Category Archives: gaia

Life Styles Of The Off The Gridders – Gentle to the Earth

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This article speaks for itself.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/living-off-the-grid4.htm

How Living Off the Grid Works

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Off-the-grid Lifestyle

You’re excited about going off the grid now, right? You’re set to get your solar panels and septic tank. You have the well driller booked and you’re ready to say no to utility bills. Before you follow through on all these moves, you need to think about the lifestyle changes that come with going off the grid.

Even with solar and wind power, you’ll still need to limit your use of electricity. Most people interested in living off the grid do so at least in part to live a greener life, so conserving power goes hand-in-hand with this decision. With adequate solar and wind systems, you should be able to operate most of your electric appliances and gadgets, but not necessarily at the same time. If you’re using a hair dryer, avoid using the microwave. If you fire up the blender, unplug your space heater. Major electricity users like washing machines should be operated at night, when your other power needs are minimal. True disciples of the back-to-land movement wouldn’t use a washer and dryer anyway. Washing clothes by hand and using a clothesline is a rustic alternative.

The same goes for your water use. With a cistern system, in periods of little rain you might need to let the dishes pile up for a couple of days or limit your toilet flushes. Some people go so far as to turn off the shower water while they lather or wash their hair. Collecting additional non-potable water in rain barrels is a great way to water plants, wash dishes and keep your pets hydrated without dipping into your well or cistern.

Energy Star appliances are the most efficient on the market and a good way to save money on your bills. Look for the yellow stickers on the appliances when you buy them and compare the ratings. In addition to saving energy, the government offers rebates on Energy Star appliances, so you’ll be saving money as well. You should­ also switch your light bulbs to the energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Off The Grid – We move into survivalist land

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Like I said in the beginning there are many types of people that want to be off the grid. The rich do it because they can. Many people do it to save money. Some people, like Thoreau, like the solitude or are paranoid. Then there are the survivalists. I do not agree with their theories or their ideology, but they are a part of the mix and this site is pretty explicit.

http://offgridsurvival.com/preppingfriendsandfamil/

Talking to Friends and Family about Prepping

A number of readers have emailed me lately asking how they can convince their friends and family to start prepping.

To be honest this is a touchy subject, one that can often make even hardcore preppers feel a bit uncomfortable.

For some, the thought of talking to anyone about prepping fills them with feelings of anxiety. Just the thought of others knowing what preps you have is enough to fill anyone with a sense of paranoia . And who can blame them, lately it seems like every time we turn on the news another government agency is warning people about those dangerous preppers.

For those that do try to talk about the subject, trying to get their family and friends on board can be a headache to say the least.

From friends and family members that truly believe the government will save them in a time of crisis, to those that have been brainwashed by the media to believe that preppers are all  tinfoil hat wearing nutjobs, prepping can often be a touchy or even taboo subject to talk about. While we have touched on the subject in the past, I thought it was important to take another look at how we can help those we care about prepare for an uncertain future.

Dealing with those who believe the Government will help them in a time of crisis.

As a reader who recently wrote to me pointed out, 50 years of being programmed to believe that the government can help is hard to undo. We live in a society that is becoming increasingly reliant on the government to help them in every aspect of their lives. In fact over 67 million Americans now rely on government aid to pay for either housing, food, health care or education. That’s 1 in 5 Americans!

Most people simply don’t realize or believe that they are in any kind of danger. Most Americans live under the belief that the government will be there to help them in a time of crisis. So what can you do to change this mindset and protect those that you care about?

Use the Governments own advice.

Even the government advises people to be prepared. They will be the first to admit that during a time of crisis it’s highly unlikely that they’ll be able to respond in under 72 hours.

At the very least your friends and family should be prepared to survive at home without power, water and utilities for a minimum of 72 hours. While most of the governments advice is rather simplistic,  it may help you introduce the subject to those who depend on the government for everything.

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It is a huge site. Go there and read. More Tomorrow.

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Living Off The Grid Has Gotten Sexy – Thanks to Natgeo’s Preppers

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I have only seen one episode of Preppers so I am no expert. The show did seem intrusive because many of the “preparing for catastrophe” types are really sensitive to outside interest.  Some fear laughter, others fear exposing their hoards to people who might try to take them away from them, and others are just by nature isolationists. Also many of their theories about the impending “end of the world” are just plain incoherent. Thus painful to listen too. Most the off the grid people I know are not Preppers, they are, like me, cheap. They hate giving money to the utility companies.

http://www.off-grid.net/

What is living off-grid?
by LINDAM on FEBRUARY 11, 2012 – 1 Comment in OFF-GRID 101

The literal definition of living off-grid (or offgrid or living off the grid) is living without Utility power or water or waste disposal.

