2008 El Segundo Bike To Work Challenge Results

The results are in and here's an excerpt from the press release.

The final total cycle commuters this year were: 416. The total includes Los Angeles World Airport's Westside Welcome Station/Pitstop at World Way West, Equity Office's Welcome Station/Pitstop at the Howard Hughes Center, and Playa Vista & Electronic Art's Welcome Station/Pitstop at Playa Vista. The breakdown was as follows:

1. Los Angeles Air Force Base (Military/Civilian) 81
2. The Aerospace Corporation 78
3. Raytheon 63
4. Boeing 55
5. Northrop-Grumman 38
6. Equity Office / Howard Hughes Center 31
7. Los Angeles World Airports 25
8. Electronic Arts 20
9. DirecTV 14
10. Playa Vista 5
11. Federal Express 2
12. ESMS 1
13. Linquest - TSAT 1
14. Mitre 1
15. Scitor 1

Last year's total cycle commuters were: 309. The breakdown was as follows:
1. The Aerospace Corporation 68
2. Los Angeles Air Force Base (Military/Civilian) 56
3. Raytheon 48
4. Boeing 39
5. Northrop-Grumman 25
6. Los Angeles World Airports 24
7. Electronic Arts 20
8. Carr America / Howard Hughes Center 19
9. DirecTV 7
10. Federal Express 1
11. Mitre 1
12. Scitor 1

A big THANKS to Aerospace, Boeing, Electronic Arts, Equity Office / Howard Hughes Center, DirecTV, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Los Angeles World Airports, Northrop-Grumman, Playa Vista, and Raytheon for donating the awesome giveaways!!!

Even though we lost, it was great to see a 25% year to year increase in bicycle commuters. Note also that LAAFB has 7000 employees and we have about a third as many. They beat us in raw numbers, but we have a higher percentage of bicycle commuters. We were saddened to see that ES major employer, Mattel, chose again not to participate.

See you at the bike fair tomorrow and at the MTA Green Line Nash Station on Thursday morning!

El Segundo Bike to Work Week Events

Media coverage of Bike-To-Work Week events in the South Bay has been sketchy again. Last year, I posted a schedule of Bike-To-Work Week events for 2007. Here's some info for Bike-To-Work Week 2008 in the El Segundo Employment Center area.

The 8th Annual El Segundo Bike-To-Work Challenge will be held from 6 to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 13, in The Aerospace Corporation's Visitor Lot/Gate C located on Douglas Street, just south of El Segundo Boulevard. Many of El Segundo's employers will be competing for bragging rights (and a trophy) to see who can bring in the most bicycle commuters. Free continental breakfast, t-shirts and goodie bags^* will be provided.

There will be a bicycle and commuting expo outside the cafeteria at The Aerospace Corporation at lunchtime on Wednesday, May 14. MTA, AAA, commuter services and bike club members will be on hand to help you find a commute route using public transit, carpool/vanpool or bicycle. Several area bicycle shops will also be present with special deals for Bike to Work Week.

MTA is sponsoring a Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 15, 2008. Check their website for more details. South Bay Pit Stops at:

1. Aviation Station Metro Green Line
2. El Segundo Station Metro Green Line
3. Torrance City Hall 3031 Torrance Bl, Torrance

* I have written before about how much I hate goodie bags, but this one actually contains good stuff. Last year, they gave out LED lights for commuting after dark!

Bicycle commuting in the news links:

• Riding a bike to work is more than a healthy commute: It's a sign of adulthood via the LA Times
• Bike to work next week and win a folding bike via Emerald City Blog
• Catching Up results from the 2007 El Segundo Bike-To-Work Challenge

Maybe you are looking for a good used bike to use for bicycle commuting? You are in luck. As part of my stuff diet, I am selling two (out of 3.5) of my bicycles. Email me through my profile page for more info.

Obligatory Earth Day Post

The Beach Cities Health District installed vegetable gardens at area schools, complete with drip irrigation, organic soil and fertilizer. Each classroom takes care of a raised bed of vegetables. Today, Earth Day, the kids began to harvest the fruits of their labor.

Free-range tomatoes! (Look ma, no cage!)

Organic strawberries.

Look at the size of these radishes.

Thanks to Janel Bagby from Beach Cities Health District and parent volunteer, Kim Dunn. (Parent volunteer, Lisa, and another BCHD employee did not arrive in time for the picture.)

Iris came home talking about how spinach is the most nutritious vegetable and how she wanted to try it. I found some spinach in the freezer and made creamed spinach out of it. She took one bite and pushed it away. She did eat her soba and tofu though.

A Different Kind of Bathtub Ring

The earth's atmosphere is often explained as a shallow pan of fluid atop the surface of the solid earth. It is a very large bathtub. So why should we be surprised to see a global-scale bathtub ring from space?

