Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

saving energy by saving water

An article in Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management quantifies the energy savings that result from water conservation.

Saving water saves energy. Consequently, implementing integrated water management (IWM) measures that reduce potable water consumption, stormwater runoff, and wastewater generation can potentially translate into significant energy savings. In this paper, the energy savings associated with IWM measures of rainwater harvesting and gray-water reuse are estimated, both at national and local utility scales using published data. At the national scale, it is estimated in this paper that up to 3.8  billion kWh and $270 million can potentially be saved annually by replacing landscape irrigation and other outdoor water uses through rainwater harvesting alone, and up to 14  billion kWh and $950 million in combination with gray-water reuse. Similarly, in Charlotte, North Carolina, the local water utility can potentially save up to 31  million kWh and $1.8 million annually. However, annual energy and associated cost savings per household are low at either scale, ranging between 1 and 120 kWh with associated cost savings of less than $10. These results are discussed in terms of energy savings’ role in IWM policy considerations and promotion of sustainable water use in urban areas.

Oregon drought update

The drought is worsening in Oregon.

Look anywhere East of the Cascades, and the story is the same: No snow anywhere but the highest peaks, streamflows far below normal in a time of year when rivers should be rushing at peak strength, reservoirs nowhere near full and little hope for a rainy spring.

Nearly all of the state east of the Willamette Valley is already facing certain or likely drought this summer, and the valley is inching toward similar status. Southeastern Oregon is experiencing the worst effects, while higher snowpack levels have created slightly better conditions in parts of Northeastern Oregon.

urban tree canopy targets

This open article in PLOS ONE mentions tree canopy targets in several cities.

Increasing UTC [urban tree canopy] has become a widespread goal, often incorporated into municipal sustainability plans. It has been proposed as a way to mitigate impacts from human-dominated systems on the immediate (e.g. shade and cooling) and global (e.g. carbon capture) environment. Sacramento Tree Foundation has pledged to plant five million trees by the year 2025, an effort that would double the region’s tree canopy cover. Philadelphia has established a goal of increasing tree canopy cover to 30% by the year 2025 (www.phila.gov/green/trees). New York City, Baltimore, and Los Angeles have also announced extensive tree planting initiatives (www.milliontreesnyc.org, www.baltimorecity.gov, www.milliontreesla.org). In addition to regional efforts, there are national and global efforts to bring more awareness to the benefits of UTC cover (Urban Environmental Accord 2005, www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/​accords.pdf; http://www.plant-for-the-planet-billiont​reecampaign.org/Partners/VariousPartners​/TreePlanting.aspx). One of the implications of embedding tree canopy goals in sustainability plans is that environmental justice is frequently included as an objective of the plans, and sometimes explicitly linked to UTC. For example, Philadelphia’s 2009 GreenWorks Plan includes goals of increasing tree canopy cover in all neighborhoods highlighting the desire for the equitable distribution of UTC cover (www.phila.gov/green/greenworks/2009-gree​nworks-report.html).

Incidentally, I lived on a beautiful tree-lined block in Philadelphia until a year ago, when the city cut them all down to replace a major sewer line. I suppose it couldn’t be helped, and they are promising to replant.

Here are a bunch of other articles I’ve stumbled across lately on urban tree benefits:

The last is slightly negative. There are people who don’t like trees. Most of their beliefs are erroneous, but some are based on nuggets of fact. Some species of trees will invade sewer lines, particularly if they are starved of water and nutrients because they are under sealed pavement. And trees do kill a small, but nonzero, number of people each year. I believe the tree haters are a tiny but highly vocal minority. It’s not worth spending any effort trying to reason with them. The best thing to do is put a tree everywhere but in front of their house. Maybe they will see how nice it is and eventually come around. If they don’t, well, you still have more trees than you had before.

The Onion on driverless cars

The Onion has an important article on driverless cars and hit and run:

According to engineers, the driverless car features an advanced Culpability-Evasion System, which rapidly utilizes front, side, and rear-mounted cameras to determine whether the other vehicle involved in the collision sustained any visible scrapes or dents and survey the area for eyewitnesses. Technicians confirmed that the self-driving vehicle’s onboard computer calculates within several microseconds of the crash if its own actions are to blame, and if it finds it is at fault, it then initiates a strategy to floor it and speed onto a major roadway before the police arrive.

