Timberati’s Weekend Postcards: USA Road Trip, Left Coast to East Coast

This last August my wife and I headed east. We strapped two bikes on top, threw camping gear, computers, clothes, toiletries, Immodium, and homebrew beer in the back, and drove across these United States to the east coast. We recommend this form of travel to everyone; driving across what is usually “flyover country,” is fun with straight and empty roads plus pleasant people in the “cities.” As an added bonus it does away with any direct interaction with those uptight drones of the Transportation Safety Administration. You don’t have to take off your shoes if you don’t want to.

Along the way, the family truckster (aka Volvo V70 XC) turned 200,000 miles on its odometer somewhere in South Dakota.

‘Twas the Night Before Deadline

I write a column called the Green Chain for the Lake County Record-Bee‘s environmental page, the Green Scene. The Record-Bee printed this yesterday.

‘Twas the night before the Record-Bee’s Green Chain deadline.
I had writer’s block, and not for the first time.

When up in the sky, riding the clouds like a boat,
I spotted a wonder, a flying Chevy Volt.

Driven by Kris Kringle without reindeer with hoof,
it nose-dived straight into my roof.

Catching fire in a wink.
I said, “I’m going to get water to put it out, right here from the sink.”

I thought better of it yet,
and grabbed the old fire extinguisher, filled with still useful, Carbon Tet.

When I ran back to the outside, he’d already beaten down the flames
with an old reindeer hide.

He dropped down to my lawn.
“Drat, I sure miss Dandruff and Sitzbath, who now are gone.”

“Donder and Blitzen,” I said.

He turned, looked at me, and arched an eyebrow.
“Hmmph. Not bad for a guy who’s got writer’s block, right now.”

It was my turn to arch an eyebrow like his.
“So tell me, how do you know any of this?”

He made a ref’s timeout sign with his hands and quick.
“Look Sport, can we stop the Clement Moore, Night Before Christmas shtick?”

“I prefer to think of it as an homage.”

“Uh huh. You’re kidding, right? Look, I know about your writer’s block because the elves keep track of such stuff on the web.”

“The elves hack into computers?”

“The elves? Hackers? Ho, ho, ho.” His great beard bounced about. “Nah. They just use Facebook and Twitter. You wouldn’t believe what people post.”

“Can I use your phone?” he said and pulled out a card. “I need a tow. Boy, could I use Vomit and Pooka-head right now.”

“Comet and Cupid.”

“Whatever.”

I took him to the phone in the kitchen. “You learned about my writer’s block from my status update on Twitter?”

“Bingo.” He dialed and then put his hand over the receiver. “So, d’ya think you could fix me a double-shot cappuccino? It’s going to be a long night.”

When he finished giving his information to the dispatcher he plopped onto my kitchen chair.

I set a plate of cookies and the cappuccino on the table. “So, how are things on the North Pole?”

“Cold.” He slurped at the cappuccino. “You know, with this global warming stuff, everybody had worried that the polar bears and the ice caps would be gone this year. Frankly, I was looking forward to catching a Russian freighter and moving to the Bahamas like we did in the 1920’s.”

“The arctic ice was nearly gone in the 20s?”

“Sure, don’t you know any history?” He bit into a cookie. “Not bad for store-bought.”

“Thank Pepperidge Farms.”

“As for polar bears, did you know we have five times the population of those four-legged eating machines than we had seventy years ago? Geez Louise, Mrs. Clause has to shoo more of them away from the clothesline every year.”

The phone rang and I answered it. “The tow truck will be here in ten minutes.”

“Thanks.” He set his empty cup down. “Man, I miss Dopey and Sneezy.”

“Reindeer?”

“Nah, they were a couple of dwarfs that hung around this hot number named, ‘Snow White.’ Really lousy poker players. I miss them.”

“By the way,” I said. “What happened to your reindeer?”

