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This is the weblog of
Raymond Powers.
Here I will be sharing what I find of import, humor, concern, inspiration and on the transformational edge
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A Quote:
To love something is to give it room enough to grow.
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Raymond lives in Ojai, where the time now is:
05:21AM
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Primarily Public
Domain.
Please ask permission if there is any question in
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| Tuesday, September 30, 2003 |  |
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30 Sep 2003 @ 22:51
Ethanol from Genetically Modified Corn
Henning Illinois - September 29, 2003 [SolarAccess.com] Biotechnology industry giant Monsanto, best known for their somewhat contentious Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) is teaming up with General Motors and the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition (NEVC) to deliver what the company calls "improved" corn for the dry mill ethanol industry, which aims to drive increased fuel ethanol demand and expand fuel ethanol infrastructure to support that demand.
"This announcement underscores Monsanto's commitment to strengthening the demand for bioenergy in the United States and, in turn, creating new markets for our customers' products," said Kerry Preete, lead of Monsanto's U.S. Crop Production business. "This collaboration is a major step forward for the industry and we feel that it will aid in the development of rural economic growth."
Monsanto said the collaborative would provide a major boost to the U.S. ethanol industry, through Monsanto's Fuel Your Profits program, by generating a multi-million dollar investment over the next two years. This investment will be aimed at fueling ethanol profits from corn planting to ethanol processing and beyond.
The Fuel Your Profits program takes advantage of Monsanto's research capabilities by promoting improved corn hybrids for the dry mill ethanol industry offered through the Processor Preferred High Fermentable Corn (HFC) brand. However, the Fuel Your Profits program is about more than just providing products to the industry, Monsanto notes.
"We wanted to provide a way for corn growers and ethanol plant owners to take advantage of Monsanto's advancements while increasing ethanol demand and expanding the ethanol fuel infrastructure in our country," said Amy Rutherford, Processor Preferred business manager. "The Fuel Your Profits program is designed to increase the profitability potential of both corn growers and ethanol plants."
Participants in the Fuel Your Profits program will be eligible for reward certificates off of a negotiated purchase price of General Motors' E85 vehicles as well as incentives to increase the number of E85 fuel pump stations that are located throughout the country.
"Monsanto has responded to corn growers' requests for programs that provide value added opportunities with Fuel Your Profits. This is a sound, sensible way to help grow the ethanol industry," said National Corn Growers Association President Fred Yoder. "The program offers a science-based analysis by which the Processor Preferred system determines a list of High Fermentable Corn. Ethanol plants and corn growers can utilize this list to their mutual benefit.
According to John Gaydash, General Motor's Director, Marketing of GM Fleet and Commercial Operations, "General Motors has more than one million vehicles on the road today capable of burning E85. We have demonstrated our interest in increasing ethanol demand through our E85 awareness efforts with NEVC. Fuel Your Profits ties nicely with these efforts."
To date, there are 17 dry mill ethanol plants participating in the Fuel Your Profits program. These plants are located throughout the country, and will collectively consume grain from 1.5 million acres of the 2004 harvest.
Through the Fuel Your Profits collaboration, Monsanto will also provide ethanol plants access to and use of a Near Infrared proprietary measurement tool developed under ISO 17025 compliance by Monsanto's crop analytics scientists. The tool will help plant managers and growers understand which corn hybrids yield more ethanol in the dry mill process. Such information allows ethanol plants to optimize efficiency and output by providing an indicator of the fermentability of corn at the front end of their process. Grower enrollment in the Fuel Your Profits program is currently underway, and ends February 1, 2004. More >
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| Tuesday, September 23, 2003 | |
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23 Sep 2003 @ 20:50
Moon brings novel green power to Arctic homes
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
By Alister Doyle, Reuters
OSLO, Norway — Homes on the Arctic tip of Norway started getting power from the moon over the weekend via a unique subsea power station driven by the rise and fall of the tide.
A tidal current in a sea channel near the town of Hammerfest, caused by the gravitational tug of the Moon on the Earth, started turning the 10-meter (33 foot) blades of a turbine bolted to the seabed to generate electricity for the local grid. The prototype looks like an underwater windmill and is expected to generate about 700,000 kilowatt hours of nonpolluting energy a year, or enough to light and heat about 30 homes.
"This is the first time in the world that electricity from a tidal current has been fed into a power grid," said Harald Johansen, managing director of Hammerfest Stroem, which has led the project.
The plant in the Kvalsund channel, which had cost about 80 million crowns (US$11 million) by Saturday's launch, is a tiny contributor to help cut dependence on fossil fuels like oil and gas blamed for global warming.
The water flows at about 2.5 meters (8 feet) per second for about 12 hours when the tide is rising through the Kvalsund channel, pauses at high tide, and then reverses direction. The blades on the turbine automatically turn to face the current. If successful, the project could herald far wider use of predictable tides in green energy and generate millions of dollars in orders. Windmills, by contrast, are useless in calm weather and have to be built to withstand hurricane-force winds.
Artificial Lagoons
Tides have previously been tapped for power plants in France, Canada, and Russia in barrages that trap water in artificial lagoons at high tide. When the tide goes out, gravity sucks the water through turbines to generate electricity. But such barrages can disrupt the habitats of animals and plants in river estuaries and along the coasts.
Proponents of turbines turned by tidal currents say that they cause less impact. They are silent and invisible from the surface, and fish, whales, and seals can probably swim round them without the risk of being sliced up.
Drawbacks are that costs are high. Hammerfest Stroem has estimated that electricity will cost about 0.30-0.35 crowns a Kilowatt hour to generate, three times that of typical hydro-generated electricity in Norway. And maintenance — with divers having to go down to the seabed — could be tricky.
Other subsea experiments to generate power from tidal currents from Australia to Britain have not got to the stage of feeding power into the grid. Norwegian oil group Statoil (STL.OL), Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB (ABBZn.VX), and local Norwegian utilities are partners in the Hammerfest Stroem scheme.
"We want to get experience from this and see that we can also be a producer of green electricity," said Hanne Lekva at Statoil. More >
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| Saturday, September 20, 2003 | |
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20 Sep 2003 @ 14:50
Sobering Infrastructure Report Card
Although the American Society of Civil Engineers does have a vested interest in repairing our infrastructure, its report on the state of our bridges, highways, dams, tunnels and other public structures our lives depend on is sobering.
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| Thursday, August 28, 2003 | |
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 28 Aug 2003 @ 19:10
I received this from the South Coast Permaculture Guild (SCPG) newslist. You can subscribe too.
I live on about 1/2 an acre with three others. Though we still by goods from a store, we are able to grow many of our own vegetable and fruit needs. What we supplement comes largely from local organic farmers and water is generated from our own pump. The 1 acre per person ideal is doable, especially if resources are used co-operatively.
