Bill Virgin is All Wrong

Bill has an article about the City of Seattle's greenhouse gas reduction plan in today's PI. The article is titled City plan on cars could be a boon for suburbia and his argument is fundamentally flawed.

I am particularly glad that he mentioned "the Hubbert's Peak folks," but his main idea is founded upon an erroneous assumption: nothing will ever replace oil--there is no such thing as the magical "something else" he writes about. He should read Kenneth Deffeyes' book Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak. Deffeyes is an oil geologist and he worked with Hubbert for years. Hubbert applied his technique to U.S. oil production and accurately predicted the peak of U.S. oil production; Deffeyes has applied the same methodology to world oil production. In his book, he examines all of the potential replacements for oil, and methodically demonstrates that they are all non-starters.

The upshot is this: oil production has either already peaked or will within just a few years, and it will never go up again. When that happens, the cost of gasoline will skyrocket, and as a society we have not worked hard enough or long enough to prepare for the consequences. Yes, people like their cars, and I agree with him that they will not voluntarily stop driving them. But when gasoline costs $12, $15, or $20 a gallon (or when there is no gasoline at all) the suburbs he (and so many others) love so much--with their widely dispersed land uses and super-low density neighborhoods--will become functionally uninhabitable.

Think about that the next time you have to drive 3 miles for a gallon of milk.

Al Gore's Climate Change Speech

I was lucky enough to snag an invitation to see Al Gore's speech on climate change this past Thursday. The talk was organized by Mayor Nickel's office as part of a weeklong series of climate-related policy announcements, mostly focused on Nickel's U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement and the release of the City of Seattle's Green Ribbon Commission report. Gore was here to show support for the role Nickels and Seattle have taken in addressing climate change. I think Al did an amazing job. He was funny, passionate, enthusiastic, and inspiring.

I've been convinced that global warming is a major threat for years. However, I have to say that after seeing Gore's presentation, it feels like climate change will be THE defining issue facing our entire civilization for the next 100 years. It affects everything. The "tipping points" that he explained so brilliantly are what we really need to be concerned about, and I couldn't help but think that the way this problem is framed will determine whether or not we are successful in addressing it. I think Gore is dead-on to characterize climate change as a moral issue, and I also feel like all of us need to make a concerted effort to characterize it as a patriotic issue as well. Something like, "cutting out carbon is patriotic!"

Eric De Place has a great summary of the speech here.

Liam's Increasingly Multisyllabic Vocabulary

During Tuesday's Dad Patrol with Liam the boy was busting out some impressive words. Earlier in the day, when he was playing trains with Amy, he held up an unused section of track and declared "this one isn't NECESSARY." Later, when Liam and I were playing hide and seek, he said "I'm moving away from you--I'm DISAPPEARING." A couple of hours later I was reading a book to him about a turtle named Franklin. About midway through the book there's a picture of his friend Bear walking through the woods and carrying a basket full of berries. I pointed at the bear and asked Liam what the bear was doing. He said "He's picking blueberries. Are they EDIBLE?"

Liam is 2 1/2 years old. Is this normal? Either way, it's pretty fun to experience.

Museum of Flight

My brother Andy is leaving Packwood and moving back to Flagstaff, Arizona. He received a pretty hefty promotion (he'll be silviculturist on the Coconino NF) and he's psyched to be going back, so I am happy for him, but I am extremely bummed that he's leaving Washington. So he came up to Seattle for his last visit before the move, and we decided we'd have a "boys day out." We asked Liam what he wanted to do, and he chose the Museum of Flight. Liam had been there a few times before with Amy, but neither Andy nor I had, so we decided to go for it.

The curious thing about the Museum of Flight is the intensely strange juxtaposition of amazing technological breakthroughs and the cold-blooded purpose to which they were put. For example, in a single room, one can see an aircraft that was used to deliver mail to remote rural towns, another that could fly faster than any plane ever built that was used to spy on other countries, and yet another that was used to drop napalm on villages in Viet Nam. I was simultaneously impressed by the ingenious engineering and disgusted by the killing technology. After a couple of hours the psychic dissonance was too much for us to bear, so we left. Plus it was nap time.

Skagit Delta Snow Geese

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Amy's folks came out for her birthday a couple of weeks ago. In addition to lots of good conversation and play time with Mr. Little Guy, we also managed a trip up to the Skagit delta on a remarkably warm and sunny Saturday. Fortunately, the snow geese had not yet headed for their northern breeding grounds, and we had lots of good views of the feeding flocks on our way towards La Conner. After lunch, we drove back across Fir Island and came upon an enormous flock of snow geese feeding on the north side of the road. We watched them from the car for a few minutes, and then the fellow living in the house closest to the flock decided it was time to mow his lawn (!) and as soon as the mower started up, every single goose (there must have been 50,000 of them at least) decided it was time to take to the sky. It was absolutely overwhelming--I've never seen anything like it. If you're ever in northwest Washington in late winter/early spring, it is not to be missed.

