Bread and Stercus [ earthstuff/ ]
With the Soccer World Cup about to explode upon us, I was just wondering: Does anybody know what is the Carbon Footprint of the World Cup about to explode on us poor dumb wogs collonials?I mean, our local(ish) airport is now open 24-hours a day, instead of the sleepy 7-to-7 operating hours they normally keep, and I have certainly noticed a huge increase in the amount of air-traffic overhead in recent days (and nights.)
Knysna - our closest town - is hosting two international teams (Denmark and uuuuhhh... France?) their managers, masseurs, trainers, tranquilizers, hookers and hangers-on. Plus another 4 teams in other towns in the immediate region. All of whom need to use the same airport. I wonder where they're parking all those charter aircraft...
But seriously: If any of you know of someone who has figured out the Carbon Footprint of this boondoggle (and, as much as I enjoy a game of Soccer, this is just pure Bread and Circusses) please drop me a line and let me know!
Oh well, Stercus accidit.
Technorati Tags: soccer, shit, carbonfootprint, worldcup2010, fuckyoufifa
Efficiency, Water Logic, Permaculture and Chainsaws. [ earthstuff/ ]
The first icy blast of Winter-to-come has hit. Happily it's brought a little rain - 7mm last night, and a bit more (3mm?) through the day. And a good lump of what passes for cold in these parts. Cold enough to want a fire, anyway, and we've had one burning all day.The design of the house makes it difficult - verging on impossible - to make the house Toasty Warm, but the fire does at least keep it livable. Really this is not a problem; we optimised the house design for passive cooling rather than heating, the former being a more serious problem in our climate.
The firewood is all harvested from our own land. We have many Australian Blackwoods (Acacia melanoxylon) on the property, and they keep us well supplied with kagelhout (firewood; as opposed to braai wood for barbequeue barbacue BBQ. Blackwood doesn't make really good coals for cooking.)
In general I try my best to avoid messing with petrol motors. They're smelly, noisy and dirty things that need endless maintenance and care. Really, I can't understand the attraction these things have for petrolheads.
But I will confess that, reasonably well looked after, my chainsaw is a Great Boon. I would not relish the idea of having to cut firewood by hand (even if it would warm me twice.) 30 Minutes with the chainsaw will saw up enough wood for a good number of fires and braais, and keeps us warm for many, many hours. I'll get my twice-warming from splitting the logs, anyway!
And this brings me to the subject of efficiency.
Many times I've heard and read about the terrible efficiency of small petrol engines such as power our (currently defunct) weed-eater and chainsaw. This may be (and probably is) true in the very narrow sense that the measure of work coming out of the machine, as a ratio of the energy going in (mostly in the form of refined hydrocarbons) is probably very low. But this view - being typical of linear, bounded design thinking - hides a deeper truth. A truth about Water Logic. Water Logic asks us to consider "and then what?" Water Logic demands that we think about consequences.
Just like sustainable design does. Just like Permaculture does.
So consider that a few hours with my chainsaw produces enough fuel to warm us for... pretty much an entire Winter! And consumes... perhaps 2 or 3 litres of petrol in the process. (To be honest I lack the stamina to cut more than 2 petrol-tankfuls of wood in one session. The chainsaw tank only holds about 250ml.) So 2 or 3 litres of petrol produces a full Winter's house-heating fuel.
I happen to think that's pretty efficient.
The fuel - at current prices - costs me (say) R25. About €2.5 (2.65865 at today's rates, if you care!) For a Winter's worth of Warm.
I'd call that a bargain.
Climate Change and Science [ earthstuff/ ]
Just a quick shoutout to Climate Change and the Integrity of Science - a short read, so you've no excuse. Go on, click the link!We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act ... But delay must not be an option.Update: Only one small nit to pick with that article: "For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet." Sorry, but that's just not terribly realistic, in my ever-so-humble opinion. The planet, and much of the life on it, will roll right on without noticing much. It's just us, and probably quite a lot of the larger life-forms, that will be vanished. And they will soon be replaced by other, newer species. (For some value of the term "species".) Explosive post-catastrophe respeciation has happened enough times before.
Be Disturbed [ earthstuff/ ]
With thanks to Gavin for this.He warns that "some viewers may find this video disturbing". I'd comment that anybody who fails to find it disturbing probably needs serious professional help.
