How to get a grip on meth and other ills in Salem

Stop giving a medical/social adjustment problem to the police to handle.

Have you had "The Talk" with your kids and grandkids?

Ignore the cement -- fossil fuel carbon emissions are a perfect correlate to consumption (depletion). Image via Wikipedia

The Talk is in essence a constantly updated survey of the state of the planet through a hydrocarbon geologist's eyes. It plows methodically through reams of energy-geek data. World Conventional Oil and Oil Sands Reserves, 1980–2007. Energy Profit Ratio for Liquid Hydrocarbons. Canadian Gas Deliverability Scenarios from All Sources. The small-font notes at the bottom of each PowerPoint slide enumerate sources that read like a general anaesthetic in print form: BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, EIA International Energy Outlook. Pie charts and bar graphs with several rainbows' worth of colour and an overabundance of italicized and all-capped words: "The absolute first priority," that kind of thing. (By the way, it should be "to reduce energy consumption as soon as possible.")

The Talk is all kinds of policy-wonky. Your eyes could glaze over. You could even miss the two slides Dave always says are the only ones you must remember. The first is a single-line graph depicting "World Per Capita Annual Primary Energy Consumption by Fuel 1850–2007," which climbs by 761 percent over its 157-year timeline and flips from 82 percent renewable biomass (mostly wood) at the 1850 end to 89 percent non-renewables (almost entirely fossil fuels) at the 2007 end. The second critical slide has three line graphs in horizontal sequence, all tracking curves that begin in 1850, around the time humanity started drilling for oil in a serious way, and then spiking impossibly high at the right-hand, 2007 termini of their X axes. Global population today: 5.3 times global population in 1850. Per capita energy consumption today: 8.6 times that of 1850. Total energy consumption today: 45 times 1850's.

You could also miss the way these figures resonate with The Talk's voluminous data on oil and natural gas and coal reserves. You could miss how our current trajectory obliges us to rely on hydrocarbons for 86 percent of our projected primary energy needs in 2030, and how that fits with the strong case Hughes makes that the global hydrocarbon peak (the point at which global energy supply will begin an irrevocable decline, making the energy price shocks of the past couple of years start to look like the good old days) is estimated to occur nine years before that date.

Here’s the upshot: if you plan to drive a car or heat a house or light a room in 2030, The Talk is telling you your options will be limited, to say the least. Even if you’re convinced climate change is UN-sponsored hysteria or every last puff of greenhouse gas will soon be buried forever a mile underground or ducks look their best choking on tar sands tailings, Dave Hughes is saying your way of life is over. Not because of the clouds of smoke, you understand, but because we’re running out of what makes them.

As Salem thinks of locking up Minto farm acres forever

The question should not be how many acres of farmland can we afford to trade for cash today at the expense of people tomorrow. The question is how many acres of asphalt can we rip up and turn back into Willamette Valley farmland, and how fast. Image via Wikipedia

Smarter people recall the most important thing about good farmland:

"They aren't making any more of it."

The money quote from the story:

The fundamentals remain in place for a long-term boom in the prices of everything ag-related. The simplest metric to consider is the amount of farmland per person worldwide: In 1960 there were 1.1 acres of arable farmland per capita globally, according to data from the United Nations. By 2000 that had fallen to 0.6 acre (see chart above, "Precious Acres"). And over the next 40 years the population of the world is projected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion.

"Land is scarce and will become scarcer as the world has to double food output to satisfy increased demand by 2050," says Joachim von Braun, director general at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "With limited land and water resources, this will automatically lead to increased valuations of productive land. And it goes hand in hand with water. Water scarcity will probably increase even more than land."

Don't forget to attend City Council on Monday, June 22!

Salem Daily Photo -- a nice find

Here's a site full of the abundant beauty that surrounds us here in Salem: Salem Daily Photo, a just-discovered website that has been documenting this beauty for some time. SDP is on reduced-posting status now, but still offers a huge archive of nice shots that remind us to take time to smell the roses, observe the beauty of the rhodies, and to eat the fleeting strawberries, because we can never know what tomorrow will bring.

UPDATE -- A kind reader sends: There's a similar site called "Salem, Oregon Daily Photo Diary." It started as a challenge to prove to the photographer's out-of-town family that there's something interesting to do in Salem every single day: http://salemphotodiary.blogspot.com

The Extraordinary Willamette Valley: Action Alert!

By Scott Bassett

People often have a very weird notion about agriculture in the US, believing that the country is pretty much all farmland (where it's not cities, forests, mountains or deserts).

