32 People Want My Screen Door

We finally got our new front door, with sidelights, installed a couple of Friday's ago. The old one had drafty side lights and I had to shrink wrap them in plastic every winter to keep out the cold. Two years ago I replaced the flimsy old storm door with a brand new storm/screen door that brightened up the entranceway while helping to cut down on the drafts.

Each year, we've set about making improvements to our home to make it more energy efficient. The bigger projects are funded with our tax refunds. Part of this year's income tax refund went towards a new fiberglass door with an oak frame and double pane glass on the door and the sidelights. Once the installation was complete I went to re-install the two year old storm door and discovered that it was too big for the new frame by an inch.

I don't know how that happened. I thought that the installation company representative took that into account when he stopped by for measurements. Somehow the ratio between door, framing, and sidelights doesn't match what I had before. So I now had to buy a new storm door and figure out how to dispose of the two year old one.

I don't like throwing stuff away. In Connecticut, it either gets hauled to an out of state landfill (we're full!) to spend millions of years waiting to become raw material for whomever comes after us humans are gone or it gets tossed into an incinerator to generate electricity and ash. I recycle as much as I can. I buy a permit every year to gain access to the town's transfer station so that I can recycle phone books, oil, and scrap metal. At $30/year, it's a bargain.

But I didn't want to dismantle this 2 year old storm door. It's still in great shape. Even recycling it would be a waste. I decided to find someone else who could use it. Goodwill doesn't take house parts. Selling it on eBay would be impractical as shipping it would be a nightmare. The Pennysaver takes two weeks for an ad to start running and I didn't want to wait that long if I could help it. I opted for Freecycle.

A friend of mine told me about Freecycle a couple years ago. It's a mailing list for stuff, anything really, that people are giving away for free. And it has to be free. I've had luck with them in the past for unloading baby stuff that Goodwill won't take (just clothes and toys now). But would someone really be interested in a storm door? I decided to give it a shot.

I got 32 replies in 24 hours.

Some of the replies included information like, "our storm door is 15 years old", "20 years old", "it's warped", "my apartment is drafty", "I need to keep ol' man winter out of my house this year", "I'm trying to save money on my heating bill this winter", and so on.

Storm doors aren't that expensive. Our local Lowe's sells them for $88 to $300, yet there's a large enough percentage of the populace that can't (or won't) spend the money on one. What does this mean? Is the economy so bad here in Western CT that people are actively looking for stuff on the cheap? Does it mean that we, as a society, are turning a corner on our rampant materialism and "used" is as good as new? Does it mean that people are saving their money to pay for home heating oil so there's nothing left for home improvements? I don't have an answer.

I do know that hurricanes Gustav and Ike have caused refineries to shut down in order to shield themselves from storm damage. That's sending gas prices back up. The growth in the Indian and Chinese economies over this decade has driven up the price of metals so much that, not only do I no longer need to pay to recycle scrap metal, but people are stealing metal from all over the country. I've even heard a story about navigation buoys being hit for their bells.

In the end, I gave the door to the first person who replied. I couldn't think of a fair way to weigh who needed the door the most. They were a nice couple, probably in their early 50's, and they were very appreciative of this "gift." He's from the north coast of Spain and talked my ear off (in a good way) about energy politics with a European perspective and his fear of a new Cold War (perhaps a topic for another day).

Afterwards, I felt obligated to write back the other 31 respondents to thank them for their interest. It'll be cold here in about two months. I could only help out one family. I wonder how the others will fare.

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DED

Updates

Pretty self-explanatory

If you like beer and live within driving distance of Waterbury, CT, the third annual Brass City Brewfest is Saturday the 13th. Unfortunately, my attendance looks unlikely this year. :(

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Phoenix found water on Mars, which is huge. It also found perchlorate, which is a bit of a surprise and opens up rocket fuel possibilities in the distant future.

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China pulled off the Olympics without any athletes choking on air pollution. It's amazing what you can do when you shut down every factory, construction site and coal power plant within 20 miles for two weeks. Now, if only they'd keep them shut down.

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This tree is still dead. In fact, I helped my neighbor take it down this weekend. Judging by the ring count, it looks like it lived 55 years. Now it's fuel to keep my house warm this winter.

The concerns I had last Fall about the drought carried through the Winter. We had a snow deficit, again. While the rest of the country got blizzard after blizzard, we got one serious storm and a couple small ones. I think we had a foot of snow for the whole winter. The rest was rain. With the ground still frozen, all that rain did was run off into the drains, rivers and reservoirs. Rivers that normally crest in April did so in February. Then Spring was on the dry side, sending my fears about a wicked hot Summer sky high. But rains opened up in late Spring/early Summer, helping to keep temperatures around average. Yay! 90 degree days were few and far between and we didn't see a single one in August.

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DED

Power To Save The World

Gwyneth Cravens grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Sandia Mountains in the distance. With Sandia National Laboratories close by, she worried that the Soviets were going to bomb her home into oblivion. As she got older, like many Americans, she associated nuclear power with nuclear bombs and thus became anti-nuclear. After relocating to Long Island, she joined protesters in successfully preventing the Shoreham nuclear power plant from ever coming on line. It's now something she regrets.

In the early 90's, while visiting friends and family back in Albuquerque, she met Dr. D. Richard "Rip" Anderson, a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, and his wife at a party. She struck up a conversation with him that would ultimately lead her over the next decade through a tour of the entire nuclear power industry: uranium mines, research labs in Idaho, Three Mile Island, power plants, old weapons test sites, and waste disposal sites. Although she didn't visit Chernobyl, there's a chapter that analyzes what went wrong and why it couldn't happen here. Cravens covers radiation, mining, fuel supply, politics and regulations, costs, risk assessment, waste storage, improvements in reactor design, safety, terrorism, baseline energy demand, and contrasts the nuclear industry with coal. The end result is: "Power To Save The World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy."

