The Kudzu Files

Art and Architecture In The Storm Drain

From BLDGBLOG, an interesting interview with Canadian urban explorer Michael Cook. It's interesting on two levels, first for the interview itself, and second for the accompanying pictures, which definitely don't look like the storm drains in my town. Who knows, maybe if he explored the sewers of Washington DC he'd find GWB's approval ratings.

The Weather Channel Meterologist Controversy

Lots of chatter about this. I decided to see what actually was said. Dr. Heidi Cullen was reacting to a blog interview with a DC-area TV meteorologist, Brian van de Graaf, who had this to say about global warming:

"The subject of global warming definitely makes headlines in the media and is a topic of much debate. I try to read up on the subject to have a better understanding, but it is complex. Often, it is so politicized and those on both sides don't always appear to have their facts straight. History has taught us that weather patterns are cyclical and although we have noticed a warming pattern in recent time, I don't know what generalizations came be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data. That's all I will say about this."

Dr. Cullen then noted a later entry on that same blog (Capitalweather.com) which responded to van de Graaf's statement:

""If that were a question on a climate science exam, van de Graaf better hope for partial credit. Sure, there are cyclical patterns of climate change and weather patterns, but he misses the more important point about trends in long-term data.

The global surface thermometer record only stretches back to the 1800s, but reliable traces of the planet's temperature can be made stretching back thousands of years using ice cores, tree ring records, ocean sediments and other "proxy" methods. Together, these records have showed a stark warming trend during the past century, particularly the last 30 years, that is out of step with previous shifts.

Scientists have identified human emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as the most likely culprit for the warming. This is the opinion of most climate scientists, and van de Graaf and others should know this and communicate this to the public....

Van de Graaf and his colleagues can look to the American Meteorological Society, which awards them their television "seals of approval" and hence their legitimacy as TV meteorologists, for a nonpartisan scientific view on climate change.

More than three years ago the AMS issued a statement on climate change that said: "There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."

Perhaps AMS members should be required to read the organization's statements and consider getting on board with the group's new emphasis on becoming station scientists. Either that, or continue to be left out of covering the biggest weather story of all time."

Dr. Cullen referred to that blog post, and went on to say:

""I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming... Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy. If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval".

So - not quite as extreme a statement as this Alabama broadcast meteorologist would have you believe. Also - Spann makes the statement that "Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon". I can't find anything close to that. The Federal government spent a few hundred million dollars on climate research in 2005, the latest year for which I could find figures. Here's the link for that. That amount will buy you a few days of war in Iraq, by the way. I doubt that private sources are covering the remaining billions Spann claims. On the other hand, ExxonMobil is spending millions to convince people that the science behind global warming isn't legitimate. I don't claim to know for sure whether we're causing some of the problem. With all the data that's accumulating indicating we are, I'm inclined to believe that there's some fire under all that smoke, and if we can put some of it out, we should.

Dr. Cullen's original blog post is here, followed by this post.

It's What All The Cool Ostriches Are Doing

"there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld said lots of things during his time before an open mic, but this has always been one of my favorites. It's also one of the things he said that actually made perfect sense to me. But in the global warming debate, it probably should be re-written:

"there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- and we don't have to worry about those."

I'm not going to say that human activities are definitely causing an abnormal change in natural warming and cooling cycles. There is plenty of evidence that something is happening - carbon dioxide levels seem to be higher than at any point in the past hundred thousand years, and the rate of increase seems to be increasing abnormally; permafrost that has been frozen for over ten thousand years is melting (which could release methane, a more destructive greenhoue gas than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere); the Greenland ice sheet appears to be melting faster than natural cycling would predict. You can find more examples - but none provide absolute evidence of global warming caused by human activity, and apparently it will require absolute evidence before some people will decide we should try to do something. I overheard a conversation the other day, some people talking about Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth". One of the people replied "I'm a Republican, I don't listen to Al Gore". That makes as much sense as someone who says "I don't like that doctor, so I'm not getting my child vaccinated". Their child might not get sick anyway, so why worry? But we do worry, and even though nothing may happen, we do something about it. We do something because we can. The history of vaccine development shows it was expensive, it was often controversial, and during the process many very smart people got some things wrong. But we were smart enough to understand that something was going on that we could affect. Looking back over the past century, it seems like a pretty damn good idea. If we're driving and we see something that causes us to be uncertain of the road conditions ahead, we slow down until we're sure. We don't just go speeding on. Unless, of course, we're idiots. We recognize that we need more data, and until we get more data we should proceed with a little caution.

