I see increasing mention in the magazine of the idea of “sustainable construction” without a definition of what exactly that is, or any explanation of how anyone should calculate how much more to spend to achieve “sustainability”. All this unquestioned discussion is leading to a general aura of political correctness where noone is willing to ask if the emporer is clothed.
My own view is that “environmental consciousness” has been enormously overhyped, inspiring many to go overboard with “sustainable” ideas which are not justified or measurable. Instead they are justified on what can best be described as “environmental religious” grounds. I was project manager on one very large such project which spent enormous sums for “energy saving” benefits. Analysis proved that the real results would be meager but the project was pushed ahead anyway for corporate public relations purposes.
The basic flaw in the concept of sustainability is the simple minded idea that the world is running out of resources: Sort of like emptying your refrigerator. Like the idea of a flat earth, this seems obvious.
On a global and historical scale however, exactly the reverse is occurring. The cave man had available to him all the same world “resources” we have today. But since he couldn’t use them, they were to him just useless stuff. Since Malthus was proven wrong about the “unsustainability” of population over 150 years ago, mankind has continually discovered how to covert formerly useless stuff to useable resources at a far greater rate than the “stuff” is being “used up”. This applies to virtually every area of human resource use including food production and energy. We now use petroleum instead of whale oil not because of environmental conciousness but because John D Rockefeller and others made petroleum a better and cheaper alternative. In addition the environment is cleaner today than at any time in the 20th century: and not mainly because of environmental laws, but because increased standards of living and improved technology made being clean possible and affordable for developed countries.
So for all practical purposes, we are not running out of anything.
Admittedly this is a complex subject, with many related issues I haven’t mentioned here. For more thorough treatment I suggest reading:
“Sustainable Development: A Dubious Solution in Search of a Problem” Jerry Taylor
“The Skeptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomberg
“A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth” Wilfred Beckerman
Barry Milliken, Architect.
Replies
Besides, if the scarcity of a given resource WERE an issue, we would see a corresponding increase in the cost of that resource. If we actually WERE runing out of a resource, people wouldn't have to be poked & prodded into using alternatives.
Case in point: During the recent runnup in gasoline prices, people started parking their cars, buying more fuel efficient vehicles, etc.
As heating & cooling costs increase, people will search for cost effective alternatives of their own volition & suppliers will start to produce "greener" energy on their own.
The other problem I've seen is that most of the "sustainable" products that have come out cost twice as much & work half as well as the old stuff. How is that sustainable?
The market tells us what is truly scarce & what is not.
Yeah, "the market will take care of it". That's a nice theory, except it fails when the monetary cost of the thing being consumed is only part of the real, actual cost of consumption. Unless taxation is used to assign a cost to cover the other costs of consumption, these don't show up in the bottom line and consumption is artificially subsidized.
The other issue is the decreasing quality of resources available. As we consume the better quality resources, they can be replaced with lower quality resources at higher cost. Old growth timber gets replaced with plantation timber- sure it's still wood, but it's NOT at all the same! Light sweet crude gets replaced with tarsands synthetic crude- but at roughly two to three times the input energy consumed per unit of product. There are lots of other examples.
I have no problem with consumption itself. Humans are entitled to live on the planet, and they consume resources to live. Where I have concern is with WASTE. And yes, that's inherently a matter of values. But when we know better, we should DO better. Merely because you can pay the face value of your consumption doesn't entitle you to waste.
The OP and I are on the same page as to the enviro-religion aspect. There are some folks who won't use a modern synthetic material regardless how beneficial it is, simply because they have some artificial and usually irrational notion that natural equals good and sustainable and synthetic equals bad, toxic and unsustainable. Idealists can build whatever castles they like in the clouds, but we real people have to build real structures with real materials, and that's entirely about trade-offs. All real materials have advantages and disadvantages. If a synthetic foam insulation costs a gallon of hydrocarbon resources and saves thousands of gallons of hydrocarbon resources by reducing heating or cooling energy requirements, a pragmatist won't exclude foam from their construction on the basis that it's "unsustainable". Unless the heatsource is something other than fossil-fuel driven, worrying about a few gallons of hydrocarbon feedstocks in the insulation is totally pointless. Making a religion out of it doesn't help- it just makes it tougher to come to rational conclusions, tending to make us "penny-wise and pound foolish" hypocrites.
"Yeah, "the market will take care of it". That's a nice theory, except it fails when the monetary cost of the thing being consumed is only part of the real, actual cost of consumption."
The monetary cost REFLECTS the cost of the thing being consumed. If it is diffucult to obtain, it will cost more to purchase, if it is easy to obtain, it will be cheap.
Suppose there was enough lumber left to build exactly one house. How much do you think that lumber would go for? It wouldn't be cheap & so people would look for & bring other materials to the market.
The fact is, "green" materials are currently more scarce than conventional building materials. As the costs of building materials in general increase, then the costs of "green" materials would be more attractive by comparison. The problem with most of the purveyors of green building practices is that they spend more time pushing their products virtues (real or imagined) than they do in finding ways to produce them quickly & efficiently.
I'm all for saving energy & plan do make my house as energy efficient as possible. However, if it comes down to having a house that is slightly less energy efficient & not having a house at all, then I choose the former.
Edited 10/25/2005 3:22 pm ET by Soultrain
You miss moltenmetal's point about hidden costs. The market ignores hidden costs, which means it is useless at determining the value of an item when there are hidden costs involved.Using your gasoline example: Yes, people did buy less gasoline when the price went up. Do you think that people might also use less gasoline if the price of our involvement in the Middle East over the last 50 years or so was included as a tax at the pump that whole time? We are interested in the Middle East for one reason only - we need a steady flow of oil. We don't really care about the arabs for any other reason. We are in Iraq for a lot of reasons, but the underlying reason is that we need to have a presence in the Mid-East to make sure the oil keeps flowing. The terrorists attacked us because we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, their "Holy Land." How much did 9-11 cost us? How much is the current war costing us? How much does our support of Israel cost us? How much does our support of the Saudi family cost us? We pay all those costs as income taxes and higher interest rates when the gov't goes into debt to pay for stuff like the war. The costs are hidden from the oil market, where they belong. What if the costs were paid at the pump instead of taken out of our paychecks? Would there be a change in our driving habits? Would alternative fuels and more fuel efficient cars be able to compete in the marketplace better?The market only works to solve problems when all that stuff is factored in during the sale. With hidden costs, it's not.
Much goes ignored in this world. From 89-94 I lived in the Congo. Lots of beautiful ebony trees but ebony logs can not be exported or the people would be exploited. So the locals use then for firewood because they don't have the money to buy propane.
Never could get a UN offical to explain to me how that was saving the trees.
as to the enviro-religion aspect
Which can be scary. That 'zeal' forces cities to spend tax dollars on all sorts of zero, and negative, return projects--all for some unspecified, but universally believed in, "good."
Most city recycling projects fit that description. Many actually generater more trash for the landfill, than produce any real gain from recycling.
As was already said, the problem is the waste (like excess packaging), not the reuse.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
The same can be said for ethanol. Currently it takes more energy to refine it than it generates via combustion.
I hera ya on the excessive packaging. On our house project, more of our trash seems to be boxes & packaging than scrap lumber, shingles, etc.
Edited 10/28/2005 10:56 am ET by Soultrain
on the excessive packaging. On our house project, more of our trash seems to be boxes & packaging than scrap lumber
But that also ties together. Glossy cardboard can't go to paper recycling, but the clear thermo-mold plastic on it could. The polyethylene shrinkwrap is pretty much useless, but can be made biodegradable with a simple addition of flour to the mix.
So, there's all sorts of costs for hauling away garbage. "Construction debris" often means being billed at a premium. Larger bills can encourage some (just some) to "lighten the load." That leads to burned PT scrap (which is clearly releasing bad-for-all-living-things pollutants), or "augmenting" fill (which is not only environmentally bad, it's structurally bad).
I know of too many cases, too. Worst part is that the true culprits are not the ones who get jumped on. (Know of one where the owner made the excavator dump some material on site--or not get paid--; TNRCC jumped on the excavator--the equipment operator, not the contractor, not the owner <ggrrr>.)Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
This is a dumb statement. Gasoline takes more energy to refine than you get burning it in your car too, but that's why we don't use Gasoline burning energy plants to make electricity. We use it in cars because it's portable. Ethanol, likewise, is portable. It's a battery, not an energy *source*. Just like gasoline.-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
We use it in cars because it's portable. Ethanol, likewise, is portable. It's a battery
Ah, but that equation includes the weight and btu per given volume. There are more btu in gasoline per volume that just about any other refined petroleum fuel. Yet, most jest use a kerosene derivative, because is weighs less for the BTU per volume.
Where ethanol 'fails' as a motor vehicle fuel is in how much fewer BTU per volume it has over gasoline. So, the "cost" is greater to use ethanol for the return. (If a tank of fuel only gets you 3/4 to the fuel station, you have to push the vehicle the rest of the way to get another tankfull--that extra energy has to come from somewhere.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
What you meant to say is that a gallon of ethanol, with a chemical energy content of X BTU, in practice takes more than X BTUs of FOSSIL-FUEL-sourced energy to produce. The inputs include fuel for tractors and other farm equipment, natural gas to make the fertilizers used on the fields, natural gas to heat the fermenters and run the stills, and (generally fossil fuel-derived) electricity to run all the other equipment including the dehydrators.
Of course you can plow the fields using horses, fertilize with horse manure and fire the fermenters and stills with wood like ol' grandad and his ten kids did, but your yields will go down and costs per gallon of ethanol will skyrocket.
Ethanol isn't the only product if you make it from grain- you also get some animal feed in the form of spent brewer's wort, so the energy economics aren't as simple as looking at the fuel side alone.
None of this means ethanol is worthless as a fuel additive. Ethanol, just like biodiesel derived from vegetable oil, reduces the emissions from combusting fossil-derived fuels by acting as an oxygenate. But if what you're after is anhydrous (dry) ethanol for fuels use, it's questionable whether it makes more energetic sense to make it via intensive grain- or corn-farming with all its fossil-fuel inputs since this is a wet process. Instead you can make dry ethanol directly via the reaction of (petroleum-derived) ethylene and water vapour, or via the conversion of synthesis gas made by the gasification of basically anything with carbon in it- natural gas, wood, garbage, coal, agricultural waste, old tires... Ethanol from waste biomass cellulose is another thing entirely- one which is not commercially viable at the moment.
The point is: just because grain ethanol is "natural" doesn't make it either good or sustainable or even sensible as a fuel. Frankly, until you've converted all your stationary energy users to renewables, focusing on renewable transportation fuels is just a waste of time. The key is not to waste these fuels by transporting two tonnes of steel around with one person in it!
Yes, quite.
None of this means ethanol is worthless as a fuel additive.
It's likely better than many of the other mandated additives. But that could then veer into the differences between motor vehicle fuel and industrial-use fuel (ugh the Pet-E types will go on and on . . . )
like biodiesel derived from vegetable oil
Which is a really good deal all around. A lot of "environmental" cost is incurred in just transporting used cooking oil & grease for disposal. The only thing better than biodiesel is co-generation using collected cooking oil. (Gets the recycling 'costs' off the "grid" to benefit of grid & recyclers.)
Instead you can make dry ethanol directly via the reaction of (petroleum-derived) ethylene and water vapour, or via the conversion of synthesis gas made by the gasification of basically anything with carbon in it- natural gas, wood, garbage, coal, agricultural waste, old tires...
Which is really intriguing technology, with all sorts of possible potential applications--assuming the regulatory agencies will permit them (in both senses of the word). Seeing as how there's been some right donnybrooks over using methyl alcohol as a fuel admixture (which can be produced from a number of waste cellulose sources--think wood pulp, paper mill, glossy paper & card/pasteboard recycling). "But "wood" alcohol can kill you" goes the whine.
Ethanol from waste biomass cellulose is another thing entirely- one which is not commercially viable at the moment.
So's, the methane from landfills, it's great tech, it's just getting the permits & the like. The sister city over here is going through some expensive contortions installing methane extraction gear on its closed landfills. Short-sightedly (least in my book) they would not spend more to actually recover the gas, it's just burned off. The pilot project is getting some grief too, the burning waste methane it seems, as as offensive to the hoighty-toighty types out there "in the country" as the out-gassing landfill . . .
The point is: just because grain ethanol is "natural" doesn't make it either good or sustainable or even sensible as a fuel
Natural does not mean no-risk any more than artificial equals dangerous. Some complaints I've heard about TXI's portland cement chimneys makes me wonder about basic science education . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Barry, Barry, Barry,
You've posted on the wrong website. Since I've been reading here, I'm absolutely certain that the sky is falling. Just keep reading, we'll get you into the fold.
Yeah, it's all one big eat-all-you-want endless buffet.
"In 1992, the devestating collapse of the cod stocks off the east coast of Newfoundland forced the Canadian government to take drastic measures and close the fishery. Over 40,000 people lost there jobs. The communities are still struggling to recover. The marine ecosystem is still in a state of collapse."
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/cbio/cancod.html
My take on issues such as over fishing would be to allow to own fishing rights for certain areas. People always take better care of their own property than they do other people's - it's human nature.