Read Dust Storms Overseas Carry Contaminants to U.S. There are huge clouds of dust traveling the rivers overhead. The dust carries heavy metals, toxins, insects, bacteria and viruses. Who needs jet travel to spread SARS when you have the jet stream?

I had thought it was a pacific northwest problem, but I learned that "authorities in Los Angeles estimate that on some days, one-quarter of the city's smog comes from China."

I downloaded the hemispherical view of the jet stream analysis from the California Regional Weather Service.

Check out NASA's MODIS picture of the day archive. A remarkable number of them are of severe dust events.

Look at my photos of the Fox Glacier. The guides told us that the reddish dust were deposited from the Australian outback during severe dust events.

Hormones and Antibiotics

In the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle post, I didn't mention my little food experiment in New Zealand. Remember the What we eat post in which I learned that some of my nighttime skin rashes might be caused by tetracycline in livestock feed? I spoke to my immunologist about that and she recalled reading journal articles about people who are deathly allergic to penicillin coming down with hives after eating meat laced with penicillin. I am only moderately allergic to tetracycline and sulfa and okay with penicillin. Perhaps that is why my symptoms, while still unpleasant, are milder.

Penicillin, tetracycline and sulfa are common antibiotics fed to livestock, including farmed fish. If you are allergic to any common antibiotics, you should stay away from "conventionally-raised" livestock. (I wonder why anyone would want to eat antibiotics unnecessarily?)

Barbara Kingsolver wrote that the American food production system is unsustainable. If we were to stop force-feeding the livestock in the factory farms antibiotics, they would all die of disease in a matter of weeks. That fits the definition of unsustainable all right.

Back to the story. On the drive to Akaroa, we marveled at all the livestock we saw. One of our hosts, the one who studied agriculture and land management at university), told us that NZ raises all their farm animals on pasture. They do none of the factory farming you see in the states or in Europe. I asked if antibiotics are used. He replied rarely.

I decided to make the trip a culinary experiment. I ate lamb, beef, chicken and fish without fear. There was no night-time rash. If my skin itched, it was because of sandfly or mosquito bites. I ate a great deal more protein than I normally do at home. I did no exercise other than daily stretching and walking in the service of sightseeing. When I returned home to my scale, it showed that I gained less than a pound, but my body fat decreased by more than a percentage point. I think I will be visiting the hormone-free and antibiotic-free meat counter at Whole Foods more regularly.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Virginia and I discussed how both of us have been attracted to the turquoise and brown color combination. How do certain colors and color combinations hit the collective consciousness? Can Pantone take all the credit? I will leave it to her because she writes about that for a living.

I just thought that the apple/persimmon cake I baked last evening looked nice. Unfortunately, I ran out of cooking oil and substituted low fat yogurt to mixed results. It really could use more fat. I used the Swedish Apple Cake recipe posted in Recipe Meme and used a combination of 1 chopped apple plus enough Hachiya persimmon pulp to make up 3 cups.

By the time I added enough flour to make a stiff batter, there was a huge amount. I also baked 3 mini-loafs not pictured above. They were all given to families that help us keep Iris occupied (along with fruit from the flats we bought at Costco yesterday).

With the help of Google, I discovered another recipe for Persimmon Cake that reads very similar to my cake. The ingredients are largely the same, save for small variations in spices. I used only cinnamon; she added nutmeg and cloves. Rachel has gone to cooking school while I have a BS in Chemistry. Maybe her cake will taste better. ;-)

I was on a cooking roll yesterday, also cooking black beans. 2 pints were frozen for another dish, and the rest went into Best Black Bean Soup from Learning to Cook with Marion Cunningham. I added 2 carrots to her recipe. Notice the cilantro garnish from our garden? The great part of being a messy gardener is all the "volunteers". Who wouldn't want fresh, young cilantro volunteers?


This was supposed to be a post about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the book I read for the Apartment Therapy Re-Nest Book Club. In the beginning, I didn't think I would want to read another book nagging me to eat locally and organic. As I wrote before, I thought I was too busy add more to my workload. I was even chastised by reader mmadden for saying that "Farmers' markets are great, but they are not convenient for a harried working mom." (Go read her criticism and my response.)

I can say that I changed my mind (about the book, not about farmers' markets). Barbara Kingsolver has made some valid points about our nation's messed up relationship with food. Even if I don't have her real estate, I can still grow more of my own food. I can also eat more seasonally and locally, even within the time constraints of shopping only before and after work and childcare duties.

I used to think it horribly unfair that I was so heavily penalized in footprint calculators for not eating more locally. After all, I eat very little meat and that takes a lot of energy and water! My lifestyle is really green! I drink filtered tap water! I recycle! I re-use! I am on a stuff diet! Look how little trash I generate relative to my neighbors! How can my footprint be marginally better than average?