Saying the vehicle’s automated hit-and-run ability represented the culmination of years of effort, Toyota sources explained that the car had experienced a number of setbacks in early development, including its repeated failure to desert the scene of even small dings, scratches, and rear-end impacts…

“Now, it has the ability to put some distance between itself and the crash site by driving for 25 straight miles in any direction before it finally pulls over into a fast food place parking spot to gather its composure,” continued Durmont.

I have a couple additional technologies that would add even more value to this system. First, a string that I could tie around my middle finger, which would lift it automatically at any careless pedestrians who stray into my path if my car needs to make an aggressive turn while the “walk” signal is out. And in the occasional situations where that is not 100% effective, a small tank of water to wash the pedestrian blood and brains off my car before they have a chance to corrode my paint job. Studies have shown that the blood of children walking to and from school, in particular, can be quite acidic.

“tactical” nuclear weapons

This is disturbing. Members of the elected legislature of a democratic country are openly advocating the use of nuclear weapons. This is happening in the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons before. This is from 2013:

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Calif., appearing on C-SPAN, encouraged Washington to get ready for war, arguing that “if you have to hit Iran … you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three. I think that’s the way to do it, with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.” …

Play out Hunter’s proposal and one quickly sees how devastating it would be. While Hunter doesn’t specify what type of “tactical nuclear device” he would propose for such an attack, the Federation of American Scientists notes that launching the least powerful of such weapons would cause nuclear blasts that would “blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

“Suppose Hunter would opt for something more lethal. If the United States were to use a more powerful tactical nuclear weapon, like the B-61, it could unleash an explosion many times more powerful than Little Boy, the atomic weapon the United States dropped on Hiroshima. Any such nuclear attack would incinerate untold numbers of Iranian civilians, including those working in Iran’s nuclear power facilities, and those in nearby urban centers.

We’re lucky in this country that the grownups are in charge most of the time. But there are moments when they are not, so while they are they should do whatever they can to idiot-proof the place before our next Lord of the Flies moment arrives.

Cold War III will be fought with sticks and stones…

Germany and Russia again? Seriously?

I feel like Ukraine is not front and center in the U.S. headlines like it was late last year, but I don’t think that means things are any better. It’s just that events in the Middle East are grabbing the headlines. This BBC article is from February:

Nato is to bolster the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe in response to increased fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia rebels…

The six bases are being set up in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Britain are taking the lead in establishing the new rapid reaction “spearhead” force, with its lead units able to deploy at two days’ notice.

Joel Mokyr

I’m still reading about secular stagnation. Joel Mokyr from Northwestern University is one of the few optimistic voices in the book:

…digitalisation has penetrated every aspect of science. It has led to the re-invention of invention. It is not just ‘IT’ or ‘communications’. Huge searchable databanks, quantum chemistry simulation, and highly complex statistical analysis are only some of the tools that the digital age places at science’s disposal. Digital technology is everywhere, from molecular genetics to nanoscience to research in medieval poetry. Quantum computers, still quite experimental, promise to increase this power by orders of magnitude. In much recent writings, the importance of ICT on output and productivity has been stressed, and it is clearly of great importance. What needs to be kept in mind, however, is that the indirect effects of science on productivity through the tools it provides scientific research may, in the long run, dwarf the direct effects. A striking example is the growing use of high-powered computers and radically new software in material science.

Materials are the core of our production. The terms Bronze Ages and Iron Age signify their importance; the great era of technological progress between 1870 and 1914 was wholly dependent on cheap and ever-better steel. In many ways, core-materials can be viewed as general-purpose technologies made famous by Bresnahan’s and Trajtenberg’s (1995) seminal paper on the topic. But what is happening to materials now is nothing short of a sea change, with new resins, ceramics, and entirely new solids designed in silico, being developed at the nano-technological level. These promise the development of materials nature never dreamed of and that deliver custom-ordered properties in terms of hardness, resilience, elasticity, and so on. Graphene, the new super-thin wonder material, is another substance that promises to revolutionise production in many lines. The new research tools in material science have revolutionised research. Historically, progress in material science had been always the result of tedious and inefficient ‘trial and error’ or highly uncertain serendipity. The classic example is William Perkin’s discovery of aniline purple in 1856 and Henry Bessemer’s invention of the eponymous steel-making process the same year. Compare those with the situation today: researchers can now can simulate in silico the quantum equations that define the properties of materials, using high-throughput super-computers, and experiment with materials having pre-specified properties.