“Probably in some hunter’s freezer now. Upper management said they had to go, said we needed a smaller carbon footprint, said those animals spewed too much methane into the upper atmosphere causing an increase in global warming, this according to the pointy headed engineers’ climate models.”

I nodded. “I bet you miss them.”

“The engineers?”

“The reindeer.”

“Well, right now, yeah. But, the new Volt has a heater and factory air. That’s nice. Though, I have to charge it for hours every 40 miles and there is a slight chance of fire in a crash.”

“So I noticed.”

“One of those fuel-efficient diesels would’ve been better; some of them get 50 miles to the gallon. Do you know how long it takes to go around the world, dropping off presents, when you have to stop every 40 miles to recharge a Volt’s battery?”

“A long time?”

“Darn right.”

A horn sounded outside.

Santa shook my hand. “Well, I gotta go.”

He turned and was gone. But I heard him shout as the Volt was towed out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to y’all, and to y’all a good night.”

Fear and Loathing in Lake County

Last Tuesday, anti-GE (genetically engineered) forces in the county threw their hats in the air, shouted hallelujah, and did happy dances when the Lake County Board of Supervisors (BoS) passed a resolution supporting the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food by a 3-2 vote. Supervisors Anthony Farrington (District 4), Denise Rushing (District 3), and Jeff Smith (District 2) voted in favor; Supervisors Jim Comstock (District 1) and Rob Brown (District 5) dissented. That all our food is the result of genetic modification already or that gene-splicing is, strictly speaking, a more precise way of making our food supply better, does not enter the conversation. Though, when pressed the discussion simply devolves to the supposition that GE products are being developed by Monsanto, and that “Monsanto is evil.”

Now to be fair, the choice to believe ‘GMO/GEO food is harmful or suspect’ is anyone’s right. We are free to believe as we wish, be it 9-11 Truthers, Birthers, UFOers, ID creationists, contrailers, GMO/GEOphobes, (but I draw the line at homeopathy and anti-vaxers).

It is when believers wish to impose their beliefs on others that we need to draw the line.

Over at Skeptical Vegan, there is a truly interesting post linking GMO labeling of food to labeling science textbooks which contain the “theory” of evolution:

I have various problems with the idea both in theory and as it has been presented to the public but my primary objection is that passing such a law would be acquiescing to a scientifically unjustified demand by a political pressure group in addition to subverting the purpose and reasoning behind current food labeling law. It may also be a stepping stone to an outright ban, enough advocates have made their desires more than clear on the subject for it to be just a hidden possibility. For many activists it seems this is not an issue so much of giving consumers a choice but rather a way of forcing GMOs off the market. All this reminds me of another time a pseudoscientific pressure group pushed their own scientifically unjustified demand on the public in the form of an “innocuous” label.

The post’s author points to creationists in school boards (elected officials) imposing their beliefs by requiring the placement of “innocuous” labels in textbooks such as this one:

This text book contains material on evolution.

Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.

This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

 

The use of government’s monopolistic power to push a belief-system on everyone should give us all pause.

 

 

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Postcards from Niagara Falls, New York

This weekend’s postcard comes from Niagara Falls in New York. We visited them in August, and it was my first time. You feel the rumble of the falls. The roar of the  water cascading onto the rocks below, while not deafening, is impressive.

The falls drain Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. According to http://www.niagarafallslive.com, Three sets of waterfalls comprise Niagara Falls: American Falls(between Prospect Point and Luna Island),Bridal Veil Falls (between Luna Island and Goat Island), and Canadian Falls (between Goat Island and Table Rock). The volume of water going over the falls at any given second varies but during the summer, when we visited, it averages 100,000 cubic feet per second during the day and (due to water diversion) 50,000 CFS at night.

 

(Click on picture to enlarge it)

Unintended Consequences – risks and rewards of needing energy

Fire is energy
Nearly half the world uses wood for cook and heat, which contributes significantly to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

In this video, Matt Palmer, filmmaker and photographer, raises good points about how we produce our energy and its consequences–intended and otherwise.