I forgot about the poop.

In modern life, we don't pay attention to what goes in and out of our bodies. We pretty much assume that there will be some food to eat when we are hungry and that our bodily waste will disappear with a flush. It is not so simple. Anyone who has ever backpacked understands how much they eat and poop. Barbara Kingsolver reminded me that, for most people, our greatest consumption, measured by mass, is in the food we put in our bodies. The greater the mass, the greater the amount of energy it takes energy to move it around. It is time to eat more local.

Kingsolver moved across the country to a place where with more land and water. I need to live close to work, in one of the densest regions of the US with some of the priciest real estate and very little water. Even so, with a little creativity, there is room to improve.

Our hostess in Christchurch threw together a light supper the evening we arrived. Amongst other things, she served a salad made with lettuce from her garden. How did she do that in a townhouse with a garden the size of ours? The next morning, she showed me her vegetables, interspersed with her flowers and other ornamentals. She only had 1-2 heads of lettuce in two varieties, but it was enough if she picked a few leaves each day from each head.

I already grow rosemary, thyme, bay and several varieties of chives and mint. Our Meyer lemon tree is groaning under the weight of this winter's crop. I already sowed some lettuce and pea seeds before I left home so I should have plenty of salad greens for a couple of months.

I started eyeing the insipid baby's tears ground cover in the shady areas. Wouldn't that be a good habitat for spinach, lettuce or watercress? Can I tuck some more herbs in other areas?

In the book, Barbara Kingsolver and her family spent a year eating local foods, most of it in season and organic. The first early spring of their experiment was bleak. They hadn't preserved food yet. They shopped farmers' markets, but the pickings were slim. In a few months, though, their garden started to reward them. My mouth watered as she described the arrival of each new food that came into season. Morels. Asparagus. Berries. Stone fruit. Tomatoes.

She reminds us that food tastes best when it is in season and has been freshly picked. You can't get fresher than your own garden. Lacking that, a farmers' market where the food was picked a that day is a good alternative. Unfortunately, I still find it difficult to go to a farmers' market for reasons I elaborated elsewhere. I explored alternatives.

At the recently remodeled supermarket 300 feet from my house, I spoke with the produce manager. He appears to be sansei (3rd generation Japanese american) with longtime ties to the community. He has been trying to convince the regional produce buyer to allow him to buy more Asian and Hispanic produce. He says they didn't believe him when he said he could sell those "specialty" items in his mass-market supermarket. Slowly, he is convincing them otherwise. The variety is increasing but quantity is still a problem. To my frustration, he can't keep enough white turnips (lobo in Mandarin) in stock. You can get beaver tail cactus there along with advice on how to cook it. I need to support his efforts by buying his produce.

Because of my commute route, it is easier for me to go to Whole Foods on my way to the office instead of on the way home. I started bringing in an extra bag for all the things that need to stay cold. I pop them into the fridge at the office while at work and bring them home later. Whole Foods doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. The bulk bins are a relative bargain. All their meats are guaranteed not to have antibiotics or added hormones. They even have a case near the front of the produce section of "in season and local" foods.

I also shop Trader Joe's on the route home. When we buy fresh food at Costco (a warehouse store with that sells food in bulk), we share them with other families. That way, we can have a greater variety.

I am planning meals more and using the food we buy more efficiently. I cook in large batches, freeze some and share some. Yesterday, my next door neighbor came over to help herself to snips from my rosemary bush (there is no way we will ever run out). I brought her over some mangoes and oranges from Costco. She sent her daughter over with some rosemary focaccia bread and challah and I sent her home with some apple persimmon cake. Another day, I sent over some cream of mushroom soup and scored some home-made pasta sauce.

It is time to send over some of our Meyer lemons. I remember fondly a few months ago when the neighbor on the corner gave away his excess avocados.

Color Cue 2008

Pantone has pronounced Blue Iris, a purplish blue, as the color of 2008. Read the Pantone press release. Read the NYT story about the surge in blues overall.

We like blue/purple in our household. We also like green, both figuratively and literally. Sadly, another NYT article, Flash in the Can, says that green (as in eco) is so over. That's the problem with fashion. It's in, it's out; but the earth still pays for our sins.

Greenwashing

Remember my post on the unlikely choice of "green car of the year"? The post was up for only an hour before someone from greencar.com left a comment about how Dan Neil and I missed the significant advance... blah blah blah.

Notice that the use of a generic name like greencar.com that sounds sort of like greenercars.org, a website of the veteran non profit, The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy? ACEEE has been working to enlighten the public about the environmental impact of cars for years.