This is an amazing book. Cravens, a novelist by trade, is able to make a book about physics and engineering, which could be dull to non-technical readers, a compelling read. We're there as she makes her journey through the nuclear world. Vivid descriptions and colorful anecdotes break up the science lessons and statistical evidence presented to destroy the myths and allay the fears that people (including herself) have regarding nuclear power.

The most illuminating portion of the book for me was the fact that we are awash in radiation from natural sources. The universe, our planet, and everything we eat, exposes us to radiation. Had a banana lately? Anything with potassium in it harbors Potassium-40 atoms, which emits beta radiation. Feeling sick now? You shouldn't. Cravens tears apart the belief that radiation exposure is harmful at all levels as all the evidence shows that low level exposure is harmless and that there is a threshold that must be passed before damage occurs. However, regulations have been established that all radiation is bad, hence the great lengths that power plants and waste repositories must go through to insulate the public. For example, the EPA states that the neighbors of nuclear power plant must not be subjected to more than 15 millirems of radiation. All American nuclear power plants emit 1-2 millirem/year. By contrast, a chest X-ray exposes you to 10 millirem. Dental X-ray 29 millirem. A roundtrip flight from NYC to LA gives you 3 millirem. The granite in Grand Central Station exposes people to 540 millirem (assuming you were there round the clock). People living in Denver are exposed to 700 millirem/year (the higher the altitude, the less atmosphere there is to shield you, not to mention all that granite). Yet there are no cancer clusters among Grand Central workers, dental technicians, airline pilots, flight attendants, or the residents of Denver. By comparison, cigarette smokers who have a one pack per day habit expose themselves to 8,000 millirem/year. Tobacco plants, it seems, have an affinity for radionuclides.

While she defends the science of nuclear power and defends the engineering incorporated into structures, she doesn't brown nose the corporations that own the power plants. She acknowledges that they've miscommunicated, kept things hidden, and made poor strategic decisions. The industry is over regulated. And while that's forced workers to adopt a culture of safety (a good thing she argues) it's over the top. I worked for a chemical company that would've been shut down if it had to report every single little spill that happened. A few milliliters of a non-reactive substance is harmless. So too are the "accidents" at nuclear power plants that you read in the paper or hear about from shrill anti-nuclear groups. But even water leaks that don't come into contact with the reactor are required to be reported. Do you tell your health insurance company every time you blow your nose? In fact, if the chemical, oil, and coal industries had to live up to the standards imposed on the nuclear industry, they wouldn't be able to stay in business due to regulatory expenditures. "Cheap coal" would be an oxymoron.

There's just so much in this book. I could go on and on and on about the material in this book (especially about radiation) but time, space, and my kids prevent me from doing so. I strongly recommend that everyone read this book (it's in paperback now too) to get the facts about nuclear power. Or go to Cravens' website.

At the end of the book, Cravens visits a clinic to determine her level of exposure after ten years of researching her book. After visiting uranium mines, Three Mile Island, a couple nuclear power plants, nuclear research sites, bomb test sites, and waste repositories, her test results came back negative.

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DED

Mercury

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court said Friday the Bush administration ignored the law when it imposed less stringent requirements on power plants to reduce mercury pollution, which scientists fear could cause neurological problems in 60,000 newborns a year.

A three-judge panel unanimous struck down a mercury-control plan imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency three years ago. It established an emissions trading process in which some plants could avoid installing the best mercury control technology available by buying pollution credits.

Environmentalist and health experts argued that such a cap-and-trading mechanism would create “hot spots” of mercury contamination near some power plants. Seventeen states as well as environmental and health groups joined in a suit to block the regulation, saying it did not adequately protect public health.

Full article

This is good news. While a cap-and-trade system might be ok to use to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, mercury is far too nasty to show that sort of leniency towards. While a broken thermometer (100 mg or less) or fluorescent bulb (5 milligrams) isn't much, coal power plants emit this stuff by the ton. 48 tons/year in fact.

That's not to say broken thermometers and fluorescent bulbs should just be tossed in the trash. If it accumulates in any one spot, it has the potential to become a problem. But one doesn't need to call in the EPA to clean it up. There are procedures one should follow.

I used to work for a environmental testing lab and we handled mercury all the time. If a soil or water sample was contaminated with high levels of sulfur (which obscures the signal of the pesticides, herbicides, PCB's and other contaminants we were checking for), we would add mercury to the sample to react with the sulfur. We'd then extract the mercury from the sample and dispose of it in our mercury waste container. The amount of mercury we would need for any particular sample would be on the order of a few drops. If any spilled, we'd pipette it up. The fume hood picked up any vapors.

Remember the saying, "Mad as a hatter"? Mercury was once used to press the felt on hats. Unfortunately, people didn't wear gloves or have adequate ventilation back then so they absorbed the mercury through their skin and inhaled the vapors. Connecticut used to be the hat making capital in the US. Danbury was known as "Hat City." While the nickname continues to this day, the industry is long gone.

But back to coal. Since the US and China are going to continue to burn it for energy, it needs to be cleaned up. Coal gasification technology is already being used to strip out sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. It's about time that the regulations for new coal plants require mercury emissions, among other things, to be eliminated.

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Breathe This!

Yeah, that's a picture of Beijing taken by Tony Law for Wired magazine. We're so quick to condemn our own cities, but this country hasn't looked this bad since the 70's.

