Fall Energy Tips

It definitely felt like fall this week in Ithaca, and fall is a great time to start thinking about how to go green and save money on that winter energy bill. For tips on this, see this useful blog post, or consider signing up for free classes taught by CCE called “Repairing and Weatherizing Older Windows" and “Save Energy Dollars”

Save Energy Save Dollars is a free 2-hour program where:

• You will learn about low-cost and no-cost energy saving actions;
• Energy conservation facts will be shared and myths will be busted with research-based information;
• You will learn about financial incentives you may be eligible for to help you afford energy-efficiency improvements;
• Each participant will leave with an individualized action plan ; and
• Each participating household will leave with an Energy-Saver Kit to help get started on lowering energy bills.

The program is free, but pre-registration is required. Call CCE-Tompkins at (607) 272-2292 to reserve a seat.

Schedule of workshops, all held at CCE-Tompkins, 615 Willow Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850
Thurs, Oct. 7, 6:30 -8:30 pm
Fri, Oct. 15, 12:30 -2:30 pm
Thurs, Oct. 28, 6:30 - 8:30 pm


Repairing and Weatherizing Older Windows
Thurs, Sept. 30th, 7:00 - 9:00 pm at CCE-Tompkins, 615 Willow Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850

In this workshop you will learn:

• How to replace worn parting-bead to tighten up a window;
• How to repair the sash-cords on your double-hung windows with weights;
• How to re-glaze an older window;
• About energy efficient treatments you can add to your older windows.

Presented by Mark Pierce, Cornell Cooperative Extension Associate.
The program is free, but pre-registration is required. Call CCE-Tompkins at (607) 272-2292 to reserve a seat.

A few things that give me hope.

Thinking about the state of things can bring me down. Every now and then I like to draw attention to things that give me hope. In today's post, I'll draw brief attention to three of those things:

1. Good colleagues, working on things that matter;
2. Deepening understandings of how to effect behavior change on a broad scale; and;
   
3. The fact that young people hold expertise that matters for changing how the world works, and that that expertise and its related infrastructure is growing quickly.
   

Charismatic Megafauna Aboard the JOIDES Resolution

Smart people are working on things that matter.
I'm writing again from the JOIDES Resolution, an ocean research ship now off the coast of British Columbia. Today we placed a CORK, a remote observatory on the seafloor, not quite a mile beneath where I sit now (and extending into the seafloor enough to reach a mile below me). I've been blogging on the JR's blog over the last week along with many of my colleagues in the School of Rock. I invite you to take a look and see what we're up to.

School of Rock is a program to bring educators into the ocean research programming to deepen the educators' understandings of ocean science and to bring scientists into contact with educators to help deepen the public's understanding of ocean science and its importance.

My School of Rock colleagues, like my colleagues at PRI and its Museum of the Earth give me hope about where the world is headed. Terrifically smart, hard working nice people working on things that matter give me hope that those efforts will make a difference. The Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling program (from which the JR gets her first name), brings together scientists and now educators from around the world to a program that enriches our understandings of how the Earth works.

A reality check is that smart people have always been working on things that matter, so we do need something more than this for our hopes for change to be realized.

The research base for effecting behavior change is maturing.
Joe Brewer, of Cognitive Policy Works, offers a nice summary of how research on fostering behavior change has changed over the past several years. Perhaps the most compelling reason for hope is the growing understanding that self-interest isn't as strong a motivator as long believed. I like to think we know this from our day-to-day experience. Most of the people I know and care about don't have greed as a primary motivator and it turns out that my friends and family aren't freakish for being kind and at least somewhat altruistic (though some of them are pleasantly freakish in other ways).

Also encouraging is the recognition that broad sweeping change happens all the time. Some of that's not been so good (urban sprawl, for one example). But there are many positive changes we can point to -- that overt sexism and racism is no longer socially acceptable in most circles, for example.

Change is possible.

For the first time in history, huge numbers of young people have expertise that really matters and that their seniors do not have.

Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World describes how media and young people's engagement with it is changing the fundamental nature of how we communicate. And if we change the way we communicate, we change the way we live.

My interaction with young folks gives me hope too. As an educator and a parent, I get the opportunity to interact with lots of them, and with their teachers from all over the country.

Though the phrasing of that last paragraph makes me feel like an old man, the basic gist of it gives me reason for optimism.

What gives you reason for optimism?

Polar Bears in the City...

It's not often that I see a commercial that makes me cry, but for some reason this commercial did it for me. It's for the new Nissan "Leaf." An electric car.



Who wouldn't want to be hugged by a polar bear!