Drought Finally Official [ earthstuff/ ]
Finally our region has been officially declared a Drought Disaster Area, and the Provincial Gov is pumping in emergency funds for "emergency projects such as drilling of boreholes/treatment of effluent water etc."A couple of weeks ago the local Muni announced that they're going to be constructing a desalinisation works for Sedgefield. They're even trying to get emergency permission to delay parts of the Environmental Impact Assessment processes that are legally required... despite the fact that brine from a desalinisation works is classed as toxic waste... despite that fact that Eskom has no spare electricity generation capacity to power such energy-intensive boondoggles projects...in the same breath as local pols are mouthing empty bullshit about reducing our Carbon Footprint...
Something is very smelly in the District of Eden! (And it's not just the illegal-but-ignored below-the-water-table septic tanks in Sedgefield.) Apart from totally abdicating responsibility for allowing the development of housing estates in Knysna and Sedgefield far in excess of the actual carrying capacity of our catchment, local officials seem to studiously avoid looking at much simpler, lower tech, more sustainable and cheaper options.
Like requiring rainwater catchment for every house...
Like requiring in-house water to be gravity fed and not pressure-driven (thus reducing by about a factor of 4 the flow rate from taps)...
Despite the drought our rainwater tanks are all full, even while our dams are pretty empty.
Even when the boys were both still living at home we never, ever used as much as 5000litres in a month. And yes, we do wash ourselves and wash our clothes. Pretty regularly. Perhaps when you know and can easily monitor your stored water levels being conscious about water usage comes more easily.
I shudder to think what the situation will look like in another few weeks when Peak Tourist Season hits...
Update: Forgot to add that the Provincial Gov rates this as the worst drought in 100 to 150 years. Didn't know they were capable of keeping records from that long ago! :-O
Kakistopoly [ earthstuff/ ]
Wrote up the origin and definition, with appropriate ranting, of the word "Kakistopoly," a word of (as far as I know) my own invention.Share and Enjoy!
And Now For Something Completely Different [ earthstuff/ ]
Jason returned from a short business trip to Sweden, and brought back something special: A copy of the (Limited Edition) new album by Folk/Pagan/Melodic Black Metal band Eluveitie, Evocation 1 - The Arcane Dominion.
All I can say is...
Awesome!
Don't be put off by the "Metal" tag... the album has not an electronic instrument in sight, yet still manages to pull of this weird fusion of Celtic folk, metal, prog-rock and even a bit of rap on one track! Almost all the lyrics are in the ancient and extinct Helvetii Gaulish language, giving a very Pagan, spiritual feel that haunts and teases some memory deep in the DNA.
I cannot praise this album highly enough. This is a work of genius.
Death Grip: The Lesson for Climate Change [ earthstuff/ ]
My last couple of posts about The Drought probably sounded like whining. They were. To some extent, anyway. But beneath that there's a lesson.So many people -- the world around -- are hoping... waiting... assuming... praying... that there'll be some sort of Return To Normal.
There won't be. Get over it!
I well know that we cannot ascribe directly the current weather conditions to GCC (Global Climate Change a.k.a. Global Warming) -- that's just not how this thing works. After all,"climate" itself is nothing more than a mathematical fiction. An average of weather conditions over some short spane of recent decades. But the climate models -- no matter how deficient they may or may not be -- do predict a greater number of more-extreme weather events than we've historically seen. Still, whilst it is scientifically incorrect to connect our current drought conditions (or any of the other extreme or unusual weather events happening in the world) to GCC, there is one consequence we can note... one realisation that comes out of this drought...
Climate change screws up our ability to predict. For the farmer, the gardener, the self-sufficient, it is impossible to over-emphasize the impact this unpredictability has. Forever... for as long as we've been cultivators... we've pretty-much been able to predict.
"If I plant Beans now, I should see enough rain to get them growing, and in about 4 moons from now, I should be harvesting the next year's Bean Stew suppers."
But now, something seems to have slipped. Take our (anecdotal) local case: We had the Humid Season back in December, instead of now (February) as is "normally" the case. Our Windy Season -- normally September and October -- is still on-going. The Once A Week Rain that characterised the region 15 years ago is clearly now a part of History. Our Spring was long, exceptionally cool, and characterised by almost 2 months of permanent overcast, resulting in very slow Spring growth from most plants. It's as though the "seasons" have slipped forward by about 6 weeks.
