Environment

 Two trees in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden were named to the New York State big tree registry. I didn't even know the state had a big tree registry. A simple search shows that many states have them, and there's a national big tree registry - the national champions - kept by American Forests. Did I mention that I'm a fan of trees? And that I love the book Tree: A New Vision Of The American Forest by James Balog?

Photo: markhillary

Good article on recycling, composting and waste in the NYTimes yesterday. I remember when I was younger, maybe back in the late 80s, the lack of landfill capacity became an issue. The projections that we were going to run out of places to put our garbage brought up recycling on a larger scale.

I had thought that the growing amount of recycling happening in the US had made the lack of landfill capacity not too much of a big deal - we weren't going to fulfill those projections, and we'd have enough space for a while. Well, I guess the coming (again) lack of landfill space has got people talking about how to throw out less stuff. The conversation seems more advanced now - how to get people to recycle more, to compost, and to just have less garbage to begin with.

We had been composting for a while, and while I definitely helped out my wife with it, I saw it as not too necessary - organic waste in the landfill breaks down, and probably creates lots of nutrients in the end product fill, so what's the big deal. I never thought that the organic wastes are a main contributor to the methane that landfills create. Bummer. Learn something new every day.

I've been hearing about the massive amount of gas in the Marcellus Shale that stretches into upstate New York. While domestic natural gas supplies are all well and good, the well drilling is seriously damaging to the environment, and the companies that do it seem hell bent on doing it their way. They've managed to skirt by regulations that 'don't apply' to the natural gas industry etc. There seems to a pretty good groundswell of support for New York State actually restricting the drilling companies from having their way with the land.

And there's a in-progress documentary film that has some amazing footage of tap water from a sink that's become flammable due to local well drilling.

And a good article in Planning about how drilling affects communities, and how to plan for it.

Saw a great episode of Nova on PBS about the Extreme Ice Survey - images of it, how it's melting, and what that means. What dragged me in was the photographer James Balog, who is an amazing nature photographer. I have his book Tree: A New Vision Of The American Forest and it's one of the few photography books that I actually look at with any regularity.

The beauty of the landscapes and features that they showed, along with the time-lapse images was amazing. After Planet Earth, the ante definitely got upped for showing nature through moving pictures. Time-lapse is now the way to go - for everyone who can't get out to these places in real life, at multiple times throughout the year (or longer) to see the changes themselves.

Maybe the beauty of the images, undercuts the climate change message they're going for, but that's ok.

From ED, some basic facts on transportation in the US. Of note - the fact that not owning a car and using public transit can save a decent amount per year (which mortgage companies take into account), coupled with the fact that nearly half the population doesn't have real access to public transit. Then notice that even more drilling for domestic oil production won't have much of an effect for a while (I think ED is shooting a bit long, but at least 10 years is a good guess).

Photo: Matt Mercer

So you'd think this would be something our government would be interested in helping out with. Not really. our current misguided transportation secretary used some carefully constructed words to intimate that since the gas-tax funds for road construction are running out (surprise - people are driving less now), they might want to use some of that transit money to fund road construction. Hopefully we've all misconstrued her (nice to hear from the feds that road projects might actually have to prove themselves the way that transit projects do), but no way to tell at the moment.

I don't even want to talk about malicious neglect that the current administration has shown towards Amtrak. Oh that we had a good regional rail system in this country (on, and on, and on, and on...)

So what we have at the moment: mass transit use is growing pretty much everywhere in the country, and at the same time the transit providers, often forced to rely on sales, petroleum use, property, and other taxes for operating income, are hurting for money. So they're going to the other source they have - raising fares, and some even cutting service.

But hey, maybe the USDOT will find a way to fund those roads that are being used a bit less now.

Photo: tsuda

So congress held hearings for many hours on why oil prices were so high, mostly focussing on the effect of speculators in the market. I was wondering if what they were talking about had any merit - in my view, speculation can jack prices up in some markets, like housing - you can only bet it one direction, really - but it depends on how it works. In commodities markets, it's a useful tool for hedging by actual companies.

It's was nice to read this article in the NYTimes about how the congressional hearings were mostly bluster. Some good quotes:

Even if you eliminated speculation entirely, the price of oil wouldn’t fall. Thankfully, no one is proposing to go that far ... because even members of Congress understand that futures markets serve a crucial purpose. They help companies hedge their oil prices, and they help energy companies manage their risk, for starters.

The energy speculators I spoke to say that Congress has it exactly backward: the futures market is actually taking its cues from the physical market, where the buyers and sellers of oil do their business. Last week, the Saudis promised to produce an extra 200,000 barrels a day. But it is pricing that oil so high that oil companies are balking at paying for it....

Both speculators and oilmen say that supply and demand is the real culprit. ... said Gary Ross, the chief executive of the PIRA Energy Group, and a well-known energy consultant. “Look at the data.... The world economy is growing by 3.9 percent a year. World oil demand should grow by 2.3 percent just to keep pace. That’s an extra two million barrels a day. We don’t have it! It’s obvious.”

I also think there is something else at play. After years of ignoring the rather obvious fact that oil is a finite resource, the world has suddenly become acutely aware of that reality.... That is not speculation at work — it’s market psychology. There’s a big difference. If there is indeed a bubble, that’s what is causing it.

I'm a light sleeper, especially in the mornings. Unfortunately I live close enough to a highway (the BQE) and some major arterials to end up getting woken up or kept up by helicopter noise occasionally. I'm not close enough to these things to hear traffic noise, but helicopters don't have to be very close to make lots of noise.

I used to live near midtown Manhattan, and every holiday season would bring the daily drone of helicopter noise as the mechanical birds hovered over midtown for long stretches filming the throngs shopping and skating and just walking about.

Photo: arbyreed

A couple scientists from the Scripps Institute released a paper about a month ago that puts even money on Lake Mead being dry by 2021. Just as bad, really, is that they also put a 50% chance that by 2017 the lake will be too low for the Hoover Dam to generate power. The authors give three main reasons: drought, water demand/use, and human-induced climate change.

Apparently Lake Mead is currently at so low a point (around 50% of its capacity) that the main water supply 'tube' for Las Vegas is in danger of rising above the surface. The Hoover Dam generates around 2 gigawatts of electricity and serves about 1.3 million people - not sure how it would be replaced if that generating capacity were lost.