Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Spring Cleaning

  Spring cleaning depresses me. It makes me realize how little social liquidity our possessions have. For example, we are throwing away two old large televisions because one has severe color problems and the other won't turn on and it is too expensive to repair them. But they have perfectly good speakers, screens, capa...citors and other electronic parts that could be put to use elsewhere.

March 24 at 3:48pm · ·
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
But will we dissassemble them and harvest the 98% still functional parts? No. For one thing it has warnings against taking them apart. For another there is no reliable after-market for these parts. We weren't trained in high school or college to salvage things and the transaction costs are too high. Where would we store the parts, who could we ... See Moregive them to, how would we organize them, test them for functionality etc. Society makes it easier to "throw things away". I hate spring cleaning; it points out everything that is wrong with our society to me.
March 24 at 3:50pm · 
Jonathan B Aibel
Jonathan B Aibel
Massachusetts restricts the disposal of electronics (don't know how seriously it is enforced). Concord therefore has two drop-off days each year and contracts with an "electronics recycling" company. But I can't tell you how many components are actually recycled and how many end up as scrap.
March 24 at 4:11pm · 
Isabel A. M. Cole
Isabel A. M. Cole
In Washington there is an appliance and electronic recycling program. All of the companies that make the products are partly responsible for recycling. Plus they have determined that it is actually cheaper for the companies to recycle the parts than to make new ones....Too expensive to ship the TVs here though. :)
March 24 at 4:26pm · 
Lara Morrison
Lara Morrison
We need to design for recycling.
March 24 at 4:30pm · 
Erica Fox Zabusky
Erica Fox Zabusky
the other issue is that repair costs are so high (and as th says, parts are often "not available"), so that it's "cheaper" to replace. how can we stop this cycle? ii hate our throw-away society!
March 24 at 5:01pm · 
Elisa Zazzera
Elisa Zazzera
zenith, sony, panasonic etc should take them back & do the recycling as interface global textiles does with their carpeting.
indeed nothing lasts forever, except of course garbage. a hundred years from now archeologists will be digging up fresh kills & the thousands of other landfills in america to see what was in hotdogs! - hey th happy belated- despite the spring cleaning i hope your new year is off to a good start.
March 25 at 3:29am · 
Edwind Suryadi
Edwind Suryadi
I think you should visit www[dot]instructables[dot]com Mr. Culhane, many broken things can be re-used for other purposes there. :)
March 25 at 5:07am · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thanks you guys! Your comments are really really appreciated, and helped cure some of the depression (now if only there was an electronics recycling place in our area!)
March 26 at 12:51am ·

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Help Create the Solar CITIES Crowd Sourced Community Cloud Citizen Science Computing Network!

 

You've heard of cloud computing, right? The idea is to treat information as a public utility and spread capital costs among users so that one can "reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development" (so sayeth Wikipedia, one of the most cumulonimbus of clouds!)...

Birthday Climate Changes and small town nuke reactions

Thomas Henry Culhane has woken up a year older and wiser and is ready to join ranks with the "global warming skeptics" and "climate change naysayers" to try and form a stronger coalition against nuclear proliferation and an atomic energy renaissance; viz. "we don't need radioactive-rock-powered carbon free energy, thankyou very much!"


ngm.nationalgeographic.com
They’d be carbon free, relatively cheap, and according to the industry, inherently safe. An underground mini-nuke could power a village.


