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Colder and cloudier summers in the Pacific Northwest?

I came here for the weather. Seriously. East Coast winters (cold) and East Coast summers (Triple-H: hot hazy humid) drove me bonkers.

But global warming is making me feel a bit like Rick in Casablanca: misinformed.

Misinformed – you know, that great line where Louis asks Rick why he came to Casablanca, to which Rick replies, “for the waters.” When reminded that Casablanca is in the desert, Rick deadpans, “I was misinformed.” See the clip here:

Well, it seems global warming is going to teach all of us a lesson or two about being misinformed.

While we’re not getting that much hotter (at least not in my lifetime, it seems), extreme heat inland will cause a curious weather pattern over the ocean in our immediate vicinity: one of increased clouds and cold during our spring and summer months.

In other words, if you thought this year’s spring and summer (for the most part) have been cold and depressing, you’re absolutely right! They have.

And climatologists and weathermen have predicted it for years.

Earlier this week, KPLU, the NPR affiliate radio station in Seattle, ran this report: Seattle spring was the coldest, one of the cloudiest on record.

Listen here

Or read an extract:

Scientists have confirmed what many suspected about this year’s weather. It was the coldest spring on record for Washington and one of the cloudiest.

The average temperature for April, May and June was lower than any year since 1900, say University of Washington scientists. And the days were more cloudy than all but one year since those records began 60 years ago.

One of the weather scientists quoted is Cliff Mass, who adds, “the hotter it gets inland, the more we seem to get the sort of pattern that brings cooler air from the ocean into western Washington.” This is obviously exactly what we’re getting in British Columbia, and it seems to be happening to some extent further south as far as Northern California, too.

But get this: Cliff Mass was already telling us about this five years ago, when our spring and summers were still pretty sweet to gloat about to our Eastern brethren. Mass called it in a 2006 Seattle Times article: An even grayer Seattle from global warming?

For those harboring the guilty hope that global warming will transform Seattle into a sun lovers’ paradise on par with the Côte d’Azur, meteorologist Cliff Mass has some bad news: It might actually get cloudier.

Mass and his colleagues at the University of Washington recently completed the most detailed computer simulation ever conducted of the region’s future weather. Among the surprises was a big boost in cloud cover in March, April and May.

“The spring is going to be gunkier — if you believe this — under global warming,” he said.

Gunkier? Ohhh-kaaayyy… That’s a good way to describe it, I suppose.

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What a gunkier "spring" looked like in Victoria British Columbia

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Gunkier.

In the article, Mass also predicts more heat spikes and problems relating to the water supplies (say what?, in Cascadia, land of rain and ice-pack? …Oh, wait… Ice-melt… Ice melts away…).

In other words, global warming is actually global weirding.

Overall, I’d say this part of the globe is not a bad place to be if you don’t want to die of heat in the summer. But the gloomy and cold spring (and summer up until just a week ago) wasn’t a lot of fun, either.

My money is on keeping an eye on Mass’s work, at any rate (I really like how he thinks in other areas, too). He’s taking climate modeling seriously, and clearly getting things right, as his 2006 predictions would indicate. The key is in the details, taking local terrain into account, as the Seattle Times article explained:

Earlier forecasts relied primarily on global climate models, which give a planetary view of the way temperatures will rise as global warming continues. But those models lack any detail about the mountains and inland waters that play such an important role in local weather.

So, using a global model as a starting point, Mass fine-tuned those projections with a high-resolution regional model that can distinguish topographical features down to a scale of a few miles.

“If you’re going to play the game around here, you’ve got to have the resolution to see local terrain,” he said.

Even with the university’s enormous data-processing capacity, it took two months of continuous computer runs to simulate each decade into the future. The researchers also factored in things such as changes in soil temperature, which can affect weather.

Fascinating article, props to the Seattle Times for having published it and keeping it available online.

Meanwhile, I find myself humming a line from an old Frank Sinatra song, The Lady is a Tramp: “…she’s broke but it’s ok …hates California, it’s cold and it’s damp …that’s why the lady is a tramp…”

We can sing that up here, too.

Ecothinking and Marx

There’s a great video available on YouTube right now, A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never. Based on a 5/23 Washington Post op-ed by Bill McKibben of 350.org (and narrated and illustrated by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia), it sarcastically tells us that “It is vitally important not to make connections.”