The true radical simplicity, I think, begins on the inside and permeates out into our lifestyles. Trimming the excess from our thoughts, cultivating our connection with the earth, and nurturing a sustainable relationship with our communities.
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Radical Simplicity:Small Footprints on a Finite Earth, by Jim Merkel is due out in September. He and Erica/Rowan are the ones who have been working on experimenting through the Global Living Project with getting a person's footprint down to actively using 1 acre per person (out of 5-6 acres per person in the world) to supply all of one's needs. They figure that using an acre a person is a person's fair share, and that leaves the other 4-5 acres for other wildlife and plants.
(I'd like to ask about what other people think of the possibilities of one acre per person at the bottom.)
Info about the book is here http://www.newsociety.com/radsim.html Isn't that an intriguing photo for the cover of the book? and they also have posted the foreword by Vicki Robin which is here http://www.newsociety.com/radsim_for.html
Info on the Global Living Project is here http://www.globallivingproject.org/
Info on footprints and a list of how a big a footprint the citizens of various countries have is listed at http://www.globallivingproject.org/footprint.html And at the bottom of the page are two links where you can calculate your own footprint. I found that it was interesting to calculate it for current conditions and then go through and calculate it a second time as if I had already made changes that I am working on. It's intriguing to see the lessened footprint with the changes.
There's a footprint list with more countries listed at http://www.rprogress.org/programs/sustainability/ef/efbrochure.pdf though it doesn't list all the countries of people on the LIM list. It shows a wide spread of 24 acres of use in the US per person compared to 1.4 acres in Bangladesh. To me it's instructive to look at countries which are using 6 acres or less per person, particularly those where most of the population is reasonably healthy. Most of them have generally low/appropriate/humanpowered tech life styles, sustainable small farming, and localized economies.
I think that working toward a goal of supplying your needs from actively using 1 acre of land per person average is a very intriguing goal. By working hard at it, the Global Living Project in their experiments with a variety of volunteers over several years has managed to get a footprint of 3.2 acres in the Summer and 4 acres in the winter. When I was looking at their procedures it seemed to me that they could have lowered this by growing a much larger percentage of their food on their property. I asked them about it, and they indicated they felt that it was important at that point to support the local economy more through local food purchases. And I could see where this would work if your neighbors who grew some of your food maintained a small footprint and bought some of their food from you. So this would reduce your footprint across the group average. But I think that if each person/family grew more of their own it would help reduce the footprint and increase the sustainability. I think the social interaction and integration with the local economy could be maintained with smaller amounts of items being bought/traded.
At the present though I am looking at things more from a viewpoint of integrating permaculture and footprints with people perhaps owning 3 acres per person (and the other 2-3 per person used for public places, roads, preserves, and with chunks of forest kept intact as nationally or group owned forests). And then I think the object would be to try and get one's permaculture 1-3 zones on 1 acre and zones 4-5 on the other 2 acres. And here's where 20-50 families might leave their 2-3 less used zone 4-5 acres per person all together in the middle or on one edge of the village, or ringed in a greenbelt as an intact forest. And a family of four for instance could have their kitchen garden nearest the house with a family orchard beyond that, and their woodlot beyond that. And then their woodlot might run up to the edge of the intact forest area.
If you'd like to design a small farm for your family based on actively using 1 acre of land per person, in addition to design info from all the various permaculture books, the Jeavons book on How to Grow More Vegetables (etc) Than you Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than you Can Imagine, 6th ed has good info for estimating yields of vegetables, fruits, some nuts, some grains, some compost, and some nonfood items. If anyone knows of books that have similar info for fuel wood, furniture wood, more grains, more compost, more fiber, more non food items, eggs, honey, beeswax, and/or oil production, I'd appreciate learning of them.
Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman has helpful info for growing a wide variety of cool weather vegetables to size in the fall and then holding them in a double insulated unheated greenhouse for harvesting as needed. This makes it possible for people to have fresh vegetables all winter, reduces the intense pressure and energy needs of preserving the fall harvest.
I'd be interested in hearing how people would design their acre or a family of four's four acre chunk(or whatever your real or ideal family configuration might be) to produce 90+% of their needs. I'd also be interested in things you might do differently to make this possible such as using cloth napkins rather than growing the fiber for paper ones, etc. I'd also be interested in how feasible you think the one acre strategy is.
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| Monday, August 11, 2003 | |
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 11 Aug 2003 @ 14:10
Vatican Says GM Food Is A Blessing
Richard Owen, The Times
05aug03
THE Vatican has stunned opponents of genetically modified foods by declaring they hold the answer to world starvation and malnutrition.
Until Sunday's statement the Vatican had been neutral in the European Union-US confrontation over GM food.
Archbishop Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the Vatican was preparing an official report on biotechnology, to be published next month, which would come down in favour of genetic modification. The document will coincide with a debate on GM by EU farm ministers.
Archbishop Martino said the Pope was greatly interested in new technologies for food development as part of a policy of sustainable agriculture. He noted that 24,000 people died every day from starvation.
Archbishop Martino, who until last year was the Vatican representative at the UN, said he had lived for 16 years in the US "and I ate everything that was offered to me, including genetically modified products. They had no effect on my health. This controversy is more political than scientific."
The Vatican study will argue that the future of humanity is at stake and that there is no room for the ideological arguments advanced by environmentalists.
One Vatican official said: "The Book of Genesis clearly establishes the domination of man over nature. God has entrusted mankind to preserve nature but also to use it."
Archbishop Martino said the Pope had been influenced by the growing weight of advice from the Vatican's scientific advisers. "The Pope ardently desires to do something for the billions of people who go to bed hungry every night," he said.
Archbishop Martino said freedom from hunger was one of the fundamental rights of man. The Vatican's stand was consistent with its belief in "the right to life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death".
Vatican officials said many in the West had made up their minds about genetic modification while ignoring the benefits to the world's hungry. Velasio De Paolis, a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Urban University, said it was "easy to say no to GM food if your stomach is full".
Scientific progress was part of the divine plan, he said. "The introduction of new and more efficient technologies such as second and third-generation GM foods, in harmony with sustainable development, is not a threat but a benefit."
Carlo Bernardini, editor of Italy's leading scientific magazine, Sapere, said he hoped Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency, would take its lead from the Pope.
But Alfonso Scanio Pecoraro, head of the Italian Greens and a former agriculture minister, said he was horrified by the Vatican's intervention. "The church is using its authority to support a scam by the US multinationals," he said.
He suspected the administration of US President George W. Bush had put pressure on the Holy See. More >
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| Saturday, August 9, 2003 | |
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 9 Aug 2003 @ 15:19
Fish Farms Become Feedlots of the Sea
Like cattle pens, the salmon operations bring product to market cheaply. But harm to ocean life and possibly human health has experts worried.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
PORT McNEILL, Canada -- If you bought a salmon filet in the supermarket recently or ordered one in a restaurant, chances are it was born in a plastic tray here, or a place just like it.