Back in high school physics, we had to calculate the speed at which two vehicles with two different centers of gravity (approximating a passenger vehicle and a truck) can safely take a turn before tipping. The takeaway lesson was that the truck tips over at half the speed that would tip over a passenger car. This lesson stuck with me for life. I am very careful when driving around trucks and I would NEVER, NOT EVER ferry my kids around in a truck. (The SUV hadn't been invented yet.)

The insanity of driving a car on stilts, endangering myself and my passengers. The waste of carrying a ton (or 3) more weight around in stop and go traffic than necessary. The increased emissions of surface level air pollution and greenhouse gases. The antisocial attitude of blocking the sight lines of everyone else, thus endangering them even further...

The worse part about it is that the SUV/truck craze has forced the passenger cars to get taller and fatter as well, just to protect their occupants. This causes all vehicles to use more fuel. It also makes passenger cars more top heavy and tippy as well.

Greenwash that!

What we eat

Yesterday, I serendipitously walked by poster H41C-0661 at American Geophysical Union (AGU): Tetracycline Resistance in the Subsurface of a Poultry Farm: Influence of Poultry Wastes

* You, Y (you.yaqi@jhu.edu), Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University and a whole bunch of other people, including her PhD advisor.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are considered to be important man-made reservoir of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Using the electromagnetic induction (EMI) method of geophysical characterization, we measured the apparent subsurface electrical conductivity (ECa) at a CAFO site in order to assess the movement of pollutants associated with animal waste. The map of ECa and other available data suggest that (1) soil surrounding a poultry litter storage shed is contaminated by poultry waste, (2) a contamination plume in the subsurface emanates from that shed, and (3) the development of that plume is due to groundwater flow. We focused on understanding the spread of tetracycline resistance (TcR), because tetracycline is one of the most frequently used antibiotics in food animal production and therefore probably used at our field site. Microbiological experiments show the presence of TcR bacteria in the subsurface and indicate higher concentrations in the top soil than in the aquifer. Environmental DNA was extracted to identify CAFO- associated TcR genes and to explore a link between the presence of TcR and CAFO practices. A "shot-gun" cloning approach is under development to target the most prevalent TcR gene. This gene will be monitored in future experiments, in which we will study the transmission of TcR to naive E. coli under selective pressure of TcR. Experimental results will be used to develop a mathematical/numerical model in order to describe the transmission process and to subsequently make estimates regarding the large-scale spread of antibiotic resistance.

Why did this poster catch my eye? The words tetracycline and poultry, together. Then it hit me.

My doctors and I have been trying to figure out if I am sensitive to chicken in some way. I tested not allergic to chicken proteins. There is a theory that chicken is high in arachadonic acid, a chemical in the inflammation pathway. Perhaps the arachadonic acid found in chicken and beef are exacerbating inflammation of my joints and skin?

If so, then why don't fruits like bananas, also high in arachadonic acid, cause inflammation? Why is it sporadic? Why don't I have the inflammation every time I eat meat?

I am allergic to tetracycline. They feed it to animals. When I eat the dead animals, I am taking tetracycline. Only it is not labeled anywhere. That is apparently legal.

Ya Qi helpfully told me that tetracycline is fed to chickens to help shorten the time to market (40 days from hatchling to roast chicken!). It is fed to pretty much all 'conventionally raised' animals. tetracyline is so prevalent in our food system that the TcR gene has been found in organic beef (and even flies). The presence of the TcR gene in an animal doesn't mean it has been fed tetracycline. It only means that tetracycline resistance is now a common characteristic in our environment, due to heavy and indiscriminate use in the past and present.

How did dumping drugs and other chemicals into our food chain become 'conventional' farming and not doing so become 'alternative' farming?

Her poster showed the apparatus that she used to get a core of the soil floor of a poultry shed. It is like the ones used to get ice cores from glaciers. So cool. The stuff she told me about factory farming in the US and China, not so cool. It kind of turns the stomach, actually. We eat organic dairy and eggs. But we don't always buy organic meats. Now I know better.

See the full abstracts for that poster session. It is hair-rising. Don't read it right after eating.

Ahead of the (energy) curve

Mark has this annoying habit of taking the food out of the microwave when there is 1 second left on the timer. Because the microwave faces a window, it is hard to see the display. Thus, the next person who uses the microwave oven will enter in the time, wonder why it isn't working, realize why, then hit clear and reenter the time. This makes that person (usually me) very cranky. He couldn't wait one more second?

It turns out that there is method in his madness; even he was not aware of his brilliance. According to Action Earth, "The average microwave oven uses more energy powering its digital clock than it does cooking food."

When Mark leaves the oven at 1 second left on the timer, he is leaving it in the most energy conserving state, short of unplugging it. Think about it. 3 or 4 numerals to display the time or a single digit? And it's the one formed out of the fewest light bars!

