Edglings

Hurricane Season Highlights Dangers from Rising Seas - Joe Romm

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:35:01 -0400

Hurricane Season Highlights Dangers from Rising Seas - Joe Romm:

By Erin Gustafson

Today marks the beginning of hurricane season, a six-month period in which most of the United States’ hurricanes and tropical storms occur. Of course, the east coast of Florida got the party started early this past Memorial Day weekend, hosting tropical storm Beryl with its 10 inches of rain and maximum sustained wind speed of 70 mph, just one in a series of extreme weather events that took place over the holiday weekend. Beryl is especially significant because it is the largest tropical storm to reach land before the official start of hurricane season on June 1^st.

“I hope this is not a sign of things to come,” commented U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, alluding to the nine to fifteen named storms, including four to eight hurricanes, NOAA’s forecasters predict will appear between now and the end of the season on November 30. Unfortunately for all of us, the future doesn’t look terribly rosy.

As dramatic as NOAA’s hurricane predictions may sound, the agency is saying that they constitute a “near normal” hurricane season which will be less severe than recent years. Still, it’s worth noting that any hurricane will bring strong winds, heavy rains, and flooding, and it only takes one massive storm to wreak major havoc.

More troubling still is that hurricane and tropical storm-related flooding this year and in the future will be exacerbated by the effects of rising seas. In the past hundred and fifty years sea levels have risen 8 inches and scientists estimate that they will rise between one and seven feet by the end of the century. With recent reports of melting ice sheets in Antarctica and rapidly disappearing glaciers due to climate change, and emerging concern about the role of increased use of water previously locked up in underground aquifers, predictions on the high end are becoming increasingly likely.

A four foot rise in sea level could endanger 5 million residents living in 2.6 million homes on $500 billion of residential real estate in the U.S., not to mention 300 energy-producing facilities, airports, thousands of miles of roads and numerous other types of infrastructure, making them increasingly vulnerable to increased storm surges and flooding.

At a Senate Hearing on the “Impacts of Rising Sea Levels on Domestic Infrastructures“ in April, Dr. Ben Strauss of Climate Central warned that rising seas would “raise the launch pad for coastal storm surges,” more than tripling the odds of what used to be “once in a century floods” within the next two decades.

Wind and high waves spun by hurricanes and tropical storms can generate massive storm surges, sometimes flooding large portions of cities and often damaging homes and infrastructure. Beryl’s storm surge and rains have caused many roads in coastal North Carolina to flood, some with as much as three and a half feet of water.

In addition, modern hurricanes will be even more damaging due to bigger deluges. Warming oceans mean that more water vapor is lurking in the air off the coasts, and a 4% increase in water vapor over oceans has been observed since the 1970s. Extra water vapor invigorates storms formed off the coast, meaning that hurricanes and tropical storms will dump greater amounts of rain in their wake. So in addition to rising seas, flooding from hurricanes will become more severe because of greater downpours.

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are attempting to address the dangers of sea level rise by – almost literally – sticking their heads in the sand. Despite the recent evidence of the damaging effects of hurricanes and coastal flooding in their own state, they are circulating a bill that would reduce state agencies’ ability to calculate future sea level rise by not permitting scientists to “include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea level rise” in making their predictions. In other words, ignore the problem, and the problem is solved!

Good luck selling that one to homeowners on the Outer Banks next time a hurricane bears down on them.

– Erin Gustafson is an Energy and Environmental Policy intern with the Center for American Progress

How Does Global Warming Make Hurricanes Like Irene More Destructive?

The Fuller Brush Family, 1956 - Chris

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:41:57 -0400

The Fuller Brush Family, 1956 - Chris:

…

Source: Vintage Midcentury

JWT: Weekly Roundup: Downward mobility for young Europeans, English-only for young Indians, ‘time-wasting’ among young Americans - Marian Berelowitz - New York

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:54:52 -0400

JWT: Weekly Roundup: Downward mobility for young Europeans, English-only for young Indians, ‘time-wasting’ among young Americans - Marian Berelowitz - New York:

Due to Memorial Day office closures, this roundup covers the past two weeks.

-The New York Times spotlights a “growing divide among American cities,” with some attracting hordes of college graduates and many other urban areas left behind.

-In a special report on China’s economy, The Economist examines domestic consumption and what’s driving consumer spending.

-South Africa has long been regarded a “gateway to Africa” for investors, but other strong economies in Africa are starting to change that notion, reports The Economist.

-The New York Times’ India Ink blogspotlights the rise of an urban generation of children that’s growing up speaking only English.

-More American men are taking jobs in traditionally female-dominated fields, reports The New York Times.

-“This is the first postwar generation facing the prospect of downward mobility,” writes a Guardian columnist of Europe’s youth.

-New data from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project finds that “European unity is on the rocks” and highlights key anxieties across the EU.

-Mashable spotlights China’s e-commerce market and looks at why the country is forecast to become the biggest online marketplace in the next few years.

-The Economistreports that more venture capital is going toward startups that adapt established business models for emerging markets.

-Crowdfunding is flourishing, and USA Today takes a look at how and why.

-With the rise of gesture recognition (one of our 100 Things to Watch for 2012), The Wall Street Journalreports that “a race to liberate computer users from the mouse is kicking into high gear.”

-The New York Timesreports on an unintended effect of efforts to narrow the digital divide: a “time-wasting gap,” with kids from poorer families now overly immersed in high-tech devices.

-Technology is changing the way we “grieve for and memorialize the dead,” says USA Today.

-“Screens Get a Place at the Table,” reports The Wall Street Journal, examining a trend that’s on our list of Things to Watch for 2012.

-A new Pew Internet & American Life Project study finds that year-over-year, about the same proportion of Americans are using Twitter, but they’re checking it more often.

-McKinsey Quarterly takes a look at mobile money in emerging markets, examining barriers to achieving scale and how to overcome them.

-A new class of small, “insect-eyed” cameras could become “an almost omnipresent part of our lives,” reports Der Spiegel.

-India is forecast to be the top Facebook market by 2015, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.

-The International Herald Tribune takes a look at the rising startup scene in Hungary.

-The Wall Street Journalexamines how next-generation robots will change factory work.