Instead of streaking through the ocean or leaping up rocky streams, it spent three years like a marine couch potato, circling lazily in pens, fattening up on pellets of salmon chow.
It was vaccinated as a small fry to survive the diseases that race through these oceanic feedlots, acres of net-covered pens tethered offshore. It was likely dosed with antibiotics to ward off infection or fed pesticides to shed a beard of bloodsucking sea lice.
For that rich, pink hue, the fish was given a steady diet of synthetic pigment. Without it, the flesh of these caged salmon would be an unappetizing, pale gray.
While many chefs and seafood lovers snub the feedlot variety as inferior to wild salmon, fish farming is booming. What was once a seasonal delicacy now is sometimes as cheap as chicken and available year-round. Now, the hidden costs of mass-producing these once-wild fish are coming into focus.
Begun in Norway in the late 1960s, salmon farming has spread rapidly to cold-water inlets around the globe. Ninety-one salmon farms now operate in British Columbian waters. The number is expected to reach 200 or more in the next decade.
Industrial fish farming raises many of the same concerns about chemicals and pollutants that are associated with feedlot cattle and factory chicken farms. So far, however, government scientists worry less about the effects of antibiotics, pesticides and artificial dyes on human health than they do about damage to the marine environment.
"They're like floating pig farms," said Daniel Pauly, professor of fisheries at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "They consume a tremendous amount of highly concentrated protein pellets and they make a terrific mess."
Fish wastes and uneaten feed smother the sea floor beneath these farms, generating bacteria that consume oxygen vital to shellfish and other bottom-dwelling sea creatures.
Disease and parasites, which would normally exist in relatively low levels in fish scattered around the oceans, can run rampant in densely packed fish farms.
Pesticides fed to the fish and toxic copper sulfate used to keep nets free of algae are building up in sea-floor sediments. Antibiotics have created resistant strains of disease that infect both wild and domesticated fish.
Clouds of sea lice, incubated by captive fish on farms, swarm wild salmon as they swim past on their migration to the ocean.
Of all the concerns, the biggest turns out to be a problem fish farms were supposed to help alleviate: the depletion of marine life from overfishing.
These fish farms contribute to the problem because the captive salmon must be fed. Salmon are carnivores and, unlike vegetarian catfish that are fed grain on farms, they need to eat fish to bulk up fast and remain healthy.
It takes about 2.4 pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon, according to Rosamond L. Naylor, an agricultural economist at Stanford's Center for Environmental Science and Policy.
That means grinding up a lot of sardines, anchovies, mackerel, herring and other fish to produce the oil and meal compressed into pellets of salmon chow.
"We are not taking strain off wild fisheries. We are adding to it," Naylor said. "This cannot be sustained forever."
In British Columbia, the industry, under pressure from environmentalists, marine scientists and local newspapers, is taking steps to mitigate some of the ecological problems.
"We have made some mistakes in the past and we acknowledge them," said Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Assn. "We feel the industry is sustainable, if well-managed, and we have a code of practices that is followed by all of our member companies."
Nearly 30 farms are preparing to move to less ecologically fragile areas, under orders from Canadian authorities.
Read On... More >
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| Friday, July 25, 2003 | |
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 25 Jul 2003 @ 13:32
Here is a great example of local business working together to effect change. I live down the road from Matilija Dam.
Socially Reponsible Investing: Only a Small Step in the Right Direction
Social Responsibility Indicators
1% For The Planet, a new nonprofit launched by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, is an opportunity for businesses to invest money where it matters. Member businesses pledge 1% of sales to grassroots nonprofits, so environmental issues unique to the communities where members do business can be resolved by local organizations, which are typically underfunded. The commitment holds member businesses to a certain integrity and accountability for their actions in a way that SRI businesses cannot. (the copyeditor had suggested a change here indicating that investors should support 1% member businesses if they want to invest in something w/ integrity, but that is not the point I'm trying to make-- I'm trying to convey that the tracking system of the 1% organization (accounting records are viewed to insure that member businesses are indeed contributing 1% of sales) is what upholds the integrity.
Although 1% of sales may seem like a lot of money, Anthony Sandberg, president of the Olympic Circle Sailing Club in Berkeley, Calif., thinks it's worth it. He says that the sailing industry has been "embarrassingly slow to embrace its responsibility to care for the health of the very environment upon which it depends." But why not simply make charitable donations without an intermediary such as 1% For The Planet? Sandberg says that by joining 1% For The Planet, "OCSC can associate with other forward-looking organizations and make a clearer statement of our intent to make a difference."
An organization that has directly benefited from 1% For The Planet contributions is the Matilija Coalition in Ventura, Calif., which received donations from Patagonia and Lulu Bandha's Yoga Studio in Ojai. The coalition’s goal is to remove the obsolete Matilija dam and restore the river. With 1% funds, the coalition has been able to collect data for a federal feasibility study. The environmental benefits of this project are enormous, as numerous species will once again be able to return to their natural habitat. The economic benefits aren’t too shabby, either: An estimated $75 million will flow into the community from tourism and recreation fishing.
Community Investment
To those accustomed to working with socially responsible investments, the Solari model of community investment may be more comfortable than the afore-mentioned selections. Devised by investment banker Catherine Austin Fitts, a Solari is defined as an "investment databank and investment advisor for a place … that promotes literacy about 'how the money works' within its place and -- with tools such as investment clubs -- promotes higher rates of investment within its place."
In an economy ridden with corporate scandals, a Solari brings transparency to money in a given location. Neighborhood financial statements that track local public and government spending and money management can illuminate the negative return on investment within the current economy and re-engineer it, according to Fitts. In other words, a well-informed public could pressure local money managers to invest according to the best interests and values of the community.
Organizers in Middlebury, Vt., are creating a community databank of information about the local economy and the various types of capital that can form the groundwork for building a Solari unique to their community. "I have never seen a model as likely to actually fix what is wrong with the world as that of the Solari," says Jason Eaton, the project’s founder.
Laying the Foundation
Although these visionary efforts are promising, they are still in their infancy. If socially responsible investors and individuals commit to creating a solid foundation for the economic paradigm shift, we can expedite the process of moving our economy to one that supports life, community, and integrity rather than maintain our current path of destruction, disconnection, and dishonesty. It's time.
Read On... More >
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| Wednesday, July 23, 2003 | |
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 23 Jul 2003 @ 21:30
Hydrogen Cars Not Needed,US Experts Say
21/7/2003
WASHINGTON - Two U.S. energy experts cast more doubt last week on a push to develop hydrogen-powered cars as a means to cut air pollution and reduce oil imports.
Cheaper and faster ways already exist to achieve the same effect, including raising fuel efficiency and toughening environmental standards, David Keith and Alexander Farrell, wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"Hydrogen cars are a poor short-term strategy, and it's not even clear that they are a good idea in the long term," Farrell, assistant professor of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
"Because the prospects for hydrogen cars are so uncertain, we need to think carefully before we invest all this money and all this public effort in one area."
