Listening to all the arguments for and against environmental controls and sustainability of resources I was struck by the fact that so much of our food supply is energy dependent not only for its production but also transportation storage and ultimately consumed by our population.
So I propose an experiment:
Suppose we all take this spring to grow the following items:
10 pounds tomatoes (that's about one plant)
10 pounds of potatoes (that's about 2 plants)
10 heads of lettuce. (that's always 10 plants)
Assuming that there is a ~31 million of us up here in Lotus land that means that the transportation for 10 pounds of tomatoes to each of us would amount to a cargo of 310,000,000 pounds the same for the potatoes at about the same for lettuce. That works out to about 1,000,000,000(Billion) pounds of produce that have to be grown somewhere else and brought to your local store in refrigerated trucks and railcars then transported home by whatever you use to shop.
Try to put your mind around the amount of energy required to disperse that billion pounds of rather innocuous vegetables to 31 million people.
So while we're running around turning the lights off and trying to use a push scooter to go to work in the morning I suggest that we begin looking at what we can do locally to offset the carbon footprint that we have the option of not using.
This is just one idea I'm sure you all have several of your own but often said charity starts at home.You could also try buying these three products from local suppliers but somehow they haven't been able to calculate in that reasonable discount that people should expect from not having to truck the products from the deep South all the way up our little town.
Kootenay lake near Nakusp
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Bureaucratic Acronyms ,Initialisms and Bafflekak
I had occasion yesterday to run into yet again a thinly veiled bureaucrat (or wannabee) on a political forum. These people seem to patrol such venues as if on guard duty to protect and extend their turf by obfuscating almost every idea that is contrary to the guidelines of their drab little bureaucratic departments.
Acronyms pile up everywhere today BLT's, PB&J's and OJ in the kitchen; GTO's, RV's, and SUV's in the garage,
We turn on the VCR or put on a CD by REM, ELO or UB40; in the bedroom we slip out of our BVD's and cop some Z's. Yuppies and WASPS, LSD and PCP, TGIF and BYOB, CBGB's and MTV , well you get the idea.
Most of them barely save any syllables over their spelled-out equivalents.
Back to yesterday's brief interlude with the modern day luddite:
His remark was- "Yes, cause a big piece of property like that right on the Avenue and right on the LRT line would never be used for... oh, I dunno... something like a TOD? NEVER!!! Note the sarcasm."
O.K. I say, what is a TOD?
The next bureauclod says: "TOD = transit-oriented development"
and goes on to add that "everybody knows that"
Well for the rest of us that's simply not true.
We know "parking lot" pretty well but TOD???
Come on, give us all a break and stop with the initialisms.
For the sake of brevity, give us the full words and meaning if necessary and then use the initalisms etc in the body of your sentences. (if you must!)
That's called common sense and it's akin to common decency, exemplary communication skills and will most likely bring you more respect than the current use of bafflekak.
"acronyms are the slang of a textual world" To quote this worthy scholar:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/acronyms.html
Acronyms pile up everywhere today BLT's, PB&J's and OJ in the kitchen; GTO's, RV's, and SUV's in the garage,
We turn on the VCR or put on a CD by REM, ELO or UB40; in the bedroom we slip out of our BVD's and cop some Z's. Yuppies and WASPS, LSD and PCP, TGIF and BYOB, CBGB's and MTV , well you get the idea.
Most of them barely save any syllables over their spelled-out equivalents.
Back to yesterday's brief interlude with the modern day luddite:
His remark was- "Yes, cause a big piece of property like that right on the Avenue and right on the LRT line would never be used for... oh, I dunno... something like a TOD? NEVER!!! Note the sarcasm."
O.K. I say, what is a TOD?
The next bureauclod says: "TOD = transit-oriented development"
and goes on to add that "everybody knows that"
Well for the rest of us that's simply not true.
We know "parking lot" pretty well but TOD???
Come on, give us all a break and stop with the initialisms.
For the sake of brevity, give us the full words and meaning if necessary and then use the initalisms etc in the body of your sentences. (if you must!)
That's called common sense and it's akin to common decency, exemplary communication skills and will most likely bring you more respect than the current use of bafflekak.
"acronyms are the slang of a textual world" To quote this worthy scholar:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/acronyms.html
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Is it climate change or just us?
