green roofs

Green roofs continue to catch on very, very slowly in the U.S. They are pretty common in Europe. Toronto has a fairly aggressive ordinance requiring them on most new non-residential buildings. Meanwhile, in the U.S. we have scattered demonstration projects and a few tax incentives. San Francisco has just become the first U.S. city to take steps toward requiring them in private development.

We have a strange relationship with technology in this country. We have embraced information technology, but in more traditional fields like civil engineering, architecture and construction our professionals seem to lack information, imagination, and intellectual curiosity about what is going on elsewhere in the world. The thinking typically goes that a new technology is not cost-effective because it is not common, and it is not common because it is not cost-effective. Short-term market forces don’t drive development of the technology in this situation, especially for long-lived technologies like buildings, highways, or pipes. Government can estimate the potential long-term benefits of adopting new technologies, then fund research, development, and lower barriers to new business creation by, to give just one example, freeing entrepreneurs from the burden of having health care tied to a full time corporate job. But our politicians seem incapable of understanding these slightly complex issues, and our citizenry is not demanding that they do.

Frontline in Yemen and Mosul

PBS Frontline probably makes the most consistently depressing documentaries. They also somehow get consistently amazing access to war zones. They did an episode on Yemen recently, and they have one on Mosul coming up. I find these extremely disturbing – if the measure of success in fighting terrorism were taken to be the cost in civilian lives and human rights, I am not sure any of these wars would be worth it. Humanitarian war is an oxymoron – if our political leaders are waging war to achieve geopolitical objectives with little regard to human rights, the people need to understand how horrific that is and try to come to terms with it. These documentaries do a pretty good job at that.

Sowing density effects and patterns of colonization

That’s plant colonization, in case you were wondering what kind of colonization I am talking about. This study has a fairly simple premise – that in restoration you can sow the seeds that have the most trouble establishing at the highest densities, and seeds of plants that germinate and spread easily at lower densities, or even not at all.

Sowing density effects and patterns of colonization in a prairie restoration

A cost-effective approach in plant restorations could be to increase sowing density for species known to be challenging to establish, while reducing sowing density for species that easily colonize on their own. Sowing need not occur evenly across the site for rapidly dispersing species. We explored these issues using a prairie restoration experiment on a high-school campus with three treatments: plots sown only to grasses (G plots), to grasses and forbs (GF1), and to grasses and forbs with forbs sown at twice the density (GF2). In year 2, GF1 and GF2 plots had higher diversity than G plots, as expected, but GF2 treatments did not have twice the sown forb cover. However, high forb sowing density increased forb richness, probably by reducing stochastic factors in establishment. Cover of nonsown species was highest in G plots and lowest in GF2 plots, suggesting suppressive effects of native forbs on weedy species. Colonization of G plots by two sown forbs (Coreopsis tinctoria and Rudbeckia hirta) was apparent after 2.5 years, providing evidence that these species are self-sustaining. Colonization was greater in edges than in the central areas of G plots. Through construction of establishment kernels, we infer that the mean establishment distance was shorter for R. hirta (6.7 m) compared to C. tinctoria (21.1 m). Our results lead us to advocate for restoration practices that consider not only seed sowing but also subsequent dispersal of sown species. Furthermore, we conclude that restoration research is particularly amenable for outdoor education and university-high school collaborations.

Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery is an Australian scientist and author who wrote a popular 2007 book on global warming called The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. He has a new book out called Sunlight and Seaweed: An Argument for How to Feed, Power and Clean Up the World, which appears to be about, among other things, growing kelp on a massive scale to absorb carbon.

By the way, I don’t sell anything on this site. I’m not against selling things necessarily, but when I signed up as an Amazon affiliate nobody ever bought anything. So I’m just embedding the book covers below for convenience and because I kind of like book cover art.

why buddhism is true

I learned about Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment through a Fresh Air podcast (embedded below). The interesting thesis is that mindfulness meditation is the antidote for a lot of what is wrong with the human condition, such as always wanting more than we have, and then not being happy when we get it. You argue that a modern meditation practice could achieve these goals without the religious angle, but the author’s thesis is that the Buddhists correctly diagnosed the human condition thousands of years ago (however old Buddhism is, I was a little too lazy to look it up).

