The Snow Drought of 2011, And Other Matters

Riffing off of my most recent post, I wanted to point out something that is being covered only tangentally by the American mainstream media, namely, the snow drought that has gripped large portions of the Northern Hemisphere over the last few months. I am now in Southern California, after driving down from Portland yesterday. From Portland through the Siskiyous, and on down through the San Gabriels into Southern California, I saw snow only once – a pathetic scattering of a few light patches maybe an inch thick in shadowed places near Ashland and Medford. (Of course, there was also a bit of snow - but not much - on some mountain peaks higher than 4000 feet.)

CBS News reports that much of the United States is experiencing a lack of snow and unusually warm temperatures. And the snow drought has affected Europe, according to stories from Finland and Austria. Meanwhile, the Global South is suffering from record rainfall and heat waves. Climate change is in the air. That's anthropogenic – man-made – climate change. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Yet climate change is not yet part of the adult conversation of many Americans and other inhabitants of the Global North, addicted as they are to their consumerist lifestyles.

Speaking of consumerism, it seems that the Nike Corporation, in concert with marketing experts, have created a very potent combination of basketball shoes and advertising capable of turning millions of Americans into raving idiots. The psychopharmacology of this shoe/advertising combination hasn't been fully documented, but Nike has been able to induce rioting in several American cities over the release of their doofus shoes. Nike officials issued nuanced statements of public regret concerning the riots, yet privately, they were probably quite pleased – as the executives of Wal-Mart must have been pleased by the effectiveness of advertising powerful enough to induce crowds to trample one of their employees to death a couple of years ago.

A Yuletide Rumination

It's that time of year again, isn't it? (For some retail store chains it's been that time of year since before Halloween.) And along with this time of year there are many people who are torn between celebrating, ignoring or denouncing the Christmas season.

As for me, being a Christian, and someone who has for several years had a love affair with ritual and ceremony, I enjoy the thought of having a special season, culminating in a special day, to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Note, however, that I did not say that I enjoy the thought of shoving that particular celebration down the throats of any who disagree with me. To those outside the orbit of Christianity, I can only hope that my life may persuade you to think about things you would not ordinarily consider. On the other hand, there are those who claim to be solidly inside the orbit of the Faith who oppose Christmas because it's supposed to have evolved from pagan holidays, and because we don't see Christmas celebrated by the apostles in the book of Acts, yadda yadda. To such people, whether they be Plymouth brethren, Jehovah's Witnesses, subbotniks (субботники), or others, I have a deal to offer you. If you promise not to rain on my parade, I promise that I won't insult you by wishing you Merry Christmas (or Happy Birthday, for that matter).

I have to admit, however, that lately I can't really get into Christmas. Partly it's because for the last few years, I haven't been able to attend church on Christmas due to visits to relatives. But increasingly it's because in this country, the Christmas season has been so thoroughly corrupted to serve the interests of capitalism. Every aspect of the season – even those aspects that were once baldly religious – has been converted into a Pavlovian goad to make people buy stuff. (Just this week I was at Trader Joe's and on the way into the store, I heard a non-stop stream of pop-soft rock arrangements of religious carols and other seasonal music being broadcast into the parking lot, thanks to the outdoor intercom system.)

Christmas has become the complement of the 4^th of July in a certain way. Independence Day is supposed to be a celebration of freedom, yet “freedom” in this country has been redefined by corporate interests into a justification of addictive behavior. Christmas on the other hand is a commercially broadcast appeal to go out and act like an addict. For those who don't choose to live like addicts, Christmas has become a dangerous time of year. Just try bicycle commuting on a daily basis any time between Thanksgiving and New Years and you will see just how dangerous, as you find your life being threatened by tantrum-throwing consumatron beasts in big SUV's. (How many people will be trampled to death or pepper-sprayed at stores betweeen now and New Year's?)

The pushers who run our society have succeeded in turning Christmas into a rather strange season. And this particular Christmas promises to be very strange indeed, as the consequences of our addictive behavior increasingly catch up to us. One of those consequences is the weather. Around here in the Portland metro area, it has been very unsettling – not in a violently demonstrative way, but in a quietly creepy, unsettling way.