-USA Today reports that home builders are starting to reverse longtime trends, focusing more on compact homes in urban areas.

-The Guardian checks out a “vegetarian butcher” and asks whether “meat in the 21^st century [is] destined to go the same way as fur, where faux becomes the mainstream version.”

-A new type of product—beauty balm—takes the skin care category by storm, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Yet More Studies Back Hockey Stick: Recent Global Warming Is Unprecedented In Magnitude And Speed And Cause - Climate Guest Blogger

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:38:50 -0400

Yet More Studies Back Hockey Stick: Recent Global Warming Is Unprecedented In Magnitude And Speed And Cause - Climate Guest Blogger:

JR: Has any piece of climate science been more vindicated than the Hockey Stick? This RealClimate piece adds three more independent studies to the ever-growing list (at the end).

Gergis et al. Figure 4, showing Australian mean temperatures over the last millennium, with 95% confidence levels.

By Eric Steig

In the Northern Hemisphere, the late 20th / early 21st century has been the hottest time period in the last 400 years at very high confidence, and likely in the last 1000 – 2000 years (or more). It has been unclear whether this is also true in the Southern Hemisphere. Three studies out this week shed considerable new light on this question. This post provides just brief summaries; we’ll have more to say about these studies in the coming weeks.

First, a study by Gergis et al., in the Journal of Climate uses a proxy network from the Australasian region to reconstruct temperature over the last millennium, and finds what can only be described as an Australian hockey stick. They use an ensemble of 3000 different reconstructions, using different methods and different subsets of the proxy network. Worth noting is that while some tree rings are used (which can’t be avoided, as there simply aren’t any other data for some time periods), the reconstruction relies equally on coral records, which are not subject to the same potential (though often-overstated) issues at low frequencies. The conclusion reached is that summer temperatures in the post-1950 period were warmer than anything else in the last 1000 years at high confidence, and in the last ~400 years at very high confidence.

Second, Orsi et al., writing in Geophysical Research Letters, use borehole temperature measurements from the WAIS Divide site in central West Antarctica, a region where the magnitude of recent temperature trends has been subject of considerable controversy. The results show that the mean warming of the last 50 years has been 0.23°C/decade. This result is in essentially perfect agreement with that of Steig et al. (2009) and reasonable agreement with Monaghan (whose reconstruction for nearby Byrd Station was used in Schneider et al., 2012). The result is totally incompatible (at >~~95%~~>80% confidence) with that of O’Donnell et al. (2010).

Probability histograms of temperature trends for central West Antarctica (Byrd Station [80°S, 120°W; Monaghan] and WAIS Divide [79.5°S, 112°W; Orsi, Steig, O’Donnell]), using published means and uncertainties. Note that the histograms are normalized to have equal areas; hence the greater height where the published uncertainties are smaller.

This result shouldn’t really surprise anyone: we have previously noted the incompatibility of O’Donnell et al. with independent data. What is surprising, however, is that Orsi et al. find that warming in central West Antarctica has actually accelerated in the last 20 years, to about 0.8°C/decade. This is considerably greater than reported in most previous work (though it does agree well with the reconstruction for Byrd, which is based entirely on weather station data). Although twenty years is a short time period, the 1987-2007 trend is statistically significant (at p<.1), putting West Antarctica definitively among the fastest-warming areas of the Southern Hemisphere — more rapid than the Antarctic Peninsula over the same time period.

We and others have shown (e.g. Ding et al., 2011), that the rapid warming of West Antarctica is intimately tied to the remarkable changes that have also occurred in the tropics in the last two decades. Note that the Orsi et al. paper actually focuses very little on the recent temperature rise; it is mostly about the “Little-ice-age-like” signal of temperature in West Antarctica. Also, these results cannot address the question of whether the recent warming is exceptional over the long term — borehole temperatures are highly smoothed by diffusion, and the farther back in time, the greater the diffusion. We’ll discuss both these aspects of the Orsi et al. study at greater length in a future post.

Last but not least, a new paper by Zagorodnov et al. in The Cryosphere, uses temperature measurements from two new boreholes on the Antarctic Peninsula to show that the decade of the 1990s (the paper state “1995+/-5 years”) was the warmest of at least the last 70 years. This is not at all a surprising result from the Peninsula — it was already well known the Peninsula has been warming rapidly, but these new results add considerable confidence to the assumption that that warming is not just a recent event. Note that the “last 70 years” conclusion reflects the relatively shallow depth of the boreholes, and the fact that diffusive damping of the temperature signal means that one cannot say anything about high frequency variability prior to that. The inference cannot be made that it was warmer than present, >70 years ago. In the one and only century-long meteorological record from the region — on the Island of Orcadas, just north of the Antarctica Peninsula — warming has been pretty much monotonic since the 1950s, and the period from 1903 to 1950 was cooler than anything after about 1970 (see e.g. Zazulie et al., 2010). Whether recent warming on the Peninsula is exceptional over a longer time frame will have to await new data from ice cores.

– Eric Steig is an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. His primary research interest is use of ice core records to document climate variability in the pas This piece was originally published at Real Climate and was reprinted with permission.

Self-DustBowlification II: Farmers in the High Plains And California Are Depleting Groundwater, Study Says - Climate Guest Blogger

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:15:27 -0400

Self-DustBowlification II: Farmers in the High Plains And California Are Depleting Groundwater, Study Says - Climate Guest Blogger:

JR: Self-DustBowlification, Part I is our ongoing refusal to sharply curtail greenhouse gas emissions. That is likely to lead to catastrophic drought over large parts of America. Part II is our unsustainable use of groundwater, as this Climate Central piece makes clear.

Satellite image of fields that have been irrigated by central pivot systems, which use less water than many other irrigation methods. Credit: Wikipedia Commons.

By Andrew Freedman

Irrigated agriculture is rapidly depleting groundwater resources in parts of the High Plains and the Central Valley region of California, which are both critical regions for food production, according to a new study. According to the study, if groundwater depletion were to continue at current rates, 35 percent of the southern High Plains will no longer be able to support irrigation within the next 30 years.

With climate change projections showing that more severe droughts in both the Southwest and High Plains are likely as the climate continues to warm, groundwater resources are going to be even more highly stressed in the coming decades, the study says.