But not all research tools depend wholly on computational capacity. Of perhaps even more revolutionary importance is the powerful technology developed by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer in the early 1970s, in which they succeeded in creating transgenic organisms through the use of micro-organisms. Genetic selection is an old technology; nature never intended to create poodles. But genetic engineering is to artificial selection what a laser-driven fine-tuned surgical instrument is to a meat axe. The potential economic significance of genetic engineering is simply staggering, as it completely changes the relationship between humans and all other species on the planet. Ever since the emergence of agriculture and husbandry, people have ‘played God’ and changed their biological and topographicalenvironment, creating new phenotypes in plants and animals. Genetic engineering means we are just far better at it.

Burma’s Capital

Here is an article about Naypyidaw, Burma’s capital:

Driving through Naypyidaw, the purpose-built capital of Burma, it could be easy to forget that you’re in the middle of one of south-east Asia’s poorest countries. On either side of the street, a seemingly endless series of giant detached buildings, villa-style hotels and shopping malls look like they have fallen from the sky, all painted in soft pastel colours: light pink, baby blue, beige. The roads are newly paved and lined with flowers and carefully pruned shrubbery. Meticulously landscaped roundabouts boast large sculptures of flowers.

The scale of this surreal city is difficult to describe: it extends an estimated 4,800 square kilometres, six times the size of New York City. Everything looks super-sized. The streets – clearly designed for cars and motorcades, not pedestrians nor leisurely strolls – have up to 20 lanes and stretch as far as the eye can see (the rumour is these grandiose boulevards were built to enable aircraft to land on them in the event of anti-government protests or other “disturbances”). There is a safari park, a zoo complete with air-conditioned penguin habitat, and at least four golf courses. Unlike in much of the country, there is reliable electricity here. Many of the restaurants have free, fast Wi-Fi.

The only thing Naypyidaw doesn’t have, it seems, is people. The vast highways are completely empty and there is a stillness to the air. Nothing moves. Officially, the city’s population is 1 million, but many doubt this is anywhere close to the true figure. On a bright Sunday afternoon, the streets are silent, restaurants and hotel lobbies empty. It looks like an eerie picture of post-apocalypse suburban America; like a David Lynch film on location in North Korea.

parking craters

This video is about how surface parking lots have crowded out actual development in many U.S. downtowns. An interesting thing is happening in Philadelphia, where I live. Surface parking lots that have been here as long as I have (1999) are suddenly turning into development sites, all over turn. This tells me that they were being held in a holding pattern waiting for the next boom. This works in Philadelphia because there were never huge areas of parking in the central city, just smaller lots scattered here and there. But there must be some critical mass where you have so much parking that you no longer have a city at all, and maybe it is hard to recover from that.

The lots that are “temporary” for only a few decades still cause environmental problems of course. Philadelphia has the good sense to charge industrial and commercial landowners by the square foot of pavement for stormwater management, a good policy that more cities should consider (disclosure: I have some professional ties to this program). This general idea of tieing taxes and fees to external costs – in this case the environmental impact of building materials – is basic textbook economics and it works!

In theory, you could cap and trade the right to pave. Initially the credits could be sold to real estate development companies. Then, when the cap is hit, a new development would have to buy enough credits from somebody else who is willing to part with an equal amount of pavement. The alternative would be to use porous materials or low impact development techniques. Credits could be retired over time – either because the government or non-profit groups buy them and retire them, or they could be retired when an owner goes bankrupt or falls behind on property taxes. Maybe they could even be accepted as payment for certain fees or taxes (for example, fees that would have been spent on stormwater management anyway), then retired. Set up a system like this and entrepreneurs would find ways to get in on the game, putting the private sector to work on behalf of the environment.