Can't say enough about cans

All hail the mighty can

U.S. Can Manufacturers Institute is celebrating the birthday of the can this year – really.

They get a little weird about it, but they seem sincere.

“The history of the can is literally a history of western civilization,” their Web site proclaims.

There is a lot of money involved, Americans use 130 billion cans a year creating an $8 billion industry, according to the institute.

But then they fly away again.

“Because we have come to rely so much on the convenience and easy familiarity of canned products, almost imperceptibly present in every part of life, we are the 'tin can civilization.' ”

Really.

The history is interesting. 1796 Napoleon’s troops were starving so he started a contest, according to the Web site. A Parisian tried for 15 years before preserving food by partially cooking it and sealing it in bottles with cork stoppers using much the same technique as today’s home preservers. He won the prize in 1810.

The same year, an Englishman won a patent for preserving food in a variety of containers, including iron coated with tin to avoid rust and corrosion, according to the Web site.

Is that a clone in your mouth?

Both sides of the debate over selling meat or milk from animals with clones in their bloodlines is are in a tizzy.

Seems the Food Standards Agency in Britain has confirmed meat from a bull that originated as an embryo of a cloned cow got into the food chain a year ago. That would be against the law because it should have been labeled a "novel food" to be sold legally, reports meatprocess.com
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority have no problem with cloned meat.

Also, the FSA has traced an offspring from the same family line to a dairy but hasn't confirmed its milk is going into the food supply. Let's see, if the dairy is feeding and caring for this cow, where do you think the milk is likely going?

Do you care if that happens around here? How would you know?

Just one more bite

Wasn't eating our way through Santa Fe enough?

My wife, Karen, and I recently took an all-too-short trip to that city recently, and, of course, the first stop was a restaurant. The Shed makes basic New Mexican, but so good. Of course, the raspberry soup wasn't traditional, but so what?

Anyway, several days and more than several restaurants later (Check out the fairly new Restaurant Martin opened by Martin Rios, formerly of Inn of the Anasazi), it was about time to leave.

But wait, there's more. Trader Joes, Whole Foods, the fabulous farmer's market and several hundred dollars later, it's time to hit the highway. We were stocked with everything from dried tart cherries to several containers of unique olives and pickled peppers from the olive bar.

Then comes the sad part. It only lasts so long. Last night was the end of the Mario Batali pasta sauce. Can't get it here, so I guess that's that.

Do you ever go grocery shopping while on vacation. Is that wrong?

Spring unsprung in the garden

Boy, the momentum was building, but as happens every year (when will I learn) that frosty Mother Nature just had to show off who's boss this weekend.

The chilly winter afternoons lolling through the seed catalogs are passed. One frenzied weekend of making the hard choices of who will get our money for what plants and seeds (no fancy starter kits this year, just flats and seed starter) left me feeling bad..."Sorry Johnny's, I know we've been faithful to each other, but that perky new Cook's Garden got your share of the cash this year. Well, her and that High Country Gardens in Santa Fe." And the afternoons sketching what holes remain in beds as I add more and more perennials are just memories on a legal pad.

Now the action is to begin. My wife pruned like a buzz saw. I planted potted chrysantemums outdoors. We both brushed away the brown refuse of winter from the expanding green crowns of plants. All that on Saturday. Then the winds turned chilly on Sunday. We were limping around a little when we went to Lowe's to stock up on supplies for mostly outdoor chores we're planning on. As long as the product wasn't on a low shelf where we'd have to bend too far over, things were passable.

Then Monday morning got here. It was dark outside, thanks to the stupid time change. A chilly rain/snow was falling and our backs were even stiffer.

Sorry Mother Nature. My bad. But your reminders that we're another year older and the average frost date (not to mention the Easter snow storms) are still to come are fully understood. We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness.

But the next sunny Saturday can't be too far off, giving hope for more adventures. Not to mention the first seed packs have arrived. Do you think it's too early to start cukecumbers?

