Let's call it "Generative A.I.eee!"

Am I right?  Too much too fast while not yet ready for primetime?

Remember the first time you were outraged by spam?  This, in the pantheon of gifts of technology misused by excessively profit-minded types, could dwarf its irritating effect. But they've got a hot technology they're trying to find a use for, and are hitting us with every conceivable uselessness, hoping to find the next fad.

Great ideas, thanks so much.  Now could you please move your Artificialism out of my way, just make it an option like everything else?

This is like the ridiculous Metaverse — taking a play-acting walk through the insides of a cartoon — being brought to you, instead of you needing to enter it.  Oh, so they thought we'd all love living in a pretend world, where you'd have a hard time telling what is real?

Then how about all those sugar-coated polystyrene illustrations? I am already really sick of seeing all these mindless garbage "A.I.eee!" graphics. Just imho; but really now. Or at the very least, if you do, please Label it as such, out or respect to all the human artists who develop and labor long and lovingly over their craft.

Artists should label their own stuff, too; something like, "THIS IS REAL — I DID THIS, my with genuine biological hands, eyes, brain and heart." (Only shorter.)

Album Notes for "All-Acoustic Contemplative Sound Spaces"

A new digital album of ambient/space music, for evening listening, intended to establish a relaxed, peaceful atmosphere.  

It was woven from all natural-world instruments, "organic" – with no synth or any electronic sounds.

Hear it streaming free here, on Rosswriting.com/music

Several live performances, but mostly layered recordings, introspections of bells, gongs, bowls, percussion, different strings, and serene voices of Nature.  Singing insects, frogs  and birds; rain, a brook, a waterfall, the ocean...

Soundtracks meant to help the listener slow down a little, so the wave that rises in the heart can more easily be found. For putting on in the background late in the day, to set the tone for time and space to stretch out.

There are no synthesizers or electric instruments on this album, no words sung or spoken — it's a percussionist's approach to meditative ambient space music. (But we did not hold back on the tasteful use of "studio magic,' of course, wherever that was right.)

Evocative, intriguing, hypnotic...
Mellow, exotic, harmonic...
An elves' workshop at play; extraterrestrial tambouras; 

Bells reverberating in the air; the thousand-stringed roar of the mighty Monochord.

As the river moves on here, the notes get longer and deeper, slower and wider…

Hopefully this is all about sitting back and settling into in a deep and soothing sound, breathing a little deeper, feeling a little closer to the peace inside.

These Are Soundtracks of Restful Dreams

You won't find the usual type of "music" on this album, with lots of ideas and lines and chords. Instead, these are flowing, abstract atmospheres of organized sound.

You could equally say that of course it's music, only, played, very, slo-o-ow-ly... 

There may be only as many individually sounded notes in this whole collection of pieces as in one or maybe two pop songs. (The notes-per-minute make a radical contrast.)

This is all about how the strongest, most riveting note in any piece of music is a rest, a note of Silence.

Then next to that would be Reverberation, the after-effect when a note is struck, how long it lasts hanging in the air...

Putting this together came from a longtime approach of being observant for the natural possibilities, as much as possible just present, listening and responding. Letting the sound suggest where it wants to go, and your deeper brain do all the heavy lifting.

The goal, the hope, is for when the musicians can become the instrument, the highest and deepest experience you can have of playing.

Some Notes On The Tracks

We've always been utterly fascinated by being immersed in a deep, rich, flowing tone that just hangs there and hypnotizes. As percussionists, we prize the raw, living sound of instruments made directly from the earth, transformed and refined by human hands. (All praise to the instrument makers!)

There's a lot of favorite electronic music that we listen to frequently, even big fans of some. But there's no way a synthesized sound can compare to the depth and all the dimensions of a natural object resonating. That's what we've got here.

We've long been collecting especially "slow-burning" instruments, the kind that make long, sustained tones. You'll hear all kinds of strange sounds pop up in the background, but it's the bells and gongs of all sorts that carry much of the load, and a favorite is using singing bowls as gongs, striking their outer walls with mallets for the deep BOOOM-M-M-M...

They just keep ringing, and ringing... And of course they do some singing, too.

Starring Nature

The other elements to these collages are from recordings made mostly around Woodstock, New York: the frogs in the rain, peepers, crickets, katydids, the stream and waterfall.  (There must have been a few add-in's, since the ocean turns up — that was from the southeast coast of Florida.)