The groundwater resources that sustain agricultural production in California’s Central Valley and the High Plains enabled farmers to produce $56 billion in agricultural products in 2007 alone, the study reported, and these two areas comprise the country’s most productive agricultural lands. The High Plains is commonly known as America’s “bread basket,” while the moniker of the country’s “fruit and vegetable basket” is sometimes applied to California’s Central Valley.

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, integrates water observations from different sources, including NASA satellites, about 11,300 wells, and computer models to produce one of the most comprehensive looks yet of how irrigated agriculture is drawing down vital groundwater supplies.

The picture that emerges from the study is more complex than was previously thought, with groundwater depletion varying in different areas and at different times.

For example, due to the region’s coarse soil, the study found that there is little to no groundwater depletion occurring in Nebraska, but there is a large amount of depletion taking place in the southern regions that are fed by the same Ogallala Aquifer.

In fact, about a third of the groundwater depletion that has occurred in the High Plains has taken place beneath just 4 percent of the land area, the study found.

Lead author Bridget Scanlon of the University of Texas at Austin said the rapid depletion of what is “essentially fossil groundwater,” — dating back as far as 13,000 years — in the southern High Plains is especially troubling, because that groundwater cannot be easily recharged.

Recharge rates of the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from Nebraska south to Texas. The blues show positive recharge in Nebraska, contrasted with orange colors, showing net losses of groundwater, farther south. Credit: Scanlon et al.

In the U.S., 60 percent of agricultural irrigation relies on groundwater supplies, and two of the nation’s most heavily irrigated regions — California’s Central Valley and the High Plains, which stretches from Nebraska to Texas — are responsible for about half of all the groundwater depletion that has occurred since 1900.

At the global level, irrigation consumed about 90 percent of freshwater resources during the past century, and according to the researchers, global groundwater depletion has doubled between 1960 and 2000.

In the Central Valley of California, massive water projects have created a system that transports water from mountainous parts of the Golden State to drier southern parts of the state, resulting in booming agricultural production in an area that wouldn’t otherwise be suitable for it.

“Essentially they’re growing food in a desert,” Scanlon said.

In the Central Valley, groundwater tends to be depleted during periods of drought, but partially recovers during wetter times, as farmers tend to be equipped to use both surface water and groundwater. During a recent extended drought that lasted between 2006 and 2009, the amount of groundwater that was depleted was equivalent to the entire capacity ofLake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., the study found.

Is “Groundwater Banking” a Possible Solution?

Climate studies show that groundwater depletion is likely to accelerate in coming years as temperatures increase and more severe and longer lasting droughts occur. In addition, the intensification of the water cycle is beginning to result in a feast-or-famine precipitation pattern, in which floods are soon followed by drought.

Two USDA researchers download data about the movement of a center-pivot irrigation system to reconstruct the amount of water and time it took to irrigate an area. Credit: USDA photo by Scott Bauer.

One possible way for farmers to use less groundwater would be by practicing more efficient irrigation methods, but such practices are already in use in Texas, for example. Instead, Scanlon said in some areas farmers might need to switch from irrigated crops to rain-fed crops. This would require that farmers make a transition away from growing thirsty crops like corn, to less water-intensive ones, such as cotton or sorghum. But that could cost farmers money, in the form of reduced crop yields.

Switching to rain-fed crops is not a viable option, though, in southern parts of the Central Valley, since so little rain falls there. For this region, Scanlon and her colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey recommend using a process called “groundwater banking” or “managed aquifer recharge,” through which excess surface water would be stored underground during wet periods, which cuts down on any increase in evaporation associated with global warming. This water would then be tapped during times of drought, and it would reduce the need to use older, less rechargeable, groundwater supplies.

Scanlon said that a groundwater banking program helped San Antonio, Texas, weather the state’s worst one-year drought on record last year. “San Antonio survived last summer because it had aquifer storage and recovery,” she said. Other cities, such as Austin, saw theirwater supplies dwindle to perilously low levels.

Even with groundwater banking and other innovative solutions, this study and other research show that managing water supplies is going to be one of the toughest environmental challenges during the next century. Water demand will rise along with the population, with the U.S. expected to have about 440 million residents by 2050, up from 312 million in 2011. At the same time, water supplies will be on the decrease.

– Andrew Freedman is a senior science writer for Climate Central, focusing on coverage of extreme weather and climate change. This piece was originally published at Climate Central and was re-printed with permission.

JWT: Data point: While mobile brands forge ahead, consumers wary of m-payments - Will Palley - New York

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:42:39 -0400

JWT: Data point: While mobile brands forge ahead, consumers wary of m-payments - Will Palley - New York:

Already valued at more than $171 billion globally, the mobile payment market is set to explode. One driver is the spread of NFC-enabled smartphones, which allow users to pay for items simply by tapping their phone to a sensor. In 2011, more than 30 million such handsets were sold, a number set to grow roughly 20-fold by 2016, according to recent research. As this technology becomes mainstream, brands are jumping on the m-payment bandwagon. In the U.S., AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless are looking to debut the Isis Mobile Wallet this summer, while Sprint is supporting Google Wallet (enticing subscribers with a $10 credit). PayPal is pushing its own mobile payment solution, which it’s rolling out to 15 major retailers later this month, including Foot Locker, JC Penney and Barnes & Noble.

The big question is, will consumers take to this new behavior? Significant percentages are skeptical, according to research from Nielsen. North American consumers are most resistant, with around half saying they probably or definitely would not use their phone to make payments in shops and restaurants. On the other end of the spectrum, Latin Americans are most open to the idea: Around half report they would probably or definitely use a mobile payment system. With the global balance tilting firmly in favor of the skeptics, brands will need to persuade consumers of the utility and security of m-payments. For a broad overview of mobile trends, check out our recent report, 15 Ways Mobile Will Change Our Lives.

Project Syndicate: Stabilizing the Stans - Richard Weitz

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:58:04 -0400

Project Syndicate: Stabilizing the Stans - Richard Weitz:

Recent violence in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, following civil strife in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, has intensified concern about Central Asia’s security. These countries urgently need structural reforms to generate more inclusive economic growth and political institutions that channel, rather than suppress, legitimate popular demands.