Energy is important to everyone and every process on earth. We want energy to power our lives. So, as Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry, reminds us, “We put energy in a conversion device to make power: a plane, a truck, even ourselves.” [watch “What’s a Watt?“] Power is what we want. Energy converts to power to allow work. (And work is “the transfer of energy from one physical system to another.” – American Heritage Dictionary)

Palmer, in this video, considers the scope of our energy needs, what it would take to re-tool the world to non-fossil fuel based systems, and:

What does it mean to say: “Dirty Oil,” “Clean Energy,” “Renewable,” “Sustainable.”

In the project, he wants to through “Constant critical thinking,” “Challenge the idea that fossil fuels are only bad, and that alternative energies are free and benign and free from resource limits.”

“Unintended Consequences” began as an idea to do a feature film that examines the unintended consequences of different energy sources from oil sands, natural gas, and coal to alternative energy sources like wind, solar, and bio fuels, in order to forge an understanding of the impacts that come from our use of energy. So some of the central conflicts we intend to examine include questions like: how do we or can we reconcile our desire to maintain our standard of living at a time of population growth and increasing energy demand given the finite natural resources available to harness energy and the myriad of unintended consequences (social, political, environmental and economic) that result from our consumption of energy? How can we build a rational, pragmatic and optimistic framework from which to bring man, energy, environment, and technology into harmony?…The goal of the “Unintended Consequences Documentary Project” is to challenge all sides in the global energy debate from energy companies to environmental organizations to consumers to think critically about what we think we know, our assumptions, our biases, and our emotional connections to the issue. – Matt Palmer producer of the Unintended Consequences Documentary Project

 

Does he mean what he says he wants? So far, few people willingly do the math of alternative energy sources. However, the salt crystal lamp in the background gives me pause because they are complete quackery (according to one site I visited their salt crystal lamps “neutralize the positive ions generated by electrical devices,” thus “give your body the same relaxed feeling you experience when enjoying a day at the beach.”). It’s possibly nothing but a gift from his wife.

In corresponding with Matt Palmer, I recommended two books: Matt Ridley’s, The Rational Optimist and Robert Bryce’s, Power Hungry. He wrote that The Rational Optimist was next on his list. If he could interview Ridley and Bryce, that would be good.

Ridley know numbers, plus he can convey ideas simply. In the foreword of his book he writes, “I find that my disagreement is mostly with reactionaries of all political colours: blue ones who dislike cultural change, red ones who dislike economic change and green ones who dislike technological change…(H)uman progress has, on balance, been a good thing…(The world) is richer, healthier, and kinder too, as much because of commerce as despite it.”

You see, the more we trade goods and services, the more we trade ideas as well. Those ideas “have sex” he says. Like DNA recombining to make unique individuals, bits of ideas cross-fertilize with others to make better ways of doing things. “In a nutshell,” Ridley says, “the most sustainable thing we can do, and the best for the planet, is to accelerate technological change and economic growth.” For instance, changing from using animals to using machines, which need power, for farming freed up 30 percent more land, since machines don’t need pasture. Using petroleum to produce nitrogen fertilizers also freed up land, since with fertilization we require less land to be as productive. That freed land then could be used to grow more food or fiber or returned to its natural state.

Which do you think is better: fossil fuel or alternative energy sources? Why?

Postcard from upstate New York

These pictures were snapped in August of this year as we were working our way toward Washington, D.C. We were impressed by the lushness of upstate (northern) New York. Delightful sights. Nice people. Can anything compete with the fun of a county fair,the freshness of just-picked corn, the susurrus of a slate-bottomed stream, or shafts of early morning sunlight piercing the mist? (You may click on any picture to get a full-sized photo)

Preserving California’s old growth

On Wednesday you read that private landowners conduct the majority of timber harvesting in California. This is due to the de facto moratorium placed on timber harvesting within national forests (state and national parks do not allow harvesting except for reasons of public safety). And, perhaps you wondered if old-growth timber could be removed. Well, fear not. National and State governments own, and have placed 99.5 percent of California’s 2.56 million acres of old-growth timber in California off-limits to any harvesting.