Featuring Peter Blum, David Budd, and Lea Garnier

Much of this album was played by Bill borrowing and buying from the impressive singing bowl collection of Peter Blum, who keeps around 30 on hand. Peter is heard on tracks 5, 6 and 11. 

Our great thanks and appreciations to him, and to David Budd (tracks 5, 8 and 11,) and Lea Garnier (8) for contributing their wonderfully sensitive playing, too.

More thanks

Three tracks, #'s 2, 6, & 10, were begun with tracks recorded by Robert Bard in his studio, Skytop Sound, in New Paltz, NY.  These were outtakes from some recording sessions Bill did with Peter that formed the basis for his "Penumbra" album.  That's how we got the recordings of Bill playing the Monochord harp (2 & 10,) which was loaned to Peter for the sessions, and of Mr. Blum on his tamboura with his beginning intonation (6).


Photo: Sky Away From The Lights, (c)2010 by Tunc Tezel

Used with permission. (Thank you, Tunc!)
From 'The World At Night' (TWAN), twanight.org


Mastered by Tom Desisto, Desisto Music, Woodstock, NY

Our thanks, too, to Garry Kvistad of Woodstock Chimes, not only for his permission to record there during one of their annual sales, but for his saying, "But don't just record – perform!" So “I Know That Girl” is Bill playing their giant, awesome Windsinger chimes in the foreground and an enormous gong behind, accompanied by the random sounds of customers trying out all the chimes, bells, rattles, flutes and whistles in the chime sale.

Stream it here, free,  at

Rosswriting.com/music

Key Influences In Wide, Slow Music

Or, Why We Made An Album Like This.  (''All-Acoustic Contemplative Sound Spaces'')

Where did we ever get the strange ideas about spare, soothing soundmaking that were pursued on this collection?  Here are a few of the original sources.

Paul Horn Inside the Taj Mahal

Paul Horn's 1967 album recorded in the dome of India's Taj Mahal was an absolute revolution in hearing, and in feeling, too.  It's got to be one of the originating albums of the ambient space in music. 

While in India (with the Beatles, it turns out), he snuck into the Taj Mahal with his flute and a Nagra tape recorder to play with a space with its distinctive "decay time" of almost a minute.  He played a long full note, and it just hung there forever as he slowly added notes and simple themes, creating a beautiful weave of suspended tones harmonizing with each other, on their way to disappearing into eternity.  (At least that's how it seemed...) 

He coaxed the temple's prayer caller into joining, so Horn follows him singing a line with harmonies on the flute, for a wonderful, slow motion cross-cultural improv.

The "Environments" series

LPs with sidelong tracks of pure sounds of nature and other expanded perspectives in sound. 

These albums were among the key influences in wide, slow, atmospheric music.

“The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore,” Side A, Environments 1

"Environments 1, released a year before Songs of the Humpback Whale" (another pioneering work in this realm,) "and almost a decade before Brian Eno’s ambient manifesto Ambient 1: Music for Airports, introduced the psychoacoustic concept of sound masking as well as the medicinal uses of natural sound into popular culture."

- From the Irv Teibel Archive, the official site about the originator and man behind the entire series.  

Side A of the original, “The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore,” was a straight up 30-some minutes of very clearly recorded ocean waves at a beach.  Side B, "The Optimum Aviary," was pure bird song.

"Tinntinabulation" (A) and "Dawn At New Hope, Penn." (B)

The second album's Side One was "Tinntinabulation" – unique in the the Environments series, this side was of computer-generated giant bells in a transfixing, seemingly random looping sequence.  (Done with an IBM mainframe, this has to be one of the coolest things ever produced with that technology, along with the other space program of the time, NASA's.)

The LP was playable at any speed from 16 ​2/3 to 78  rpm.  The CD reissue opted for the slowest speed, which is what you'll find online.

The bells were complemented by a Side B of the gentle sounds of all forms of nature awakening, "Dawn at New Hope, Pennsylvania."  

Many other albums were from pure scenes in Nature, including favorites like "Wood-Masted Sailboat," of the lightly thunking, ringing, wave-slapped sounds of the boat itself, all of which were so soothing.

It was a whole new kind of record to put on, of "music" to hear, a peaceful revolution in listening.  If you've ever lived next to ocean, or some unspoiled away-from-it-all spot, this was old news.  But in a loud, irriating urban situation, they were very welcome even just as aural padding. So city-dwellers craved these recordings, enough to create a new genre.