June 1 News: Green Economy Could Create Up To 60 Million Jobs Worldwide In Two Decades - Rebecca Leber

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:35:42 -0400

June 1 News: Green Economy Could Create Up To 60 Million Jobs Worldwide In Two Decades - Rebecca Leber:

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post other links below.

A greener economy could create between 15 million to 60 million jobs worldwide over the next two decades, according to a report from a United Nations panel. If nations pushed green energy, job creation would outnumber jobs lost in fossil fuel industries that do not adapt, with net gains of 0.5 percent to 2 percent in net total employment [Guardian]:

Achim Steiner, executive director of Unep [United Nations Environment Programme], said: “The findings underline that [the green economy] can include millions more people in terms of overcoming poverty and delivering improved livelihoods for this and future generations. It is a positive message of opportunity in a troubled world of challenges.”

As well as generating net new gains in the number of jobs, the switch to a green economy could help to lift millions of people out of poverty.

In the US, there are now about three million “green jobs”, in sectors such as wind power and energy efficiency, the study found. In the UK, the number is close to one million and has been one of the few areas of the economy that has been creating jobs. There are about 500,000 people working in green jobs in Spain. In the developing world, too, the number is growing rapidly – about 7% of people employed in Brazil, amounting to three million people, are now in the green economy.

Chinese officials promised Friday to play a positive role in this month’s U.N. environment summit but stressed the needs of their country’s poor, apparently trying to dampen hopes for major concessions. The comments added to signs that the June 20-22 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, might face political obstacles to any significant agreements. President Barack Obama, in the midst of a re-election campaign, and European leaders have withdrawn from the meeting. [AP]

Institutional investors and environmental advocates on Thursday urged companies to disclose their risks from the impact of climate change, two years after the Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidelines for firms to do just that. While the SEC guidelines do not force publicly traded corporations to assess such climate-related events as severe storms, droughts, floods and heat waves, some companies have done so anyway. But those disclosures have not been particularly useful, according to Maryland State Treasurer Nancy Kopp. [Reuters]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter late last year raising concerns that the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline might require more stringent permitting than planned by the Army Corp of Engineers, according to a report from the Associated Press. [NPR]

Mitt Romney’s Solyndra swipes may prove difficult to pull off cleanly. For one, Romney used to be a proponent of government funding of clean energy technologies. His 2008 energy policy platform called for a “dramatic increase” in “federal spending on research, development, and demonstration projects that hold promise for diversifying our energy supply.” Among those projects were “bringing clean energy technology to market through commercialization of large-scale renewables.” [Huffington Post]

The creators of Leafully, Nathan Jhaveri and Tim Edgar seem to think so, and so does the U.S. Department of Energy. The Seattle start up won the federal agency’s “Apps for Energy” contest this week with their app. The application monitors home energy use by accessing information from a user’s utility provider. [Discovery News]

Project Syndicate: Democracy versus the Eurozone - Daniel Gros

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:15:07 -0400

Project Syndicate: Democracy versus the Eurozone - Daniel Gros:

The EU is a voluntary quasi-federation of sovereign and democratic states in which elections matter and each country seeks to determine its own destiny, regardless of the wishes of its partners. But it should now be apparent to everyone that the eurozone was designed with a very different institutional arrangement in mind.

Project Syndicate: Austerity and Debt Realism - Kenneth Rogoff

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:55:23 -0400

Project Syndicate: Austerity and Debt Realism - Kenneth Rogoff:

With many of today’s advanced economies near or approaching the 90%-of-GDP level that loosely marks high-debt periods, expanding today’s already large deficits is a risky proposition, not the cost-free strategy that many advocate. On the contrary, the impact of prolonged high debt levels on long-term growth is likely to be profound.

There’s An Energy Revolution Brewing in Bihar, India - Climate Guest Blogger

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:51:22 -0400

There’s An Energy Revolution Brewing in Bihar, India - Climate Guest Blogger:

by Justin Guay, via the Sierra Club’s Compass Blog

Something’s brewing in Bihar. After decades of being India’s most notoriously “backward” state, the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has tempered corruption, built roads and spurred development.

Given the impressive achievements of his previous term, it’s no surprise he rode to overwhelming victory in recent elections. What is surprising is that his campaign platform consisted of more or less a single promise — to deliver electricity access to the 82% of the over 100 million inhabitants of Bihar who lack it. With little fossil fuel reserves to speak of, Bihar will need to write a blueprint for a clean energy revolution to deliver on that promise.

As Shaibal Gupta, Secretary, of the Asian Development Research Institute puts it, Bihar now requires an infusion of energy to further “lubricate” the wheels of development. That’s putting it lightly. Bihar faces a 30% peak power deficit (highest in the country) due to its paltry 546 megawatts of installed capacity — about the size of one average coal plant. Worse, Bihar loses roughly 38% of the meager amount of energy it produces through transmission and distribution. That’s like taking almost half of this capacity and pouring it down a drain – while you pay for it.

The states chief minister has tried to construct new coal plants to reverse the situation but to no avail. Worse, India’s coal crisis is raging, reducing the likelihood that any new coal plant Kumar is able to build will be able to secure coal at affordable rates. Add the lead time for a new coal plant (at least 5-7 years to complete) and it’s pretty clear turning to renewable energy is the only way to make good on his campaign pledge.

But these factors can be said to be true for any number of country’s still heeding conventional wisdom and dumping billions into failed grid extension efforts powered by heavily polluting coal plants. Which is why Greenpeace India has launched a campaign to push Bihar in the direction of the quickest most promising way to deliver energy access – decentralized clean energy (read their new report here). The campaign is creating the political momentum to catalyze a clean energy revolution building on the pioneering work of entrepreneurs like Husk Power and green light planet.

As a result of the campaign, coupled with the headache of securing coal, the states politicians are seriously considering committing their citizens’ future to clean energy.

While that commitment is exciting in and of itself, its significance for the other 1.3 billion people around the world without access to the grid could be tremendous. Bihar has the ability to lay a blueprint for developing countries across the world looking to deliver energy access in the cheapest, fastest, most sustainable way.