Maybe so. Maybe not. That's not the point.
The point is that the weather has become just that much less predictable.
Until last year, I would have planted Maize in the 1st or 2nd week of January1. This year the dry conditions stopped me. Perhaps fortuitously! Perhaps I should now plant Maize in mid-February... (If we get some rain.) But I don't know.
And next year? I won't know!
It's all gone Random. That's the real consequence of Climate Change.
----
[1] In most parts of SA, people would plant Maize much earlier in the Spring and/or spray the plants with some Toxic Cocktail. Around here, early-to-mid-Jan is the Right Time for "organic" growers to plant Maize whilst avoiding the worst depredations of Corn Ear Worm.
Drought: Climate Change Shows Its Face [ earthstuff/ ]
We're in the midst of the most serious drought we can remember since moving to Braamekraal some 13-and-a-bit years ago. So far, here at near the end of January, we've had only 10.5mm of rain this month, with little prospect of any more. "Normal" for January would be between 60 and 70mm. The last decent rain we've had -- any single fall of over 10mm qualifies as "decent" -- was in mid-November. The neighbouring town of Sedgefield has run out of water and the municipality is having to truck in drinking water for the town's residents.Triage Time
I've written-off the contents of a couple of beds full of seedlings. They're easily replaced if/when rain returns.
The House Dam is almost empty -- I have at most two more waterings for the veggie garden. At that I am only watering the well-established Tomatoes, Chillis and Squashes. Everything else must fend for itself.
The house water tanks are fine -- we still have around 12kl in the storage tanks (out of 15kl capacity) which would last us (I guess) 8 or 9 months. By the time things got that serious we'd probably be the last people left alive in the region. ;-) But the garden is suffering, as is the forest.
The New Normal
This, I have no doubt, is the bare face of Climate Change. For the past 10 years we've seen the weather patterns steadily change -- always towards the more extreme... always towards dry...
Why, then, are the local government bureaucrats and politicians running about crying about a "crisis"? Crises are ephemeral in nature! This is the new reality: Less rain. Less frequent rain. Less reliable rain. More extreme weather events. More frequent extreme weather.
And it looks like it is too late to do anything about it.
In Consequence?
I guess we're going to be selecting seed on the basis of Drought Resistance this year.
How Far Future [ earthstuff/ ]
I was noodling around the 'net the other day for info on arcane bits of Provincial legislation. You see, some local property developers want to park (yet again!) an industrial "development" in our beautiful, rural neighbourhood. The current proposal -- in stark contrast to the last one -- is pretty softcore. The trouble is that, to get the zoning permissions, they're following an obscure process that eliminates the need for Environmental Impact Assessments, public-participation processes and the like. Or maybe not. It all depends on whether you can convince the Bureaucrat Of The Moment to buy your interpretation of the legislation and regulations.Long story short, all this led me to a link to the Provincial Government's Draft1 Climate Change Policy Document. Wow! Who ever would suspect that such a thing exists?
It will take me a good long while to read throught this thing, so all I've done is skim it so far.
Apart from some fairly obvious (to me) missing pieces, the whole thing seems pretty impressive to me. (And this is me -- the anarchist, using a word like "impressive", about government! Will wonders not cease?) In summary, the Western Cape is going to get dryer, mainly in the extreme South-Western areas (i.e. Cape Town, my home town) but not so much where we are (the Southern Cape.) That's assuming the IPCC models have some resemblance to future reality2. The Western Cape is hugely dependent on agriculture as an economic driver, so there's much discussion of that. None of this is the impressive bit...
To me what is important in the document is that
- the Western Cape Provincial Government is actually taking Climate Change seriously, and not in denial like some other governments we might mention,
- they're actually advocating mitigation strategies, depsite the fact that, as a "developing" nation, South Africa is not "technically" obliged to worry about mitigation4, and
- they're talking about actual, concrete actions, not just a lot of waffle, like the National government's discussion documents. (In fact, the National Government's list of "Key Issues" does not even mention climate change at all!)
[1] In the (long) time it took me to write this, the policy document has been gazetted, and is therefore no longer merely a "Draft"...