Of course the intent is the opposite: McKibben does want us to make connections. These days, however, we’re often so bedazzled by spectacle (including disaster footage) as to feel powerless about the point of information that connects to anything else.

But if not connect now, when?

In the video we see extreme weather events, including recent tornadoes in the Midwest; wildfires in Texas and droughts in New Mexico; flooding in Mississippi, and record rainfall elsewhere. “Do not wonder if they’re somehow connected,” the narrator warns. Do not wonder…. because it’s imperative to have a passive populace, of course – one that’s transfixed by looking instead “at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising rivers as the water approaches his chest,” or similar “oh-wow”-human-interest angles.

It’s far too hard to look at facts, or to ask whether government policies (such as allowing more coal mining or exploiting Alberta’s tarsands) even begin to make sense when it comes to global welfare…

So how about some facts for the next time you get up off the couch and head to the fridge? According to The rising cost of food – get the data (published on June 7, 2011), global food prices this year are still 37% higher than they were last year. And there’s no relief in sight as “high and volatile food prices are also likely to prevail for the rest of the year, and into 2012.”

What’s driving this rise, which has propelled the food price index from 92 in January 2001 to 232.4 in May 2011? Theories abound, including ones around weather (too much and/or too little rain fall); a growing population (including a demand for meat in China); concentration of corporate control; and the use of food for biofuel.

But maybe the following angle, alluded to in The Guardian, reveals an aspect that vitally deserves to be connected to other facts and insights: As the article notes, there is a

massive influx of big investors into deregulated commodities markets – searching for a “safe bet” after the dotcom bubble burst – who speculate on the future price of food. On Sunday, a UN conference on trade and development said it may be necessary for governments to intervene with regulation to rein in rising food prices. The FAO adds that more must be done to improve transparency in global food markets. (source)

Ok, let’s take that “dot” and connect it to another approach, courtesy of Bob Burnett’s recent article, Roll Over, Karl Marx (June 10, 2011). When you start to think about climate change and weather disasters in conjunction with environmental despoliation and rising food prices, and plug some of that into a political analysis, you have to get politicized …which is probably very dangerous to our ruling class.

Ruling class? Why, what’s this? Class warfare?

Well, yes, it’s shaping up that way, isn’t it? Except, of course, for the lethargy of the key players…

Burnett summarizes Marx and marxist thought in broad strokes, from the Industrial Age to the later 20th century, when income inequality (Johnson Administration) lessened …before picking up again. By 2007, income inequality had reached a historic high. What’s up with that?

In the meantime, our more recent Great Recession has hugely exacerbated that imbalance while it’s also busily eviscerating the middle class – which of course leads to more polarization. Yet the populace remains docile, even in the face of environmental despoliation (which is causing disasters world-wide) and significant rises in the cost of living, particularly food prices.

Burnett addresses several factors Marx (who expected that any class under such pressure would revolt) could not have foreseen: multinational corporations; a corporate-controlled mainstream media that owns the airwaves and your eyeballs; a PR campaign that remade our perception of corporate strategy (convincing us that trickle-down economics actually work, for example), or that “markets are inherently self correcting and there is no need for government regulation.” Burnett notes, the “consequences were devastating to workers, the environment, and the American economy,” particularly as jobs went overseas while wages stagnated. Union power / collective bargaining rights were undermined or destroyed, and – most significantly – instead of being perturbed by this loss of real power, people became distracted with questions about fundamentalist religion and issues like abortion – both of which “ divert attention from poor wages and living conditions.”

It doesn’t help that the Democratic Party is (as Burnett puts it) “capitalism lite,” leaving the non-capitalist crowd without a champion in the political arena.

And yet we wonder why Obama has been so wishy-washy on the environment. Why we continue to rape the earth – frack it for all it’s worth, for example.

But of course, “It is vitally important not to make connections.”

You should not wonder…

You should instead continue to be distracted by “human interest” stories and ridiculous debates about religion and abortion and other matters that keep people on a slow boil, instead of directing them to fix real problems.

Above all, remember how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fuel companies…

Relevant images (links included)

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It’s expensive.

It’s expensive – whether we’re talking money or resources. There’s no “free” energy, sadly. I’m referring to the question of how we’re going to proceed on the question of nuclear power in the wake of the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan.

