A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Since we’d marked the calendar and set an alarm, we were ready this year for Earth Hour 2009.  We turned off all the lights outside the house.  We shut down the laptops, router, printer, UPS, and electronics and then turned off the lights, fan, and everything else.  All we left on were the appliances (furnace, fridge, water heater).

Throughout the year we try to do what we can to conserve and reduce our footprint on the Earth.  We only own one car.  My husband drives it to work and back during the week.  He makes a loop on the way home to the post office or store so there’s no additional travel since their on the way home.  We shop once a week or every other week depending on our needs.  That weekly shopping trip is on a loop so we drive to the recycle center to drop off all our recycling (we’re not on a pick up route), then we hit the stores in order  and come home.  Many times we do the shopping on Saturday and thus don’t drive or go anywhere on Sunday.

We have a small vegetable garden during the year and eat out of that for fresh veggies when we can.  Of course, most years we’re struggling to get the fruits of our labor before the critters get them.  (We live on five acres in the midst of farm country and often have deer, rabbits, and other critters in our yard.)

We also have a small fruit orchard but even though we do get peaches and plums and apples by they time they ripen the deer or other critters get them.  We have managed to get our strawberries and raspberries (and we put the blueberries in planters on the deck so we could get them.)

What angers me sometimes is the questions on surveys: Will you drive less because of gas prices?  No, we won’t. We’ve reduced our driving years ago and they only way we could further reduce it is not to go to work.  Many of us have been cutting down and doing what we can for the Earth for years and have very little we could still cut back on so the questions don’t truly get at the current status of some of us.  For other, who have never considered cutting back, they probably could find ways to reduce driving or use of resources but others of us have already done the hard stuff and we’re working on refining where we can.

So, this year we did our bit for Earth hour and now we need to consider what more we could do.

Last year we turned off all our lights and the computers and everything we could find in the house except some appliances. We cranked up our wind-up radio and our wind-up LED Camp light and some candles and listened to music and read.

It wasn’t as quiet as the time when a hurricane blew through and we lost power for a week. One thing that power outage and Earth Hour taught me is just how much noise there is in our lives from our electronics. If you’re reading this on your laptop or PC, just listen for a moment. Do you hear the computer’s fan? Do you hear the hum of electronics? We’re so used to the background noises that we don’t even hear them anymore. But they’re there — subliminal and slightly annoying.

When the power went out, everything was off — not just the non-necessary lights and gadgets. The silence was unbelievable. In our bit of the world, our home, was only the sounds of wind rustling in the trees, birds chittering and tweeting, and that was it. Just our talking or turning a page — just the noise of life.

This year, I’ve marked the calendar and we plan to turn off all non-essential electronics again. I hope you join with all of us throughout the world to give the Earth an hour. Vote for the Earth by turning off your lights and non-essential electronics for one hour on March 28th from 8:30 PM (your local time). You’ll be amaze at what the world around you sounds like.

Today it was in the mid-30’s and it snowed a bit. It melted as soon as it touched the ground and later turned to rain.  But, cold and rain means it felt even colder. What makes it weird is that just two days ago on Wednesday the temp was near 80 and I was outside without a sweater or a jacket.

I noticed then that our forsythia bushes are all budded up and a there’s some bright yellow showing. These are the harbingers of spring that I really love — they just flash their brilliant yellow flowers — shouting to all who listen that it is spring.

The azaleas have got some leaves and buds too. The tulips and irises have shot up their leaves. No sign of flowers yet, but the promise is there.

I’m starting to think of gardening and ran about pulling all the gardening catalogs out along with the one or two seed catalogs that I got. I’ve got the pots and the soil to get the seeds started in the house. Once they get growing they’ll be transferred to the garden area.

I love spring; it’s such a time of promise and hope. What about you? What do you look forward to when you recognize the signs of the coming spring and summer months?

I’ve known about the problems of wind energy and the current power grid for quite a while.  I found this article on The Energy Challenge — Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid Limits in the New York Times (you’ll need to login to read it). To clearly state the problem. In part:

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.

