Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells — Our Ride to a Renewable Future
Recently I walked down to 255 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, a couple miles south of where I live. I turned onto Wall Street, passed the New York Stock Exchange, and then proceeded to circle the same short block until a parking attendant confirmed that the address I was looking for no longer exists. A clothing store now stands roughly where the world’s first power plant once did. In 1882, at a time when Thomas Edison was being chastised by impatient investors and scoffed at by the press, he finally threw the switch here, illuminating hundreds of light bulbs along Wall Street. Within a decade, the early foundations of our modern-day power grid had been laid, and more than a million bulbs shone across the country. My walk was inspired by Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells — Our Ride to the Renewable Future by journalist Amanda Little . It’s the kind of book that makes sense of events and inventions you didn’t even realize belonged in the same story. From shipping crates to electric cars to silicone breast implants, Little elucidates a topic as complex and tangled as the wires now running beneath New York City. I’d be tempted to insert a pun here about how Little has pulled off something big, if I were into the kind of quippy subheadings found throughout the book ("It’s a Sprawl World," "Big Butz," "The Writing is on the Wal-Mart"). But I think Power Trip sells itself short with this cutesy packaging. It’s a friendly, but not a faddish, book — an expansive, impressively well-researched history that explains how we came to live in the world that we do and where we might go from here. Beginning with a long look at fossil fuels and the infrastructure they’ve generated, Little takes us to an "ultradeep" offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an enterprise she finds "doggedly ambitious, but also seemingly desperate — like an addict forcing a syringe into the earth’s innermost veins." She recalls a time when the United States was "the Saudi Arabia of the world" in terms of supplying petroleum, then traces how oil "evolved from a fuel for war machines to a catalyst for war to a lethal weapon" on September 11th. One of the best scenes in the book is her fond rendering of the 1945 maritime meeting between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the king of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, during which the two men forged an alliance that would shape the modern world. (Ibn Saud brought along a herd of sheep, slept under the stars, and, having a lame leg, bonded with FDR over his newfangled wheelchair.) Much of the narrative is cast as a personal quest for understanding. This works well at times, such as when we descend with Little to inspect the electrical grid beneath New York City, where "hot flashes" have been known to fuse contacts to eyeballs. But it seems contrived in other spots — at Talladega in Alabama, for example, where Little has an epiphany that NASCAR is "more universally American — more me — than I’d ever realized." Even though Little catalogs the contents of her office, her home, and her salad in greater detail than necessary, her message about the astonishing ubiquity of petroleum is a powerful one. Our dependence on oil goes far beyond fuel. We touch more plastic than we do skin. And thanks to fossil-fuel-based fertilizers — arguably the most significant invention of the last century — we even eat oil. In the end, Little argues that the same ingenuity that got us into this mess can get us out of it. The last part of the book canvasses alternative energy technologies, including Scotch Tape-thin batteries made of viruses and "nanoink" that can be printed on any surface to convert sunlight into electricity (think pants that charge your cell phone while you wear them). To glimpse what the future might look like, she visits the new Bank of America skyscraper in Manhattan (where the rooms can tell if they’re occupied by measuring CO2 levels) and a zero-energy housing development in Tennessee — "an experiment that could have implications for American daily life almost equal to those of Edison’s Pearl Street dynamo." It’s heartening that the great inventor himself anticipated the end of fossil fuels. "This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of it — it is so wasteful," Edison told a visitor to his laboratory around 1910 (not 1931, a minor error in the book*). "You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. "Do we use them? Oh no! We burn wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property." * On page 252, Little quotes Edison as saying this in 1931. The source in her notes, however, is Little Journeys by Elbert Hubbard, a book published in 1913. If you have a look at the chapter on Edison, you’ll see that the quote is actually from an interview that took place when Edison was 63. Since he was born in February 1847, that would make the interview in 1910, unless it’s very early 1911.