A Counterintuitive (and Depressing) Argument

This post is a couple of years old, but it certainly gave me pause when I stumbled across it earlier today. The take home message of the book (Rebel Sell) it references: "practices such as downshifting, energy conservation, eating organic produce, and engaging in local environmental activities are useless" and "you can't break the cycle of poverty; you can't break the cycle of violence; you can't break the cycle of corporate expansion; you can't break the cycle of the arms race; you can't break the cycle of imprisonment, if you don't break the cycle by which radicals are isolated, idealists are turned into pragmatists, and pragmatists into opportunists." The thing is, many of the arguments have merit. It's an interesting read, definitely worth a few minutes of your time.

Surprise Visit from the Kaplans

Amy's birthday was two weekends ago and her parents came out for a surprise visit. It was tough to find a way to keep Amy and Liam home the morning her parents were due to arrive, but I made up a story about ordering something that she needed to sign for. It worked pretty well, and she and Liam were both completely shocked to see her parents, and not the UPS guy. It was a great visit, especially for Liam. More pics of our trip to the Skagit in the next post.

Here's a shot of Amy, Linda, Dan, and Liam on the steps in Fremont near the ship canal.

Bike Station Seattle

I had some minor mechanical problems with my front brakes on Monday (mostly due to my mechanical ineptitude) so I took my bike to the Seattle Bike Station. I'd never been inside before, and I was pretty impressed by what I saw. In addition to housing secure, 24/7 bicycle parking, Bike Station is also home to the offices of the Bicycle Alliance of Washington and they have a full service repair shop in the back. On my way to see Joe (the mechanic) I passed Pauh Wang, the City of Seattle's liason to the Bicycle Advisory Board, who had also come in for a quick repair. Joe fixed up the Kona in about 15 minutes and he only charged me $5!

This is a great facility, and I think it would be even better if there were more of them in and around Seattle, located in areas of high employment density (another in downtown, closer to the Pike/Pine corridor & financial district would be good, UW, downtown Bellevue, Microsoft campus in Redmond, etc.). Something similar has been done in the San Francisco Bay area, with Bike Stations in Berkeley and the Embarcadero. Long Beach and Palo Alto also have Bike Stations.

Maybe we could use some of the State's budget surplus to fund more infrastructure for bicycle commuters?

Calico, The Coolest Map-making Cat in Town

For the past several months one of my colleagues at CommEn Space, Tim Schaub, has been working on a series of improvements and modifications to the open source web mapping tool MapServer. We had a naming contest for the application and Calico was the winner. I don't get to do much graphic design at work, but occasionally an opportunity presents itself, and I designed this logo for Calico. Not sure how exactly we'll be using it, but I expect it will be gaining some visibility over the next few months, and pretty soon we'll be generating even more (non) profits! To see some examples of Calico applications we've made for our clients, go here.

Black Ice, the Rematch

Last year I crashed pretty hard on some black ice (which I mentioned briefly here) and this morning it was re-match time. Last night it rained pretty hard, then the skies cleared and the temperature dropped to 30 degrees--perfect conditions for the creation of copious amounts of black ice. Nearly the entirety of my route was covered with ice--from my house, along the Burke Gilman, across the Fremont Bridge, up and over Dexter--and it wasn't until I was in downtown proper that the heat island kicked the temperature up to around 35 degrees. I had one terrifying slide on the BG, but I did not crash and made it into work unscathed. I probably should have taken the bus, but I wanted to have at least one successful ride on the black ice!

Impending Bloom

It has been exceptionally cold and clear here in Seattle for the past week, but nevertheless Spring is getting ready to bust out all over the place. Just before the cold Arctic air moved in, I snapped these shots of our blooming camellia and an iris in the front yard. All of the trees are just about ready to break bud, and it looks like the apricot tree is going to have loads of fruit this year. I really love the winters here in Seattle, but I also look forward to the return of Spring!

By the way, I shamelessly appropriated the title of this post from an Oregon song of the same name.

Fidalgo Island--Sugarloaf Mountain

This past weekend Andy and Lynna came up for a visit and we went for a short hike on Sugarloaf Mountain, which is on Fidalgo Island. The trail is short (about 3/4 mile) but Liam hiked the entire thing by himself--this was his first "solo" hike. The entire time he kept saying "I'm in the woods!" At the top of the mountain (which is more accurately described as a hill) there were numerous rock outcrops that Liam proceeded to climb, exclaiming "I'm climbing a cliff."

