Sustainable Business they expected the fees gathered from underperforming buildings would pay for the rebates to the certified LEED buildings.
Still in public hearing mode on the proposals, the reactions have been overwhelmingly supportive, the article says.
"About half the respondents in a public comment period think the policy is appropriate for the city," it quotes an official from the city's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. "Another 40 percent say it's not stringent enough, and about 10 percent don't support the policy. "
The motivation to implement the incentives comes from the fact that Portland cannot enforce building codes more stringent that Oregon's.
LEED ratings come from the U.S. Green Building Council, and participation is voluntary.
The council calls LEED standards "the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green building."
LEED, they say, "promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality."
Making LEED certification more attractive to the mainstream not just the "greenies" through incentives serves as Portland's real innovation here.
Earning rebates or avoiding fees will make more developers cognizant of LEED building practices and increase the program's everyday relevance.
That's makes Portland a real leader in terms of sustainable development.
More cities should consider following the feebate path that Portland has blazed.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Molecular fields forever
You may have heard that green is the new black, but did you know carbon as the new cash crop alongside corn or beans?
Maybe, if the farmers can get paid for burying — but not growing — greenhouse gas emissions.
Agricultural researchers see potential for sequestration in both soil and in waters of wetlands.
Even now, scientists are conducting experiments to find out if wetlands grown with cattails and other plants can provide the world some breathing room from global warming by capturing carbon dioxide under dirt and water.
U.S. Geological Survey have a lot of information posted about their efforts in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to trap the gas, as well as stop land subsidence.
Robin Miller, who has the very cool title of biogeochemist with the geological survey, explains it pretty well at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/details.asp?ep=68.
"A carbon-capture farm is a wetland built specifically to grow very productive emergent marsh vegetation, in our case, cattails and tules that use photosynthesis to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put it into their plant tissue," he said.
Normal farming methods on the delta for the last 100 years has stripped the land of its soil, Miller added. Farmers drained the fields to grow corn and other row crops.
Exposure of the soil infused more oxygen into it and encouraged microbial growth.
These microbes ate the organic matter in the peat soils.
"And so under traditional farming practices, the islands lose up to an inch of surface elevation a year," Miller continued. "And now many of the islands are subsided more than 20 feet below sea level and the ground water has to be kept even lower than the land surface to grow crops."
In turn, the water tables have dropped substantially, creating pressure on the region's levees.
If the levees broke, the delta would see a salt water intrusion covering the land, creating 20-foot-deep lakes in their place.
This could cause a catastrophic loss in the fresh water supply to Los Angeles and California's important agricultural pursuits, Miller said.
Growing generation after generation of cattails in wetlands could build the land back up, after they die and turn to peat moss. It would take decades, however, to regenerate the soil.
Selling carbon capture credits to an emission intensive industry could provide revenue for the farmer, Miller said. "And although the carbon-credit market is not yet established in California, our hope is that carbon farms will be able to sell their credits and make money, essentially replacing conventional farming in the Delta with carbon-capture farming."
California Department of Water Resources has given a $12.3 million grant to fund the 400-acre wetlands plot, partnering with the USGS and the University of California at Davis.
The federal and state agencies had previously partnered on a pilot project at a place known as Twitchell Island in the same area.
During these tests, scientists recorded "elevation gains" of more than 10 inches from 1997 to 2005 "as cattails, tules and other plants grew, died and decomposed.
"The process leaves behind roots and plant remnants that compact into a material similar to what formed the peat soils initially," a press release about the wetlands farming project says.
These could be considered passive carbon farms — there are ideas out there for more aggressive pollution controls through wetlands.
Such "marsh farms" could address the problems caused by excess nitrates, which come from fertilizers used to grow grains, according to Science News Online.
"Cities and farms throughout the upper Midwest provide a large share of the nitrate pollution responsible for the annual creation of a huge zone of oxygen-starved water—the so-called Gulf dead zone—1,000 miles downstream in the Gulf of Mexico," the article stated.
The problem causing nitrogen can be removed from the waters by bacterial found in wetlands, helping to prevent the dreaded dead in the oceans from growing larger.
Where carbon capture by wetlands could be a fairly low-tech business, nitrogen would require more intensive engineering and monitoring, Science News' information indicates.
But it's effective, at least for a time, as shown by the results of a test done by research Amy Poe at the University of North Carolina. A built-from-scratch 12-acre marsh handled about 50 percent of the nitrates washed off of a 2,200 acres of corn and beans for about three years.
Hopefully, a system of economic rewards can be developed to reward farmers for returning the land to this natural and important kind of productivity.
While the harvest might be more abstract, it's no less important than the air that we breathe.
Maybe, if the farmers can get paid for burying — but not growing — greenhouse gas emissions.
Agricultural researchers see potential for sequestration in both soil and in waters of wetlands.
Even now, scientists are conducting experiments to find out if wetlands grown with cattails and other plants can provide the world some breathing room from global warming by capturing carbon dioxide under dirt and water.
U.S. Geological Survey have a lot of information posted about their efforts in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to trap the gas, as well as stop land subsidence.
Robin Miller, who has the very cool title of biogeochemist with the geological survey, explains it pretty well at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/details.asp?ep=68.
"A carbon-capture farm is a wetland built specifically to grow very productive emergent marsh vegetation, in our case, cattails and tules that use photosynthesis to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put it into their plant tissue," he said.
Normal farming methods on the delta for the last 100 years has stripped the land of its soil, Miller added. Farmers drained the fields to grow corn and other row crops.
Exposure of the soil infused more oxygen into it and encouraged microbial growth.
These microbes ate the organic matter in the peat soils.
"And so under traditional farming practices, the islands lose up to an inch of surface elevation a year," Miller continued. "And now many of the islands are subsided more than 20 feet below sea level and the ground water has to be kept even lower than the land surface to grow crops."
In turn, the water tables have dropped substantially, creating pressure on the region's levees.
If the levees broke, the delta would see a salt water intrusion covering the land, creating 20-foot-deep lakes in their place.
This could cause a catastrophic loss in the fresh water supply to Los Angeles and California's important agricultural pursuits, Miller said.
Growing generation after generation of cattails in wetlands could build the land back up, after they die and turn to peat moss. It would take decades, however, to regenerate the soil.
Selling carbon capture credits to an emission intensive industry could provide revenue for the farmer, Miller said. "And although the carbon-credit market is not yet established in California, our hope is that carbon farms will be able to sell their credits and make money, essentially replacing conventional farming in the Delta with carbon-capture farming."
California Department of Water Resources has given a $12.3 million grant to fund the 400-acre wetlands plot, partnering with the USGS and the University of California at Davis.
The federal and state agencies had previously partnered on a pilot project at a place known as Twitchell Island in the same area.
During these tests, scientists recorded "elevation gains" of more than 10 inches from 1997 to 2005 "as cattails, tules and other plants grew, died and decomposed.
"The process leaves behind roots and plant remnants that compact into a material similar to what formed the peat soils initially," a press release about the wetlands farming project says.
These could be considered passive carbon farms — there are ideas out there for more aggressive pollution controls through wetlands.
Such "marsh farms" could address the problems caused by excess nitrates, which come from fertilizers used to grow grains, according to Science News Online.
"Cities and farms throughout the upper Midwest provide a large share of the nitrate pollution responsible for the annual creation of a huge zone of oxygen-starved water—the so-called Gulf dead zone—1,000 miles downstream in the Gulf of Mexico," the article stated.
The problem causing nitrogen can be removed from the waters by bacterial found in wetlands, helping to prevent the dreaded dead in the oceans from growing larger.
Where carbon capture by wetlands could be a fairly low-tech business, nitrogen would require more intensive engineering and monitoring, Science News' information indicates.
But it's effective, at least for a time, as shown by the results of a test done by research Amy Poe at the University of North Carolina. A built-from-scratch 12-acre marsh handled about 50 percent of the nitrates washed off of a 2,200 acres of corn and beans for about three years.
Hopefully, a system of economic rewards can be developed to reward farmers for returning the land to this natural and important kind of productivity.
While the harvest might be more abstract, it's no less important than the air that we breathe.
Overhead savings
The solution to urban heat island effects may well be over peoples' heads, I would say.
That is to say, their roofs.
Good candidates for lowering temperatures and energy costs in the built environment of towns and cities come in the form of flat roof structures, such as schools, big box superstores and traditional urban buildings like those found in downtown Hillsville and Galax and the core of larger cities across the country and the world.
Black tar roofs — sealed to keep out water leaks — also absorb the heat from the sun's rays and can at times make the roof temperature almost boiling hot.
A cost effective solution, for both new construction and roof replacement, is to choose the "cool roof" option.
What it amounts to is creating a more reflective, i.e. white, roof surface with the goal of cutting down solar heat gain.
The Environmental Protection Agency says while the reflective roofing systems costs about the same, they can lower energy usage in a building by about 10 percent.
Right here in Virginia, an Energy Star roof replacement project at Jefferson Houston Elementary School in Alexandria showed the electricity saving possibilities.
When replacing the roof on the school built in 1970, administrators realized that a reflective roof could cut down on cooling costs, especially as the mercury in summer typically rises to 100 degrees in the eastern Virginia locality.
The old surface on the 83,000-square-foot facility was replaced in the 1990s with — to use the jargon — a white ethylene propylene single-ply membrane as part of a more insulated and reflective roofing system.
"The reflectivity of the new roof, compared with the old roof, increased from less than 20 percent to 78 percent," said the case study.
The insulation value of the roofing was doubled at the same time to stop the heat gathered at the surface from raising the temperature inside the school.
While the cost of the cool roof was "no higher," the school started seeing immediate savings after the installation was finished.
The total cost of the replacement came to $330,000, or about $3.87 per square foot, the EPA said. The electricity costs for the year fell by $31,000, or 37 cents per square foot.
Electricity savings totaled a whopping 514,000 kilowatts for that one elementary school for the year.
That's a reduction of more than 1.2 million tons in carbon dioxide emissions, equal to taking about 122 cars off the roads, according to the EPA information.
"These savings are due to both greatly reduced electric power demand and lower electric energy consumption," the case study said.
On top of that, the school saw these electricity use reductions despite adding to the square footage of the facility by enclosing an interior courtyard and turning it into classrooms.
"The white EP membrane accounted for approximately 30 percent of the realized savings," said the EPA. "Based on their energy-saving potential and ease of installation, white, reflective, single-ply membrane materials have become the roofing product of choice for Alexandria City Public Schools."
With that good introduction to energy efficiency as a starting point, the school also received further upgrades to lights and air conditioning and heating systems and a new energy management system, the EPA added. These improvements combined with the new roof cut the school's electricity usage by a total of half.
Sunny California has long known the benefits of reflective roofs, seeing the systems as not only relief from the heat but as a way to stretch the available power supply and prevent electricity shortages in the summertime, according to a California Energy Commission news release dating back to 2002.
Peak temperatures can range from 150 to 190 degrees at the surface of a traditional roof, but the temperature on a cool roof can be on average 50 to 60 degrees lower.