One of the most sensitive topics today is that of global warming and its effects on the human environment. It seems there are several different camps each one blaming the others for what could be either a real or imagined change in climate. I say real or imagined because recently we have discovered a lot of the data related to climate is either destroyed missing or manipulated to produce results more suitable to its users.
Through all this there is one salient thing I'm almost certain we can all agree upon is we are burning through our resources faster than we are able to replenish them.
In many cases those resources are finite and cannot be restored.
One of the first concepts that needs to be understood is that both oxygen and carbon make up the serious part of our planet i.e. all of lifeforms currently existing and those that came before. Without carbon and oxygen there can be no life on this planet.
The size of this planet shrinks under the unrelenting expansion of the human population and the tremendous impact that growth puts on plants animals atmosphere and sequestered carbon (oil gas wood). We are consuming and converting these materials at a rate far beyond our abilities to replenish them or have nature do that same thing for us.
We must learn to maximize the use of these products while at the same time curbing our ever-increasing population to balance with our abilities to survive without further changes.
One of the proposals that simply cannot work is that of converting the fertile land that we currently use to produce food supplies into sources of alcohol to supplement the current automobile engines. Here again we have a limited number of acres of farmland available today without further destroying the natural forests that give us the ability to sequester and store carbon from CO2 for centuries. They are mother nature's carbon filters.
Forests
Guinness Book of Records, states that an average two million hectares are disappearing every year, double the annual loss in the 1980s. ... The idea that replacing these forests with grassland is the equvalent of a natural forest is astounding and sadly, not true.
Even one of the fastest-growing, quickest-sequestering trees that sprout up today would require 50 years or more to absorb the carbon emitted by burning a single cord (128 cubic feet) of wood (about the amount in a foot-thick 40-foot-long log). With slower growers, we’re talking a century or so. The twin morals of this story are: 1) Be sure to turn your heat down to 55 or lower when you’re out of the house or asleep, and 2) Beware of exaggerated promises about carbon offsets.
As we force the planet to produce more and more food crops for humans and domestic animals we destroy the planets' ability to deal with the mounting CO2 levels that these forests used to control by sequestration.
In addition, a population of 2 1/2 billion with predictions of 5 to 6,000,000,000 in the next generation there is little likelihood that there'll be a scrap of forest remaining is not under cultivation and every square inch of this planet will have a human life form dependent on it for survival.
Common sense would tell you this can't work.
Often overlooked is the fact that those of us that live north of the 49th parallel i.e Canada and most parts of Russia ,europe,Manchuria ets. are dependent on oil reserves currently to protect us from the severe climate that we have endured for centuries. It becomes a question of whether or not we should all pack our belongings to move further south and closer to the equator to avoid the use of fossil fuels or should we attempt to reduce our dependency on these two products with innovation and perhaps a few too maximizing those energy resources by virtue of more efficient vehicles of transportation.
One thing is certain, at this juncture we cannot all move closer to the equator There is simply not enough water or sustainable growth in that area to feed cloth, water and shelter the people currently living on this planet.
We quite obviously need the northern climates to produce an abundance of cereal crops as well as root crops for our sustenance .This is undeniable it will not go away, Doubling the population of the planet will simply exacerbate the situation.
I strongly disagree with the Al Gore camp that merely taxing individuals for corporate profits will do anything concrete to slow or halt the population explosion that will most assurdly destroy the planet far in advance of even the most bizzarre predictions of global warming.
For further reading check this:
http://www.co2science.org/CarbonSequestration/Vol4.php
Through all this there is one salient thing I'm almost certain we can all agree upon is we are burning through our resources faster than we are able to replenish them.
In many cases those resources are finite and cannot be restored.
One of the first concepts that needs to be understood is that both oxygen and carbon make up the serious part of our planet i.e. all of lifeforms currently existing and those that came before. Without carbon and oxygen there can be no life on this planet.
The size of this planet shrinks under the unrelenting expansion of the human population and the tremendous impact that growth puts on plants animals atmosphere and sequestered carbon (oil gas wood). We are consuming and converting these materials at a rate far beyond our abilities to replenish them or have nature do that same thing for us.
We must learn to maximize the use of these products while at the same time curbing our ever-increasing population to balance with our abilities to survive without further changes.