"The air isn't always so awful: Sometimes the wind sweeps through, revealing a blue canopy overhead. But on a bad day — come August, say, when temperatures approach 100 degrees — the atmosphere around Beijing becomes a photochemical bouillabaisse of coal smog, steel-mill spume, and tailpipe crud, mingled with concrete dust and baked in the oven formed by the surrounding hills.

Just the place for the summer Olympics."

Read the full article.

China is desperately trying to change its image in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics. They're pulling out all the stops to try and green Beijing in time. And when you've got an autocratic, one party government, there's no debate. The order is given and you'd better get it done. That's not to say there isn't a bit of corruption along the way.

While there wasn't any mention of nukes in this article (I'm surprised after this one), there is mention of cleaning up coal ("They're retrofitting the city's big power plants with scrubbers — standard-issue in the US and Europe since the 1980s but still a novelty in China."), putting a limit on construction ("a ban on excavation at the city's 3,000-plus non-Olympic construction sites — the source of up to one-third of the capital's airborne dust"), and forcing drivers to leave their cars at home ("taking an estimated 800,000 cars and trucks off the road") during the games all in an effort to make sure the skies stay clear during the games.

But Beijing itself isn't the only culprit for its pollution. "70 percent of Beijing's summer particulate pollution originates outside the city." They might have to shut down everything upwind for a couple of weeks to ensure the sky is clear during the games.

"City officials referred vaguely to "hard measures" — reportedly including forced, last-minute vacations not only for factory workers but also for the capital's resident army of civil servants. Whether they can strong-arm upwind provinces — including much of China's industrial heartland — into blowing off a couple weeks' worth of GDP to clear the air over rival Beijing is an open question."

If the world sees images of athletes hacking from respiratory illnesses or sooty skies, it'll be a PR nightmare for China.

Seed magazine did some investigation of their own. They found much of the same thing.

"The litany of environmental challenges that China faces is shocking, even by the enormous proportions of all things Chinese. The International Energy Agency predicts that this year or next China will surpass the United States as the world's No. 1 producer of greenhouse gases. As 14,000 new cars take to the road every day and a new coal-fired plant opens every week, China's CO2 emissions are on course to triple by 2050; the country's newest coal plants alone will cancel out the global emissions reductions sought by the Kyoto Protocol in the next five years. The glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, the source of the three major rivers that supply much of China's water, are shrinking by 7 percent a year, causing droughts and water shortages across the western part of the country. And in cities throughout China, temperatures this winter hit record highs."

Read the full article.

And it's more than the Olympics. China's meteoric rise to economic superpower has come at a price.

"Chinese scientists have predicted that the Yangtze River will die by 2011, and with two-thirds of other rivers polluted, more than 340 million Chinese lack access to clean drinking water. An estimated 400,000 Chinese die of pollution every year. By the government's own estimates released in December 2006, climate change is occurring in China at alarming rates, with temperatures due to increase by 1.3 to 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020. China is unveiling forward-thinking policies and pushing alternative energy because it has no other choice."

Even the normally docile citizenry are reacting.

"In the village of Huaxi, in eastern Zhejiang province, peasants took notice when, following the construction of 13 pesticide and fertilizer plants, babies were born deformed and the river started to run brown. After unsuccessfully petitioning the government, the villagers erected roadblocks in April 2005 to prevent shipments from leaving the plants. When the authorities arrived to remove the roadblocks, the villagers overturned at least a dozen police cars and stripped officers of their uniforms."

How long will it be before urban dwellers react similarly?

"In World Bank assessments, Lanzhou has at several points earned the dubious distinction of most polluted city in the world (15 other Chinese cities join it on the top-20 list)."

But while things are certainly hellish, China is throwing money at the problem. "The Chinese have purchased 35 million solar water heaters, more than the rest of the world combined." But in their haste, they're making mistakes.

"Entire wind farms have been built so quickly that the infrastructure to connect them to the grid wasn't integrated into the plan, and so they sit, huge aeolian props thumping into the constant breeze, powering nothing. In July 2005, turbines from an Inner Mongolian wind farm collapsed, killing six workers. A subsequent investigation revealed that the accident was caused by hasty deadlines and failure to observe construction standards."

When the Olympics are done, what then? Will China revert back to its sooty ways? 70% of its energy is produced by cheap coal, and it takes alot of energy to grow an economy as big and as fast as China. With any luck, the green policies will stick. Sometimes being #1 isn't all that's it cracked up to be.

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DED

What Housing Bubble?

At least that's the question Toll Brothers seem to be asking. Apparently, they're not concerned about this year's developments and the horrible gnashing sound emanating from the banks as the credit crisis deepens. But houses aren't places to live in, they're assets!

If you're unfamiliar with Toll Brothers, they're a luxury home builder. They have a few developments in my state. Townhouses in dense residential areas are the more affordable places they build with prices starting just under $300,000. When they have the room to spread out, homes double in price.

Back in 2002, they decided that my town was ripe for another one of their housing developments. They informed the zoning commission that they intended to build 129 units on the 22 acre site. Not only did the zoning commission reject them, but the Inland Wetlands Commission did too, due to the fact that the site is wetlands. The road that construction trucks and moving vans would have to take to get to the site is awfully narrow. I can't say that for all the times I've driven that road, and I've taken it quite a bit (it's a shortcut to the Danbury airport, the mall, and I-84 west to NY), that I've ever seen a truck on it.

The site lies between two small ridges and water collects in the valley. Except for this year, due to the drought, the area is typically marsh. During years we have above average snow or rain, flooding occurs. No one ever thought that anyone would try to build on it.