Other benefits touted by the CEC include: extended life of air conditioning units due to less cycling and operations; improved comfort for workers in buildings and on the roof; and reduced air temperatures surrounding the cool building, lessening the heat island effect.
So, it seems there are considerable opportunities to save on overhead electricity costs and some continuing maintenance simply by installing a white tinted roof.
As building continues and as rooftop surfaces in cities expand, the benefits to installing cool roofs should accrue.
The Heat Island Group, at http://eande.lbl.gov/HeatIsland/CoolRoofs/, conducted a study in 11 cities to estimate the net savings by using the reflective roofs, for example.
Considering both summer cooling savings and increasing needs for heating in winter, this study still found the Windy City of Chicago with its winter chill saw decreased power costs in the seven figure range.
Hot spots savings were considerably more, of course. The study calculated the impact of white roofs in Los Angeles to total $35 million a year, $37 million in Phoenix, $27 million in Houston and $20 million in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Heat Island Group took these findings and expanded them to forecast nationwide savings, which the researchers said came to $750 million worth of energy reductions a year.
All this means that there's abundant acreage overhead that could be tapped to lessen the impact of our buildings on the environment.
That is to say, their roofs.
Good candidates for lowering temperatures and energy costs in the built environment of towns and cities come in the form of flat roof structures, such as schools, big box superstores and traditional urban buildings like those found in downtown Hillsville and Galax and the core of larger cities across the country and the world.
Black tar roofs — sealed to keep out water leaks — also absorb the heat from the sun's rays and can at times make the roof temperature almost boiling hot.
A cost effective solution, for both new construction and roof replacement, is to choose the "cool roof" option.
What it amounts to is creating a more reflective, i.e. white, roof surface with the goal of cutting down solar heat gain.
The Environmental Protection Agency says while the reflective roofing systems costs about the same, they can lower energy usage in a building by about 10 percent.
Right here in Virginia, an Energy Star roof replacement project at Jefferson Houston Elementary School in Alexandria showed the electricity saving possibilities.
When replacing the roof on the school built in 1970, administrators realized that a reflective roof could cut down on cooling costs, especially as the mercury in summer typically rises to 100 degrees in the eastern Virginia locality.
The old surface on the 83,000-square-foot facility was replaced in the 1990s with — to use the jargon — a white ethylene propylene single-ply membrane as part of a more insulated and reflective roofing system.
"The reflectivity of the new roof, compared with the old roof, increased from less than 20 percent to 78 percent," said the case study.
The insulation value of the roofing was doubled at the same time to stop the heat gathered at the surface from raising the temperature inside the school.
While the cost of the cool roof was "no higher," the school started seeing immediate savings after the installation was finished.
The total cost of the replacement came to $330,000, or about $3.87 per square foot, the EPA said. The electricity costs for the year fell by $31,000, or 37 cents per square foot.
Electricity savings totaled a whopping 514,000 kilowatts for that one elementary school for the year.
That's a reduction of more than 1.2 million tons in carbon dioxide emissions, equal to taking about 122 cars off the roads, according to the EPA information.
"These savings are due to both greatly reduced electric power demand and lower electric energy consumption," the case study said.
On top of that, the school saw these electricity use reductions despite adding to the square footage of the facility by enclosing an interior courtyard and turning it into classrooms.
"The white EP membrane accounted for approximately 30 percent of the realized savings," said the EPA. "Based on their energy-saving potential and ease of installation, white, reflective, single-ply membrane materials have become the roofing product of choice for Alexandria City Public Schools."
With that good introduction to energy efficiency as a starting point, the school also received further upgrades to lights and air conditioning and heating systems and a new energy management system, the EPA added. These improvements combined with the new roof cut the school's electricity usage by a total of half.
Sunny California has long known the benefits of reflective roofs, seeing the systems as not only relief from the heat but as a way to stretch the available power supply and prevent electricity shortages in the summertime, according to a California Energy Commission news release dating back to 2002.
Peak temperatures can range from 150 to 190 degrees at the surface of a traditional roof, but the temperature on a cool roof can be on average 50 to 60 degrees lower.
Other benefits touted by the CEC include: extended life of air conditioning units due to less cycling and operations; improved comfort for workers in buildings and on the roof; and reduced air temperatures surrounding the cool building, lessening the heat island effect.
So, it seems there are considerable opportunities to save on overhead electricity costs and some continuing maintenance simply by installing a white tinted roof.
As building continues and as rooftop surfaces in cities expand, the benefits to installing cool roofs should accrue.
The Heat Island Group, at http://eande.lbl.gov/HeatIsland/CoolRoofs/, conducted a study in 11 cities to estimate the net savings by using the reflective roofs, for example.
Considering both summer cooling savings and increasing needs for heating in winter, this study still found the Windy City of Chicago with its winter chill saw decreased power costs in the seven figure range.
Hot spots savings were considerably more, of course. The study calculated the impact of white roofs in Los Angeles to total $35 million a year, $37 million in Phoenix, $27 million in Houston and $20 million in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Heat Island Group took these findings and expanded them to forecast nationwide savings, which the researchers said came to $750 million worth of energy reductions a year.
All this means that there's abundant acreage overhead that could be tapped to lessen the impact of our buildings on the environment.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Softening the urban fabric
Cities are hard places.
While Destiny, Fla., Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and to an extent tornado ravaged Greensburg, Kan., are about designing green communities from scratch, the larger challenge for the globe is making the existing metropolises environmentally friendly.
After all, if we make every new development from now on greenhouse gas-neutral, the pollution causing and energy intensive urban jungles will still continue to generate their Industrial Age problems.
It's not enough to just build communities correctly from here out — the environmental degradation created by all those hard surfaces in cities will continue unabated unless people start addressing them right away.
As cities built up and suburbs annexed farms and forests, planners and developers merely repeated a pattern that worked.
But now the diminishing returns are becoming more and more apparent.
Look at the building blocks of development: Concrete, steel, glass, asphalt.
To make a city block, architects, engineers, planners, developers, investors and laborers collaborate to — with various degrees of exigency — slather the place with tons of these impervious materials.
And the result is heat islands, unclean waters, unproductive earth, tense people and a general hostility to the natural order of things.
The key to solving the environmental pressures of the world is not abandoning our existing cities, giving them up as lost, shaking our heads, bowing out, humiliated by the short-sightedness, moving out and never looking back.
The key is softening the concrete and glass landscape, reversing their detrimental effects, taking better advantage of the untapped possibilities.
Fortunately, that also gives humanity plenty of opportunities to improve our cities, because practically every factor of development has been used and abused.
So I, a thoroughly unqualified but enthusiastic and curious civilian, will state a number of simple ideas whenever they occur to me to try and reverse the trend and reclaim the cities in terms of sensible and sustainable development.
While Destiny, Fla., Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and to an extent tornado ravaged Greensburg, Kan., are about designing green communities from scratch, the larger challenge for the globe is making the existing metropolises environmentally friendly.
After all, if we make every new development from now on greenhouse gas-neutral, the pollution causing and energy intensive urban jungles will still continue to generate their Industrial Age problems.
It's not enough to just build communities correctly from here out — the environmental degradation created by all those hard surfaces in cities will continue unabated unless people start addressing them right away.
As cities built up and suburbs annexed farms and forests, planners and developers merely repeated a pattern that worked.
But now the diminishing returns are becoming more and more apparent.
Look at the building blocks of development: Concrete, steel, glass, asphalt.
To make a city block, architects, engineers, planners, developers, investors and laborers collaborate to — with various degrees of exigency — slather the place with tons of these impervious materials.
And the result is heat islands, unclean waters, unproductive earth, tense people and a general hostility to the natural order of things.
The key to solving the environmental pressures of the world is not abandoning our existing cities, giving them up as lost, shaking our heads, bowing out, humiliated by the short-sightedness, moving out and never looking back.
The key is softening the concrete and glass landscape, reversing their detrimental effects, taking better advantage of the untapped possibilities.
Fortunately, that also gives humanity plenty of opportunities to improve our cities, because practically every factor of development has been used and abused.
So I, a thoroughly unqualified but enthusiastic and curious civilian, will state a number of simple ideas whenever they occur to me to try and reverse the trend and reclaim the cities in terms of sensible and sustainable development.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Rising to the top
If innovation is the key to correcting environmental wrongs, then maybe some scientists featured on Discovery's Project Earth have found the answers.
I only got to see one of the series that profiled eight different engineering and scientific experiments to address the planet's ailments, but the hour-long episode left an impression.
It was entitled "Hungry Ocean" and featured a 1,000-foot, wave-powered pump meant to encourage phytoplankton blooms, as the Discovery Channel's website explains.
This would help fight climate change, according to the scientists, including Brian von Herzen of the Climate Foundation, and oceanographers David Karl of the University of Hawaii and Ricardo Letelier of Oregon State University.
Blooms of the tiny living organism would absorb carbon as part of its life cycle, the show explained. When plankton died and sank, it would effectively trap the carbon at the bottom of the ocean.
The role of the pump was to bring up water near the ocean floor already chockfull of necessary nutrients to support plankton, to feed the living stuff and encourage its growth.
These methods were in contrast to other experiments that added iron to the oceans to spark those blooms.
The genius of the ocean pumps is that — as long as they remained intact — they would not require chemicals to go into the water that weren't there already.
They got their energy to pump from natural tides of the ocean, so there weren't any moving engine parts or necessary fuel consumption.
A buoy would float near the ocean surface and the tube would act like a drinking straw to pull up nutrient-rich waters from the depths.
Set up near Oahu, the pumps would take advantage of the abundant oceans to take carbon dioxide out of the global warming equation.
Oceans make up just about three-quarters of the earth’s surface, and Discovery called them “the most important carbon sink" around:
"They have the potential to lock away 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Every day, tiny microbes called phytoplankton convert millions of tons of carbon dioxide into living matter."
Though plankton makes up only about 1 percent of the planet's biomass, the living organisms take in "as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as trees, grass and all the land plants combined."
Carbon molecules absorbed by plankton could remain trapped for thousands of years after it falls to the ocean bottom, the experiment notes say.
But the experiment seems even more important with the consideration that plankton appears to be dying off. Researchers attributed that die-off to changes due to climate change, as well.
"Between 1999 and 2004, it killed off 30 percent of the phytoplankton in some parts of the world," according to Discovery. "One of the effects of the oceans warming up, is that they are mixing less and nutrients aren't always getting to the surface."
The pipes could not only increase plankton population, but many kinds of sea life could flourish from higher concentrations of the organism because it is one of the most important links in the food chain.
At the end of the show, scientists found that many kinds of life for which plankton was the main source of nourishment had returned to the area where sea pumps were installed.
While the tubes ultimately stopped functioning due to failed welds, scientists and the show proved the concept worked — that circulating the ocean water better encouraged plankton growth.
The possibilities in restoring life to dead waters alone seems to me enough benefit to continue the experiment, and it appears to open up a new front in the battle against climate change.