[2] Extremely dubious! I think that consensus amongst climate scientist3 is that the IPCC model is disastrously wrong. Climate change is happening far quicker than anybody expected or predicted, and it is accelerating faster than any "accepted" models. Of course, academic process being what it is, the climate will simply have gone and changed -- maybe radically -- before academic bodies accept the models that explain the change.
[3] Any climate scientist who reads this and wishes to correct my views, please do!
[4] What bollocks! Every human being is going to be "impacted" by climate change. Anybody who think that mitigation is not part of their personal responsibility should be put up against the wall is clearly deluded.Technorati Tags: climate-change, global-warming, western-cape, southafrica
Simmering the openseed.org pot [ earthstuff/ ]
An exercise in Extreme Slow Cooking, this! For quite a long time, now, I've been (sporadically) working on a web-based tool for tracking and matching seed-exchange wants and offers. You'd think it's such a simple thing I could have batted it out in a couple of weeks... probably so, but I've also been using it as a way to explore different technologies and software design approaches. Not stuff that's interesting to seedy people or self-sufficiency hackers, I know, but satisfying to my inner-geek.Anyhow, I'm quite determined to get this thing implemented and running as soon as possible. The first version is (deliberately) terribly simple: Anybody who wants will be able to sign-up with the site, and enter a list of the seeds they
- offer for swaps and/or
- are looking for in exchange.
What The Hell Inspired All This?
There are lots of bloggers who keep their seed-lists (more-or-less) up-to-date on their blogs, websites, etc., just as I do, or who list their seed offers and wishlists on various web-forums and group-chat sites.
As a tech geek, it seems just obvious to me that computers should be doing more than that -- they should actively be matching us up to make it easier to swap seeds! I mean, this is exactly what computers are supposed to be really good at, after all. Isn't it?
The first release of the system will do just that. You'll be able to type-up a list of seeds you offer for sale, swap or giveaway, and you'll also be able to capture a list of seed varieites that you're keen to lay hands on. As soon as you do that, the server will look for other people who have matching wishlists and offers (in reverse, though, if you see what I mean) and will drop an email to both parties suggesting a swap.
I expect some challenges around the matching -- what happens if I misspell (say) Lettuce, or if I enter a plant as "Lactuca sativa" but you're looking for "Lettuce"? I don't know how well (or otherwise) its all going to work out -- I could really use some help from a SQL1 guru with this sort of stuff. All gods know I'm not one!
Right now most of this works, but it all still looks like crap, as I've made absolutely no attempt to "style" it to look like anything yet. If you have some web-design (especially CSS) skills and are keen to help out, please drop me a line! Otherwise I'll hack something up...
The only significant missing piece right now is any ability to Just Browse through the lists of what's on offer! I feel that this is a crucial piece of functionality, and need to implement something before the site goes into what we propeller-heads call a "Beta Release" -- a working, functional version, but May Contain Some Nasty Surprises2.
Other bits and pieces that I may add later -- depending on how important other people feel they are -- would be a wiki system so that we can write-up plant descriptions, with pictures, growing tips, seed-saving hints, breeding ideas of the various varieties. (My own interest is in veggies, but I really hope that flower and fruit growers will also step up...) Then, too I have in mind to add a "forum" chat system later... we'll see.
The software will be released as Free Software so that if anybody wants to run their own exchange system -- perhaps with a regional or specialty focus -- they'll be able to take advantage of the software. My aim is to build-in functionality that will enable all OpenSeed exchange systems to share all their swap offers globally, but that, too, is a "for later" feature.
So Why All The Waffle Now?
Frankly, I need a little help. Included on the site are the usuall stuff like a "Links" page, and I could use some input on what links to include. I'm particularly looking for seed-bloggers (you know who you are! many of you are already listed ;-) good-quality heirloom seed suppliers, and links to seed-saving, food-biodiversity, plant-breeding, heirloom variety information, seed-politics, etc. At this stage anything's game. Spammy commercial links won't make it ;-)
Where and When?
The site will go live as openseed.org -- hopefully sometime in late-Jan/early-Feb (but no promises -- if somebody offers me a bunch of money to do something else, openseed.org will have to go on hold.)
The site will be non-commercial -- for the time-being I can afford the hosting and such, but I could really, really use help with testing, ideas for more features, and, once it is up-and-running, feedback, bug-reports and content.