This is perhaps the most frightening and, in my opinion, irresponsible article National Geographic has ever published, making our beloved magazine appear for the first time like a shil for the centralized energy lobby. After three pages of glowing commentary (pun not intended) for this terrible idea they toss off the ...unresolved issue of highly radioactive waste in one glib sentence and say nothing about how a massive deployment of "small town nukes" will affect proliferation and increase terrorist threats, to say nothing of the dangers of having radioactive material shipped to every Bedford Falls in the world. They don't talk about the health of thorium and uranium miners and plutonium process factory workers and their families (we saw the consequences and the horrible deformities of babies and children when we met with the doctors studying this in India). And they don't talk about how this initiative to "decentralize" nuclear energy through micro-nuke deployment, while keeping centralized control of the manufacture, sale, installation, servicing and fueling of the reactors will affect the true decentralized distributed energy sector which is working with safe, clean, renewable energy sources. The "carbon free, relatively cheap" mantra, using climate change scare tactics to get environmentally concerned citizens to approve these horrible devices, is a red herring since we already have plenty of net carbon zero technologies if we are really concerned with global warming that are safe and can be immediately deployed and the nukes will be subsidized by tax payer money so that they can outcompete nascent idustries with large start-up and capital costs.

Quite frankly, as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer who is working on small town renewable energy issues I am deeply disappointed, dismayed, disturbed and depressed, not only by the push that the U.S. and France and others is making for this, but by the fact that National Geographic is publishing such uncritical material that sounds more like an advertisement or a piece of industry propaganda than a report. As we used to say in Dobbs Ferry New York, to express shock and concern "hey, Nat Geo, what's the big idea?"


 Comments:

Charles F. Munat
What the f#ck is wrong with them? Maybe a big influx of energy corp. dollars? This is awful -- and I speak as a former reactor operator.
March 20 at 10:55pm · 

Sherry Kerr
shocking!!!
March 21 at 5:42am ·
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Charles, we NEED YOU now, as a former Navy nuclear reactor operator, to speak out in every medium possible. This sad and out of character National Geographic article deliberately compares the mini-nukes being proposed for the rest of us to the small reactors on nuclear subs, as if that somehow makes them okay. The public has this weird warped impression from a backwards hijacked "small is beautiful" campaign that somehow our military's ship-based nuclear reactors are safe and have never had accidents and don't create unmanageable toxic waste. Can you tell the world about the frightening and irresponsible things you saw and learned when you were on the submarine working on the reactors and why it made you want to leave the armed forces?
March 21 at 1:07pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thanks for expressing that Sherry. I'm shocked too. If you read Hayden White's "Tropics of Discourse" and deconstruct the trope of this Nat Geo article it is clear that it is a linguistic subterfuge. The dangers are glossed over with such finesse and utopian optimism you would think we were reading General Electric propaganda from the 1950during the shrewd "atoms for peace" campaign that started atomic proliferation. India trumped us all in 1974 by signing up for atoms for peace and turning around and making and detonating a nuclear bomb, spurring Pakistan to do the same. What I fear now is making towns and cities dependent on ubiquitously distributed radioactive energy sources that demand high security everywhere. Talk about setting up conditions for a climate of fear that will justify police-state fascism!
March 21 at 1:13pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
The thing is I normally really admire Chris Carrol's writing and articles. His article on "Hi-Tech Trash" and its impact on the health of African villagers who are on the receiving end of the environmental insult was a real eye-opening (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text) and he has always covered issues with fairness, compassion and a leaning toward sustainability and health. This is uncharacteristic of him and the magazine.
March 21 at 3:20pm ·
Lara Morrison
Lara Morrison
TH, I think people with vested interests in a lot of the current structure are so afraid they see nuclear energy as a way out of changing our life styles with Peak Oil. I think the decline of cheap oil production is much more advanced than is acknowledged in the MSM but they know and they know how fragile the things are. I have more faith in people and want to open their imaginations to see how things could be better.
March 21 at 7:23pm ·
Charles F. Munat
Charles F. Munat
I never saw anything particularly frightening while operating a Navy reactor, but accidents, of course, happen all the time. The Navy can claim an accident-free record only by redefining the term. Anything less than really catastrophic gets renamed an "incident." And there are lots of "incidents."

But that's really beside the point. There's nothing mystifying about Navy reactors. They are better designed than civilian reactors, and smaller and more manageable, but then the Navy doesn't need to make a profit. How do you replicate that in a profit oriented industry? (Big subsidies, obviously.) Of course, Navy reactors are also mostly located on mobile platforms which are then transported to battle zones where there are people with very good reason to blow up or sink those platforms. That doesn't seem so smart, does it?