Nat'l and state govts hold 99.5% of old-growth. Source: USDA Forest Service, "Area of old-growth forests in California, Oregon, and Washington" by Bolsinger and Waddell

Working landscapes, environmental correctness

According to a 2001 agricultural economic report, “urban expansion claimed more than 1 million acres per year between 1960 and 1990″ in the United States, and that expansion follows one of two two routes: 1. expansion of urban areas or 2. large-lot development (greater than 1 acre per house). (Heimlich 2001)

 

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Land trusts throughout the United States have reacted to this trend of the loss of agricultural land to urban developers by working to protect farms and ranches (and some mixed-use tree farm operations) by creating easements for them as “working landscapes.” For purposes of discussion, forests have been teased out from the farm and ranching portion of ‘working landscapes’ since even, “Tree plantations are more biodiverse [than an annual crop], even though such plantations may be less complex than a ‘wild’ stand.” (Dekker-Robertson 1998)

Let’s not fool ourselves, no perfect solution exists (whether it be market-driven, government mandated or mixed enterprise) to our environmental needs for open space. On the contrary, compromises must be found. No right and perfect answer exists; only “good enough” exists.

At first glance, the creation of working landscapes appear environmentally correct. One would have thought allowing ranching and farming families to stay in business and ostensibly ward off urban encroachment would have been a good thing. After all, they are our neighbors and as such they hold a special place in our hearts (mine included). Now, I’m not as certain, at least from an ecologic or economic vantage point. Working landscapes now appear to be a form of environmental correctness.

What impresses me about the “working landscapes” solution is that it is neither government mandated nor is it funded by tax dollars (except to the degree that land trusts are tax-exempt as 501.C.3s). Farmers and/or ranchers who agree to a land trust’s requirements to maintain a working landscape bolster the land’s economic production.

What concerns me regarding “working landscapes” is that agriculture is arguably the most ecologically disruptive activities we humans engage in. There is no question that we are better off due to the invention of agriculture. Yet, we have become more efficient at growing food and fiber which means fewer acres are needed to grow food per capita. The upshot then is, saving a ranch or farm may not be our wisest course of action and freeing the land up for other uses (even urbanization) may actually be beneficial. As a result, working landscapes may not be better for our environment than urban development.

Proponents give an array of arguments for preserving, protecting, and maintaining working landscapes. (Arizona Land and Water Trust n.d.) (National Park Service 2008) (Morse 2010) These include preventing:

1. Loss of regional identity, distinctiveness, and character and its corollary loss of context for stories linking people to the land and an estrangement from the landscapes sustaining us

2. Unraveling of traditional social/economic relationships to the land and loss of special products of place

3. Loss of models in sustainable landscapes and living cultures

4. Fragmented landscapes

5. Loss of biological diversity

6. Food insecurity

7. Climate change


Below are my responses to each of these arguments and why I think they are overblown.

1. Loss of regional identity, etc.

Not just in the U.S. but also worldwide, the stories and the character of the land and those who work it are being lost. This comes as a byproduct of progress, the homogenization of time and place. Since humans began trading with one another and thus specializing in the products we did best, we have lost the ability and knowledge of how things are made. We have lost the ability to fashion projectile points from rock. The Stone Age did not come to an end from lack of stones; they were replaced by other and better materials and made into new products. Maintaining working landscapes to prevent loss of regional identity, distinctiveness, and character is, at best, a rear-guard effort that will devolve into a situation where tourists will stop to interact with docents who will explain how it used to be done. In other words, I believe that the working landscapes will become anachronisms


2. The unraveling of traditional social/economic relationships to the land and loss of special products of place.

The second reason to prevent loss of social/economic relationships for those “special products of the place” aligns itself closely to the first argument of preventing loss of place. Prevention again is a rear-guard action. As has been happening for the last ten thousand years because of trade and specialization, places are becoming more similar and less distinctive. Farmers, displaced from the ‘Euxine Lake’ when the sea level rose and broke through the Hellespont, brought their seeds with them, so Northern Europe lost its special products of place when the farmers planted the newer emmer and einkorn wheat grains. (Ridley 2010) The items we treasure as distinctive to place may not be as permanent as we would prefer to believe. Just because something is what we happen to have in our memory does not mean that it has always been that way.