For one thing, there has been almost no precipitation this month. According to the Weather Underground site, average precipitation for December should be 4.32 inches. We have received less than two tenths of an inch so far. Not one flake of snow has fallen in the Portland metro area since October. Daytime high temperatures have been exceeding historical averages – not drastically, but by enough to cause concern for those who should be paying attention. I can't predict the future, but I suspect that this may turn out to be a very dry winter. A dry winter may mean a hot summer, and an extreme fire danger, which is not typical for this area. There is a lot to burn here. We may also be introduced to something else that is not typical to this area, namely, drought.

Even with this year's La Niña weather, global average temperatures are beginning to move into dangerous, potentially irreversible territory. Atmospheric CO2 levels are now at 390.31 parts per million. Our addiction is destroying our climate, yet like many dysfunctional families whose members are addicts, our society is unwilling to talk frankly about the consequences of our addiction. This week, as I walked through my neighborhood, I was treated to a sight that I haven't seen since I lived in Southern California – houses decorated with Yuletide lights, Santa Clauses, and fake icicles – and not a speck of snow on the ground. It would be most ironic to find that some of the residents in those homes were listening to Bing Crosby singing about his dreams. This year I think I'll buy myself a weather thermometer for Christmas.

I must bring this short meditation to a close. I will shortly be driving down to So. Cal., and I have a few things to do yet. My MP3 player is loaded full of interesting stuff that I haven't yet heard. One thing I have is a LibriVox recording of The Slavery Of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy. It promises to be good listening for those who don't want to be addicts. Merry Christmas.

Capitalists and Cheapskates on Craigslist

In these days of economic turmoil, in which large employers are abandoning any sort of commitment to the well-being of their employees, it is not surprising that many people are considering self-employment. Self-employment is attractive for a couple of reasons. First, a savvy entrepreneur can become independent of fickle, unreliable employers. A successful small businessman or businesswoman can therefore earn a living while being free from the fear of “downsizing.” Second, self-employment is “controllable,” at least on paper. That is, there need not be some external agent such as as boss forcing the self-employed person to work like a dog for sixty or seventy hours a week, while barely earning a living wage. In principle, the self-employed person should be able to set his or her own hours in order to live a manageable life.

The ability to form and use networks is a key for the self-employed. Not very long ago, such networks were built out of relationships – between service providers and satisfied customers, between service providers and trusted suppliers, between friendly fellow practitioners. Such networks were, in a sense, “owned” by all the users thereof. Now, such networks have largely become electronic. Everyone advertises and talks to each other on line these days.

It is instructive to trace the migration of relationship-building from the physical world to the cyber-world. There are several good examples of this from recent history. One such example is Craigslist, which started out simply as one means out of many by which a collection of friends with similar interests networked with each other. (See Craigslist from Wikipedia.) Craig Newmark's e-mailed list of things of interest to him expanded beyond his circle of friends as friends talked with other friends, and soon his list was a big, popular thing with the potential to make a lot of money for its owner.

For things that have no monetary value, or for the sort of “garage sale” things that people sell or trade, Craigslist still has value in connecting ordinary people with ordinary people. But while in its earlier days, Craigslist was a good way for small-scale entrepreneurs to connect with each other, it no longer seems very useful to the self-employed.

The problem is the capture of Craigslist and other on-line venues originally created for ordinary people to connect with each other. Nowadays, most of the people who advertise for jobs or offer services on Craigslist seem to be large corporations, or are start-ups backed by lots of venture capital from heavyweight “investors” looking to corner the market for some service. Thus many of the things that could at one time be done by ordinary people in order to get by without a regular job have now become commodities meted out to the public via growth capitalists. Those who are trying to escape from being turned into commodities are discovering that even self-employment is now being commodified.

There are many signs of this commodification. Are you smart? Did your education give you a solid background in mathematics? Now that your office job has dried up, you may be thinking, “Hey, I could tutor high school kids in math!” But beware of trying to drum up business via Craigslist. Tutor Doctor, Complete College Prep, and a host of other big, multi-state services will eat you for lunch if you try to set up as an independent tutor. Of course, you could always surrender and go to work for one of these outfits. They typically charge around $45 an hour for tutoring – but they will pay you around $20.

Let's say that tutoring isn't your thing, but you have a strong back, work hard and like cleaning houses. I know people who put themselves through college by cleaning houses, and they worked as independent small businesspersons. They couldn't do it today – not with people like The Cleaning Authority, who have massive advertising budgets and massive budgets for placating the legal system. Do you like kids? Want to be a nanny? Beware, because there are venture capitalists trying to capture the nanny market as well. In fact, at least one firm which has advertised on Craigslist offers to meet all your domestic needs – housecleaning, tutoring and nanny services – all from one provider. How convenient.