It can go further than this, to include being disconnected from the infrastructures that make life convenient, including roads, banks, schooling, doctors and so on. Even the Internet is a grid of sorts. Wikipedia has an extended discussion

In the absence of Utility electricity, energy needs are often supplied by solar, water or wind energy. (more…)

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.
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Climate Change Professor’s New Book Shows The World The Length That Deniers Will Stoop To, To Smear Someone Speaking The Truth

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While this book is interesting in its presentation of the Climatological Facts, I think the most telling details are how viciously the deniers attack people through the web.

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Long live the hockey stick! Climate science fights back.

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy.

Repeat something a sufficient number of times and, eventually, people will believe it, no matter whether it is true or not. It is one of the most effective tricks of propaganda and it has been used more than once against science, for instance in the demonization of the “Limits to Growth” study. During the past few years, it has been applied repeatedly, even obsessively, against the “hockey stick,” the reconstruction of past temperatures on which Michael Mann and coworkers had been working from the 1990s.

It is rare in the history of science that a single piece of experimental evidence has been the object of so many attempts of demolition. Yet, all the serious reviews of the original data have basically confirmed the initial results. Being unsuccessful in demolishing the science, the attacks have moved against the scientist, Michael Mann himself, who has been subjected to an unbelievable denigration campaign, defamed, insulted, and even physically threatened. Recently, the campaign against Mann has targeted his new book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”, with a large number of negative reviews and derogatory remarks which appeared in the reviews of the book on the Amazon site. Most of these seem to be the work of web identities created expressly for this purpose, i.e. “sock puppets“.

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Go there and read. The interview after the text is excellent. More tomorrow.

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Changing The Environment By Changing The Culture – How to classify this

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I have no idea how to classify this but I found it interesting nonetheless. She is kinda cute no matter what.

 

http://www.blueplanetgreenliving.com/2009/01/30/culture-change-drives-environmental-improvement/

Culture Change Drives Environmental Improvement

“What I’m doing is socially engineering organizations by working with employees so they can shift their company culture and drive business performance — and even personal performance,” says Elizabeth Frisch, president of Culture Technologies, Inc. and director of development for A Nurtured World.“

Elizabeth Frisch of Culture Technologies and A Nurtured World
Elizabeth Frisch of Culture Technologies and A Nurtured World

 

One of the things we’re committed to is inspiring people, enrolling them, and getting them connected with their passions in the workplace. This is just like we do on the consumer side with A Nurtured World, getting people to commit to green living in their home, so that being environmental is not about suffering, deprivation, and “something else that is on my To-Do list.” Instead, you create space around it, so that it’s this open frontier. There’s all this possibility!”

Culture Technologies is working with the Dallas Cowboys to green their new Cowboy Stadium, a topic you’ll read about in tomorrow’s post. Today, we talk with Elizabeth about how Culture Technologies helps businesses become more environmentally responsible through culture change. We spoke with Frisch from her office in Austin, Texas.

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Go there and read the really long interview. More tomorrow.

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Cuba Moves Ahead With Alternative Energy – Will they move ahead of the U.S.

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As rediculous as it sounds, Cuba could very easily overtake the U.S. in its use of alternative forms of energy. Why? Because like China they have a planned economy.

http://peakoil.com/alternative-energy/cuba-on-the-road-to-clean-energy-development/

Cuba on the Road to Clean Energy Development

More than a decade ago, solar electricity changed the lives of several mountain communities in Cuba. Now this and other renewable power sources are emerging as the best options available to develop sustainable energy across the island.

“If the world’s clean energy potential exceeds our consumption needs, why do we insist on using the polluting kind?” asked Luis Bérriz, head of the Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Respect for the Environment (CUBASOLAR), a non- governmental organisation that promotes the use of alternative and environmentally-friendly power sources.

According to his calculations, the amount of solar radiation Cuba receives is equivalent to 50 million tonnes of oil a day.

“If we covered the 1,000-kilometre-long national highway with solar panels we would generate all the power currently used, without using fossil fuels or occupying a single square metre of agricultural land,” Bérriz said to IPS in an interview.