One of the proposals that simply cannot work is that of converting the fertile land that we currently use to produce food supplies into sources of alcohol to supplement the current automobile engines. Here again we have a limited number of acres of farmland available today without further destroying the natural forests that give us the ability to sequester and store carbon from CO2 for centuries. They are mother nature's carbon filters.
Forests
Guinness Book of Records, states that an average two million hectares are disappearing every year, double the annual loss in the 1980s. ... The idea that replacing these forests with grassland is the equvalent of a natural forest is astounding and sadly, not true.
Even one of the fastest-growing, quickest-sequestering trees that sprout up today would require 50 years or more to absorb the carbon emitted by burning a single cord (128 cubic feet) of wood (about the amount in a foot-thick 40-foot-long log). With slower growers, we’re talking a century or so. The twin morals of this story are: 1) Be sure to turn your heat down to 55 or lower when you’re out of the house or asleep, and 2) Beware of exaggerated promises about carbon offsets.
As we force the planet to produce more and more food crops for humans and domestic animals we destroy the planets' ability to deal with the mounting CO2 levels that these forests used to control by sequestration.
In addition, a population of 2 1/2 billion with predictions of 5 to 6,000,000,000 in the next generation there is little likelihood that there'll be a scrap of forest remaining is not under cultivation and every square inch of this planet will have a human life form dependent on it for survival.
Common sense would tell you this can't work.
Often overlooked is the fact that those of us that live north of the 49th parallel i.e Canada and most parts of Russia ,europe,Manchuria ets. are dependent on oil reserves currently to protect us from the severe climate that we have endured for centuries. It becomes a question of whether or not we should all pack our belongings to move further south and closer to the equator to avoid the use of fossil fuels or should we attempt to reduce our dependency on these two products with innovation and perhaps a few too maximizing those energy resources by virtue of more efficient vehicles of transportation.
One thing is certain, at this juncture we cannot all move closer to the equator There is simply not enough water or sustainable growth in that area to feed cloth, water and shelter the people currently living on this planet.
We quite obviously need the northern climates to produce an abundance of cereal crops as well as root crops for our sustenance .This is undeniable it will not go away, Doubling the population of the planet will simply exacerbate the situation.
I strongly disagree with the Al Gore camp that merely taxing individuals for corporate profits will do anything concrete to slow or halt the population explosion that will most assurdly destroy the planet far in advance of even the most bizzarre predictions of global warming.
For further reading check this:
http://www.co2science.org/CarbonSequestration/Vol4.php
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Is heating your home with trees carbon neutral?
The folks over at Burning Issues website have calculated that to heat a small home for a year of approximately 2 acres woodland are required for each year feeding.
Over the period of 30 years such a home would require in the neighborhood of 60 to 65 acres in order to sustain the growth that selective logging would require.
It's pretty obvious to me that that's just not happening here in North America and definitely not happening in the Third World.
It's been shown that the so-called high-efficiency wood stoves can actually create more greenhouse gases than a traditional fire. In addition,other gasses--carbon monoxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc.--are produced in much greater quantities than previously thought.
Although many people associate tobacco smoke with certain health risks, research indicates that second hand wood smoke has potentially even greater ability to damage health. A comparison between tobacco smoke and wood smoke using electron spin resonance revealed quite startling results (Rozenberg 2001, Wood Smoke is More Damaging than Tobacco Smoke). Tobacco smoke causes damage in the body for approximately 30 seconds after it is inhaled. Wood smoke, however, continues to be chemically active and cause damage to cells in the body for up to 20 minutes, or 40 times longer.
EPA researchers suggest that the lifetime cancer risk from wood stove emissions may be 12 times greater than the lifetime cancer risk from exposure to an equal amount of cigarette smoke. (Rozenberg 2001, What's in Wood Smoke and Other Emissions).
Excerpt from New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services website:
Compounds released during the combustion process interfere with normal lung development and function. Indoor and outdoor air quality can be degraded significantly by the use of poorly designed, non-certified wood stoves. Poor burning processes, lack of maintenance, improper stove installation, and burning wet wood create excessive amounts of pollution. Fires left smoldering to keep a house warm during the night can also be particularly harmful. Smoldering wood burns slower and incompletely, thereby releasing more smoke and gas into the air.
Excerpted from Citizens for Environmental Health
Smoke produced from residential wood burning costs 24% of the total green house gases in Canada each year. In Quebec , where emissions have grown 20% in the last five years, this smoke causes 55% of particulate matter, a deadly molecular soot pollution that enters deep into the lungs. And, all that smoke, people know very little about. People deserve and have the right to know.