The commodification of things which used to fall under the category of self-employment has led to other harmful outcomes. Those who do domestic work or tutoring for these firms must increasingly submit to onerous and invasive background checks and must provide extensive references, often for jobs that don't pay more than $12 an hour. (A lot can be said about the burgeoning “background check” industry, by the way. More on that in another post.) This has emboldened private parties looking for services to ask for the most outrageous things while offering the most outrageously cheapskate compensation. Just this past week I read an ad posted by someone in Lake Oswego (a rapidly evaporating enclave of people who once thought they were rich) asking for a tutor to provide after school instruction and supervision to a couple of kids. The prospective tutor was to provide an extensive list of references for this most important job – in exchange for $5 an hour plus gas money!

The commodification of self-employment has emboldened some people who are as yet untouched by our ongoing economic collapse to try to use their fellow men and women as slave labor. These people are wanna-be capitalists who think they can get something for nothing from their fellows just because times are hard. So they post ads on Craigslist for “nannies” and “tutors” who must provide multiple references and submit to a background check and fingerprinting in exchange for chump change, or for nothing more than “free room and board.”

Self-employment is a valuable and viable means of coping with hard times. But I think that those who want to make a successful go at it will need to re-learn the art of building networks of relationship outside of the Internet. Networks of personal relationships cannot be easily co-opted by capitalists and cheapskates.

A Survey Of Solar Thermal Power Systems - An Interview

A few weeks ago I promised you an interview. Today I'm pleased to be able to deliver on that promise. I present to you an interview with Dr. Luther Clements, a member of the faculty of the Renewable Energy Engineering Program at the Oregon Institute of Technology. Dr. Clements teaches a course in solar thermal power systems, and my interest in this subject was aroused several months ago by an article I read in No Tech Magazine titled, “The Bright Future of Solar-Powered Factories,” written by Kris de Decker.

The premise of that article was that most of the interest in solar energy was biased heavily toward the generation of electricity, and that the huge potential for direct use of solar heating in manufacturing processes was being overlooked in the United States. The article included a number of references which described the high level of interest in direct use of solar thermal energy in Europe and other parts of the world, along with descriptions of some unexplored avenues for direct use of solar heat in metallurgy.

During my interview, Dr. Clements and I discussed the article and the possibilities which it described, as well as possible reasons for lack of interest in direct use of solar heating for American industries. He touched on the need for sound engineering and design standards for manufacturers of solar thermal systems. Lastly, we discussed the future of engineering in an energy-constrained world characterized by economic contraction. You can listen to the interview directly on this blog, or you can download the audio by clicking here.

Dreaming That We're Poor

This past week, the New York Times ran a front page piece titled, “Bleak Portrait of Poverty is Off the Mark, Experts Say.” It was basically a packaging of “expert” criticisms of a U.S. Census Bureau study titled, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010.” The study stated that, among other things, the number of Americans living officially below the poverty line grew by 9.7 million between 2006 and 2010. (That figure is found in Table B-1, on page 62 of the report.) The report states that the number of Americans living in poverty has grown to 46.2 million, over four consecutive years of increasing poverty, and that the official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent. There are also now 49.9 million Americans without health insurance coverage.

The experts quoted by the Times (as well as the writers and editors at the Times) object to such a stark depiction of American poverty, saying that it does not take into account the availability of safety net programs for the poor as well as earned income tax credits. According to these talking heads, such things would cause “as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006” to “disappear.” These talking heads grudgingly acknowledge a rise in the numbers of “near poor” people (what does that mean?!), who make too little to live comfortably and make too much to qualify for aid or tax breaks or reduced-cost medical care.

I find such talk to be very far from reality. It seems to me that the nation has become poorer. Social safety nets have been and are being gutted in every state in the Union while the rich continue to concentrate wealth. Access to social safety net programs is dwindling for most Americans. It's easy for so-called experts and their media mouthpieces to redefine “poverty” by fudging numbers. They have no idea what it is to experience life on $18,000 a year. But maybe I'm asleep, dreaming that most of us are poorer. If I just pinched myself hard enough, I'd wake up to find that most of us are rich.

