We have been here before. Harry Truman started the first big alternative fuels project. President Carter promised that the U.S. would never again import as much foreign oil as it did in 1977. Twenty-nine years later, President Bush warned about our addiction to oil (BTW more than in 1977). What did we learn? Cheap oil trumps policy promises and alternatives. Sowaddawedo?

First, we need to recognize that the problem is political, social and economic, but not really technical. This is important, because we keep on trying to apply the technical solutions and they never work. We use oil because it is cheap. We use foreign oil because it is even cheaper. We want to continue to use oil because it supports the lifestyles we enjoy at a price we accept. Unless we change part of that equation, we will always come up with the same answer - more oil.

Before going on, let me break the problem down into two parts. The one part is oil as an environmental problem. The second part is FOREIGN oil as an economic and geopolitical problem. They are separable. You could solve one and not the other. For example, foreign oil can be replaced by American oil from ANWAR, oil shale from Utah, Colorado & Wyoming or from oil sand from Alberta (yes a foreign country but nearby and generally stable). This oil will cost a little more in terms of dollars and a lot more in terms of environment, but we can achieve reasonable energy independence in this way. This is not the way to go, IMO.

Oil use as an environmental threat is the bigger challenge. Remember why we use oil, but then figure in the external costs. This makes oil less of a good deal.

Rand Corporation has recently released a study indicating that falling costs of ethanol, wind power and other forms of renewable energy could allow them to supply 25% of U.S. energy by 2025 at little or no additional expense. (Renewables currently account for only 6% of our energy, and about half of that comes from hydroelectric dams.) This assumes that the price of oil does not decline by very much. Low cost oil (reaching its lowest point in 1998) has destroyed hopes for alternatives before. So let's make sure the prices do not drop very much.

Once they get started, renewables have a big constituency, especially in farm states. The most promising, IMO, is ethanol from wood chips. I admit a personal interest in that. Also interesting are various ways to make methane from manure and other wastes. Read more about these things here.

Promising as all this is, read the number very carefully - 25%. That is the optimistic scenario. That still means 75% has to come from someplace else. We will still be using oil, coal and gas for a long time. The most promising large scale clean alternative is nuclear (the French get 78% of the electric power from nukes; we get about 20%). We might be able to squeeze a little more out of energy conservation. If we just build smarter we can save money, be comfortable and help the environment at the same time. A sustainable resource house, BTW, need not be built out of straw or sticks and it can be very attractive and comfortable.

So let's address the energy problem, but let's address the right one in the right way. Recognize that we have the energy mix we have today because it is what we chose and what we continue to choose. We need not blame others or talk about the stupidity of past generations. We chose what we have and that means we have the choice to choose alternatives too.

Posted by Broadnax at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chrissy and I drove down to the farm for father’s day. It was a hot day (about 90) but it didn’t seem so bad because it was not too humid and there was a decent breeze. We took the hybrid. It gets a lot worse mileage when you use the air conditioner. Last time I went to the farm, I got 42 miles/gallon. This time it was only 36.

This is me with the trees of heaven, an invasive species native to China. It has become a problem in the U.S. The trees dominate native species and give off a toxin that hinders competition. There are about ten acres of them around the farm. I have to kill them all or they will spread. We chop the truck with a machete and then apply the herbicide “Arsenal”. You can just spray it all over the leaves, but that overuses the chemical, bad for the environment and not cheap. Chop and apply is much more labor intensive, but better. Besides, I can get the boys to help, so labor costs are minimal.

Above shows the scale. That is our car parked on our dirt road. The big trees are boundary trees. The ones in the back are on the far side of State Road 623. These trees get pretty big. We own about 10 acres on the far side.

These are little plantation pines on an old landing area. They are not as big as some of the others that are growing on better (and less compact) soils. In the long run, however, the will grow well up here. The stumps in this area are pretty big.

A little description. Most of our land is in loblolly pine plantation, planted in 2004. The previous owner sprayed to kill off the nascent hardwoods. Two streams run across the place. Near them, the timber was left standing to protect the watershed. The trees there are big. We have beech, oak, maples and walnut. These are the climax species, so this part has been left for a long time. We also have a wetland that has cattails, willows and some sycamores. It is hard to get near the wetland because of the multiflora rose. This is an invasive species sometimes called the living fence because it forms a thick and thorny living wall. It gets nice looking flowers, but generally is a negative. Eventually I will have to hack through some of them, but for now I am going to go after the trees of heaven. They are the bigger menace. The multiflora rose forms an understory and will not interfere with my trees very much. It is just literally a pain to walk through.

A couple weeks ago, the boys and I shifted 20 tons of A1 rip-rap to stabilize our road by one of the streams. It took us five hours to get it done. The dump truck could not get all the way down, so we have to do a lot of moving. The rocks cost $490.00 delivered. These are our rocks.

