Fragments From Floyd

Ann asked when she got home from work how Earth Day went, and I honestly couldn’t say. I told her I felt removed from the event the way I feel after hosting one of our rare big parties at the house, in which case when it’s all over:

Yes, I saw all the cars parked along the road, so we must have had a good crowd. Yes, I said a few words to all of our guests but not many to any; I sampled a few of the covered dishes and saw but never had time for a taste of my favorite Pecan Pie somebody put on the table though I heard it was wonderful. And I saw people meeting new friends and finding common ground and apparently enjoying themselves and most said as much as they left. And afterwards, I was totally exhausted from the stepping and fetching and general “upness” required during the several intense hours of the event after days of planning. But I was not immersed in but rather hovering outside of the time, an overseer, not a participant.

And at the end of the day yesterday, I felt like the “good steward of a few things” of the Biblical parable. How many times over the years I’ve approached a responsibility with the full force of my energies and planned as if it would be presented to an auditorium full of interested people only to have the three or four politely bored elderly ladies who came nod off during my carefully crafted discourse. No so many came yesterday as I’d hoped (something like 85) but about as many as I expected. But those who came seem to have thought it worthwhile. I couldn’t say, too involved in tending the trees to see the forest.

Will yesterday’s event be only the first of similar environmental-focus gatherings in the future? Could be. And I think that those who came yesterday will be more inclined to come back to future events and bring a friend. And those involved in planning will know some things learned yesterday. Most things went right, only a few details fell through the cracks. It was a Floyd-scale success by almost all measures, for sure, though “the choir” composed a good bit of the audience. How do you bring in those people who aren’t already convinced of the worthiness of the topic you will present?

Meanwhile, a varied slate of events for Earth Day are scheduled at nearby Virginia Tech. Of note, there were few young people in the audience in Floyd yesterday, and this is one deficiency that could perhaps be addressed in future efforts.

Did you ever have a wonderful-terrible moment of catastrophic comprehension when your vision suddenly broke through the thin surface film we call waking consciousness to deeper, truer levels of REAL-ity than you saw just seconds before? I had such a moment when I first read about the coming of the World Wide Telescope–the same kind of weep-for-joy wonder I experienced when I zoomed home in Google Earth for the first time. My God, our tiny personal here and now makes us ignorant of so much Other stuff.

I pretty much knew better than to try to share such an experience only to be set up as a maudlin, geeky old coot. So my honest and unconfessed gut reaction to the World Wide Telescope is validated to find this morning Robert Scoble’s reaction to the WWT– He cried. Good on you, Mr. Scoble, I understand. Here’s how he explains it:

So, why cry over a telescope?

Because I just saw the world I live in, er, excuse me, the universe I live in in a new way that I never had imagined before.

I cried because I imagined all the kids, like my sons, who will be inspired by what they see. It took me back to the days when John Kennedy wanted us to go to the moon. Hint: there’s a lot more out there to explore.

I cried because I realized just how much work, money, and all that went into making these images. I never had access to them before. Certainly not in this way so I could compare them by clicking a button. As a taxpayer who’s helped pay for some of these telescopes it’s the first time I’ve seen the results of my and your, investments in our scientific research.

It’s human to look out at the sky and wonder what’s going on out there. This takes us a LOT further into our understanding of just what is.

And,, yes, that’s worth crying some inspirational tears. Thank you to Microsoft Research for inspiring me in a way that Microsoft hasn’t inspired me in years.

And, also, sorry to the teams that I caused some PR troubles for. I hope you’ll forgive me for getting a little excited. I couldn’t contain myself. It isn’t everyday that you get to see such an inspiring piece of software.

Some politicians seem to feel we really don’t need bother with the messy unpredictable and unprofitable world of rank and file and mostly nameless creatures that unfortunately for them do not vote or contribute to campaigns or to the tax infrastructure or to the patriotic consumption of goods and services.

Might be wise to take a second look, politicos and myopic number-crunchers because the (insert the name of any unsung and obscure living species here) that you think worthless today could save your life, our lives tomorrow.