But every reactor, whether it is a military reactor or a civilian reactor is busy creating large amounts of the most deadly toxic waste known to humanity. A teaspoon of the stuff could kill huge numbers of people. And it's toxic forever. And its radioactivity embrittles the containers you put it in, making leaks more likely. And there's the transport problem. And there's the guard-it-forever problem.

Nuclear power is simply the stupidest idea humans have ever had. It is not even remotely clean -- even aside from the radioactive waste concerns, there is all the waste produced in building and fueling and decommissioning them, and then there is the enormous thermal pollution from cooling them. To say that nuclear power is a clean source of energy is like saying shit is good to eat because it doesn't contain cyanide. And there is nothing renewable about nuclear energy, either, neither are the deposits of uranium any more conveniently positioned than the remaining deposits of oil and gas, thus ensuring continued energy wars for decades to come.
March 21 at 9:08pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Can I quote you in my blog, Charles? Your expertise and insight is very valuable. Thanks so much for posting (and thanks for your comments too Lara!)
March 21 at 9:57pm · 
Lara Morrison
Lara Morrison
did you see my post with T Boone Pickens talking about Peak Oil?
March 21 at 9:58pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Yes indeed, thanks Lara. And it is because oil is peaking and will not become cheaper that I am confident the free market will replace in rather quickly with better alternatives -- if and only if we can keep the centralized energy industry from artificially making it seem as though the nuclear option is better. They will do this by using climate change scare tactics and by subsidizing the price of nuke-generated-electricity for the end user until the other options have been killed off. I would rather risk continued global warming as we transition to carbon neutral fuels (with investment in rapid carbon sequestration technologies -- like massive tree plantings and urban greening -- for example) and foregoe the nukes completely. Carbon the earth can handle, radioactivity we don't do well with. I say that as a carbon-based lifeform :)
March 21 at 10:07pm · 
Charles F. Munat
Charles F. Munat
Sure, you can quote me.
March 21 at 10:16pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thanks, I just did so in the comment section on the blog post. I appreciate it (and your eloquence)!
March 21 at 11:14pm · 
Lara Morrison
Lara Morrison
Are you familiar with Albert Bates' work on biochar? He thinks it is key to bringing down co2 levels.
March 22 at 5:51am · 


March 21, 2010:

Had a great time giving a presentation to the "green team" at Ben Franklin Elementary in Glendale. They seem on board with the idea of doing renewable energy projects at the school and I hope to help them. Care to lend some of your legal skills to helping stop this horrible movement toward ubiquitous nuclear deployment? It really concerns me, especially when the public erroneously thinks radioactive waste is somehow easier to deal with than carbon dioxide, which is harmless and can easily be recycled and sequestered in the biosphere. What do you think about all this?

  Big thanks to everyone for the kind birthday wishes; received as gift a beautiful energy saving 37" LCD TV from Sybille and the Fruetels so I can now get to work editing our "everyone can make their own small-scale garbage-using-biogas-reactor" documentary; have to get the message out before dangerous mini-nuclear reactors are deployed everywhere.

March 20 at 10:36pm

Small-town nukes? Hey you guys, what's the big idea?

  Micro-nukes? That's the big idea?

I'm afraid..

(Illustration from March 2010 issue, copyright National Geographic)
Micro-nukes? That's the big idea?I'm afraid...
 (Illustration from  March 2010 issue, copyright National Geographic)Micro-nukes? That's the big idea?I'm afraid. Very afraid. On my birthday, which is supposed to be the first day of spring, I opened the March issue of National Geographic, my favorite magazine, only to find a pr
· Share
Mike Gallay
Mike Gallay
"With any of the new reactors, of course, there will still be radioactive waste to contend with." Aside from ending on a preposition, I too was cloaked by a feeling of dismay from that line. That's it? Now we're moving on to directing leery glances at regulators for not moving faster to put Mom and Pop nuke Shops on every corner?