Brian Eno's Music For Airports —

Later, in the earliest 80's, Brian Eno began making what he termed "ambient" music, defined as this subtly shifting sound that was not made for direct listening, but instead was an environment, an atmosphere designed in this case to lighten the mood of the rushing travellers.

It was slow-moving piano by Harold Budd and wordless vocal samples with the full studio treatment, turning the sound into an Impressionist painting.  But the main feature of the music was how the tones sounds were left hanging there to resonate for the longest time, from start to finish.

Classical Avant-Garde —

Then there's the rethinking of music of the early 20th century's classical Avant-Garde, who were searching the world for ways out of the highly structured box that Western classical music had become by that point.  They sought a form of music based on pure tonality, the random or chance element in nature and/or everything they could think of, experimented like mad and seemingly tried everything.

These European composers pushing the limits of that music discovered how well-suited empty space was for framing their radically new statements in sound.  And they were there as the beginnings of electronic sound gave people the starry-eyed idea that maybe someday there could be completely electronic music!

"Poeme Electronique" by Edgard Varèse, an unearthly, floating combination of percussion, electronics and vocal created for a World's Fair pavilion in the late 1950's, was defining.  Varèse began making abstract percussion music in the 1930's in France using orchestral instruments.  It wasn't any kind of mellow or tonal, but he brought a whole new perspective to listening, of hearing raw, seemingly unstructured sound as music.

Alvin Lucier's "Music On A Long Thin Wire" was another breakthrough in this world.  Among his many sonic experiments, he stretched a long metal cable across an entire room and miked it as both ends.  What he got were the waves of sound impulses as the wire reacted with its environment.  At first he would play on it, activate it in various ways, until he discovered it when he reentered the empty room that it was singing to itself, just from the air currents in the house.

Hats off, too, to John Cage, primarily for his writing and ideas.  He was the writer-theorist and composer who brought very different elements into Western music, of Zen and chance and random changes of various kinds being planned for a performance. While his own music was kind of eh, his writing was stunning, coming at a time when ideas of mindfulness, of understanding how much our own music is rooted in Nature and so on, seemed to this culture to be very, very new.

So Many More

There are countless other tributaries, of course: Tony Scott's "Music for Zen Meditation and Other Joys" from 1964 was probably The original of the genre, was a set of groundbreaking, slow-motion improvs with classical koto and shakuhachi musicians and his clarinet.  Then there was the enormous impact of Indian classical music, the opening Alap section, and just the mesmerizing sound alone of the sitar and tamboura buzzing and droning together.

And 60's rock and jazz were listening: all that feedback (our frenzied version of the tamboura's sound), the jam in the middle of The Grateful Dead's "Dark Star," Weather Report's "Adios"... this could be a very long list.

All of these were defined by fewer, much longer notes, with generous space in between.  With human-made music, it seems, Less is usually More.

And we can only properly conclude by acknowledging the ultimate musical  influence, our countless listening experiences at the Ocean's shore.  (Preferably with the crickets.)

---

All of these were inspirations for,

"All-Acoustic Contemplative Sound Spaces" 

Bill McNeill Ross, featuring Featuring Peter Blum, David Budd, Lea Garnier; and Nature.

https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/billmcneillross

Download or stream from the CD Baby Music Store, iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon and all the rest.

(More on the album, and a free, full streaming player, here:)

Rosswriting.com/music/ 

We've always been utterly fascinated by being immersed in a deep, rich, flowing tone that just hangs there and hypnotizes.  Alongside that, as percussionists we prize the raw, living sound of instruments made directly from the earth, transformed and refined by human hands. (All praise to the instrument makers!)

Then there's the medium of ambient or space music, which suggests a couple things: long sustained tones in a peaceful, slow moving background, addressed more to the senses, feelings and breath than to our modern overstimulated minds. And you always assume it's done on synthesizers.

There's a lot of favorite electronic music that we listen to frequently, even big fans of some.  But there's no way a synthesized sound can compare to the depth and all the dimensions of an object in nature, resonating. That's why it was put together "all acoustic."  (The new term for this unplugged approach seems to have become "organic," but I'm sorry, that only suggests food to me.)

---

"Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order."
- Plato (429-347 BC)

And that's what it's all about.