For Greenpeace that blueprint consists of scaling up mini grids that can eventually connect to the grid via smart grid technology if, and when, it finally makes its way to rural villages. Individual components like solar home systems can feed into these mini grids supplying power alongside small scale power plants using biomass or hydro creating a balanced set of renewable power options.

The most exciting thing is that this decentralized micro grid pathway is exactly what visionary advocates like Amory Lovins are advocating needs to occur in the United States. But in the US this means a significant change in entrenched industries and existing infrastructure. Bihar on the other hand can build this revolutionary new ‘grid’ from the bottom-up — getting it right from the start.

As the Bihar campaign gains momentum the world will be looking to Rio+20 as the halfway point of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All campaign. Energy access practitioners have sent a letter to World Bank president Robert Zoellick seeking $500 million to finance an off grid clean energy revolution just like Bihar’s in countries around the world. It’s now up to institutions like the World Bank and other development finance institutions (DFIs) to catalyze their efforts and make good on universal energy access goals. Ultimately, it may not be much of a stretch to say as Bihar goes, so goes the world.

Justin Guay is with the Sierra Club’s International Program. This piece was originally published at the Sierra Club’s Compass Blog and was reprinted with permission.

“Views of London”, c.1905 - Chris

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:30:06 -0400

“Views of London”, c.1905 - Chris:

“I found this book in the basement of an old house in Italy.”
- Fulvio Borro

…

This capsule was curated by Fulvio Borro

House designed by Paul Rudolph, 1964 - Chris

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 05:11:46 -0400

House designed by Paul Rudolph, 1964 - Chris:

…

Images by John Dominis

Source: LIFE Archive

NG: China's Top Growth Centers - Wendell Cox

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 02:10:44 -0400

NG: China's Top Growth Centers - Wendell Cox:

Hefei, the capital of historically poor Anhui province emerged as China’s top growth center among major metropolitan areas over the past 10 years. Metropolitan areas from the interior, the Yangtze Delta and the central and northern coast were the fastest growing, displacing Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta, long the growth center for the country. (Figure 1).

China’s Trends in Context: China’s growth rate has fallen substantially and the United Nations has projected that the nation will experience population decline starting between 2030 and 2035. However, China’s urban areas have grown strongly as people have continued to move to cities for better opportunities. According to World Bank research, China’s economic progress since 1981 has lifted more people out of poverty than ever before in the world.

Never before in history have so many people moved to urban areas in such a short period of time.

Since the reforms began in approximately 1980, all of China’s population growth has been urban. Rural areas lost approximately 110 million people between 1980 and 2010. That is approximately equal to the population of Mexico and more than each of the nations in the world except for 11. Over the same three decades, 470 million people were added to the urban areas. That is more than 1.5 times the population of the United States.

China’s Metropolitan Areas: This article provides an analysis of the urban districts (qu) of Chinas urban regions (routinely mislabeled “cities”). These districts are designated by regional officials as urban for urban development. Since the peripheral urban districts are principally rural, the combination of urban districts (Shi Shixiaqu)in a region are akin to a metropolitan area (labor market area).

Among the metropolitan areas that began the decade (2000) with more than 1,000,000 inhabitants, the slowest 10 year growth rate was 36 percent. In comparison, among the 51 US metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population, only three (Las Vegas, Raleigh and Austin) would have placed in China’s top 20, and not higher than 14th (Table). As in the US, the most rapid urban growth is taking place in smaller metropolitan areas with less than 5 million in 2010.

Top 20 Metropolitan Growth Centers in China: 2000-2010
Rank	Metropolitan Area	2000 Population	2010 Population	Change	%	Geography
1	Hefei, AN	1,659,000	4,544,000	2,885,000	173.9%	I
2	Xiamen, FJ	2,053,000	3,531,000	1,478,000	72.0%	C
3	Zhengzhou, HEB	2,560,000	4,254,000	1,694,000	66.2%	I
4	Suzhou, JS	2,473,000	4,074,000	1,601,000	64.7%	Y
5	Wenzhou, ZJ	1,916,000	3,040,000	1,124,000	58.7%	Y
6	Ningbo, ZJ	2,201,000	3,492,000	1,291,000	58.7%	Y
7	Urumqi, XJ	1,753,000	2,744,000	991,000	56.5%	I
8	Weifang, SD	1,380,000	2,044,000	664,000	48.1%	N
9	Shenzhen, GD	7,009,000	10,358,000	3,349,000	47.8%	P
10	Hangzhou, ZJ	4,243,000	6,242,000	1,999,000	47.1%	Y
11	Beijing, BJ	12,874,000	18,827,000	5,953,000	46.2%	N
12	Changsha, HUN	2,123,000	3,094,000	971,000	45.7%	I
13	Chengdu, SC	5,268,000	7,677,000	2,409,000	45.7%	I
14	Shanghai, SH	15,758,000	22,315,000	6,557,000	41.6%	Y
15	Hohhot, NM	1,407,000	1,981,000	574,000	40.8%	I
16	Nanjing, JS	5,098,000	7,166,000	2,068,000	40.6%	Y
17	Shijiazhuang, HEB	1,970,000	2,767,000	797,000	40.5%	N
18	Fuzhou, FJ	2,124,000	2,922,000	798,000	37.6%	C
19	Qingdao, SH	2,721,000	3,719,000	998,000	36.7%	N
20	Tianjin, TJ	8,146,000	11,090,000	2,944,000	36.1%	N

Metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population in 2000.
Metropolitan areas consist of urban districts (qu)

Geographical Codes
C	Central Coast
I	Interior
N	Northern Coast
P	Pearl River Delta (Coast)
Y	Yangtze River Delta (Coast)

Data from National Bureau of Statistics of China

The Interior: Six of the top 20 gainers were in the interior, including fastest growing Hefei. This reflects the appeal of lower labor costs and perhaps also that rural migrants often prefer to work in regions closer to their homes and families in agricultural regions. These six metropolitan areas had an average growth rate of 71 percent, the largest rate of any geographical grouping.