Unhappy with my town's decision, Toll Brothers took it to court. And won. The town recently went for a compromise and got Toll Brothers to agree to half the number of units (That's the best link I can provide. The newspaper just redesigned its site so old stuff has been truncated).

It doesn't matter that the "National Association of Home Builders said its housing market index, which tracks builders' perceptions of conditions and expectations for home sales over the next six months, fell two points to 18 in October, the lowest level since the index began in Jan. 1985."

It's not like my town needs more luxury townhouses. I didn't think that it needed any, but a similar development is about halfway completed about a mile and a half away in a non-wetland area on one of the main roads (Route 53) into town. That site was owned by a construction company, for as long as I've lived here, and was an eyesore, though trees hid it from view.

The good news? If Toll Brothers is successful, it'll mean a larger tax base for the town. I don't think that makes up for the bad news though.

While they claim to respect the environment, I have to wonder how Toll Brothers will explain away this latest conquest.

UPDATE: The first graph, here, is very telling.

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DED

Relief

Last week, we finally received some much needed rain. Unfortunately, 2.5 inches of it came in one day. Stamford, a city 20 or so miles southwest of here got twice that amount. Streets flooded, blocking off access to the I-95 on ramps and forcing some drivers to abandon their cars. My wife said that she saw people headed for safety from knee deep water.

Anyhow, it took a large chunk out of our drought. Autumn has slowed down to a more normal pace. After bottoming out at an 11.25 inch deficit (28% of our total), we're now down a mere 8.8 inches (21.6%).

Other parts of the country aren't so lucky, in particular southern California and the Southeast. While Kentucky and Tennessee are forecasted to receive rain this week, Alabama and Georgia may not. Last week, it was announced that the city of Atlanta has only 90 days of water left. Lake Lanier might even run dry, a truly frightening prospect.

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DED

Drought Watch

The normally soggy New England continued its abnormal dryness through September. Well, at least around here. Now I realize that other parts of the country are suffering from worse drought (the South and West come to mind), but that doesn't diminish what we're experiencing here. It just underscores how bad things are on a national level. Residents of Texas and Oklahoma are certainly welcome to take exception, considering the way above normal levels of rain they've had this year.

In my area, we received less than 3/4 of an inch of rain last month. Normally, we get over 4 3/4 inches of rain in September. For the year, we're down over 10 inches of precipitation, which amounts to a 26% shortfall.

One silver lining to all this is that my wife is actually interested in getting rain barrels. She proposed the idea a couple of months ago. It's something that I've always wanted to do but didn't think she'd go for it. I always thought she'd dismiss it out of hand. We're a little bit like "Living With Ed," though neither of us is as "polarized" as the Begley's.

After I wrote about the possibility of an early Fall, we received the forecasted rain. But since then, I've watched storms drive west and north of us. The mere pittance of rain that fell wasn't enough to get past the leaves on the trees and hit the ground. And we've got sunny skies forecast for the next seven days.

How has this played out in my yard? The beds are so dry that I was able to pull a dead azalea out of the ground with my bare hands. Lawn mowing continues to be down (a good thing), though the grass is certainly hurting. I may mow it this week just to mulch up the leaves. Maples, birches, and beeches continue to showcase their colors, with the smaller trees leading the way. The larger ones are still able to tap moisture reserves. The cottonwood and hickory trees are joining this group. Fortunately, the oaks remain resilient.

Surface root plants like moss and weeds are dead or severely wilted. Small scrub is all showing some form of wilt. A fire would easily take hold and wipe out the understory. There's plenty of fuel available.

Over in the evergreens, conifers seem to be doing ok. I think that they're better adapted for dry conditions that the others. While the fir, cedar, and hemlocks are unscathed, the black pines have yellowing needles. It doesn't look widespread so it just might be seasonal shedding.

The Japanese Andromeda are extra thirsty and have shown leaf wilt and some loss. I'm trying to keep up with watering them and the hydrangea.

The rhododendrons and pachysandra aren't looking so good either. During the winter, the colder it gets the more the leaves curl up to prevent water loss. I'm seeing the early signs of that behavior, despite the fact that temperatures are nowhere near freezing.

All of my extra watering is akin to deficit financing. I'm taking the water out of the aquifer now in the hopes that it will be replenished with rain and snow over the next few months. So far, so good. The well seems to be holding up and I won't have to keep watering for long as the plants will be going to sleep soon. I wonder though how many will wake up next Spring.

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DED

Early Fall

We've gone 2 1/2 weeks without rain here in my little corner of Connecticut. Ok, we had a sprinkle Saturday night, but it was just a trace. The local airport said about 1/16th of an inch. That seems a bit on the high side. The rain didn't even penetrate the mesh chairs on my deck let alone the massive trees overshadowing most of my yard.

We're down over 7 inches year-to-date, which is 20% less than what we should have. While those numbers pale in comparison to other parts of the country, it still puts a strain on the vegetation. Fortunately, it hasn't been too hot. Overall, it's been pretty average temperature wise this summer, which is a good thing.

This sweet birch on the side of my yard (bad photo, sorry) took the dry spell rather hard. This species likes moist soils, hence why it lives in the northeastern US. I think that it's about 40 feet tall, so it's a mature tree. About a month ago, it's leaves started changing. They summarily fell, as you can see here. I'm hoping that it's just taking an early nap for the Winter and will be back next Spring. If not, well, I've got more firewood for the following Winter.