I clicked theLike" option because I felt your review of the article was thoughtful and your take on it accurate. The article itself feels almost like an advertorial. Do the small-town nukes come with apple pie, Main Street and that wily Otis Campbell, the town drunk? I hope these machinations represent the one step backwards before the eventual two steps forward.
March 22 at 4:42pm
Rebecca Tobias
Rebecca Tobias
When this myopic concept hit the pavement several years ago members of the PSR and the LA Non-Nuclear Disarmament Dialogue made it a point to bring it to public forums to discuss its dangerous threat to the health and well-being of communities who would contemplate it in the future as a 'quick-fix' to our energy needs. How irresponsible of NatGeo ... See Moreto make garden shed sized reactors palatable to the masses, and to minimize the hard and fast possibilities that exist for us by harnessing power of the wind, sun and oceans. Corporations stand to gain, and in our relentless pursuit of comfort and immediacy I am afraid that many will fall prey to the lure of their offering unless we become empowered with knowledge and embrace fundamental lifestyle changes--just as you advocate for day in and day out. Thank you TH. Keep sharing your findings with us so we can learn to live in peace and harmony with our fragile, precious environment.
March 22 at 4:55pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Mike, Rebecca -- your comments are as eloquent as they are appreciated. May I reproduce them on my blog so others can see them?
March 23 at 11:11pm · 
Rebecca Tobias
Rebecca Tobias
You bet TH--have you seen this insanity? Bill Gates is one of Toshiba's staunchest supporters, argh!:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100323/ts_afp/japannuclearusgatescompanytoshiba_20100323053821
March 23 at 11:41pm · 
Mike Gallay
Mike Gallay
I'd be honoured
March 24 at 12:11am · 

Thursday, March 11, 2010

  I just talked by telephone to Dr. Martin Denecke, professor here at Essen University, whose research into the topic of "Wie viel Energie liegt auf der Strasse" (How much energy is lying on our streets?") has enormous urban planning application for Cairo, particularly since the slaughter of the pigs removed the Zabaleen... incentive for removing organic waste from the city. Dr. Denecke's work is among the most inspiring I've seen in a long time, and I look forward to meeting him in the next few days.

See More
www.uni-due.de
[20.04.2009] Bisher fiel er nicht als typischer Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Forschung auf, doch er könnte Energie für die Zukunft liefern – der Straßenkehricht. Welches Potenzial das Gemisch aus Blättern, Rasen, Holz, Papier, Sand und Abrieb zur Herstellung von Biogas hat, analysieren derzeit Dr. ...
March 11 at 5:36pm · · · Share
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
We visited Dr. Denecke this morning and he took us to the lab to see his 3A 3 phase reactor system -- aerobic/anaerobic/aerobic in a 24 hour, 20 day, 30 day cycle that makes everything useful (lignocellulosic feedstock too) and generates significant heat for the reaction.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

It's alive!

  Delighted to discover that my mesophiles in the porch tank survived the winter and, what is more, despite this weekend's snowfall and the icey weather that persists, the bacteria are still producing natural gas -- small quantities to be sure (30 second burns every couple of hours) but at these temps in Germany in an open telescoping digestor, who is complaining?

March 9 at 8:48pm ·
 Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Perhaps the suggestion of the Chief Scientific Officer at Blue Marble Energy was spot on -- we need to "shock" the system and put the microbes through periods of selection pressures so that each new generation that survives is hardier than the last. Evolution here we come!
March 9 at 8:50pm

Middle East nuclear renaissance?

Okay, am I the only one who finds this very very very frightening? Who is willing to mobilize with me to stop this insanity -- with all the sunlight, wind, and garbage that the mideast has, to say nothing of oil and gas, can we really conscience these countries adding more nuclear material to the world cache just to su...pposedly "provide much needed electricity". Come on friends, yella sadeeqna, surely you aren't going to allow this madness.