The capital of Anhui province, Hefei (photo), had the largest gain, at 174 percent. Hefei grew from 1.659 million to 4.544 million. Hefei is developing one of the most dispersed urban forms among China’s metropolitan area and there continues to be considerable construction. Hefei’s population growth rate was more than double that of second place Xiamen. Anhui is one province removed from the coast and Hefei is only 115 miles (185 kilometers) from the Yangtze Delta’s Nanjing.
The third ranked metropolitan area was Zhengzhou (photo), the capital of Henan province (also separated from the coast by one province), which experienced a 66 percent population gain.
Urumqi, the capital of China’s large northwestern province of Xinjiang ranked 7th with a gain of 57 percent. Urumqi is by far the most remote from the East Coast of the large gainers (2,000 miles or 3,250 kilometers from Tianjin, near Beijing).
Other interior fast growers were Changsha, capital of Hunan (12th, with 46 percent growth), ; Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan ranked 13th, with 46 percent growth and Hohhot, capital of Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolia), ranked 15th, with a growth rate of 41 percent.

Hefei

Zhengzhou

Central Coast: Xiamen (photo), one of the first special economic zones designated after Shenzhen and placing 2nd in growth, added 72 percent to its population. This metropolitan area is centered on an island in Fujian province on China’s central coast, less than 10 miles from to Jinmen (Quemoy), an island controlled by Taiwan. Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province was another central coastal metropolitan area among the top 20 growth centers (18th, at 38 percent). The average growth rate of these metropolitan areas on the central coast was 55 percent.

Xiamen

Yangtze River Delta: Like the interior, the Yangtze River (Changjiang) Delta also placed six metropolitan areas among the top 20 growth centers. The average growth rate was 52 percent. The Yangtze River Delta is a large area with a population greater than that of the Pearl River Delta, but with urban regions that are separated from one another by considerable rural territory (unlike the Pearl River Delta). The exception is the Shanghai-Suzhou-Wuxi corridor (Note), where the urbanization is continuous in limited corridors.

Suzhou (Photo), part of which (Kunshan qu) abuts Shanghai ranked as the third fastest growing metropolitan area, with a growth rate of 65 percent. Suzhou added 1.6 million people and is nearing 4.1 million. As the growth of Shanghai continues to spill westward and northward, Suzhou is likely to continue its strong growth.
The other three top 10 metropolitan growth areas in the Yangtze River Delta were in the province of Zhejiang, including Wenzhou at 5th, growing 59 percent (Photo), Ningbo, one of the nation’s largest ports was 6th, at 59 percent and Hangzhou, the provincial capital, which Marco Polo claimed was the largest city in the world in his Travels was 10th, at 47 percent.
Shanghai, the nation’s largest metropolitan area, placed 14th in growth, at 42 percent. Shanghai had the largest numeric growth, adding 6.6 million to its population, more people than live in Toronto.
Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province ranked 16th in growth, at 41 percent.

Suzhou

Wenzhou

Northern Coast: Five northern coastal metropolitan areas were among the top 20 metropolitan gainers, with an average growth rate of 42 percent.

Weifang, in the province of Shandong ranked 8th in growth, the highest rating among metropolitan areas in the northern coastal area. Weifang added 48 percent to its population.
Beijing ranked 12th in growth, at a 46 percent rate. Beijing’s numeric growth was second only to Shanghai, at 6 million.
The other northern coastal growth centers were Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei (17th, at 41 percent) and 175 miles (280 kilometers), south of Beijing. Qingdao, of brewing fame (“Tsingtao” beer) ranked 19th, with a growth rate of 37 percent, while Tianjin, which is close enough to be Beijing’s port, ranked 20th, with a growth rate of 36 percent.

Pearl River Delta: In contrast the Pearl River Delta, the home of so much urban growth over the past 30 years, placed only one metropolitan area among the top 20 growth centers, Shenzhen. Shenzhen placed 9th, with a growth rate of 48 percent. This is in stark contrast to 1990 to, when Shenzhen and adjacent Dongguan both more than doubled in population.

Missing Giants: Chongqing was not among the top growth centers. Chongqing has been routinely mischaracterized as China’s largest metropolitan area (because of semantic confusion over the word “city”). Chongqing’s metropolitan districts grew only 22 percent and the region (a provincial equivalent) lost population. Neighborhood rival Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province from which Chongqing was separated in 1996 more than doubled its growth rate. Manchuria, China’s “Dongbei” (Northeast) also failed to place any areas among the fastest growing. Shenyang, the center of China’s Rust Belt, grew less than 10 percent, though Harbin, capital of Helonjiang grew nearly 30 percent.

More Growth to Come: Despite an overall population that is just peaking, urban population growth is expected to be substantial. In addition to the 470 million people that have moved to urban areas since 1980, the United Nations projects that another 340 million people will be added to the urban areas by 2045 (after which a modest decline is expected). Over the same 35 years, China’s rural population is expected to fall by 387 million (Figures 2 and 3). Where these new migrants move and how they make do will be among the most important urban stories of the next decade.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”.

———-

Note: Includes Kunshan, part of the Suzhou metropolitan area, but a separate urban area (between the Suzhou urban area and the Shanghai urban area).

Top photo: Hefei: All photos by author.

Non Urbanism - bmilligan

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:44:28 -0400

Non Urbanism - bmilligan:

[View from the Econo Lodge balcony, just off I-5, Ashland OR]

“If you go into the hardcore urban or the hardcore rural, it is quite simple to define it, but that is not so relevant. It is more significant to talk about the condition in between. And this condition is extremely difficult to define.” – Urban planner Kees Christiaanse in conversation with MONU.

MONU’s call for submissions for its latest issue (#16, Non Urbanism) asked its participants to “investigate how non-urbanism may be defined and identified today, and how non-urban areas interact with and relate to urban areas.“ Fortunately for readers, the printed compendium seems to succeed in largely refuting the very existence of its themed subject matter. Or, if it doesn’t go so far as to refute the ‘non urban’, the content demonstrates how difficult it is to call out any place as not being deeply under the influence of it.

MONU #16’s agenda fits within mounting reactions to the geographic myopia found in some of the contemporary ‘urban age’ rhetoric. ‘Non Urbanism’ explores what happens when the inventory of urban moves beyond widget counts of human bodies for its reductive definition. It asks: what is non-urbanism when we approach the ‘built environment’ in a fully relational way? What happens when we see cities in the wider geographic field of their effects, borrowings, and networked agencies? Even if one is seduced by the persistent mantra of “…over half the human population now lives in urban centers…“, this issue of MONU reminds us that there is still the other half of humanity inhabiting and designing within everywhere else, which is a far larger and more diverse territory.