(How About) A Greenhouse Walking Track Community Center

A Concept Statement.

(Greenhouse on the Biltmore Estate - Dale S. Rogers)

Imagine — not just "picture," since scent is central to this— a lush, leafy greenhouse under a large, arching glass ceiling, filled with beautiful, breathing plants, most of which are also food.  It's warm, with an invigorating light moisture in the air.

Then, winding its way through this living space, a walking track, a footpath under the bowers, interspersed with fountains and benches.  There's a space in one corner, say about 25 x 25 ft., where near sundown the shelves of plants usually growing there can be swung into wheeled stacks and moved to open it up for meetings, small performances, etc.

The small café, its tables tucked in under the leaves, is always open starting later in the day, once all the work on the plants is through.  The music is selected for the tastes of the plants, the food for the people's.

You began coming here (remember, we're still imagining,) because you heard the walking path was very pleasant, and maybe to look at the various foods grown there and for sale.  But definitely hearing that interesting and generally healthier types of people were getting together there was an influence.

Once you'd been in there a couple times, you noticed how much you looked forward to that first in-breath of oxygen-rich air when you walked in the double door, and your step always became just a bit livelier.

Eventually you became a member, because you fell in love with all of it.  Membership in the co-op means that you get the best price and first crack at every new crop, with a year-round food share of whatever best grows in each season and cycle, and preferential choices for walking times and meeting space use.

You even looked forward to the open member meetings because you liked a lot of the people, and came to feel a common cause with them.
___

Now, realistically, we all know that good and even helpful ideas can and do run aground as easily as bad ones.  So any idea worth its salt has to stand up to a few good rounds of How's It Work, What-If and Then-What?

The key idea is that the combination of a strong, (literally) healthy Membership program, and the café (which could expand into a restaurant if the demand is there), could ease the enterprise out of the brutal stream of making it work exclusively as a retail operation on what's grown for sale.

Okay, sounds ducky; but "What If" it doesn't work?

If it didn't fly as this multipurpose dreamhouse, it could still be easily turned into simply a commercial greenhouse — unless the winter fitness or restaurant crowds are what draw the main support, who knows? — and I'll just need to find somewhere else to walk in the winter, even year-round.

Postscript
It would so cool if someone would do this; I'd consider moving there and becoming your first member, how's that?

(April 20, 2018)

"A Working Simple System"

This post represents an interesting confluence of past and present. In a recent short series I wrote for LinkedIn on "Economizing on High Quality Documentation Projects," I ended the third with a reference to John Gall's famed concept about the crucial role of what he called "a working simple system."  It turns out this concept has become so famous over time that it's now known as "Gall's Law."

Well, that started the wheels turning, because one of the first half-dozen posts I wrote in 2006 was about just that.  Why rewrite what I've long been saying about Mr. Gall's stellar thinking, when I already have *and* had decided to start republishing my own favorites from the blog, as topsoil for what will come next.

That's what made this one our nominee for our blog's humble "Hall of Frame," we'll call it.  So:

---

Here's an idea so profound, so fundamental, that I can't tell you how many times I've quoted it; even before the time I had it on my first site ( in "the Serious Part," now enshrined here, along with everything else in the Internet Archive). A lot of system designers of all kinds would do well to contemplate this principle.

It's from a book by John Gall, famously named "Systemantics, The Underground Text of Systems Lore." (With the typical feverishness of Web publishing, I'm going to slap this up here now, then do some searching later to see if I can find anything about it online, or in print, or at least a bread crumb trail. Originally found this in print, in the old Whole Earth Review when I believe Kevin Kelly was editing it, before he went on to Wired.)

Some essential statements:

"Complex systems exhibit unexpected behavior. 

"The system always kicks back - systems get in the way - or, in slightly more elegant language: Systems tend to oppose their own functions.

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

"The parallel proposition also appears to be true: a complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system."

General Systemantics Press, Pub. Date 2nd Ed.: November 1990

---

(Shortly afterwards:)
...Sure enough, there are ample references to Mr. Gall's book all over the Web.

"General Systemantics Press was established in the 1970s to publish Dr. John Gall's book, 'Systemantics™ - How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail.'
This was the First Edition of what is now 'The Systems Bible™,' 

which they proclaim includes,

"three new chapters, new AXIOMS, THEOREMS AND RULES OF THUMB, and many new Horrible Examples..."