We think differently, we act more responsibly, when we know the facts.
Over the period of 30 years such a home would require in the neighborhood of 60 to 65 acres in order to sustain the growth that selective logging would require.
It's pretty obvious to me that that's just not happening here in North America and definitely not happening in the Third World.
It's been shown that the so-called high-efficiency wood stoves can actually create more greenhouse gases than a traditional fire. In addition,other gasses--carbon monoxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc.--are produced in much greater quantities than previously thought.
Although many people associate tobacco smoke with certain health risks, research indicates that second hand wood smoke has potentially even greater ability to damage health. A comparison between tobacco smoke and wood smoke using electron spin resonance revealed quite startling results (Rozenberg 2001, Wood Smoke is More Damaging than Tobacco Smoke). Tobacco smoke causes damage in the body for approximately 30 seconds after it is inhaled. Wood smoke, however, continues to be chemically active and cause damage to cells in the body for up to 20 minutes, or 40 times longer.
EPA researchers suggest that the lifetime cancer risk from wood stove emissions may be 12 times greater than the lifetime cancer risk from exposure to an equal amount of cigarette smoke. (Rozenberg 2001, What's in Wood Smoke and Other Emissions).
Excerpt from New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services website:
Compounds released during the combustion process interfere with normal lung development and function. Indoor and outdoor air quality can be degraded significantly by the use of poorly designed, non-certified wood stoves. Poor burning processes, lack of maintenance, improper stove installation, and burning wet wood create excessive amounts of pollution. Fires left smoldering to keep a house warm during the night can also be particularly harmful. Smoldering wood burns slower and incompletely, thereby releasing more smoke and gas into the air.
Excerpted from Citizens for Environmental Health
Smoke produced from residential wood burning costs 24% of the total green house gases in Canada each year. In Quebec , where emissions have grown 20% in the last five years, this smoke causes 55% of particulate matter, a deadly molecular soot pollution that enters deep into the lungs. And, all that smoke, people know very little about. People deserve and have the right to know.
We think differently, we act more responsibly, when we know the facts.
| From future projects 2010 |
Friday, March 12, 2010
I'm fed up with "Organic" this and that
When somebody tells you that something is a 100% Organic are they saying to you that if it were not 100% organic that there's something wrong with it?
Unless someone comes up with something real fast to show scientifically, that there's an absolute difference I will have to say I'm totally fed up with these folks.
I think this is a racket.
I will never buy another product with organic on the label.
Modern science and agriculture have expanded the food crops around the world sufficiently to feed a world more than twice the size it was in 1950. They continue to expand our horizons with new breakthroughs. Fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, top quality meats, cheese, milk products. I could go on but we all know.
I am left with the feeling that the food and human commodities market is under siege by those folks who would undermine it in order to control the distribution of both food and commodities.
I do, on the other hand, endorse good stewardship of the planet and careful consideration for the environmental variables. I do not condone the use of arable land to produce 60 to 70% smaller crops in order to satisfy the "organic whim".
Unless someone comes up with something real fast to show scientifically, that there's an absolute difference I will have to say I'm totally fed up with these folks.
I think this is a racket.
I will never buy another product with organic on the label.
Modern science and agriculture have expanded the food crops around the world sufficiently to feed a world more than twice the size it was in 1950. They continue to expand our horizons with new breakthroughs. Fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, top quality meats, cheese, milk products. I could go on but we all know.
I am left with the feeling that the food and human commodities market is under siege by those folks who would undermine it in order to control the distribution of both food and commodities.
I do, on the other hand, endorse good stewardship of the planet and careful consideration for the environmental variables. I do not condone the use of arable land to produce 60 to 70% smaller crops in order to satisfy the "organic whim".
I grow weary of Facebook
The continuous and unending drivel that passes for intelligent conversation. The constant requests for artificial friendships.
The silence that occurs when one posts anything of consequence.
The thinly veiled searches for personal data.
The terse, unjointed and unrecognizable broken sentences and comments.
The constant lack of response to comments that in normal conversation would require one.
A message from FB arrives in your mailbox suggesting one of your "acquaintances" has posted some information of value that you should be aware of.
You read it and are unable to decrypt the message.