Earlier today I read about Iowa’s nuclear problem. Let’s talk money. From the article:

MidAmercian Energy wants to explore the possibility of constructing a nuclear power plant in Iowa. They want their utility customers to pay higher rates to pay for engineering studies necessary for the plant, which may not even get built.

Historically, when a utility wants to add new generating capacity it must build the plant and begin producing electricity before seeking to recover the costs from its customers. They can only recover costs that are reasonable and prudent.

Last year, the Iowa legislature considered cost recovery legislation that had a provision empowering the Public Utility Board to require competitive bidding for new electricity resources. Under that approach, only if nuclear is cheaper can the project proceed, but MidAmerican knows nuclear is much more costly than efficiency, natural gas or wind, so this year’s bill drops that language.

We argued against this measure last year. This year’s measure is worse.

The shareholders, the ones that will benefit from increased profits, should take on the risks and expenses related to this project, not the captive customers.

It seems unreasonable to argue with the Daily Sentinel’s reasonable argument. But you can bet that there will be plenty of argument and shifting around of responsibility, because nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive to build.

Forget about the problem of radiation leakage in the event of an accident. Just on the basis of expenditure, maintenance, and upkeep, nuclear has a huge financial drawback.

Take a look at Do We Really Need Nuclear Power? (subtitled “After Japan, everyone’s asking the question—and the answer is more complicated than you think”) by Bradford Plumer.

The pro-nuclear power argument, as rhetorically laid out by Plumer, goes something like this:

…nuclear power carries some risks, but those aren’t nearly as great as the risks of burning coal, cooking the planet, and sending all sorts of deadly pollutants into the air. Air pollution kills two million people per year and much of that is due to fossil-fuel combustion. The right answer is to learn from Japan’s mistakes and improve nuclear safety. (It’s also worth noting that the next generation of reactors are supposed to be even safer.) No energy source is risk-free, and nuclear is one of our best bets. Right?

That’s compelling – if you count up deaths, then you might conclude that nuclear is safer. Surely, it’s not killing 2 million people annually.

But as Plumer goes on to illustrate, the financial calculations are a different matter. The US, for example, gets 20% of its energy needs from nuclear and has 104 plants. (I did not know this; it’s a substantial number of nuclear plants and a substantial percentage of power.) What’s standing in the way of nuclear power plant expansion isn’t “the fear of fiasco” via melt-downs. It’s cost:

New nuclear plants go for at least $10 billion a pop—and that’s before cost overruns inevitably set in (as has happened with a much-hyped new reactor in Finland). Building intricate concrete and steel structures that can withstand all manner of disaster is a costly enterprise. According to a 2009 MIT study, “The Future of Nuclear Power,” getting electricity from nuclear costs about 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with 6.2 cents for coal and 6.5 cents for natural gas. Other industry analysts have suggested that the MIT study is too optimistic, and that power from new nuclear plants could cost twice as much. (source)

Now you can see why MidAmerican Energy wants to stiff the customers for building a new plant. They probably can’t afford to do it on their own. Additionally, as Plumer notes, private companies like MidAmerican Energy might now realize that post-disaster remediation can really bite. Even Three-Mile Island cost $1billion and 14 years to clean up (1998 figures?). Plumer refers to a 2007 report by Charles Ferguson of the Council on Foreign Relations, and then observes: “all of the 104 reactors currently operating in the United States will likely need to be decommissioned by mid-century. Replacing those reactors (so simply preserving the status quo) would mean building a new reactor every four or five months for 50 years.”

Did I mention that they cost $10 billion each?

Read the whole article – it covers a lot more than the cost of nuclear power plants, and goes into a lot of detail about the feasibility of getting energy from renewables. But the bottom line? There’s no magic bullet.

Note: clicking on the illustration takes you to CNN Money article on Aging Nuclear Power Plants in the US.

Despoliation of the environment, high finance, mountain top removal

Two articles that need your attention: one, in the Wall Street Journal, Trader Holds $3 Billion of Copper in London, which describes how some trader is sitting on 80-90% of circa 50% of the world’s exchange-registered copper stockpile, squirreled away in a London warehouse. We don’t think a lot about where those metals come from.

Which brings me to the second article, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Obama-Effekt erreicht Bergbau und Banken. The article looks at the involvement of Swiss banks in financing companies like Massey Energy – companies engaged in environmental despoliation of a scale that’s hard to imagine. It’s called “mountain top removal”…

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Watch iLoveMountains‘ video, above. Check out their website.