Of course there are a number of entries about it in the Wikipedia;
the main page for Systemantics contains these additional, comforting Laws:

"The Functional Indeterminacy Theorem (F.I.T.):
In complex systems, malfunction and even total non-function may not be detectable for long periods, if ever.
"Systems develop goals of their own the instant they come into being."

---

– from this blog, Rosswriting: "A Working Simple System"
  (originally posted  July, 2006, at 10:36 PM)  

No Glam, Just Bam: Net-Zero Energy with Passive Design in Maine

Although putting the principles of passive energy design to work can efficiently generate a solid, high yield over time, "passive" is just not the kind of attitude the mainstream culture gets turned on by these days. You get bang for your buck, but they're looking for technologies that make more noise.

With the relics of the Industrial Age still running big jobs all around us, we unconsciously think a powerful solution has to somehow belch smoke and fire and make loud banging sounds.  Like so many pro tennis "raquet-eers" of our time, we want our solutions forcefully grunting with each serve, so we can hear how hard they're working for us.

So, with the news that wildlife on the planet has been cut in half in the last 40 years (Wall Street Journal), as the earth is blindly stripped of their habitats by multiplying human populations, here's another working example of how far you can go with how little. What a very important advantage that is turning out to be.

The New York Times just published this look at a net-zero energy house built by Jack Soley, a commercial real estate developer (and evidently, hardy outdoors-type,) in Portland, Maine. He built this retreat home on a tiny island off the coast as,

"a 1,200-square-foot structure that produces all the energy it consumes — less than it takes to power a high-end refrigerator." 

Mr. Soley and, "Christopher Campbell, a Portland-based architect, collaborated on a design that borrowed from traditional marine and boating practices to create the simplest, most cost-effective solutions..." 

"The 12-Volt Solution" - NYT Home & Garden, Oct. 1, 2014

How?  By putting passive-house principles to work in his design, like:

• "super-insulation, double-paned fiberglass-clad windows and a south-facing orientation to the sun";
• building it on only a 12-volt system powered by a micro-array of solar panels only the size of a dining room table, and stored in four marine batteries;   
• collecting and storing rainwater to supply nearly all that the home uses, with an on-demand heater providing hot showers, etc.

"'You can be here,'" Foley says in the article, "'and have no notion you’re off the grid on a coastal island.'"
___

Architect Christopher Campbell's site

What Can We Do With All This Old Plastic?

Continuing this small series on solutions to the resulting problems of all of that plastic we were told to, "Use it once, and just throw it away!" – 
Echoing the words of Buckminster Fuller, here's a gentleman reusing plastic by mixing it in with cement for roadways.

The road to the dump, and beyond it to Madurai (India)’s airport, is like a Hollywood vision of dystopian ruin: lifeless, black, choked with human refuse. And that’s why Rajagopalan Vasudevan’s enthusiasm is so jarring. … “Wonderful resource,” he says, admiring a jumble of plastic bags, jerrycans, and torn food packets. “With all this plastic, I could lay the whole road to the airport.” 

''Innovators – India's 'Plastic Man' Turns Litter Into Paved Roads''
By Akash Kapur, Businessweek, July 10, 2014

As is characteristic of truly good ideas, it has benefits in multiple ways: 

•  it literally "takes out the garbage," but for real,

•  it's much cheaper than the bitumen it replaces in the cement mixer,

•  it even makes the roads stronger!

But wait, there's more — Vasudevan’s roads reuse more types of plastic than can currently be recycled otherwise, including thicker types, grocery bags, wrappers, even the unfortunately popular snackpacks that are layers of different plastics and aluminum. 

The method also has the rare quality of Simplicity: Businessweek's story says, "It requires no significant technical knowledge and no large investments or changes to existing road-laying procedures."

=0=

Question: shouldn't it simply be against the law, internationally, to produce or introduce anything into the environment that can't be recycled?

Here it's probably worth noting that any product, material or substance, of any kind, that's publically available must be considered as entering the ecosystem, because it will — as proven by The Great Ocean Garbage Patches.

Also in here:
UNDO-ing Plastic: At The Source

Photo: Chandigarh, India
Some rights reserved by sandeepachetan.com, under Creative Commons

"All Earth's water in a bubble"

Saying, "perhaps this will give us some perspective on how truly precious a resource water really is," Treehugger posted this provocative info-graphic from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), attempting to show how much water is there on, in, and above the Earth as a series of full bubbles.