As for those special products of place, we no longer manufacture Acheulian hand axes. After all Acheulian hand axes used to be quite special; the most important item for people, no matter the place, for one million years. (Ridley 2010) Yet, we no longer fret that no one uses them anymore. Once an item or process has been replaced, we have to move on–I do not see how farming and ranching is any different.


3. Loss of models in sustainable landscapes and living cultures.

The term “sustainable” is the term du jour and means many things to many people. Yet the loss of this “sustainable landscape” stems from its inability to provide an income sufficient to ward off other encroaching income streams: farming/ranching became unsustainable from an economic point of view. That is the land succumbs to its “highest, best use.” Rather than being something to mourn, the trade from one use to another may be a natural outcome toward greater sustainability. By trading land for money, the rancher or farmer may prove to be better off than before. “Interdependence of the world through trade is the very thing that makes modern life as sustainable as it is,” says Matt Ridley, “suppose your local wheat farmer tells you that last year’s rains means he will have to cut his flour delivery in half. You will have to go hungry.” Today, you benefit from a global marketplace; “in which somebody somewhere has something to sell you so there are rarely shortages, only modest price fluctuations.” (Ridley 2010)

“Economists have long recognized the welfare gains from specialization and trade,” wrote Steve Sexton on the Freakonomics website. “The case for specialization is perhaps nowhere stronger than in agriculture, where the costs of production depend on natural resource endowments, such as temperature, rainfall, and sunlight, as well as soil quality, pest infestations, and land costs. Different crops demand different conditions and vary in their resilience to shocks. So California, with mild winters, warm summers, and fertile soils produces all U.S.-grown almonds and 80 percent of U.S. strawberries and grapes. Idaho, on the other hand, produces 30 percent of the country’s russet potatoes because warm days and cool nights during the season, combined with rich volcanic soils, make for ideal growing conditions.” (Sexton 2011)


4. Fragmented landscapes.

This argument makes little sense. Farming and ranching patch quilts our landscape. Farming is a disruption of a natural landscape (often through deforestation) to grow food or fiber. Today, much of our fiber, though not our food, can be made from petroleum products with a much smaller footprint than agriculture. Urban areas need much less space compared to agriculture. The urban areas in the United States occupy about 3 percent of the U.S. whereas agricultural land occupies nearly 50 percent. (Frey 1995) It would seem more advantageous to have land revert to its natural state through use of greenbelts around urban areas.


5. Loss of biological diversity.

This argument aligns with the previous: the loss of biological diversity already happened when the area changed to agriculture. Agriculture fragments and disrupts natural habitats. In addition, predators to the crop, flock or herd (which are often displaced by the agriculture pursuit) are subdued through mechanical and chemical means. Maintaining working landscapes means ensuring the loss of biological diversity, not preventing it.


6. Food insecurity.

The desire of the land trusts is to protect small family farms and ranches because they are close by and therefore can provide food and fiber. Steve Sexton, writing on the Freakonomics website says, “[I]mplicit in the argument that local farming is better for the environment than industrial agriculture is an assumption that a ‘relocalized’ food system can be just as efficient as today’s modern farming. That assumption is simply wrong. Today’s high crop yields and low costs reflect gains from specialization and trade, as well as scale and scope economies that would be forsaken under the food system that locavores endorse.” (Sexton 2011)

And, as noted by Jesse Ausubel, this argument does not stand up: “For centuries, farmers expanded cropland faster than population grew, and thus cropland per person rose. When we needed more food, we ploughed more land, and fears about running out of arable land grew. But fifty years ago, farmers stopped plowing up more nature per capita. Meanwhile, growth in calories in the world’s food supply has continued to outpace population, especially in poor countries. Per hectare, farmers lifted world grain yields about 2 percent annually since 1960. Two percent sounds small but compounds to large effects: it doubles in 35 years and quadruples in 70.