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Battle to Preserve Baja’s Whale Nursery Celebrated, but Threats Remain
"…. for there is no splendor greater than the gray when the light turns it to silver ." — Homero Aridjis, The Eye of the Whale Ten years ago this month, the Mexican government — under intense pressure from environmentalists — announced it was canceling a proposed industrial salt factory at Baja’s Laguna San Ignacio. The lagoon serves as the last undeveloped birthing habitat for the eastern Pacific population of gray whales, which were hunted almost to extinction a century ago and continue to make a tentative recovery. (Their Atlantic cousins succumbed to overhunting and have disappeared from the seas.) The sudden and surprising decision to scrap the saltworks was a landmark victory for U.S. and Mexican environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which had been fighting for five years to stop the joint venture between Mexico and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation. When many of the key participants in that fight gathered last week for a reunion at the remote lagoon, it was clear that ongoing efforts to protect this unique part of the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve were having a profound impact. At game parks on the African Serengeti, humans go to view wildlife - but here in Baja, the wildlife comes to you. The gray whales were out to greet everyone, some 200 strong for twice-daily whale watches, exhaling a heart-shaped mist as they chuffed past the panga boats. They sometimes approached close enough for onlookers to touch or even rub the baleen inside their mouths. "A magical gift, transcending time," as Mexican poet and environmental leader Homero Aridjis described one two-hour visit on the water. Gray whales make one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom, traveling 5,000 miles or more from sunny Baja to the cold Arctic, where they feed during the long days of summer. But they mate and give birth primarily in a few special lagoons along the Baja coast. The two other habitats they frequent have already seen considerable development, including a large saltworks. San Ignacio alone remains pristine. Had the salt project gone forward here, it would have meant a mile-long concrete pier across the whales’ migratory path and diesel engines pumping 6,000 gallons of sea water per second into 116 square miles of diked salt evaporation ponds. Given the many other threats facing the 17,000 remaining gray whales — from deafening Navy sonar to climate change impacts on their food supply — industrial expansion into this nursery would likely have proven disastrous. During the anniversary gathering last week, a symposium to discuss future steps for protecting the area drew a standing-room-only crowd of well over 100 people to one of the lagoon’s nine eco-tourist campgrounds. "This past decade has been a watershed moment in the way we lived and perceived ourselves," said Josele Varela, president of the new Rural Association of Collective Interests and one of a number of local community members from among the lagoon’s 205 families giving presentations. In 2004, lagoon residents formed an alliance with some of the 36 other biosphere reserves in Mexico to exchange information. These are sites designated for their natural beauty to foster sustainable development. "With this alliance, we’ve been able to learn new ecological methods," said Raul Lopez. New projects at the lagoon include oyster aquaculture and an award-winning effort to grow and restore mangrove forests. Such efforts by the lagoon’s six ejidos (communal land cooperatives) have been bolstered by the Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance, which is also comprised of five outside NGO’s — NRDC, International Fund for Animal Welfare, International Community Foundation, Wildcoast, and Pronatura. "I think we’re about halfway to where we want to be, in terms of increased protections for the lagoon," said Jacob Scherr, NRDC’s director of international programs.The purchase of conservation easements now protects roughly 140,000 acres on the lagoon’s eastern side, he said. "We’ve also gotten a commitment from the national government to preserve about 100,000 acres of federal lands on the other side of the lagoon." However, as marine biologist Steven Swartz put it, "I think we need to remain vigilant." Mitsubishi and its Mexican counterpart, Exportadora de Sal (ESSA), still maintain the legal right to renew their proposal. A year after the saltworks project was halted, according to Scherr, "without any real fanfare ESSA renewed that concession for another 50 years. We became aware of this and are now in the process of trying to have it nullified." Mark Spalding, director of the Ocean Foundation, which fiscally sponsors the Laguna San Ignacio Ecosystem Science Program, adds: "The land conservation easements and other land purchases have been very strategic, in hopes of making it extremely difficult for Exportadora to revive the project. But future oil or gas development is still a real risk here." A proposal to improve or even pave the rough road that runs 37 miles from the town of San Ignacio to the lagoon is under consideration by Baja authorities. The local community would, of course, benefit from quicker access to fish markets and medical facilities. But many fear better roads would also increase the likelihood of development. "They want to keep the flavor of a wilderness experience, because that’s part of the allure," said Swartz. Scientists are also studying the potential noise impacts of construction, especially on the lagoon’s bird population. Swartz’s ongoing census of the lagoon’s gray whales found an increase during this winter’s mating and breeding season, from 193 at the 2009 peak to upwards of 260 now. However, the number of mothers with newborns appears to have fallen. And although scientists are seeing fewer skinny whales than last year, concerns remain about the gray whales’ food supply in the warming Arctic. Due to climate change, the tiny crustaceans called amphipods upon which they customarily feed at the end of their 5,000-mile-long migration have disappeared from the traditional sites, forcing the whales to range even farther north. "So there is nutritional stress, and some whales have lost all their body fat," Swartz told the symposium. Still, a decade after the saltworks was stopped, "the basic integrity of the area has been maintained," according to NRDC’s Scherr. "At the end of the day, you can never preserve a place unless you have the local people with you. That’s what’s been such an important part of the story of Laguna San Ignacio." Among the "friendly" grays this March, that was true cause for celebration.