Thanks to Bek's Friday enviropostings for the heads up. See more tips at Action Earth.

I have one more tip that Action Earth omitted. The energy usage on refrigerators is just an estimate, based upon typical usage. You can improve the energy efficiency of any refrigerator by keeping it full.

Why? Because, when you open the door, the cold air spills out and warmer air from the kitchen flows in. After you close the door, the refrigerator has to cool all that air down. Empty refrigerators use more energy than full ones. (Unless you keep nothing in your fridge and never open it. In that case, maybe you should unplug it altogether.)

As you use up the food in your refrigerator, put bottles of water to displace air. This is akin to placing a brick in your toilet tank to conserve water when you flush. While you are at it, fill your freezer with containers of water, too. As a bonus, all that ice and cold water will minimize food spoilage during power outages.

While I am enviroblogging, I might as well add a link to the story about the Great Plastic Garbage Patch aka the North Pacific Gyre.

Charles Moore, the marine researcher at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach who has been studying and publicizing the patch for the past 10 years, said the debris - which he estimates weighs 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas - is made up mostly of fine plastic chips and is impossible to skim out of the ocean.

Thanks to Here in Malibu for the heads up. Also, read more about the Great Plastic Garbage Patch in the Synthetic Sea. They find 6 pounds of plastic for each pound of zooplankton in the North Pacific Gyre. See the pictures of the junk on the Algalita website.

Aside: They do the analysis in Redondo Beach's very own SEA Lab (a good place to tour with your kids).

Blog Action Day: Walking My Watershed

Years ago, I attended a lecture by a noted member of the "Deep Ecology Movement". I can't remember his name or all the things he talked about. But I do remember that he sounded much more reasonable than detractors of the movement had led me to expect. In his closing statement, he implored the audience to "walk your watershed".

How can such a simple idea lead to a whole new way of seeing my relationship to the world? Today, on Blog Action Day, I would like to take you on a tour of my watershed.

(New readers may also be interested in the Green Party and Fire is a river that runs uphill.)

We begin with a familiar picture.

Lucky urban dwellers don't have to think much about water. Clean, safe water just comes out of our taps. (I know that it is clean and safe because my water district encloses the results of water analysis with the bill.) The bill is paid with hardly a thought. It takes 1-2 hours of my salary to pay for a whole month's water for our household. Contrast that with the 5 hours per day a woman in sub-Saharan Africa might spend providing her family with water (which is not necessarily clean and safe).

Where does our water come from? I live in a semi-arid region with about 15 million other humans. Once, there were wetlands which did provide water for a small human settlement and an estuary for wildlife. But the wetlands are mostly paved over now.

Ballona Wetlands used to cover over 2000 acres, but only about 800-1000 remain and much of that will disappear under the Playa Vista development which is being built now.

Another large wetland area became Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbors, two of the busiest, and most polluted, ports in the entire world.

Our natural watershed can't provide sufficient water for the population here. Read Revisiting ‘toilet to tap’ to learn how the Hyperion water treatment plant below provides recycled water to the beach cities. In the picture below, you can see some of the water that the Hyperion plant releases into the Santa Monica Bay. What you can't see is that treated waste water is also pumped into the aquifers from which part of my tap water is derived.

But even recycling can't provide enough. We have to look much further to meet our voracious appetite for water. Some of it comes from the Colorado river even though we are hundreds of miles from the natural Colorado river watershed pictured below. In fact, the Colorado River no longer flows to the sea. All of the water is used and reused until the river disappears in the desert.

This favorite campsite is near the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers, in Dinosaur National Monument. A few miles downstream, they will join the Colorado river.

In the morning, we rode our mountain bikes on a jeep track along the Yampa Bench overlooking the Yampa river.

On another trip, we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison, also in the Colorado river watershed.
The Colorado river is a shared resource. We cannot take enough from it to satisfy our needs. We also tap the Owens valley watershed picture below. The extent of Mono lake used to be much bigger and this valley used to be much greener.

See the dust devil below from June 2007? Los Angeles lost a lawsuit because it diverted so much water from Mono Lake, that dust storms became common. This created unhealthful air quality for the people living in the Owens valley.

Los Angeles did not live up to its past agreements. The water line agreed upon in a court settlement in 1994 is here. Doesn't look very wet here at all.

All of these tufa formations used to be underwater. If the agreement above were honored, many of them would be underwater again.

I walked my neighborhood today to show you my watershed up close. Our household sewage goes here. Note that I live in an urban infill townhouse. Two identical townhouses share a single lot, hence the two sewer lines.

Storm runoff goes into a separate system which flows, untreated, into the ocean. Here is our backyard storm drain.

The storm drain in the front driveway.