Then again, maybe pinching myself wouldn't work. Maybe those of us who are tired of pinching ourselves should tell our stories to each other, lest the experts convince us that we're all crazy or dreaming. What if we bloggers mounted a campaign to contradict the Times and its talking heads by citing the Census Bureau study and posting our own stories of the poverty we're seeing?

By the way, if you want a copy of that Census Bureau study, you'd better download it fast. According to the Times, on Monday the 7^th of this month, the Census Bureau will publish a “long-promised alternate measure meant to do a better job of fudging the numbers counting the resources the needy have and the bills they have to pay.”

Renewables for Rich People - A Geothermal Hole

(This week, I'd like to give a big welcome to LindaM. She writes the blog hello it's me.)

As part of my present job, I am getting to mingle with people who have relatively deep backgrounds in the various facets of what is commonly called “renewable energy” in the United States nowadays. I am always eager to have my horizons expanded and my thinking challenged, so from time to time I talk with some of these people about their work.

A couple of Fridays ago I got to have coffee (for me it was actually herbal tea) with a geothermal engineer who holds advanced degrees. I was curious about geothermal energy, and was wondering as well about whether pursuing a post-baccalaureate education would actually be worth my time and effort. I learned a number of interesting things about geothermal energy.

First, the word “geothermal” has two common uses in the field of energy engineering. The first use, which more accurately reflects the classical definition, has to do with the energy, generated within the earth via radioactive decay, which is accessible via voids and discontinuities in the earth's crust that allow high-temperature matter to reach the earth's surface. Typically the high-temperature matter consists of steam, hot water, and high-temperature rock. The second use of the word has to do with the use of ground-source heat pumps to exchange heat between the earth (at shallow depths, typically less than 100') and a building which has spaces that must be conditioned (heated or cooled). (My geothermal engineer friend considers the reference of the word “geothermal” to ground-source heat exchange to be somewhat inaccurate.)

High-temperature geothermal energy resources are used for electricity generation and to supply heat for direct heating of spaces and for some industrial processes. My friend told me that in the United States, there is a strong bias toward using geothermal energy for electricity generation, and not nearly as much interest in using geothermal energy for direct heating applications, although there is a growing interest here in direct heat applications. I mentioned an article by Kris de Decker that I had recently read in Low Tech Magazine, in which Mr. de Decker stated that “Most of the talk about renewable energy is aimed at electricity production. However, most of the energy we need is heat...”

We discussed the bias toward electricity generation in the renewable industry in the U.S. and concluded that it must be due to the prejudices of the big economic players here who have sunk large amounts of capital in electric power plants and centralized schemes of electricity distribution. These players are only interested in a renewable source of energy to the extent that it can help them maintain and increase their profits via their current infrastructure and business model. Using a renewable resource for primary delivery of energy in a form other than electricity would undercut previous investments in electricity generation and distribution. (As an aside, my friend pointed out to me that non-electric uses of geothermal energy are very popular in Europe and elsewhere. China, for instance, has no geothermal electric plants, but has many applications of direct geothermal heating.)

We moved on to discuss how geothermal “resources” are discovered and exploited. I was interested in knowing whether the same methodology used for identifying potential oil and gas resources is used for identifying geothermal resources. My friend told me that historically geologists have used somewhat different methods for identifying geothermal resources, and that the oil and gas methodology is not altogether a good fit for identifying geothermal resources, due to the dynamic nature of heat flows within the earth's crust. A good (as in ethical, honest, accurate) geothermal geologist is therefore likely to include a much larger margin of error in his or her assessment of a potential geothermal resource than a petroleum geologist is in assessing a potential petroleum resource.

This puts a geothermal engineer in a bit of a bind, because the only true way to assess a potential geothermal resource is to drill a well, and wells require a lot of money up front. Therefore, venture capitalists and other lenders often demand that a geologist provide an unreasonable degree of certainty in identifying a resource prior to drilling. Of course, any geologist who identifies a resource with such certainty prior to drilling makes himself or herself professionally and financially liable if such an identification proves false. Typically, it is a petroleum industry service firm that drills a geothermal well, since such wells must be deep (at least 300 feet, and typically thousands of feet deep), and such firms normally collect hefty profits.

Although readily accessible geothermal resources in the U.S. are limited in availability, there are some good examples here of geothermal energy use. My friend told me of villages and towns in Alaska that are supplied with geothermal district heating. Also, there is the city of Klamath Falls in Oregon, which provides geothermal district heating to its populace, along with a geothermal heat and electricity plant at a state university campus in Klamath Falls.