NOTE:
By the way, there will be a three-day seminar on "Planting the Seeds of Sustainability" this month in Amarillo. It's sponsored by the High Plains Institute for Applied Ecology, High Plains Food Bank and Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. It runs March 19-21. Check out the above link for details.

Another day, another lawsuit

WildEarth Guardians are still on their BioBlitz warpath.

It’s their campaign to raise awareness of endangered species and to mark the 36th birthday of the Endangered Species Act with a new lawsuit or complaint every workday for eight weeks.

This time their focus is the prairie ecosystem we call home. Prairie Week will include suits to save two insects, a fish, a lizard and a kangaroo rat. The threats include” urban sprawl, oil and gas extraction, invasions of non-native plants and animals” and other stuff, according to the group.

“The Great Plains needs a home makeover that provides enough space for the original prairie occupants from the animal kingdom,” said Lauren McCain, Prairie Protection Director for WildEarth Guardians.

I know, I practically bet the lesser-prairie chicken would have been on the list. But our highest-profile threatened species didn’t make the cut.

The lawsuits and petitions this week are aimed at protecting habitat for the Great Plains wolf, plains grizzly bear, Audubon bighorn sheep, eastern elk, passenger pigeon, and heath hen.

Now we surely live on the plains here, but I haven’t seen any of these around. The Great Plains covers a lot of area, so I guess they’re somewhere.

And now, the local bits

Linda Loper, who's kind of the honcho on the ground at Mariposa EcoVillage, reports the cold weather has put a crimp in some of the work out there west of town.

After Tuesday's Environmental Advisory Committee meeting, she said work on plastering was on hold until things warmed up a little. The welcome center, however, is weathered in, so work can begin soon on the earthen floor. That will be a lot of packing of dirt from the site to make it hard, smooth and shiny.

And building No. 2 will begin to take shape soon. Linda said her house will be going up. It will be built with insulated cement slabs on a site carved into a hillside.

While the welcome center's compressed earth walls were interesting, her home should be fun as well. It will be completely off the electric grid, and 'look ma,' no well. The water will come only from rainfall capture. Now I can see that in Austin or somewhere, but here in the Great American Desert, as early maps labeled our stomping grounds.

She seems to know what she's talking about, so we'll see.

Back to the Green Committee, they will take the new Web site to city commissioners Tuesday to get their blessing and suggestions. Live launch is planned for Jan. 19.

Lights Out – The clock is ticking

The second annual “Sylvania Socket Survey” is full of surprises.

Okay, it says 74 percent of participants have switched to energy-saving light bulbs in the past year. That may be true, but there are more than 74 percent of shoppers at stores I frequent buying standard bulbs or the stores are foolishly filling shelves with the outdated bulbs.

That was surprise one. But No. 2? Almost 75 percent of respondents didn’t know that incandescent bulbs are headed for a phase-out beginning Jan. 1, 2012.

Count me and everybody I know in that group. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true. A press release about the survey says the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for the transition to start with traditional 100-watt bulbs and continue from there.

At the bottom of the release is the explanation that the survey involved only 300 adults. That makes some of the findings make a little more sense, but I wonder if some of the them are really true. How does compact fluorescent lights get into “71 percent of homes in America” but rank second to traditional bulbs in terms of use? Are the CFLs not turned on or do people only use them in a few lamps, using the usual bulbs in all the others?

I don’t get it.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the results.

66 percent of respondents said they are likely to purchase a compact fluorescent light (CFL), halogen or light-emitting diode (LED) bulb in the future.
Halogens are used in 40 percent of homes.
12 percent are using LED lighting.
52 percent said price is a key consideration in purchasing; the responses reflect a 12 percent spike compared to 2008.
Just 13 percent said they plan to buy extra 100-watt bulbs before the phase-out.
16 percent say they will shift to lower wattage incandescent light bulbs.
91 percent said they consider energy consumption per bulb to be an important factor.

I don’t get it.

But then there's the recycling. CFLs have mercury in them, so don't throw them in the Dumpster, experts say. And you might want to use a drop cloth when changing bulbs because you don't want to have to sweep up a toxic mess.