Jessica Bridger’s essay (“Urbanism in the Expanded Field of the Built Environment”) sets the stage by revisiting Rosalind’s Krauss’ ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’ (yes, again). This time around Bridger substitutes nature and urban for the binary/continuum of landscape and architecture. Perhaps more effective than the reworking of Krauss’s diagram is the text supporting it:

“…the consideration of what is urban and what is not is a distraction from the reality of the built environment…urbanism needs to be expanded to the built environment, and the understanding that the environment in specific as well as in general, is built. It is constructed from the level of the poetics to the poured concrete of a sidewalk, to the designation of a nature preserve.

…we are so concerned with the edges, the delineations of things that we risk missing the field condition, the environment for the buildings or the trees. We must move from the binary either/or to the multivalent both/and.”

[Former U.S. military missile silo turned into a private residence. Artist rendering courtesy of 20th century Castles, who provide a list of such properties available for sale.]

MONU #16 compiles excursions into these field conditions, with each essay and interview providing a different instance of the rural-urban’s vast and varied in-between. The examples are culled from around the world. Benjamin Beller travels through China’s explosive rural development, looking for opportunities. Eduard Sancho Pou peers into the spatial corporate assemblage of Red Bull via an on-the-ground stroll through its surreal and Truman show-esque corporate headquarters at Fuschl am See, Austria. In “Processes from Away and Under”, Clark Thenhaus explores Midwestern US’ missile silos and clandestine underground digital servers as the non-urban of safe harbor for both covert militarization and cultural innovation:

“What falls under the notion of non-urbanism – those diverse realms beyond the city center – are territories at a distance from regimentation and scrutiny, the place of pioneers and innovation…Considering the vernacular as process of systemic integrations of ‘rogue’ populations interacting over time and distance, exposes the non-urban as a frontier space in which spatial and temporal fluxes produce novelty and change.”

The “non-urban” as free zone for innovation and territorialization is repeated in other articles, including two looking at desakota, or “pioneer” and “transitory space leading to the rise of the city of non urban.” [defined elsewhere, desakota “encompasses more than the term “periurban.” It refers to closely interlinked rural/urban livelihoods, communication, transport and economic systems. Desakota systems occupy, and radiate out from a spectrum of conditions that have purely urban and purely rural as the two extreme ends”].

[Images above: Map of China’s interstate expressway system and photo of in-process highway construction. Both taken from polis’ post on the subject.]

Mobility, both in physical transportation and communication are also given a privileged space in the volume to describe the basic vectors or logistical ‘autopoietic’ by which the ‘urban and non-urban’ are co-generators of one another. Think Amazon wish lists, Google’s latest policies and principles, and Facebook (towns based on tourist economies may have thousands more Facebook ‘friends’ than they have embodied inhabitants). In “Sentient Cities”, Mike Crang and Stephen Graham unpack the politics of information space (both commercial and military applications) and track creative resistances to space experienced as active computational agent organizing our daily lives and the weird geo-networks we are part of.

[Checking mails at 6 pm. By STAR strategies + architecture Original painting: The Angelus, 1857–59 by Jean-François Millet.]

In MONU 16, ‘non urbanism’ is exposed as a stereotype, a blunt instrument deployed for any number of agendas of oversimplification. It conceals the huge terrain of mongrel, spliced, hybridized and networked landscapes detailed in the essays that defy broad generalization. This point is brought home definitively in an interview with Scott Herring (Author of “Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism”) in which he debunks the queer ‘flight to the city’ narrative and the rural as a cultural backwater by highlighting the instances of non-urban queer spaces in the US as sites of cultural richness and resistance.

Ecologists have long privileged the pseudo-pristine, or instances of untouched ‘wilderness’, while designers have largely confined themselves to population centers. Consequently, both disciplines have historically missed the bigger picture. As MONU points out, commonly used antonyms within urban discourse such as “urban-rural, diversity-homogeneity, connectivity-isolation, tolerance-intolerance, sin-virtue, decadence-purity, perversion-normalcy, falsity-truth, or danger-safety are ultimately challenged and have to be re-thought and re-theorized.” The pervasive in-between realms where these modifiers overlap, exchange roles, or become entirely irrelevant is far more extensive than the rarefied extremes from which they were culled.

List of the full lineup of MONU #16 Non-Urbanism is available here

North Carolina Bill Would Require Coastal Communities To Ignore Global Warming Science - Joe Romm

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:20:36 -0400

North Carolina Bill Would Require Coastal Communities To Ignore Global Warming Science - Joe Romm:

Some North Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise.

King Canute thought he had the power to hold back the tide (in the apocryphal legend). These all-too-real lawmakers want to go one better and mandate a formula that projects a sea level rise of at most 12 inches, far below what the science now projects.

A state-appointed science panel reviewed the recent literature and reported that a 1-meter (39 inch) rise is likely by 2100. Many coastal studies experts think a level of 5 to 7 feet should be used, since you typically plan for the plausible worst-case scenario, especially with expensive, long-lived infrastructure.

The 2011 report by the National Academy of Science for the U.S. Navy on the national security implications of climate change concluded:

Based on recent peer-reviewed scientific literature, the Department of the Navy should expect roughly 0.4 to 2 meters global average sealevel rise by 2100, with a most likely value of about 0.8 meter. Projections of local sea-level rise could be much larger and should be taken into account for naval planning purposes,

Rob Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University and a member of the state science panel, pointed out to the North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF), that this proposed law stands against the conclusions of “every major science organization on the globe.” Young notes, “Every other state in the country is planning on three-feet of sea level rise or more.” The Charlotte Observer notes:

Maine is preparing for a rise of up to 2 meters by 2100, Delaware 1.5 meters, Louisiana 1 meter and California 1.4 meters. Southeastern Florida projects up to a 2-foot rise by 2060.

In place of science, the bill would mandate that only the Division of Coastal Management can put out an estimate of the rate of sea-level rise rate — and they must use an arbitrary, low-ball formula:

These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.