While I’m not suggesting that nature’s creatures only have a value if they can be exploited for OUR good (as some seem to have it), nevertheless, as we destroy coral reefs and rain forests, opportunities like these two examples might be lost for good. Just me thinking out loud–which is after all the nature of the blog from Goose Creek.

Alligator immunity may be the key to help us cope with the “superbugs” that are no match for antibiotics anymore.

Clams work for free to filter bird flu viruses.

We didn’t know we might need the services of the Univoltine Root Mining Weevil, but such is the case. Suppose, then, it is a good thing our pervasive pesticides have missed this little guy. link

While he looks formidable, he’s only the size of the letter “o” in 12 point font, they say. But we may be talking about large numbers of them needed to do their job: ridding the place of a European invader you may not even have noticed. Or smelled.

Garlic Mustard–botanically closer to the latter, a member of the “Cruciferae” to us elder botanists and a good name. It’s flowers, as exemplified by this example, often form a CROSS with their four equal petals. The heart shaped leaves are distinctively shaped, but if you are in doubt, pluck, crush and sniff. There will be no doubt you’ve discovered the “garlic” part of the name.

Alliaria petiolata–what a pretty name. And not a shabby looking thing either, except for the fact that, especially in “disturbed areas or forests with high deer populations.” it is spreading like crazy, outcompeting native flowering plants for sunlight in forested clearings and along roadsides in Floyd County–and from as far south as Georgia and north to Alaska.

ECOLOGICAL THREAT

Garlic mustard poses a severe threat to native plants and animals in forest communities in much of the eastern and midwestern U.S. Many native widlflowers that complete their life cycles in the springtime (e.g., spring beauty, wild ginger, bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches, hepatica, toothworts, and trilliums) occur in the same habitat as garlic mustard. Once introduced to an area, garlic mustard outcompetes native plants by aggressively monopolizing light, moisture, nutrients, soil and space. Wildlife species that depend on these early plants for their foliage, pollen, nectar, fruits, seeds and roots, are deprived of these essential food sources when garlic mustard replaces them. Humans are also deprived of the vibrant display of beautiful spring wildflowers.

Garlic mustard also poses a threat to one of our rare native insects, the West Virginia white butterfly (Pieris virginiensis). Several species of spring wildflowers known as “toothworts” (Dentaria), also in the mustard family, are the primary food source for the caterpillar stage of this butterfly. Invasions of garlic mustard are causing local extirpations of the toothworts, and chemicals in garlic mustard appear to be toxic to the eggs of the butterfly, as evidenced by their failure to hatch when laid on garlic mustard plants.  link

So the biocontrol folks at USDA seem to be thinking this little weevil won’t mistake our target mustard for a close relative–like cabbage or broccoli in your garden. How these little beetles might be distributed is something I’ll investigate. I’ll get back to you when I know more.

Meanwhile: many parts are edible. If you can’t like’em, eat’em.

Power: to the people. Power–electrical power. It comes at too high a cost when you factor human and forest community destruction of MTR–mountain removal mining–in the debit column. Coal companies mostly haven’t.

But because of the democratizing technologies now in wider use, average citizens have the power to learn, to understand and to have their voices heard, to tell the true cost of MR coal in terms of human health, fragmented communities and buried mountain streams. And it is making a difference. Consider this one major effort by ilovemountains.org to use Google Earth to experience what otherwise might be simply one more abstract catastrophe:

While the site first launched in September 2006, its most recent upgrade this November, which connects coal-burning utilities to residential zip codes, has succeeded in motivating thousands of citizens to write letters. “The reality now is that a lot of people have been calling, and it’s sort of a non-stop rush to keep up,” says Matt Wasson, conservation director of Appalachian Voices, the non-profit overseeing the site.

Google Earth agreed to partner with I Love Mountains and included the site’s National Memorial for the Mountains, the project’s first phase, as part of the Google Earth map software. The Memorial appears on a map of the eastern states as a field of 450 American flags spanning the Appalachian Mountains, each commemorating a ‘decapitated’ mountain. Zoom in close to a single mountain and there’s a step-by-step explanation of how machinery literally scrapes away peaks, and aerial photos of a site the size of Manhattan.