President Bush has proposed spending $1.5 billion over five years to spur development by 2020 of cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells in order to cut dependence on imported oil.
The European Commission has said it plans to spend close to $2.3 billion (2.1 billion euros) on hydrogen-related research over the next four years.
Hydrogen is present in water, oil, gas and coal. Supporters of a "hydrogen economy" regard it as a clean source of energy that would cut pollution and the carbon dioxide emissions some scientists link to global warming.
Farrell and Keith, associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, noted that hydrogen is derived mostly from oil and coal, which produce substantial carbon dioxide.
They said better fuel efficiency, improvements to car technology and stricter environmental rules could reduce air pollution at less than 100th the cost of hydrogen cars and would be more effective for several decades.
"Automobile manufacturers don't need to invest in anything fancy. A wide number of technologies are already on the shelf," Farrell said. "The cost would be trivial compared to the changes needed to go to a hydrogen car."
Other scientists have also questioned the benefits of hydrogen fuel cells. Leading environmental groups have also criticized the U.S. government and Europe for failing to put renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power at the heart of their hydrogen policies.
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| Monday, July 21, 2003 | |
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 21 Jul 2003 @ 11:48
Mining bacteria's appetite for toxic waste:
Researchers Try To Clean Nuclear Sites With Microbes
Scientists are experimenting with some unusual species of bacteria that can thrive by cleaning up radioactive wastes left over from the Cold War when nuclear weapons plants across the country were running full blast.
The problem exists wherever uranium has been mined, processed and made into nuclear bombs. Almost 500 billion gallons of groundwater -- enough to supply 1. 5 million homes for a year -- remain contaminated with uranium and other toxic chemicals in 36 states, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates.
Another 800 million gallons of waste from uranium mines and weapons plants lie buried in landfills, trenches and unlined tanks. More than 2 billion cubic feet of contaminated sediments remain to be cleaned -- a mountain of radioactive and toxic dirt 2,000 times larger than Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza.
For many years, scientists have known about the unusual appetites of some microbes, including the ability of certain strains to consume uranium and other deadly poisons. Now researchers are starting to exploit that ability as a way to clean up nuclear sites, a process called "bioremediation."
STANFORD ENGINEER'S STUDIES
Among the experimenters is Craig Criddle, a Stanford University environmental engineer. He is working with several classes of microbes that he believes can turn a soluble form of uranium into an insoluble form. The uranium can precipitate out of the water like sand and be gathered like a common mineral, he believes.
Next week, Criddle will pursue an experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which produced the uranium for the infamous atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, killing almost 80,000 people.
The lab has another legacy. "The nitric acid and uranium oxide waste, a witch's brew, was dumped into unlined pits there for 31 years and then covered by a parking lot," Criddle said.
The waste ate its way down into layers of saprolite, a claylike rock, so that more than 99 percent of it is deep in the soil, he said. The remaining uranium has contaminated groundwater, a long-term threat to human health, because the uranium is soluble and moving steadily toward nearby Bear Creek, which flows through the area.
A complex community of microorganisms thrives by "breathing" oxides of sulfur, iron, aluminum and even more hazardous compounds like the uranium and other radioactive elements. As the microbes obtain their oxygen from soluble uranium oxide, for example, they transform it into a highly insoluble form called uraninite.
At Oak Ridge, Criddle will be working with several bacteria, including members of a genus called Desulfovibrio, which numbers more than 30 distinct species.
Heavy metals such as chromium that were used during the bomb-making era also pose a human health problem. Similar techniques mobilizing bacteria to remove chromium, a cancer-causing metal, are also being tested in the Oak Ridge experiments by a team from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, led by marine biologist Bradley Tebo.
Criddle's uranium experiments involve lowering the acidity of the microbes' environment and nourishing them with ethanol to "get them all happy," as Criddle says. Doing so encourages them to go to work on the uranium by reducing oxides of the radioactive uranium and thereby rendering them insoluble.
Like other researchers in bioremediation, Criddle has support from the Department of Energy. The agency's program manager, microbiologist Anna Palmisano, is a former member of the astrobiology group at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, seeking microbial analogues on Earth for possible life on other planets.
"There are wonderful microbes that could be able to help us," Palmisano said. "But the radioactive elements that are moving into the water are soluble,
and to get them out, they must be made insoluble."
URANIUM DRIFTING TOWARD RIVER
Along the Colorado River, about 200 miles west of Denver, is the small town of Rifle, whose two mines and mills produced almost 17 million tons of uranium oxide, known as "yellowcake." When the mines shut down about 30 years ago, they left almost 3 million tons of contaminated uranium tailings. Uranium dissolved in the water beneath the tailings is moving gradually toward the Colorado River. Internet maps warn of the Rifle mill site: "No well drilling or use of groundwater."
After more than a decade of laboratory work, microbiologist Derek Lovley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has built a field site for testing the ability of a class of microbes, called Geobacters, to attack the uranium waste problem at the old Rifle mines. Two weeks ago, he began new and large- scale tests there.
In effect, Lovley and his colleagues have discovered that the Geobacter bacteria can live or "breathe" in environments where uranium oxides dominate. They are focusing on the old Rifle mill site to see if they can reduce the uranium-polluted water to radioactivity levels well below the government's safety standards.
The genes of Lovley's Geobacter species already have been sequenced by the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., founded by famed scientist Craig Venter, who raced government scientists to sequence the entire human genome, and at the Energy Department's Joint Genome Institute, operated in Walnut Creek by the University of California.
Understanding those genes, according to Lovley, could enable scientists to engineer new strains of Geobacter even more capable of transforming the water- soluble forms of uranium into insoluble forms that could be filtered from streams and underground aquifers.
OTHER MICROBES IN SPOTLIGHT
Still other strains of microbes are under investigation.
One unique bacterium bears the intriguing name of Deinococcus radiodurans, meaning "strange berry that withstands radiation." It was discovered by Oregon radiation researchers in 1956 in a can of meat that had spoiled even after the meat was sterilized experimentally by intense radiation beams, and it is by far the most radiation-resistant organism in the world.
Gene-splicers are experimenting to see if the genes of D. radiodurans can be engineered to produce a new "superbug" that could decontaminate the most intensely radioactive wastes on Earth -- wastes much more deadly than the uranium that scientists such as Criddle and Lovley are hoping to clean up.
Check Paul Stamets success using mushroom organisms for oil and other toxic cleanup also his grow your own edible mushroom kits. More >
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| Monday, June 30, 2003 | |
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 30 Jun 2003 @ 06:13
20-Year Study Backs Organic Farming
By Fred Pearce
New Scientist
The world's longest running experiment in comparing organic and conventional farming side-by-side has pronounced chemical-free farming a success.