Why aren't cows & pigs extinct? we eat them all the time.
Come on Soultrain!!! What are you gonna do when your school of fish comes onto to my area? You got'em branded?
Something like 2/3 of all edible fish species are under population pressures that they will have to have on fishing bans on them. Up here where I can see the waters that used to contain so much cod that it was thought you could never fish it out, after 12-14 years (or maybe longer) of severely reduced fishing or bans, the population still is not coming back as indicated by trial catches by the Dept of fisheries. This used to be such a productive area that 20 some countries including even Russia, Japan, US, Spain, Portugal, France, England etc. had large fishing factories out there fulltime 365/24/7- had a few friends /aquaintenances who were fisheries observers trying to make everyone "keep their promises not to overfish or fish the wrong species". But the better species are fished out!!!
As I said on another thread here- we're even running out of natural aggregate for concrete. We're now blasting mountainsides apart, crushing the stone and shipping it hundreds and thousands of miles (no energy use here though). One mining company that I watch as a stock is shipping from Alaska to California and Japan. We have at least two huge quarries scarring beautiful rural settings here and......there's a big fight on to stop another in a heavily frequented tourist area .....whose future product is all destined for NY.
Does this sound like we're thinking ahead?
You're kidding right? If I owned fishing rights to a certain "parcel" of the ocean, I'd darn sure make certain that I had fish there.
Obviously fish move around, but just like hunting geese or whatever, if you provide feeding & breeding areas for the fish, they will come back. If my livelyhood depended on fish in an area that I had complete control of, I'd want to make sure that there were fish in it.
With reguards to the quarries, do you own the land that's being mined? Why should you're preferences be honored above those of others?
Edited 10/25/2005 10:30 pm ET by Soultrain
I wish I had better knowledge of your constitution and amendments as a few years back a brilliant speaker from Harvard gave a series of lectures here on "too much democracy going on at home" and everybody's individual rights slowing down government and the courts. (that's why people/criminals go free from not being brought to trial quickly enough and 125 or so people (a lot of them disadvantaged poor or minorities) have walked off death row in the past 10 years. Thank someone for DNA testing)
She quoted (don't quote me) something like a section where the common good is mentioned. There are some things that we do for the common good- destruction of habitat, losing species , (maybe we should solve African hunger by sending them more rifles so they can get the last of the elephants, tigers, black rhino's etc for food. At least , we will still have pictures and videos of them.), preserving at least some heritage properties and on and on.
Post 13 : should read - stopping destruction of habitat.........
>>With reguards to the quarries, do you own the land that's being mined? Why should you're preferences be honored above those of others?The point is the loss of available resources, not his preferences.
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Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace
Again, if it is a loss of resources, the cost of obtaining that resource will increase as said resource becomes more scarce - thus causing people to seek different alternatives.
which works from an economics point of view but doesn't factor in the wasteland that's left behind. The value of wildlands isn't just in the materials we can extract from them. Until these externalized costs are factored in, using markets to allocate resources won't produce sustainable results.Consider two hypothetical scenarios: Farm A using no pesticides produces 100 bushels of corn and no harmful runoffFarm B uses heavy concentrations of pesticides and 130 bushels of corn and enough toxic runoff to destroy the local fishing stream.The economics are clear, Farm B is the preferred system from a production standpoint. But if you include ALL of the costs including the destruction of the local fishing stream then it starts to look not so good. The problem with all of these 'the market will fix it' arguments is that negative consequences: land and soil destruction, toxic wastes, ground water depletion, pollution, etc. are almost never included in the costs even though clearly they should if you are doing an honest accounting. I have no problem using the market to allocate goods and resources if the true costs are included but I don't often see the free market crowd actively lobbying for including externalized costs which tells us they aren't fighting on principle but rather, are simply opportunists. My feeling is that they are the ultimate welfare bums because they rely on society to pay for the messes they create.
It's more like Farm A produces 50 bushels that are full of bugs & Farm B produces 200 - not to mention that the procducts used to control pests in "organically grown produce" cost about 5 times as much.
So much talk is invested in the harm the chemicals may produce & usually that harm is far outweighed by the benefit. Take DDT for example, Malaria was on it's way out until DDT was banned, now hosts of undeveloped countries are swept with a preventable disease.
Besides, if pesticides actaully DID render the land infertile, that WOULD be factored into the costs.
In terms of land becomeing "wasteland" after mining for aggregate or whatever, why should it matter to you? It's not your land.
I'd love it if there weren't any development going on around me, but what right do I have to impose my desire to be completely surrounded by trees at all times on other people who wish to have homes? I didn't purchase the whole town when I bought my lot.
If half the money spent on lobbying (sp?) for legislation to impose one group's PERSONAL view on the environment on everyone else, were smartly invested, groups like the Sierra club could be purchasing land for themselves to keep as "pure" as they wished. They could even deed restrict if if they wanted after they bought it.
Now, if only the pollution you create had the common decency to stay on your land after you create it, huh? I'll tell you what.. if you hermetically seal your land on all sides, below, above, 4 horizontal sides... do whatever you like in it. But unless you can keep the crap in your own land, don't be surprised when other people have a say, because it does affect them too. If your farm kills a river, everyone downstream from you is affected.Malaria was on the way out... along with dozens of species. I guess you don't understand the value of "biodiversity" either.-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
What species were on the way out because of DDT? There were studies that showed the POSSIBILITY that certain bird's egg shells were thinner when exposed to large concentrations of DDT - is this potential worth people across an entire continent dying?
2nd (and I'm definitely playing Devil's advocate on this point - I don't advocate the wanton destruction of species), but according to evolutionary theory, the fittest species survived & those that couldn't hack it didn't.
Biodiversity & evolution don't work together. What DOES work is allowing people to exercise rights of ownership on their own property (land & otherwise). Given an owner occupied house & a rental, which do you expect to be in better shape?
If people have ownership stake in the land (or sea in the case of fishing) they are obtaining said resource from, it's in their best interest to keep that resource available - so they can either keep generating the resource or sell the rights to someone else.
But you're missing the point. It's not THEIR land they are necessarily screwing up. wind blows, water flows. You own that coastal marshland, fill it, build it, make your money and move on... and the people left behind find out exactly what that coastal marshland did to hold their coast together later. YOU owned it. YOU made your profit. OTHERS pay the price.That is why capitalism is not the answer to everything.-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
This is a fascinating discussion. I think that when we say sustainable construction, we simply mean that choices have been made factoring in such things as the durability of the materials, their embodied energy, their inherent toxicity, the overall efficient use of resources, and the effect of the building on the locale. I don't think we're advocating earthships so much as reasonable and thoughtful design. So, while that may be a vague description, the entire idea of designing and building with some thought to the greater good is fairly amorphous, and extends not only to the use of resources, but to Marxism and capitalism, freedom and statism.
Somewhat on topic is a bumper sticker I saw the other day. If it's not grown, it's mined. Given some of what I consider to be shortsighted nimbyism in my area regarding such things as quarries and cement plants, it gave me pause.Andy Engel
Senior editor, Fine Woodworking magazine
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value. --Robert M. Pirsig
None of this matters in geological time.
Well said, Andy.Let me add a bit from my brother's firm's website to tie Historic Preservation side in: (I am copy and pasting, cuz they can say it better than me, duh...edit out the name if you see fit, too.)Historic PreservationAt Farr Associates, we view preservation as integral to our larger mission to design sustainable human environments. Historic preservation is an essential part of a civil society; historic buildings form the core assets of many communities, and their restoration is key to neighborhood revitalization. Preservation is an essential part of any conservation-minded approach to human settlements. Historic buildings serve as anchors in time, preserving cultural richness and providing essential lessons for contemporary work.The strength of our preservation practice lies in achieving a level of historic integrity that responds best to each project’s inherent assets. Where a legacy exists of high-quality materials and exceptional workmanship, savings on new construction can be allocated to technological improvements in lighting and energy systems, and in the application of green building strategies.In our experience, renovating or restoring an older building provides deep ongoing rewards—in both the process (research, design, and construction) and the day-to-day satisfaction of occupying a renewed vintage building.
Yes indeed, well said Andy. I think you've summarized it accurately.Following upon that, here are a few thoughts I've already shared with a friend of mine who is putting a green building program together in his local community. He is trying to make a positive contribution, both economic and ecological. As I've probably made clear here, I agree with him -- both components are essential.The problems that we are faced with are largely the result of people making individual expressions of preference in the exchange of goods and services. That's a plausible working definition of a local economy. Because population is the governing factor in all of our calculations, with economic return on investment following close behind, I can't help but wonder if it's time to look deeper into the science of how small changes in a process can produce big results.The answer to these seemingly intractable environmental problems is right in front of us; to wit, the problem is the solution. Any time you start a business or try to analyze an economic function you look for the driver and the multiplier. In this case, the drivers are population, energy use, and consumption of labor and materials. Given that, there is no reason why the market cannot function in a positive ecological direction.With fuel prices doubling in one year, steel and lumber prices skyrocketing, and concrete soon to follow, what green builders have been saying for years is starting to make sense to anyone.The challenge is to give people more value for their money, strengthen the local economy, and improve the environment all at once. I maintain that it is well within our reach to do so.Look at Sarah Susanka and The Not So Big House, I don't think she has the answer, but she is on the right track.If we start by building houses that;are appropriately sized, attractive, comfortable, and energy-efficient,
make a responsible use of materials,
outlive the mortgage by a factor of 2,
do not cost more per year than 25% of of a family's annual income,
do not create a waste disposal crisis at the end of their useful lives (the house's life that is),
keep as much of the construction cost as possible in the local economy,
make thorough and responsible use of every energy flow that runs through it (read waste water, rain water, garbage, electricity, sunlight, so on),and make it cost the same or less than what we are nor regarding as "standard" construction, we will have made a difference so significant that I do not think we can accurately predict the results.I know that we already know how to do this, because I have done it. But one or two houses here and there is not enough. It needs to be regarded as our new "common sense" if there is to be a measurable result.If we can incorporate enough urban planning to reduce our dependence upon automotive transportation (that is, make it discretionary) and re-establish the concept of functionally integtated neighborhoods, we will have accompished nothing less than a socio-economic and environmental revolution.The initial (or start-up) capital is intellectual.
After working in one type or other of conservation for over 30 years, I guess I've become a little cynical of where the masses are still heading. When you mentioned the "new common sense", it reminded of one of my quotes in my profile here:
"Common sense ain't all that common, is it?" by Mark Twain , I believe.
If it don't change its direction soon, the masses will have to be controlled by what they all love: legislation and regulations!!
Speaking of "common sense".
Sitting here with the TV on the Discovery Channel. They're talking about "Ultimate Machines" in which they show a couple jet propelled tractors (as in tractor/trailers) dragging....They each use 450 liters (about 110 -120 gallons US) in 10 seconds!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is this what we what our children to be amused and influenced by??? This and NASCAR. Our only indigenous refiner in the Atlantic Provinces (who's influence now is down to at least southern Maine with turnpike gas stations) now has a car and team for some minor NE US version of NASCAR. Stopped buying gas at their stations unless absolutely necessary!!!
Agreed -- 100 percent.The hope I hold out for all of us is that we can learn. For example, I lived near a river a a kid. One of the local septic haulers used the river as a dump site. There was no law stopping him at the time. The Clean Water Act did not exist. Since the passage of that law, we have made some progress as a society. Nowadays few people would consider that behaviour acceptable.This is why I think we need to work so hard to provide an economic incentive for those who will only act in their own narrowly-defined and perceived best interest.
"Somewhat on topic is a bumper sticker I saw the other day. If it's not grown, it's mined. Given some of what I consider to be shortsighted nimbyism in my area regarding such things as quarries and cement plants, it gave me pause."That deserves a thread of its own. The NIMBY attitude needs to be called out for what it is-- hypocrisy. I get it all the time from neighbors of the new jobsite who don't want their view spoiled, or whatever the problem of the day is. These are the "I'm here, raise the drawbridge" types. I usually point out to them that they liked it when someone built their house, these new neighbors of theirs feel pretty much the same way, they are going to like their own new house too, so get out of the way and let me finish tearing the h#ll out of the landscape, OK? <G>When NIMBYs graduate they become BANANAS: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. <G>
I agree...and then again...I live in a pretty active neighborhood, we block off the street 2-3 times a year and throw a party, we have a business district nearby and folks get involved in helping them succeed (annual cleanup, word gets around if someone is having trouble that kind of thing). This is the flip side of nimbyism - folks who care about their neighborhood and want to make it a livable place.We're starting to get a lot of traffic on our street and so the block is lobbying for stop signs, speed bumps, etc. I'm sure this looks to the outside world as pure and simple nimbyism but on the other hand we have 25+ kids on our one block stretch and it's both a safety issue and of course they can't play in street which sucks. I remember playing football on our block when I grew up - not for these kids.
This is the flip side of nimbyism - folks who care about their neighborhood and want to make it a livable place.
Which, fortunately, often occurs.
I'm not an excavator, but sometimes pretend to be one. Current job was cutting a drive through a boulder field up a mountain. Then cutting a pad for a house. Fill used for the front yard. I'm about 20' tall on the fill now. Rocks range up to 14-16 tons (my guess as to the max I can push downhill). You can sure see where I've been.