This is where (and how) we get our resources.

There’s got to be a better way.

Below, image of a landscape wrecked by copper mining, via Wall Street Journal article:

Green Design as Art

Last Friday, I stopped in at Exploring the Aesthetics of Sustainability | Green Design as Art, a small (but interesting!) weekend exhibit at the newly-completed Atrium Building in downtown Victoria. The developer (Victoria-based Jawl Properties) made an unfinished/ raw ground-floor retail space available to the the organizers – props to the Jawls for their civic-minded generosity.

(For some beautiful photographs of this building, especially its eoponymous interior, the atrium, see Lotus Johnson’s Atrium set on Flickr. Her photos are stunning – I particularly love the interior shots, for example, this one…)

On Picasa, I created an album of photos I took at the Green Design as Art event, which was organized by Cascadia Green Building Council’s Emerging Green Builders – Victoria. Wherever there’s a photo of an object, followed by a photo of an information sheet pasted to cardboard, the latter is the wall post that describes the object.

My favorite objects were Gary Streight’s “automans”: two stools made from recycled tires and other materials. The fluffy-topped one was cheekily feminine, yet oh-so-tough; and the elegant brown tailored number could fit into the most soigné of setting. Loved them both.

Below: photo of the show’s producers:

<—  Cascadia Green Building Council’s Emerging Green Builders organizers Dave, Tim, and Melissa pose for the cameras.

Do green and make green

There are times, I think, when having a tumblr (vs a blog) would be cool – then it would be enough just to post, free-standing, the smack-down that Peter Busby (“one of Canada’s leaders in green architecture”) gives Bob Rennie (“the influential Vancouver condo marketer who is the last say for many developers on what will sell”).

In this conversation recorded by Frances Bula, Busby and Rennie have just started talking about Victoria BC’s Dockside Green:

Mr. Busby: It [Dockside Green] did not make money because it was priced competitively against non-green product. Dockside was competing against buildings that weren’t trying to do anything in terms of green, so [the developer] didn’t get much of a premium in the marketplace for his green features. And that came out of his profit. And that’s why the project’s dead right now. And that’s why we have to have improved building codes. They must pay for a better envelope. Everything else is greenwash. If you don’t make a better building that performs better, you’re just putting green fuzz on buildings. (source)

I’m not heartened by reading Busby’s assessment of Dockside Green (that it’s “dead”), but he is so right to talk frankly to the marketer. I’ve been to developer luncheons – where there actually were developers who did real green projects – and their marketers (whom I spoke to as well) couldn’t get the facts, or push them into the marketplace. And I have no doubt that by the same token there are plenty of developers who continue to convince the moneybags and the marketers that it’s not possible to do green and make green.

I’d like to start something in the space between their arguments – work on retrofitting existing housing, for example. So much work needs doing there.

In case that Globe and Mail article link goes dead, here’s one to CTV News, which carries the same interview/ text.

n.b.: I do appreciate Bob Rennie’s last (literally) word:

Mr. Rennie: I’ll be there. But we can’t just tell the consumer to pay more. This has to work for them and, if it doesn’t, they aren’t going to buy it. They’ll move somewhere else, out of Vancouver. And, in the end, that’s what we have to look at, not just what rich people in the city are willing to pay for.

He gets it from the marketing p.o.v.: it’s no good if what you’re doing drives people away. Getting more people into your city is actually a good thing (something that too many people in Victoria absolutely do NOT get, sadly).

On re-reading Biophilic Design: Taking Love to the Street

Since I’m fuming in a conversation over on Facebook about the City of Victoria’s Department of Engineering (which seems to me benighted), I was reminded of my 2007 article, Biophilic Design: Taking Love to the Street (the link goes to the Scribd version).