"We have shown that organic farming is efficient, saves energy, maintains biodiversity and keeps soils healthy for future generations," says Paul Mader of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Frick, Switzerland, which carried out the 21-year study.
Although crop yields on organic plots in the experiment were on average 20 per cent lower than those on conventional plots, the ecological and efficiency gains more than made up for it, Mader says.
Soils nourished with manure were more fertile and produced more crops for a given input of nitrogen or other fertiliser. "The input of nutrients like nitrogen were as much as 50 per cent lower, so overall the organic system was more efficient," he told New Scientist.
Not all crops did equally well. Potato yields on organic plots were only 60 per cent of those on conventional plots. But organic winter wheat achieved 90 per cent, and grasses fed on manure did just as well as those fed on fertiliser.
Mader argues that the biggest bonus is the improved quality of the soil under organic cultivation, which should ensure good crops for decades to come.
Earthworms and fungi
Organic soils had up to three times as many earthworms, twice as many insects and 40 per cent more mycorrhizal fungi colonising plant roots. Soils microbes went into overdrive, transforming organic material into new plant biomass faster than microbes in conventional plots.
More predictably perhaps, organic plots contained up to 10 times as many weed species as conventional plots sprayed with herbicides.
"Under European conditions, we can clearly grow our food with much less chemical input than we do now," says Mader. "But of course a 20 per cent yield reduction in a country like India would have fatal consequences."
However, in practice, where poor farmers cannot afford expensive agrochemicals, switching to organic methods boost yields, he says: "Last year I visited a project in India, the Maikaal Project near Indore, where more than a thousand farmers are growing food organically -- and increasing their yields compared to neighbouring conventional farmers."
Jules Pretty, director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, who recently completed a global study of organic farming, said the findings confirmed his conclusion that "organic farming is more efficient and in many circumstances can increase yields for farmers".
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| Saturday, June 28, 2003 | |
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 28 Jun 2003 @ 17:34
Like a lot of Americans, millions of monarch butterflies spend their winters in Mexico. Trouble is, the Mexican government has been unable to protect the monarch's forest habitat from illegal logging. Reasoning that illegal logging stems from necessity -- the 200,000-odd largely impoverished people who live in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve clear the lands to grow crops, build their homes, and fuel their stoves.
A Mexican nonprofit organization called Alternare has begun a quiet revolution to teach farmers sustainable living techniques in the name of the butterfly. The group teaches farmers to build from adobe rather than wood, to farm without chemical fertilizers, and to rotate crops for increased land productivity. Once farmers master the techniques, they teach them to others, and so Alternare's vision is slowly spreading through the Mexican forest.
With monarch habitat disappearing at alarming rates, critics fear the change is coming too slowly, but advocates say that for the first time, the interests of both the human beings and the butterflies in the area are being served.
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| Friday, June 27, 2003 | |
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 27 Jun 2003 @ 15:44
Europe Takes Bite At Bush
BRUSSELS, June 24, 2003
The European Union on Tuesday rejected a complaint from President Bush that the EU's restrictions on genetically modified crops are hurting poor African farmers.
"It is false we are anti-biotechnology or anti-developing countries," said EU spokesman Gerassimos Thomas. "These things said by the United States are simply not true."
On Monday, Mr. Bush criticized European restrictions on bio-engineered food, saying they were based on unfounded, unscientific health fears.
"Because of these artificial obstacles, many African nations avoid investing in biotechnology, worried that their products will be shut out of important European markets," Mr. Bush told a meeting of the Biotechnology Industry Association in Washington.
"For the sake of a continent threatened by famine, I urge the European governments to end their opposition to biotechnology," he added.
U.S. farmers estimate EU biotech restrictions have cost them nearly $300 million a year in lost corn exports alone. The issue has soured the world's biggest trading relationship and will loom large at an EU-U.S. summit Wednesday in Washington.
Thomas claimed the EU spends seven times more on development aid to Africa than the United States. He said the EU focuses its spending on longer term improvements to help African farmers improve their yields.
U.S. officials have previously blamed the EU restrictions for decisions by African nations to reject American food aid because it contains genetically modified grain.
European Union authorities imposed a moratorium on the import of genetically modified food products in 1998, responding to mounting fears of European consumers about possible health risks from the products.
Talks between the two sides broke off last week at the World Trade Organization in Geneva and the United States said it would seek a WTO ruling to end the EU moratorium on grounds that it is an unfair trade barrier.
Genetically modified crops are engineered by scientists to be heartier, yield more food or require less water or pesticide.
Proponents say genetically modified foods offer developing countries a chance to make their farms more productive, which will not only feed their people but also allow their economies to diversify away from subsistence farming, increase education levels and reduce poverty.
The Department of Agriculture convened a meeting this week of 100 farm ministers to discuss the promise of GM food.
Protesters outside the talks spoke not of promise, but peril.
Opponents say not enough is known about the safety of the food, or the effect of the "GM" plants on the environment. At least one GM food company does not allow farmers to save seeds from one crop to plant the next year's, a traditional practice. Some GM crops could spread to fields where non-GM crops are grown.
Other critics say the problem for African farmers is the lack of access to Western markets, thanks to barriers like the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and U.S. farm subsidies.
With world commodity prices falling, it's possible the problem isn't the size of the food supply but how it is distributed, some observers note.
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| Monday, June 23, 2003 | |
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 23 Jun 2003 @ 13:10
Letecia Layson sent me this article.
Personal Voices: Facing Up to Race
Carrie Ching, AlterNet
June 20, 2003
Abercrombie and Fitch is back on the hotseat -- this time for racial discrimination in hiring practices. Last year the company was forced to pull T-shirts sporting slant-eyed Chinese laundrymen and the slogan "Two Wongs can make it white" when Asian-Americans protested. This time the stakes are higher. Nine Latino and Asian plaintiffs are suing Abercrombie for only hiring white people for sales floor jobs and pushing black, Latino and Asian applicants into stockroom jobs to project what the clothing company calls the "classic American look."
Here we go again. The media and American public are shaking their heads at the company, but this is hardly a new phenomenon. The case is simply yet another manifestation of the prevalent belief that "American" still means white. But instead of pointing fingers at flagrant offenders like Abercrombie, we should instead look in the mirror to examine the ways that we all participate on a daily basis in this racist hierarchy which places whites in the center and pushes those whose backgrounds are more "ethnic" to the margins.
Think about it. When you go to an expensive restaurant, the managers and servers are almost always white, while the busboys and kitchen help are unfailingly people of color. At most offices the managers are usually white, while the interns and junior staff are often people of color. Often when you drive by the carwash you'll see white and light-skinned people fanning themselves in plastic chairs while brown-skinned people are scrubbing tires and windshields. Diversity is great, but only when it happens at the lower levels of an organization so as not to challenge the skewed balance of power. The signs are everywhere: Race still plays a major if unspoken role in the way our society is organized.
