Hema 'ehu

Michael Moore sometimes makes sense

2009-10-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

In the past few years I've moved steadily away from Michael Moore's rhetorical style - yes, I'm certainly upset with many aspects of my local, regional, national, and international governance, but I sense that it can easily slide into a vituperative style that doesn't win over the opposition - but I continue to appreciate Mr. Moore for his dedication to activism. Not content to sit idly by, or complain loudly while doing nothing, or criticizing without constructing a viable alternative, Moore sometimes peeks out behind the gotcha! attitude of any good muckraker to remind us that there are Things We Can Do to affect positive change.

Here's the whole article, and I'm quoting my two favorite slices of activism (from the 15):

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/michael-moores-action-pla_b_329664.html

and...

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/michael-moores-action-pla_b_329664.html

Letter to Sen. Graham

2009-10-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following email to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), in response to his concerted efforts to enact greenhouse gas-limiting legislation, and to his and Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) excellent op-ed in the New York Times from a couple days ago...

Senator Graham,

I want to thank you for your leadership and vision with regard to climate change and energy development. Your op-ed in the NYTimes with your colleague Sen. Kerry truly touched me in that it has rejuvenated the possibility of true bipartisanship in Congress.

The environment, our climate, the atmosphere - these are not objects that can be held by one political party or one nation; these are the literal Commons that must be preserved by everyone if they are to be preserved for anyone. I'm grateful for forward-thinking legislators like yourself, for understanding that the scientific evidence, while certainly not perfect nor without room for ample debate, shows that the preponderance of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, almost entirely by human enterprise, are quickly and dangerously heating up our planet and potentially disrupting the climate system we all rely on to survive.

Thank you, Senator, for being a Republican legislator from a Republican state, willing and able to look past sound bites and the misinformation of your colleagues (i.e. Sen. Inhofe) to take positive, real action towards ending our dependence on foreign energy products and towards preserving our way of life for future generations (a truly "Conservative" effort, if I've ever seen one)!

Sincerely,

-Tim Varga

Obama Nobel Peace Prize Press Release

2009-10-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

Oslo, October 9, 2009

Public Option Publicly Supported

2009-10-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Yglesias, quoting Drum, says the right things about why a lack of public option in the healthcare bill does not necessarily mean electoral defeat for Democrats in 2010. Folks are worried about losing the House or Senate.

Listen, I get it: in the coming mid-term election, Dems can expect to lose a few seats in the House and Senate for a whole variety of reasons, and one of those reasons might be the failure of healthcare reform.

But let's not confuse popular support (in the form of a national poll) with Democratic support (or lack thereof) of reform. No, as Yglesias has pointed out, repeatedly, the reason we see such slow, patently unfair, and unvisionary progress when it comes to reform is that the Senate is an inherently unrepresentative body.

Repeat: the Senate is not a representative legislative body - it (as was it's design) unfairly gives preference to Senators from small (in population) states. Max Baucus, Senator from Montana, represents 0.16% of the United States, but as Chairman of the Finance committee, he completely controls the debate over healthcare reform. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) represents 6% of the country, but has absolutely no say in healthcare legislation, and is not even on the committee.

I'm a huge fan of the government the founding fathers (and mothers) set up - but let's not just assume it's a perfect body. Progress requires political institutions that accurately reflect the will of the people, and the Senate as a body fails at that charge.

Vote for SMooney!

2009-09-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

Occasionally it is shown to me that some of my acquaintances are amazing people doing amazing things, and Scott Mooney is no exception.

He and his team have crafted and entered a sustainable building design contest to rebuild the town of Greensburg, Kansas that was destroyed by a tornado in 2007. The design contest can be accessed here, and you can vote for his particular design here.

Take a moment to glance through the many amazing, innovative, and creative designs offered - the winning house will be built as a chain of eco-homes and the designs published freely for use elsewhere. This is a fantastic effort and I'm so very proud to see brilliant people attempting to make the world a better place.