Moreover, “nobody can block the sun; it belongs to all of us,” he added.

Bérriz is a researcher and long-time advocate of renewable power sources who prefers to talk about “reversing” climate change – which he says is caused by “the destructive actions of today’s societies” – instead of “adapting” to it.

In his opinion, adapting to what others destroy sounds more like “conformism”. Industrialised countries are responsible for 75 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which cause global warming. The leading GHG is carbon dioxide (CO2).

For Bérriz, the best course of action is to move from oil to clean energy sources, which exceed power needs. The way to do this is to develop the knowledge, technology and industry necessary to tap into the various renewable energy sources most available in each area, he says.

Key components of this process, Bérriz argues, are the training of scientists, technicians and skilled workers to cover human resource needs, and the creation of an energy and environmental culture that will raise the awareness essential for the development of solar power based on “fairness and solidarity”.

 

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It’s a big article, so go there and read. More tomorrow.

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BP Never Got The Issue – They believe they did nothing wrong in the first place

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That’s right the OIL SPILL in the Gulf of Mexico was not their fault.  You know what? Between the remediation they have done and a court of law they maybe right. Which is maybe more disgusting. The well was theirs, there is no doubt about that but with the blowpout preventer being bad, the cementing company’s cement job being bad, and the drilling platform operator being bad to dangerous, by the time they get to court (think 20 years if the Exxon Valdez is any gauge) and all three companies may actually end up owing BP money. They sure are trying to put a shiny happy face on it though.

 

Locals call BP’s feel-good Gulf ads ‘propaganda’

Advertising blitz touts recovery of tourism, fishing industries after massive spill

By CAIN BURDEAU
updated 1/8/2012 2:24:03 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly 20 months after its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill — and just as Americans focus on New Orleans, host of the college football championship game — BP is pushing a slick nationwide public relations campaign to persuade Americans that the Gulf region has recovered.

BP PLC’s rosy picture of the Gulf, complete with sparkling beaches, booming businesses, smiling fishermen and waters bursting with seafood, seems a bit too rosy to many people who live there. Even if the British oil giant’s campaign helps promote the Gulf as a place where Americans should have no fear to visit and spend their money, some dismiss it as “BP propaganda.”

The PR blitz is part of the company’s multibillion dollar response to the Gulf oil spill that started after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and leading to the release of more than 200 million gallons (760 million liters) of oil. As engineers struggled to cap the out-of-control well, it turned into the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Now, BP is touting evidence that the Gulf’s ecology has not been severely damaged by the spill and highlighting improving economic signs.

“I’m glad to report that all beaches and waters are open for everyone to enjoy!” BP representative Iris Cross says in one TV spot to an upbeat soundtrack. “And the economy is showing progress, with many areas on the Gulf Coast having their best tourism season in years.”

The campaign, launched just before Christmas, has ramped up for the two-week period around the Sugar Bowl and Bowl Championship Series title game to be played on Monday between Louisiana State University and Alabama.

The company is paying chefs Emeril Lagasse and John Besh to promote Gulf seafood, it’s hired two seafood trucks to hand out fish tacos and seafood-filled jambalaya to the hundreds of thousands of tourists and fans pouring into the city for the football games and it’s spreading its messages at galas, pre-game parties and vacation giveaways.

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More tomorrow.

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Aral Sea Shrinks To A River – More damage from the Soviet Union

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You can read either article below. The facts stay pretty much the same but  each has one of my favorite pictures of the horrible damage. The overhead shot is the most compelling:

http://www.global-adventures.us/2010/04/05/aral-sea-shocking-disaster/

Then there is the “boats and camels” shot:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/16/the_world_s_worst_ongoing_disasters?page=0,3

The World’s Ongoing Ecological Disasters

While it’s probably still too soon to celebrate, BP appears to finally be getting the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico under control. But many of the world’s greatest environmental catastrophes continue, with no end in sight.

BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | JULY 16, 2010

UZBEKISTAN/KAZAKHSTAN

Disaster: The shrinking of the Aral Sea

Going since: The 1960s

Damage done: Straddling the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth-largest inland water body and home to at least 20 species of fish and a thriving coastal economy in the surrounding towns. In the early 1960s, the Soviet government built more than 45 dams and 20,000 miles of canals in an effort to create a cotton industry on the desert plains of Uzbekistan, depriving the sea of its main sources.

