Our energy is overwhelmingly electrical energy with the vast majority of it being produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The fuels are primarily coal, oil and natural gas. Oh, there is certainly hydro-power (dams) and nuclear but these are a small minority.
With the increased demand for more energy and less carbon emissions new methods of generating the same energy are being developed and old ones brought back into use.

Clean electricity production from hydro-power has been around for many decades. In fact, it has reached the point that there are very few rivers left to dam. The same rivers that produce power are also used for irrigation, industry and residential needs. Not much chance for improvement there.
Nuclear power with all its early promise has been in disfavor in the US for years because of the toxic nature of its waste and the threat of a ˜Three Mile Island” or ˜Chernobyl” incident in your backyard.

We are familiar with fossil fuel generating plants’ production of the greenhouse gas CO2 and all the negative press it receives. Some of the old ways that are new to some people are both passive and active systems.

Passive includes putting in insulation with a higher R rating, using thick drapes to cover windows and insulating blankets on water heaters. Installing compact fluorescent light bulbs to reduce power use has become very popular.

Active systems like solar panels were once very expensive and didn’t generate much energy given the cost of a system. New generations of active solar panels are being developed that increase the power yield by 50% and cut their cost in half.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/CLM07617092007-1.htm

Wind generated energy is increasing world-wide. There are windmill farms with generators that have blades 85 feet long. Some of these farms are sited in the nearshore of oceans as well as windy land areas. http://www.capewind.org/
We all know that wind farms have been around for awhile now but the technology inside the turbines has been improved to generated greater power.

There are some things on the cutting of research edge that sound like they are right out of a science fiction novel. A researcher has been able to ˜burn” seawater with radio waves.

The energy from the radio waves forces the water molecules apart, forming oxygen and hydrogen which ,when ignited, burns at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This was not part of his initial research. He was working on a new method for curing cancer. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm

With global warming’s promise of a new world that most of us aren’t ready for and with our planet’s not so unlimited resources, we will all have to find both new and old ways for dealing with “Our Changing Times”.

Think Global – Act Local!

It has long been felt by historians that the day mankind went from hunt to farming was the day that our species started on its long journey to civilization. It’s on the back of farming that we have prospered. Allowing us to reach from one pole to the other and play golf on the moon.

The explosion of invention, art and literature that lead to this had its roots in the warming cycle called the ˜Medieval Warm Period” from 900 to 1300 AD. During this period the average temperature increased allowing the expansion of agriculture into the northern reaches of Europe and Asia. Grapes were grown in southern England and wheat in Scandinavia and Greenland. With a decrease in the sea ice in the northern latitudes exploration into the western hemisphiere was expanded.

With the increase in the food supply Europe’s population grew by a factor of three hundred percent during this time.

The extra calories weren’t just put into making more people but the construction of great cathedral cities, bridges and public works projects. Commerce with all parts of the near and middle east increased. This lasted until the early middle ages – around 1400 when the climate began to cool off.

The first thing that happened was crop failures. Grapes wouldn’t grow in England – with the frost and snow. Wheat crops rotted in the fields or the north or gave such a poor harvest there wasn’t enough to save for next year’s seed.

In modern western society we take our food supply for granted. One look at the obesity statistics for the United States will tell you that there is more than enough to go around.

We are already starting to look at shortfalls of grain products on world markets. Canada, which is the world’s second largest wheat producer, is looking at a harvest that is its smallest in five years. Europe’s harvest looks to be down 40% this year due to floods and droughts.

Looking at wheat production on a global scale it makes up 20% of the food eaten. World-wide inventories are expected to be at their lowest in 26 years.
Developing countries which don’t produce enough wheat to feed their people are looking at the shortfall as a national security issue because they’ll have to find a way to pay for it.

Since global warming affects areas producing other types of grain it’s starting to become scary. China forecasts losing 5 to 10% of its grain harvest by 2030. India has indicated that if global warming continues it will lose over 50% of its grain crops.

People in India and China will have no where to move to plant their crops. They make up over one third of the planet’s population and their people are some of the poorest on earth.

In the U.S. farmers are paid not to planet crops for fear that a large surplus will drive the price so low that it will put them and the food processors out of business.

United Nation’s agricultural scientists are saying that while in North America more land will become available in the northern latitudes of Canada the soil is not as rich as that further south so the yields will be lower.

Researchers are using advanced methods way beyond crossbreeding to assess ways to avoid a looming planetary food disaster including gene splicing, ocean culture and hydroponics.

It is a little difficult to see the threat of future crop failures for most of us. But, it will be obvious in the coming years. Every year over half the world’s population lives, or not, based on whether there is a normal harvest.

Think Global – Act Local!

For as long as most of us can remember electronics has been a part of our lives. I was trained as an electronics technician in the mid-sixties on vacuum tube equipment. In my last year transistors and the first integrated circuits were introduced.