GLOBAL WARMING STILL FREAKING ME OUT

2009-03-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

So normally I like to avoid the doom-and-gloom and try to focus on the positive with climate change. I'm a positive person and all, but there was a scary article about the effects of global warming on the tropics/subtropics in Science back in January, that I write about in the TerraPass Footprint here.

The only thing that could've made this post better would be if I could've worked in a picture of a toadfish. Alas. Just wasn't to be.

Also unfortunate, I tried to make the headline "It's Getting Hot in Herre" followed by the clever subtitle "So take off all your- wait, better just move north, actually" but Adam Stein would have none of it. Apparently he doesn't get "pop culture." He also referred to it as "the hippity hop." So he's an old man. At least he's got that going for him.

Missing carbon found in... fish guts?

2009-02-17T14:07:00.000-08:00

A new one over at TP Footprint.

With cute picture of a toadfish! OMG LOLZ SO CUTE

New post over at the Footprint

2009-02-12T13:07:00.001-08:00

Hey most of my posts are going up over at the TerraPass Footprint! You should click on over to there to see this latest post!

It is about trees and global warming. Looks like warming is increasing tree mortality in the Western U.S.! OH NOES

Trees are made of air

2009-01-17T20:23:00.000-08:00

That's professional Tree Hugger, thank you.

The new paper came out, and it's chock full of amazing science and radically awesome declarative sentences. No hemming and hawing to be found here, guaranteed.

It involved the usual assortment of crazy advanced technology and tree hugging hippieness.

The pictures probably speak for themselves (times 1,000!), and if that explanation isn't good enough, well, there's a whole paper written about them.

Population go boom now?

2008-12-11T21:40:00.000-08:00

First published over at the TerraPass Footprint

So when is that population bomb going to happen, exactly? In theory, exponential increases in human population should eventually be constrained by limited, non-renewable resources. One way to track an impending resource crunch -- when high demand hits low supply -- is by watching for a surge in the price of various goods.

In 1980, biologist and author of The Population Bomb Paul Ehrlich wagered economist Julian Simon that demand for five different precious metals, including copper, would result in higher prices for those metals.

After ten years and 800 million more people, the largest increase in a single decade in human history, the inflation-adjusted price of all five metals had gone down. So much for resource catastrophe.

Fast forward 18 years. The New York Times recently reported on the boom and bust cycles of copper extraction in the rural West -- the article was a look at what should be a growing sector of the economy. Turns out that bubble appears to have burst, too. The Times's article made me wonder how the Malthusian predictions are holding up, now that we've steamed past 6.5 billion people.

Surging demand in India and China pushed copper prices to big highs in 2006, only to come crashing down this year. After a few years of looking like we'd finally hit a point of true scarcity, demand for this resource has fallen again and the price is back to historic levels.

So when is the resource limitation/population growth trainwreck supposed to happen? I find myself in a strange position of bracing for an environmental apocalypse (because the earth is obviously finite), but scratching my head because we haven't maxed out yet (although examples of collapsed societies exist). If anybody can predict when, precisely, I should start worrying, please let me know. I'll want to stock up on Twinkies.

I <3 KEXP

2008-10-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a reason I love Seattle's listener-supported, commercial-free radio station:

Upon turning on the live stream after getting home from work, the first two songs were

1. Hungarian rap (and pretty good, too!)

2. Daft Punk's "Around the World" given the salsa treatment by Senor Coconut

Pretty freakin' awesome!

Holy Eons, Batman!

2008-10-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's been forever since we've posted! And by "forever" we clearly mean "greater than one year" because that's how long it has been, according to the time stamp on the last post. This is a long time in blog years, and an even longer time in dog years.

To update on the tree stuff: pushed the number of measured trees past 20,000, paper has been submitted, and Hema'ehu made the leap back across the pond to San Francisco to do other things.