Yet there are many people -- mostly white -- who refuse to believe this is true. Two students in my evening class told me recently that they didn't believe race was an issue anymore in America, or at least, not in the San Francisco Bay Area. The two are both white, liberal, educated, upper middle-class professionals in their 50s, and both live in exclusive neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Their argument: Since race relations are so much better today than they were thirty years ago, what are all these angry people of color complaining about? Besides, one of them argued, isn't inequality in America based much more on class than race?
It's true that race relations must be better than they were thirty years ago -- as a biracial person I probably wouldn't even be alive if they weren't. But someone who thinks that race is a dead issue must have their head buried pretty deep in the sand, or more appropriately, pretty deep in a wealthy white neighborhood.
I asked the students why a person whose great-great-grandfather emigrated from China 150 years ago is still called an "Asian-American," while a person whose father emigrated from Germany fifty years ago becomes just a plain old "American" in one generation -- not a "German-American" or a "European-American." We're all pretty recent transplants here (unless you're Native American), so why are people of color are still made to feel like visitors in their own home? Because being American is still very much about being white.
I'm so tired of hearing these kinds of things from white people. It's like a skinny person saying that fat people aren't discriminated against, or a man claiming that there's no such thing as gender inequality. Is it so difficult to understand? One of the perks of being in a privileged position is that you don't have to think about it.
Racism is so ingrained in our dominant culture that we don't even recognize it for what it is anymore. And we're so squeamish about talking about race that we avoid it at all costs. We tell ourselves that the profiling of Arab and other brown-skinned people as potential terrorists is about weeding out religious fanatics, not about race. And although the low-income housing projects across town are filled entirely with black men, women and children who ride the bus, while our own neighborhoods of trendy boutiques and overpriced cafes are filled with mostly white professionals who drive brand new SUVs, it has nothing to do with race; it's all about class, work ethic, and levels of education, right?
One of the most common arguments I hear against race-based affirmative action is this whole theory that the race problem has been solved and that inequality today falls much more along the lines of class.
When we compare the struggles of a working class white person to a middle-class or affluent black, Asian or Latino person, we forget the fundamental difference between class and race: class is mutable, race is not. If a working class white man puts on the right clothes, has the right connections, and gets the right education, he can transcend his class status and slip into an upper middle-class world because his skin color allows him to be somewhat "invisible." But no matter how much money or education an affluent black, Asian, or Latino man or woman acquires, in today's America, they will still be treated like a second-class citizen or an "other" in most elite social and professional circles. Many white parents would be less upset if their kid brought home a girlfriend or boyfriend from a different tax bracket than someone who is Korean, black, Arab or Mexican. Let's not forget that up until 1967 it was still illegal in sixteen states for people from different racial backgrounds to marry.
We make these arguments about class so that we won't have to face up to two of the most painful -- yet obvious -- truths about the society we live in: 1) Our dominant culture is built upon a racist ideology that sustains and promotes injustice and inequality, and 2) by not acknowledging the hierarchy that we all participate in, we help reinforce that racist hegemony every day. What a tangled web of lies we weave.
Yet just acknowledging and wanting to change a culture of racism is only half the battle. Taking responsibility for how it plays out in our private lives is somewhat more challenging. This entails taking an honest look at our friendships and romantic relationships and examining how larger forces shape our desires and social interactions. Because even though most of us refuse to admit it, attraction isn't colorblind.
I agree with critics who say that just having "friends" of a different color doesn't necessarily make you a more open-minded person. I know plenty of people who pull the "I have a black/Chinese/Cherokee friend" card when the cocktail party discussion turns to race, yet their circle of close friends and their history of dating reveals they've never ventured outside of their own kind in their most intimate relationships (see blackpeopleloveus.com for more on this topic). Tokenism is never a pretty sight, particularly when you're the token. On the other hand, you have to start somewhere, and taking the risk of getting to know someone of a different race or ethnicity is at least a step in the right direction.
What I bump up against time and time again is this sort of white liberal hypocrisy, where people stick to their own in their private lives, yet claim they feel solidarity with groups of indigenous people halfway across the globe with whom they will never have a meaningful conversation. This was an ongoing theme at my predominantly white and very liberal university, where everyone was in solidarity with the Zapatistas in Chiapas and the factory workers in China and the starving children in Africa. But when discussions about the sorry state of diversity on our own campus or the racist undercurrents (including an active KKK that regularly distributed leaflets) of the town itself came up, people could only shift uncomfortably in their seats. It's too easy to claim solidarity with people of different backgrounds from afar -- you don't have to take chances and endure the discomfort of having your own perspective and unconscious assumptions about race challenged. Examining and breaking down the racial boundaries in our personal lives is just as important as addressing injustices on a global scale.
Now that I've graduated and moved to San Francisco, I've found the same willful blindness in the workplace -- particularly within the news media. We pay a lot of lip-service to fighting racial discrimination and the need for diversity, yet there are few to no people of color in high-level positions on the masthead. We want so badly to believe that institutional racism is something that is going on "out there" in the world, when in fact it has tangled roots in our private lives. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not we all have a choice to be either accomplices or everyday revolutionaries. It's time to face the fact that the small, unconscious choices we make in our private lives -- like who we feel safe sitting next to on the bus, who we choose to be our colleagues at work, and yes, even who we choose as our intimate friends and lovers -- become the blueprints for the shape and color of our society as a whole.
Carrie Ching
freelance journalist and an editor of WireTap.
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 23 Jun 2003 @ 04:43
Hidden Secrets Of The Dreaded Weed
Telegraph.co.uk
June 14, 2003
The Isochanvre manufacturing process is a closely guarded secret said to involve crystallisation of the silica-rich hemp sap at low temperature, using very little energy and without the use of additives. The result is a rot-proof, fire-resistant, lightweight and strong substance which is unpalatable to vermin.
Architect Ralph Carpenter admits that it all sounds too good to be true: "It is alchemy. The mineralisation process means the material remains vegetable but is not biodegradable . . . I know because I've had some in my compost heap for four years and it still hasn't rotted down," he says.
The material's inventor is every bit as enigmatic as her product. According to Mr Carpenter, France Perier (named by her parents in defiance of the German occupying forces during the Second World War) worked as a rural midwife and field radiologist until she developed skin cancer. She cured herself with a mysterious preparation containing hemp oil. "She realised that crystals in the hemp oil must have had some beneficial effect and that's what encouraged her to explore its properties," says Mr Carpenter.
Whatever the curative properties of hemp, they are unlikely to influence its use as a building material. What might make a difference, though, is the plant's affordability and low environmental impact. There's nothing mysterious about that.
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 23 Jun 2003 @ 04:43
Don't you think it's time we move away from a petroleum based economy no matter what the availability of the resource is?