This is important because the scientific community has set off alarm bells, in that innovation will be an integral part of the solution, going hand in hand with a reduction in use of fossil fuels.
Maybe the invention that solves the climate crisis isn't ocean pumps, but it does make me wonder what will rise to the top, what will make the cut and become the must-have tool to fight pollution.
And, perhaps more important for us couch jockeys, will there be a television show to chronicle its development?
But it won't just take scientists to end the massive waste and bad practices that's caused pollution.
Even landlubbers can participate and become part of the solution through everyday activities.
Government officials and researchers promote wetland farming as having multiple benefits in improving water quality, protecting habitat and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
For more information, see next week's column.
I only got to see one of the series that profiled eight different engineering and scientific experiments to address the planet's ailments, but the hour-long episode left an impression.
It was entitled "Hungry Ocean" and featured a 1,000-foot, wave-powered pump meant to encourage phytoplankton blooms, as the Discovery Channel's website explains.
This would help fight climate change, according to the scientists, including Brian von Herzen of the Climate Foundation, and oceanographers David Karl of the University of Hawaii and Ricardo Letelier of Oregon State University.
Blooms of the tiny living organism would absorb carbon as part of its life cycle, the show explained. When plankton died and sank, it would effectively trap the carbon at the bottom of the ocean.
The role of the pump was to bring up water near the ocean floor already chockfull of necessary nutrients to support plankton, to feed the living stuff and encourage its growth.
These methods were in contrast to other experiments that added iron to the oceans to spark those blooms.
The genius of the ocean pumps is that — as long as they remained intact — they would not require chemicals to go into the water that weren't there already.
They got their energy to pump from natural tides of the ocean, so there weren't any moving engine parts or necessary fuel consumption.
A buoy would float near the ocean surface and the tube would act like a drinking straw to pull up nutrient-rich waters from the depths.
Set up near Oahu, the pumps would take advantage of the abundant oceans to take carbon dioxide out of the global warming equation.
Oceans make up just about three-quarters of the earth’s surface, and Discovery called them “the most important carbon sink" around:
"They have the potential to lock away 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Every day, tiny microbes called phytoplankton convert millions of tons of carbon dioxide into living matter."
Though plankton makes up only about 1 percent of the planet's biomass, the living organisms take in "as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as trees, grass and all the land plants combined."
Carbon molecules absorbed by plankton could remain trapped for thousands of years after it falls to the ocean bottom, the experiment notes say.
But the experiment seems even more important with the consideration that plankton appears to be dying off. Researchers attributed that die-off to changes due to climate change, as well.
"Between 1999 and 2004, it killed off 30 percent of the phytoplankton in some parts of the world," according to Discovery. "One of the effects of the oceans warming up, is that they are mixing less and nutrients aren't always getting to the surface."
The pipes could not only increase plankton population, but many kinds of sea life could flourish from higher concentrations of the organism because it is one of the most important links in the food chain.
At the end of the show, scientists found that many kinds of life for which plankton was the main source of nourishment had returned to the area where sea pumps were installed.
While the tubes ultimately stopped functioning due to failed welds, scientists and the show proved the concept worked — that circulating the ocean water better encouraged plankton growth.
The possibilities in restoring life to dead waters alone seems to me enough benefit to continue the experiment, and it appears to open up a new front in the battle against climate change.
This is important because the scientific community has set off alarm bells, in that innovation will be an integral part of the solution, going hand in hand with a reduction in use of fossil fuels.
Maybe the invention that solves the climate crisis isn't ocean pumps, but it does make me wonder what will rise to the top, what will make the cut and become the must-have tool to fight pollution.
And, perhaps more important for us couch jockeys, will there be a television show to chronicle its development?
But it won't just take scientists to end the massive waste and bad practices that's caused pollution.
Even landlubbers can participate and become part of the solution through everyday activities.
Government officials and researchers promote wetland farming as having multiple benefits in improving water quality, protecting habitat and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
For more information, see next week's column.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Jousting at wind turbines
The fear about birds deaths being generated by wind turbines with their huge blades spinning to create clean energy for the nation is just a lot of empty air.
As the push for safe, clean, non-terror supporting emergent energy sources grows so does apprehension among bird lovers.
I respect the sentiment of wanting to protect winged creatures, and not just birds but also butterflies.
It appears there will be some wildlife conflicts with the admittedly imposing towers. I acknowledge that there will be some bird kills.
And it seems the effect of the vibrations caused by the turbines is even more serious for bats — researchers have noted die-offs in the mammals that never came into contact with the generators. The vibrations were fatal to bats by the animals just flying into the vicinity of the tower.
But to talk about wind turbines as if they will be the main threat to life for birds, a kind of plague on winged wildlife, makes it seem like the worriers are missing some obvious truths.
Probably ever major human undertaking has a negative impact on birds and other kinds of wildlife — impacts that most people are quite willing to turn a blind eye on.
There are reasons in today's society to want to push the panic button in terms of protecting wildlife. Look at the recent report from the Audubon Society that said steep declines have been seen in even the most common birds.
A survey of birds by the nature-watchers had found a "nosedive" in their populations over the last 40 years, as much as 80 percent for some species.
Audubon complied a list of 20 common birds in decline, each of which have seen a 54 percent or greater population loss.
Virginia birds listed as in decline were the Northern Bobwhite, the Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, the Field Sparrow, the Rusty Blackbird and the American Black Duck.
Audubon laid the blame for these plummeting numbers at the feet of habitat destruction perpetrated by people. There was no mention of wind turbines as being the problem.
And looking at the matter objectively as possible, it's hard to believe even with a proliferation of wind turbines that death-by-blade would even approach the other ways we kill off birds.
Don't believe it? Do what I did and Google the phrase "what kills birds?"
As reliable at the Internet is, the results varied wildly on some numbers of bird fatalities and their causes.
Several results, though, cited a study by Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College that found windows in our homes, commercial buildings and skyscrapers are much riskier for birds than anything else we do.
Birds flying into the glass die by the hundreds of millions a year, the much-cited study found. The actual number could be from 100 million to close to a billion bird deaths a year.
"Millions of houses and buildings, with their billions of windows, pose a significant threat to birds," as information posted by avian enthusiast David Sibley at http://www.sibleyguides.com/mortality.htm put it. "Birds see the natural habitat mirrored in the glass and fly directly into the window, causing injury and, in 50 percent or more of the cases, death."
But we have created many other ways to kill birds, and while no single cause approaches the number of window strikes, there are hundreds of millions more bird deaths caused by our technology a year, according to figures bandied about the Internet.
Just house cats unleashed on the wild might cause 100 million birds to die a year, though some estimates put it at closer to 500 million.
Collisions with cars and trucks cause an estimated 50 to 100 million bird deaths; pesticides could kill another 67 million; collisions with communication towers could take out four to 10 million a year and collisions with electric lines 174 million.
Nobody knows how many birds deaths that habitat clearing may be responsible for.
In stark contrast, Sibley quotes statistics that wind turbines only kill 33,000 a year. That's less than 100 a day.
Compared to other bird kills, that of wind turbines seems almost statistically insignificant.
True, planners should take precautions to keep the technology from increasing those numbers by carefully considering where they place the turbines.
But I take a dim view of the idea that more wind turbines is Armageddon for birds.
There are plenty of other human behaviors that need correcting with the idea of sparing birds before wind turbines.
Those people objecting to clean energy and trying to stop wind turbine projects for the sake of birds are jousting at windmills.
They could stop every turbine in existence and humans would still be killing birds in the billions.
As the push for safe, clean, non-terror supporting emergent energy sources grows so does apprehension among bird lovers.
I respect the sentiment of wanting to protect winged creatures, and not just birds but also butterflies.
It appears there will be some wildlife conflicts with the admittedly imposing towers. I acknowledge that there will be some bird kills.
And it seems the effect of the vibrations caused by the turbines is even more serious for bats — researchers have noted die-offs in the mammals that never came into contact with the generators. The vibrations were fatal to bats by the animals just flying into the vicinity of the tower.
But to talk about wind turbines as if they will be the main threat to life for birds, a kind of plague on winged wildlife, makes it seem like the worriers are missing some obvious truths.
Probably ever major human undertaking has a negative impact on birds and other kinds of wildlife — impacts that most people are quite willing to turn a blind eye on.
There are reasons in today's society to want to push the panic button in terms of protecting wildlife. Look at the recent report from the Audubon Society that said steep declines have been seen in even the most common birds.
A survey of birds by the nature-watchers had found a "nosedive" in their populations over the last 40 years, as much as 80 percent for some species.
Audubon complied a list of 20 common birds in decline, each of which have seen a 54 percent or greater population loss.
Virginia birds listed as in decline were the Northern Bobwhite, the Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, the Field Sparrow, the Rusty Blackbird and the American Black Duck.
Audubon laid the blame for these plummeting numbers at the feet of habitat destruction perpetrated by people. There was no mention of wind turbines as being the problem.
And looking at the matter objectively as possible, it's hard to believe even with a proliferation of wind turbines that death-by-blade would even approach the other ways we kill off birds.
Don't believe it? Do what I did and Google the phrase "what kills birds?"
As reliable at the Internet is, the results varied wildly on some numbers of bird fatalities and their causes.
Several results, though, cited a study by Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College that found windows in our homes, commercial buildings and skyscrapers are much riskier for birds than anything else we do.
Birds flying into the glass die by the hundreds of millions a year, the much-cited study found. The actual number could be from 100 million to close to a billion bird deaths a year.
"Millions of houses and buildings, with their billions of windows, pose a significant threat to birds," as information posted by avian enthusiast David Sibley at http://www.sibleyguides.com/mortality.htm put it. "Birds see the natural habitat mirrored in the glass and fly directly into the window, causing injury and, in 50 percent or more of the cases, death."
But we have created many other ways to kill birds, and while no single cause approaches the number of window strikes, there are hundreds of millions more bird deaths caused by our technology a year, according to figures bandied about the Internet.
Just house cats unleashed on the wild might cause 100 million birds to die a year, though some estimates put it at closer to 500 million.
Collisions with cars and trucks cause an estimated 50 to 100 million bird deaths; pesticides could kill another 67 million; collisions with communication towers could take out four to 10 million a year and collisions with electric lines 174 million.
Nobody knows how many birds deaths that habitat clearing may be responsible for.
In stark contrast, Sibley quotes statistics that wind turbines only kill 33,000 a year. That's less than 100 a day.
Compared to other bird kills, that of wind turbines seems almost statistically insignificant.
True, planners should take precautions to keep the technology from increasing those numbers by carefully considering where they place the turbines.
But I take a dim view of the idea that more wind turbines is Armageddon for birds.
There are plenty of other human behaviors that need correcting with the idea of sparing birds before wind turbines.
Those people objecting to clean energy and trying to stop wind turbine projects for the sake of birds are jousting at windmills.
They could stop every turbine in existence and humans would still be killing birds in the billions.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Man bites bird
Walking on the New River Trail one day, my family and I saw something of an exotic visitor standing in the water.