An Andromeda, another moist soil plant, that I had nurtured back from near death several years ago has taken a big hit. It has several yellow leaves and most of the green ones were droopy. This is an evergreen so these symptoms are troubling.

But these trees aren't alone. Several varieties of trees in the area, mostly maples and birches, are changing colors. Yellow is becoming a popular color in the arboreal landscape with faded green right there with it. The problem is, it's too soon. These guys shouldn't be starting to change for another couple of weeks yet. Even my massive red maples are turning at their tops.

Since trees transpire through their leaves, this early Fall shouldn't come as a surprise. The trees are just cutting their losses.

And I shouldn't be surprised either. Back in January, I was worried about the lack of snowfall and its implications. Sadly, I seem to be right. While I downplayed any concern about pests becoming more aggressive, that seems to have been a mistake. I read in the paper over the weekend that pine beetles have been having their way with Michigan's forests. Right here at home, my cats are suffering from fleas for the very first time.

But if there's a silver lining to this cloud, it's my decreased use of gasoline. I didn't mow the lawn in July and only twice in August. The shade from the trees has helped keep most of the grass from burning out.

The dry weather also provided favorable conditions for house painting and repairs to the exterior (Great work, Chris!).

Rain is in the forecast for this week. Tomorrow, in fact. It was frustrating Saturday night watching the rain move west, then north, of us. And today, small cells dissipated just before they hit the state line. The ground is so dry that it's become hard. Water runs right off of it. We'll need a steady soaker, not a downpour, to have a positive effect.

My wife told me that the Farmer's Almanac is predicting a snowy winter for the northeast. I hope they're right.

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DED

Ignorance Is Still Bliss

Got the following email today as I'm still on ADM's mailing list. I just had to share it. All emphasis is mine.

National Survey Reveals More than 70% of Americans Don't Know Plastic is Made from Oil -- 40% believe plastic will biodegrade at some point

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Apr 20, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- According to a nationwide online survey released today, 72 percent of the American public does not know that conventional plastic is made from petroleum products, primarily oil. The survey was conducted by national online market research firm InsightExpress for Telles(TM), a joint venture of Metabolix, Inc. (NASDAQ: MBLX), a company using bioscience to provide clean solutions for plastics, fuels and chemicals, and Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM), one of the world's largest agricultural processors and the world leader in BioEnergy.

Plastics are everywhere and most Americans have come to rely on plastics in all aspects of their lives. However, very few people realize that plastics are made from oil, further contributing to the problems of energy dependence, greenhouse gas emissions and depleting resources. In fact, nearly 10 percent of U.S. oil consumption - approximately 2 million barrels a day - is used to make plastic. The survey also revealed a misunderstanding about another important characteristic of traditional plastic - it never goes away. Despite the fact that petroleum-based plastic will never biodegrade, 40 percent of respondents believe that it will biodegrade underground, in home compost, in landfills, or in the ocean. Plastics will not biodegrade in any of these environments. In fact, the only way to rid the planet of existing plastic is by incineration in those cases where it can be recovered.

"Everyone knows about our country's unhealthy reliance on oil and the impact that petroleum use has on climate change," said Jim Barber, President and CEO, Metabolix, which has developed a brand of fully biodegradable Natural Plastics. "Similarly, people see a lot of plastic waste in the form of litter. But the fact that so many people are unaware that plastic is made from oil and that it will persist in the environment for thousands of years, shows the need for education about the impact of plastic on the environment and the various alternatives made from renewable resources."

Americans also have a much more optimistic view of the country's recycling efforts than is supported by the facts. On average, those surveyed believe nearly 40 percent (38.2%) of plastic is recycled, when in fact that figure is less than six percent (5.7%) nationally, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. There is hope, however. When informed that plastic is made from oil and that it never biodegrades, half of Americans indicated they would be willing to pay a premium for natural, biodegradable plastic. Mr. Barber concluded, "The more Americans understand the environmental impact of using conventional plastics, the more they will look for and demand new solutions for meeting their needs for these essential materials. "Snapshot of Survey Results:

-- 72% of respondents do not know that plastic is made out of oil/petroleum-- On average, respondents estimated 38% of plastic is recycled (the reality is less than 6%, according to the EPA)

-- Nearly 40% (38.1%) of respondents said plastic will biodegrade underground, in home compost, in landfills, or in the ocean (plastic will not biodegrade in any of these environments).

-- After learning that plastic is made from oil and never biodegrades, half (50.1%) of respondents stated they would be likely or very likely to pay 5-10% more for a natural, biodegradable plastic. Only 24% were unlikely/very unlikely to pay this much more.

-- 62% of respondents rate their own level of environmental knowledge as fair or poor,with only 5.6% rating it as excellent.

About the Survey
The survey was conducted online between the dates of April 5 and April 10, by InsightExpress,a leading national online market research firm. Survey participants were recruited online via InsightExpress' patented sampling methodology. A representative sample of 501 respondents completed the survey, reflecting a +/-4.89% margin of error at a 95% confidence level.

If you want to know more about the companies, I can either post the rest or forward it to you.

One thing that wasn't discussed was photodegradation. That's where plastics degrade when exposed to light. Unfortunately, it's extremely limited. Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE, aka #4 in the recycle triangle) is the most susceptible to this method, but it's still very slow.

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DED

Ethanol Optimism

You may have heard the news today about the Supreme Court ruling that the EPA and the federal do have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as per the Clean Air Act. The auto industry spun their reaction as something positive but insisted that they not be the sole bearer of the CO₂ clean up burden.