But wait, there's more!

The phase-out will happen over two years, and by 2014, maybe there will be more choices, but the main option now is CFLs. Just be careful you get the right kind. There is a special kind if you have a dimmer switch, and you have to get the right temperature bulb, for some reason measured on the Kelvin (not my idea) scale, to get the type of light you want from yellowish to blueish. The Energy Star folks have a good illustration, but this seems a little complicated.

Nevertheless, the idea is to save energy, and that's a good thing says Andrew deLaski, director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project in U.S. News & World Report.

"It's hugely important," he says. "A 60 to 70 percent reduction in light bulb energy use will save as much energy annually as that used by all the homes in Texas last year."

I guess disrupting my life is worth that.

Much Mish Mash

Here's a few unrelated, but related items.

Yeah, baby it's cold outside
But the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center has a Night Hike coming up December 11 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for children and seniors and members are free. Bring a flashlight for the hike and activities. They promise hot chocolate after the hike. It better be really hot.

The next day at the Bluff is a program on land management and fire.

From 10 a.m. to noon hear a lecture on fire ecology and then hike to an area that was burned in November 2008 to get smart about the importance of fire in our ecosytem. Admission is the same as for the Night Hike.

The Bluff is out Soncy Road north from Interstate 40 on the west side.

Powering up
Makes sense. Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge is getting $96,000 in recovery money from Uncle Sam to install solar power panels. Natural power in the middle of nature - the ducks will probably approve.

Boost your bill
SPS is asking pretty please in Austin to put a new charge on your bill. The money would go to purchase Renewable Energy Credits. It's a voluntary program the PUC has to approve, but monthly payments to help fund wind energy might be a handy way to do it.

How much for a shower?

A recent report says solving water supply issues globally may look similar to solving electricity demands – cut demand.

The report from McKinsey & Co. calls the current situation a water gap since about 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean water. It says the answer is economics or charging more for water to make people use less.

Enhancing the ability of farmers to grow more "crop per drop" is also thrown out as a viable approach.

That’s a roughly similar approach to the calls for increased efficiency to reduce power usage before trying to produce more sustainable energy as an answer to carbon emissions.

While the report is a little geeky, it poses some interesting questions and posits some solutions that sound like they'd work. Of course, it talks mostly about developing countries where large portions of the population might not be so touchy about being forced to conserve.

So how much would you pay for a shower?

Ouch

Warning, due to my extended absence, I thought I'd make a senselessly rude return.

Well, it might not be senseless, depending on your point of view. It probably depends on what side of the global warming debate you fall on. But it might also depend on how strong your stomach is and how much you think of polar bears as cuddly teddys, only bigger.

And stinkier from all those seals they eat.

But I digress.

The media battles just keep heating up. This one is an ouch! Like a two-by-four over the head ouch.

It's from the London-based group Plane Stupid that is all upset about how people are stupid about planes. Their catch phrase is "Bringing the aviation industry back down to earth."

In this case, "It's really not about polar bears anymore." We just fly too much.

Now the science cited in the video may be questionable, but don't let the kids watch.

Those zany Brits.

How much do I care?

Well, there's a new way to spend time online and save the planet at the same time.

I got a press release today with a link to a nifty new beta site that allows you to enter facts about your home and find out what you can do to save energy which translates to saving money and reducing the amount of carbon you are responsible for utilities spewing into the atmosphere. It also shows you the do-it-yourself cost of changes and how your home ranks to an "average" home, whatever that is.

Just don't be in a hurry. It may look like you're about to finish the survey when - boom - there's subquestions on the topic you are on.

How'd our house stack up? It's hard to tell, but the accuracy of ratings against average should improve as more people take the survey.

Biggest saving? Install a programable thermostat at a do-it-yourself cost of from $30 to$190 dollars. Quite a spread, but supposedly it will save us $208 a year and reduce carbon by 1,848 pounds annually.

Next up? Install compact fluorescent bulbs.