WORLD OIL SUPPLY MORE DIVERSE;
NON-OPEC PRODUCTION INCREASING
BP Press Release
10th June 2003
World oil supply is becoming more diverse and world oil production capacity comfortably exceeds world oil demand, said BP chief economist Peter Davies today.
"As a result, producers were able to meet the needs of oil consumers during the Iraq war and during unplanned supply disruptions in Venezuela and Nigeria. Consuming nations were not required to tap their emergency reserves. This is good news for those concerned about energy security, but it should not lead to complacency," Davies said at the launching of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2003.
OPEC, while using spare capacity of almost 4 million barrels a day to keep the market supplied during the war, cut its average daily output by 1.87 million barrels a day in response to weak global oil demand and a 1.45 million barrel-a-day increase in non-OPEC production. OPEC production has declined in three of the last four years.
"The story is one of supply momentum that looks set to continue," Davies said. "Russian oil production is up 25 per cent in three years and Russia has been joined by a new group of oil producing basins, across several continents and regions, that have begun to grow rapidly."
Production from Russia, the Caspian, the deepwater Atlantic Basin and Canada is up 3.3 million barrels a day (26.5 per cent) in three years and has the potential to increase another 5 million barrels a day by 2007.
China accounted for 68.5 per cent of the increase in global primary energy consumption in 2002 and has become a major energy consumer and importer. Consumption of coal, which accounts for 66 per cent of Chinese energy use, grew a massive 27.9 per cent. Oil consumption increased 5.8 per cent or 332,000 barrels a day, accounting for all of the world's oil consumption growth in 2002. China replaced Japan as the world's second largest oil consumer.
Natural gas is the world's preferred non-transport fuel. Outside the Former Soviet Union (FSU) gas consumption has grown 3.4 per cent a year over the past decade and its share of total energy consumption is now roughly equal to coal at 24 per cent.
US gas consumption grew 3.9 per cent in 2002 as North American gas production fell 1.8 per cent. Imported LNG is filling part of the gap. Producers are now considering options for delivering new sources of pipeline gas and LNG to this growing gas market.
Commercial (non-hydro) renewable energies are growing rapidly, but their contribution to total world electricity generation remains small (1.7 per cent in 2000 versus 1 per cent in 1990).
Oil - Brent oil prices averaged $25.19 a barrel in 2002, up slightly on the 2001 average price of $24.77 and well above the post-1986 annual average of $19.40. Prices during 2002 ranged from a low of around $18 per barrel in mid-January to peak just before the end of the year at $32.
Global oil consumption was broadly flat, increasing 290,000 barrels a day from 75.5 to 75.7 million barrels a day. All of the increase is attributable to China where oil consumption increased 5.8 per cent or 332,000 barrels a day.
Global oil production declined 415,000 barrels a day, or 0.7 per cent, from 74.4 million to 73.9 million barrels a day. OPEC daily oil production fell to 28.2 million barrels a day, a drop of 1.87 million barrels a day (6.4 per cent). The steep fall resulted from a number of unplanned disruptions and because some OPEC producers, primarily Saudi Arabia, curtailed production in response to weak demand and to a significant 1.45 million barrel per day increase in non-OPEC oil output. Large daily production increases occurred in Russia (640,000 barrels), Kazakhstan (150,000 barrels), Canada (170,000 barrels), Angola (160,000 barrels) and Brazil (160,000 barrels).
Gas - World consumption of natural gas increased in 2002 by a relatively strong 2.8 per cent on the strength of a 3.9 per cent increase in US consumption and a 7 per cent increase in non-OECD Asia Pacific consumption. Growth in natural gas consumption outpaced growth in world primary energy and its share of total energy consumption is now roughly equal to coal at 24 per cent.
Global natural gas production increased 1.4 per cent, from 2,493 billion cubic metres to 2,527 billion cubic metres. North America was the only region to experience a production decline, falling 1.8 per cent from 779 to 766 billion cubic metres. A price-driven drop in drilling activity explains some of the production decrease, but the maturity of US and Canadian gas producing basins was also a factor.
Coal, nuclear and hydroelectric - Coal was the fastest growing fuel in 2002 with coal consumption increasing 6.9 per cent in 2002 on the strength of an extraordinary reported increase in China of 27.9 per cent. Excluding China, world consumption increased just 0.6 per cent.
Consumption of nuclear power increased 1.5 per cent, with most of the increase coming in Asia. World consumption of hydroelectric power increased 1.3 per cent from 2001 but was still less than in 2000. Nuclear and hydroelectric power each account for about 6 per cent of total world energy consumption.
Note to Editors:
This is the 52nd edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2003 is published on the internet at www.bp.com/centres/energy where data can be viewed and downloaded.
Press copies of the Review are available from the BP press office (tel: 44 (0)20 7496 4076).
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| Sunday, June 22, 2003 | |
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 22 Jun 2003 @ 00:52
Reporting in the Feb 26 Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists found consistently higher levels of phenols (59% vs 19%) in corn, blackberries and strawberries grown using certified organic or sustainable practices compared to same foods grown conventionally.
Phenols, ...., are produced by plants as natural defenses against insects, infections and UV radiation. As potent anti-oxidants, they may help prevent the free-radical cell damage in humans that contributes to age-related conditions like heart disease and cancer. Researchers speculate that chemicals used in conventional agriculture may disrupt the natural production of these substances More >
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 22 Jun 2003 @ 00:21
I hear that General Electric bought Enron's wind division and have comitted a team of engineers to develop turbine technology.
Stanford Study Reveals New Wind Economics
In the first study to clock winds at the hub height of newer turbines (262 feet versus 164 feet for older turbines), Stanford researchers found that 24 percent of U.S. wind monitoring sites experience gusts fast enough to generate power as cheaply as coal or natural gas plants. Co-authors Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson report their findings in the May 13 online issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres).
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| Saturday, June 21, 2003 | |
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 21 Jun 2003 @ 23:53
My housemate John Rolac posted this on his Nutiva website
The Green, Green Grass That's Home
Telegraph.co.uk
June 14, 2003
It's barely legal, but hemp is here to stay - as a low-cost, environmentally friendly building material. David Taylor meets a family putting it to the test
Jessee Mulcock has heard them all in the year she has lived in her new house: "You'd have to be dopey to live there." And "Hope your chip pan doesn't go up - the fire engine wouldn't be able to get through all the hippies standing downwind." And "If you run out of booze, you can always smoke some of the wall insulation . . . "
Being the butt of such feeble jokes is the price Jessee has to pay for living in a house made almost entirely out of Cannabis sativa - hemp, for short. And, let's face it, that does sound rather like a dope-smoker's equivalent of Hansel and Gretel's gingerbread house.
"Yes, we've had a lot of jokes, but at least when people find out what it's about, they stop laughing. They're interested," she says.