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A Better (Mac)intosh
Scientists and historians estimate that more than 14,000 varieties of apple have been cultivated in the United States, but over the past 100 years, much of that diversity has been lost as agriculture shifted its focus to large-scale production of just a few types. Today a mere 11 varieties account for more than 90 percent of all domestic apple sales. The good news is that researchers at the University of Arizona and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have recently identified 110 genetically unique types of apple on abandoned homesteads in the Southwest. The newly rediscovered heirloom varieties have survived for decades in the arid Southwest, indicating that they may contain genes that confer resistance to dry weather — an important trait that could come in handy for apple breeders if climate change increases the frequency or severity of droughts.
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A Better (Mac)intosh
How to Fix the World
Life on a fault line should concentrate the mind, and make it serious. If you want to build an office tower in California, for example, laws require that you make sure it will stand up to a major earthquake. Over the years the specifics change, as both building technology and seismic research advance, but the general principle endures: politics, technology, and science should work together to protect people’s lives. Imagine, though, what earthquake preparedness would be like if it were handled the way American society deals with climate change. There would be little debate on the real choices ahead, but plenty of "debate" over the "alleged scientific proof" that earthquakes are actually real or that humans can do anything about them. Deniers would trot out one or two dissident seismologists to claim (falsely) that there is no scientific consensus. The reality-based community would take the bait and claim (falsely) that all scientists agree about everything. In An Inconvenient Truth , Al Gore states that there are 930 papers that agree on human-made climate change and zero that dispute it. But as the climatologist James Hansen recently noted, "That’s just not normal for science." Instead of pondering probabilities and degrees of confidence, we have allowed our deliberative processes to turn the world’s environmental crises into culture wars. Last December, for example, the biggest climate news concerned not scientists’ data but their stolen personal e-mails. As the sideshows go on, the risk of global catastrophe keeps rising. The entire human population now lives on an environmental fault line. So why, when we debate what to do about global warming or long-term sustainability, can’t we sound like grown-ups? In The Essential Engineer , Henry Petroski offers an answer. Americans, he suggests, are deluded about what science is and how it works. We want high-tech ways to cope with the risks of (to use a list of potential worldwide disasters that Petroski himself quotes) "a modern day global famine; an astronomical event leading to complete or partial extinction of life on Earth; a hundred- or thousand-year severe storm, earthquake or volcanic eruption; a terrorist attack that can kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people, or a climate change that could lead to total extinction of life on Earth." Instead, Petroski argues, American politics and culture prepare citizens for a fantasy world in which science eliminates all uncertainty, predicts the future perfectly, and provides technical solutions untainted by politics and money. "Conventional wisdom is that science is sure," he writes. "In fact that is often the way its findings are reported." Of course, the actual language of science is nothing like this. Only crazy cult leaders tell their followers that the next big earthquake will strike at 8:14 a.m. on April 12, 2016. The best scientists can do is to say there is a 46 percent probability that an earthquake with a 7.5 magnitude will strike Southern California in the next 30 years, and a "greater than 90 percent certainty" that human activities drive global warming. Those are impressive intellectual achievements, and we should be glad to fold them into policy debates. Instead, we want scientists to act like cult leaders. How did that happen? The role of theoretical physics in the development of the atomic bomb, Petroski believes, led us astray. For a few decades during and after World War II, with physicists "almost running amok in political influence," it really did seem that abstract, all-knowing science was the root of progress, both for our understanding of nature and our ability to make airplanes, cell phones, and other useful stuff. In reality, knowledge more often flows from material progress. "The rocket came before the mathematical solution to the problem of rocket flight," Petroski notes. "Inventors seldom have the patience of scientists." From steamships to pasteurization to refrigeration to the earthquake-resistant Golden Gate Bridge, the typical history of invention belongs to practical people trying to make things that we can use, building on what has come before. Revolutionary leaps are rare, unintended consequences ever-present, and a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Indeed, Petroski writes, it is failure that teaches inventors how to improve. The people plodding along this path don’t refine beautiful theories or wait for perfect insights. They just get things