One “take-away” point from our conversation is that geothermal energy is expensive due to high up-front capital and infrastructure costs. In a shrinking economy, this means a shrinking likelihood of expanding geothermal energy use. The American bias toward viewing renewable resources solely in terms of electricity generation is likely to have unpleasant consequences because of the age and increasing disrepair of our grid, along with the very high costs of an extensive grid overhaul and the rapidly appearing shortages of capital caused by our economic collapse.

What about ground-source heat exchange, then? We both agreed that it is a useful way to save energy. But here again, the up-front capital and infrastructure costs are high. Landlords and owners of large buildings would be far more likely to be able to afford the micro-tunneling needed to install a large heat exchanger in the ground next to a new building whose interior spaces were to be conditioned via ground-source heat pumps. Small landlords and homeowners would find the installation of ground source heat exchange to be quite “spendy,” to use an Oregonian term. Retrofitting an existing home – especially a home with a conventional joist floor – would be really spendy. (Think $30,000 or thereabouts.) This would be due to having to replace the floor with a concrete slab containing embedded heat exchanger pipes.

My conclusion at the end of our conversation was that exploiting geothermal energy or ground-source heat exchange is probably out of the reach of the vast majority of people in this country because of the high cost involved, and geothermal energy will therefore probably not be part of the toolkit of people looking to create resilient neighborhoods in this present time of energy and economic decline. Most of us will have to adopt low-tech strategies for getting our energy needs met. Geothermal energy has its place, but that place is limited.

And as far as me going back to school? I'll tell you all about that some other time...;)

P.S. Although I am an engineer, I am not a geologist. If any geologists read this, feel free to chip in your educated two cents...

No One For President, Or, Election-Proofing Your Life

(Before I start, I'd like to welcome Meg O'Halloran to my blog. Thanks for your readership! Also, a belated welcome to those who joined last year, including Neil and Naomi Montacre. If you live in the Portland metro area, feel free to check out their store some time.)

I've been thinking about my visit to the #Occupy Portland protests, especially in light of the mainstream media's continued lame coverage of the #Occupy movement in general. While the MSM have not been exactly enthusiastic or even diligent in their coverage of the protests, they have been very enthusiastic in providing coverage of the Republican presidential campaign. This is interesting in that it shows the rapidly widening rift between the MSM and the ordinary people of the United States.

One message that came through loud and clear in my interviews with the #Occupy Portland protesters is that increasingly, most Americans do not believe that either main political party serves the interests of the common people. Increasingly, people are coming to believe that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are actually interested in providing solutions or adaptive responses to the problems and predicaments facing ordinary Americans in this time of economic decline and contraction. An increasing number of Americans is waking up to the realization that the entire electoral and political process has been bought by the rich in order to serve the rich at the expense of all the rest of us. And more and more Americans are realizing that the story they are being fed by the mainstream media bears no resemblance to reality – especially the reality lived daily by ordinary people of small means.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is pushing stories about Texas Governor Rick Perry's proposed policies for America while Herman Cain chews up the airwaves with controversial and schizophrenic statements. (If ever there was a man suffering from a massive case of Stockholm syndrome, Herman Cain fits the bill. He's at least as bad as Clarence Thomas.) And AOL News recently ran a piece advising its readers which Republican presidential candidate would be best for their wallets. At least Sarah Palin has experienced a rare moment of decency and has decided not to run for president.

Increasingly, the Republicans remind me of a line from a Warren Zevon song, Werewolves of London: “You better stay away from him. He'll rip your lungs out, Jim...” And the Democrats? They are being paid by the werewolves to do nothing while the rest of us get eaten. In fact, I can see a few well-developed canine teeth in the mouths of many Democrat politicians. As for third parties in the United States, most of them also seem to be insane and more than a little bit feral.

Maybe we ordinary people should send an election year message of our own to whoever might be listening. I propose a campaign consisting of homemade bumper stickers (for those who drive) or bicycle helmet stickers (for those who pedal). Let the stickers read, NO ONE FOR PRESIDENT. I also propose that ordinary working-class people devise means for election-proofing their lives. This means finding strategies that will enable you to live in some measure of dignity without danger to your lungs or any other body parts, no matter which werewolf gets elected in 2012.

P.S. I will have a couple of more technical posts in the next few weeks, including (hopefully) an interview.