One neighbor (recent arrival) clearly resents a new driveway going past her property. On the other side, the old coot isn't thrilled, but that's mostly due to his losing his shooting range. He knew it wasn't his, has taken it in good stead. He's more worried about my rolling a boulder through his house.
Yesterday somebody new stopped by. Lives in the oldest (200 yrs) house around and came to check on progress. Didn't bother her in the slightest to see the work done. What did bother her was the tripling of size of the new development on the other edge of the small town. She'd been to the country board of supervisors meeting and was disgusted by their unanimous rollover for the developer.
What I saw was balance. Everybody would like land to not be developed, but realize it's gonna happen. Then they'd like some reasonable control. Existing zoning does it for the site I'm working. Large subdivisions are another matter. We've got one coming down the road here, 400+ acres, in a rural setting. No telling what it'll look like.
What I'd like to see would be a tightening of building requirements regarding energy use for creature comfort. The powers-that-be here are far more concerned with "affordable". I don't see a contradiction, but I'm a minority. We're having my client over to see what type of house would be ideal, IMNSHO, for his site. PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Storme, that doesn't sound NIMBY to me at all. It sounds like you live in a really cool neighborhood. Folks who care about their community are the essence of what makes a good quality of life.I'm all for speed bumps and stop signs and people slowing down, getting to know each other, and making a place for the kids to play.I wish there were speed bumps in my neighborhood . . . I'd install them for free if it was allowed.I've lived in communities that have block parties, close off the street off for the weekend, everybody go out and spend some good time together.Crime goes down, the local businesses thrive like never before, property values go up, people have fun, gee, what's not to like?THAT is the kind of sustainable community I want to be in.Glad you commented -- this is really important.
So there's more context here. So far it all sounds great, folks care about their neighborhood, the do stuff to make it livable. I live in Berkeley, California and ALL of the neighborhoods are trying to keep their traffic down so what's resulted is a very convoluted system where basically you have to use the main streets and only the main streets to get through certain parts of town which creates traffic jams. If we put up speed bumps or barriers it pushes traffic onto the next block which then gets upset at all the traffic and lobbies for more speed bumps and on it goes.It all comes from a good place but sometimes you have to take a step back and say, ok, what's the common good here how can we manage this so that no neighborhood gets too much traffic but all share in it somewhat. Sometimes you have to suck it up and put up with some of the problems of city living because fixing them just creates another problem.My complaints about the process aside, the city is actually very livable, I walk to a neighborhood business district that has most of what I need, bicycling and walking are common which helps keep crime and the traffic down, etc. so who knows if we did switch back to no barriers and speed bumps perhaps I'd hate it, hard to say.
Maybe we should take a lesson from the organic folks - once on the margins, now mainstream, and name our businesses with the word sustainable in the title. Folks still argue about whether the foods any better for you, but it sells anyway.
Ryan Sustainable Homes...
Then the govt will come along and set sustainable guidelines, and we'll all raise our rates.
But the tides of public taste will have to change before we will be selling many "not so big" houses
Treat every person you meet like you will know them the rest of your life - you just might!
<<Maybe we should take a lesson from the organic folks - once on the margins, now mainstream, and name our businesses with the word sustainable in the title. Folks still argue about whether the foods any better for you, but it sells anyway.Ryan Sustainable Homes...Then the govt will come along and set sustainable guidelines, and we'll all raise our rates. But the tides of public taste will have to change before we will be selling many "not so big" houses>>I think you are on to something.Mostly, people buy what is available, (As opposed to buying what is not available? <G>) rather than build custom.If something else was available, they might buy it.If it cost less, felt better to live in, and had a higher resale value, we probably couldn't punch them out fast enough.
I'm friends with a builder that puts up 100 or so houses a year - everyone comes in the door saying "we want something a little different" and he says most of them leave with basically the same thing. There are a number of reasons for this, but here is one:
I don't want it to be true, but it seems most folks are mindlessly bouncing through life, just following the path of least resistance, very little vision or passion. But that is not everyone.
At the ends of the "bell curve" are folks who think about the consequences of our thoughts, trends and actions far into the future. These creative, passion filled leaders are everywhere, but less common than average folks. Many of this type frequent the BT board. Some see solutions on the right, some on the left, and most are thoughtfully seeking to better their life and others--how we shelter people is a big deal. Homebuilding is a big deal.
The masses will follow where we lead, (if we lead well) and most are too lazy or distracted to do the research. DDT is bad: "OK" You need a bigger house: "OK" DDT isn't bad: "OK" Sustainable is the way to go: "OK" (even if I have no idea what that really means)
What is annoying are the agenda driven folks who spread misinformation for their cause without the perspective to see the damage they are doing. The masses then follow, and we have a movement based upon a lie. Is "sustainability" one of these lies?
It sure is a hot topic. I haven't seen this many posts on a topic since D Mix Worshipper...
Treat every person you meet like you will know them the rest of your life - you just might!
Environmental issues always seem to get people riled. Nobody likes being told no and unfortunately that's often the environmental message: No, you CAN'T build a shopping mall on that wetland. Mix into this 40 years of a concerted propaganda effort to demonize environmentalists and you get a lot of heat. When they finally cut down so many trees in NorCal that they had close a lot of the mills, they went and told all the folks who lost their jobs it was due to enviros. Same message went around when the fisheries collapsed in the East. People are being lied to. The huge irony of course is that if they had slowed down the cut (or the fishing) which is what the environmental community was fighting for, those jobs would still be there.
Getting back to the subject of sustainability, this is obviously something that's debated at length within environmental groups, what probably comes as a surprise to many is that the definitions of sustainability that environmental groups settle on *always* and I mean always, include livable, long term jobs for the local community. Locking the land away is fine for national parks but we need wood and that wood has to come from somewhere. The boom/crash cycle like we see in timber or fishing right now is terrible for the environment and it's terrible for forest communities. Pesticide Action Network, the anti-pesticides group I once worked for, considers itself to be pro-farmer (and genuinely is in my opinion).
Another story about how public opinion is manipulated: the Forest service recently lost a lawsuit because they closed down public comment on a lot of major cutting and mining projects. When the judge ruled they had to allow public comment before they could cut down half the forest, they then threw a temper tantrum and shut down *all* forest activities: firewood collection, weddings, snowmobiling, everything. claiming that enviros had forced them to conduct public hearings before they could allow it. So the judge had to issue yet another order to slap some sense into them. Of course, the only thing locals will know about the issue is this apparently stupid order and that the environmentalists say they can't cut firewood. So it goes and another generation learns to despise environmentalists (more of the story here).
People are being lied to - I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone repeat a badly twisted version of some issue or event. I don't really blame folks for being pissed at enviros given what they hear, I just wish they were as critical and careful of what they hear from timber or chemical companies (not to mention Fox news or Rush Limbaugh) as they are of environmentalists.
I find it interesting how you feel environmentalists are embattled and despised etc.
My experience has been nearly the polar opposite; most folks I encounter are quick to follow the green ideas and needlessly suspicious of industry. Its uncool to not recycle, hybrid vehicles are the next great thing etc. Of course I live in a pretty liberal state, not MT or WY.
But many of these folks are merely riding the pop culture wave, and would probably not suffer much for the cause of sustainability.
I have considered building ICF houses, but I think the market sector would be small, unless I could give a 50% less energy bill guarantee or something similar. Even then most would still want really big spaces, bonus rooms, 9' ceilings, etc. A 5% price premium would shrink the market further, even though those costs would be recouped in short order. (most in my area heat all winter and cool all summer)
Treat every person you meet like you will know them the rest of your life - you just might!
Well ok, so when you work in the field you're confronted with the 'other side' more often. Most folks, as you say, are pro-environment even if they don't quite know what that means or follow through on it in terms of consumption habits or voting.I'm feeling despair at the world right now because we've lived for 5 years and another 3 to go under an administration which is downright hostile towards environmental concerns. Just last week front page of our local paper it was reported that the indicator species for the Sacramento river is in such steep decline it may go extinct, last year the Klamath fisheries collapsed after farmers took almost all the water out of the river. The forest rules are being gutted, the arctic is melting at an accelerated rate and we've now had three cat 5 hurricanes in the gulf (intensification of storms and more frequent storms is one of the predicted effects of global warming). Also last week the USGS reported that a more detailed survey of the Amazon and the damage there is much more widespread than they had realized - like twice as bad. Earlier this year it was reported that the pacific coast plankton counts (plankton is the base of the whole aquatic food chain) had plummeted. So embattled and despairing is probably what most environmentalist feel right now, the thing I care the most about is being destroyed right in front of me and there's precious little I can do about it.Worse, the US press no longer reports environmental news to any great degree so most people don't have any clue any of this is going on and even if they hear about it now and again they don't know to take it seriously because no one is treating it seriously.
I find it interesting that the very same folks, some here even, who espouse the virtues and power of free markets and near Godlike powers of the 'invisible hand'. Fail to include humans, themselves and theirs, in the equation.Simple supply and demand. Not many buffalo left so their price increases. We are on track to see seven Billion people on the planet, nothing like a shortage of stock or applicable premium for rarity, so the value of humans goes down. As amoral as that may seem that is exactly what we are up against. We have an oversupply of humans and a shortage of many other things.The other point that has to be made is that environmentalism often gets a bad name because the poster children are obscure fish and convoluted concepts of interaction which always seem to interfere with how people want to live and make money.A lot on the right see claims made for global warming, sea rise, environmental collapse and ozone holes as overheated and overblown. What they don't understand is that these are the friendly predictions. What none want to tell them is the truth underlying what is known: That nature does not care. That we flatter ourselves thinking we could destroy the earth. That nature, as a whole, would notice our best efforts.The best estimates of how life developed on this planet points to a time when there was virtually no free oxygen available. Given that level of degradation no humans could survive, even with massive investments in equipment, for more than a few months. We wouldn't make it and you can forget all the space fantasies. Given our best efforts we might be able to keep a few hundred people alive in space for a few years. Every attempt even contemplated has pointed out we can't produce self supporting systems. Given a few years our technology breaks down and the travelers choke on their own wastes.Funny thing is that given an environment far more hostile than anything we would end up with even if we tried to kill the planet the planet was still alive. And from this anaerobic, acidic, UV and hard radiation blasted environment life bootstrapped itself up to the human friendly environment we have today. Nature is far more resilient than humanity. But people need to understand we have not been given a pass. We can go extinct too. We can nuke and poison and generally interrupt the cycles and balances that keep us alive but the planet will not die. Species may die. Given a few thousand years and it will recover leaving very few traces of humanity to show we were ever here. In the end we only really determine our own destiny. The question is not whether we can save the pandas or the snail darters or the Florida panther. The question is whether we can save ourselves. From what I can tell we don't show many signs of being capable of carrying this off. So far we have survived only by destroying the environment. Not necessarily a bad strategy for a small nomadic tribe. Anyone who thinks the deep forest tribes were into sustainable practices has no idea of what they did. They systematically laid waste to large tracts of land. They understood this and, when the land in one area was used up, they moved on. They were not saved by their environmental wisdom but rather the ability of the environment to heal itself. Given enough time, as I point out, any damage can be corrected by the natural systems. The time needed may be in terms of thousands of years but nature is nothing if not patient. We can either limit our population to sustainable numbers or lower the average footprint of the population we have. Possibly some combination. What is not going to work is the combination of both large populations and large average footprints. I say average footprint, environmental impact, because it will be possible for a few to live like George Jetson on crack if the majority of people are willing to pound rocks, muck farm and swill gruel. Unfortunately most of the people presently swilling gruel are increasingly gaining access to AK-47s and explosives so the negotiations set to guarantee your flying car and their continued poverty may not go swimmingly.There just aren't many easy answers. Fisheries are nearing global depletion. Deep cold water movements which have maintained ecologies and climates for millennia are slowing. The planet will survive even if we don't. The question is not what we are going to do to save the whales. The question is what are we going to do to save humanity long term where eating the whales and everything else we can lay hands on won't help for very long. The motto of environmentalist should be: 'Save the Humans'.
Catchy no?
The question is not whether we can save the pandas or the snail darters or the Florida panther. The question is whether we can save ourselves. From what I can tell we don't show many signs of being capable of carrying this off.
An elegant turn of phrase, I must say.
It ties into some debates I have had with the cataclysmists (who can be a right dour lot). Hard to argue against the sheer mass of planetary-sized effects. Things like a ice chunk in the kilometer size hitting one of the subduction zones (like the Alaska trench). That makes for some exicitn tectoncics if it either "freezes" or "unlocks" plate movements.
Or, a cometary tail being drug through the atmosphere (ooh, there's good lamenting and wailing and gnashing of teeth with that one). Darkened skies, global cooling, meteoric impacts to create further havoc--there will be nothing to do, we're all doomed, it's all so pointless . . .
Which is about where I start asking "What about those people who won't just like down and die to fit your 'once every 250,000 years extinction' cycle?" People being contrary that way; the will to live being quite strong even in the face of hopeless odds. Only problem is that I usually wind up having to support teaching more people how to sustain themselves--a much more herculean task than merely living in sustainable ways.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Mostly, people buy what is available,
Now, that's an intriguing thought that has been on my mind. A real big chunk of the housing market is in the used market. There are a number of reasons for that, that's not the issue.