So what's the deal with the global warming debate? Maybe we don't have everything right. Maybe we don't understand all the data. But we have the technology to do some things. We could clean things up a bit while we're trying to understand better what's happening. But it's so much easier to just sit there and do nothing, and point to every pseudo-scientific or near-scientific study claiming to refute the studies that show something we don't want to believe. It's easier to say "we're not sure, let's not do anything right now", and find the one or two guys in the room saying things we agree with.

As a friend said this weekend, it's what all the cool ostriches are doing this year.

The Great $100 Voter Purchase Plan

Also, it's the latest attempt by Republicans to drill in ANWR. but that's not my point here. Today the Republicans proposed a "bold move", giving most US taxpayers a $100 "gas-tax rebate". Every taxpayer with an adjusted gross income of $125,000 or less, or $150,000 for couples filing jointly, would get the rebate. I haven't seen a report saying how many people would be eligible for this, but I went to the IRS website and looked up the number of returns by AGI. In 2003 there were about 125,000,000 individual returns that would qualify. So if each of those representedf a person or couple who would get the rebate, then the Republicans have just added to the deficit approximately

$12,500,000,000

Heck, that would pay for a month and a half of the Iraq excursion. But it won't do a thing to solve any of our energy-related problems. Here's a better idea for US taxpayers: trade that gas-sucking SUV for something that burns less gas. If you drive 1,000 miles a month, and you get 15 mpg in your Ford Expedition, then switching to something like a Ford Escape getting 23 mpg will save around $70 each month. That beats the hell out of a one-time $100 vote-buying handout. And make no mistake, the rebate is all about buying votes come November. And unlike the Republican proposal, getting better mileage actually does something to reduce gasoline consumption.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil posted profits of

$8,400,000,000

for the first quarter of 2006, following profits of

$10,700,000,000 for the last quarter of 2005. Obviously, companies have to have profits, but I'm just sayin'. That's a lot of cash they've raked in from us. But one thing we know, they can't afford to pay more in taxes. They're barely making it as is. I'm just sayin'. But you know, it wasn't like the car dealers put little yellow stickies over the gas mileage figures on the window stickers, so we couldn't see the numbers. I have no sympathy for people who complain about how much it costs to fill up their Suburban or Excursion or Hummer, or their Explorer or Tahoe or Dodge Ram. Nobody forced them to buy a 5,000 pound behemoth with a 6-liter V8 to haul around two kids and a few bags of groceries. I think we should issue bumber stickers that say "130,000 US soldiers are in the Middle East protecting my right to waste gas". I'm just sayin'.

Lions and (sabre-tooth) Tigers and Bears, Oh my!

Well, not really sabre-tooth tigers, but they are talking about lions, and cheetahs, and elephants. And considering the reaction of ranchers to the re-introduction of gray wolves, I strongly suspect this won't get much reaction beyond ridicule.

"Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators," said lead author Josh Donlan, of Cornell University. "There are going to have to be some major attitude shifts."

Ya think???

Cell Towers Incognito

Joe mentions cell phone towers that are, or try to be, disguised as something else. Here in Madison, MS, we have cell towers disguised as a tree, one hidden in a church steeple (a new twist on receiving a call from the Lord), and one tucked away inside a scaled-down replica of the Washington Momument, nestled right beside I-55 just north of Jackson. Maybe we'll have a whole series of historically-inspired cell towers - the Eiffel Tower, State of Liberty, a Space Needle, maybe a giant Ronald Reagan. It's mildly ironic that in the part of the state where the cell phone count per capita is highest, the desire to not have, or hide, cell phone towers is also the highest. Nimbyville, USA.