How far will it go? While my rant may make it seem like I'm not on board for improving the environment and getting carbon emissions reduced, as the logic I tried to convey will likely be lost, nothing could be further from the truth. It's the federal government's ability to do anything right this decade that has me colored skeptical. Carbon dioxide is essential to life on Earth, but too much of it, and other naturally occurring greenhouse gases, and the planet cooks. It helps to keep the planet warm from the cold of space. But it's also why Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being about twice as far from the sun.

Hopefully any legislation that comes out of this will be specific about which sources of carbon dioxide will be regulated. I'm not optimistic. Creating a category for "greenhouse gases" separate from "pollutants" would be a nice start. You might think that it's semantics, but "the devil's in the details." Leave room for loopholes and the lawyers for the big offenders will exploit them.

The automobile industry "urge(s) consumers to consider buying one of our many fuel-efficient technologies on sale now, because these autos can reduce gasoline use and thereby reduce carbon dioxide." What they're really saying is, "prove to us you want cleaner cars, then we'll make more." While Toyota and Honda have eagerly gambled on this approach, GM has taken the easy route. Ford waffled at first, but they seem to be opting for GM's route.

In case you didn't already know, ethanol is the easy route. Very little needs to be done for the auto industry to produce flex-fuel cars and trucks that will run on ethanol. In fact, they claim that millions of vehicles on the road already are capable of handling ethanol. As I wrote before, I'm not advocating ethanol for various reasons. But there are people who are wildly optimistic about its potential.

Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, formed Khosla Ventures to invest in environmentally friendly technologies. He wrote an article for Wired magazine explaining why he's so bullish on ethanol. It's definitely worth reading as he tackles most of the arguments against ethanol in detail. He lays out a somewhat rosy picture for ethanol's future and I hope that he's right. My lack of faith in ethanol's viability doesn't mean I wish failure on those who pursue it.

Khosla firmly believes that the technological problems ethanol faces can be overcome. He even advocates genetic engineering to increase crop yields. I can't help but wonder how that will play out in the Greenpeace crowd.

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Waiting For Winter

Here in Connecticut, we just had our warmest December on record. Not only that, we didn't have any snow. Today, it's raining and the temperature is 56°. Tomorrow, we're headed into the 60's. The average high for this time of year is 36°. The jet stream has been stuck in place for several weeks now. So while we're getting Spring-like temperatures, the Rockies are getting dumped on with snow.

I realize that most people prefer the warm weather, but I don't. I like winter. I don't ski, but I do sled. But it isn't about that. I just like the cold. I like looking out my window and seeing a foot of snow. I like the adversity of Man vs. the Elements that comes to play. Maybe I just like the change of seasons. It seems like we've been in a holding pattern for late Fall since... late Fall. A seasonal Limbo.

There are, of course, pros and cons to all of this nice weather. My electric bill for November 6th through December 11th was better than expected. We averaged 16 less kWh per day than the same time period the previous year. The average temperature, according to CL&P was 7° warmer this year though. I should expect a similar bill next week or so. But at 15.278 cents/kWh, the highest rate in the continental US and twice the national average, I cringe whenever I get the bill. Electric heat. Electric water heater. You get the idea. And the rates are going up even more. Not only can I expect another 7.7% increase (though total bill or just power generation, I don't know), but FERC is hitting us (the whole country, I think) with another surcharge. The attorney generals from Massachusettes and Connecticut are fighting it as it will cost us $500 million and $200 million per year, respectively. If the money were being used for something useful, like improving energy efficiency or promoting alternative energy, I could stomach it. But CT AG Blumenthal says that the money will go to existing power generators without requiring them to build new plants or produce more electricity.

Another good thing is that I'm not burning nearly as much wood as I normally would by now. At this current rate, I'm certain that I'll have enough to get through the winter.

The lower electric bills make it easier to save up money for energy saving home improvements and brings the day when I can generate my own power that much closer. I figure that solar panels and wind turbines will be that much more affordable, more efficient, and easier to install when that day comes. For example, Southwest Windpower is now selling a wind turbine for only $10,000. It has an estimated energy production of 400 kWh per month assuming an average wind speed of 12 mph. Even with CT's electric rates, you'd be looking at over a decade for a ROI. But it would definitely offer some peace of mind that your carbon footprint was tremendously decreased, not to mention that no "geopolitical entanglements" were required either.

So what are some of the cons to this warm spell? Drought and Parasites. The cold weather kills off the harmful insects (gypsy moths and pine beetles) and parasites that attack people, animals, and plants, forcing them to re-start their populations over from scratch each year. Ticks, fleas, and adelgids are just a few of the many parasites susceptible to cold.

When I lived in Florida during the early 80's, the fleas there were brutal. If you had a pet that went outdoors, it was guaranteed to get fleas. None of the flea collars on the market worked at all. Flea baths would help for a while. Once the fleas got in your house, they went after people. Even if you caught them, and managed to crush its tough exoskeleton, there were thousands more elsewhere. From time to time, people would have to have exterminators bomb their homes. I remember having to leave the house for a couple hours while the pesticide did its job. One friend even volunteered for an experimental pesticide, which required her house to be registered with the state's EPA branch.

Another southern pest is the fire ant. Anyone who's accidentally walked onto a nest of fire ants can tell you how painful their bites are. Having your feet and legs covered with a swarm of warriors is excruciating. On the occasion when I'd get attacked, I'd run and dive into our pool with all my clothes on to rid myself of them and numb the pain. And they're as brutal to other animals as they are to people.

I'm not suggesting that fire ants and aggressive fleas are going to be in the Northeast this summer because of our mild winter. However, these guys will certainly be able to increase their range thanks to the warm weather that the entire eastern seaboard has enjoyed this year. But native pests like the adelgid are already here. I shudder to think what would happen if they didn't die off each year.