As a heron stood still in the water of Chestnut Creek, my father, a frequent visitor to Virginia himself, remarked that he believed that this sighting says something about the loss of wetland habitat, the bird's preferred hunting lands.
Since then, the Twin Counties has been visited by a rufous hummingbird and an eastern towhee. Both caused great stirs among the local birdwatching community.
Folks indicated to me that these birds being spotted here is even more extraordinary because the rufous normally lives in the Pacific Northwest and the towhee in the West and Mexico.
It's reasonable to wonder why these creatures would be flying so far out of their normal range to perch, at least for a while, on the boughs and branches of the Twin Counties.
And the Audubon Society offered a possible explanation in an alarming news release on June 14.
A survey of common birds by the nature-watchers found a "nosedive" in their populations over the last 40 years, as much as 80 percent for some species.
Audubon complied a list of 20 common birds in decline, each of which have seen a 54 percent or greater population loss.
"These are not rare or exotic birds we're talking about — these are the birds that visit our feeders and congregate at nearby lakes and seashores and yet they are disappearing day by day," Audubon Chairperson and former EPA Administrator, Carol Browner is quoted in the news release. "Their decline tells us we have serious work to do, from protecting local habitats to addressing the huge threats from global warming."
Included on the list are the Northern Bobwhite, the Evening Grosbeaks, Eastern Meadowlarks, Whip-poor-wills, Little Blue Herons and Rufous hummingbirds.
"Rufous Hummingbird populations have declined 58 percent as a result of the loss of forest habitat to logging and development, in both their breeding range in the Pacific Northwest and their wintering sites in Mexico," Audubon officials said.
"Little Blue Herons now number 150,000 in the U.S. and 110,000 in Mexico, down 54 percent in the U.S.," the release said. "Their decline is driven by wetland loss from development and degradation of water quality, which limits their food supply. "
Listed as Virginia birds in decline are the Northern Bobwhite, the Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, the Field Sparrow, the Rusty Blackbird and the American Black Duck.
Each species is beset by development pressures that destroy the necessary habitat for the bird's survival and compounded by worldwide environmental threats like global warming.
Audubon officials point out that these common birds are not in immediate danger of extinction, but they hoped that public awareness would lead people to stem the tide of population loss and its causation.
"Audubon leaders hope the multiple threats to the birds people know will prompt individuals to take multiple actions, both locally and directed toward state and national policies," the news release said.
"Fortunately, people¹s actions can still make a difference," Audubon's Greg Butcher is quoted. "Average citizens can change the fate of these birds just as average citizens helped us confirm the trouble they face."
More information is available at the organization's Web site, www.audubon.org, on how to help keep common birds common and the environment healthy.
• First published March 2008.
As a heron stood still in the water of Chestnut Creek, my father, a frequent visitor to Virginia himself, remarked that he believed that this sighting says something about the loss of wetland habitat, the bird's preferred hunting lands.
Since then, the Twin Counties has been visited by a rufous hummingbird and an eastern towhee. Both caused great stirs among the local birdwatching community.
Folks indicated to me that these birds being spotted here is even more extraordinary because the rufous normally lives in the Pacific Northwest and the towhee in the West and Mexico.
It's reasonable to wonder why these creatures would be flying so far out of their normal range to perch, at least for a while, on the boughs and branches of the Twin Counties.
And the Audubon Society offered a possible explanation in an alarming news release on June 14.
A survey of common birds by the nature-watchers found a "nosedive" in their populations over the last 40 years, as much as 80 percent for some species.
Audubon complied a list of 20 common birds in decline, each of which have seen a 54 percent or greater population loss.
"These are not rare or exotic birds we're talking about — these are the birds that visit our feeders and congregate at nearby lakes and seashores and yet they are disappearing day by day," Audubon Chairperson and former EPA Administrator, Carol Browner is quoted in the news release. "Their decline tells us we have serious work to do, from protecting local habitats to addressing the huge threats from global warming."
Included on the list are the Northern Bobwhite, the Evening Grosbeaks, Eastern Meadowlarks, Whip-poor-wills, Little Blue Herons and Rufous hummingbirds.
"Rufous Hummingbird populations have declined 58 percent as a result of the loss of forest habitat to logging and development, in both their breeding range in the Pacific Northwest and their wintering sites in Mexico," Audubon officials said.
"Little Blue Herons now number 150,000 in the U.S. and 110,000 in Mexico, down 54 percent in the U.S.," the release said. "Their decline is driven by wetland loss from development and degradation of water quality, which limits their food supply. "
Listed as Virginia birds in decline are the Northern Bobwhite, the Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, the Field Sparrow, the Rusty Blackbird and the American Black Duck.
Each species is beset by development pressures that destroy the necessary habitat for the bird's survival and compounded by worldwide environmental threats like global warming.
Audubon officials point out that these common birds are not in immediate danger of extinction, but they hoped that public awareness would lead people to stem the tide of population loss and its causation.
"Audubon leaders hope the multiple threats to the birds people know will prompt individuals to take multiple actions, both locally and directed toward state and national policies," the news release said.
"Fortunately, people¹s actions can still make a difference," Audubon's Greg Butcher is quoted. "Average citizens can change the fate of these birds just as average citizens helped us confirm the trouble they face."
More information is available at the organization's Web site, www.audubon.org, on how to help keep common birds common and the environment healthy.
• First published March 2008.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Update: New lighting's darkside
The mercury in compact fluorescent bulbs only amounts to a trace, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a move to calm fears about the pollution potential of the new lighting.
More people are finding out they need to take care when disposing of a CFL (or if one might break) because of the mercury it contains.
Mercury can be hazardous to people. Improper disposal could lead to contamination.
But EPA officials responding to a citizen's question sent out a news release on the question, assuring people that the significant energy savings makes it worth it to use CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs.
Compact fluorescents typically use 75 percent less energy and last 10 times longer than the kind of bulb it's replacing.
The mercury in a CFL is only a trace amount, about five milligrams, the EPA's Dan Gallo, an electronics recycling specialist, responded the citizen's question about disposal. This amount "would cover the tip of a ballpoint pen.
"It would take 100 CFLs to equal the amount of mercury contained in older thermometers, which is about 500 milligrams."
Several retailers have stepped up to facilitate proper disposal of CFLs, the EPA official adds. Home Depot, IKEA and Ace Hardware will accept these bulbs for recycling, and Wal-Mart has started a similar pilot program in Richmond, Va., which may mean widespread CFL relief is on the way.
Some precautions need to be taken if a CFL is broken. Gallo said get everyone out of the room and open windows to air it out for 15 minutes.
The bulbs — with safe handling, of course — are by far more beneficial than harmful, the EPA indicated.
"Since CFLs use 75 percent less energy than traditional incandescent light bulbs, if every American switched one incandescent bulb to a CFL, it would save more than $600 million in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from 800,000 cars," the release said.
More tips can be found at:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastetypes/universal/lamps/index.htm
http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastetypes/universal/lamps/faqs.htm
More people are finding out they need to take care when disposing of a CFL (or if one might break) because of the mercury it contains.
Mercury can be hazardous to people. Improper disposal could lead to contamination.
But EPA officials responding to a citizen's question sent out a news release on the question, assuring people that the significant energy savings makes it worth it to use CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs.
Compact fluorescents typically use 75 percent less energy and last 10 times longer than the kind of bulb it's replacing.
The mercury in a CFL is only a trace amount, about five milligrams, the EPA's Dan Gallo, an electronics recycling specialist, responded the citizen's question about disposal. This amount "would cover the tip of a ballpoint pen.
"It would take 100 CFLs to equal the amount of mercury contained in older thermometers, which is about 500 milligrams."
Several retailers have stepped up to facilitate proper disposal of CFLs, the EPA official adds. Home Depot, IKEA and Ace Hardware will accept these bulbs for recycling, and Wal-Mart has started a similar pilot program in Richmond, Va., which may mean widespread CFL relief is on the way.
Some precautions need to be taken if a CFL is broken. Gallo said get everyone out of the room and open windows to air it out for 15 minutes.
The bulbs — with safe handling, of course — are by far more beneficial than harmful, the EPA indicated.
"Since CFLs use 75 percent less energy than traditional incandescent light bulbs, if every American switched one incandescent bulb to a CFL, it would save more than $600 million in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from 800,000 cars," the release said.
More tips can be found at:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastetypes/universal/lamps/index.htm
http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastetypes/universal/lamps/faqs.htm
Monday, January 26, 2009
Keep them grounded
Think about it: Do you really want all the yahoos who cause all those close calls on the roads everyday (including myself) swooping along in an aircar, a threat to life in the skies as well as on the ground?
After many years of trial and error, it looks like hybrid cars and planes are on the verge of becoming a reality, now that a company called Terrafugia has developed the Transition.
Company representatives told Discovery News that the two-seat vehicle is both road- and airworthy with the inclusion of wings that are folded up on the ground but snap into place for air travel.
As for myself, I feel torn about that announcement — torn between the fantasy of an ordinary individual like myself being able to take to the skies at will and the possible reality of traffic jams and demolition derbies moving from the earth into the realm of the air.
I mean, really, think about all the distracted cell-phone-talking, and sometimes cell-phone-texting, burger-eating, scenery-gawking, travel-weary people who barely miss us on the road each day with their land-bound, two-ton ball of hurtling death? Do we truly feel the need to give them the opportunity to crash their vehicles into the roofs of our houses now?
I don't.
So, nothing personal against the inventive innovators at Terrafugia, I want to be the first to go on record against this particular kind of progress.
Here's my reasoning:
• Vote of no confidence
Probably the most compelling argument against drivers becoming fliers are the drivers. They provide more than enough anecdotal evidence to prove people shouldn't have aircars.
Soon after I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains years ago, I invited friends from my hometown down to visit.
Unfortunately, one of the most vivid memories my friends have was of this decrepit little old gray-headed lady somehow managing not to get killed when she tested their brakes by pulling right out in front of their van in Carroll County and then her getting lucky again when they witnessed a tractor-trailer that barely avoided the same grizzled motorist the next day in Galax.
To this day, my friends still ask me about an old woman hazardously careening around the Twin Counties in a little blue Ford.
God wouldn't even be her co-pilot.
I'm sure that everybody could come up with an example of a driver that would fill them with absolute dread should they have access to a flying car.
• Can't trust it
The one thing you can be certain of in mechanical devices is that eventually they will become an inert piece of non-functioning matter upon which you will regret spending the initial capital investment of $71,685 to get, Hummer owners.
Difficulties such as running out of gas on the ground are often no big deal, but running out of aircar fuel over the deserts of Arizona? Now you're talking vehicle trouble.
And while I'm sure that everybody's favorite pilot, C.B. Sullenberger from U.S. Airways Flight 1549, wouldn't have any trouble gliding a Transition in for a powerless emergency landing over Topeka, I suspect few individuals can match the impressive talents of Sullenberger.
• More snarge, anyone?
Speaking of Flight 1549, birds would no doubt be on the losing end of widespread public availability of a "GM Strafe" air sedan.