Over the next three decades, the sea shrank to two-fifths its original size, turning fishing villages into barren desert outposts. Thanks to the high salt content in the remaining water, all 20 fish species are now extinct. Drinking water supplies in the area are dangerously low and the ground contains dangerous pesticides from the cotton farms. When the wind sweeps across the now-dry sea bed, it spreads up to 75 million tons of toxic dust and salt across Central Asia every year.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Nigeria – Oil spills and bombs

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OK, yesterday was a feel good day. Maybe a feel good weekend, but now back to the environmental disasters. This latest oil spill in Nigeria is not like the one in the Gulf of Mexico or the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Still it was from a fixed well to a fixed vessel. This is ineptitude of huge proportions. It is in a country that has a history of destroying the environment and its own people. On the day when the Pope preaches against violence, they blow up a Catholic Church. Nice.

http://www.advisorone.com/2011/12/26/bombs-oil-spill-shake-nigeria

Bombs, Oil Spill Shake Nigeria

Offshore leak stems from flexible export line to tanker

By

December 26, 2011

Nigeria was hit with a double whammy over the past few days: first an oil spill that could develop into its worst since January of 1998, and then a series of Christmas Day bombings that escalated the strife in the oil-rich country.

Production on the deepwater oil project was shut down as Royal Dutch Shell worked to contain the spill, which it said resulted from a leak in the flexible line between a tanker and the production facility.

Thus far neither disaster has had much effect on the price of oil, but with many markets closed, in the U.S. and U.K. for the Christmas and Boxing Day holidays, that could change on Tuesday. Prices were up a bit in Asian markets over supply concerns.

Bloomberg reported that the spill, which began last week, originated at the Bonga deepwater project, which produces 200,000 barrels a day. Production was shut down before the leak reached 40,000 barrels, Shell said in the report. Mutiu Sunmonu, Shell’s chairman for Nigeria, said in a statement last week, “The sheen has thinned considerably due to a combination of natural factors and dispersant application, and in places is breaking up, all of which should aid further dissipation.”

Bonga is the first deepwater discovery of oil for Nigeria, and it produces nearly 10% of the nation’s crude oil. It is located approximately 75 miles off the Nigerian coast. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the U.S., having provided 826,000 barrels from the beginning of this year through September, the latest month for which figures are available from the U.S. Energy Administration.

Five ships were deployed by Shell to spray dispersants; the company also brought in experts to combat the spill, which could be the worst since an Exxon Mobil Corp. spill in January of 1998 lost approximately 40,000 barrels from the Idoho platform on the southeastern coast of the country. At that time, oil slicks were reported as far west as Lagos.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Salmon Once Again Flow Down The White River – Condit dam blown through

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I was going to post about the Nigerian oil spill in my continued meditation on environmental disasters in the recent years BUT its Christmas weekend eve. So instead I am posting a happy event. The White River is now free flowing after they punched a hole in the Condit Dam and this spring salmon will flow down the White River for the first time in 100 years. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and Happy Holidays to the rest.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/environment/freshwater/us-condit-dam-salmon.html

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For text see:

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wr/cwp/condit.html

Condit Dam Removal Project

Breaching Event

Updated! 10/24/2011 Condit Dam was breached a little after Noon on Wednesday, October 26, 2011. During the event approximately 750 acre feet of water was drained into the White Salmon River downstream of the dam and into the Columbia River. Flows from the breach of the dam are anticipated to transport a plume of accumulated sediment from the reservoir causing turbid water.

Over the course of the next 10 months, dam removal will be conducted and restoration of the former reservoir area completed.

See more project info on the Pacificorp website.

Project Overview

The Condit Hydroelectric Project is located 3.3 miles upstream from the confluence of the White Salmon and Columbia Rivers. Constructed between 1911 and 1913 by Northwestern Electric Company it has been operated by PacifiCorp since 1947. PacifiCorp has chosen to remove the dam rather than seek fish passage required under a new federal dam license.

The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) conducted necessary environmental reviews and issued regulatory approvals associated with the project, including granting a Section 401 Water Quality Certification. The 401 certification under the federal Clean Water Act certifies that water quality standards and other water-protection regulations are met during dam removal and subsequent restoration. The 401 outlines the steps PacifiCorp must take to protect water quality during dam removal.

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Go there, view and read. More next week.

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