And what of the hibernators? If it's too warm to hibernate, and all the plants are asleep, what are these guys going to eat? My cats are still chasing tree squirrels this late into the season when both should be keeping warm, the former nestled in some burrow (not hibernating though) with its kin while the latter by a warm fire.

As for the increased potential for drought, you first have to understand what the snow pack does. A melting snow pack slowly releases its water into Spring, keeping the ground moist for plants for an extended period of time. Typically, it's long enough, when coupled with Spring rains, for the trees to unfurl their leaves and thus shade the ground, and their roots, from the hot sun. It's even more important on farms where there are no trees to provide shade. A snow drought doesn't guarantee problems, but it puts stress on the system. You couple that with a thriving parasite population and then you've really got trouble.

Now, one might say that it's ok, the system will bounce back. Yes, a year here or there of climatic stress and the ecosystem bounces back. Plant and animal life adapts or dies off, and something else moves in to inhabit its niche. Dutch elm disease and Chestnut blight have wreaked irrevocable damage. There's a street in town named Chestnut Ridge but good luck finding one. There's a chestnut tree in my yard that's still trying to survive. It typically shoots up a trunk an inch or so in diameter until it reaches 6 or 7 feet and then dies, only to repeat the process again.

Over time, oaks, maple, ash, beech and birch have filled in the gaps left by the Chestnut tree holocaust (I don't know how else to describe it. Megadeath perhaps? They're not extinct but may as well be.) But what if too many species of trees die off before others can fill in the gaps? 50 foot trees don't sprout up overnight.

It's one thing to deal with one opportunistic parasite when the seasons are normal or one year of drought (snow or rain), but what happens when both converge as a regular occurrence? What a terribly bleak landscape that would be.

I'll leave you with an example from my own experience. Another natural facet to my life in Florida was the abundance of Norfolk Island Pines. I lived on the east coast, where the sandy soil was a perfect home for them. They defined the landscape, towering above everything. They were at least twice as tall as the town water tower and as tall as the condos on the shoreline. They defined neighborhoods and each cluster of trees had a unique shape to them. They were the landmarks I navigated by. When the ocean breeze buffeted them, it made the most beautiful sound. And when you drove over the intercoastal bridge from the mainland, it was like looking at a mountain range.

On one visit to my parents in the mid-90's, I was dismayed to find that ALL of the giant trees were dead from a severe cold snap years before (They're native to the South Pacific, not Florida. They weren't able to deal with the extreme cold, though the palm trees did ok). The place felt alien without them. The skyline was all wrong. I had difficulty navigating my way around. I felt lost without them. I would be surprised when I found myself in places. "Oh, we're here already?" or "I was supposed to turn there." No matter how many times I went back to visit, it never felt like the place I used to call home.

The sense of loss, for me, was like the death of an old friend from your childhood. Having actually experienced that emotion before, I don't make that comparison lightly. And I'd rather not have to relive those feelings, here and now.

So let's have a snowy Winter already, ok?

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UPDATE (Sunday 1/7): Just read an article in today's paper about how the mild winter hasn't killed off the milfoil infestation in Candlewood Lake. Some background: Candlewood Lake is CT's largest lake. It's also man made. It's infested with watermilfoil, an invasive weed which chokes the waterways. It's a scourge to boaters. Anyway, each winter when the lake is drained to generate electricity, the milfoil and eelgrass are exposed to the bitter cold air and die off. They bounce back over the summer and the process is repeated. Not this year. Whether or not this is a good thing (boaters unable to use the lake) is subject to debate. Economically it's bad. Environmentally it's good (afaik).

Neo-Greens

Now that the elections are over and the robocalls have finally stopped and my mailbox is no longer full of glossy ads shilling for candidates (and shameless negative ones equating voting for particular candidates with the end of the world), I can move on with my life. Well, hopefully.

One of my life long goals is to be as green as I can, without resorting to living in cave eating nuts and berries. My wildly optimistic dreams of utilizing my chemical engineering degree to apply technology to industry to make it greener was ahead of its time, and thus dashed against the rocks of Reality. But now I see that, the rest of the world, and even some Americans, is doing just that. Actually they've been doing it for several years now. Maybe there will be a spot for me when the kids are in school and I have to go back to work full time.

In the May issue of Wired, there were a couple articles about neo-greens. What the hell are neo greens? Well, consider the old greenies to be the hippies of yore: preachers of doom and gloom and wearers of hemp clothes who offered no solutions to environmental problems except consumer abstinence and commune shacks. Not very appealing. The neo-greens (yeah, labels suck but they're a fact of our culture) look for market driven solutions. They'll use technology to make their machines cleaner, hold off on the pesticides to make their food healthier, recycle everything and reuse it to make clothing and furniture. Sustainable agriculture, forestry, and fishing are replacing brute force and "slash and burn" and driftnetting. Organizations like the Nature Conservancy strive to build proverbial bridges between preserving ecosystems and utilizing their resources for local populations, whether they be in the Amazon or Iowa.

Al Gore (Give him a break already will ya!), besides promoting his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, heads an investment fund based on the principles of sustainability. With David Blood, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, on board, he's serious about making this work.

Brian Schweitzer, Governor of Montana, wants to put the state's vast coal reserves into use to lessen our dependency on foreign oil. Now before you get your knickers in a bunch, FuelCell Inc. of Danbury just announced a contract with the government to utilize coal in fuel cells. The process boasts an efficiency of 50% (as opposed to 35% of current coal burning tech) and would capture 90% of carbon emissions. For the record, your car doesn't capture any carbon. Schweitzer also wants to add farm subsidies to alt-energy crops like soybean, safflower, camelina, and canola for biodiesel fuel.