See More
www.energy-daily.com
Washington (UPI) Jun 23, 2008 - A comprehensive and well detailed report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, released last week, sheds a pile of information on the state of nuclear proliferation in one of the world's most volatile regions -- the Middle East.

Shame on Sarkozy

  Shame on you Sarkozy. Remind your fashion model wife that the word "Bikini" comes from a sick advertising campaign based on the fact that after the H-bomb tests on the Bikini atoll there was >nothing left of the islands, and since with this bathing suit there is practically nothing left we should name it after the isla...nds we destroyed<. And what will you leave us with, France, if you have your way... radiant smiles on radioactive skulls?

See More
www.nuclearpowerdaily.com
Paris (AFP) March 8, 2010 - France urged international financial bodies to finance a new era of global nuclear power on Monday and pitched its own reactor technology as the model to follow.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Tuam libera mentem: recycling human wastes

  Tuam libera mentem: If we accept human beings as top prey rather than top predator, human wastes as inputs rather than outputs, the hominoid corpus and animus as carriers of prokaryotes and information we begin to see better species-packing solutions and might view population as a solution rather than a problem. The questions: what is our sustainabile yield? We know we can multiply; can we now be truly fruitful?

March 5 at 8:47am ·
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
毛 澤東 / 毛泽东 (Mao Zedong) only scratched the surface when he quoted the ancient Chinese philosophers saying "each birth brings a new pair of hands not just a mouth to feed". We also bring a hypersea of nutrients to the feast, and mobile levers for transformation.
March 5 at 8:59am · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
And Malthus skewed our thinking astray saying "food supplies grow arithmetically while population grows exponentially" suggesting that we could outstrip our food supply. Think again: Food IS a population (i.e. derives from populations of living organisms that also reproduce exponentially). And the more we use SCP (Single Cell Protein) and insect protein to feed Homo sapiens and our livestock the sooner we will realize this is true.
March 5 at 11:45am · 
Emily Wentworth Low
Emily Wentworth Low
OK, TH - let me make sure I understand: So, we evolve from consuming hot dogs (then) to tofu pups (now) to the worm wieners of the future, which would include the labeling, "this product contains sustainably grown SCP". And uncles in this new Biome-archy would gross their nieces out by teasing that the SCP was cultured on their own feces (as ... See Moreopposed to my uncle, who convinced me when I was 7 that the hot dog I was roasting was made of worms. Really. He'd worked in a hot dog plant outside Philly. I didn't eat hot dogs for years.)
March 5 at 5:17pm · 
Byron DeLear
Byron DeLear
TH, ur the apex predator of love!
March 5 at 5:23pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Yup, that's the gist of what me be sayin, Emily. And to prove it I ate a mealworm in Mr. Beard's 9th grade science class in Seattle when we went to present to them (two days in a row) about the work we did with y'all in Cordova. I guess I'm a bit like your Uncle; maybe grosser! By the way, the students totally want to join the Cordova Wolverines ... See Morein doing biogas and Mr. Beard wants to communicate with Adam. He said he tried doing biogas before using sewage sludge but was trying to feed the bacteria grass and didn't get good results. Now he is going to replicate what we did in Cordova. (He is cool, he even has dermestid beetles in his class that strip the flesh off of road kill so his students can do taxidermy on the skeletons!).
March 5 at 5:24pm · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Heya Byron -- do you remember the Oaxacan restaurant "Galaguetza" on Olympic in L.A.? When we were building our biodigestor at Al Silva's in the 'hood Alvaro and I went there to eat grasshoppers (Chapulines con queso) with my brother Mike, my sister in law Amy (who now works for Disney), Game Changer Mike Bonifer and his wife Professor Virginia... See More, Kuhn, Mike Rimoin and Sybille and Kilian. I think we all felt that the Oaxacans are on to something with their inclusion of delicious insect protein into our diet. Sure beats spraying them with toxic pesticides and then trying to eat the inferior vegetable foods they would have turned into high quality protein!
March 5 at 5:36pm · 

creativity-online.com

Thomas Henry Culhane to Mike Rimoin

  See this article "A Campaign of Play" and "The Ball" concept for advertising that fellow Mike Bonifer friend Tali Krakowsky has written. It expresses much of the "crowd sourcing" concept you and I have have been discussing for creating DIY energy, water and waste management solutions through creative play who...se fruits we hope to bring to the Congo (to, in turn, engage in further play with those trapped on the other side of the digital divide).