People power. Individual voices have come together–more than 43,000 of them–to say that mountaintop removal mining as it is practiced cannot go on. Yes we need power, but the bigger-hammer approach favored by Mr. Bush and by almost half of those in his party must end. The battle has only just begun.

“The public has clearly spoken: Mountaintop removal is a national disgrace and Bush should not change another rule in order to help Big Coal blow up more mountains and bury more streams,” said Chuck Nelson, a former deep miner and volunteer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the West Virginia citizens’ group at http://www.ohvec.org .

The strong opposition to OSM’s proposed SBZ rule is consistent with the findings of a September 2007 survey sponsored by 700Mountains.org project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (CSI) think tank. That survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation that two out of three Americans (65 percent) oppose the Bush Administration’s proposed rule “to ease environmental regulations to permit wider use of ‘mountaintop removal’ coal mining in the U.S.” The survey also found that the Bush Administration plan to permit wider MTR coal mining is favored by only about one out of four Americans (26 percent), including just 14 percent of Democrats, 27 percent of Independents, and 42 percent of Republicans. Full survey findings are available online at http://www.700Mountains.org.

Okay geeks and geekettes, here’s your chance to use your computer hack-trickery and knowledge to good purpose. I need your suggestions.

Needs: a common place for a half dozen committee folks to submit relavant web links with comments; post ideas about the logistics, timing, space allocation, and responsibilities for an April 19 Earth Day Event; set up a calendar; and maintain a running conversation in an easily accessible web location, some not being familiar with wikis and such.

What is the quickest, easiest and best suited Web 2 collaborative location to do what we need to do so all can participate without a steep learning curve?

I’ve seen so many such sites in the past six months and not needed this sort of thing. Now I need this sort of thing, and I’m asking you to share from your experience–as many of you work regularly with groups like this. Here on Goose Creek, not so much.

I started working this direction on a WetPaint wiki site here. Maybe this is as good as any. Whaddaya think?

One good resource already found: maps of Virginia’s watersheds. Yes, there are other kinds of geeks than computer geeks.

On the Parkway along Rocky Knob there are times the wind is strong enough to rock my car. I stop at the Saddle Gap overlook and grumble at the very air, barely able to open the door against the gale. But maybe I should think differently of this invisible force of high and open places.

It’s not hard to imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when oil will be five, six dollars or more per gallon and America will have started to acknowledge that we can’t do what we’ve always done for electricity. And then, the wind may become more blessing than curse.

But the prospect of stark silhouettes of a dozen 400 foot tall GE 1.5MW towers on Appalachian ridges and the sound of their whirling 250 foot rotors gives me a chill. No one want such unnatural mammoth machinery in their back yard. But think about it: we go nuts without electricity for two or three days during an ice storm.

That should be lesson enough to let us know how dependent we are on the buttons and switches that keep the lights, TVs and computers on. The costs of coal (including environmental) are nearing a point at which we’ll be motivated by necessity to find an alternative for electricity production. Wind will be on the short list of choices, but the choices there will multiply.

As windy as it seems here some days, we don’t have adequate average wind speeds in Floyd County to justify construction of large-scale wind farms (though smaller applications are possible and reasonable. Did you know that there’s a small wind generator behind the Jacksonville Center in Floyd?) On the other hand, it has been said that “there is enough harnessable wind energy in just 3 of the 50 states-North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas-to satisfy the country’s electricity needs.”

For me, the idea of exploiting the inevitable winds, an indirect consequence of the planet’s warming, has a certain elemental beauty to it. And the practical use of wind power doesn’t necessarily require construction of massive towers along coasts or on mountain ridges. Someday soon, there may be more acceptable, smaller-scale ways of using the power in the winds that buffet us in our walk between the house and mailbox

One of the most promising new wind-energy ideas I’ve seen was created by a young man, Shawn Frayne, who recently won the Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award with his WindBelt. This device consists of a “taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils.

Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps” in remote places and third-world countries.

A road-related wind application that is in prototype would put horizontal rotors in the median barriers that separate highway lanes or in the “goal posts” over the roadway that hold signs just above the tops of the tallest trucks. Have you every stood on the side of an interstate while changing a tire? The artificial winds created by speeding vehicles are remarkably strong!  Maybe that turbulence that shoves our little cars aside when a truck passes at 80 could be put to a better use.

But promising future wind energy projects like these falter in a boom-or-bust cycle created by political on-again off-again Production Tax Credit legislation. Thankfully, upon recent opportunities for renewal, this credit for startups has been sustained through 2008.

Consider one contender:  the Mageen Air Rotor System. This is a helium-filled inflatable tethered on a 1000+ foot cable. It is less efficient than the huge mountaintop turbines, but more economical to build and place. Other similar inventions might thrive with federal and state support.

Here’s another thought: with cheap and decentralized production of electricity (should that happen), rather than using natural gas as a source of hydrogen for auto and truck fuel or fertilizer, it could be extracted by electrolysis from water. The hydrogen economy, were it to become feasible, would significantly reduce greenhouse gases and our dependence on foreign suppliers of petroleum.

Maybe it’s quixotic to think we can avoid jousting with large ridge top, open-plains and offshore windmills for a time before more efficient alternatives are encouraged to replace them. And in the end, wind will likely turn out to be just one of several concurrent alternatives that let future generations harness earth’s replenishable energy, use it wisely and cleanly, and still leave the place unspoiled for those who come after.

By the way, wind energy is an active issue just up the road in Highlands County, VA. And this is a good general resource on wind.

Floyd Press / Road Less Traveled for Jan 17, 2007

I am so lost in the rabbit trails. Some, from interest; some from need; some from sheer distraction. One leads off into another; they all seem to carry me someplace worth going. A few do. I wish I knew the difference at the beginning.

Here’s one: it connects the trail of “balonium“–an imaginary mineral I made up a few months back in a sensationalized story about mountaintop removal in Floyd County–and the “Story of Stuff.” Don’t know where it will lead but here are some threads of it.

1) We are blind to the externalized costs of the things we seem to get cheaply. The Story of Stuff uses this quote to describe externalized costs: “If some portion of the cost of producing a product are borne by third parties who in no way participate in or benefit from the transaction, then economists say the costs have been externalized and the price of the product is distorted accordingly. Another way of putting it is that every externalized cost involves privatizing a gain and socializing its associated costs onto the community.”

2) There really is an element essential for cell phones and laptop chips. It’s ore is called coltan. Eighty percent of it comes from the Congo.

3) Talk about your invisible externalized costs (in child labor, dead gorillas and vanishing ecosystem plus more than 4 million dead in Congo’s Coltan wars: Watch this. Read this.

4) And where and how (if anywhere and anyhow) to use this information as more than mere fact? Can it teach me anything? Then, can I in turn teach others?

Okay, I’m seeing why I might want to go back and reconsider Twitter. I can envision several populations of “friends” I might want to become or stay connected to:

• A group of people who share my environmental/sustainability interests.
• A group of folks who will find my next book topic of interest (the nature gap for adults and especially children) and be able to offer suggestions and links and maybe some early edits or previews.
• My graphic design collaborator(s) for Book Two
• Blog Readers to FFF who could find “tweets” on the blog as updates rather than entire posts.

I have a few resources (EduBLogs, EduCause pdf) I’m looking at as Twitter Primers. I’m open for being educated here. And if you know of groups to join or Firefox Plugins related to Twitter, please let me know.

Old dog struggling hopefully to learn new tricks.

 .. a new front is opening in the campaign against children’s indolence. Experts are speculating, without empirical evidence, that a variety of cultural pressures have pushed children too far from the natural world. The disconnection bodes ill, they say, both for children and for nature.

Read more of this NY Times piece where Richard Louv elaborates on the costs of “environmental ennui” that flows out of our children’s “fixation on artificial entertainment rather than natural wonders.”