You reply, "this message makes no sense to me"
The author repies that it does to people who should know the circumstances. --- I feel a pigeon hole starting to form.
The shallow and bizarre biographies of the life and times of acquaintances.
The tick tick tick of the clock that consumes us all.
The silence that occurs when one posts anything of consequence.
The thinly veiled searches for personal data.
The terse, unjointed and unrecognizable broken sentences and comments.
The constant lack of response to comments that in normal conversation would require one.
A message from FB arrives in your mailbox suggesting one of your "acquaintances" has posted some information of value that you should be aware of.
You read it and are unable to decrypt the message.
You reply, "this message makes no sense to me"
The author repies that it does to people who should know the circumstances. --- I feel a pigeon hole starting to form.
The shallow and bizarre biographies of the life and times of acquaintances.
The tick tick tick of the clock that consumes us all.
Organic this and that
I'm really topped up with the organic movement.
These organic environmentalists have come out of the woodwork recently demanding and receiving everything from organic baums, ointments and fruit organic pesticides mitecides,books and pencils.
The word natural is now reworked to mean not manufactured or industrially made.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The long and the short of it is it's a marketing tool and as the story unfolds the products sold under these buzzword labels offered no more benefit than food products and remedies already registered in our countries and in several cases contain contaminants not normally found in our daily food intake.
The quest for pure food and basic human supplements has opened the door for thousands of untrained and scientifically illiterate individuals to ply their trade on the unsuspecting public.
Like most of you, I want my food to be nutritious and free from toxicity. Until proven otherwise, I'm unwilling to accept organic and or natural foods and substances that have not undergone like and similar testing to that which I am accustomed to using.
I'm also unwilling to pay a premium to farmers to produce products for me without the benefit of some proven advantage to my well-being.
These organic environmentalists have come out of the woodwork recently demanding and receiving everything from organic baums, ointments and fruit organic pesticides mitecides,books and pencils.
The word natural is now reworked to mean not manufactured or industrially made.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The long and the short of it is it's a marketing tool and as the story unfolds the products sold under these buzzword labels offered no more benefit than food products and remedies already registered in our countries and in several cases contain contaminants not normally found in our daily food intake.
The quest for pure food and basic human supplements has opened the door for thousands of untrained and scientifically illiterate individuals to ply their trade on the unsuspecting public.
Like most of you, I want my food to be nutritious and free from toxicity. Until proven otherwise, I'm unwilling to accept organic and or natural foods and substances that have not undergone like and similar testing to that which I am accustomed to using.
I'm also unwilling to pay a premium to farmers to produce products for me without the benefit of some proven advantage to my well-being.
Thoughts about opinions
Recently, during a rather superficial and meaningless conversation I was subjected to, that recurrent statement that "everyone is entitled to their own opinion".
Well, I have to agree with that.
Unfortunately, opinions are like shape shifters and take on a body and essence of their own dependent entirely on the knowledge and experience of the individual possessing the opinion.
That's where the problem begins:
We have literally billions of individual minds on the planet today, each one possessing a set of opinions.
These opinions are based on environmental, cultural, ethical, religious, political, and scientific experiences. Individuals with retained memory stored from these experiences generally put forward the most logical hypotheses related to those experiences we are trying to explore and understand.
Where this system breaks down is the socialistic perspective that every individual, by right of passage, is entitled to an opinion regardless of their lack experience required to formulate same.
With the advent of the Internet and the ability to communicate with those of like and similar views we are developing pockets of low-level thinking wrapped in some form of visible banners such as political movements, environmentalists, religious fundamentalists.
Well, I have to agree with that.
Unfortunately, opinions are like shape shifters and take on a body and essence of their own dependent entirely on the knowledge and experience of the individual possessing the opinion.
That's where the problem begins:
We have literally billions of individual minds on the planet today, each one possessing a set of opinions.
These opinions are based on environmental, cultural, ethical, religious, political, and scientific experiences. Individuals with retained memory stored from these experiences generally put forward the most logical hypotheses related to those experiences we are trying to explore and understand.
Where this system breaks down is the socialistic perspective that every individual, by right of passage, is entitled to an opinion regardless of their lack experience required to formulate same.
With the advent of the Internet and the ability to communicate with those of like and similar views we are developing pockets of low-level thinking wrapped in some form of visible banners such as political movements, environmentalists, religious fundamentalists.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)