Solar Panels and the White House

Last week we linked to a video of Bill McKibben of 350.0rg on Letterman discussing his new book and his mission to try and convince President Obama to reinstall Carter-era solar panels on the White House. Unfortunately, President Obama and his staff have declined to do that.

Campaigners had hoped that the White House would embrace at least the symbolism of going solar - much like Michelle Obama kicked off her healthy and local food movement by planting a vegetable garden.

"Clearly, a solar panel on the White House roof won't solve climate change - and we'd rather have strong presidential leadership on energy transformation. But given the political scene, this may be as good as we'll get for the moment," McKibben said in a Washington Post comment this morning.

Sailing on the JOIDES Resolution and Pondering Climate Change

The JOIDES Resolution approaching Victoria, BC

I'm on board the JOIDES Resolution (the JR) and set to head out to sea tomorrow afternoon. I'll be blogging about it regularly on The JR's blog and occasionally here too.

What is The JR and why should we care?

Well, to answer the first question well, you should spend some time poking around on The JR's website, but I'll say briefly that it's one of the most famous geologic ships that there is. JOIDES stands for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling, and it takes the name Resolution from James Cook's ship of more than 200 years ago. It's also a converted oil drilling ship that now drills for samples of ocean core sediments rather than for oil. It's also a pretty big ship. Look at the picture -- the row of windows across the front of the ship should give you a sense of scale of something familiar. The derrick stands 62 meters (about 20 stories tall) and she's 143 meters long (about one and a half football fields).

More amazing than its proportions (and partly because of them) is the fact that The JR can reach from its derrick to the sea floor and not only drill deeply into the sea floor, but also recover cores from the sea floor, and place instrument packages into the hole left behind. Take a virtual tour here.

Handling a core on The JR's previous voyage.

We won't be coring on this trip. We'll be placing an instrument package called a CORK in an existing hole. More on that later (as I learn more about it).

Ok, so why would we want to do that stuff?
We can use what we find in these sediments to reconstruct the story of how the Earth came to be the way that it is -- in many different ways. The fossils (commonly microscopic) that we find in cores give us hints about what ancient climates were like. Studying methane hydrates found in sea floor sediments can help us understand their role in climate change.

A chunk of methane hydrate looks like ice -- but you can light it on fire.

Pondering them raises a question for me to explore in the coming days with the scientists on board. What, if anything, do the methane hydrates found under the sea have to do with methane bearing shale, like the Marcellus? I also want to deepen my understand of how they fit into understandings of climate change.

If there's more you want me to be pondering (with the help of some scientists who are some of the world's experts in these areas), please let me know. You can do that by posting here, or by sending me an email at my temporary ship's email address (and I only have limited access to my regular email). That address is: jrs_duggan-haas@ship.iodp.tamu.edu.

The Lazy Twentysomething's Guide to Sustainability: Organic Beer

Organic - Not just for food anymore!

Apparently, Americans drink about 82L beer per capita every year. This places us 13th in the 2004 world rankings behind, well, most of western Europe. The Czech Republic and Ireland are first and second, with 157L and 131L, respectively. We may be woefully behind the rest of the developed world in beer consumption, but that hardly means that we should ignore how the ingredients are grown.

Beer is mostly water and malted grain (usually barley or wheat), with a little yeast for fermentation and hops for flavor. It takes about 336 square feet of barley to produce enough barley for one American’’s entire year of beer. The number of acres under barley cultivation worldwide is dwarfed by maize, wheat, and rice, but the rate of fertilizer per hectare is pretty high (pdf). The rationale for drinking organic beer over conventional is basically the same as with eating organic rather than conventional anything. Namely, a lower pesticide and synthetic fertilizer load in the environment and a lower pesticide load in you. Since “100% local” seems to be an impossibility for brewers outside of Germany, we’ll have to settle for USDA certified organic as our green alternative to conventional beer.

In an act of staggering generosity, members of the PRI Outreach and Development teams have tested a selection of organic beer in order to provide our readers with a little guidance should they wish to purchase some. We were able to find 3 brands of organic beer at the Finger Lakes Beverage Center*: Pinkus, Peak Organic, and Wolaver’s. A more thorough search would probably turn up an even greater variety. From Pinkus, we tried the Pils and the Munster Alt; from Peak Organic,we tried the IPA, the Pale Ale, the Amber Ale, and the Nut Brown; from Wolaver’s, we tried the IPA, the Pale Ale, the White Ale, the Brown Ale, and the Oatmeal Stout.

Here is a summary of the rankings and tasting notes, but the main point is that you don’t have to sacrifice taste to sustainability!