No, the idea that's been nagging/toying with me is in getting modern things like healthier materials, sustainable products/remodeling, that sort of thing in the used housing market.
It's one thing to buy a 50 or 100 year old structure, it's another to have to live with lamp or zip cord wiring, or covered-over materials. I don't have an answer o nthe ways or hows. I think we'll all know about it if somebody does--that kind of success would be hard to keep secret.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
It's something that I think about, too, Cap.The materials and methods already exist. Putting it all together, well, as an industry, we're still trying to crack the code on that one.I know from experience that I can build a new house that will pretty much last forever with the most minimal maintenance, you can heat it with your dog, cool it with your beer, and it's pleasant to live in. I know I can build it at a cost that will make it competitive in the marketplace.It will also require a level of design competence, skilled labor, supervision, and attention to detail that seems to rule out mass production. Maybe that will change, I hope so. That's what I was referring to earlier when I said that the capital for this endeavor is intellectual.How to get this into the used housing market is an important question that I am glad you asked. If you look at the value of our used housing market in terms of social capital, we can't afford to ignore that.My gut hunch is that this is where we could use good architects.
Has anyone here thought about the economy of scale in building a smaller house?It seems to me (all other considerations comparable) that while a smaller house should cost less than a larger house, there must be some point at which the cost per square foot starts going up because the fixed expenses are being spread over a smaller footprint.From a marginal analysis perspective, what is the smallest house we should build?
Hey catskinner, have you seen or read about the new modular houses? They basically have an open floor plan and run all the utilities in conduits so you can re-jigger the interiors with minimal effort - I think I remember it was in a FH a year or so back or perhaps I read about it somewhere else. Running the house takes a lot but the resources that go into remodeling is also huge.
I have not seen these, but I would be interested to. I used to tow the old-style modular houses around. They were terrible. There is nothing quite like looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing both ends of a half of a house flexing about a foot at 55 mph every time you hit an bump.I've often thought about modularizing the process at leat. Some way to fabricate more components in the shop. Less expense, better quality, better working conditions in winter, easier on the subs.I think I read somewhere that entire bathrooms were being pre-fabbed and brought to the site.If it gets the plumbers moving faster, it's OK with me. <G>I have also wondered why we don't adapt a lot of commercial design principles and site practices to residential construction. Seems like there would be short-term and long-term savings there, especially, as you pointed out, when it comes time to remodel.
The prefab bathroom is a good idea for low-cost building. The entire thing can be manufactured from various plastics and composites with built-in tub/shower, waterproof walls and floor, etc. Pre-plumbed to a degree.I remember this was done probably 25 years ago for some apartments in NY that were being rehabbed. They chopped a hole through the roof and lowered the units down through several floors, stacked on top of each other. I think that may have been a Habitat project.
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In Europe, I've been told that fixtures don't come with the rental so you move into a bare shell and go get your cabinets from Ikea. Interesting idea. I think the key is that it has be high quality. I have to admit, my first thought when you mentioned pre-fab homes was, ewwwww. It's gotta be something that high end customers want if it's going to succeed on a broad scale. I found the SIP article interesting, it's somewhat down that path though it doesn't seem like the internal design matches the building envelope in flexibility.re: commercial construction, we had a huge fire (Berkeley, Oakland fire) which burned something like 1,500 high end homes and many of the replacements use steel construction. It's been an education watching them get built. As an aside, unfortunately, too many are ego driven monsters so the neighborhoods aren't as nice. There are a few gorgeous, very human, very lived in and loved buildings but too many are huge and cold (though architecturally 'advanced') structures.
Yeah, "The Not So Big House" by Susanka has a lot to say about this.--------------
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It's on my 'must get' list. Any other's you'd recommend? I'm mostly interested in landscape design related but stuff like the Susanka is bigger picture.
From a marginal analysis perspective, what is the smallest house we should build?
Interesting question, but not one, I fear with a simple or singular answer.
Houses really need to respond to climate & location. Here were I live, taller is not better, it only exposes more wall to solar heat gain. But, taller interior spaces are better, as they can "store" more warmed air "away" from the occupants. There's a gotcha in there, in that this is a calculus that should not be left to the big national builders' accountants. In a hot, humid climate like mine (or Savannah, or Mobile, or the like), a 12' interior makes a lot of "climate" sense. But, what is built? 10' plate height McHouses. Why? Because the market surveys "say" that people asked in the sales center/model home "liked" the taller-than-normal ceilings (meaning not 8') "better." But "better" than what?
Nope, going to not rail off on sales techniques, etc. of the big builders.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
There's also a corresponding issue with regard to energy efficiency, especially when heating. A large building is inherently easier to heat, per cubic foot, than a smaller one of similar proportions, since in any building you really only need to heat the walls and ceiling (and floor, to a smaller degree) -- the interior space does not need to be heated. And, in fact, in larger buildings the heat generated by the occupants, lighting, computers, etc is largely sufficient to heat the "skin", if effectively captured and recirculated.Cooling is a bit more of a mixed bag, of course, but there are still economies in larger buildings.Which really leads one to the conclusion that an apartment or townhouse scheme is the best approach for low-cost, sustainable housing. It's just that these solutions are somewhat less "humane", especially when poorly done.
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is an important question that I am glad you asked. If you look at the value of our used housing market in terms of social capital, we can't afford to ignore that.
Well, if I remember rightly, it's like 80/20 existing to new (or 85/15, somewhere in there). There's a slight bias towards the oldest houses, as they were built better "back when" or have a certain cache for having "lasted." So, there's a "built in" inertia, especially in the Economics sense of the thing. That every new house built adds to the total of existing used.
That, then brings up some real questions. Like, what happens when the McHouses start needing rehab or remodel. I'm already leery of opening the walls in anything built in the last 15 years or so in a subdivision.
In my opinion, eventually this will start becoming "common" knowledge, that some of (or many of) what once were "hot" properties are not much more than shells. That would (will) put even more pressure on what is no the used market, as buyers seek out quality used houses. That suggests more exposure for that presently "marginal" & "grandfathered" structures out there. So, there's a bit of a muddle.
Shoot, I live in one. There are many unique things about my 1951 house (like being built in #2 sugar pine throughout, or the t&g sheathing for all surfaces--no plywood in the original). There are other things, like the galvanized I.P. plumbing, or the ungrounded, but sheathed cable, but cicuited K&T-style electrics; that are not worth saving--but invite gutting the structure. (This has been an interesting mental exercise in Nuke's "how would you rebuild" thread.)
I want the glue-on GAF ceiling tiles out--but they are not a good item to bulk up the landfill with; makes a good argument for leaving them in place. But, they're junk! Arrgh. Same thing with the vinyl siding on the house, I want something better in several definitions--it's the getting there that is the hard part.
My gut hunch is that this is where we could use good architects.
Well, now, some of that will be in making it a profitable exercise. Residential work is some of the least profitable for archies as a business (some of that is commercial pays so much better, some is the "competition" from all of the "y'doan need no 'spensive kno-nuttin archy" trade out there too). The "public" has to want it too.
But, I'm thinking we may start to see some of that here in the next 5 or 10 years, as the big-builder McHouses (not all are mansion-sized) get to their "natural" lifespans. The AHJs out there may also regulate the housing industry into greater (if not necessarily better) involvment by "professionals." (The key thing to watch will be who is made, or is required to be made into, into a "professional"--licensing DW crews will not be good sign, per se . . . )Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Whoathere buddy! Whereas DDT probably saved millions of lives during and after WWII by keeping down insect-borne disease, broadcast spraying of DDT to control pests on crops such as cotton plantations had demonstrable and enormous environmental impact. Not just from the DDT itself, but from the parts per thousand to parts per million levels of chlorodioxins and chlorodibenzofurans that were in the DDT used. DDT doesn't break down in the environment, it is bioaccumulative and has demonstrated hormonal effects on wildlife and suspected hormonal effects on humans. Chlorodioxins and chlorodibenzofurans are amongst the most hazardous environmental pollutants known to man: as with all mutagenic/carcinogenic species, literally one molecule in the wrong place at the wrong time can eventually kill you, cause a birth defect in your child etc. There are approximately 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in a pound of this stuff.
People didn't know any better at the time, but even once they knew harm was being done, the use of thousands of TONS of this material in broadcast spraying/fogging continued for years. Why? Because it was profitable to do so, for lots of people! But the use of this material locally didn't just lead to local impact: there are high concentrations of DDT and other similar materials in the fat of Arctic animals, where these materials were NEVER used.
It was this callous, wasteful use of an excellent pesticide that has people so turned off it that today we hesistate to even use it to treat mosquito netting to reduce the exposure of the desperately poor in Third World countries to malaria. Used in this judicious way, the hazard to people and to the environment represented by the use of this inexpensive and effective pesticide is infinitessimal relative to the harm and suffering it reduces.
What's the lessons here? We all live on the same planet and we share this biosphere. What we do for profit affects others, and if we don't include the costs to others in calculating our profit, we're actually ripping other people off. Markets don't work if people are allowed to pay only part of the costs of what they buy. The other key lesson is that we can't be religious about this stuff- we need to use our brains and reason to make appropriate decisions: simply banning a product like DDT for all uses isn't an appropriate response- it actually can cause harm to people.
There are lots of synthetic materials that are worth their environmental consequences when used appropriately. The statement, "If it isn't grown, it's mined" is inherently false and unhelpful. Humans have the power to use energy to transform matter from raw materials into finished goods, and this isn't an inherently evil process. We have to choose the raw materials and the energy sources sensibly, in a reasoned way, without merely ignorning the consequences of our actions. The duty we owe our children and future generations is merely this: use wisely and do not waste.
You guys have me a bit wrong. Obviously dumping pollutants into a stream or burning large quantities of garbage in my front yard affects more than my own property. That's why LOCAL municipalities have regulations that were agreed on by LOCAL residents. Straw men are fun to set up aren't the?
There are two "environmental concerns" I take issue with.
The first is people who complain about "development" - It's not their land, so why is it their right to tell someone else they can't live on it? What is the difference whether a "developer" (or housing provider) makes a profit by building homes for dozens of people or of the same dozens of people all built their own houses there? The first method is far more efficient. A developer is going to waste far less time, materials & resources by building 30 houses in one spot than 30 people all hiring their own contractors (or DIY) building the same things. It seems the main qualm people have is that the developer made a profit. He did so by giving people something they need or want.
The second is the pushing of "green" products as a moral issue. I'm all for development of products from recycled materials, products that are safer, conserve resources, etc. It's just that MOST of the time, the benefits are marginal at best & often times the product is far more costly to produce (which means that it is actually more scarce than the supposedly dwindly resources - especially given that the demand for traditional building materials is much higher than for renewable materials) & often times the work half as well (ACQ vs CCA pressure treated for example).
As much as people would throw a hissy fit if someone were to preach Jesus Christ in a public venue, it amazes me that people have no qualms with preaching economically unviable living (Do you realize how much more expensive it is to produce & purchase organic produce) as a moral necessity. Environmentalism seems to be a religion to some people.
Again, I'm all for researching & producing renewable energy, building materials, whatever. If/when a given resource actually DOES become scarce, the costs to harvest it will begin to outweigh the costs to produce renewable goods & more companies will jump on the bandwagon (which again will drive the price down for renewable goods). For example, oil companies (Shell & BP come immediately to mind) are putting much effort into renewable energy such as solar & wind because the costs to obtain fossil fuels is increasing. The funny thing is that when oil actually does become scarce and the price begins to reflect this, everyone screams "PRICE GOUGING"!!!
In summary, sustainable resources: GOOD; pushing them via moral browbeating or false economic incentives (ie taxation on non-renewable goods): BAD
The market works - when people (ie the gov't) leave it alone. I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465081452/qid=1130507178/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-0322178-5243368?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
BTW: Here's some info presenting the other side of the DDT argument: http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
I agree with a lot of what you say--except about land "ownership". Your being able to destroy your own land might be fine if you lived forever, but that land will be there long after you are dead. I guess the next person gets it "buyer beware!", but what if they don't know you buried drums of nuclear waste in it?
If I destroy my own property, that's my business, but RE: buyer beware, that is becoming less & less the law of the land for real estate. Things like that are required to be disclosed.
Regardless, burying oil drums DOES affect more than my own property. In NJ, underground oil tanks are now illegal (unless you are a licensed gas station).
A friend of mine is having to go through tons of cleanup since their old underground tank (it was disclosed when they bought the place - so they knew about it) began to leak. Right now, their house is up on piers in the back yard as well as their neighbors house.
The land ownership issue I was referring to was telling people whether they can or can't live on it - or sell it to someone else who wants to live on it - or harvesting goods from it. If a persons actions decrease the value of it, they will learn their lesson or else won't be able to sell it.
Many foreclosures happen this way because a person allows the property to degrade to the point where the value is no longer sufficient collateral for their mortgage. Someone ends up buying & restoring the property (for a profit - since they're evil).
No where does the constitution give me the right to drive around & see trees on other people's land. If I want it to stay completely wooded, then I should buy it.