Not to sound too much like I’m tooting my own horn, but that was such a good article, and such a great idea – and it was instantly shot down in a committee meeting of council without so much as a second thought by then-Director of Engineering Peter Sparanese, who told Councilor Pamela Madoff that the scheme floated by me in the above-linked article would be too expensive: as far as anyone could tell, he quoted a $12million price tag seemingly on the spot – amazing, how quickly that particular variation of a Class-C estimate materialized…

In the Director of Engineering’s mind, it was seemingly more expedient to build yet another paved road, …and that’s exactly what happened. And how did the Director get his way? By conjuring a figure that was 3 times more expensive ($12million) than what his conventional fix would cost ($4million). No one ever questioned him on how he came up with his numbers, and from what I’ve seen he has been given free rein ever since: “…Coun. Helen Hughes pointed out the last time the council looked at the project [to fix the View and Vancouver Street intersection] the cost was estimated at $1.55 million, less than half the $4,080,000 of the latest estimate.” (source) and let’s not forget how mercurial the Department of Engineering’s financial estimates regarding the Johnson Street Bridge refurbishment and/or replacement have been…

That this city has no imagination is something I’ve suspected ever since, and my suspicions have been proven again and again in every twist and turn regarding the Johnson Street Bridge fracas – where the only imagination shown is in quoting increasingly bizarre budgets for either option.

For the record, here’s my August 2007 article in full:

“Biophilic Design: Taking Love to the Street”

We know that regular exposure to nature is good for us, and yet we perfect designs that keep nature out, sometimes even erase our awareness of it. Protected from nature, we control and limit our exposure – we stay warm in winter, cool in summer, which affords us greater productivity and increases our comfort. Like most people, I’m happy to enjoy central heating and storm windows. But an over-armored life isn’t ideal, either. Think of dinosaurs or giant turtles next time your car has you imprisoned in a traffic jam or your office window won’t open because that would disturb the air-conditioning.

Today’s eco-conscious designers point out that excessive barriers to nature produce lowered quality of life as well as boring, mediocre built environments. But designing with nature, they argue, contributes to health, creates excitement, and even fosters love. Love of nature, termed biophilia by E.O. Wilson, refers to a deep-rooted need “to experience natural habitats and species.” Wilson’s colleague Stephen Kellert writes of biophilic design: a conscious bent to design access to nature into what we build in cities. It’s a mandate that can shape buildings, parks, …and streets.

Earlier this spring, the City asked for the public’s input at several Parks Masterplan workshops. Planners wanted to know how we use parks, and where we might create new ones. During one workshop, there was an electric moment when a participant suggested turning part of View Street into a linear park. She noted that traffic volume on Fort and Yates (both one-way arterials) is heavy, while it’s relatively light on View. While still allowing cars, the city could nonetheless create a linear park – which would function as a badly needed beautification project, too – and, she added, let’s incorporate exercise stations for seniors.

View crosses Vancouver Street, already blessed with an unparalleled canopy bestowed by majestic chestnut trees whose massive trunks suggest outdoor sculpture. Under the trees, wide grassy boulevards suggest to the many pedestrian commuters that here, indeed, is an urban park – or should be. The intersection of View and Vancouver is sinking, however, and presents a major engineering conundrum. But this problem could become an opportunity.

As we know from Jennifer Sutherst’s research (“Lost Streams of Victoria,” map, 2003), that intersection is built on what was a wetland fed by seasonal streams and rainwater run-off. The wetland in turn fed a stream that coursed along Pandora (accounting for Pandora’s odd bend, between Douglas and Government): the stream marked the boundary between Chinatown and “white” Victoria. It was treated badly even in the 19th-century (apparently turned into an open sewer), was soon contained, put underground, paved over. Its remnants still drain into the Inner Harbour.

Sutherst’s map shows the wetland directly at View and Vancouver. Today, its asphalted surface is impermeable, while drainage codes mandate that run-off from roads and neighbouring buildings diverts to storm sewers, versus flowing back into the marsh. Consequently, the now-hidden wetland is drying up, and as it dries, its layers of peat shrink and compress, causing the roadbed to sinks. To “fix” that problem, we’ve in-filled additional layers of asphalt, making the surface even heavier – and contributing to increased compression of the underlying stratum.

It’s in many ways a classic vicious circle, and a lesson in living peaceably with micro-ecosystems. In effect, by building yet another protective barrier between nature (the wetland) and us, we have also paralyzed the wetland’s hydrological functioning. If the land were a body, what would the wetland be? Perhaps kidneys, absorbing fluid, treating it, discharging it. By putting impermeable asphalt over that natural organ, we’ve desiccated it, and now it’ll cost a pretty penny in engineering surgery.