Oh, and any good heirloom veg seeds ;-)
(And after that I'll get around to making this blog look like something. Right now it looks like crap and leaves a whole lot of usability to be desired. But it's Summer, right now, and Prime Weeding Season and It All Takes Time.)
[1] The system is currently using MySQL, but could quite easily be transitioned to another database system, but there's no compelling reason to change right now, and it would only slow me down at this point, when my aim is to get something up and running for people to kick the tyres and suggest how to do things better.
[2] Like Windows Vista, then... ;-)
Technorati Tags: seed, seed-swap, seed-exchange, openseed, biodiversity, software, website
Oil Be Seein' Ya [ earthstuff/ ]
Hail on the chief!Power to the peakle! Piss in the powder and praise the ambulation. Prop up the prayerful. Lead us not in too uncertainty, but deliver us our pizza. Mine us the glory, the power of the vampire... at least until we've passed the peak, empirical evidence not with standing. At least until we've picked the bones of the past. At least until we're pissed.
Pickled in their owned whine, pickled in a peck by their own henpecked pack, their feeding frenzy turns on their own insecret urgents, kundaleaning on their puppets, saintgeorging their dragons. Landgrabbing at their own psychotrophies, paxing their blags. Pack to the future: the ünteröberfuerher's articulated cargo culture backed to the gills by their spindizzy illumiknotty cranking the turingspindle, fueling the smouldering krankenfear, winding the springs of smalldering souls. Fed to the gills on fantasy freelunches, fast boxlunch combustibusiness, massmart instalodges beating the ploughshares the landcares the earthwares into swards of instagratafie. Burgeoning crapitalism winnowing the crashcrops and salting the earth. Dah-doo enrunrun, dah-doo enrun.
Their disconnect, their triple-sec, piped pap for crumbfort -- thrice nine I lived there.
Take no heed the surgeon-general's warnings
Robotman's sexpak, empire sturmtrouper, freedom's child backs from the front, back from the udder side, sucks hind tit, sucks on exhaustgas of mannamachina running on empty, running on fumes, fuming and fulminating and running on emptation, "Where is my playcheck? You bastards! You've eaten it!" Sadly attempts reconstructing the undeconstructible kaputznik intellogies, slides down the slippery slopium in epimenidisney daze. Glide down the path of disticulated blatherbots' future imperfect, misstilling their weird from the sweat of my own frothers brow. Small beer in my contigulum.
Nightout in the diskriegulum
Back. Back from the utter realms of desolated trendfeldenkreit; back from the spam and the spin, the spick and the span, the tucked and tanned desertifed and stratified panglobulous hemi-semi-demi-quavered, the fucked and fanned transmogrified powerpack semisold into wageslavery. Back from where the normalisms rain. Back from the bangling headnoise of the neocrims and quaquaquaqua econofascisti; their blathering, their blistering ignoramofarten dismalism ranting and islamowailing "Let rip the warcrimes! Unleash the packs of lunchmeat!" Crunching bongbots. Thieving slavetakers.
Bring jah paper, bring jah fire. Fill up the rightbrothers with righteous fury and fire the eagle's nest; smoke the whitehouse wasps from their paper castle. Matchless we march the halls of terregnum, the walls of interment, the malls of terrafie. Donner und blitzen the gorgon's lair the liars creedpots the krankensteins castle. Galileo lift thy head raise thy eyes past the neohorizon. Il papa, il duce, spare us your sanctity.
No cheer for the menschless
So build aye my fortnot my safehouse my madhouse, my powerless mousehole. With walls inside out and doors of perception flung wide. And welcome aye the rain and sky, the earth and sun in roofless untermensch obscurity. Let fall the fools of power where they may, the tools of destiny. Enchancingly cast spells of remake; cultivate what's left of us an earthward spiral way. Mine is no disgrace.
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Zeitgeist
- Recent ramblings...
- Bread and Stercus
- Efficiency, Water Logic, Permaculture and Chainsaws.
- Climate Change and Science
- Be Disturbed
- Drought Finally Official
- Kakistopoly
- And Now For Something Completely Different
- Death Grip: The Lesson for Climate Change
- Drought: Climate Change Shows Its Face
- How Far Future
- Simmering the openseed.org pot
- Oil Be Seein' Ya
- Listening to...
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blogs i read regularly