But, when you look at these two maps, you see that few areas of the country grow orchards, and there are even fewer acres used to grow vegetables. What the maps don't show is that millions of acres of prime farmland have been put under suburban sprawl, much of it devoted to the use, care, or feeding of automobiles. That's land that will almost certainly never grow food again.

So there are very few places in the country are suitable to grow fruit, nuts or vegetables.

Salem is smack in the middle of some of the best, most productive farmland in the country. And Minto Brown Park includes about 25 acres of hazelnut trees and 35 acres of fruit trees that have been abandoned. The orchards could be replanted with disease resistant trees and put back into production. (The City reported in April of 2009 that there were 30.4 acres of fruit trees and 18 acres of Hazelnuts. I have documentation from the 1973 Minto-Brown Island Park Development Study that the area of the orchards were larger, but I can't put a precise number on the area.)

In addition, 240 acres have been in vegetable production most years since the City took over ownership in the 1970s. The land in Minto Brown Park is so productive that it can be double-cropped in one growing season. This spring and summer, green beans will be planted and harvested twice.

On June 22, the Salem City Council will consider accepting federal funding for a conservation easement that will prevent most of the vegetable farming and prohibit replanting the orchards.

If you would like to see this prime farmland continue to be available for growing fresh local fruits and vegetables, please contact the Mayor and City Council, and attend the June 22 City Council meeting.

Source: The maps are from a New York Times article published May 3, 2009 (The Hot Spots for Organic Food by Hannah Fairfield) and the acreage count is from production in 2007.

Just another day: Open season on bicyclists

Image by Salim Virji via Flickr

And uninsured bicyclists to boot. Another great example of why we need universal health care. This kid is probably in the top 0.01% for health -- until an inattentive driver just about kills him. He could easily have would up dead or with a serious brain injury. But even if he recovers fully, our "coverage" is for bicyclists to pass the hat . . .

Academy of Environmental Medicine warns against genetically tampered food

When did we sign up to be Monsanto's lab mice? Image via Wikipedia

Doctors Warn: Avoid Genetically Modified Food

On May 19^th, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on "Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks."[1] They called for a moratorium on GM foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling. AAEM's position paper stated, "Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food," including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. They conclude, "There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation," as defined by recognized scientific criteria. "The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies." (much more here).

Estimating your own energy demand (cont.)

A natural gas processing plant. Essentially all industrial agriculture depends entirely on fertilizers derived from natural gas, just one of many reasons that the energy used to produce industrial food often dwarfs the energy content of the food itself. (Image via Wikipedia)

Last time the discussion showed you how to convert the three most-obvious forms of energy purchases to common units (kilowatt-hours, kWh). They were electricity, natural gas, and gasoline, the most recognizable types of energy that people in Salem commonly buy.

Recall that the global average energy consumption (total consumption divided by total world population) is about 48 kWh/day per person. This is the energy equal to burning 20 100w light bulbs for 24 hours. And the average consumption in the US is about six times as much -- burning 120 of those 100w bulbs all day and all night.

But this overlooks a disguised kind energy buying that we all do. The reason it is disguised is that we don't think of these purchases as involving energy at all, because we conceal the energy content of the purchases under another name: calories.

That's right, buying food means buying energy. That's all that food is, actually: one big macronutrient (energy, usually counted in calories) and a variety of micronutrients that the body needs in order to be able to access and use the food to make energy.

And food (energy in plant or animal form) is amazingly energy-dense. 860 food calories -- which you can easily get in a single dessert -- is the energy of 1 kWh, so it's the same energy that would keep 10 of our 100w light bulbs burning for an hour. So if you're on the nominal 2000 calorie diet, your daily energy intake represents 2.33 kWh of your daily energy consumption. If you're a man on the nominal 2500 calorie diet, you consume the equivalent of 2.9 kWh/day in food form.

Thus, a man eating 2500 calories a day and using only 48 kWh/day, the global average, consumes 6% of his daily energy as food, leaving him only 45 kWh left for everything else. His partner, a woman eating 2000 calories a day, uses 5% of the global average daily energy consumption to support her diet.

Where it gets really interesting is when you try to figure out how much energy it took to grow the food, process it, and deliver it to you. That's a complex question that's impossible to answer with certainty; however, numerous groups have tried to estimate this for the US, and the figure that is commonly heard is that every calorie we eat represents about 10 more (mostly from fossil fuels) that were burned delivering that one calorie to us. So our a daily 2500-calorie diet actually demands 25,000 calories, which is 29 kWh (23.25 kWh for the 2000-daily-calorie woman).