When bird strikes occasionally blind pilots by becoming blobs (or snarge) on windscreens or blow out jet engines — besides being not so good for the avian creatures — that incident could be potentially fatal for whoever's inside the flying machine as well as a great many innocent bystanders along its flight path.
Put more people in the air, especially in craft that depend on jet propulsion... well, it won't just be Canadian geese that go splat.
I know that there can be happy conclusions to those sorts of things, but to underscore what I think about that, please review the preceding comment about the mad skills of pilot Sullenberger.
• The safest way?
Air travel may be the safest way to get there, but that's only because its practitioners aren't flying by the seats of their pants.
I enjoyed "The Jetsons" cartoon as a child, but I have reason to hope that the travel of the future won't be too Jetsonian.
A flying motorist won't be able to merge into dense traffic in a way that resembles a game of air bumper cars, like an irritated George does on the TV screen.
Air transportation is safer exactly because there are fewer vehicles in the sky than on the ground, and if we expect it to stay that way, we need to keep most motorists grounded.
Sure, it appears that there are real advantages to Terrafugia's Transition, like the 500 miles you could travel on a tank of unleaded gas.
Thankfully, though, this particular aircar is going to be out of reach for most people at $194,000.
Anyway, the flying car is so the 1950's vision of the future.
Can't we just skip the experimental-hybrid-aircraft-plummeting-to-earth phase of transportation and jump straight to the breaking-things-down-to-their-molecules-and-beaming-them-from-point A-to-point B-at-the-speed-of-light eureka moment?
Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
Next week: Jousting at wind turbines.
After many years of trial and error, it looks like hybrid cars and planes are on the verge of becoming a reality, now that a company called Terrafugia has developed the Transition.
Company representatives told Discovery News that the two-seat vehicle is both road- and airworthy with the inclusion of wings that are folded up on the ground but snap into place for air travel.
As for myself, I feel torn about that announcement — torn between the fantasy of an ordinary individual like myself being able to take to the skies at will and the possible reality of traffic jams and demolition derbies moving from the earth into the realm of the air.
I mean, really, think about all the distracted cell-phone-talking, and sometimes cell-phone-texting, burger-eating, scenery-gawking, travel-weary people who barely miss us on the road each day with their land-bound, two-ton ball of hurtling death? Do we truly feel the need to give them the opportunity to crash their vehicles into the roofs of our houses now?
I don't.
So, nothing personal against the inventive innovators at Terrafugia, I want to be the first to go on record against this particular kind of progress.
Here's my reasoning:
• Vote of no confidence
Probably the most compelling argument against drivers becoming fliers are the drivers. They provide more than enough anecdotal evidence to prove people shouldn't have aircars.
Soon after I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains years ago, I invited friends from my hometown down to visit.
Unfortunately, one of the most vivid memories my friends have was of this decrepit little old gray-headed lady somehow managing not to get killed when she tested their brakes by pulling right out in front of their van in Carroll County and then her getting lucky again when they witnessed a tractor-trailer that barely avoided the same grizzled motorist the next day in Galax.
To this day, my friends still ask me about an old woman hazardously careening around the Twin Counties in a little blue Ford.
God wouldn't even be her co-pilot.
I'm sure that everybody could come up with an example of a driver that would fill them with absolute dread should they have access to a flying car.
• Can't trust it
The one thing you can be certain of in mechanical devices is that eventually they will become an inert piece of non-functioning matter upon which you will regret spending the initial capital investment of $71,685 to get, Hummer owners.
Difficulties such as running out of gas on the ground are often no big deal, but running out of aircar fuel over the deserts of Arizona? Now you're talking vehicle trouble.
And while I'm sure that everybody's favorite pilot, C.B. Sullenberger from U.S. Airways Flight 1549, wouldn't have any trouble gliding a Transition in for a powerless emergency landing over Topeka, I suspect few individuals can match the impressive talents of Sullenberger.
• More snarge, anyone?
Speaking of Flight 1549, birds would no doubt be on the losing end of widespread public availability of a "GM Strafe" air sedan.
When bird strikes occasionally blind pilots by becoming blobs (or snarge) on windscreens or blow out jet engines — besides being not so good for the avian creatures — that incident could be potentially fatal for whoever's inside the flying machine as well as a great many innocent bystanders along its flight path.
Put more people in the air, especially in craft that depend on jet propulsion... well, it won't just be Canadian geese that go splat.
I know that there can be happy conclusions to those sorts of things, but to underscore what I think about that, please review the preceding comment about the mad skills of pilot Sullenberger.
• The safest way?
Air travel may be the safest way to get there, but that's only because its practitioners aren't flying by the seats of their pants.
I enjoyed "The Jetsons" cartoon as a child, but I have reason to hope that the travel of the future won't be too Jetsonian.
A flying motorist won't be able to merge into dense traffic in a way that resembles a game of air bumper cars, like an irritated George does on the TV screen.
Air transportation is safer exactly because there are fewer vehicles in the sky than on the ground, and if we expect it to stay that way, we need to keep most motorists grounded.
Sure, it appears that there are real advantages to Terrafugia's Transition, like the 500 miles you could travel on a tank of unleaded gas.
Thankfully, though, this particular aircar is going to be out of reach for most people at $194,000.
Anyway, the flying car is so the 1950's vision of the future.
Can't we just skip the experimental-hybrid-aircraft-plummeting-to-earth phase of transportation and jump straight to the breaking-things-down-to-their-molecules-and-beaming-them-from-point A-to-point B-at-the-speed-of-light eureka moment?
Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
Next week: Jousting at wind turbines.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Up in the air
Like many news watchers, I found it thrilling that the pilot of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 was able to protect his passengers and spare the 9-11-haunted city of New York from another aircraft-related tragedy.
Pilot C.B. Sullenberger earned widespread praise for his masterful handling in landing the disabled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River without a single casualty after reporting the plane suffered a double-bird strike.
Quick thinking ferry and tugboat captains also contributed to the fortunate result by wasting no time in moving their vessels in to collect the 155 passengers off the wings of the sinking plane.
The excitement and enthusiasm by the major news agencies to praise a new popular hero in a time when most topics have been dismal, depressing or worse clearly showed.
Given the happy outcome, giddy and relieved reporters on NPR laughed about the work undertaken National Transportation Safety Board to confirm whether it was a bird strike that caused the planes problems, particularly about the new word they learned: Snarge.
You heard it right — snarge. It basically means the residue from the living creature left over after a vehicle/bird collision.
A smear of blood and guts, in other words, as well as feathers and whatever else may survive passing through a jet engine or smacking the windscreen at 100 mph.
Lots of bird-plane collisions occur, but because planes are built to withstand such incidents and because that it usually only becomes a problem if a pilot's sight is obstructed or unless it knocks an engine out, it doesn't often rise to the level of high drama as the one last week in New York.
Thanks to enterprising reporters, lots of information about aviation safety and bird strikes have emerged in the last week.
It's being said that a bird strike happens to about one in every 10,000 flights.
The Associated Press, after flippantly saying this bird (or these birds) won this time by taking down the Airbus, quoted University of Dayton researcher Kevin Poormon in that bird strikes have caused 200 fatalities in the last 20 years with a total of 5,000 impacts reported each year.
"Aircraft are being struck every day by birds," he told AP. "The reason you don't hear about them so much is they are designed to take these impacts. But once you get to large flocks or large birds striking at a critical moment, that's where these events hit the news."
An MSNBC article offered more details on the frequency of bird strikes, noting a quadrupling of the incidents from 1990 to 2007, when the numbers rose from 1,738 per year to 7,439, causing "3,094 precautionary landings, 1,442 aborted takeoffs, 312 engine shutdowns and 1,162 minor negative effects," based on information from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Such collisions are most likely to occur at low altitudes, as when a plane is taking off or landing.
The researcher that MSNBC asked about the increase, Richard A. Dolbeer, a retired ornithologist with the Department of Agriculture at the Wildlife Services in Sandusky, Ohio, explained the phenomenon is a result of better environmental practices.
Populations of larger birds that cause the most damage to engines, like great blue heron, osprey, snow goose and Canada goose have rebounded in the years since the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act and outlawed the pesticide known as DDT.
It also seems like an increasing number of flights or the birds being pushed into areas that are less desirable because development is crowding them out of their element might also be factors in this safety issue, but I'm just a layman.
The conventional wisdom is that flying is the safest way to travel, and as proven last week by Sullenberger — a gifted practitioner in his profession — a few pilots have the skills to turn what could be a massive calamity into a safety triumph.
The National Aircraft Controllers Association reports that there are 87,000 flights in the air each day, about 30,000 being commercial airliners. It's too much to hope for that each and every one has a pilot aboard as talented as Sullenberger.
When it comes to safety, keep in mind that flights originate out of airports where planners can exert control over safety issues and take corrective action against more bird strikes happening, forensic bird identification scientist and snarge expert Carla Dove pointed out to NPR. Identifying the bird helps planners avoid future incidents by letting them understand the species' behavior and showing them what they need to prepare for.
What's needed occasionally may be as simple as cutting the grass to prevent birds from taking cover there, or maybe moving a pond that might be attractive to waterfowl.
"If you think about pest management, and that's really what this is, it's like a safety issue," she told NPR. "You can't really do anything about the problem until you know what the species that's causing the problem is."
Experts acknowledge, though, that they can't control every variable in birds versus airplane troubles.
So it seems logical to conclude that an increasing number of airplanes in the skies alongside more birds means more problems in the air, more opportunities for strikes to cause an engine flame out.
So what's that mean for the vaunted dream of personal flight? The idea that everyone who needs to get from point A to point B will do so in a personal jet or air car?
Stay tuned for next week's column to look at more closely at human technology-bird conflicts.
Pilot C.B. Sullenberger earned widespread praise for his masterful handling in landing the disabled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River without a single casualty after reporting the plane suffered a double-bird strike.
Quick thinking ferry and tugboat captains also contributed to the fortunate result by wasting no time in moving their vessels in to collect the 155 passengers off the wings of the sinking plane.
The excitement and enthusiasm by the major news agencies to praise a new popular hero in a time when most topics have been dismal, depressing or worse clearly showed.
Given the happy outcome, giddy and relieved reporters on NPR laughed about the work undertaken National Transportation Safety Board to confirm whether it was a bird strike that caused the planes problems, particularly about the new word they learned: Snarge.
You heard it right — snarge. It basically means the residue from the living creature left over after a vehicle/bird collision.
A smear of blood and guts, in other words, as well as feathers and whatever else may survive passing through a jet engine or smacking the windscreen at 100 mph.
Lots of bird-plane collisions occur, but because planes are built to withstand such incidents and because that it usually only becomes a problem if a pilot's sight is obstructed or unless it knocks an engine out, it doesn't often rise to the level of high drama as the one last week in New York.
Thanks to enterprising reporters, lots of information about aviation safety and bird strikes have emerged in the last week.
It's being said that a bird strike happens to about one in every 10,000 flights.