There's a point at which one person, alone in the forest with nothing but a measuring tape, chalk, and a notebook, goes crazy. We went crazy. We talked to ourselves. We talked to trees. We stubbed our toes too many times on sharp rocks. We became disenchanted with the notion of working outside.

And so we ran, we ran so far away.

To an office, in downtown, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people.

There's still too much to do, and our role is now more central to the fight against climate change. But the trees will be missed, and there will never be anything quite like a sunbreak in a mist soaked forest.

Biomass - a preview

2007-10-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

It's been forever. Terribly sorry, but Hema'ehu has been wicked busy, what with work, eating, playing frisbee. Life is rough when the temperature never drops below 68 degrees.

There are some stellar ideas kicking around inside the ol' noggin about multi-media explorations of just what it is Hema'ehu does for a living. For the present moment, suffice it to say it involves hugging trees. Lots of trees: somewhere around 3500 greater than 5 cm DBH. We (that is, the CAO team out here in Hawai'i, not even the editorial we) are building a relationship between field-measured biomass - this is where the tree-hugging comes into play - and remote sensing. The venture started off a bit unevenly, but once we cruised past the 2000 stem mark a solid relationship emerged. It's not quite solid enough, yet, for publication, but damned if all this work will go to waste.

A note about fieldwork: it's great. That is, it is beyond excellent to be standing in a native (shoot, even an invaded) forest, with the sun dappled floor, mosses, lichens, ferns, and lianas in full view. Maybe an orchid in bloom. Birds flitting about in the overstory... ah.

However, it's the rainforest. So when it rains - it's not so good. It can be miserable. Wet, tired, mosquitos, rocks that are slippery, trunks that are slippery, falling, dropping tapes and chalk after having climbed 10 feet up to measure above a buttress... it can be dismal. And Hema'ehu ain't no fair-weather field tech, no. We're out there, day in, day out, regardless of rain or sun.

So we have mixed feelings about fieldwork. C'est la vie.

Isotopes and Hawaiian Lineages

2007-07-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

How cool are isotopes?!

I know, too cool, you say.

When someone links isotopes to beautiful coral to Hawaiian settlement in 1575 CE, it gets a million times cooler.

These guys figured out a way to use 238U-234U-230Th dating to estimate the age of corals found in early Hawaiian structures. Using these dates and Hawaiian family trees, they have figured out who was on the islands and when they were there... knowledge previously relegated to the "sometime between 1000 and 1800 C.E." bin.

They not only figured out a more precise time-frame for early-Hawaiian settlement, but also showed just how quickly social change can occur: a group of islands went from independent family-groups to a structured proto-civilization within 30 years!

Cool.

Up and Around in the Metallic Bird

2007-06-12T13:11:00.001-07:00

A modern, unparalleled experience is to be flown above the island in a helicopter. Floating like angels above the land, tourists and Eden-seekers can traverse the rugged lowland rainforest and steep waterfalls of the Hamakua Coast, trace the contours of cowboy country and Pu’u Wa’a Wa’a Ranch, grace the sterling, deep blue pools and coral reefs of every hue along the leeward coast, witness the expansion of land as lava tumbles and flows in Ka’u, then ascend past the towns of Mountain View and Kea’au to Volcano Village and the mists of Volcanoes National Park. The entire island can be witnessed in a few hours. (Has paradise ever felt so small?) During the course of one flight the land will grade from literally seconds old to more than 4.5 million years. The constancy of creation is an improtant factor in assuring Hawaii’s uniqueness as a living laboratory for scientific study. The helicopter, circling round the ocean entry point at Laukapu, is witness to the same processes and conditions that created the land 150 miles and 4 millions years to the North. In this place history and future come together where the earth melts into a boiling sea.