“Vast frontiers for even more agricultural improvement remain open. On the same area, the average world farmer grows only about 20% of the corn or beans of the top Iowa farmer, and the average Iowa farmer lags more than 30 years behind the yields of his most productive neighbor. Top producers now grow more than 20 tons of corn per hectare compared with a world average for all crops of about 2. From one hectare, an American farmer in 1900 could provide calories or protein for a year for 3 people. In 1999 the top farmers can feed 80 people for a year from the same area. So farmland again abounds, disappointing sellers who get cheap prices per hectare almost everywhere.” (Ausubel 1999)

Lastly, the United States Department of Agriculture is not sounding the full alarm, yet: “[Urban expansion] is not seen as a threat to most farming, although it may reduce production of some high-value or specialty crops. [emphasis added] The consequences of continued large–lot development may be less sanguine, since it consumes much more land per unit of housing than the typical suburb.” (Heimlich 2001)


7. Climate change.

Preventing climate change (by proclaiming his pet project prevents it) seems to be the last bastion of the scoundrel. Whereas it used to be that everything caused pollution, it now gets weighed by its “carbon footprint.” Sexton says this about the advisability of small farms for lowering carbon emissions, “The Harvard economist Ed Glaeser estimates that carbon emissions from transportation don’t decline in a locavore future because local farms reduce population density as potential homes are displaced by community gardens. Less-dense cities mean more driving and more carbon emissions. Transportation only accounts for 11 percent of the carbon embodied in food anyway, according to a 2008 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon; 83 percent comes from production.”

Summary

So, to a Physiocrat or Romantic, preservation of so-called working landscapes may make sense. They preserve viewscapes, allow a traditional way of life to continue (ranching and farming), help our agricultural neighbors survive in these difficult economic times, and help maintain a region’s distinctiveness and character.

However, from an ecological and economic perspective maintaining agricultural holdings makes very little sense. “The worst thing for the environment is farming,” says Dr. Pamela Ronald, “It doesn’t matter if it is organic [or conventional]…You have to go in and destroy everything.” (Voosen, 2010) We currently use nearly 40% of Earth’s ice-free land for our food and fiber needs. According to one source, that’s an “area 60 times larger than the combined area of all the world’s cities and suburbs.” (Wilcox 2011)

If the area figure cited is even close to true (and it appears that it’s close to the mark), then it is more beneficial to allow farms and ranches to revert to wildland (and urbanized area), especially if they are not economically viable.


Sources

 

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If California’s timber industry falls, will anyone hear it?

Lands owned by state and federal government now contribute little to California’s wood supply (see the graphic below). Private landowners (the green area) now carry nearly all the burden for California’s timber harvesting and its wood demand. (Source: California Forestry Association CA Timber Harvest Statistics 1978-2009.)

As previously noted on this site:

Our California forests have the capacity to produce all the wood we need and export some as well, yet we import 75% of our wood. You can bet the wood we import wasn’t harvested under restrictions as comprehensive as those within California’s Forest Practices Act. Did any of the harvests have a Timber Harvesting Plan that took water and wildlife into consideration?

And just how much wood do we Californians consume? According to a paper published by the University of California at Berkeley, Californians used somewhere around 8.5-9 billion board-feet in 1999. Given that CA’s consumption grew by ~3 to 4 BBF from 1990 to 1999, we may currently consume 11-12 BBF. How much do we harvest in California? According to data from the California Forestry Association, about 1.6 BBF, i.e., about 15 percent of what we use, leaving 85 percent to come from other places.