The storm drain by the street. Note the graphic reminding us not to dump nasty things into the drain.

A sign at the park tried to educate the populace.

Some of the storm drains are above ground and attract wildlife.

This ersatz creek flows into Polliwog Lake. Note that our recent rainfall caused the lake to overflow its concrete banks. The benches are not normally in the water.

It is a sad fact that, around here, only low-lying areas are turned into parks. But at least Polliwog is a very attractive park. This catchment basin is not as attractive.

It all ends up here. Read the environmental scorecard for the beaches.

Or maybe it all ends up here, in the clouds. The airshed is connected to the watershed... (sung to the tune of the funny bone song)

Which then rains back down. And so it goes ad infinitum. The global watershed is all connected. Take good care of your watershed.

Green Party

I found this on the Prius' windshield after lunch today. An identical one was placed on it a few weeks ago, when it was parked near our house. The (glossy, non-recyclable) flyer promises, "Drive a hybrid and save more than the planet."

Why does this bother me? Let me count the ways.

This is nothing more than marketing gimmickry. "Green" is just another affinity group and market segment to these folks. This guy is trying to sell car insurance (which is required in CA), but most "green" marketeers are trying to sell goods that people don't really need. The greenest choice is NOT TO CONSUME SO MUCH STUFF. But, then, what would all the marketing folks do for work?

Most "green" marketing is fairly transparent, and this is no exception. Flip the car over and there is a guy washing his SUV in the driveway. (I already wrote about the environmental damage caused by driveway car washing.) Why would an advertiser shoot himself in the foot like that? Not terribly bright. Is this the kind of guy you would want for your insurance agent?

A t-shirt on the cover of a 'back to school' circular said, "Green is the new black". The young girl/woman wearing the shirt looks so cute and happy in that shirt. And why shouldn't she? This has become a common catchphrase. (Type it into your search engine of choice and you will see many articles, some quite thoughtful.) But I feel uneasy about all this green consumerism. Buying a shirt made of organically grown cotton won't help the environment as much as wearing out the clothes that you already own (and using a clothesline instead of a dryer). The best thing we can all do is to consume less, a lot less.

Thomas Friedman put it most eloquently in the Ideas and Consequences page in the Atlantic:

I am not a skeptic about global warming. It’s happening. I am a total skeptic that we are really doing anything about it. I think we are in the middle of a huge green bubble …
[snip]
Did you ever study a revolution in history? You ever seen a revolution in history where nobody got hurt? That’s the green revolution. In the green revolution, nobody gets hurt—we’re all winners … Exxon’s green. They give $100 million to Stanford … Dick Cheney’s green. He’s for alternative fuels, yeah. He’s for liquefied coal. Dick Cheney’s green. We are all green now. Welcome to the green revolution, where nobody gets hurt.

… This isn’t the green revolution, friends. This is a party … [snip] And ladies and gentlemen, today the old-legacy industries, they control this story; they control that policy mechanism in Washington. They are tough, and they will fight dirty. They are not going anywhere.

And that’s why we are having a green party, not a green revolution. Do not kid yourself for one second.

If you follow the Ideas and Consequences link over to the Atlantic, you will see billionaire Richard Branson at the top of the page, talking about his new commercial space venture, Virgin Galactic. Branson is no stranger to green marketing. His airline, Virgin Air, will sell you carbon offsets with every plane ticket. How many trees will need to be planted for every joy-ride into space?

This is not an idle worry as lifting things into space takes enormous expenditures of energy. There is a reason why space launches are so expensive. But marketeers pick their target price point and design their product around that. So, how do they bring the price of the ride down to $200,000? For starters, they get someone else to pay for the infrastructure.

Oh, I digress again. This is a post about seeing through feel-good green marketing. But I can't resist this quote from the above article.

Carol Garcia, 52, of Las Cruces, said: “It’s just a rich man’s dream that he needs us to help pay for. If it’s your dream, build it yourself.”

The Bubble Bath

How else do you corral those exercise balls? What other use do we have for a huge jacuzzi bathtub in the middle of an extreme drought?

The Woods are on Fire

Remember my rant in Fire is a river that runs uphill? Don't miss the NY Times article, On Fringe of Forests, Homes and Fires Meet.

A new generation of Americans (snip), in moving to places perched on the edge of vast, undeveloped government lands in the West, are living out a dangerous experiment, many of them ignorant of the risk.

Their migration — more than 8.6 million new homes in the West within 30 miles of a national forest since 1982, according to research at the University of Wisconsin — has coincided with profound environmental changes that have worsened the fire hazard, including years of drought, record-setting heat and forest management policies that have allowed brush and dead trees to build up.

Not only are there more fires, but the number of structures in the trees is going up. Who pays? You and I do. (And let us not forget that firefighters pay with their lives all too frequently.)