The big one represents all of the water on, in and around Earth as a bubble 860 miles in diameter.  But that's 96% saltwater.  "The smaller sphere over Kentucky represents Earth's liquid fresh water in groundwater, swamp water, rivers, and lakes," the USGS says.  The volume of this sphere would be over 2.5 million cubic miles, forming a perfect bubble (and you have to imagine, quite an imposing one) about 170 miles in diameter.

That's the fresh water we need every day, but around 30% of it is unavailably deep in the ground. Rivers, the source of most of the fresh surface water people use, only constitute about 300 cubic miles, about 1/10,000th of one percent of total water.

"How much water is there on, in, and above the Earth?"  (USGS) 

From the USGS Water Science School, which offers "information on many aspects of water, along with pictures, data, maps, and an interactive center." 

"If you put all Earth's water In one place, it'd look like this"
by Jaymi Heimbuch, Treehugger.com

This Year's Spring View

The view across the street here in Catskill, NY, of the middle of the eastern range of the Catskill Mountains, three miles west.

            

New Leaves on the Tree Again

It's Spring, (even if kind of an on-again, off-again one this year,) so what better way to restart the discussion here in the Things Green Dept. than by Going Back To The Roots.

Yes, we're talking about Trees, in this case stimulated by an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, "Why Trees Matter."

"We have underestimated the importance of trees," author Jim Robbins writes. "They are not merely pleasant sources of shade but a potentially major answer to some of our most pressing environmental problems. We take them for granted, but they are a near miracle."

Among the many well-cited benefits he names are,

•  "In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned. 

• "In Japan, researchers have long studied what they call 'forest bathing.' A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system… 

• "In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth."

"…an old proverb seems apt. When is the best time to plant a tree? The answer: 'Twenty years ago.' The second-best time? 'Today.' "

From "Why Trees Matter," by Jim Robbins, author of the upcoming book, “The Man Who Planted Trees.” NY Times, published April 11, 2012

Ah, the endless subject of trees, the lengthy lists of all their virtues and gifts to us. From just one page of the Arbor Day Foundation's site, for example, we can learn that trees:

• help fight climate change, 
• are the “low tech” solution to energy problems, 
• reduce your carbon footprint,
• tame stormwater, 
• conserve soil and water, 
• regulate the temperature of your neighborhood, 
• provide food for wildlife. 

Why, they even "add value to your home," especially when planted to require less energy to heat or cool it.

That's all just on the coolly rational, cost/benefit analysis side, too. Trees, standing in for the entire plant world, offer a perfect symbiosis with oxygen-breathing, carbon-dioxide-exhaling humans. "Through the natural process of photosynthesis," Arborday.org reminds us, "trees absorb CO2 and other pollutant particulates, then store the carbon and emit pure oxygen."

Then, in the most direct terms, how much does the shade of a tree mean to you on a hot summer day, with the sun at full blast? How about the sound and the visual of a grand old tree in the wind, being moved and heard from a thousand different spots; and the incomparably soothing effect that can produce in your nervous system?  How is it that all that motion can massage us, tip to toe, from inside to out, somehow washing away a tide of tension and concerns?

Like the man said, we don't appreciate trees nearly enough.

Not that there aren't people who do, and are working on it: for example, the United Nations sponsored an International Year of Forests in 2011, "a global celebration to highlight people's action for sustainable forest management," and "highlight our relationship with forests and humankind’s role in ensuring their well-being and development."

"The four shared Global Objectives provide a framework for international efforts toward sustainable forest management."

This United Nations Forum on Forests awarded their first-ever Forest Heroes Awards, celebrating the "countless individuals around the world who are dedicating their lives to nurturing forests in quiet and heroic ways. By honouring everyday people, we would like to show that it is possible for everyone to make a positive change for forests!"

(Snapshot by BR, 2012)

Reboot

The traditionalist part of my brain will not allow me to let seven months sans postings go by unacknowledged. Search-engine-wise, of course, it doesn't matter, because people reach you by tags, not chronological lists.

But in the narrative sense, in the words of Chico Marx, "Nah, atsa no good, too." I'd moved my blogging attention primarily to logging events in the movement to make the Hudson Valley a Green Tech center, and what seems to have happened, at least at this point, can be summed up in a word: China.