As you might think anything electronic uses electricity from one source or another. We are used to plugging our gear into the wall socket and not even thinking about it. If we are camping or in a boat our electronics will most often be battery powered.

In days of yore the cells were zinc batteries that leaked if they were left in the device for too long and managed to ruin what ever they were running. As time has gone on alkaline, lithium and Nimh were developed, to name few. While these new batteries lasted longer and were smaller they still had to be replaced often and at a continuing cost to the consumer.

As the cost of materials to make batteries increased innovative companies began to look into ways of decreasing or eliminating batteries.

In the last few years, with the threat of global warming on everyone’s mind, there has been even greater incentive to reduce our battery usage.

A common problem many people have these days is that their cell phone battery runs down and they have no way to charge it. Our friends ˜across the pond” have come up with a solar powered cell phone battery charger http://www.freeplayenergy.com/products.html.

This charger will also run and charge just about anything else we use.

Did you know why a flashlight was given that particular name? When the first batteries were used in these lights they were so bad that the light could only be turned on for a few seconds at a time to avoid running the battery down. From a distance, the light seemed to flash on and off “ thus it was called a flashlight.”

It was been the same story for the flashlight battery over the years until recently. A technology has been developed that allows a user to turn a hand crank a few times and charge battery for hours of operations. LED bulbs are used in combination with a battery for 1600 hours of use per battery at a minimum.

This hand crank technology has been applied to many other battery-powered devices like various types of radios, lights and generators.

Follow these links to learn more.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/24/energy.survival/index.html#cnnSTCText
On a sunny day you won’t need any fuel or batteries to cook your hotdog according to the following link.
http://www.solarcooking.org/

Changes in the way we use batteries will not stop global warming but it will help to stop slow it down by not adding more carbon to the atmosphere when we make batteries.

Think Global – Act Local!

If we wanted something we drove to the mall and looked around. There was always the Sears catalog and later a host of others that we could use to mail order.
Whether we know it or not all of these ways of doing our business used up a lot of fossil fuel. Mail order is a good example. Trees have to be cut and then processed into paper. The catalogs have to be printed, transported, mailed out and delivered. Our order forms are picked up and transported with the products being returned by the same means.

Communication using the Internet has started to eliminate but the last delivery step. People no longer have to drive an hour to the mega-mall or the big-box store to hunt around for the one thing that they need. We can signup for email advertisements from our favorite retail stores and stop them when we no longer want them. Nationwide and global searches can be easily done to find the least expensive price for the item we want.

A place like www.Ebay.com, which is basically the world’s biggest yard sale, is open to anyone who wants to sell or buy nearly anything. In the scenario just mentioned the vast majority of the carbon produced is in the final transportation of the item. This method relays completely on communication.

Cell phones have done the same thing as the Internet only in a different way. Our activities both personal and business are coordinated in a timely if not immediate manner. As an example, we don’t have to drive somewhere only to find that the store is closed or that the person we wanted to talk to is not there. That flat tire on a dark country road is only a nuisance not a scary five-mile walk to a phone.

While changes in the way we communicate have not done away with catalogs or newspapers, they have been significantly impacted. The death of the printed media has been predicted in the next ten to twenty years – we’ll see.

These changes are and will result in a reduction in our carbon footprint and help to reduce the impact of global warming.

Think Global – Act Local!

Another way people are adapting to global climate change is by starting to give up on centralization. Centralization seems to be basic to the way people think. People seem to want to focus on one site or area for almost of their needs and wants.

One stop shopping is something we have grown to love.

Business likes it as well because it is less expensive to haul everything to one site than it is to ship products to half a dozen or more locations.
This focus on one site and minimization of costs had one tacit assumption – the cost of transporting all these goods would not increase rapidly and have a hidden cost. The hidden cost is increased global warming due to the release of CO2 in the transportation of products and getting the consumer to their stores. The majority of the CO2 emissions are from the consumers not the transportation of the goods.

Small and medium sizes American businesses are starting to see the wisdom in having numerous local sites for the production, sale and distribution of their products. Their customers are also starting to be increasingly unwilling to drive their cars ten or 20 miles to pickup a loaf of bread or a box of nails.

It is starting to be easier to have numerous satellite stores, around a main sub-regional warehouse / mega-store, which stock all the common items that households in the local areas buy most often.

In Europe, they have been using a similar system for centuries. In their cities, which are concentrated for sure, you don’t have to walk more than a block or so to find a bakery, drug store, grocery or butcher shop. It is based around availability, ease of use and cost minimization. People don’t want to buy and use a car just to take care of their basic daily requirements.

In this time of global warming the European system can be viewed a model for reducing fossil fuel use and easing costs associated with shopping to the consumer and businesses. One of several U.S. cities where this idea is catching on is Portland, Oregon.