Staggering isn't it? The average global citizen only uses 48 kWh per day; in the US, we use 50-60% of that just to feed ourselves, even if we stay in bed all day with no heat or lights on, and certainly not driving or flying or using any electrical devices or tools.

US Dept. of Energy officially wakes up to Peak Oil

The US: still the third-ranked oil producing nation, but the one with the smallest reserve capacity (2% of global reserves). So "drill here, drill now" means exhausting our domestic reserves even faster. Wikipedia

This is very good news about some hard news. The first step to dealing well with reality is recognizing it. The DOE energy forecast group (Well-respected?! By who?) has previously been about as useful as a roomful of mystics on hashish.

So here's the headline for you: For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. Almost as notable, when it comes to news, the 2009 report highlights Asia's insatiable demand for energy and suggests that China is moving ever closer to the point at which it will overtake the United States as the world's number one energy consumer. Clearly, a new era of cutthroat energy competition is upon us.

Peak Oil Becomes the New Norm

As recently as 2007, the IEO projected that the global production of conventional oil (the stuff that comes gushing out of the ground in liquid form) would reach 107.2 million barrels per day in 2030, a substantial increase from the 81.5 million barrels produced in 2006. Now, in 2009, the latest edition of the report has grimly dropped that projected 2030 figure to just 93.1 million barrels per day -- in future-output terms, an eye-popping decline of 14.1 million expected barrels per day.

Even when you add in the 2009 report's projection of a larger increase than once expected in the output of unconventional fuels, you still end up with a net projected decline of 11.1 million barrels per day in the global supply of liquid fuels (when compared to the IEO's soaring 2007 projected figures). What does this decline signify -- other than growing pessimism by energy experts when it comes to the international supply of petroleum liquids?

Very simply, it indicates that the usually optimistic analysts at the Department of Energy now believe global fuel supplies will simply not be able to keep pace with rising world energy demands. For years now, assorted petroleum geologists and other energy types have been warning that world oil output is approaching a maximum sustainable daily level -- a peak -- and will subsequently go into decline, possibly producing global economic chaos. Whatever the timing of the arrival of peak oil's actual peak, there is growing agreement that we have, at last, made it into peak-oil territory, if not yet to the moment of irreversible decline.

More on phosphorus: More like this please!

Image via Wikipedia

Here's an encouraging story about a sewer treatment plant that has added a phosphorus recovery module. There are still huge problems with using sewage sludge as fertilizer --- because we don't have separate treatment facilities for industrial and commercial operations, our wastewater treatment plants are producing sludge loaded with heavy metals and other nasties that should not be allowed anywhere near food-producing land. But the phosphorus from the liquid component of the waste stream (urine carries much of the phosphorus we excrete) is not going to have that issue; the metals and such are going to be in the solid sludge component.

This is the sort of thing we need in every aspect of society: doing away with the idea of "waste" and closing all of our waste streams, turning them into loops instead. Note that this process turns what was a pollutant back into a valuable commercial resource. There are similar opportunities everywhere you look.

Ostara's technology removes 90 to 94 percent of the phosphorous and 20 percent of its ammonia the first time through, then transforms the nutrients into tiny, fertilizer pellets about the size of barley.

The fertilizer takes nine months to dissolve in soil -- a speed so slow it never leaches into the water table, Baur said.

Ostara is working with Mt. Angel-based Wilco, St. Paul-based Marion Ag Service and other partners in Oregon and Canada to distribute the new product.

Phosphorus, a nonrenewable and dwindling resource, is an important ingredient in fertilizer. Currently, it is mined in Florida and shipped across the country to Oregon and elsewhere, said Kennedy, who now serves on Ostara's board.

Crystal Green's local, less energy-intensive creation will make it less expensive, Baur said.

Of the 20 tons created at Durham since the Ostara reactors began operating in April, 11 were sold to the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment, which dumped it into nutrient-poor streams to help nourish the salmon population, Baur said.

The reactors are expected to produce 40 tons each month. Ostara used its first 20 tons as a test-run of the facility. Starting with fertilizer produced Wednesday, Ostara will pay Clean Water Services a per-ton amount that is expected to bring in at least $400,000 a year.

Along with money saved through operating efficiencies created by the new process, Clean Water Services expects to pay back its $2.5 million investment in five years or less -- and start making money after that.

Washington County Commissioner Roy Rogers has already had some experience with the product. His said his wife tossed some onto a Christmas cactus that hadn't bloomed for years. Now, he said, "The thing will not stop blooming."