Paradise, Protected

2007-06-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

The Niaulani Forest, owned and operated by the Volcano Arts Center, may be the closest thing to original paradise that remains on the Big Island. Because Volcano Village is situated above the active lava vent, the town has been spared from hundreds of years of flows. Tim Tunnison, former Land Manager of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, estimates the age of the oldest o’hia here to be upwards of 400 years old – ancient, especially by the standards of active Hawaiian vulcanism. Stepping into the forest from the manicured lawn of the Arts Center’s backyard is to enter a primordial realm. Gone is the sun, filtered and fragmented now, the hairy, arching arms of hapu’u, the tree-fern, subjecting interlocutors to dampened light. Trunks of o’hia extend through the canopy, marble columns supporting the green ceiling of fern – columns more perfect than the Parthenon’s. Here and there a stray koa leaf, its crescent, sickle shape carved out against the otherwise bare ground. Glancing skywards, the source is plenty visible, the leaf’s siblings shift and sway in a breeze that simply cannot pierce the umbrage of branch and bramble that insulate the understory. But the top of the koa, the pinnacle of the forest, where is it? Hidden behind and above tiers of canopies, the top must be beyond our visual reach, somewhere in the heavens, connecting us with the gods. Here, in the original paradise, not a single alien or invasive specie can be found. It is, of course, an entirely human construction.

Caffeine!

2007-05-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

Hema'ehu was reading a fascinating article about tropical birds and coffee plantations when a comment from lead researcher Cagan Sekercioglu (his real name!) struck us: "Most birds don't like to eat the coffee fruit. Caffeine evolved as a pesticide to keep pests away."

So true, for the birds! Taking a page from Michael Pollan (in re: The Botany of Desire), it could also be supposed that coffee has evolved caffeine as an intoxicant that some species (humans and, according to legend, goats) find pleasurable and therefore want to spread! That, at least, seems to be a reasonable supposition seeing as coffee, native to East Africa, is now grown around the tropics, and sold even more widely. Thank you, Starbucks!

In effect, what is poison to one is pleasure to another, and either strategy - or both! - may be successful, from the plant's point of view.

Cobalt!

2007-05-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Periodic Table of Elements has some random "What the-!?" elements on it. Sometimes Hema'ehu looks at a certain element name and thinks, "Is that even real?" Cobalt falls into that category, for although it is a most excellent color for a cocktail shaker there is little that we know that makes cobalt "useful."

Turns out there are two legitimatizing biological needs for cobalt: Vitamin B12 and nitrogen fixation.

Vitamin B12 is an essential nutrient. We use it for cool things like extracting energy from proteins and fats - that is, burning your body's fuel to function. Cyanocobalamin, in the parlance of chemistry, is also a large, unwieldy compound that can't be formed by plants or animals. Notably, this vital, life-would-cease-to-exist-without-it nutrient is synthesized by micro-organisms only: Bacteria and Archaea 1; higher plants and animals 0.

Nitrogen, which is utilized extensively by plants in cell construction and photosynthesis, is plentiful in the atmosphere (78% of it, in fact) but in the biologically inert form of di-nitrogen N2. Some plants - like legumes or Ceanothus - have convinced microbes to live on/within roots and transform N2 into active forms of Nitrogen in exchange for carbohydrates or energy. These symbioses tend to benefit both the plant and the microbe; one recieves an otherwise limiting nutrient (Nitrogen) and the other recieves a steady source of sustenance.

Without Cobalt, none of this happens. We're sorry Cobalt, we had no idea... we were just joking about the "useless" barb. Please don't hurt us.

Scientific progress in a disappearing world...

2007-05-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

Some words from one who said it best, Aldo Leopold (from The Sand County Almanac):

There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for dismemberment is called a university.

A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never that of another, and if he listens for music he must never admit it to his fellows or to his students. For all are restrained by an ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the domain of poets.

Professors serve science and science serves progress. It serves progress so well that many of the more intricate instruments are stepped upon and broken in the rush to spread progress to all backward lands. One by one the parts are thus stricken from the songs of songs. If the professor is able to classify each instrument before it is broken, he is well content.