Okay, I guess I agree with you--as long as sellers disclose everything they've done to the land when someone else buys it.
> What species were on the way out because of DDT? There were studies
> that showed the POSSIBILITY that certain bird's egg shells were
> thinner when exposed to large concentrations of DDT - is this
> potential worth people across an entire continent dying?The bald eagle was threatened by DDT. The birthrate was declining, and researchers saw evidence (broken eggs in the nests) that much of this was due to thinning shells. Since DDT was banned, bald eagle numbers have rebounded.But it is a good point -- there's a difference between banning a substance and making sure it's used in a limited, controlled manner. Using DDT at about 1/100 the historical levels would have been sufficient to control malaria, but limiting use to that degree would have required even more government regulation.--------------
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The bald eagle was threatened by DDT. The birthrate was declining, and researchers saw evidence (broken eggs in the nests) that much of this was due to thinning shells. Since DDT was banned, bald eagle numbers have rebounded.
But was it DDT (or just DDT alone)? I'm not sure we can know the answer.
We also, at about the same time, applied Federal protection to eagles too. You could no longer kill any of the aquatic raptors just because you thought they were over-fishing "your" water. You could not net them to collect the feathers for sale as decoration either. You also could not raid nests for eggs, either.
So, which was it that caused the rebound in the raptor population? Fewer "harvested" birds? Decreased nest raiding? Thicker eggshells? No way to tell, short of capturing the various species and posioning them in labs (a highly unlikely event).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Re: "No way to tell, short of capturing the various species and posioning them in labs (a highly unlikely event)."Actually, it has been many years since I read about or talked to the people knowledgeable about the studies, there have been many studies done. One was a matter of capturing birds, in this case, as I remember it, most of the study was done on ducks and other waterfowl as they were far less endangered and easier to get to, and taking a blood samples at a mass nesting site and correlating the levels of DDT and related compounds to the number of eggs crushed by the sitting birds. The correlation was very good as I remember it. Simply put the higher the concentration of DDT and related compounds the higher the percentage of eggs so thin they were destroyed by their own parents as they tried to keep them warm.There are many studies out there. Some are being produced to cast doubt on what we already pretty well understand. Of course it is interesting that DDT is the focus. There are a lot of other insecticides and many other ways, besides bombing the area with pesticides, to limit or control mosquito populations. Light oil is cheaper than DDT, in fact light oil often being used as a carrier, and it is effective if sprayed on standing water. Although it damages the environment and other species its effects are more focused and less long lived than DDT.Even the idea of controlling mosquito populations oversimplifies a complicated situation. Malaria isn't spread by most types of mosquitoes. Malaria is spread mostly by mosquitoes adapted for living around people and on land modified by humans.Not a few jungle tribes have had, historically, little or no malaria before the slash and burn farmers moved in and destroyed the most of the jungle to raise cattle. There were mosquitoes present before the change. Just not the ones that easily spread malaria. The slash and burn method is a short term and short sighted method. Jungle soils are notoriously poor and thin. Burning the jungle only fertilizes it for a couple of years. After that the farmers, poor folks too poor to buy fertilizer, have to move on to the next section of jungle. The wasteland they leave behind is a playground for malaria mosquitoes. Eliminate the slash and burn methodology and you could vastly reduce the number of malaria mosquitoes.
Well, my wife would certainly disagree with this- she researches the differences between conventional, soft (low chemical input) and organic pear growing here in central washington. over a year, organic orchardists pay the least in spray costs, and conventional orchardists pay the most. The crop yeilds are the same, as far as statistics are concerned. What the organic orchards do require is more attention to what is happening in the orchard, and an experienced fieldman. Unfortunately, most of the fieldmen are employed by chemical companies, and aren't always knowledgable about organic ag.
Perhaps there are situations where conventional ag can outcompete organic by 4 to 1, but that's not representative of the overall picture. There is a steep learning curve with new building methods as well as with new agricultural methods. It used to be that we couldn't afford to not learn about the best way to build or to grow food--now we seem to be able to hide and shift the costs of our ignorance so that we can buy a bit more at wally world. I say that a house built well is one that will last for generations, and not use more resources than necessary.
zak
Zak, can you say more about your wife's work? This is really interesting. I get the impression that there is much more to this idea than what is immediately apparent.
The essence of my wife's work is that if pesticide use is reduced, the number of beneficial insects will increase, and keep the pests in check. So rather than killing every insect in the field with a DDT-like chemical, let predator insects like ladybugs and lacewings keep the numbers of pests down, and then take the pest numbers down even more at critical times with pesticides that won't harm the beneficials.
It's hard to make this technique work if you're near a conventional orchard though. For one thing, spray drift can kill the beneficial insects, and for another, pest insect numbers can spike in the time between sprayings- both pest and beneficial numbers go way down, and then pest insects have a faster generation time, so their population can grow unchecked. Then the pests from that conventional orchard infest the organic or soft orchard. If you're interested, the website is http://entomology.tfrec.wsu.edu/pearent/pcg.htm I'm not sure if that'll show up as a hyperlink, be patient with me.
zak
If that were true, then why is disease so rampant in undeveloped countries? They don't use pesticides at all & malaria is killing Africa. (*cough*DDT*cough)
I have no issues with regulating the use of pesticides & keeping their use to the "minimal effective dosage", but flat out banning a useful tool based on scare tactics is costing lives.
DDT is still used in Africa to control malaria. Even more effective though are bed nets. Brazil which *has* banned DDT has dropped their malaria rates below what they were with DDT by using non-chemical controls like managing standing water better, distributing bed nets, etc.DDT saved a lot of lives, no doubt at all about that, it also imperiled ecosystems worldwide including almost wiping out the American Eagle. It's been 60 years though and there are better ways to solve that problem now including a malaria vaccine which has proved successful in trials. That said, the one exemption to the worldwide ban on DDT is for human health reasons and it is still being used in a few very poor countries (there are other things that work, but DDT is cheaper)
I stand corrected, there is minimal DDT use in Africa (all privately funded since no gov't agencies want any part of it).
However, stating that bed netting is more effective than DDT is naive. I guess mosquito's don't bite during the day - unless you are advocating round the clock use of bee-keepers outfits.
Anyway, here's an article discussing DDT & Malaria in Africa:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4250
"Uganda used DDT very successfully during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some African countries -- Eritrea, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and Swaziland included -- still successfully use it. In part as a result of the pressure from the environmentalist lobby, the South African government briefly discontinued the use of DDT in the late 1990s. Between 1998 and 2000, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa's most malarial province, experienced a 400 percent increase in malaria cases and the government was forced to reintroduce DDT. By 2001, malaria cases fell to their pre-1998 levels"
Trying to eliminate sources of standing water isn't going to cut it either - unless you plan. There will always be puddles, water holes, etc. You can't seriously believe that the majority of the mosquito population was hatched in back yard puddles...
It's also worth noting that Africa is hotter than Brazil which in turn increases the lifespan of mosquitos.
For malaria to be spread, a mosquito must bite an infected person or animal. From the time of the first bite, it takes approximately 2 weeks for the parasite to develop into infectious form. The mosquito must then bite another individual to pass on the disease.
Mosquito life spans are also roughly two weeks. In hotter climates mosquitos are more likely to survive the required gestational period. For this reason, malaria spreads more rapidly in Africa than in Brazil.
I used to work for an anti pesticides environmental group and once went to a conference in Africa (Tanzania) and met with the Registrar of Pesticides for that country. He spoke favorably of DDT. While our group lobbied against DDT in general, I think among lots of environmental groups the attitude was that it was a necessary evil for fighting malaria and when doctor lobby's fought for a DDT exemption of the global ban on DDT for health reasons the enviro groups stood aside and didn't fight it.The story has another twist to it though, because there's never anyone checking up on these things so DDT bought and sold for public health use could and was then used on crops instead and we're back to square one.I didn't know that about the mosquito life cycle though - I always wondered why there was so much more malaria in Africa. About the puddle thing, it actually is a major source. In hawaii, pigs are one of the main threats to endangered bird species, why? Because the pigs, when rooting around dig up the dirt and leave spots where water can puddle, along come mosquitos which breed in them and then go along to infect the birds with something. Bizarre, I know... puddles near human habitation are a bigger problem than distant sources of mosquitos so focusing on them can have an effect. Countries sometimes have campaigns where they have a lot of advertising about things like standing water and collectively it can work. Bed nets (often soaked in pesticides) also have a dramatic effect on infection rates though I agree, it can't be 100%About your main point though, yes, it was over reaching to ban DDT in some areas where they didn't have other ways (or enough money to afford more expensive pesticides) to fight the problem and I think you're right to be angry about it. With any luck though, the vaccine will be a success and we can put this whole sorry situation behind us.
We'll have to look into it, but I think the eagle's eggs theory was proven false; eggs w/o DDT would thin on older eagles too. Of course the way info is thrown about these days, who knows who to believe.
If what junkscience.com et al are saying about Malaria and DDT are true, shame on us for believing Rachel Carson.
Treat every person you meet like you will know them the rest of your life - you just might!
I don't think there's any doubt at all DDT causes eggshell thinning, I don't consider junkscience.com to be credible, they're simply shills for industry. DDT and eggshell papers from actual science journals:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Search&db=PubMed&term=ddt+egg+shell&tool=fuzzy&ot=%27ddt+egg+shell%27pick any random set and scan through the abstracts. Here's a quote from the first hit: "DDE-induced egg-shell thinning in birds has caused severe population declines in a number of raptor species in Europe and North America. " (DDE is a breakdown product of DDT)Somewhat off topic to your point but this whole junkscience talking point is thrown around by the Right because it gives them a lever to ignore scientific results when they goes against their economic interests. It's not an argument, it's propaganda.Some will note that the quote above is an assertion, the difference is that it's in a peer reviewed journal and I can find 100 such statements from actual scientists.
I was a little skeptical about junk science - the google abstract lists it as corporate funded. But are all or even most corporations bad? Maybe the far left is behind google. The junk science website is mostly links to articles; ones that support the corporate right, but I think the goal is to bring a different perspective to the table. In reality, the propaganda from both sides is flat crazy. I know a number of scientists, and I can see a clear human propensity to self preserve--whether the result is corporate greed or grant preservation--we get ideas in our heads and build conclusions.
I do however see a lot of sense in building smaller houses. House size, whether due to ego, investment, competition, fear, ignorance, consumerism etc. is out of hand where I live. We are financially so successful, yet so susceptible to the ads that play on our inadequacies, and we compensate by spending the bucks. On big, empty spaces.
My wife recently drove through such a starter castle neighborhood around dinner time, and it appeared that no one was home, except she saw a kid sittting alone at one house doing homework. So we work extra hours to pay the price for our excesses, and our own kids sometimes suffer. I'm as or more concerned for sustainablity of the people as I am their planet. The house thing is a symptom of a larger illness.
Treat every person you meet like you will know them the rest of your life - you just might!
I have no problems with most corporations, I've worked in and for quite a few. But the term 'junkscience' is a well thought out marketing campaign which was created to fight the use of science in public debate. Some of this was needed, there was a time when people slavishly believed just about anything if it was presented in a 'scientific' manner. But that problem aside, it doesn't change the fact that the term 'junkscience' is a propaganda tool; you'll hear about it at length and quite regularly on right wing talk radio shows where it's used to dismiss actual and real science which the Right doesn't want to accept.Science *should* be challenged, thats the game in science, you put something up and then everyone else tests it. But using dismissive labels like 'junkscience' isn't how it's done and when someone starts using that kind of argument you know it's really just a propaganda effort, or more likely, someone repeating something they heard from Limbaugh and Co.We've gotten off topic which I apologize for, but I've wanted to respond to the pesticides and junkscience comments since I have a lot personal involvement with these issues.
<<...when someone starts using that kind of argument you know it's really just a propaganda effort, or more likely, someone repeating something they heard from Limbaugh and Co.We've gotten off topic which I apologize for, but I've wanted to respond to the pesticides and junkscience comments since I have a lot personal involvement with these issues.>>I don't think you are off topic at all -- it's an imortant point you bring up.Any time we try to do something new, we need to think about what we're doing. (Some days I need to think about the old stuff, too. <G>)And while everyone has a right to their opinion, all opinions should not be regarded as being of equal value. I may have an opinion about something to do with rocket science, but nobody from NASA is calling to ask.Starting with the desired conclusion and working backward to premises that support your position, the rhetorical sleight of hand and sophistry that passes for public discussion on AM radio, and the concerted effort to dismiss responsible scientific research because some interpretation of the result might potentially clash with some corporate intent somewhere; this hurts all of us in the long term.I'm glad you pointed that out.**********
edited to add:It seems to me that a lot of what passes for reasoned discussion on talk radio is nothing more than highly skilled sophistry intended to amuse audiences who enjoy hearing their own opinion reenforced, regardless of the quality of the argument.We know that we can count on an AM talk show host argue fiercely, lampoon and ridicule their imaginary opponent, and generally act like they were restating the unvarnished truth to anyone who had the common sense to hear it (and anyone who disagrees is a moron), and then when backed into a corner, say "Hey, I'm just an entertainer."But the line of reasoning finds its way into public discourse. That is sad. If we're going to hold on to our noble experiment, we need to do better than that.