Peak Organic Amber Ale

• Darker
• Syrup-y
• Smells better than it tastes
• Unbalanced
• Awful start, but a good finish

Avg. = 5.375

Peak Organic IPA

• Righteous
• Smells like tomato plants
• Honey and citrus scents
• Darker than I thought it’d be
• Deeper than a hoppy finish
• I like the way it starts but it’s bitter at the finish

Avg. = 6.25

Wolaver’s IPA

• Cleaner than last IPA
• Don’t like his one as much – not as much character
• Floral and not too bitter

Avg. = 6.625

Peak Organic Nut Brown

• A little flat
• Smells better than the last one
• A little earthy
• Not a fan, generally, of nut brown ale
• Vanilla on the start
• Enjoys the complexity
• Brown-sugary sweet

Avg. = 7

Pinker's Original Unfiltered

• Yummy smell
• Smooth and not a big finish
• Summer beer
• Not too flavorful
• Citrus-y
• “…a decent Bud Light”

Avg. = 7.125

Wolaver’s White Ale

• Smells like bacon; like breakfast at CNC, like lighter fluid
• Citrus-y – more lemon than orange
• Needs citrus to be effective
• Sweet, and not smoky or salty
• Like the highest note on a piano
• Too complicated for a beer that you’d put citrus in

Avg. = 7.1875

Peak Organic Pale Ale

• Smells like soy sauce or the woods
• Coffee taste
• Acidic
• Herbal, earthen flavor

Avg. = 7.3125

Wolaver’s Oatmeal Stout

• “Oh, hello.”
• Smoky
• Delightful
• Tastes like dinner
• Not coffee, but espresso
• More earthy than other stouts
• “Starts sweet, then smoke, then coffee”
• It’s like chocolate that’s spent time by a campfire

Avg. = 7.3125

Wolaver’s Pale Ale

• Solid
• Definitely preferred
• Easy to drink
• Nice finish – not bitter
• Warm finish like a soup
• Bread-y

Avg. = 7.75

Wolaver’s Brown Ale

• Smells like a good beer
• Completely solid
• More than just nutty – Mr. Peanut Party Mix
• “tastes like beer to me”

Avg. = 7.83

Pinker’s Alt Beer Munster Ale

• Molasses and whiskey
• Bread-y – pumpernickel
• Mellowed out
• “I like this. I like this a lot.”
• Finishes with depth, and starts like OJ / juice
• Smells like grape juice
• You can drink this year-round, and all day
• Little too sweet overall

Avg. = 8.25


Have you tried any organic beer that we missed? How did you like it?



*Thanks to the Beverage Center staff for pointing us in the right direction.

Labor Day!

How to throw a green Labor Day picnic…

1. Use natural charcoal or wood for your grill.

Natural charcoal is very basic - it's simply charred wood. It's available by the bag at major retailers and home improvement stores.

Using wood itself is another option. If you have a basic backyard grill (not propane), you can burn fallen sticks and twigs that you can gather yourself with minimal effort.

2. Send out electronic invitations to save paper.

Or, make your own invitations from scrap paper or junk mail.

3. Encourage your guests to walk, bike, carpool, or use public transportation to get to your party.

4. Serve local, seasonal foods.

Labor Day is still within the growing season in many parts of the country.

Corn, tomatoes, peppers, onions and squash are all good options for grilling and are still in season in early September.

Potato wedges cooked on the grill can take the place of packaged potato chips.

Regardless of where you live, there will be something good and grill-able that is in season and grown locally.

5. Serve food on reusable flatware and plates.

Serve drinks from washable cups and glasses. If possible, have drinks in coolers and kegs rather than individual cans or bottles.

6. For those items that are disposable (beverage cans or bottles, for example), have clearly labeled recycling bins set up for guests where they can easily toss their used items.

7. Burn citronella candles or torches around the edges of your party or grilling area if it's all outdoors.

Have citronella candles burning on any outdoor tables where your guests will be eating.

Provide natural insect lotions or sprays for your guests as well.

8. If you want to cook meat on the grill, choose grass-fed, organic, and/or free range meats.

Wild meats are also a good option if the season coincides.

You can still serve traditional burgers and hotdogs - just choose vegetarian or free-range, organic versions of these classic foods.

9. Whole grain flat bread is good on the grill, and with toppings of grilled vegetables and/or meats, it becomes a main course.

10. Make dessert from seasonal, local fruits.

Some berries are still in season around Labor Day - serve them in a cobbler or pie, or raw with sauce or dips.

11. Strings of festive LED lights in appropriate colors provide eco-friendly lighting for your party.

Solar lights are also an option - they are easily obtained these days and can be quite affordable.

--Courtesy of elertgadget.com