About 45 percent of the Forest Service’s proposed budget for 2008 is designated for firefighting, compared with 13 percent in 1991. Last year, the agency spent $2.5 billion, a record, thinning fuels and fighting fires that burned 9.9 million acres, also a record.

California, braced for what fire officials have said could be one of the worst seasons in history this year, has set aside $850 million for wildfire suppression.

The Department of Interior, which includes the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, the country’s largest landlord, spent $424 million fighting fire last year.

To put this in perspective, California budgeted $5.1 billion of the University of California and $4.0 billion for the California State Universities for this year. $.85 billion is not chump change. I would also argue that state spending on higher education has the potential to pay back the state many-fold because graduates (relative to those who never went to college) will likely earn more and hence, pay more in taxes.

Aside: The article does end with a newly transplanted (to the woods) couple deciding to join the volunteer fire department. That's showing the right self-sufficient pioneer spirit!

I knew a woman who moved from the city to the mountains. Not only did she join the volunteer fire department, but she eventually became the fire marshal. She was always complaining about the part-time residents in the fanciest and biggest homes. It appeared that those owners were much less likely to clear their brush or thin trees too close to their structures; they almost never joined the volunteer fire department.

It drove her crazy. Up in the mountains, you depend not just on yourself, but on your neighbors to do their part for mutual safety. What could she do? She cited and fined them. They could afford to pay her fines and ignore her requests .

Wildfire Season ad Nauseum

Although it is only May 11, we have already had quite a busy wildfire season already. I am worried about how the summer and fall will shape up. Fall is traditionally our most active fire season.

Take a look at the MODIS visible spectrum imagery of Catalina today taken by the Terra and Aqua satellites. Terra flew by in the mid-morning. The area lies near the edge of the image so the resolution is not optimal.

Aqua flew by in the early afternoon. The marine layer had burned off a bit. Catalina is near the center of the image so the resolution is better than Terra's today. (This coverage changes daily and Terra gives better coverage than Aqua some other days.

The smoke plume gives you a pretty good idea of the wind direction. Now, take a look at the terrain. (I just love the tilt feature in Google Earth.) See if you can predict where the fire will go next based upon Fire is a river that runs uphill.

There are several species that live on Catalina island and nowhere else on earth. I hope they will survive.

Links:
You may also want to look at the USDA Forest Service Wildfire Maps. Click on California/Nevada. Click anywhere on the map to zoom. See how many fires have burned since January 1, 2007 in California. Yipes.

Allstate has decided to halt writing homeowner's insurance policies in California, citing the fire danger. They've been writing policies and collecting premiums here for years. The policies even have clauses excluding flood damage. So, if they collected premiums during the wet years and now want to stop covering the state because they might have to pay out fire claims this year, then why do we carry insurance?

Bike to Work Week Info

I searched the web and found that the info for Bike to Work Week in the South Bay, our local area, is somewhat sketchy. In particular, there are several "Bike and Breakfast" events. I lifted some info from email circulated by my company's transportation coordinator.

The seventh annual Bike-To-Work Challenge will be held from 6 to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 16, in Visitor Lot/Gate C located on Douglas Street.

A number of other El Segundo employers will participate in this event. All cyclists who ride their bikes to work that day, regardless of their starting point or whether they ride with a group, will receive a continental breakfast, t-shirt, and promotional items.

Thursday, May 17, Pit-Stop, 6 to 9:30 a.m. at the El Segundo/Nash Green Line Station in recognition of Bike-to-Work Day. All cyclists are invited to stop by for refreshments and giveaways.

So you can get free breakfast both Tuesday (Douglas street south of El Segundo Blvd.) and Thursday (El Segundo and Nash Green Line station). But t-shirts will only be given out on Tuesday on Douglas street. I would like to add that, in past years, pedestrian commuters were also given free breakfast and t-shirts. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. ;-)

Earth Day Thoughts

I drove my 4200 pound minivan around today while running errands. I feel really badly about that, especially because today is Earth Day. My mind wandered back to Daniel Nocera's talk at MIT on the Road, LA Edition, last month. I am posting some of his slides today, with his permission. Click on the pictures to view them in full detail. I put my own notes below each slide.


Slide 1: Our current global energy inventory is shown to the left. Nathan Lewis and Daniel Nocera performed some back of the envelope calculations to predict future energy needs using middling estimates for population growth, economic growth, and energy efficiency gains. (28 to 35 Terra Watts (TW) are a couple of reasonable rough estimates but the figure could be much, much more, unless we change our behavior drastically.) That leaves us with a big fat question mark for future energy sources.