But I don't get this helpful hint. Put in more attic insulation at a cost of $700 and save $22 a year. That's a long payoff in my wallet world. Besides, there's a puny 195 pounds of carbon to be saved with this move.

Hmmm

Not in your backyard

I know, I've been lax in posting, but here goes a new era.

There's buzz around the region about the Chinese coming to the Panhandle to build a wind farm. I've been asked a few times in the past week and couldn't find out anything specific because all the information floating around never says where the project will be except somewhere in Texas.

That narrows it down.

The New York Times environmental blog Green Inc. is equally vague, but here's the details it did contain, confirmed on the Web site of Cielo Wind Power, the Austin-based company partnering with the Chinese. It also is active in the Panhandle, most recently developing the Wildorado Wind Ranch and piling up leases for future development.

A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Nasdaq company based in China, will ship in 240 of its 2.5 megawatt turbines for the project slated to cover 36,000 acres. The total cost of the project is estimated at $1.5 billion.

But no wonder people are in a fluff, the company hopes to get $450 million of the financing from U.S. stimulus funds, and the project will create 2,000 Chinese manufacturing jobs, according to the blog. There will be American jobs, but not anywhere close to that.

The thing is, for any wind farm, construction jobs are temporary and the jobs to maintain the farms are few.

Cielo has created jobs in the Panhandle, like at the Wildorado Wind Ranch and White Deer's Llano Estacado Wind Ranch, and has plans to do more, but this deal isn't happening here.

I talked to Walt Hornaday, CEO of Cielo, yesterday, and he said the project will be somewhere downstate where there are transmission lines available now. The Panhandle's are still not absolutely guaranteed until the PUC decides wind developers have proven they will use them, and the process to make them happen puts the finish date in 2013.

Hornaday said the reason the news on where the farm will be is that the exact location is not yet concrete.

This isn't the first time Cielo has reached out to partner with an overseas company. Cielo and Samsung Heavy Industries of South Korea are planning to install three of Samsung's 2.5 megawatt prototype turbines near Lubbock for testing.

Playing in the dirt

Workers took advantange of today's mild weather to start topping off the first building at Mariposa ecoVillage, a sustainable development planned for west Amarillo.

Work is going slowly, but it's going, on the 625-acre site owned by Bushland-based businesswoman, environmentalist and philanthropist Mary Emeny. Mary was out with the volunteers as they applied roofing material.

The plan is to get the hospitality/marketing center sealed up from the elements before serious winter hits. Next week, the stucco goes onto the outside of the walls built from dirt compressed into giant Lincoln logs.

Once the doorways and windows are sealed, work can begin on the interior.

I'll get some photos posted here next week as they apply the stucco, also made from soil at the site of former caliche pits. The actual construction of homes and businesses from alternative materials will only cover about 300 acres scarred by the pits. The untouched land will remain untouched.

Work was to begin this week on another building, but developer Linda Lloyd said she has to apply for a waiver from the city because she thinks it's a waste to build roads first and then wear them out during building construction.

All over but the crying

The Solar Decathalon is history now.

There's a fine Web site to check out if you haven't been following this event closely.

There's a lot of sweat and fancy thinking spent on these projects, and the contestants take it very seriously.

I won't spoil the finish for you, but there's a lot of nice work on the part of 20 university teams from Europe and North America. It was all played out on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

LED lights strategically placed in the base of the house and deck help the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's solar-powered house illuminate at night during the Lighting Design contest at the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.,(Credit: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon)

Go, See, Do Stuff

It's good to be smart and this might help all of us.

The Wildcat Bluff Nature Center will hold two events Saturday.

Leadership in energy and environmental design is the topic Mark Benton will be talking about from 10a.m. to noon. The regular admission to Wildcat Bluff will cover the event too.

It's also good to have fun and this might be just the thing. From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., the center will host its Sunset Seasonal Sausage and Suds Scheindig. Cost is $10.

Both events are open to the public.

For more info, call Wildcat Bluff Nature Center at 352-6007.