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

With the news about a reliable sighting of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker, I thought back to a bird I saw in 1994 or 1995 while driving home one day from my job in Vicksburg, MS. I had a 60-mile drive home, and rather than drive the interstate, I usually took a fairly lonely road that cut through northern Hinds County. One afternoon, I rounded a curve in time to see a large bird fly across the road ahead of me. It was obviously a woodpecker, and a large one at that. It had a prominent red crest, long bill, black and white on the wings and body. And very large - 20" or better I would estimate, easily larger than a large crow. I wish I had thought at the time to notice the color of the bill. I called my father when I got home, and he said it was probably a pileated woodpecker. But I've often wondered since then, and especially the past couple of days, if I had actually seen an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The range and habitat would be right, hardwood forest and bottomland (this was very near the Big Black River) in west-central Mississippi. The two birds are very similar.
I'm not an avid birder, more of a hobbyist, and if I'd seen it now instead of 10 years ago, I would have paid more attention to the details.

Driving through a Mississippi spring

I drove to our North Regional Office today, a roughly 3-hour excursion up I-55 to Oxford, MS. One of those bluebird days that makes you remember why you stay in Mississippi: clear, deep blue skies, warm sunshine, and a landscape that's practically vibrating with new growth. And I was reminded once again what makes Mississippi different from so many other states. Green is everywhere. An incredible array of textures, shades, tones. The most creative human artist could never select and use so many shades of green. Their imagination would run dry long before they approached the diversity that nature routinely paints upon her canvas. In Mississippi, it's mid-spring. The early bulbs - snowdrops, wild narcissus and jonquils, escapees from old homesites, have pretty much finished blooming. Crimson clover is beginning to bloom, along with roadside wildflowers in wide swaths of ywllow and blue (It's a little odd that we have few orange and red spring-flowering wildflowers). But these are just window dressing. Right now, it's the domain of green. And that's without the kudzu, which is still brown from winter.

A New Urbanism

New (sub)Urbanism touches on a topic that is repeatedly ignored by American policymakers - the need to begin envisioning a time when oil is simply not as available and plentiful as it is currently. You can debate how much oil is recoverable, or how much we could pump from ANWR - but to blithely assume that we'll just keep pumping and refining and consuming is foolish at best, and societally disastrous at worst. It is a finite resource, and we can either begin to plan and research for the post-petroleum era now, or be forced to devise a post-petroleum economy and society when the wells stop pumping.

Ten Years Of Wolves

Howling At A Waning Moon has the remarks of Rodger Schlickeisen, President of the Defenders Of Wildlife, at the National Press Club on December 14, 2004. Here's an excerpt, but I recommend you go read the entire article, regardless of where you stand on the issue of species reintroduction.

"On January 12, 1995, at approximately 8:30am, the gray wolf returned to Yellowstone after a forced absence of some 70 years. I was there and I remember the absolute joy and awe that we all felt as we embarked on this monumental undertaking. After years of legal wrangling and delays, the wolves were finally back and we, the same humans who had driven them from these lands decades ago, had made it happen. Ten years later, the skies of Yellowstone echo once again with the howl of wolves, a stirring reminder of what is perhaps this country's greatest wildlife conservation success story...

By the 1970s, after three centuries of extermination, the wolf was essentially eliminated from the wild everywhere in the contiguous United States except northeastern Minnesota.

Happily, today, wolves are making a comeback in the lower 48 states. Wolves are thriving in the Yellowstone ecosystem and Central Idaho following reintroduction, wolf populations have increased substantially in Minnesota, and wolves have recolonized parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Montana. Meanwhile, Fish and Wildlife Service reintroductions have also returned the Mexican gray wolf to Arizona and red wolves to North Carolina..."