And Douglas Durst, co-president of the Durst Organination, is building environmentally friendly skyscrapers in Manhattan. The new Bank of America Tower at Bryant Park is the current example. Making use of recycled materials, insulated glass, fresh air (as opposed to the recycled air most office buildings use and thus make people sick), rain and treated waste water (on-site), smart lights and LED's, and a thermal storage system, these new skyscrapers will advance green building technologies in our cities with hopes of it trickling down to big box stores in suburbia.

It's all so downright sunny that I can forget Bush is in the White House for awhile.

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Suffocation

Would politicians pay more attention to the environment if there were dead zones in our atmosphere that snuffed out whole cities, congressional districts, counties, or chunks of their base?

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Hot Enough For Ya?

It's a mere 93 degrees in the shade on my back porch at 12:30 EST. That's nothing compared to South Dakota a couple of days ago, which hit 117, the highest temperature ever recorded in the state. Sub-zero in the winter. Phoenix like heat in the summer. What a swell place.

Last night, the Discovery Channel showed "Global Warming - What You Need To Know." If you didn't catch it, record it, or Tivo it, then do so. Tom Brokaw narrated it. I don't know how it compares to Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" as I haven't seen that one yet. But I imagine they cover the same territory.

Anyway, I thought that Brokaw's version was really well done. They covered alot of the evidence and showed much of the impact that it's already having. And I appreciated the fact that they didn't make carbon dioxide out to be a pollutant. They rationally explained the carbon cycle and how we're contributing to it.

There's a statistic that often goes misunderstood, but was brought up in the documentary. When people hear that the global average temperature has gone up 1 degree, they say, "big deal!" But it is a big deal. What often goes unsaid is that during the last ice age, the average global temperature was only 11 degrees cooler (though in this documentary I believe they stated 9 degrees). So, put it in perspective. If we're only above an ice age by 10 degrees or so, then what will be the impact of 1 or 2 degree temperature increases in the global average bring?

And the other major point is that the rate at which CO₂ is being pumped into the atmosphere is increasing. I didn't mind that the US didn't sign the Kyoto Protocols. I didn't buy into the whole whining bit about "Oh it's gonna hurt our economy... waaaaa" crap. We're pissing tens of billions of dollars into Iraq each year and the economy has been doing just fine (at least if you ask a gov't spokesman). It's the fact that developing nations like India and China were exempt. Anyone who follows the global economy can tell you that these two countries have been growing like gangbusters over the last few years. To maintain that growth, they've needed to expend alot of energy. In China's case, that means burning lots of coal. China is already the #4 economy in the world and I believe that it may be, or soon will be, the #2 contributor to carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Therefore, why should they be exempt?

I don't trust the US government to help much. There's too much money and resources being expended in the neverending war on terrorists, would be terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, and political opponents. Here's a case where capitalism might be a better hope. If there's money to be made in something, businesses will follow. Don't believe me? Just have a look at the organic food industry. What started out as just a bunch of hippies has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry. Even the big supermarket chains have organic food sections. The same needs to happen for other industries, especially automobiles, construction, and power generation. We need to change a little today or sacrifice alot tomorrow.

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Stop Breathing! You're Destroying the Planet!

Ever wonder what the difference is between a rational and irrational environmentalist? Well, here's an example. A rational environmentalist would just call this silly. Trying to declare Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant is inane. CO₂ is a naturally occuring compound. It's the by product of Life! Anyone who wasn't brain dead in school would know that we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. If the government is forced to treat CO₂ as a pollutant, then every living thing on this planet becomes a polluter! Even plants switch over at night.

And what about volcanoes? Although infrequent, they certainly spew out tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases when they erupt.

Will it mean that people can't have camp fires? What about barbecues? Will I still be able to use my wood stove to heat my home?

If this goes through, there will be the usual outcry of, "Judges are trying to legislate from the bench!" Of course I don't see that as being any different than the President making them up as he goes along.

But more importantly, if this goes through, we'll be allowing an inept bureaucracy to regulate something else. Maybe there will be an exemption for living things, but maybe there won't. I don't know how much carbon dioxide a person exhales over the course of a year, but given the propensity of government to screw things up, I can see someone arguing in court that obese people generate more carbon dioxide than people within acceptable weight limits. Granted, cutting down on obesity is a good thing, but having the government enforce it flies in the face of Freedom.

As absurd as all this sounds, it really isn't far fetched. "Common sense" has been legislated all over the country. We've got smoking bans, DUI laws, and recreational drugs are illegal. All those things are obviously harmful to individuals and even the people around them, but we also need permits to go fishing. Where's the harm in that? Oh, too many people are taking away too many fish. Yeah right, someone needs to tell that to the drift netters.

You want pollutants? How about polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's), dioxins, pesticides, and volatile organic compounds (VOC's). You can even throw sulfur compounds in there too, even though they occur in nature, since they do more harm than good. You run the risk of cancer, renal failure, or asphyxiation, depending on which pollutant you're dealing with. Now those are pollutants.

I realize that reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a good thing, and that it's imperative we get a handle on it sooner rather than later, but getting carbon dioxide labelled as a pollutant isn't the way to go. You might piss off the trees. But seriously, this administration is hopeless. If you want the government to act responsibly towards the environment, vote for an environmentally friendly congressional candidate no matter what party they're in, though make sure they've got a record to back it up. And check your own CO₂ output. No one likes a hypocrite.

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