Big House On The Prairie

Sure, she looks a little rustic, but the first building at Mariposa ecoVillage is coming along.

The last I saw her, there were a few long blocks of compressed earth stacked on a low cement wall. She looked like a giant lincoln log project just getting started. She didn't have much vavoom, although there was some promise.

But this morning I checked and was impressed. The walls are complete with openings for windows and doors. The roof is on and you can see how the ceiling will have a gentle upward curve to it. The structure now looks like something. She's even a little imposing in her sturdiness out on the hill northwest of town.

The walls are still draped with what's left of black plastic sheets meant to slow down the curing of the compressed dirt blocks. But the wind this morning, and apparently before that, was taking a toll on the covering.

After a walk around, it was time to go inside. Wow, there's a big pile of dirt inside on the floor. Wait, what floor? There was only rough, bare ground. Then I remembered. Linda Lloyd, the project manager, told me even the floor would be earthen. A highly packed and polished layer of dirt, mined on site, just like the dirt for the walls. But first there are pipes to lay that will carry water heated by the sun, giving off gentle warmth from inside the "floor."

The thick, solid walls will insulate the inside of the visitors' center for the planned ecologically sound community, so people with inquiring minds this winter can feel comfortable taking in the promise of Mariposa. The idea is for the 18-inch thick walls to keep the temperature between 62 degrees in the winter and 72 degrees in the summer.

I'll give it a couple more weeks and go out to take some photos to post here for a proper sneak peek. She's still not quite ready for primetime, but she's shaping up.

Carbonated Conversations

Just back from a somewhat steamy Columbus, Ohio, and the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference.

It was a jam-packed three days on the future of energy with a constant background glow thanks to global warming. The panelists were by and large true believers and basically activists for the kill-carbon-before-it-kills-us point of view. Most were more temperate than Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress and blog author, but who isn't?

Anyway, it was thought provoking, even with a grain of salt or two. The shift in scientific thinking puts all the blame for excess carbon on human activity, and that makes more and more sense as the data comes in. But one word of caution from former astronaut, and role model for skyward-looking kids of a certain graying age, John Glenn. He said he still has scientist friends passing on the idea that the jury isn't totally out on whether global warming is part of nature's cycles. And that raises the questions of who or what's spewing the carbon dioxide many blame as the leader of the Greenhouse Gas Gang.

But then he came back with this: "If we screw it up, there's no going back...No matter what's happening in the cycles, we have to clean up the environment."

He described Earth's atmosphere as a "thin film" rather than the chunk of air in school textbooks, painting an image of something fragile and at risk.

What a guy. He and his wife since 1943 are still vital and involved and were then off to a national climate something or other.

I'll be writing here and in the Globe-News in a hopefully more coherent way about what's happening here on the High Plains in relation to the topics the experts discussed at the conference. The common thread was the quickest, easiest ways to reduce carbon are conservation and efficiency.

On that topic, a smarter grid is one way experts propose to burn less fuels that release carbon. I'm working on an update on efforts to make our stupid grid smarter here at home for my first story. The next one may be a look at how school districts are faring on the 2007 mandate to reduce energy consumption 5 percent per year.

By the way, the hospitality on the Ohio State University campus was fantastic, although I was dragging a bit from the pace by the time I got home at midnight last night. The organizers of the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference and especially the staff of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism and the John Glenn School of Public Affairs know their stuff.

And it was a little eerie looking out my hotel window on the Woody Hayes Boulevard towards the solid, gray memorial to his legacy, the holy stadium where he did his thing that is even lit at night.

Some utilities have all the fun

Well, sorry for my absence. I’ve been distracted by family issues with my father failing despite his hospice care and my mother-in-law trying to find her way after the July 4 death of her husband.

I’m going to do better

Here’ something happy about our region’s power supplier. It would be more happy if they were doing these experiments here, but it’s way happier than getting their bills.

Xcel Energy recently announced the first phase of its SmartGridCity in Boulder, Colo., is up and running. It’s a combination of infrastructure and software engineered to increase reliability, provide energy usage info to customers, allow remote reading of electricity meters and the installation of devices the utility or customer can control remotely to manage usage.