Posted by Broadnax at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We bought 178 ½ acres of land in Brunswick County, Virginia. For comparison, Humboldt Park in Milwaukee is around 90 acres. Owning a forest has long been my dream. This will be a forest soon. It was cut over in 2001 and replanted with loblolly pine in 2003. Loblolly is the most important timber tree in the Southeast. Southern pine (which include loblolly, slash, shortleaf and longleaf pine) supplies 58% of the timber used in the U.S.

The pines on our land are genetically superior super trees and will grow fast. I took the pictures below in June. When I went back in August, some had literally doubled their size and some were taller than I was.

We also have a lot of hardwood on the place and three creeks. The hardwoods are about as old as I am. I have a wonderful little grove of beech trees near one of the creeks and some very big white oak, tulip tree and sweet gum. The under story bushes are American holly. It grows wild down here. The land will just get nicer each year. I am looking forward to growing my trees and taking care of things like the wetlands.

There is a group of hunters who lease hunting rights. They are local guys who take care of the land for me. They claim to have hunted this land for more than 100 years (their families at least). They tell me they will run off anyone who tries to cause trouble and I believe they will.

I also joined the Virginia Forestry Association. Next year I will be the communications director for the Virginia Tree Farm. It doesn’t pay anything, but I think it will be fun. I hope also to meet people who can help me figure out how to best care for my land.

You can tell how excited the kids were to be there.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

St. Paul said that faith is the essence of things hoped for and the evidence to things unseen. I have faith in transcendence, which I sometimes feel but can't articulate. When my father died, I was depressed. I was surprised at how sad I was. I lived away from home, across the oceans. My contact with him was episodic. How much practical difference could it make? It did make a lot. Then awhile after I had a very vivid dream, and the gloom lifted. Details there were none, only a feeling. Everyone was there: the living and the dead, along with the unborn generations. They were all there in a vast eternal present in the multiplicity of all the aspects of their changing personalities. The only existing analogy I can think of is when I see my kids. I don’t see only what they are today; I see what they were and what I hope they will be. It was kinda like that, only all encompassing, the alpha and the omega. I have faith that there is more to life than the life we know. It is a dream I have that I won't give up. I can't give it up. I am not religious enough to be an atheist.

I had a long time to wait for my flight, so I decided to take a walk to the forest on College Avenue. I used to go there a lot in high school. Now it is a part of the Milwaukee park system, but then it was just a forest. Around 1973, there was a big outcry when a trucking firm wanted to tear down the forest and make a parking place for the big rigs. Everyone said that this was one of the last “virgin forests” and should be preserved. I am happy for the preservation , but it is not a virgin forest as even casual inspection reveals. Many of the older trees are broad and branched almost to the ground. Trees do not grow this way in a forest where they have to compete for light. Beyond that, there is a the stone wall that once separated tilled fields. This is a new forest. Since the park service took over, the trails are less defined. Where I used to ride my bike is now almost impassible. Nature returns. As I got to College Avenue, it started to rain – hard. I had my Gortex coat, but my pack and all my stuff got wet. I hunkered down in the shelter – below pictures. Forest shelters are lonely places, especially in the rain. Besides the occasional school field trip, they are not used. It feels good to build them and to have a dedication. The forest shelter is a lot like the exercise bikes people eagerly buy, but never use. I expect most people who live near this forest are only vaguely aware of its existence. The other pictures are the stone wall and the old bike trail that still exists. The last picture is from our back porch in New Hampshire. I only had three pictures from the forest and wanted to add a fourth for symmetry.

I have been wandering forests for my entire adult life, most of my adolescence and some of my childhood. I have learned to identify the trees, soil types, & topography. I love forests, but my thinking about them has changed. I used to like to wander lonely as a cloud. I didn’t want to see the signs of human kind in my forests. Maybe that was because there was little chance I would get my wish. I have changed my mind. I don’t really like wilderness in the sense of land without man. There was plenty of that in the countless eons before man and there will be plenty more after we are gone. Will “time” stop with nobody left to count the minutes, hours and years? It might sound arrogant to say that man is the measure of nature, but it is even more arrogant and downright ignorant for any human to say that he can understand nature in any other way. Raw nature is nasty, cold and incompressible. No human can respect nature in its natural state and it really doesn’t matter if we do. There is nothing the human race can do to add or detract from nature. If we managed what we arrogantly fear (but couldn’t really do) – if we destroyed the entire surface of the Earth, would that make any difference to a nature that encompasses an endless universe of worlds without end and billions of years of time at its disposal? Is there anything any of us could do that will make a difference a billion years hence? It would make a difference to humans in the here and now. We can only add or detract from the human interpretation of nature. Now I am happy to see signs of “good” human intervention and sometimes even the results of a bad intervention healed. More than a century ago, a great man-made catastrophe transformed N. Wisconsin. The great Peshtigo fire burned everything from the middle of the state to Lake Michigan. You can still see the signs in the type of vegetation and soils. We now call it old growth, but it results directly from inadvertent “bad” human intervention. The people living now benefit from this horrible tragedy of which most of them are unaware. Sitting in alone in a forest shelter in a downpour puts things in perspective. I take refuge in my ignorance and fall back on faith.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)