The Associated Press, after flippantly saying this bird (or these birds) won this time by taking down the Airbus, quoted University of Dayton researcher Kevin Poormon in that bird strikes have caused 200 fatalities in the last 20 years with a total of 5,000 impacts reported each year.
"Aircraft are being struck every day by birds," he told AP. "The reason you don't hear about them so much is they are designed to take these impacts. But once you get to large flocks or large birds striking at a critical moment, that's where these events hit the news."
An MSNBC article offered more details on the frequency of bird strikes, noting a quadrupling of the incidents from 1990 to 2007, when the numbers rose from 1,738 per year to 7,439, causing "3,094 precautionary landings, 1,442 aborted takeoffs, 312 engine shutdowns and 1,162 minor negative effects," based on information from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Such collisions are most likely to occur at low altitudes, as when a plane is taking off or landing.
The researcher that MSNBC asked about the increase, Richard A. Dolbeer, a retired ornithologist with the Department of Agriculture at the Wildlife Services in Sandusky, Ohio, explained the phenomenon is a result of better environmental practices.
Populations of larger birds that cause the most damage to engines, like great blue heron, osprey, snow goose and Canada goose have rebounded in the years since the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act and outlawed the pesticide known as DDT.
It also seems like an increasing number of flights or the birds being pushed into areas that are less desirable because development is crowding them out of their element might also be factors in this safety issue, but I'm just a layman.
The conventional wisdom is that flying is the safest way to travel, and as proven last week by Sullenberger — a gifted practitioner in his profession — a few pilots have the skills to turn what could be a massive calamity into a safety triumph.
The National Aircraft Controllers Association reports that there are 87,000 flights in the air each day, about 30,000 being commercial airliners. It's too much to hope for that each and every one has a pilot aboard as talented as Sullenberger.
When it comes to safety, keep in mind that flights originate out of airports where planners can exert control over safety issues and take corrective action against more bird strikes happening, forensic bird identification scientist and snarge expert Carla Dove pointed out to NPR. Identifying the bird helps planners avoid future incidents by letting them understand the species' behavior and showing them what they need to prepare for.
What's needed occasionally may be as simple as cutting the grass to prevent birds from taking cover there, or maybe moving a pond that might be attractive to waterfowl.
"If you think about pest management, and that's really what this is, it's like a safety issue," she told NPR. "You can't really do anything about the problem until you know what the species that's causing the problem is."
Experts acknowledge, though, that they can't control every variable in birds versus airplane troubles.
So it seems logical to conclude that an increasing number of airplanes in the skies alongside more birds means more problems in the air, more opportunities for strikes to cause an engine flame out.
So what's that mean for the vaunted dream of personal flight? The idea that everyone who needs to get from point A to point B will do so in a personal jet or air car?
Stay tuned for next week's column to look at more closely at human technology-bird conflicts.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Pet peeve 2009 edition
I once thought that it was ethically wrong to use my position at a newspaper as a bully pulpit, as Teddy Roosevelt used to refer to taking advantage of his power to promote his own agenda.
But I've come to realize that everybody has a bully pulpit of their own. Or if not, at least access to such a forum in terms of blogs and comments boards on the Internet, or something otherwise.
It even might be a keg of nails in a country store that a good conversationalist draws up to sit on.
So I've loosened up and now I'm quite willing to talk about the admittedly little things that bother me here at the outset of 2009.
They don't really all rise to the level of pet peeve. A good example of which could be a young person tailgating me on a curvy road close enough for me to see him texting on his cell phone. But they are annoyances that I'd like to see stop in the coming year.
• And the Escalade you rode in on
Ever since I started driving, I've always considered my speed as just right and anyone passing me as too fast.
I formed that opinion behind the wheel before you could say "reckless endangerment," back in the day before I developed a healthy respect for the destructive power of an automobile.
So at that time, anybody passing me was actually going too fast, as was I.
With my family onboard, I am no longer trying to break land speed records — especially on interstates slicked with rain and temperatures hovering around freezing.
I've made my Christmas trek many times before, but never with rain falling during 300 miles of it.
Did it help that we saw lots of flashing emergency lights on the other side of the highway in Louisville and an Explorer in the median where one side had been shredded and the other side appeared almost normal? No, not really.
There were times when I almost got down to 45 mph and some traffic in the fast lane probably continued to go 80. At any time I expected to do a 360 and spin off road or into the path of a speeding tractor-trailer that couldn't slow down in time.
It makes me want to have technology that will let a driver communicate with any other vehicle in close proximity, so I can tell them what I think about their ability to operate a horseless carriage and the mental capacity and perceptive abilities of any DMV official who would allow them to do so.
Actually, I wouldn't try to be mean — more like a protective adult trying to tell a 3-year-old with two left feet not to run with upturned scissors on one hand and a primed grenade in the other.
• Slight sight distance
Closer to home, it sometimes seems that I've gotten my boyhood wish to own a car that operates in stealth mode, cloaked from the vision of other drivers.
In reality, though, Chevy Cavaliers don't usually merit that kind of expensive feature, so I have to conclude that something else is going on when many motorists continue to pull out in front of me in what I deem insufficiently safe distances on U.S. 58 in Carroll County.
I realize that 58 west of Hillsville is a four-lane road, but that doesn't guarantee I'll be able to zoom to the left every time to avoid their puttering ways.
Maybe I'm wrong, anonymous drivers — maybe you are not distracted like I think you are and can in fact see me and also see there's no other traffic to impede me from getting out of your path.
But if that's the case, you need to wait for me to go by and then pull out.
So, please, help me spare my brakes by showing a little patience before you enter the highway.
• Lingering stuff
It's probably been three years since I've voluntarily accepted all my retail goods in a plastic grocery bags when leaving a store.
That said, I can't quite figure out why I still have hundreds of the darn things.
Maybe it's because of the limited amount of reuse they have. Previously I had figured out they could be used as liners for my small wastebaskets, plus as trash bags in the car.
But I've only stumbled upon one extra reuse for plastic grocery bags ever since — scarecrow.
Having seen a neighbor grow a large enough garden to draw the interest of our deer population, it became apparent that person had taken advantage of an innovation to allow for a good harvest of beets and carrots safe from animal predation.
Besides pie pans, that person merely put up plastic bags to rustle in the wind. It worked incredibly well.
Now my fledgling apple trees are protected, too. It's a little unsightly, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for fresh fruit and vegetables.
I guess it's a good idea to continue to use the plastic bags sparingly, so I will still have a supply when a luxury tax gets applied to shopping bags that are not recyclable.
• Depth charge
As everybody who's not "off the grid" in the Twin Counties knows, local electric utility rates have gone up significantly.
A lot of people say their bill has doubled. Not quite, I think. Looking at the "average daily cost" for electricity figured on my bill, it's up to $5.34, where it used to be about $3.
I had feared that about a dollar of that daily cost was going towards my rechargeable items — my shaver, my handheld vacuum cleaner and of course my cell phone.
My wife doesn't care if I shave, so I've unplugged that personal grooming tool.
I'm not instantly ready to sweep up small messes any longer, after I disconnected my vacuum from the wall socket.
My one remaining device that sucks up wattage is an aging cell phone, which I depend on for communication with the outside world. After about 30 minutes of talk time, the thing's almost dead and needs more charging time, a victim of unimpressive battery life.
With the increase in rates and the need to be charged more often, my phone still may be costing me a dollar a day to operate.
In the short term, I'm looking forward to replacing my phone. No wonder billions end up in landfills a year (though I will give mine to a young man who has a recycling business).
I'm kind of envious of the person out there who will invent the better battery, because that person will make millions.
Well, that's all my bugaboos for now.
I resolve to wait until 2010 before I unleash any more complaining about my pet peeves.
But I've come to realize that everybody has a bully pulpit of their own. Or if not, at least access to such a forum in terms of blogs and comments boards on the Internet, or something otherwise.
It even might be a keg of nails in a country store that a good conversationalist draws up to sit on.
So I've loosened up and now I'm quite willing to talk about the admittedly little things that bother me here at the outset of 2009.
They don't really all rise to the level of pet peeve. A good example of which could be a young person tailgating me on a curvy road close enough for me to see him texting on his cell phone. But they are annoyances that I'd like to see stop in the coming year.
• And the Escalade you rode in on
Ever since I started driving, I've always considered my speed as just right and anyone passing me as too fast.
I formed that opinion behind the wheel before you could say "reckless endangerment," back in the day before I developed a healthy respect for the destructive power of an automobile.
So at that time, anybody passing me was actually going too fast, as was I.
With my family onboard, I am no longer trying to break land speed records — especially on interstates slicked with rain and temperatures hovering around freezing.
I've made my Christmas trek many times before, but never with rain falling during 300 miles of it.
Did it help that we saw lots of flashing emergency lights on the other side of the highway in Louisville and an Explorer in the median where one side had been shredded and the other side appeared almost normal? No, not really.
There were times when I almost got down to 45 mph and some traffic in the fast lane probably continued to go 80. At any time I expected to do a 360 and spin off road or into the path of a speeding tractor-trailer that couldn't slow down in time.
It makes me want to have technology that will let a driver communicate with any other vehicle in close proximity, so I can tell them what I think about their ability to operate a horseless carriage and the mental capacity and perceptive abilities of any DMV official who would allow them to do so.
Actually, I wouldn't try to be mean — more like a protective adult trying to tell a 3-year-old with two left feet not to run with upturned scissors on one hand and a primed grenade in the other.
• Slight sight distance
Closer to home, it sometimes seems that I've gotten my boyhood wish to own a car that operates in stealth mode, cloaked from the vision of other drivers.
In reality, though, Chevy Cavaliers don't usually merit that kind of expensive feature, so I have to conclude that something else is going on when many motorists continue to pull out in front of me in what I deem insufficiently safe distances on U.S. 58 in Carroll County.
I realize that 58 west of Hillsville is a four-lane road, but that doesn't guarantee I'll be able to zoom to the left every time to avoid their puttering ways.
Maybe I'm wrong, anonymous drivers — maybe you are not distracted like I think you are and can in fact see me and also see there's no other traffic to impede me from getting out of your path.
But if that's the case, you need to wait for me to go by and then pull out.
So, please, help me spare my brakes by showing a little patience before you enter the highway.
• Lingering stuff
It's probably been three years since I've voluntarily accepted all my retail goods in a plastic grocery bags when leaving a store.
That said, I can't quite figure out why I still have hundreds of the darn things.
Maybe it's because of the limited amount of reuse they have. Previously I had figured out they could be used as liners for my small wastebaskets, plus as trash bags in the car.
But I've only stumbled upon one extra reuse for plastic grocery bags ever since — scarecrow.
Having seen a neighbor grow a large enough garden to draw the interest of our deer population, it became apparent that person had taken advantage of an innovation to allow for a good harvest of beets and carrots safe from animal predation.
Besides pie pans, that person merely put up plastic bags to rustle in the wind. It worked incredibly well.
Now my fledgling apple trees are protected, too. It's a little unsightly, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for fresh fruit and vegetables.