In a few more words, Vince Cozzolino of The Solar Energy Consortium in Kingston talked about a specific solar manufacturer's setback, but he could have been speaking for the sector.

He explained they were "hit by a combination of the bad economy, reduced demand for solar cells because of lower subsidies in parts of Europe, and competition from countries such as China, where solar manufacturing is heavily subsidized by the government."

(From the story by Christian Livermore in the Times Herald-Record/Recordonline, 12/22/10.)

At the same time, I've gotten busy with successive new documentation projects, two of them back in the field of professional video, one for large-scale live events and the other for broadcast studios.

As a guy who was trained to really take the time to choose the right word and proofread carefully, I can't just dash off some breathless verbiage and hit Send. It takes time. Even here in the 21st century, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right — right?

Now add the increasing if still stingy amount of time on Facebook, because naturally I've discovered a couple dozen old buddies that I wind up riffing with on subjects both serious and JPF (Just Plain Fun*), and all that's how the blog went "on hold." You've got to have a sense of when you're getting spread too thin; and that's coming from a skinny guy, where it becomes especially important.

But I knew the tide would come back in, and there it is. It just took the right time and an exciting enough reason — in this case, Ray Allen's night — to take keyboard in hand again.

(* - "Just Plain Fun" - no, I'd never seen that acronym before, either.)

A CLEAR-Headed Idea for Reducing Emissions

Two U.S. Senators have proposed what looks like a brilliant framework for not only reducing carbon air pollution, but putting some money directly into our pockets, and doing it with what sounds like a refreshingly simple system.

(Are you kidding me? Can I be forgiven for fearing, in these nutty times, that it's too good to be true? Well, I just read this morning that the White House and Senate allies decided this week, "to press ahead with a scaled-back energy bill," and they didn't mention this one, so it might turn out to be. Nevertheless:)

In December, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act. They wrote,

"Our concept is simple: Instead of cap-and-trade, our approach is 'cap-and-dividend,' with the dividends going where they belong: into the pockets of hardworking Americans."

"The legislation would set up a mechanism for selling "carbon shares" to the few thousand fossil fuel producers and importers through monthly auctions. Seventy-five percent of the auction revenue would be returned to every citizen and legal resident of the United States through equally divided rebate checks -- averaging $1,100 for a family of four each year. The remaining 25 percent would finance clean-energy research and development…" and more.

This would be done "without disrupting the economy, using a gradually declining 'cap.' The concept is to gradually accelerate emission reductions," aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020, and 83% by 2050.

Quotes from "A cap-and-dividend way to a cleaner nation and more jobs," Cantwell and Collins' Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post, Friday, 6/18/10.

There are literally a host of good ideas contained in this one bill, beyond the obvious lure of a check from the guv'mint, for a change: transfer money directly from those who profit from polluting to those who suffer from it the most. Set a predictable price for carbon that everyone can plan on, one that's market-driven within set limits, and all with a minimum of government involvement since an independent trust would be set up to handle the auction. (A few nods to the Republican side of the aisle, there — bully! Let's get everybody on board.)

And how about these perks? "We create a level playing field instead of providing pollution credits to whichever entities have the best lobbyists," the Senators write. "The act cuts out Wall Street speculators and price manipulators. It minimizes destructive price volatility."

And, perhaps most radically of all, the actual bill is only 39 pages long! That means all those members of Congress will be able to actually have a concept of what's in there, for a change. (Candid Representatives have admitted there's no way you can know all the provisions in your common 2,000-page bill.) Between the few pages and the mechanism proposed, it also means that special interests wouldn't have anywhere in the system to hide big payouts to themselves.

The idea is that now that companies will have to pay for the carbon they allow into the atmosphere (that we're all breathing, and in effect swimming in together), they will be economically incented to reduce that output. At long last they'll find the will and the way to do what they'd put off for as long as possible, simply due to the cost. Polluting did not figure into their bottom line — aside from compliance costs during earlier eras when the EPA was actually on the job. Now it would.

By golly, they even made a cute little video for YouTube to explain it:

"How the CLEAR Act Works" (PDF, from cantwell.senate.gov/)

First saw it here:
"Double Dividend: Make Money by Saving Nature"
George Lakoff, Huffington Post

Photo from Wikipedia —
the controlled demolition of four giant coal smokestacks, known locally as the "four sisters," in a Toronto suburb (2006). The plant was labelled a heavy polluter by the Ontario government; and we who live downwind, to the east, thank you.