Since we have to throw money at it anyway, what if we did something truly innovative to that diseased organ? What if we practiced biophilic design to restore its ecological function – and gained a unique urban focal point in what could be a fabulous linear park project? Imagine, for example, an intersection with a permeable steel-grid “road-bed” suspended slightly over a daylighted wetland, the latter slowly restored to full hydrologic function. In the restoration field, daylighting typically refers to excavating and restoring a stream channel from an underground culvert, covering, or pipe. In the case of the View/Vancouver wetland, it would more appropriately refer to removing an impermeable surface, and planting appropriate vegetation that allows the wetland to resume its normal function as a water filter. Restored urban ecology also provides both an educational tool for stewardship and an aesthetic community amenity.

The art-technology-engineering challenge lies in marrying restoration with normal urban functioning: traffic (automotive and pedestrian) has to flow. But consider the value that could accrue for Victoria with a project like this. If Dockside Green, locally the symbolic heart for sustainable development, attracts worldwide attention, perhaps a brilliantly restored kidney could turn a few heads, too.

What about widgets?

I go to my local YMCA a lot, and every time I’m there I think about energy use: how much energy I could be generating, how much I’m using, how much others are using.

My “plus” membership entitles me to use the sauna and steam room, and I get towel service, too (yes! – love that, because it means less shlepping and less laundry at home!). I use the steam room regularly – since we’re having an unseasonably cool summer it’s welcome, even in July. However, the ladies change room has poor air circulation, and in the summer (even a cool one like this) it gets hot in there. Furthermore, every time we users open the doors to the steam room or the sauna, the escaping hot air contributes to heating the changing and shower area, and the upshot is that the Y is running additional oscillating fans in our change room.

So, to recap: the steam room uses energy, the sauna uses energy, the blow dryers provided by the Y use energy, and now the fans – meant to give the illusion of cooling all this heat that we’re producing through our energy use, also use energy.

Meanwhile, when I’m upstairs on the elliptical trainer – along with scores of others on treadmills, stationary bikes, stairmasters, and rowing machines (it’s a pretty swell facility!) – I could be generating energy, couldn’t I?

Which brings me to…

Widgets

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I’m in love with shiny new technology products (even if I can’t afford them), and long ago drank the Kool-Aid regarding social media platforms and the importance of ‘markets as conversations.’

But lately those things have begun feeling “bubbly” – that is, not too-too solid enough. Today, the spouse sent along an article by Andy Grove, How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late. In my mind, Grove’s arguments tie in with Jeff Rubin‘s criticism of globalization, and they also relate to what bothers me when I’m at the Y thinking about energy use.

It’s all about what we’re making (another social media platform that lets us communicate?) and where we’re making it (if it’s not another Foursquare, is it a widget and who will scale it?). As Grove observes:

Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.

The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

When I think of energy use at the Y, I’m thinking not of platforms that let me tell you what I think about energy use at the Y. I’m thinking of widgets that would make it easy to measure energy use, for example, so that it becomes less risky for individual users (home owners or building managers) to install efficiencies. The next step – staying with Andy Grove’s call to arms – means thinking about what happens after some tinkerer in a garage invents a measuring device. Where does it get manufactured, and who gets to be employed doing so? Jeff Rubin argued that the cost of oil will eventually force countries like the US to re-introduce manufacturing at home because it will just get too expensive to ship raw materials from one continent to another, and the finished product to yet a third.

While I sweat in the steam room, I might think about what it would mean to have efficient “air curtains” installed just outside the steam room and sauna doors – air curtains that capture the escaping heat when doors open, and recirculate that heat for hot water use. But how or why would anyone install such a thing – even if it readily existed, although you could adapt and reverse engineer the air curtains that some stores use – without having widgets or gadgets capable of calculating, predicting, and (most importantly) measuring, to provide immediate feedback to calibrate energy use? If you don’t have the feedback (measurement), it’s just …hot air!

As I blogged a while back in Creating Value Through Sustainability, Eric Hespenheide said it best: “You measure what matters, and what gets measured, gets done.”

We’re desperately ignorant most of the time of our energy use, if we bother to think about it at all. I’m pretty sure I’m a weirdo in taking three consecutive Bikram yoga classes and then stopping because I thought the energy footprint of that type of yoga is outrageous. (And I also thought the hot room was a gimmick.) Doing hot yoga, you need to be clean (showered) before you start (hot water, towels, soap) because even incipient bad BO is going to knock out the others as you start to sweat like mad. After the class, you need to launder whatever you wore (no way you’re wearing it again unwashed) and you need to shower again (more soap products, more hot water, more towels/ laundry). The amount of energy needed to heat the yoga room to the required temperature is crazy, as are the HVAC requirements (unless you very quickly want a moldy building). (And incidentally, where do the Bikramites and others get off doing competitive yoga? Maybe I’m missing something…)

But enough of yoga and sports.