Carnegie Atmosphere Observatory: So precise, it can see your new haircut

2007-04-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Hema'ehu needs to come clean with this first: I work with/for these guys, and the principal investigator paid my salary (when I used to ask for pay - he is now holding my graduate degree just out of reach to get me to finish), and I'm hoping to get back on the payroll come June. So is Hema'ehu sucking up? Heck yes. Is this thing still some of the coolest sh*t you'll ever see? Double heck yes.

The Carnegie Airborne Observatory is a combination hyperspectral remote sensing instrument, LiDAR sensor, and geocorrectional device mounted onto an airplane. The hyperspectral scanner, AVIRIS (Airborne Visible-InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer) measures upwelling (reflected) radiation from the earth's surface. As sunlight careens through the Earth's atmosphere and hits the ground, it comes into contact with a huge range of materials: plant, animal, buildings, yo' mama, etc. Every physical component, down to the very tiny elemental bonds that hold something together, either reflect, scatter, or absorb that sunlight. Because the solar spectrum is wide - we can see but a tiny portion of this spectrum with our eyes - the materials (in the parlance of remote sensing, ground cover) have distinctive and unique spectral signatures due to the difference in reflection, scattering, and absorption of light at all wavelengths along the solar spectrum. So AVIRIS measures that stuff.

This is known as a passive remote sensing instrument. It merely collects information about light attenuation at an assortment of wavelengths from sunlight bounced off the Earth. The LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), conversely, is an active remote sensing instrument. Similar to ship sonars (or, for that matter, killer dolphin sonars) or the po-po's speed gun, the LiDAR shoots out a beam of energy that bounces off the ground cover and returns to the airplane lickety-split. The time it takes the beam to hit the ground and return gives the height of the ground at that spot. So LiDAR measures height.

The on-board GPS thing is cool, too, but for more nerdy, less applicable and interesting reasons. It tells the computer on board exactly where the airplane is in three-dimensional space as it flies over the Earth. Hema'ehu would be the first to agree that this does not seem so hard, as we can all see airplanes as they fly over head. Please trust that this instrument is very precise, however, and this precision makes most remote sensing scientists drool.

The combination of hyperspectral scanner and LiDAR sensor gives an extremely high-definition image of some segment of the planet. Chris Field, the director of the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology, compared the CAO's performance to that of a "CAT-scan of Earth."

Hema'ehu is going to let that all sink in for a bit. Here are some pictures:

All pictures are courtesy the CAO website.

Exploit Wind Not Coal

2007-04-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

Do we really need coal electricity? Two Stanford researchers seem to think not. Apparently the winds are blowing, like, all the time, and modern turbines can capture that energy and turn it into electricity.

Whoa.

We'd only need about 200 square kilometers, maybe off in the ocean or South Dakota where the winds blow steady and strong.

And these turbines don't even kill (many) birds. They've got about a 77 meter radius, and rotate slowly so they're easy for birds to avoid. For humans, they also make excellent golf course hazards.

These guys have another idea: tether drones flying at 4600m to the ground and collect energy from massive turbines on the glider wings. It's... just... crazy... enough to work.

Bio-diversity and Bio-fuels

2007-04-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

It is remarkable that the debate over alternative, green energy resources has come so far. Ten years ago, corn ethanol was hardly known outside the world of futurist farmers and the halls of academia. Now, President Bush has voiced support for ethanol in the State of the Union address, challenging the nascent biofuels industry to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2015. Energy technology is at the forefront of our national debate.

The American public should be wary, however, of snake-oil salesman and golden-tongued charmers promoting one particular energy solution. A healthy dose of cynicism is valuable when assessing any elected leaders’ claim or plan, no less so for the President’s ambitious agenda. For all the talk of energy independence and reduced reliance on Middle Eastern oil, the motivation for corn ethanol is not sustainability and national security but politics and entrenched financial interests.