Edited 10/29/2005 9:05 am by Catskinner
"but I think the goal is to bring a different perspective to the table"
Different perspectives are good unless it is a perspective that goes against how the leftists want us to think.
The terms "left" and "right" serve as a handy description of the caricatures at the extreme ends of the spectrum. By this I mean the folks who want to tell you all about their opinion but don't want to hear yours and won't let you change the subject.Fortunately, viewed as a bell curve, they don't occupy a lot of space on the chart. <G>But discarding the extremes, the terms "left and right" or "liberal and conservative" seem to obscure more than they reveal. They certainly don't promote mutual understanding.I think that there are a lot of folks who might exist in those three or five standard deviations off the center who want to hear responsible and well founded opinions from everyone who is concerned.I've learned just as much here from the people I disagree with as from the people I agree with. If their arguments are sound, the folks I disagree with definitely make me think harder.
I was using "lefty" as a characature. I provided a different take on the DDT issue & the main response was "well I don't take junkscience.com seriously" - never mind that it cited sources for every statement made.
So what if it has corporate sponsors - so does PBS. Since when does gov't spending make research more pure? No research is free & every scientist needs to maintain funding - regardless of which side of the issue their on.
http://www.ecosystemvaluation.org/index.htmlWhat do you think?
Interesting, too much for me to look at right now but I've bookmarked it. If you're interested in this approach Environmental Defense is the leading enviro group working on (advocating for) market based environmental approaches. Personally I like market based approaches because I hate bureaucracy of any kind and if we can simply price in environmental impacts it gets rid of a lot of the paperwork and still gets you the results you want.Instead of regulating car emissions, charge a carbon tax on gas. Let companies pollute but attach a price to it so they have an incentive to get it as low as economically possible.
Got any links to E.D.'s economic work?
It's a cross program thing for them, so if you look at their air pollution program you'll see a section on emissions trading. Same thing for water, etc. sulphur dioxide trading (the chemical behind acid rain) is the big notable success in the U.S. so far - this system reduced SO2 emissions way below what they were hoping for and at far less cost to the corporations involved, a big win for everyone involved.There's a carbon market created under the Kyoto treaty as well. Here's a query that lists some things: http://www.google.com/u/envdef?serch=trading&linkID=1&q=trading&x=0&y=0
I think we're on rhetorically soggy ground here and we need to step carefully. <G>Citing sources and criticising data is the sophistry du jour it seems.We've got a ridiculous example in the form of a Texas congressman who is challenging the data that some dendrochronologists are using for climate research. This guy couldn't understand the data if it was explained to him, and he is trying to use it to discredit the results of a research project that is well conducted by any standard. He's playing a game at public expense for corporate profit.As I've said many times, it is instructive to "Follow the money."It is important to recognize that there are impeccably resposible scientists who are publicly funded for the common good. We all need these people to continue their work for the common good. That should be clear to anyone who isn't adopting a "know-nothing" position.There are undoubtedly a few LIFERS (former GIs will recognize that acronym <G>) swinging off of the ample porcine bosom of professional academe who do nothing useful but secure their next research grant and recycle their ill-gotten gain into the local economy one latte at a time.I don't think much of that crew, either, but fortunately they are few.However, if an association of chemical producers, or maybe pharmecutical producers, publish and pay for a study saying that their product is safe, and that study has not survived peer review, wouldn't we be a little suspicious?I'm only saying that we all need to be careful of a pseudo-scientific opinion that supports the preference that we bring to the discussion.
People are being too polite to you on this. Science isn't about universal unanimity, and that's what's so beautiful and powerful about it. Science is about building hypotheses, testing them with experiment and peer review, and going forward with the theory that is best supported by the data. As new data come in, the theory is tested against this new data and WILL CHANGE if a new theory better supports the data- not just some of the data, and not just in some scientists' viewpoints, but ALL of the data in the prevailing view of the vast majority of scientists.
That alternative viewpoints exist, even amongst scientists, is NOT proof that science itself is corrupt or that the prevailing scientific theory on a particular topic is incorrect. And yes, that remains true even if the prevailing scientific viewpoint tells you something that you don't like, which might require you to change your behaviour and do things differently if you want to avoid doing irreparable harm to the planet we all live on.
And sorry- if someone cites articles in peer-reviewed journals and your response is a corporate-sponsored contrarian website, they win and you lose the rational argument.
Of course you are free to think and believe whatever you wish, on whatever basis you wish to believe it. But you CANNOT claim science as your basis if you reject the scientific method.
D#mn, Molten, you write well.
quote: the main response was "well I don't take junkscience.com seriously"Fair enough, soultrain. Let me take one of the points in junksciences doc, one we've mentioned before, and I'll tell you why I'm dismissive. From: http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm#ref239. Many experiments on caged-birds demonstrate that DDT and its metabolites (DDD and DDE) do not cause serious egg shell thinning, even at levels many hundreds of times greater than wild birds would ever accumulate. [Cecil, HC et al. 1971. Poultry Science 50: 656-659 (No effects of DDT or DDE, if adequate calcium is in diet); Chang, ES & ELR Stokstad. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 3-10 1975. (No effects of DDT on shells); Edwards, JG. 1971. Chem Eng News p. 6 & 59 (August 16, 1971) (Summary of egg shell- thinning and refutations presented revealing all data); Hazeltine, WE. 1974. Statement and affidavit, EPA Hearings on Tussock Moth Control, Portland Oregon, p. 9 (January 14, 1974); Jeffries, DJ. 1969. J Wildlife Management 32: 441-456 (Shells 7 percent thicker after two years on DDT diet); Robson, WA et al. 1976. Poultry Science 55:2222- 2227; Scott, ML et al. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 350-368 (Egg production, hatchability and shell quality depend on calcium, and are not effected by DDT and its metabolites); Spears, G & P. Waibel. 1972. Minn. Science 28(3):4-5; Tucker, RK & HA Haegele. 1970. Bull Environ Contam. Toxicol 5:191-194 (Neither egg weight nor shell thickness affected by 300 parts per million DDT in daily diet);Edwards, JG. 1973. Statement and affidavit, U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, 24 pages, October 24, 1973; Poult Sci 1979 Nov;58(6):1432-49 ("There was no correlation between concentrations of pesticides and egg shell thinning].") ]ok so looking at this, first off note the dates on the research cited, all 1980's or earlier, that's not a good sign. But, these are serious journals and the research IS peer reviewed so what's going on?The the nature of research is you'll always have some range of results. This might seem odd but think about what you are doing here: feeding pesticides to birds. You can imagine a whole range of complicating factors coming in: what kind of birds are used?, are they healthy? Do they have exposure to some other chemical that would skew the results? Is their feed right? Is the effect you are looking for masked by something else? (For example, I know that if you feed chickens lots of oyster meal their eggs get very thick). Finally, was the research manipulated?Especially for biological or human experiments it's really, really tough to get a pure answer. For example, smoking, which just about everyone believes to cause cancer, was actually quite hard to show, it took over 10 years to really make the case, and this was for a fairly obvious situation. You will *still* find people who say it hasn't been proved that smoking causes cancer and they are right - you can never prove A causes B, you can only disprove it. When people claim the connection between smoking and cancer has been proven what they really mean is that "the weight of the evidence all tends in that direction" not exactly a strong, ringing statement.Basically, you'll always have a range of results, very, very rarely do you have an experiment which is so well designed that it shows conclusively that A causes B. So what goes on is that people take the basic premise, in this case "DDT causes egg shell thinning" and test it a thousand different ways, different birds, different amounts of DDT, different diets, in cages and the wild. They'll also look for corroborating evidence in the wild: Do birds in the wild who have egg shell thinning have more DDT in their bodies? It's extremely tedious and it takes years.Ultimately, after all this effort, people will notice that the results will tend in one direction, the *weight of the evidence* will settle on a conclusion. That phrase is important: the weight of the evidence, not, "we've got this one result that says X" While this is happening it is quite common for people to jump the gun and say: early results show DDT causes X. This is the sin that enviro groups are often guilty of. They aren't lying but they are taking early results and claiming more of them than can really be claimed. Personally, I'm somewhat forgiving of this because I'd rather be conservative and catch problems early on, but I can see why this drives people nuts and I should note that it's *not* ok to do this in an academic conversation where people have to be much more careful about what they claim.Where this gets really, really dangerous is for global warming. We will never conclusively prove that human CO2 causes global warming, but the the best minds of the field are generally of that opinion right now. But at the same time, you will quite often see these folks hedging this, saying "we can't say for sure" which is the correct scientific statement but not necessarily the best policy conclusion. Here's the problem: we won't be able to say with any confidence until after it's happened! and that my friend, is a problem because if it happens (and it looks like it will) then much of Florida will go under water and stay there. We live in dangerous times.Back to DDT, I'm dismissive of junkscience because I know it's easy to find a dozen articles that will support just about any case I might want to make. The question is: are these the leading minds in the field? Is the research up-to-date? Are these the go-to papers that are cited again and again by the professionals? Here's my thinking on DDT and why I think junkscience is a scam: I can see that modern published papers refer to the DDT causing egg shell thinning issue as a foregone conclusion, and I also note that junksciences references are 25 years out of date so I conclude that they are deliberately manipulating their case. When you see something like a series of 25 year old citations over a highly studied question it's clear that they aren't in this to convince scientists, they are in this to convince people who don't know what goes into a scientific debate. The *weight* of the evidence doesn't support their conclusion even if there are few individual papers that do.So let me stop beating around the bush and get to what I really think: I think these are manipulative liars who are deliberately distorting an important public health issue to discredit environmentalists who have gotten between them and their pot of cash. Most real scientists won't even bother refuting junkscience because they know, and the junkscience people know, that arguing a point with 25 year old data is BS, they are a propaganda effort.
On the DDT sub-thread:
I live in Nova Scotia where in the 1950-70's bald egles were still a declining species and peregrines were gone period- not enough new hatchlings. Now I can see a bald eagle any time I want and peregrines are being re- introduced (but only 4-5 pairs per year can be done since they're so scarce) and starting to take hold again. We haven't used DDT since about 1960.......any connection?????
Absolutely. Get rid of the DDT and the birds come back, it's happening everywhere. Virtually all the organochlorine chemicals have been banned now (DDT is an OC). The OC chems (along with the organophosphate chems) are the biggest problem because they take so long to break down. That's generally what all the nastiest chemicals have in common: they don't break down very fast so they accumulate in the environment. Ideally what you want in a pesticide is something that is very specific in it's toxicity, i.e. it kills X and only X, it binds well to soil so it doesn't travel much in the environment and it breaks down quickly so it doesn't continue to be a problem. The newer chems are much better than the older chems in this regard.Another issue that people often confuse about pesticides is acute toxicity versus chronic toxicity, it's the chronic toxicity which is always the big worry. DDT for example isn't very *acutely* toxic, you can eat the stuff and it won't kill you right away. Of course, once you do, it's going to be with you (and your children if you're a woman and give birth) the rest of your life.
I wondered the same thing--I basically think DDT could be used to control malaria spreading mosquitoes to save people, as losing some birds may be worth it--but I have noticed eagels coming back that were very scarce in the seventies. I understand that way too much DDT was spread around and that a little put on door frames and such works well. I guess I'd consider saving human lives with it until something better can be developed. The problem is, with us lazy humans we just go with the status quo until disaster occurs. No thinking ahead. Sort of like dependence on oil.
Nature is complex. Treating something like malaria via an extermination strategy doesn't work because it treats nature as a simplistic mechanism when it's an enormously interconnected web.
Here's an example I remember from a university class: there was an outbreak of a fever borne by certain types of flies, in an area where people were wretchedly poor and malnourished and sanitation was terrible (hence lots of habitat for flies). Rather than trying to solve the hard problem (i.e. the poor sanitation, the poverty and the fly habitat), the area was broadcast sprayed with an insecticide. Those flies which had the mutations necessary for resistance to that insecticide survived and reproduced, but that wasn't the immediate problem. The lizards which normally preyed on the flies were poisoned, but many of them weren't killed outright, which meant that the cats could catch them more readily than they could before. Because of bioaccumulation, cats that ate more than a few lizards died, which was fortunate for the decimated lizard population but rather unfortunate for the people: in the absence of the cats, the rat population exploded and they were soon overcome with bubonic plague, borne by the fleas on the rats!
Appropriate use of insecticides such as treating bed nets etc. gives people and the environment minimal exposure and provides significant benefit. So banning a cheap and effective pesticide like DDT outright is just as stupid as using it in broadcast spraying on crops. The problem is that backlash against past stupidity and ignorance and greed tends to rob us of tools which could be of real benefit if used wisely.
Is "sustainability" the flavour of the month? Maybe. But can the human species survive without considering the sustainability of their lifestyle? Not for long. Yes, a dwindling number of people can struggle on in ever-increasing misery, but that suffering is needless if we just pull together and make some better public policy. This mindset that if you can afford the current financial price of something, you have the inalienable right to consume as much of it as you can afford in any way you choose, is just BUNK. Until we heal ourselves of this stupid notion, we're headed straight to hell in a handbasket.