As the National Academies report to the Navy pointed out, observations suggest SLR won’t be linear: Thanks to satellite data, “it is now possible to detect acceleration in sea-level rise over the past few decades.”

Here is NASA’s website with the data plotted showing the recent acceleration:

See also the Real Climate post, “Is Sea-Level Rise Accelerating?”

A 2011 study led by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory using satellite data concluded, “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace.” The JPL news release explains how the authors concluded we face 1 foot of sea level rise by 2050:

The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches).

Sadly, even if this inane bill never becomes law, anti-science forces are already winning the battle to block sensible adaptation to global warming in North Carolina, one of the states most threatened by sea level rise.

A coastal economic development group called NC-20 attacked the state science panel’s recommendation to the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission to plan for 1 meter of SLR. And even though the panel reconfirmed its findings again in April, the Charlotte Observer reports, “NC-20, named for the 20 coastal counties, appears to be winning its campaign to undermine them”:

The Coastal Resources Commission agreed to delete references to planning benchmarks – such as the 1-meter prediction – and new development standards for areas likely to be inundated.

The N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which is using a $5 million federal grant to analyze the impact of rising water, lowered its worst-case scenario from 1 meter to 15 inches by 2100.

Several local governments on the coast have passed resolutions against sea-level rise policies.

One North Carolinian writing in Scientific American said the proposed bill is “exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.”

The irony is that North Carolina celebrates scientific and technological achievement on its license plate and state quarter – the Wright Brothers “First Flight” at Kittyhawk. Oh, and its state motto is Esse quam videri, which means “To be, rather than to seem.”

You’d think such a state would pass laws based on science and what actually is, rather than what seems to be popular with narrow economic interests.

Solar Company Used In Crossroads Anti-Obama Attack Ad Received Taxpayer Dollars From Governor Romney - Rebecca Leber

Thu, 31 May 2012 16:22:53 -0400

Solar Company Used In Crossroads Anti-Obama Attack Ad Received Taxpayer Dollars From Governor Romney - Rebecca Leber:

Ads from Mitt Romney and American Crossroads earlier this week disparaged solar energy, leading up to Romney’s surprise visit to Solyndra today.

The Crossroads ad targets the Obama administration for green energy investments, but features a company that once received taxpayer support from Governor Romney’s administration. Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent points out that one company featured in Crossroads’ ad — Evergreen Solar — received $2.5 million during Romney’s term:

The Crossroads video, which is embedded below, cites the Massachusetts company Evergreen Solar as an example of a company that received taxpayer money before declaring bankruptcy or suffering “serious financial issues” — which the video derides as a “risky investment strategy.” Romney picked up that attack line today, appearing in front of a shuttered Solyndra outlet to bash Obama.

But three weeks into Governor Mitt Romney’s term, Evergreen Solar received $2.5 million from the Romney administration for a “major expansion and to cover operating losses as it tried to become profitable,” according to a February article in Politico. The investment was part of a broader program in which the Romney administration gave millions in subsidies to multiple other companies, Politico reported.

Evergreen ultimately filed for bankruptcy last year, making this case very similar to Solyndra. Evergreen’s presence in the Crossroads ad was pointed out by the Obama-allied American Bridge.

In contrast, the New York Times reported in 2011 that “Evergreen has received no federal money.”

Romney’s attacks on Solyndra have been misleading and often downright false. The rhetoric on Solyndra veers far from the reality of a loan that Republicans have thoroughly investigated, yet have found no scandal. As the New Republic pointed out Wednesday:

On balance, the White House seems to be playing Wall Street games—if that’s what you want to call massive investment in underfunded public infrastructure—pretty decently, and in a manner that produces more value for the public than private equity firms. Bain and Solyndra are really nothing alike.

Before etch-a-sketching, Romney embraced development of an industry he now says does not deserve investment (meanwhile, he’s silent on Big Oil subsidies).

How to Find a Good Baguette in Paris - David

Thu, 31 May 2012 16:09:42 -0400

How to Find a Good Baguette in Paris - David:

There are a lot of people who come to Paris and can’t wait to get their hands on one of the amazing baguettes that are packed in baskets and lined up on flour-dusted bakery counters seemingly on just every street corner. (And people still ask me why I moved here?) Well I have good news and bad news for you – there are plenty of great baguettes in Paris, and unfortunately a few not-so-great ones out there as well.

You just can’t assume that every bakery makes great bread, just like not all wine companies make great wine or all restaurants serve good food. Paris is a large city with lots of bakeries of various quality. And in Paris, a baguette generally isn’t something worthy of great adulation or bread that someone would take two métros to buy – a baguette is simply part of everyday life and something you’d pick up on your way home from work for dinner. And they come in all different sizes, shapes, dimensions, and colors.

Continue Reading How to Find a Good Baguette in Paris…

LongNow: Alexander Rose on The Conversation

Thu, 31 May 2012 14:49:24 -0400

Radio producer Aengus Anderson began a project earlier this year with the goal of facilitating a conversation about the paradigms we may have to leave behind if we’re to build the future we want. Over the next several months, he’ll be motorcycling all over the United States and discussing the future with thinkers, do-ers, artists and makers. He posts those recordings on The Conversation and invites listeners to give feedback, offer critique, and to suggest questions for future participants:

The Conversation is a new type of media project. It’s not journalism, documentary, or oral history. Instead, it is an asynchronous conversation about the future between a cross-section of American thinkers and you, our participants on the web. Aengus is going to be traveling America from May to October, posting two audio interviews a week and carrying ideas from one interviewee to the next. As Aengus travels, you will be able to join the conversation online, commenting on specific interviews and suggesting themes and questions for Aengus to pursue in upcoming interviews.

He sat down recently with Long Now’s Alexander Rose to talk about long-term thinking, the 10,000 Year Clock, and generational-scale problem solving. Alexander’s interview is the seventh in the series, with many more to come!

from The Long Now Blog http://bit.ly/KBugec

People of Venice Beach, 1970s - Chris

Thu, 31 May 2012 14:28:28 -0400

People of Venice Beach, 1970s - Chris:

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Source: Venicepix