Seattle Public Utilities GreenUp Program

Inspired by a recent story (and many, many previous blog posts) by Northwest Environment Watch uber-geek Clark Williams-Derry about home energy efficiency, we've taken two steps at our house to improve our energy efficiency and decrease our climate impact. The first step was to sign up for Seattle Public Utilities' GreenUp program, whereby ratepayers can voluntarily pay a premium to ensure that all or a portion of their power is coming from renewable sources, such as the Stateline wind farm. As an added bonus, early subscribers receive a $10 gift certificate to local organic food heroes Puget Consumers' Co-op and a nifty canvas "green power" tote bag.

The second thing we did was to hire a firm called Atmosphere (no web site!) to perform a series of whole-house energy efficiency improvements: sealing all the cracks in our house where heated air was escaping, improving overall air circulation, installing new fans, etc. The repairs haven't been in place long enough to measure quantitatively, but already we've noticed that the furnace doesn't kick on as frequently and the whole house feels more comfortable. I'll report more when I've got some numbers, but I can recommend Atmosphere if you're thinking of doing something similar--they did great work and were extremely conscientious.

Video Grabs of Liam Skiing

OK, as promised, here are some screen grabs from the video we took of Liam during his first skiing lesson. His instructor, Stephanie, was awesome--extremely patient and encouraging and apparently possessing a back made of titanium. Liam had a great time and I really hope he decides to stick with snow sports as he gets older! If you're interested in seeing the actual video, email me and I'll send it to you.

CommEn Space on KUOW

My boss Chris Davis was on KUOW Wednesday morning representing our organization, CommEn Space, during a show about mapping. Chris did a great job explaining what we do, but to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, talking about mapping is like writing about music: it's kind of hard to convey much meaning about an inherently visual medium without the use of any graphics. There were some interesting calls, and who knows if any new work will come of it, but it was nevertheless fun to hear my boss on the radio talking about the stuff we do everyday. An archived version should be available for podcasting here.

And thanks very much to Jon Stahl for publicizing the event on his blog before it happened!

White Pass Snowboarding

Last weekend we visited Andy and Lynna in Packwood for a quick visit and some time on the slopes. Liam had his very first ski lesson! He did pretty well considering he's only been walking for a bit more than a year. Of course the whole time he was on the kiddy hill he kept pointing at the high-speed quad, saying "I wanna go there!!!" Maybe next year. Unfortunately I did not have the presence of mind to take the camera out of Andy's car until after his lesson was finished, but Amy did take a fair bit of video. At some point I will extract a frame or two from the tape and post a pic of him with his itty-bitty skis. I did get some shots of Bro & me at the top of the mountain. The views were spectacular--this was the first clear day in over a month at White Pass and there was a TON of snow; 120" at the top and 80-something at the base. Very, very nice conditions. This was my first full-on snowboarding trip in about two years, and it was great!

We're #3!!!

Seattle was ranked the third best city for cycling by Bicycling magazine. Of course, Portland was number one (again), and I'm fairly astonished that Denver was #2, but it was nice to see that we're still up there. Here's hoping the Emerald City will be #1 next time they put the rankings out.

27 Consecutive Days of Rain

We finally had a day with no measurable rainfall (yesterday) which broke our streak of 27 consecutive days of rain. Remarkably, this is not the record! We came close to breaking the all-time record of 33 days, which was set back in 1953. We definitely needed the moisture, but all that precipitation adds a certain amount of, ah, excitement to the morning bicycle commute. Naturally, it started raining again today, but it was nice to get outside and walk the beach at Discovery Park with A & L yesterday.

The Inevitability of High Probability Events

There are some things that I know are going to happen: it will rain in the winter in Seattle, Liam will notice heavy construction equipment, Republicans will behave unethically, and so on. However, there is one high-probability event that I have mercifully avoided for years until yesterday morning—a flat tire on the way to work. I’ve had plenty of flat tires since I started bike commuting, but usually of the slow-leak variety that I notice as I’m getting ready to head for home. This is the first total blow-out I’ve experienced while actually on the road (and naturally, it happened during a pretty robust rainstorm). Fortunately I had a patch kit and pump with me, so I found a dry spot of concrete underneath an awning along Dexter Ave and fixed up the punctures in the tube—there were two! Hopefully I will be flat-free for another several years.

Planting the Solstice Tree

For the second year in a row we bought a live Douglas fir for our Solstice tree. Last year we planted it at the Audubon marsh on the Snoqualmie river, but the volunteer coordinator there said the soil wasn't the best for a Doug fir and he was worried that the tree might not make it. So this year, Amy found out about another habitat restoration project happening much closer to home, at Promontory Point in Magnuson Park. So we loaded up the tree, the kid, a bunch of Tonka trucks, and off we went!

It was a good time, and it will be much easier to visit this tree over the years and watch it shoot skyward. I think this is going to become one of our holiday traditions.