done. Approvingly, Petroski quotes a "frequently cited” definition of structural engineering: "the art of assembling materials whose properties we do not fully understand into arrangements we cannot fully analyze to support loads we cannot fully predict — and to do so in a convincing enough fashion so that the public has complete confidence in the resultant structures." The driver of progress, then, isn’t pure science (which often brings up the rear, advancing thanks to the new instruments and data created by the practical inventors). It’s engineering, broadly defined as the business of making things people can use out of what is available, with whatever knowledge is at hand, and accepting the constraints of politics, money, and human nature. "Engineers do not need to imagine the unimaginable," Petroski writes. "They have to imagine the manageable." As a claim about the history of progress, this is an extreme position in a long-standing debate. (Do new machines foster new thought, or does new thinking lead to new machines? Surely it’s a little of both.) And Petroski, a professor of civil engineering at Duke University who has written 15 books (counting this one) that explain the engineer’s mind-set, lays it on thick. In The Essential Engineer , scientists merely know, but engineers do . Petroski’s scientists are passive and innately pessimistic, content to study nature and think their impractical "out of this world" thoughts. But engineers are active, upbeat, and always useful. After all, Petroski writes, while scientists "tend to be more flamboyant than engineers" and "sometimes appear to think of themselves as special," it’s the engineers who, though they have "few if any literary allusions or plays on words in their work," are "in a position to change the world, not just study it." If this makes Petroski sound as if he has a chip on his shoulder, let me hasten to clarify: it’s a boulder, and it makes him, and his argument, look small. The peevish tone is unfortunate, because the book makes a valuable point. Engineering as Petroski describes it is the human side of our science-based civilization. It involves all the mess and strife from which we dream that pure science is immune: incomplete knowledge, insufficient budgets, political trade-offs, fads, fears, and foibles. When we forget all this, we end up expecting inhuman perfection from scientists. We want to know exactly how climate change is happening and precisely what we can do about it. Hence the sorry state of climate politics: if you believe science can know everything , then the slightest uncertainty or disagreement can make science look like it doesn’t know anything. People who think too much of science, in other words, will end up thinking too little of it. So Petroski is right to encourage an engineer’s grown-up perspective. But he goes too far, and it’s not just in his self-indulgent grousing about the "separate and unequal" professional relationships of scientists and engineers. The Essential Engineer isn’t an argument for correcting the imbalance; it’s a call for reversing it. On climate change, for example, Petroski believes we’ve had too much study and not enough action. It’s not enough for scientists to do science, he says; they should also do engineering, or let the engineers do it themselves: "Scientists should either hand the problem over to engineers or engage not only in science relevant to climate change but also in engineering means to control it." But global warming is exactly the kind of problem for which his get-it-done, use-what-we-know solutions could be disastrous. Like any good engineer, Petroski wants to plan our actions on global warming by adding up the dollars and cents and using what knowledge we have. After all, "engineering is all about designing devices and systems that satisfy the constraints imposed by managers and regulators." That leads him to accept without question the supposedly hardheaded, by-the-numbers reasoning of Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist who claims society should spend its scarce resources on problems other than climate change. Petroski quotes Lomborg as saying that "spending an extra dollar cutting CO2 to combat climate change generates less than one dollar of good, even when we add up all the economic and environmental benefits." These numbers have been disputed by economists, but there’s a larger problem with this kind of analysis: it works only if we can be certain we know exactly how much good will result in 2030 from a choice made in 2010. In other words, it assumes that past experience is a good guide to the future. Petroski, eager to accept the constraints imposed by managers and regulators, buys that premise without question. But climate scientists, whose discipline gave us the term "butterfly effect," know that the planet’s natural history is nonlinear. Sudden shifts in global climate have occurred out of all proportion to their causes, and in those times the past was no guide to the future at all. Before we try to engineer the climate, then, it’s probably a good idea to learn more about what could go wrong. Hence, we’re lucky we still have some people pursuing impractical knowledge instead of just making better refrigerators at a better price. Petroski prefers doing to knowing; he wants to roll up his sleeves and start geo-engineering. But a society that takes his advice to heart could end up not knowing what it’s doing.
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How to Fix the World