I guess it's a good idea to continue to use the plastic bags sparingly, so I will still have a supply when a luxury tax gets applied to shopping bags that are not recyclable.
• Depth charge
As everybody who's not "off the grid" in the Twin Counties knows, local electric utility rates have gone up significantly.
A lot of people say their bill has doubled. Not quite, I think. Looking at the "average daily cost" for electricity figured on my bill, it's up to $5.34, where it used to be about $3.
I had feared that about a dollar of that daily cost was going towards my rechargeable items — my shaver, my handheld vacuum cleaner and of course my cell phone.
My wife doesn't care if I shave, so I've unplugged that personal grooming tool.
I'm not instantly ready to sweep up small messes any longer, after I disconnected my vacuum from the wall socket.
My one remaining device that sucks up wattage is an aging cell phone, which I depend on for communication with the outside world. After about 30 minutes of talk time, the thing's almost dead and needs more charging time, a victim of unimpressive battery life.
With the increase in rates and the need to be charged more often, my phone still may be costing me a dollar a day to operate.
In the short term, I'm looking forward to replacing my phone. No wonder billions end up in landfills a year (though I will give mine to a young man who has a recycling business).
I'm kind of envious of the person out there who will invent the better battery, because that person will make millions.
Well, that's all my bugaboos for now.
I resolve to wait until 2010 before I unleash any more complaining about my pet peeves.
Keep digging in
In hopes of keeping my brain fertile this winter, I've been imagining a new landscape coming this spring.
Though the New Year has just turned as I write this, I just broke a sweat walking the dog. The unseasonable weather is freakish, but still serviceable for digging out much of one new garden area today.
Even so, the periods of light are short, and I can stay mentally active while the sun's down by researching the varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees that will benefit wildlife that fly by the yard in the months and years that I'm here, and hopefully beyond.
My education actually started with warm-weather walks in the Crooked Creek Wildlife Management Area and its success in drawing birds and bugs.
A few of the flowers and trees were unmistakable, like the probably naturally-occurring trillium and the dogwoods, but others escaped my knowledge of flora.
So I decided to look up Crooked Creek on the Internet to see if there were a planting legend to go by.
Sure enough, some clicking around led to recommended plantings for birds and several game animals.
Through "habitat," I arrived at the plant materials page, which gives tips for both the uplands and the wetlands of Virginia. It gives helpful information about where to get the stuff.
Apparently for landowners with larger tracts to develop into habitat, the site recommended some suitable varieties that I wouldn't have thought of, as well as some old standbys.
The plants big bluestem and little bluestem and indiangrass as well as kousa, red osier and silky dogwoods, persimmons, indigobush and crapapple all rang familiar. These same varieties went into the Devils Den Nature Preserve to attract wildlife and wildlife watchers to the Fancy Gap area.
The site also suggested plants less familiar to me, like chokeberry and chokecherry, chickasaw plum, roselow sargent crabapple, eastern gammagrass, birdsfoot trefoil, hazelnut and more.
It listed a couple of viburnums, arrowwood and blackhaw, which is good, because I'd seen a few at nurseries around here and had been on the fence about them.
Food plot species include wheat, rapeseed, proso and browntop millet, buckwheat and of course black oilseed sunflowers.
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ pages list the expected benefits to wildlife, and I intend to sow those that provide food and shelter for songbirds.
Other links connected me to Web pages and files with more information.
It's gratifying to see so many suggestions from the Backyard Conservation worksheet already in my yard.
Providence (or previous owners) have supplied cherry, walnut, dogwood, redbud, sassafras and oak trees, bittersweet, Virginia creeper and grape and milkweed and clover and violets either here or as close as the fence row.
To these, I've added aster, butterfly bushes, butterfly weed, coneflower, bee balm, phlox and salvia and hollies.
I strive to use native plants, because those are better able to survive with just rainfall and little extra watering. An effort to cross-reference these suggestions led me to the native plant database at www.wildflower.org — a new discovery that's quite helpful.
It was that database that made me realize that spicebush and sassafras are both members of the laurel family and that I've got to have more of both.
Spicebush not only supports birds and butterflies, but can host the eastern tiger swallowtail and the spicebush swallowtail caterpillars. Ditto for sassafras plus the palamedes, a rare find in the mountains of Virginia.
There's plenty more to learn, but at least I can make a list to approach my favorite nurseries to see if they'll have my varieties on hand or if they need to be special-ordered to prepare for spring.
I'd love to be able to install lots of trees, like the eastern cottonwood, which is beneficial for tiger swallowtails, the state bug; the elusive mourning cloak; the more visible brushfoot, the red spotted purple; and monarch-doppleganger known as viceroy. But my small plot will support only so many trees along with planned herb and veggie gardens, too.
The overhead utilities also make shrubs and flowers the more likely choices.
So with my mind's-eye, I'm trying to see shrubs attractively grouped according to size and color aesthetics, covering a gradual slope down the hill that won't grow tall enough to interfere with the overhead lines.
Arrangements seem assured of spicebush and sassafras (with its single-, double- and triple-lobed leaves and gorgeous fall color) with viburnums mixed in.
Holly trees would be a good possibility, with the many berries for food and cover for nesting birds. Clustering the trees could serve as a windbreak, though space is still an issue.
Serviceberries are said to provide year-round food for birds, but are subject to cosmetic diseases and insect problems.
Other questions arise, such as: what should the mix be of deciduous and evergreens to provide year-round cover for the birds? Should I plant sunflowers so that they will loom over my planned herb garden? And can I get it all done in a timely and an orderly way?
Just have to keep digging into my research and be ready to go in May, I guess.
Though the New Year has just turned as I write this, I just broke a sweat walking the dog. The unseasonable weather is freakish, but still serviceable for digging out much of one new garden area today.
Even so, the periods of light are short, and I can stay mentally active while the sun's down by researching the varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees that will benefit wildlife that fly by the yard in the months and years that I'm here, and hopefully beyond.
My education actually started with warm-weather walks in the Crooked Creek Wildlife Management Area and its success in drawing birds and bugs.
A few of the flowers and trees were unmistakable, like the probably naturally-occurring trillium and the dogwoods, but others escaped my knowledge of flora.
So I decided to look up Crooked Creek on the Internet to see if there were a planting legend to go by.
Sure enough, some clicking around led to recommended plantings for birds and several game animals.
Through "habitat," I arrived at the plant materials page, which gives tips for both the uplands and the wetlands of Virginia. It gives helpful information about where to get the stuff.
Apparently for landowners with larger tracts to develop into habitat, the site recommended some suitable varieties that I wouldn't have thought of, as well as some old standbys.
The plants big bluestem and little bluestem and indiangrass as well as kousa, red osier and silky dogwoods, persimmons, indigobush and crapapple all rang familiar. These same varieties went into the Devils Den Nature Preserve to attract wildlife and wildlife watchers to the Fancy Gap area.
The site also suggested plants less familiar to me, like chokeberry and chokecherry, chickasaw plum, roselow sargent crabapple, eastern gammagrass, birdsfoot trefoil, hazelnut and more.
It listed a couple of viburnums, arrowwood and blackhaw, which is good, because I'd seen a few at nurseries around here and had been on the fence about them.
Food plot species include wheat, rapeseed, proso and browntop millet, buckwheat and of course black oilseed sunflowers.
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ pages list the expected benefits to wildlife, and I intend to sow those that provide food and shelter for songbirds.
Other links connected me to Web pages and files with more information.
It's gratifying to see so many suggestions from the Backyard Conservation worksheet already in my yard.
Providence (or previous owners) have supplied cherry, walnut, dogwood, redbud, sassafras and oak trees, bittersweet, Virginia creeper and grape and milkweed and clover and violets either here or as close as the fence row.
To these, I've added aster, butterfly bushes, butterfly weed, coneflower, bee balm, phlox and salvia and hollies.
I strive to use native plants, because those are better able to survive with just rainfall and little extra watering. An effort to cross-reference these suggestions led me to the native plant database at www.wildflower.org — a new discovery that's quite helpful.
It was that database that made me realize that spicebush and sassafras are both members of the laurel family and that I've got to have more of both.
Spicebush not only supports birds and butterflies, but can host the eastern tiger swallowtail and the spicebush swallowtail caterpillars. Ditto for sassafras plus the palamedes, a rare find in the mountains of Virginia.
There's plenty more to learn, but at least I can make a list to approach my favorite nurseries to see if they'll have my varieties on hand or if they need to be special-ordered to prepare for spring.
I'd love to be able to install lots of trees, like the eastern cottonwood, which is beneficial for tiger swallowtails, the state bug; the elusive mourning cloak; the more visible brushfoot, the red spotted purple; and monarch-doppleganger known as viceroy. But my small plot will support only so many trees along with planned herb and veggie gardens, too.
The overhead utilities also make shrubs and flowers the more likely choices.
So with my mind's-eye, I'm trying to see shrubs attractively grouped according to size and color aesthetics, covering a gradual slope down the hill that won't grow tall enough to interfere with the overhead lines.
Arrangements seem assured of spicebush and sassafras (with its single-, double- and triple-lobed leaves and gorgeous fall color) with viburnums mixed in.
Holly trees would be a good possibility, with the many berries for food and cover for nesting birds. Clustering the trees could serve as a windbreak, though space is still an issue.
Serviceberries are said to provide year-round food for birds, but are subject to cosmetic diseases and insect problems.
Other questions arise, such as: what should the mix be of deciduous and evergreens to provide year-round cover for the birds? Should I plant sunflowers so that they will loom over my planned herb garden? And can I get it all done in a timely and an orderly way?
Just have to keep digging into my research and be ready to go in May, I guess.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Winter ticks away
I first wrote this in 2006, but it's still relevant for 2009, because we're having another unseasonably warm January and no winter at all.
And while warm weather brings its pleasures, there are certain perils, too.
Like one of the few critters on the face of the earth that I hate, a vermin I found crawling up my leg after a Jan. 5 dog walk.
I broke a sweat while briskly walking my dog March 2.
It's of limited interest to readers in the Twin Counties, writing about how much I may perspire, I realize, but bear with me.
As someone who doesn't like warm weather and the damp feeling that comes along with it, I immediately slowed down.
To me, this became a notable event because it's the first time in 2006 I felt overheated in shirt sleeves, despite a nice breeze.
A quick glance at my cell phone confirmed my belief that it is not in fact May yet, no matter what the thermometer reads — 70 degrees!
Signs of spring are all around: Birds take to the trees and to the air, and even when you can't see them, their songs are filling the air; flower stems have started pushing their way out of the soil towards the sun; and insects have already buzzed me in the face.
It's been a very unwinterlike winter, especially January, the warmest on record for our region, and probably for many other places across the region and the world, too, I suspect.
NASA called 2005 the warmest year in a century, and we're not getting 2006 off to a good start.
Twin County orchardists now have to worry about their trees budding and a renewed cold snap nipping them, diminishing their crop early on in the growing season.
As a dog owner, I know I'm going to have ticks crawl up my legs and arms into my hair and stick that thing, whatever its called, through my skin in order to drink my blood.