VIDEO: Tim-berrrr! (53 sec., no sound)

Related, here:
Posts tagged "Green tech"

Conservation Tips For The "Heat Wa-a-a-ve!"

Public Service Electric and Gas, New Jersey’s largest utility, and PJM Interconnection, the electric grid operator for 13 states and D.C., put out an urgent release yesterday, July 7th, asking everybody to conserve electricity, and since it's no cooler today I thought I'd pass along these highly-relevant tips they included.
(Unless you tend to live this way already, in which case Bully for you! And thanks.)

These are some of PSEG's conservation tips:

• Turn off everything you’re not using; lights, TVs, computers, etc. Use dimmers, timers and motion detectors on indoor and outdoor lighting.
• Close blinds, shades and draperies facing the sun to keep the sun’s heat out and to help fans and air conditioners cool more efficiently. (Duh.)
• Close doors leading to uncooled parts of your home. With central air, close off vents to unused rooms.
• Delay heat-producing tasks such as washing and drying laundry or dishes until later in the day, and (or least) wait until a load is full.
• Don't use nonessential appliances, like an extra refrigerator in your garage. Consider setting air conditioners to 78 degrees, health permitting.

More "Energy Conservation Tips from PSEG"

"In the New York City area, Con Edison said its crews were working 24 hours a day to maintain service. Con Edison on July 6 broke its 2010 record for peak electricity use when the company delivered 12,963 megawatts at 5 p.m. A news release said usage would have been even higher if not for the efforts of Con Edison’s customers, who responded to the company’s request for conservation."
- Sunpluggers.com News, where I saw a piece on PSEG's release.

(Can't resist on a day like this:)
"Heat Wave" — (the music starts at 1:40 in)

Giant Shipper Finds "Slow Is Better," Cheaper

Now that oil is back in the news with a vengeance, exacting the price for our dependency on both the fuel and the money to be made from it, I kept thinking about this piece from earlier in the year about a revolutionary move of the leading container shipping company.

"Slow Trip Across Sea Aids Profit and Environment," Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times, 2/16/10.

The world-spanning Danish line Maersk, socked with $145 barrels of oil in 2008, cut their fuel consumption by almost one third with a daring manuever: cutting the top cruising speed of its ships by half.

"Reducing engine load dramatically decreases fuel consumption," a Maersk presentation explains, because, "fuel consumption and CO2 emissions increase exponentially with speed." Maersk was able to cut their fuel needs on major routes by as much as 30 percent, a major savings. But just by that, the company also managed an equal cut in their ships’ emissions of greenhouse gases.

On many routes, it doesn't even take any more time(!) — cut-off, transit and arrival schedules remain the same since technology now allows for a better distribution of speed, thus gaining back what had been wasted "hurry up and wait" time.

(Of course, when you think of it, this isn't really an entirely new principle to any of us, because we've all heard from way back that driving at 55 gives you the best fuel efficiency and gets you there just some minutes later. But that doesn't mean some of us aren't still looking for the chance to really open 'er up anyway.)

"Where the previous focus has been on 'What will it cost?' and 'Get it to me as fast as possible,' " Maersk’s director of environmental sustainability explains in the NYT story, there's now a third dimension: 'What’s the CO2 footprint?' " Maersk's pitch to shippers includes the offer that, " We will significantly reduce your carbon footprint," claiming that, "Super Slow Steaming alone easily reduces a customer’s whole annual supply chain by 13%."

"Slowing down from high speeds reduces emissions because it reduces drag and friction as ships plow through the water," says the NYT's story, and points out that the same holds true for airplanes, which could easily reduce their emissions by taking it slower, say by 10%.

This is an especially welcome innovation at a time when worldwide consumption is growing so fast; the container ship trade grew by eight times between 1985 and 2007, especially long-haul shipments of goods from Asia. Maersk says their fleet of 545 ships makes a port call every thirteen minutes. So their shift to Slo-Mo has an impact, even more so as a gauntlet thrown to their competition — not, God forbid, because it's the Right Thing To Do or anything, but because it'll save them money, too.

Hey, whatever it takes.

But here's another excellent and really intriguing example of how progress doesn't always come from charging ahead — maybe just as often, it can be achieved by dropping back a step.

• Maersk vessel photo page

Related, sort of, here:
On Slow-blogging
Posts about Green Tech