One immediate benefit was the system detected four transformers about to croak, allowing Xcel to replace them before customers were left in the dark for hours. It’s an experiment, but the utility says it’s looking good so far on the way to refining a truly smart grid for the future.

An Xcel partner, Spanish energy company Abengoa Solar, just announced another Colorado test, this time in Grand Junction. Abengoa will install a parabolic trough concentrating solar power plant at Xcel’s coal-powered Cameo plant.

That’s the confusing way of saying a trough of mirrors that move to follow the sun and they focus the light that hits them to heat synthetic oil in a pipe, according to Abengoa. The hot oil moves to the power plant and turns water into steam that spins or helps spin the turbines that generate electricity. That and makes plant run more efficiently, using less coal to make the same amount of electricity. More efficient, less carbon emitted. Don’t ask me the details. I’m still working on finding that out.

But why don’t they try that stuff around here? Not that any emissions stay around long with our gentle breezes – except Hereford’s, Borger’s and Pampa’s, I guess.

Please, hold the surprises

Consistent and predictable, those are bywords for food manufacturers and even produce companies. Notice the words manufacturers and companies. They can be large entities with little ideas.

When I first saw this story about “electronic tongues” my curiosity made me rush into it. Somebody or sombodies had developed technology that “boasts 100 percent accuracy over the full range of natural and artificial sweet substances.” That means a sensor that can accurately taste test a lot of stuff.

Interesting.

But then I started to think about it and got a little depressed. These developers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had no doubt tried to make something to improve processes for manufacturers. You know, make things better. The device is the size of a business card, an improvement over the first electronic tongues, and much more accurate.

But to what end will these be put to use? Making things more the same. From China to Amarillo, the candy you eat or soda you drink will taste even more the same than they do now. Where’s the fun?

Now I don’t ask for something crazy like every Red Bull tasting different from the next, but guaranteeing sameness allows for companies to expand. That expansion can chew up the little guy, erasing the variety that is cooked up in smaller batches. It’s like barbecue or enchilada sauces, when you get one that doesn’t taste like it came out of a mass-produced can, no matter how good that stuff is in the can, that new sauce can be a discovery, a revelation, a diversion.

I know, its somehow comforting to walk into a McDonalds and know that, within a certain margin, everything will taste like the last McDonald product you consumed. But does that mean we should banish the Burger Barrel or Arnold's? Should our goal be to become absolutely consistent and safe? That’s what got us the tomatoes everyone curses at the grocery store. They’re reliable and travel well to make for bigger business.

Yummy.

But I still think the idea of an electronic tongue is kind of cool – as a novelty.

Blinded by science

All the details are beyond me, but think about how cool it would be to be able to paint a solar panel onto almost anything.

Chad Boutin recently reported for the National Institute of Standards and Technology that scientists are developing organic photovoltaics (see, I’m already getting a little confused). The short version is that they would replace rigid silicon cells. They would begin as a kind of ink that you could paint on various surfaces.

One rub is that the best organic photovoltaics currently can only convert less than 6 percent of light to power and don’t last very long.

Scientists at the institute are working on improving that performance and recently made discoveries that should help make progress.

“The 'ink' is a blend of a polymer that absorbs sunlight, enabling it to give up its electrons, and ball-shaped carbon molecules called fullerenes that collect electrons. When the ink is applied to a surface, the blend hardens into a film that contains a haphazard network of polymers intermixed with fullerene channels.”

See, clear as mud. But the important part is that, “By applying X-ray absorption measurements to the film interfaces, the team discovered that by changing the nature of the electrode surface, it will repulse fullerenes (like oil repulses water) while attracting the polymer.”

That means improvements in performance and lifespan because the materials aren't mixed haphazardly. That seems like a good thing to me.

And organic photovoltaics, try typing that fast six times, are a hot topic these days. A quick Google search brought up about 230,000 results. Go there for some light reading.