It's going to happen, no matter what preventative measures I may take.
Anecdotally, I realized the winter hovered in unseasonably warm temperatures from the number of ticks I found on both me and the dog.
At a time I can usually depend on the little buggers to be dead, ticks struck my dog multiple times this season.
November must have set a record for the number of parasites attacking my dog. Probably amounted to a dozen — I lost count and just kept finding them as they continued to get bigger from their blood intake.
The only month we got any relief was December.
I welcome spring, even though I dread the hot, muggy weather.
But even when I'm not overheated, fear of ticks may keep me in a cold sweat.
And while warm weather brings its pleasures, there are certain perils, too.
Like one of the few critters on the face of the earth that I hate, a vermin I found crawling up my leg after a Jan. 5 dog walk.
I broke a sweat while briskly walking my dog March 2.
It's of limited interest to readers in the Twin Counties, writing about how much I may perspire, I realize, but bear with me.
As someone who doesn't like warm weather and the damp feeling that comes along with it, I immediately slowed down.
To me, this became a notable event because it's the first time in 2006 I felt overheated in shirt sleeves, despite a nice breeze.
A quick glance at my cell phone confirmed my belief that it is not in fact May yet, no matter what the thermometer reads — 70 degrees!
Signs of spring are all around: Birds take to the trees and to the air, and even when you can't see them, their songs are filling the air; flower stems have started pushing their way out of the soil towards the sun; and insects have already buzzed me in the face.
It's been a very unwinterlike winter, especially January, the warmest on record for our region, and probably for many other places across the region and the world, too, I suspect.
NASA called 2005 the warmest year in a century, and we're not getting 2006 off to a good start.
Twin County orchardists now have to worry about their trees budding and a renewed cold snap nipping them, diminishing their crop early on in the growing season.
As a dog owner, I know I'm going to have ticks crawl up my legs and arms into my hair and stick that thing, whatever its called, through my skin in order to drink my blood.
It's going to happen, no matter what preventative measures I may take.
Anecdotally, I realized the winter hovered in unseasonably warm temperatures from the number of ticks I found on both me and the dog.
At a time I can usually depend on the little buggers to be dead, ticks struck my dog multiple times this season.
November must have set a record for the number of parasites attacking my dog. Probably amounted to a dozen — I lost count and just kept finding them as they continued to get bigger from their blood intake.
The only month we got any relief was December.
I welcome spring, even though I dread the hot, muggy weather.
But even when I'm not overheated, fear of ticks may keep me in a cold sweat.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Putting down roots
When my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, the answer I gave resulted in a look of consternation.
"Rocks," I told her.
Is it wrong that the curled lip and the narrowed gaze that I received became one of my favorite moments of the holiday season?
But I had her curiosity going, because she asked why rocks, and I said because I need rocks to create a dry stream bed like we'd seen at Asheville, North Carolina's arboretum, which we had visited on one of our many "honeymoons" in 2008.
Still skeptical, my wife has assured me that I will not get rocks — though it may be appropriate, considering the source.
I've shifted my wishlist to shrubs, and there's no hurry to buy those as a gift because I won't be able to plant them for months.
But I have to say that in 2008 I got everything I could imagine wanting.
Despite nationwide economic turmoil and its repercussions at home in the Blue Ridge, 2008 may well turn out to be my favorite year ever.
Reflecting on events of the past 12 months, I can't help but feel glad to have experienced some momentous personal events and feel positive about the future.
As the year draws to a close and nearly all news agencies, including The Gazette, sum up their top stories, I'm looking forward to the new adventures to come.
Having just completed my Holiday Tour to visit friends and family from North Carolina to Indiana, a round trip encompassing about 1,550 miles, having gathered around the Christmas tree with my generous inlaws for the first time as an "official" family member, having shared some time with my niece and nephew (both still cherubic and angelic but poised on the cusp of becoming "grown up"), renewed relationships and having caught up with friends and family members now spread out nearly from shore to shore and letting them get to know my charming wife, I reveled in the season.
Our flurry of unwrapping gifts proved that my parents came through on my request for camping gear.
So now me and the Mrs. and our dog can enjoy the outdoors in relative style with room enough to stretch out in our new dome tent.
We had planned to explore the depths of the Great Dismal Swamp as part of our honeymoon trip to see Tidewater for the very first time.
While we got to Colonial Williamsburg, it became clear that the 100-plus-degree heat that cropped up while we were there would not be a comfortable hike through a mosquito infested swamp.
The tent will allow us to take more affordable and more frequent trips such as a return to Virginia's coast, as well as the extreme north and south ends of the Blue Ridge Parkway on free weekends and maybe even on to the Shenadoah .
The challenge of climbing Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain on the East Coast, still beckons. And we also can't wait to pop up the tent at Mount Rogers and hike at the highest park on the highest mountains in Virginia.
I'm already looking forward to getting away and learning more about this wonderful place we live.
On the homefront I'm looking forward to spring and hoping to stay busy.
I got an idea to recreate a successful bit of landscaping - a grouping of barberry, junipers, sedum and other bits - in other places around the yard.
That's obviously where my No. 2 item on my Christmas list comes in.
New plantings will help tie the different parts together and beautify the place, I hope. It will also allow me to take up more lawn and replace it with possible food and shelter for the birds and bugs.
This will continue to solidify my yard's designation as a "certified wildlife habitat" from the National Wildlife Federation — one of my finest non-marriage accomplishments of 2008.
The certification gives me credit for trying to provide the "four basic habitat elements needed for wildlife to thrive: food, water, cover and places to raise young."
It's not too hard to do. Planting butterfly bushes has helped those insects as well as bees get nectar. My new apple trees, too immature to produce fruit yet, have already provided some sustenance for the deer by means of their twigs. Some of the apples are intended to feed wildlife, but the darn greedy critters have to leave the branches on in order to get that done. Letting plants like swamp milkweed grow up around my brush pile gave at least one monarch butterfly a place to reproduce. I found great joy in seeing the yellow, white and black striped caterpillar nibble the milkweed leaves down last summer.
I will work to make the yard even more hospitable in 2009.
Water sources are a bit of a weak point. Right now, one of them is an overturned garbage can lid filled with rainwater.
This led to my number three gift suggestion to my wife, a birdbath.
One of the handiest possessions that the Mrs. brought into our relationship was her sturdy shovel, which I will use in 2009 to move our small indoor garden outside.
It's my plan to try and recreate some of the "door gardens" full of herbs that I saw in Williamsburg during a different honeymoon and she wants vegetables.
A few nice bell peppers grew in the south facing windows of the basement, and we hope to get even more of a bounty and more variety of veggies in raised beds in the backyard.
There's a nice hillside to the west that gets unobstructed sun from midmorning to nearly sunset.
My wife and I put down roots in 2008, and we will grow together in 2009.
"Rocks," I told her.
Is it wrong that the curled lip and the narrowed gaze that I received became one of my favorite moments of the holiday season?
But I had her curiosity going, because she asked why rocks, and I said because I need rocks to create a dry stream bed like we'd seen at Asheville, North Carolina's arboretum, which we had visited on one of our many "honeymoons" in 2008.
Still skeptical, my wife has assured me that I will not get rocks — though it may be appropriate, considering the source.
I've shifted my wishlist to shrubs, and there's no hurry to buy those as a gift because I won't be able to plant them for months.
But I have to say that in 2008 I got everything I could imagine wanting.
Despite nationwide economic turmoil and its repercussions at home in the Blue Ridge, 2008 may well turn out to be my favorite year ever.
Reflecting on events of the past 12 months, I can't help but feel glad to have experienced some momentous personal events and feel positive about the future.
As the year draws to a close and nearly all news agencies, including The Gazette, sum up their top stories, I'm looking forward to the new adventures to come.
Having just completed my Holiday Tour to visit friends and family from North Carolina to Indiana, a round trip encompassing about 1,550 miles, having gathered around the Christmas tree with my generous inlaws for the first time as an "official" family member, having shared some time with my niece and nephew (both still cherubic and angelic but poised on the cusp of becoming "grown up"), renewed relationships and having caught up with friends and family members now spread out nearly from shore to shore and letting them get to know my charming wife, I reveled in the season.
Our flurry of unwrapping gifts proved that my parents came through on my request for camping gear.
So now me and the Mrs. and our dog can enjoy the outdoors in relative style with room enough to stretch out in our new dome tent.
We had planned to explore the depths of the Great Dismal Swamp as part of our honeymoon trip to see Tidewater for the very first time.
While we got to Colonial Williamsburg, it became clear that the 100-plus-degree heat that cropped up while we were there would not be a comfortable hike through a mosquito infested swamp.
The tent will allow us to take more affordable and more frequent trips such as a return to Virginia's coast, as well as the extreme north and south ends of the Blue Ridge Parkway on free weekends and maybe even on to the Shenadoah .
The challenge of climbing Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain on the East Coast, still beckons. And we also can't wait to pop up the tent at Mount Rogers and hike at the highest park on the highest mountains in Virginia.
I'm already looking forward to getting away and learning more about this wonderful place we live.
On the homefront I'm looking forward to spring and hoping to stay busy.
I got an idea to recreate a successful bit of landscaping - a grouping of barberry, junipers, sedum and other bits - in other places around the yard.
That's obviously where my No. 2 item on my Christmas list comes in.
New plantings will help tie the different parts together and beautify the place, I hope. It will also allow me to take up more lawn and replace it with possible food and shelter for the birds and bugs.
This will continue to solidify my yard's designation as a "certified wildlife habitat" from the National Wildlife Federation — one of my finest non-marriage accomplishments of 2008.
The certification gives me credit for trying to provide the "four basic habitat elements needed for wildlife to thrive: food, water, cover and places to raise young."
It's not too hard to do. Planting butterfly bushes has helped those insects as well as bees get nectar. My new apple trees, too immature to produce fruit yet, have already provided some sustenance for the deer by means of their twigs. Some of the apples are intended to feed wildlife, but the darn greedy critters have to leave the branches on in order to get that done. Letting plants like swamp milkweed grow up around my brush pile gave at least one monarch butterfly a place to reproduce. I found great joy in seeing the yellow, white and black striped caterpillar nibble the milkweed leaves down last summer.
I will work to make the yard even more hospitable in 2009.
Water sources are a bit of a weak point. Right now, one of them is an overturned garbage can lid filled with rainwater.
This led to my number three gift suggestion to my wife, a birdbath.
One of the handiest possessions that the Mrs. brought into our relationship was her sturdy shovel, which I will use in 2009 to move our small indoor garden outside.
It's my plan to try and recreate some of the "door gardens" full of herbs that I saw in Williamsburg during a different honeymoon and she wants vegetables.
A few nice bell peppers grew in the south facing windows of the basement, and we hope to get even more of a bounty and more variety of veggies in raised beds in the backyard.
There's a nice hillside to the west that gets unobstructed sun from midmorning to nearly sunset.
My wife and I put down roots in 2008, and we will grow together in 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