While this distributed system may seem very workable it will take a serious shift in how Americans think about shopping and living in a world of global warming for it to fully develop.

Looking at how we eat, most of us take the wide variety of food available in the supermarkets as normal. These products, whether they are fresh, frozen or canned are not produced locally. Most of them for that matter come from hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

The fossil fuel cost of transporting all these products is increasing as the price of fuel goes up. Not to mention that the farther you move something more green house gases are produced.

In response to these issues people have started to change the way they eat. Restaurants opening all over the country restaurants are only using locally produced food products. These include not only vegetables but cheeses, chicken and beef as well. We may think it’s something that only happens in the third world but it’s taking place all over our country.

Local farmers are responding to this change by producing and selling more regional produce and gearing up to produce meat. This is taking place in all areas of the nation. There’s a book out called ‘The year of eating locally’. The book shares a solid year of experiences a woman and her family encountered by only eating food that was produced within 100 miles of their home. This may seem a bit extreme for most people’s way of thinking but it’ll be coming main stream as global warming heats up and the price of fuel increases.

If you need more reasons to eat locally, check out this web site where you’ll find some interesting links, http://fogcity.blogs.com/jen/2005/08/10_reasons_to_e.html. Ok, I’ll give you another reason – ‘It tastes better’.

THINK GLOBAL – ACT LOCAL!

Historically, we think of streets as a place for our family sedan or soccer-mom mobiles. Secondarily we seem to think about them as a way to move our goods and provide the services we need for the community and ourselves.

What few of us think about is that streets are something that people walk on, along and over plus use bicycles in the same ways. This is changing in a major way not only along the cities of the Gulf Coast but nationwide. The influx of foreign labor has brought this home to most of us. We see these workers walking and biking everywhere. In some cases it is running because rather than walk a half-mile out of their way to cross a road at a crossing light they will risk dashing across. Not exactly what one would call a walking friendly or even walking safe city.

With people looking for any way to save money by not driving, an increasing senior population exercising by walking and to help out with global warming our roads are going to get more crowded and not with just vehicles.
In response to these changes, at first, concerned citizens then local and state governments began to get organized to do something about it.

The movement to integrate pedestrian and bicycle traffic into the mainstream has gone by various names including road diet, calm city and narrow roads. It seems to have settled on ˜Complete Streets”. Complete Streets seeks to integrate vehicular traffic with walking and bicycling. The following link will take you to their web site where you can learn more on how this works http://www.completestreets.org.

Many cities and states are looking at this method of getting differing modes of transportation to work together in a very favorable light include Tennessee, Virginia, South and North Carolina, Kentucky and Florida.

One thing they warn about is overlaying this integrated transportation system on existing highways that aren’t able to handle it. This could create more problems than it solves – new roads, or highways that are being widened, at prime candidates for this type of traffic integration.

Also, doubling up is not a good idea. This is making a lane of traffic such that both walkers and bicyclists use it at the same time. You are asking for accidents because people don’t seem to know that you bike with traffic and walk against it.

Think Global – Act Local!

It has been three years since hurricane Ivan started the process of kicking some sense into coastal residents and Katrina finished it. Now, the nation seems to have finally gotten the message. Hurricanes happen and will continue to impact our coastal areas. To continue living and building like we have will only lead to future personal and business losses.

Like living things institutions have responded. In order to survive insurance companies have to continue to remain profitable to their stockholders. As a response to hurricane damage claims they have raised their homeowner rates along the coasts greatly. Entire areas were dropped because they offered too great a future risk to the profitability of the company(s).

This has in turn made coastal property somewhat less desirable than it was before the recent unpleasantness of hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. The home building industry is starting to offer module home as one answer to hurricane damage prevention. These homes are built in sections and then transported to the construction site. Some are rated to withstand 120 mph winds.

The following links will take you a couple of sites that have a lot of information on adaptive housing.

http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/DAC-ART/modular-kit-houses.html

http://www.mfghome.org/mc/lib/showtemp_detail.asp?id=66&cat=whats_hot

Banks and other lending organizations are finding it is not in their or the home owners’ best interest to offer so called ˜creative financing” when it comes to home loans. This is becoming especially true in hurricane prone areas of our country. In light of the sub prime loan crisis these institutions are seeing that this adaptation is a method to enhance their survival and help avert future losses.

Colleges are finding ways to adapt to the thousands of displaced students from New Orleans. Online courses and college credit transfers are being implemented. Not only does this allow students to continue their education but also it keeps the money following to the colleges and their full time enrollment level up.

The analogy of institutions as living organisms is a fair one and if thought about makes them more predictable. This predictability makes it easier for us to adapt as these large powerful ˜creatures” try to enhance their survival.

Think Global – Act Local!