However, to achieve that 20% figure, the United States must upgrade its power grid. Over the past several years, more and more people have come to realize that our national power grid is just not up to snuff. In fact it may not even be up to a sniffle. One of the problems with wind generation is that it isn’t generated evenly throughout the day. Wind changes direction, gets stronger, lighter, and sometimes dies completely. Scientist have been working on teaming the turbines with generators that smooth out the power that is generated. However, while that solves one problem it still doesn’t deal with the fact that you still have to get the power from where it is generated to where it will be used effectively or efficiently — and that means upgrading the grid.

Part of Obama’s recovery plan, and a source of new jobs, was to upgrade the nation’s power grid. Many people complain that it isn’t necessary because we all have power, don’t we? Well, no — not all of the citizens of this country have power. But, yes most do. The problem is that for years people have been ignoring the fact that coal, oil, and carbon based power generation is relying on finite resources — folks, we’re going to run out of these raw materials. We need to switch to greener renewable energy resources — wind, solar, whatever… To do this we need to have the technological grid that can handle what we can throw at it to power our homes, factories, and tools. Upgrading the national power grid is a necessary first step.

March came in like a lion. There’s an old saying I knew as a child:

March comes in like a lion,
and goes out like a lamb.

Hopefully, that means that the end of March will quietly meld into April. But, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, I got a new coffee cup. This one was a Christmas gift from friends. It’s got those simple lines that I love. Again, it’s reminiscent of a type of diner coffee cup and has a nice blue line. It also says “Vote for Women” celebrating women’s right to vote. That’s a right that’s very dear to my heart making this an especially great cup.

Well, while March was coming in like that lion it roared with wind and dumped about five inches of snow on us here in Brandywine, Maryland. Not at lot of snow by the standards of some northern parts of the country but here people don’t do well with snow so five inches is a lot. In our part of the state, we usually don’t get much snow for some reason, most of the snowfall is north and northwest of DC and we’re southeast — we usually get rain when other parts of the state get snow. But not this time.

We got a bird feeder a while back because of our concern about a demented cardinal that was continually attacking our sliding glass door on the deck. The birds have been spreading the word and we’ve got quite a lot of birds eating from our feeder and we’re learning to recognize some of them. However, evidently birds go a bit wacky with snow. Maybe they think they’d better fill up on all the food they can because the feeder might go away because today we were inundated with birds.

While it’s not that unusual to see more than one bird at the feeder, today saw a lot more birds than usual. We usually fill the feeder once a day and very occasionally twice. Today, we filled it three times.

We haven’t seen much of our looney cardinal or any cardinals for that matter since we got the bird feeder. Today in the snow we saw several of them. Some down stairs on the lower patio and some on the feeder, waiting their turn or just looking like they just drifted in to make a splash of color on an otherwise  grey day. I got this fellow sitting on the railing on the upper deck.

I was trying to get a better shot of a cardinal sitting on the railing. When I clicked the shutter, I saw that another bird had come into the shot and was just off the cardinal and it looks like it’s attacking the sitting cardinal. But in truth, it just appears that way. But it was a neat shot and the wings are in motion so I thought I’d post it.

I’ve got two more picture I took today, the first is of the birds in and about our hydrangea bush down on the patio deck on the ground level of the house. I suppose I should explain that all the pictures were taken from within the house. While the glass on the doors is fairly clean it does effect the light and the clarity of the photos. In this one I also got a cardinal and a mourning dove.

To give you an idea of how patient the birds were here’s a shot of several birds waiting for their turn at the feeder.

So, even though it snowed and was cold and completely blew away my belief that the worst of winter was over. It was an absolutely wonderful, beautiful day.

Shortly after the New Year and before we took down our tree, this cardinal showed up on our deck. He’d arrive shortly after sun up each day. He’d spend some time looking in the sliding glass doors, hopping to the left and right and turning his head. Personally, I think the only thing he could probably see was his reflection but maybe he was seeing the tree. We weren’t sure because he repeatedly fluttered up and down the left hand door and then the right hand door.