The only thing that makes me wary of Buddhism, but this applies to almost all religions, is that a social elite can use it to encourage people to accept things the way they are rather than envision a better future and be willing to fight for it. Then again, maybe part of the human condition is a fundamental conflict between being happy in the moment and being unsatisfied with the way things are and willing to fight for a better future. Perhaps the middle ground is to take some time each day to reflect on all the things that are good about the moment we find ourselves in. I personally like to also take a little time to nurture that deep down flame of anger about the way certain things are, because it motivates me to want to change them. If everyone just exists peacefully in the moment all the time, nothing will ever change.

the tech revolution and the engineering, architecture and construction industry

This article from Engineering News Record tries to answer the question of what the tech revolution means for the engineering, architecture, and construction industry.

As the world around us becomes more technology-driven and sophisticated, what will that mean for A/E/C? It’s been well-documented that the construction industry productivity gains in the past 40 years have been paltry, and that’s perhaps stating it lightly. So how can we go to IBM’s Watson for legal advice (yup, Watson will put a lot of lawyers out of business), get advanced health screening on our smartphones, obtain a master’s degree on our tablet computer, and then turn around and tolerate 20th century design and construction approaches? How can we allow technology companies to create massively personalized customer experiences, and then deal with a lack of communication and transparency on our construction projects, or dumb models (even worse, 2-D printed drawings!) with meaningless data?

We can’t. Our clients won’t. We need to embrace technology, get comfy with data, and revolutionize the client experience.

I figured the article would elaborate on the three suggestions above, but it doesn’t, really. I think our industry lags behind for a few reasons. First, we design and build things that last a long time, like highways, sewer pipes, buildings, etc. Even if the level of knowledge and technology relating to these things is increasing, they don’t get replaced very often. When individual little pieces of our transportation and water systems break, we replace them with similar or incrementally improved pieces, because it doesn’t seem to make sense to replace the whole system with something radically different all at once, even if that could be the right long-term answer. University curricula, professional groups, labor groups, institutions such as utilities and authorities, licensing and credentialing programs, and their associated lobbyists arise to resist change and perpetuate the status quo. Engineers and architects aren’t really trained in long-term planning or system thinking. There is a planning field that sort of is, but we constantly beat them down and encourage them to conform to short-term thinking so they can remain employed in our industry. In private consulting we talk about serving our clients all day long, but there is really a revolving door between private industry and public clients and not a whole lot of room for new and revolutionary thinking to enter the mix. Truly disruptive technology like self-driving cars leading to drastically reduced demand for private vehicle ownership, and drastically reduced demand for paved surfaces, could eventually push out some of the old thinking. It’s hard to imagine the water or environmental equivalent, but maybe a truly revolutionary toilet that doesn’t require a sewer system at all could be an example. Truly revolutionary building materials like cheap carbon fiber could be another.

not the Cuban Missile Crisis

Sheldon Stern, who was a historian at the JFK library for 23 years, points out that JFK stood up to his military leaders who were hell-bent on a full-scale invasion of Cuba, while today we are hoping that our military leaders might stand up to a President’s reckless decision to unleash the military and risk nuclear war.

It is all but impossible to imagine this kind of informed, rational and mature leadership coming from the Oval Office today. If discretion and common sense are to prevail, it will require, as noted above, turning the central dynamic of the Cuban missile crisis upside down; this time, the top military figures in the administration may be forced to try to short-circuit an impulsive over-reaction by their commander-in-chief. Today, fortunately, most senior military officers are vastly more politically sophisticated and historically educated than their 1962 counterparts (who received most of their formal military education before the advent of nuclear weapons). Indeed, Mattis has edited an important book about American views of our military and McMaster is the author of a highly-regarded study of the failure of civilian and military leadership to prevent the escalation of the Vietnam War. There is room for hope.

I too hope that cooler heads will prevail, and if the coolest heads are in the military at the moment I am behind them. But if the coolest heads are the military, it is a sign that the civilian leadership has completely failed. I am not confident that it will get us out of trouble this time, and even if it does it is a scary precedent for the future. Basically we are saying it is okay for the military to step in and take over in an emergency. Nothing in our constitution is supposed to allow that, and for it to happen the President has to be extraordinarily weak and the entire rest of the civilian government has to stand by and do absolutely nothing.

Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare by Bertrand Russell

Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare was a 1959 book by Bertrand Russell. The title is clearly tongue-in-cheek because these are two things that don’t mix. Here is a fun quote/paraphrase relating the book to the present day, provided by History News Network:

Responding on August 8 to North Korean threats, Trump publicly warned that North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Later that day, North Korea’s state media announced that its government was considering a strategy of striking the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam with mid- to long-range nuclear missiles―a strategy that a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army said would be “put into practice” once Kim authorized it.

This kind of reckless and potentially suicidal behavior is reminiscent of the game of “Chicken,” which achieved notoriety in the 1950s. In the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), two rebellious, antisocial male teenagers (or juvenile delinquents, as they were known at the time) played the game before a crowd of onlookers by driving jalopies at top speed toward a cliff. Whoever jumped out of the cars first was revealed as “chicken” (a coward). A more popular variant of the game involved two teenagers driving their cars at high speed toward one another, with the first to swerve out of the way drawing the derisive label. According to some accounts, young James Dean, a star of Rebel Without a Cause, actually died much this way.

With news of the game spreading, Bertrand Russell, the great mathematician and philosopher, suggested in 1959 that the two sides in the Cold War were engaged in an even crazier version: nuclear “Chicken.” He wrote: “As played by irresponsible boys, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked.” But the game became “incredibly dangerous” and “absurd” when it was played by government officials “who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings.” Russell warned that “the moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of ‘Chicken!’ from the other side.” When that moment arrived, “the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.”

This might be the biggest problem of all with having nuclear weapons around. Even if rational adult supervision is present 99% of the time, and even if there were no risk of terrorism, it only takes one irrational leader one time to pull the trigger and fuck up our world permanently.

National Climate Assessment – censored?

13 U.S. agencies, including NOAA, NASA and EPA, are required to produce a National Climate Assessment every four years. The thing about bureaucracy, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, is that it grinds on somewhat disconnected from the political process. So the latest National Climate Assessment has been produced. It has to be approved by political appointees in the agencies before it can be officially released, but no matter because the New York Times has posted the key appendix here, called the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Climate Science Special Report. I’ll post a couple excerpts below:

First, a bit of the up-front matter:

The findings in this report are based on a large body of scientific, peer-reviewed research, as well as a number of other publicly available sources, including well-established and carefully evaluated observational and modeling datasets. The team of authors carefully reviewed these sources to ensure a reliable assessment of the state of scientific understanding. Each source of information was determined to meet the four parts of the IQA Guidance provided to authors: 1) utility, 2) transparency and traceability, 3) objectivity, and 4) integrity and security. Report authors assessed and synthesized information from peer-reviewed journal articles, technical reports produced by federal agencies, scientific assessments (such as IPCC 2013), reports of the National Academy of Sciences and its associated National Research Council, and various regional climate impact assessments, conference proceedings, and government statistics (such as population census and energy usage).

“Fake news published by the failing New York Times”, indeed! I vowed never to forgive the New York Times for their role in the Iraq invasion debacle, but they are beginning to redeem themselves. The Trump junta seems to be getting frustrated that their Goebbels-esque propaganda isn’t just getting parrotted unopposed.

And now, I’ll just share this graphic which I found a bit shocking:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of-the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html

One interesting thing is you might think Florida or Georgia might be the wrong place to be, but these maps suggest they may not change as much and the rest of the country will sort of catch up to create one big Jurassic stew. Now, people live in hotter places than Florida and Georgia and manage to get along just fine. The real question is whether we can grow food under these conditions.

If you don’t believe me that this is disconnected from the political process, read this Guardian article about how the USDA has been instructed to avoid the term climate change. That is the agency responsible for our nation’s food security.

Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead…

The primary cause of human-driven climate change is also targeted, with the term “reduce greenhouse gases” blacklisted in favor of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”. Meanwhile, “sequester carbon” is ruled out and replaced by “build soil organic matter”.

Reading on, I have to say it isn’t clear how high up the political chain this directive came from, or whether it is a mid-level supervisor advising staff how to stay out of political trouble. Self-censorship is still censorship though, and indicates the politicians have created a climate (no pun intended) of caution and fear for scientists. I can’t argue with building organic matter though, which would be good with or without climate change.