There have been alternative pesticides forever but they cost more. I basically agree with your point though, used reasonably some pesticides can be effective tools and the problems wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't include DDT in that mix though because the stuff sticks around too long - it's just a bad engineering choice. Parathion or something else would make more sense. You don't want to be using chems that concentrate in the food chain, it just creates too many problems down the line and the regulatory regimes you have to put in place are a drag to everybody, not to mention unrealistic. Incidentally, just stumbled across this article which claims that the increase in malaria was NOT caused by DDT bans but rather insect resistance to DDT: http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm I don't know what to make of it but I'll put it out there.The other point here is that it's important to look at these things from an epidemiological point of view - it's not the theoretical best case that matters, it's the practical reality on the ground across the whole population. One of the more stupid things about current US pesticide laws is that when they calculate exposures they assume that all pesticides, all the time, are used in accordance to the label. That's just not reality - we all know that CCA wood is burned, that most contractors didn't sweep up all the dust or use gloves 100% of the time yet that's what the assumption is. We had a similar 100 post thread awhile back on the topic of CCA. People are understandably upset that CCA was pulled from the market and were making the argument that it's basically a safe product. People almost always have problems with statistical arguments. In the end what it came down was: if CCA's so bad then show me the bodies. Which is understandable but it's not how public health works. For example there's never been a case of lung cancer you can claim was for sure caused by smoking, it's all an epidemiological argument. In other words, it's the effect on the overall population they are looking at, not individual cases. It's hard to justify this because most people don't understand or accept epidemiological harm even though it's the basic tool for the control of diseases.The logical chain for pesticides is this: arsenic in *elevated* doses causes X number of cases of cancer in rats, therefore (the argument goes) *small* doses cause Y number of cases in humans. Then they look for situations (spraying, working with, playing on CCA structures etc) where you might get those small doses and from that they calculate the number of new cancer cases that exposure is likely to cause. If it's over some number (typically 1 in a million) they change the rules to limit the exposure (wear gloves, wear a mask, don't use it on crop X, etc), if they can't get it low enough by making a label change, they pull the product. CCA was pulled because child exposures for arsenic were very high (not due to exposure to builders interestingly). There's a lot that could go wrong in that chain of reasoning and many legitimate critiques of it, but it's how all drugs and chemicals are tested for safety. CCA came up short by a mile when it came to kids exposures to arsenic so they pulled it.
You and Moltenmetal make good points.
I know what you mean about using the product according to labels--I rarely do that (and theoretically, I know better!). Most people think if a little works, then a whole lot will be better. But, in the case of antifreeze in particular, and I suppose insecticides as well, more is actually not good. Pure antifreeze will freeze where a 50% mixture (solution) won't.
I once separated lumber I put out to the curb into a pile of CCA-treated and a pile of non-treated because I knew a neighbor scavanged wood to burn for heat. I came home from work the next day and he'd taken both piles! An attitude of, "Hey, it burns, it gives heat, why not use it?"
I burned CCA wood when I was a kid. It burns a nice green color, very pretty. There are billions of board feet of CCA installed now, I wonder what's going to happen 30-40 years down the road when it finally rots away and the residues will be in everyone's yard. Maybe not a concern but I wouldn't take any bets on it. I guess we'll see.
Your neighbor is lucky to be alive.There was an recent article (I think in JLC) about a woman who died, autopsy showed arsenic poisoning. Cops suspected the husband, couldn't find a motive, and on a hunch had his blood tested. He had high levels of arsenic too but didn't die.They had been working on the deck of their summer cabin over the weekend and burned the scraps of CCA.
Or all of his neighbors--he's inside while the black smoke pours out of his chimney and over the whole neighborhood. Anyway, I've moved, so I don't need to worry about it now.
I would agree with you that banning a chemical based on scare tactics is a terrible strategy. DDT is not such a bad chemical if used sparingly and responsibly, and i think that it may still have uses- however, mosquitoes grow resistant to it, and the reason that DDT can still be effective in cases like the one you cite is that it is not widely used now.
I'd kind of like to see this discussion head back towards housing. . . Why is it that "sustainable houses" tend to be these 4,000 sf houses with a bajillion windows and recycled glass tiles that i see in magazines? what about "live simply so that others may simply live?zak
"Why is it that "sustainable houses" tend to be these 4,000 sf houses with a bajillion windows and recycled glass tiles that i see in magazines?"
LOL
what about "live simply so that others may simply live?
Living simply doesn't enable others to live any more than eating your veggies helps starving Ethiopians. Which would be better - a guy sitting on his cash living in a 500 sq ft house or his shelling out some of that cash to someone else working?
In fact whatever you do with you money (aside from stuffing it in a mattress) helps others.
ermmm. yeah, housing. Sorry about that.
Why is it that "sustainable houses" tend to be these 4,000 sf houses with a bajillion windows and recycled glass tiles that i see in magazines? what about "live simply so that others may simply live?
Well, how would anyone know you were doing so much for their enivornment with out all of the landscape lighting, lawn sprinklers, fancy non-native plants, imported lawn & house features . . . living in a modest unassuming house like the neighbors?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Soultrain, I disagree with basically everything you've written here either on a factual basis or on an ethical basis but the thing that stuck out was this line: "why should it matter to you? It's not your land." It matters to me because I care about more than just myself and what I can claim I own. I care about my neighborhood, I care about my country, I care about the environment. I think it comes with being human. I can't even imagine living life with that kind of attitude, it seems both cold and inhuman. I think it fails to acknowledge how much we depend on each other and I think it fails to acknowledge how much we can help each other. I wouldn't wish that kind world on my worst enemy, i really wouldn't.I've been to places where anything goes, where regulations were nonexistent, where people could do as they pleased. They are fairly close to hell on earth, brutally poor, polluted, foul places. It's not a life I'd wish on anyone and if you saw it up close and personal I bet you wouldn't either.-s
Experienced - help me understand what you mean about the aggregate. My thinking is the earth is a rock, and we'll never find enough uses as mere surface dwellers.
I want rock from outside the neighborhood, but not the next state. Are there states that cannot quarry rock? And if so is it caused by urban sprawl, nimby complaints or environmental regulation, or lack of actual rock.
I am thinking rock is near the ultimate material for sustainable construction.
Treat every person you meet like you will know them the rest of your life - you just might!
Natural aggregates are the stuff found in what we call "gravel pits" up here. It was the sand and smaller stones placed there by old rivers, oceans and formed with gravity and winds as the energy forces. When we find such a deposit, all we have to do is dig and screen it (and maybe wash it) into appropriate sizes for asphalts and concretes. When we have to blast and then crush large rock down to those sizes, a lot of energy is used. So the naturally formed aggregates are cheaper and preferred for pricing reasons.
I used to work in the energy section of our Dept. of Natural Resources. A recently retired geologist from the Dept. was in the library one day (1997-8) and I asked what he was up to? Hired back privately by the dept to do research in aggregates and wordwide markets-there's a big market developing!!! This tiny, teeny gold company I mentioned earlier who now has one of the largest gold deposits in the states (Alaska) grew by selling sand/gravel to california/japan to finance gold exploration.
By the way, stock went from about 10 cents to $10 over 2-3 years. I had owned it in the distant past but don't invest in gold anymore nor do I wear any jewellery. I still watch it amusingly. It was mentioned recently as a good takeover candidate for one of the big gold players who need to replace reserves. Wonder if I can stop myself from taking a position now that I know this little gem from a gold analyst??? We all like to make money legally if it's there to be made but somewhere the morals/conscience have to enter the equation. Gold is really energy intensive and a lot of the operations use cyanide to leach gold from the rock heaps at the surface.
A lot of the problem with gravel is the NIMBY complex that most new and growing areas have. Planned (well over-planned) communities don't want the noise, dust, and truck traffic in them. However, they need the materials for their growing populations. One local city, Santa Clarita, is trying to prevent a new gravel pit from starting up near their city.
The gravel pit will be located in a local stream bed, where it will harvest the annual washout from the mountains. In fact, this material needs to be removed or flooding will later occur as the gravel builds up. Things left to themselves mean that you would be seeing people flooded out of their (>$500k) homes in a few years.
This is eminently a sustainable process. Each year the rains wash more gravel down from the mountains. Every 20 or so years an earthquake raises the mountains up a couple of feet. This has been going on for the last few million years and will probably continue for the next few million years.
The big problem is that bulk materials like gravel need to be consumed near their point of origin. It is really wasteful to try and transport this material any great distance. Unfortunately, California is very hostile to extractive industries like the gravel industry. So they will try to force such industry out of state.
Erich
First time I heard of a river that could supply commercial quantities of aggregates yearly. Up here you can't touch anything around rivers and must protect streams etc from fouling due to silt, mud , clay from construction sites. The largest development in our city of 400,000 was shut down last week until they had dams,dykes, filters in place to catch all the crud from entering nearby lakes. Are their any fish species in that river that would be affected?
The fouling that occurs from silts.etc is that it covers the sands that some of our better species of commercial/sport fishes like to lay their eggs in. No sand, no spawning. This is a good part of the reason (as well as overfishing and logs being floated down the rivers in spring) that millions of dollars are now being spent to have the great Atlantic Salmon come back in quantities to our rivers here. It was a great sport and commercial fishery with quite a few richer folks/celebrities from all over (Ted Williams was a regular)
<<The fouling that occurs from silts.etc is that it covers the sands that some of our better species of commercial/sport fishes like to lay their eggs in. No sand, no spawning. This is a good part of the reason (as well as overfishing and logs being floated down the rivers in spring) that millions of dollars are now being spent to have the great Atlantic Salmon come back in quantities to our rivers here. It was a great sport and commercial fishery with quite a few richer folks/celebrities from all over (Ted Williams was a regular)>>Good point.It's that and much more. When you silt up a river you can also wipe out an insect population along with the fish. Once you've wiped out the insects there are bird species that may follow down the drain so to speak.When the balance is upset to this level there is an effect on nearly everything in that ecosystem, and as you pointed out, it is really tough to get back.
The trick here in Southen California is that the rivers only run half the year. In the summer, the sand and gravel are there on the surface ready to pick up. Then the rains come and the cycle starts again. In wet years they may run year around, in dry ones, not at all.
The gravel pit will be located in a local stream bed, where it will harvest the annual washout from the mountains
Which works until some bureaucrat far away makes the stream bed a "protected habitat." The fact that the stream bed is an "n-stage" oxbow, which will continue to repeatedly flood until the oxbow is isolated by the eventual "cut through" will make no difference.
Now, that's not all bad, in it's way. The Gifford-Hill people up in Waco, bought up property that had been previous oxbows of the Brazos river. As the river "abandoned" the bends, the resultant oxbow lakes became lower and lower energy systems. That actually increased the deposition of particulates, even graded the resultant aggregates, making for slightly more efficient aggreagate "mining." Sadly, now, some of these "mines" are now being saddled with environmental regulations (for drag lining gravel out of former streambeds . . . <eyeroll>)Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Don't forget the firefighters who died because the Klamath River Basin authority would not authorize taking water lifts from the lake to aid in the firefight...
After all, there were protected fish in that lake...http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/esa/esainvestorsbusdaily012005.htm
Edited 10/28/2005 11:06 am ET by Soultrain
Edited 10/28/2005 11:07 am ET by Soultrain
because the Klamath River Basin authority
Hmm, had forgotten that.
I seem to remember there was some posturing that KRBA politcal types were pontificating that there was not way to prove more water would have helped, so they could not be at fault . . .
I could be mis-remembering, though.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Even if there wasn't evidence to PROVE that more water would have helped, it certainly would not have hurt the situation. Sounds like some buro trying to make excuses for unconscionable behavior. IMO, you do everything you can as quickly as you can to save those people's lives.
Funny thing too, in the article I linked to, it turns out that the "protected fish" were illegally included on the endangered species list. To bad for those farmers who lost their crops & the men & women who lost their lives.
For a great discussion on this problem see "The Fisherman's Problem" by McElroy. It is a great discussion of fishing off the west coast or N and S america over the last 100 years or so. The concepts tie into sustainability and Malthus also.
It is good to see people thinking about this issue. I feel that it is important but unless someone dies or something big explodes the media aren't interested. That leaves it to Enviromental groups that tend to take a "sky is falling" approach that turns must of us off the subject.
Terence
ps. Google "environmental footprint" and take the test. Its interesting.
Concerning aggregate for concrete--couldn't we pulverize old concrete for aggregate, or used crushed glass?
couldn't we pulverize old concrete for aggregate, or used crushed glass
You can, except in those jurisdictions that require recycled concrete or glass to be "cleaner" than yard aggregate.
The problem being that roadmetals have been exposed (but not necessarily contaminated) wit ha number of things over the years.
So, one of the keys to creating "sustainability" will be in inculcating common sense instead of CYA in many of the bureaucracies, especially environmental regulatory ones.
Sand, that had fractional ppm of some simple organic chemical, that was then mixed into concrete means that the concrete is no "contaminated" per the current ppb regulation. Thus it can't be crushed into new aggregate that would be encased in portland cement and fused into a nice solid mostly stable new product. Instead, due to the new "tougher" environmental regulation, it has to be specially broken up, protected during transport, and hauled off to a specialized landfill, which by it's enviro-hazard labling will fill quickly and can have little or no future use. That's not sustainable. That's waste by fiat.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
I remember when flyash and bottom ash were used as road bed, but then those materials were ruled to be hazardous materials and were prohibitted. So now they go to special landfills,where they truly are "wasted."
were used as road bed, but then those materials were ruled to be hazardous
Now, the least sensible, in my book, was the use of "waste" transformer oil used to seal or "oil" county gravel roads.