See More
creativity-online.com

Huge methane leak in Arctic Ocean: study

  Be alarmed, very alarmed. Then join us (or support us) in offsetting these new sources of GH gas methane by using biomethane elsewhere. Join the Solar CITIES team and build a bioreactor in your own backyard. We need you!

Chinese Sci Fi Cinema

Chinese cinema has become a really pleasing alternative to the American mainstream. In CJ7, Kung Fu Hustle director Stephen Chow tackles the issues of class prejudice, the integrity of the poor and the love of family against a backdrop of a rapidly developing Chinese landscape and an imaginative child's struggle again...st conformity. The great special effects and extra-terrestrial friendship theme prove that China is not only ready for the new space race, but can lead intellectually and morally as well. I highly recommend this little known film! Delightful for the whole family!

See More
www.sonypictures.net

Chapulines Con Queso

  They don't advertise them on the website, but if you go in and order "Chapulines con Queso" they will serve you the delicious "grasshoppers with Cheese" that makes a trip to Oaxaca such a joy (in Oaxaca women come by in the square with baskets of two different species, large and small; in L.A. they only serve the large.... You can also get a delicious fried Nopal salad -- attention all my Syrian and Egyptian friends who only know "Teen Showki", the fruit known as "tuna" in Spanish, yes, the paddles of cacti are delicious!

See More
www.guelaguetzarestaurante.com
Guelaguetza Restaurante - Dish

Thursday, March 4, 2010

ソトコト

Ohayo Gozaimas.  Do you know this eco-lifestyle magazine "Sotokoto"? It appears I will be honored in it as part of their "Green Fighters 100" special issue "introducing 100 people from around the world that are doing positive things for their communities and for the planet". What a cool honor (as the song goes, it would be great to be "big in Japan!"). Seriously, it is exciting and I hope that I can visit you again in Japan and continue the great green fight we started back in Indonesia all those years ago!

See More
www.sotokoto.net
月刊「ソトコト」は、ロハスピープルのための快適生活マガジン。スローフードやスローライフ、最近ではロハスをはじめ、NPOやエコツーリズムなど、楽しくオシャレにエコロジーを、暮らしのヒントを毎月特集スタイルで提案しています。
March 4 at 8:43pm ·

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A stink in Central California over converting cow manure to electricity

Thomas Henry Culhane via Eric Santiestevan: Ay yay yay America, my home sweet home; why is it that here in my adopted homeland Germany we have thousands of large scale commercial biogas power plants (8,000 in all of Europe) while the U.S. has only 150 and is making it hard for farmers and small businesses to keep them running? Using the little amount of NOx po...llution they emit as a barrier to entry into the energy business? Get real!

See More
www.latimes.com
Reporting from Stanislaus County, Calif. - Central California is home to nearly 1.6 million dairy cows and their manure -- up to 192 million pounds per day. It's a mountain of waste and a potential environmental ...

Solar CITIES on National Geographic Weekend with Boyd Matson

  This past weekend we were once again honored to have a radio broadcast conversation with host Boyd Matson on National Geographic Weekend,
this time about our work exploring how to harness Alaska's
psychrophilic bacteria to produce biofuels around the world in areas
where it is too cold for the typcial mesophiles that we get from animal
manure.

Listen to the broadcast here.


solarcities.blogspot.com
This blog describes the activities of global nomads T.H. Culhane and Sybille Culhane as they work on the Solar C3.I.T.I.E.S. mission: "Connecting Community Catalysts Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Systems"