Jessee, 26, and her six-year-old son, Vincent, are willing guinea pigs in an experiment to test the environmental, technical and economic benefits of using hemp as a building material. Her house, and the one next door, which is also made of hemp, have been built in the Suffolk town of Haverhill for social housing provider Suffolk Housing Society. The idea of using hemp came from the architect, Ralph Carpenter of local firm Modece Architects, who believes that this fast-growing crop could offer a cheap, sustainable and effective alternative to traditional building materials.
"I found out about it through my brother Stuart who at the time was working for Hemcore [the UK's largest processor of hemp]. He told me about a hemp-based material which is made in France and used for building," explains Mr Carpenter.
The qualities of hemp fibre are well known. It was the first choice for rope before the advent of man-made fibres and it still makes the best quality paper. But the plant's role in the illegal drugs trade suppressed its legitimate use for most of the 20th century, even though commercially grown hemp contains only negligible amounts of the psychoactive drug THC.
In recent years, however, pressure from industry has led to a relaxation of the laws governing the cultivation of hemp with the result that it has bounced back and found its way into a range of new products, from clothing and cosmetics to ice-cream.
Today, hemp's environmental sustainability is a major selling point. It is easy to grow, even on poor soil, and is ready to harvest in just four months. Like all plants, it absorbs carbon dioxide - the main "greenhouse" gas - from the atmosphere as it grows and, because it requires very little energy to process, it can help save money, conserve fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The French material used in the construction of Jessee's house is called Isochanvre, a by-product of fibre production consisting of the pith and sap processed to minimise its biodegradability. Mixed with hydraulic lime and water to bind it together, Isochanvre is packed into timber formwork and left to solidify like concrete.
It is an easy material to work with and requires fewer skills than building in brick. Its good insulating properties mean that no wall cavity is needed, and its resistance to moisture means that the walls can sit on a ground-floor slab cast in the same hemp-and-lime mixture without the need for a damp-proof membrane. The two hemp houses at Haverhill are built around timber frames with the hemp mixture used as in-fill between the timber beams and columns.
The houses form part of a development of 18 properties on the site and are flanked on either side by two similar houses built with traditional materials. These provide a benchmark against which scientists from the Building Research Establishment in Watford can assess the hemp houses.
The first hemp house took almost twice as long to build as the equivalent brick houses, mainly because the contractor had to learn how to use the unfamiliar materials from scratch. "But once they got the hang of it, they were very fast," says Ralph Carpenter. "The second hemp house was quicker to build than the conventional brick ones."
In terms of its performance, the hemp material seems just as good as brick-and-block construction, according to the BRE's preliminary report to Suffolk Housing Society. Jessee, though oblivious to the science involved, confirms: "It's warm and dry and comfortable, and it has a lovely rustic feel to it, even though it's a new house," she says.
One unexpected benefit of the hemp material is its acoustic behaviour. Slightly quieter, according to BRE measurements, than the conventional houses, the hemp/lime mixture seems to deaden sounds within the building. "The acoustic properties have a noticeable calming effect," says Mr Carpenter. As the material is more "breathable" than modern gypsum plaster, the hemp houses also suffer less condensation than their conventional counterparts.
Liz Garrod, the BRE's project co-ordinator at Haverhill, is impressed by the hemp houses but confesses herself puzzled by the material itself: "I don't know how they process it, but it looks just like the Hutch Hemp I use for my rabbit's bedding." Laboratory tests bear out the fire- and rot-resistance claims, and Ms Garrod says her own experiments at home with Hutch Hemp have yielded comparable results.
Whatever the special properties of Isochanvre, Ms Garrod thinks hemp could have a bright future as a building material. "I like houses made out of natural materials, and this is very sustainable and can be recycled," she says. "It's faster to use than some of the traditional building methods, like cob and rammed earth, which are also becoming popular again."
As for Jessee, she has nothing but praise for hemp: "When I moved out of my old first-floor flat on the other side of town, all I wanted was a house. But when I learned about this project, I really wanted to be a part of it.
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 21 Jun 2003 @ 23:53
'Alpha-Earner' Wives More Common
Last month, Newsweek magazine's cover story, "She Works, He Doesn't," reported on a new trend. More men, it reported, are staying home or cutting back at work to attend to family responsibilities. That's because 30.7 percent of married working mothers now earn more money than their husbands do, up from 24 percent just a few years ago, the magazine reported. Eleven percent of marriages now feature "alpha-earner wives," women who earn more than 60 percent of the family income.
Hollywood is trying to catch this wave as well. The plot of the new Eddie Murphy comedy "Daddy Day Care," centers on laid-off marketing-executive fathers banding together to create a family day-care home while their alpha-earner wives worked. The last time Hollywood tried a similar storyline, 20 years ago in "Mr. Mom," Michael Keaton, another laid-off executive, was far less competent than Murphy and his pals. Keaton's dinner-burning, poker-playing character would never have stretched his imagination beyond taking care of his own kids.
A husband at home and a wife at work was going far enough for conventional gender role swapping in 1983. At the end of the movie, Keaton's character goes back to work and his wife quits her job because they prefer a more traditional arrangement.
Two decades later, a lasting stay-at-home father arrangement is not unusual. In the decade between 1990 and 2000, the number of families with stay-at-home fathers and working mothers rose by 70 percent. Nearly 2 million couples have reversed roles. The number of at-home fathers last spiked during the recession of 1992. When fathers get downsized, as is happening now, mothers often help shoulder more of the financial load and fathers often take on more work inside the home.
In addition to changing conventions about who nurtures the children and who earns the money, lines and attitudes have blurred for other family situations. Countless studies show that men, particularly in dual-income households, shoulder more child care and household chores than they used to. For example, in 1998, the Families and Work Institute, a New York research and policy center, reported that men put in 75 percent of the time women did on workday chores, versus 30 percent in 1977.
'Nontraditional' Parenting More Common
Finally, in the post-September-11 world, many men have rethought the assumption that one can find no greater reward or success than climbing the corporate ladder. Given the economic, cultural, and ideological climate, more U.S. fathers are poised to become more like Sonora Dodd's father; selfless, sacrificing and hands-on.
Julie Shields, an attorney and writer in McLean, Va., is the author of "How to Avoid the Mommy Trap: A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making It Work."
For more information:
Families and Work Institute--The Fatherhood Project
How to Avoid the Mommy Trap: A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting - and Making it Work
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| Wednesday, June 18, 2003 | |
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18 Jun 2003 @ 17:12
Heirloom seed grower and plant breeder Kevin Akiva Werbalowsky is providing a number of learning sessions and apprenticeships for those interested in preserving, protecting, and creating valuable maize varieties, squash, melon, and other favorite crops. Use of prophylactic bags, meticulous timing, and close observation during the pollination season is the focus as well as organic practices. Limited numbers of people will learn very quickly how and when to do this in hands-on activities.
Begins July 20 in Minneapolis area (July 11-20 in California)
Contacts for scheduling, cost, and any other info:
seedmind@usa.net
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Sounding Circle - Category: Permaculture