The agriculture lobby is well known throughout the U.S. as an effective and powerful figure in crafting, lobbying, and supporting the national Farm Bill, the work of laws and statutes that doles out millions of tax-payer dollars to farms. The majority of tax breaks and giveaways (including paradoxical payments to owners for keeping land out of production) go to enormous, high-technology, low-labor farms. The agri-business lobby is salivating over the growth of the corn ethanol movement, as President Bush’s State of the Union address has already resulted in an increase in the price of corn from $3.70 to $4.40 per bushel (a jump of almost 20%).

In terms of energy, corn ethanol is a seemingly logical place to start, with an immensely developed infrastructure and a forceful lobby that controls national policy. And for corn, the yields are huge: in one hectare of land (ha, about 2 football fields) over 90 gigajoules of energy can be produced (a single match contains about 1 joule of energy, and there are a trillion joules in one gigajoule [GJ]).

The energy output of corn ethanol dwarfs all other biofuels. So, too, the inputs required to grow corn are astronomical – the energy expended through farm equipment, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and fuels needed to produce that hectare of corn almost matches the output derived from farming. On balance, corn ethanol has a large return only with an equally large investment. As a part of our national energy budget, we may as well not grow the corn in the first place, thereby saving on farm inputs what we would be attempting to produce as outputs.

But the striking inefficiencies of corn ethanol should not discourage us from all biofuels, lest we throw the baby out with the bath-water. A recent article in the journal Science by David Tilman, Jason Hill, and Clarence Lehman shows the potential for sustainable biofuels.

There is considerable nuance associated with the science and sustainability of biofuels, and a careful look at the details paints a fascinating portrait of an emerging and promising technologic venture. At left is a figure from the Tilman et al. article. On the vertical axis we see energy units (in GJ per ha), and along the horizontal axis are 5 potential biofuels: corn ethanol, soy diesel, and generic biomass electricity, ethanol, and synfuel. Each biofuel has two columns: the energy outputs (yield) and inputs. Below the x-axis are two calculations of the graphical data, Net Energy Balance (NEB = Output – Input) and the NEB ratio (NEB ratio = Output / Input), for each biofuel.

Unsurprisingly, corn ethanol dominates the field (pun intended) for both outputs and inputs. More importantly, the NEB for non-corn or soy biofuels is roughly equal to that of corn, and the NEB ratio for corn ethanol is exceeded by every other potential biofuel source. Most importantly, the biomass electricity, ethanol, and synfuel are all sourced from a low-input (no tillage, pesticides, or herbicides) high-diversity prairie grassland, replanted on agriculturally degraded soils (that is, they can no longer support food production).

The magnitude of this conclusion cannot be overstated, as it shows how a restored, diverse grassland can provide as much and more energy per degraded hectare than the intensive, energy expensive production of corn. This study exemplifies the care we must take in analyzing proposals by elected leaders and industry – solutions that are reasonable and sustainable are abundant, and need only be considered on balance with the prevailing status quo to show their likely success.

Our energy future will depend on a whole swath of potential and known fuel resources. Corn ethanol may serve in a transition to sustainable fuels, but maintaining food production and security while providing energy will only be possible with concerted, diversified effort. A sustainable biofuels industry will propel America into the future.

San Franciso from Bernal Heights

2007-04-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hold on guys... it's about to get messy

2007-04-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

It's April 19, soon to be May and soon to be June. Conversations with my peers (here at school, those of you away and abroad are excluded from this statement) revolve around jobs, futures, and the looming horizon of the real world.

Bring it.

The current word over here at Hema 'ehu is that there are no guarantees of anything. The two options as yet: Hawai'i doing biogeochemical and remote sensing research for conservation biology and endangered species monitoring or Tokyo doing energy research for APEC.

Booyah.

The field is wide open. Let this young blogger be the first to tell you that no one could have suspected that a degree in ultra-hippy sounding "Earth Systems" could have resulted in such pleasing and exciting opportunities. Take that, iBankers.

It's all coming together

2007-03-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

This is where posts will go. Let me know if it's too hot to handle.