We need to measure what we use. “You measure what matters, and what gets measured, gets done.” To do that, you need tools.

Who’s building the tools? On a big scale?

Manufacturing today takes place elsewhere, not in North America. Grove again:

The job-machine breakdown isn’t just in computers. Consider alternative energy, an emerging industry where there is plenty of innovation. Photovoltaics, for example, are a U.S. invention. Their use in home-energy applications was also pioneered by the U.S.

Last year, I decided to do my bit for energy conservation and set out to equip my house with solar power. My wife and I talked with four local solar firms. As part of our due diligence, I checked where they get their photovoltaic panels — the key part of the system. All the panels they use come from China. A Silicon Valley company sells equipment used to manufacture photo-active films. They ship close to 10 times more machines to China than to manufacturers in the U.S., and this gap is growing. Not surprisingly, U.S. employment in the making of photovoltaic films and panels is perhaps 10,000 — just a few percent of estimated worldwide employment. (source)

I bet any tinkerer in his/ her garage working out the kind of measuring widgets I’d like to see every homeowner and building supervisor have at his/ her fingertips is going to end up getting the widgets manufactured in China, too. Just read Grove’s section on Advanced Batteries to see where we’re heading. He argues that “abandoning today’s ‘commodity’ [battery, or television] manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.” That is, innovation needs an ecosystem – and we’ve got a pretty good one on the social media platform front, but it could be looking better when it comes to widgets. If you drop in on your local gym, you can even see that for yourself.

Tree amenity

I spent the past week in Boston and noticed that most streets – whether in Boston, Brookline, or Cambridge (the three municipalities I spent time in) – were either relatively tree-less or had undersized trees.

While there are many streets that have some trees, and while there are some neighborhoods that approach leafy-ness, I’ll go out on a limb <…pun> and say that for the most part, the trees are puny or even absent.

Take one of my old haunts, Coolidge Corner, for example, which is mostly built-up with lots of low-rise apartment blocks and is filled with pedestrians going about their business. Its main streets are wide (too wide) and poorly furnished with trees. The few tiny street trees are no match in scale for the road widths, nor does their minuscule canopy provide shade. Lack of tree cover is especially noticeable on very hot days that leave pedestrians fully exposed to the sun. There are lots of cars (and also the Green Line, C train) on those wide roads, however, and it’s clear that in the overall scheme of things vehicular traffic has priority over pedestrian traffic.

One way you can really tell that cars have priority is by the absence of public amenities for pedestrians – and let’s remember that everyone who gets off the T becomes a pedestrian. This means that if a city is interested in getting people out of cars and into public transit, it’s really important to think about the pedestrian experience. Transit doesn’t end until you reach your destination – which invariably involves some walking.

Large boulevard trees are a public amenity that most benefits life at three to four miles per hour – that is, easy to moderate walking speed.

It’s easy to understand destination amenities that are either essentially private (neighborhoods well-provisioned with coffee shops, restaurants, banks, grocery stores, etc.) or public-but-nodal (a destination like a library or community center, for example – edit: see also a PS in my response in comments, below ). But streets rich in boulevard trees comprising a continuous – and contiguous – exposure to nature provide a public amenity that makes density enjoyable in passing – that is, not just as “destination.” This strikes me as an important amenity in low-rise areas that nonetheless have significant density.

In downtown CBDs characterized by “canyons” (high-rise buildings), a pocket park can provide a sufficient amenity. But in low-rise neighborhoods (like the ones I’m pointing to here), lollipop-sized trees planted along roads that obviously favor cars come across as a half-hearted attempt.

I wonder whether the lack of tree cover provided by large boulevard trees in Boston (and nearby municipalities) is planned. Trees cost money to plant, maintain, and replace; they require clean-up (leaf and branch pick up); the leaves clog storm drains, the limbs grow to interfere with overhead power lines, the roots get into storm and sewer lines and other underground utilities; and they raise liability issues when storms bring down branches. But their benefits are huge – if those benefits are ignored, it’s because they just haven’t been quantified. And that’s too bad.