well, I did something a little different today.
My good friend Roland took me for a tour, in his classic Cessna, that is
- with original instrumentation, original panel and a view of the horizon that takes your breath away
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28036258[/vimeo]
like ducks take to water ~
like ducks take to water -
our Springtime baby ducks get their first pond experience and ….
experience it IS !
Two Weeks later a tour of the Nashville area is hard to believe.
Every place has been affected in some way. Large areas, areas that were not close to any high water experienced loss of power.
You drive by a neighborhood and hundreds of cars parked in the streets, you drive by areas near rivers and see each yard full of debris and cleaning trucks.
listen to his Earth stories – the Hawk, the Doe, the Water, and the Moon
listen to Earth’s music
what 4 inches of snow won’t do for Nashberg. Grace delivered on Friday, weathermen predicted accurately on Thursday.
Pack up for the weekend at grocery of your choice – and play. What a great play snow it is complete with full ‘Wolf Moon’ Friday night, snow glistening in light, another few inches on Saturday
leaving no choice but to bundle up, light the fires, make trails with the dogs
embrace the Blue Silence …. and maybe catch on snow moon setting in the morning.
We like Dog Creek …
Wolf Moon tonight.
The ‘largest moon’ we will have in 2010. The Indians give title from many wolves that are electrified by the great moon. Tonight Mars will also rise at sunset, a ‘younger brother’ to our largest moon but in Tennessee, our snow storm overwhelms the view
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100129-biggest-full-moon-2010-mars
Why is building green solutions so important and why is it such a special opportunity for us. Yes, I said us.Amazing things have happened on planet earth in the past couple hundred years, especially for industrialized society. There are great challenges for the many people of the third world but for most of us,
We live and work in air conditioned spaces, use transportation that turns hours into minutes, enjoy comforts, food choices, merchandize and services that were previously available only to the very wealthy.
We are at an interesting crossroads at this time however. We have exhausted some of the resources that make this life possible. Most of our current energy resources have side effects that are dangerous for coming generations. Some of the boundless opportunity that appeared in our nation’s youth has been replaced with difficult choices and job insecurity. We are ushering in a generation that for the first time will probably see a decrease in their standard of living.
What does building green solutions have to do with all these ostensibly, unrelated issues? In the pitch of the Great Depression one attempt to feed the economy was provided with a jobs program, road works that provided jobs in the short run. Government ‘created’ jobs to stimulate the economy and some believe this had a measure of success. This was job creation at it’s most direct level, not exactly supply and demand.
There is a consensus that ‘stimulating’ the economy in the form of lower interest rates and greater government spending is a proven way to revive a struggling economy. This too has really nothing to do with the fundamentals of capitalism, supply and demand.
Now we have a call on multiple fronts to find solutions, solutions that speak to many issues, find energy solutions that are economical yet do not create hazardous waste, solutions that are affordable and accessible to most of the population.
Building green solutions addresses all these issues while also creating new technology, new expertise, a whole new area of employment that simply did not exist before. It is exactly, supply and demand. Our greatest sense of creativity, our greatest sense of invention does indeed respond to need and respond to special circumstances requiring special solutions.
It is not a government program design to ‘create’ work but rather a response to a need whose specialty will create jobs in research, production, and implementation. The United States is challenged to compete in factory production with third world countries. Our high standard of living has also made it difficult to compete in large production and agriculture with countries whose labor cost is a mere fraction. Yet we still lead in technology and the technology of living green is in high demand all over the world.
What else is special about ‘green technology’ and green solutions?
Everybody wins. Resources that are kinder to our environment reduce the impact of our lifestyle and begin to reverse global warming. Countries such as China with fast growing economies and faster growing populations now more than ever need solutions to provide their people energy consuming amenities without destroying their environment.
What else will building green solutions provide? This could be the fun part. We don’t know.
We have witnessed a digital revolution in the past decade, an information revolution that has changed life all over the world. It brought with it new energy, new research, new products, new possibilities, and new jobs. Who would have thought they would be sending a picture from the Zoo as they are talking to their friend across the country? Who would have thought they would be carrying more data on their key chain than all the banks in New York in our last century?
We have every reason to believe this same innovation and same new invention will accompany our ‘green revolution’. New ideas are rarely stale and very rarely solutions unto themselves. Rather they open up new pathways, new ways of thinking, new solution that open even more possibility.
Should our government subsidize this research subsidize this possibility for self-reliance and true economic growth? Of course it should but the green revolution is here and with or without the assistance from our government, energy solutions for the planet will define the 21st Century.
What’s so special about electric cars, and why do you care?
There is a new wave of living unfolding on planet earth. Challenges that seem to overwhelm current solutions are drawing on vision and imagination.
In some ways we are returning, returning to a simpler life, meeting some needs by reducing them. In other ways we are drawing on possibilities that have existed for some time but needed a special calling …. to awaken.
The dinosaur is dead.
Fossil fuel provided a resource for an innovation that practically defined the 20th century. Suburbia, highways, and a lifestyle in many ways liberated from distance came with our automobile. But so did many other things. Fossil fuel could never be exhausted. When the automobile was first built and conceived, fossil fuel practically had no value and was the perfect solution for an energy resource that was bountiful, inexpensive, and easily accessible.
What else did we get ?
Who could have ever predicted the enormous effect on our climate and the air we breathe ? I remember taking trips when I was a child and when we entered the state of Texas we began counting countless oil wells. Who would have thought at that time that we would run out of this inexhaustible resource and commit what has been coined by T. Boone Pickens as ‘the greatest transfer of wealth’ in the history of mankind.
The dinosaur is dead and a new day is dawning.
What’s so special about electric cars and why is the United States not among the leaders in implementing this saving technology, implementing a solution that will allow us to reclaim our self-reliance, produce our energy at home, and make dramatic reductions in our environmental thumbprint?
Good question. What’s so special about electric cars is that for all the promise of clean, renewable energy, there is now a practical solution, for the special demands this kind of car does have.
Manufacturers have identified that most urban work travel is under 100 miles, that the capacity of electric car meets the needs of the typical driver in the United States and the industrial world.
Like any technology that receives the focus of the scientific economic community, the capacity and possibilities for a lithium-ion battery is growing regularly. Use of silicon instead of graphite allows much more energy to be stored because the silicon absorbs larger amounts of lithium in the charging process. If you simply look at the advances in computer size, storage, memory capacity in an industry driven by demand, it is clear that once the electric car is a viable option for the consumer, these same kind of advances will be made in response to demand and the market. A lithium-ion battery can also be recycled with minimal environmental impact. More than 95% of the battery materials can be recovered and reused.
If we picture the United States ten years from now, recharging stations will be dotted across the land because having a charge capacity for an automobile alone is not enough. For a viable solution, an owner/driver of an electric car will require the same confidence they have now, that once out on the road, ‘fill up’ stations exist. Just like our gasoline stations now, charging stations will exist where an electric car can be recharged, or have battery exchanged for stopover comparable to one now taken on a long trip when we fill up with gas.
The difference is, when we fill up with electricity, the fuel will have been resourced here, the funds for it will stay here, the manufacturing of the resource will occur here, the tax revenue for our troubled government will stay here. The dawn of a new day of perhaps our founding fathers’ most powerful inspiration, independence and self-reliance will begin.
Shall we ParaSail ?
What better way to enjoy my Canon vixia then to wake up at 5:30 at Gulf Shores looking out over the horizon. Beautiful bank of clouds have stolen my sunrise but then, the clouds capture their own special treatment of color.
T Boone Pickens