Slide 2: I find this slide showing per capita energy demand in giga Joules (GJ) versus per capita GDP for a variety of nations especially embarrassing. It shows how much we produce per unit of energy. The lower left hand corner represents 3.2 billion of the world's 6.2 billion people. The box at lower right shows relative energy consumption per capita in units that I forgot to note down. If energy consumption per capita were distributed equally, the figure would be close to the current usage in Equatorial Guinea.

We lead the world in per capita energy consumption--by a lot. Equally rich industrial nations are much more frugal with their energy. See how the US's per capita energy consumption has been flat for two decades? It's only party due to gains in energy efficiency. It is largely because we stopped manufacturing things and now import so much of our industrial goods. I will blog about that later; in the mean time, you can read Goodie Bags and the Wealth of Nations.


Slide 3: Self Explanatory


Slide 4: Balanced Redox (reduction and oxidation) equations for the combustion of coal and methane, the main component of natural gas. Note that methane produces about twice as much energy per molecule of CO₂ produced than coal. (A negative value means that energy is released.) Oil is largely composed of alkanes, chains of carbon with some hydrogens hanging off them, produces a middling amount of CO₂ per unit of energy compared to coal and methane.

Slide 5: CO₂ emission versus primary energy consumption per capita. This graph illustrates the types of fuel used by the nations. For instance, the US (indigo blue) uses mainly oil and gas with some coal. Japan (light cyan blue) uses a mixture of oil and coal. France (yellow) falls dramatically below other industrial nations because of their reliance on nuclear power.

Look at China and India in the lower left hand corner. They represent over one third of the world's population. If you want to be really scared, read this projection of world population from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.



Slide 6: This is a popular graph of CO₂ concentration versus time measured at the top of Mauna Loa, a volcano in Hawaii. The small zig zags demonstrate that the earth is a living, breathing entity. Plants absorb CO₂ in the growing season. Because there is more land surface in the northern (boreal) hemisphere than in the southern one, there are slight depressions in CO₂ concentrations each boreal summer. However, the overall trend is up. That means we are putting much more CO₂ into the atmosphere than the planet can absorb.

Antarctic ice cores show us that the level of CO₂ in the last 50 years is unprecedented in the past 650,000 years. Mixing times (the amount of time it takes to thoroughly mix a system) are shown below. It takes about 35 years to mix the atmosphere and the top layer of the ocean. It takes about 400-1000 years to mix the top layer of the ocean with the bottom layer.


Slide 13: I fast forwarded through all the pictures of retreating glaciers and coral bleaching. They are too depressing to show.

This slide shows that there is probably no way to get from here to there without letting go of my opposition to nuclear power. It also demonstrates that windmills will not be sufficient. However, solar power holds a great deal of promise. I have some professional experience with advanced photovoltaic technology and I agree with Professor Nocera. I also have some personal experience with low-tech solar hot water panels and I think almost everyone should have them.

What will the future look like? It largely depends upon our own collective behavior. Nocera says take a good look at Equatorial Guinea. I say, add some energy saving technology. Change some of our personal behavior. It could be a nice place to live.

But we have to act now. The longer we delay, the more bitter the medicine.

Note: The slides are from Daniel Nocera, but the notes are mine. I am responsible for all errors.

How Dry Is It?

It is very dry, and it is about the become drier.

The US Drought Monitor says we are in an extreme drought in southern California. You may wonder, just how bad is it?

• The National Weather Service has a page full of Precipitation Data links.
• You can go directly to the water year 2007 page. ("The water year starts on Oct 1 and ends on Sept 30." Wow! Precipitation follows the Federal Fiscal Year calendar.)
  

It is bad; LAX has received only 2.16 inches of rain so far in this water year. We typically don't get much more in the late spring and summer. Remember the skewness of the rainfall distribution I mentioned before? Even though we have received 18% as much rainfall as an average year, we are at more than that compared to a median year. There are simply more dry years than wet years. The relatively few extremely wet years make the average rainfall substantially higher than the median rainfall.

In fact, the western US may be heading to a permanent drought. The LA Times has a good story about this. What if the climatology that the water treaties were based upon water data from an anomalously wet period? Now that we have a more complete climatology, we know that more water has been promised than typically falls.

"This is a situation that is going to cause water wars," said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"If there's not enough water to meet everybody's allocation, how do you divide it up?"

The story is even bleaker. Many parts of the west have been supplementing rainfall by pumping water from the Oglala aquifer. According to the USGS, this ancient water, stored up over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, is being depleted at a rapid rate, especially in Texas and Kansas. Water in storage in Texas was down by 27% between the 1940s and the year 2000.

Depletion is especially severe in the Lubbock, Texas area. What is the water used for? To grow cotton in the desert, possibly to make T-shirts that no one really needs.

Fashion Incubator has been blogging about sustainable fashion. As usual, her reasoning is sound and backed up with data.