There's new debate on whether PCBs are, in fact, truly artificial chemicals (chlorine binds to so many things naturally); so that's a hem & haw; but dioxins & trioxins are not very nice at all.
Much better to use an actual natural product like bitumen for paving.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Right up front, I will agree with you on one part of your statement; there is apparently no end to the hype and BS surrounding sustainability, whatever that is.
But like any new view of the world or emerging philosophy, there are always those folks at the fringe that can be set up as straw dogs and used to lampoon the essential principles.
The fact that we have some sloppy thinkers, opportunists, near-religious fanatics, and dogmaticly positioned hand-wringers swarming around the concept does not change the value of the concept. You find those folks anywhere.
Where I disagree with the direction of your post is the way you framed the argument. The question of sustainability (at least as I see it) is only partially about the availability of resources, and a very small part at that.
If you limit the argument in this way, then of course it is fairly simple to tease out an absurdity or two.
But at the core of sustainability, we have much wider questions. As Bill McKibben pointed out, so many of us are leading "normal" lives that something abnormal is happenening to our environment. I don't think there is any responsible way to contradict that observation -- the wealth of evidence for this would be tough to ignore unless you wanted to ignore it for some reason.
So if you recognize that roughly 14% of the US economy is tied to construction, you know that we are the biggest single component of the economy after government spending. If you were concerned about the long-term health and quality of life that our country enjoys, this industry would be a great place to start.
Clearly, this is not limited to our country, it is a global concern.
And this concern can be extended without resorting to emotionalism, animal rights or political correctness; there is no way to hypothesize our existence outside of the complex web of biological interactions we roughly term "nature." And the further one looks into biology or chemistry, the more clearly we see these inextricable connections.
The idea that nature can absorb without consequence anything we care to hand out simply defies all of the scientific evidence we have available, and common sense, too. We have the industrial capacity to alter our environment in ways that did not exist 50 years ago, and we can do so at a rate that did not exist 5 years ago.
You cited Bjorn Lumborg. Does it bother you at all that he is at odds with about 97% of the rest of the world's atmospheric scientists?
We probably are not running out of things to build houses with, in that regard you are correct.
Energy efficiency can be taken to ridiculous extremes, I've seen it as well.
But it is beyond dispute that our air and water are not what they were a mere 50 years ago, and the quality of life that our children will experience will not be what our parents had.
As an architect, you are making decisions that people will live with for a long time to come. I hope you recognize the gravity of that responsibility,and I hope that you will, to the best of your ability, work for the benefit of everyone.
That's how I was taught to build.
Lomberg is not an atmospheric scientist, he's a statistician. I suggest you read his book.
In fact he shows that air and water quality are much better now that 50 years ago. And even better than 100 years ago.
In NY City where I live, most building burned coal for heating 100 years ago, and the streets were littered with horse manure.
50 years ago there were very few municipal sewage treatment plants: most cities dumped untreated sewage into rivers.
Even 35 years ago virtually all apartment buildings incirnerated their garbage. Soot was everywhere in the air.
I'm familiar with Lomberg's work. The overwhelming majority of the world's scientific community regards it as politically motivated garbage.And you know what Mark Twain said about statistics, right? <G>As has been noted by far better thinkers than me, when the scientific value of a claim is slight, it is useful to consider the political motivation.He "shows" nothing but his own political bias. He makes a lot of money as a speaker, and he is a worldwide favorite of those who would maintain a certain status quo.Every one of the instances you have provided are true. They also in no way account for the changes that we are seeing on a wider scale. There are some basic logical problems and well documented factual problems with his position.You can simplify any argument to the point of irrelevance if you care to. A popular corollary to Lomberg's line is that ". . . there is no problem with the forests, why, we have more trees right now than we did in 1850!"Talk to a scientist who understands in landscape scale about forest health, species diversity, watershed functionality, biological connectivity, and a very different picture emerges.The health of the forest, or the planet for that matter, cannot be measured by the number of trees per acre.Also recognize that Lumborg has adopted a contrarian position. While there are certain rhetorical advantages to this if you are an AM talk radio host, it is important to recognize the implications of this tactic. He has proven nothing, and re-framed the question as a challenge that would be, on the terms that it is presented, answered as a result of deductive logic.Which of course he knows can't be done. He cannot be refuted on the terms that he presents the argument in, and that is not because he is right.If you are persuaded by his arguments, that is unfortunate for all of us. Regardless of the content, the form of his arguments should not get past a high school philosophy class. Add to that the intentionally misleading nature of his statistical analysis, and we've got a pretty sad state of affairs.If you find support in his work for a position that you already believe in, it is neither my place nor my desire to change your mind.If you don't want to see it, you aren't going to.
Ad hominem arguments don't work for me. And political motivation is blatantly apparent by some people on both sides of this debate: The various ECO funds publishing scare stories to boost donations, scientists motivated to obtain government funding for their research. We won't solve anything unless we stick to the issues.
Again I advise those who wish to learn more to read the books I cited.
I don't think I proposed an ad hominem argument -- I'm pretty keen on avoiding that myself, as I have often pointed out here at Breaktime.*** Edited to add the following: Let's be clear about what constitutes the informal fallacy of Argumentum ad Hominem. This is the attempt to undermine a claim by calling attention to the irrelevant circumstances of the person making the claim. A more specific form of this fallacy is known as Genetic: for example, "His opinion on politics is worthless, he's Canadian you know."(I couldn't resist that one, the opportunity was too good. Y'all quit pickin' on my Canadian friends now, eh?)I've gone back over my posts, I can't find even a hint of ad hominem anywhere.I've been pretty careful to keep it relevant and to the point. The personal circumstances of Lumborg's life are of no concern to me whatsoever. It's his work that I take issue with. I hope that is clear. [end of edit] ***I'm not questioning the person, I'm questioning the motivation behind the argument, which I think is instructive.I think I'm pretty close to the core issue.And yes, there is political motivation on every side -- I agree with you; when in doubt, always follow the money.As for the book, I picked up a copy at an NAHB show a few years ago after heariing him speak at the keynote address.I read far enough into it to recognize a bad argument.Again, anyone who would be persuaded by Lomborg is only persuaded because they want to be. His work is irresponsible.
Edited 10/26/2005 3:50 pm by Catskinner
Lomberg was also publicly rebuked by a Danish scientific board and leading scientific journals have editorialized against him. The only reputable source I know that still supports him is the Economist magazine (oh and I once heard an agrochemical company rep wax poetic about him) and while I respect the Economist on many issues, they're economists not scientists. Hardly a source I'd want to reference to make my points.The points you make below are true for the West but not in the developing world (or at least the parts I've visited: Tanzania, Malaysia, Guatemala and Mexico) so while it's nice that NY air is breathable extrapolating that to the rest of the world isn't logical.That said, while I have no hesitation calling myself an environmentalist a lot of the stuff I've seen on sustainability seems like rot to me. Where some of it makes points in my book is that it's basically building science R&D. R&D doesn't need to make economic or energy sense, anything in it's developmental stages is going to be expensive. In my area straw bale houses are seen as cutting edge 'sustainable' structures but from what I can tell, they really don't make any sense - the engineering and design effort that goes into them is huge and since the bales aren't structural you still need a post and beam wood structure hidden inside them. Further, it's not clear that they'll last. But while it seems to me that they fail as sustainable structures, it's still an interesting idea and worth playing with and I'm glad there are people out there working on straw bale designs.It's obvious to me that we better get serious about sustainability yesterday so I'm happy to see folks working on these designs even if 90% of them fail.
Quote: "In my area straw bale houses are seen as cutting edge 'sustainable' structures but from what I can tell, they really don't make any sense - the engineering and design effort that goes into them is huge and since the bales aren't structural you still need a post and beam wood structure hidden inside them. Further, it's not clear that they'll last. But while it seems to me that they fail as sustainable structures, it's still an interesting idea and worth playing with and I'm glad there are people out there working on straw bale designs."
About 1997-8 I designed the HRV system for a bale hosue about 5 miles up the road from me. Bale houses were built in Nebraska (and maybe other plains states) in the latter part of the 19th century with some still being lived in. Others not being lived in did not start failing untill the roofs failed. Seems like a product whose time will come back to some of us. As to the structurals, true 1 storey slab-on-grade (like the one up the road) need very little engineering and if I remember correctly this one had no vertical posts- the roof system lay on top of a beam supported by bales only.
The last time I was into visit and check out the place, there were no complaints. In the first year, they had some leakage from horizontal wind driven rain around a window facing the ocean (east here...... and, by the way, we're getting the tail end of hurricane Wilma here tonight)
Another trivia thing just came to mind..... these folks are or were US citizens- moved up here from Colorado in a major move of the Bhuddist community from Boulder. Seem to be good folks....musicians, teachers, riding stables...offering alternate schooling for arts and experienced based schooling by field trips and doing...backed by books, not mostly books........wish I could've afforded to put my kids through there.
An observation or three, and then a suggestion for a positive direction to the discussion;To suppose that the world environmental situation is better because the individual components are better is mistaken for several reasons;There is always the question of a statistical confidence, i.e. does your data set provide you with sample that will enable you to accurately represent the situation? As previously noted, choosing modern cities in the most well-developed countries unquestionably skews the evidence. Any statistitian who does that should be regarded as permanently suspect. That is irresponsible at best.In other words, sure, I'm curious about New York City, but also tell me about Shanghai, Bangkok, Mexico City, and so on.Secondly, Lomborg's argument is a superb example of the fallacy of composition. Briefly, the fallacy of composition is the error of attributing the qualities of the parts of something to that something as a whole. Two examples; just because all of the musicians in a band are good musicians, it does't logically follow that you have a good band. Or more to the point, a syllogism (not mine);All molecules are in constant random motion. (We know this is true)
The Lincoln Memorial is made of molecules. (Also true)
The Lincoln Memorial is therefore in constant random motion. (Probably not <G>)One of the factors that affects our environment is total population, another is the rate that it is loaded. There are more, this will suffice for now.If we have a couple of really dirty cities, that's not so good. If those cities get somewhat cleaner, that's good for the population of those cities. But there is some number of relatively cleaner cities that, taken together, will have a far more serious effect that the few dirty cities did.All of the responsible scientific evidence we have suggests that we have arrived at that point.As for rate of loading; I am well aware that in the 1930's it was unwise to swim in the Hudson downstream of Sing-Sing prison. Sewage treatment was still a novel concept, apparently.And while it is important to recognize that sewage treatment is a good thing, it is equally important to this discussion to see that this was a biological waste that was arguably within the capacity of the overall system to absorb without catastrophic long-term result. It is certainly a public health problem, no doubt an aesthetic annoyance, and generally bad form to sh!t in the river upstream of your neighbors. At the rate it was occurring, it was not the same kind of problem as we have today. Multiply the load rate (oops, bad pun) by several orders of magnitude and you have an entirely different problem.So one must be careful in the comparison of our situation now to previous times.As for the type of load on the system, it would be difficult to overstate the importance. Relatively small volumes of organic waste are troublesome, but they are nothing compared to the massive quantities of endocrine disrupters we release on a daily basis.One small example: the folks at the sewage treatment plant at a town outside of Dallas can tell you when Spring Break at the loxcal university is over by measuring the synthetic hormone levels in the effluent stream. We're talking about birth control pills. That chemical is not fully metabolized by a human, and it is not treated at all by a municipal system. It just goes back into the river. And there is simply no mechanism in the natural environment that makes it "go away."Then there is always PCBs, but we probably don't need to go there.For a positive direction;I am not an environmentalist. I am a construction professional. In fact, on a good day I probably bulldoze enough trees to keep an architect in paper for years. <G>I am not proposing that we stop all growth, go back to the land (wherever that was) and live in mud huts without electricity and wallow in our collective guilt until the economy collapses and we all die of starvation. I can't stand those folks, either. <G>That's why I entered this discussion in partial agreement with you.What I am proposing is that as construction professionals we acknowledge a problem that we have overwhelming evidence for and use our position to build a better world for those who will follow us.
Is it too late for you to go back to school?
http://www.farrside.com/ccgt/
Hey thanks Darcy. I bookmarked that one.
It's my archy brother, Kevin's project."CCGT is only the third building in the nation to achieve Platinum certification based on the United States Green Building Council's LEED rating system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). CCGT is the first rehab LEED Platinum building in the country, the first LEED Platinum in the Midwest, the first LEED Platinum brownfield development, and the first LEED Platinum that is accessible by public transportation."You're welcome...<g>
Edited 10/26/2005 4:36 pm ET by darcy
After a quick look at his website, I'd gues you must be proud of your brother.That's really quite an impressive achievement.
Yeah well, he got all the brains in the family.<g>The guy can build well too! He started remodeling my folks 1919 house at age 16. Put in a master bath, etc. Thurned the detached garage into and apartment for himself...All the plumbing and electrical too.You bet I'm proud!