Day after day for two weeks, he’d begin at sun rise and stay until shortly after sun set. Up and down the two doors. Time after time. He took a few short breaks of about 15 to 20 minutes several times a day. But basically he spent the days attacking our window. We took the tree down thinking that he was trying to get at it. That didn’t stop the fluttering. This photo isn’t very clear. I had a difficult time taking it through the glass because if I got too close he flew to the side of the house on the corner of the deck and waited until I left to start in again.

We were getting worried about this psychotic bird. When was he eating? Was he going to die trying to fight for territory with the cardinal he saw reflected in our doors? What was with this guy? Other cardinals in the area didn’t take to battering the door with their little bodies for hours on end. So, we worried.

In the end, we went out and bought a bird feeder. We set it up on one of the plant hangers on the deck across from the doors. We figured he wouldn’t have to go far to eat and could keep up his strength to attack our door — which was getting bird poop all along the bottom of it.

The bird feeder went up and non-migratory birds from all over came to eat. After two days the cardinal left. Haven’t seen him since. But these fellows have been photo’d at the feeder. The only ones we’ve identified — we bought a bird book — are the finches:

We’ve also had some black eyed Juncos and got a picture of one but I can’t find it now. We also have these birds that we don’t recognize. We can’t find them in our bird book — or at least can’t find a matching picture. If you know what they are let me know.

We’ve also had some woodpeckers at the feeder but they’re a bit big and just snatch and fly away to eat so I haven’t been able to get a photo. On the other hand, we have a number of ground feeders like doves getting the dropped food from the feeder on the ground level. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to bring the camera down to try for them.

It has been really nice having the birds around. Not as noisy as I would have thought. But I can sit and read and look up and watch them lining up to take their turns with the feeder. They’ve begun to share. At first they would fight off the other birds, especially those in another species, but now they will share. It’s interesting to watch the interplay.

I came across this interesting article on EarthFirst and followed the link to a similar announcement on WorldChanging. Basically, the city of Oslo, Norway is going to start running their buses on biomethane. The WorldChanging article says:

In Oslo, air pollution from public and private transport has increased by approximately 10% since 2000, contributing to more than 50% of total CO2 emissions in the city. With Norway’s ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2050 Oslo City Council began investigating alternatives to fossil fuel-powered public transport and decided on biomethane.

Biomethane is a by-product of treated sewage. Microbes break down the raw material and release the gas, which can then be used in slightly modified engines. Previously at one of the sewage plants in the city half of the gas was flared off, emitting 17,00 tonnes of CO2. From September 2009, this gas will be trapped and converted into biomethane to run 200 of the city’s public buses.

To me this sounds like a great project. I mean really, we (meaning humans) spend billions of dollars treating our sewage and trying to find ways to make it disappear and Oslo has come up with a way to use it. It’s essentially free energy — in that the basic beginning material (and you know what it is) is certainly not going to disappear anytime soon and you have to do something with it anyway. It’s a resource that is abundant, not owned by anyone, and every city, town, village, has to come up with some way to treat it and handle it anyway. This adds a different step and violá power to run buses and other automobile.

I think every level of government that has to deal with sewage treatment should be keeping an eye on this program to see just how well it works and to begin plans to implement a similar program in their own area.

Thank you Oslo for thinking outside the box.

I don’t know about you but I’m always interested in new gadgets that will be better for the environment and greener to use. I’d never heard of this contest before but it’s their second year.

The people at Core77:

We invited designers to explore the concept of “Greener Gadgets.” Designs sought to minimize the environmental impact of consumer electronic devices at any stage in the product lifecycle. Areas of sustainability to consider included energy, materials/lifecycle/recycling, social impact, and educational development. Designers could focus on a particular area of human enterprise (learning, playing, communicating, etc.) or a particular context (work, home, school, etc.), a particular material, or a specific device. Entries could also seek to create new paradigms for products and services.

You can check out the designs and vote on your favorite. I’m still working my way through the list of green devices. Some are outstandingly clever, some are ho-hum, some are WTF, but show some interesting solutions to the problem of how to do some activity in a new, novel way with less of an environmental impact.

I’d love to hear what your favorite gadget from this list was and why — as much as the Core 77 people. Each gadget has its own page and there are comments on the gadget below the description. Another reason it’s taking so long to go through this list.

Core77 deserves a round of cheers for sponsoring this effort.