how to tan a caribou skin

I finally tanned my caribou skin this weekend after putting off the project since early November. I did one last year, and remember the whole process being frustrating and hard – the kind of work that makes you physically sore. And it all needs to happen at once.
My goal this time was to meet the standard spelled out in John and Geri McPherson's Primitive Wilderness Skills, Applied and Advanced: the finished robe should "drape over your arm like a blanket, not fold like paper."
In my limited understanding of the process, actual tanning – with tannin, alum, or other chemicals – changes the chemical composition of the skin. Another, simpler way is to just replace the water in the skin with oil (also a chemical change, I suppose) and work the fibers as the skin dries.
That’s what I tried, partly with some caribou brains, which look like strawberry yogurt and are only safe because spongiform encephalopathy hasn’t been found in Alaska, and partly with a mixture of Ivory soap and neatsfoot oil.
I thawed out the skin, fleshed it, scraped off the membrane, shampooed and rinsed it, rubbed the brains and soap into it, and worked it hard on the stretcher.
Forty-eight hours later, it’s done. The skin is more like a blanket than paper, but still a little stiff, a little greasy, and not quite like store-bought. Not that you can buy a caribou skin. Caribou have warble flies that live under their skin at various times of the year, and the bugs leave unsightly marks. The store here instead sells tanned reindeer, the domestic version of caribou.
I can't help but wonder now if a turn in the dryer with some tennis balls wouldn’t soften up the skin. But there’s a good chance that would lead to disaster for the dryer or the fragile, hollow hairs, so I think I'll stick with what I've got.

calculating your carbon hoofprint

In Planet Slayer’s carbon calculator, you start out as a pig. A pig with a charming face and long eyelashes, but a pig all the same. A dog in a white lab coat named Prof. Schpinkee is watching over you with arms crossed, ready to help you figure out how big a greenhouse hog you are, and the best you can hope for is to be an “environmentally sustainable ‘green’ pig.”
Planet Slayer’s may be the least forgiving, but it’s just one of many carbon calculators available online. Tallying your footprint is the logical first step toward reducing your impact or “offsetting” your emissions with purchased carbon credits, and conservation groups, oil companies, and government agencies are all offering their own versions.
But figuring out how much carbon you spew is not easy, and not all calculators are created equal. I tested six – by the Environmental Protection Agency, The Nature Conservancy, BP, Conservation International, ClimateCrisis.net (Al Gore’s thing), and Planet Slayer (a project of the Australian Broadcasting Corp.) – and offer my unscientific review here.
The first thing to recognize is that carbon calculators don’t all calculate the same thing. The one on ClimateCrisis.net seems to be limited to home energy use and transportation. It lists the national average for per-capita emissions as 7.5 tons, which is nowhere near our full greenhouse gas footprint. Likewise, the EPA’s calculator is limited to emissions from home energy use, driving, and waste disposal. Conservation International’s and BP’s are limited to home energy use and transportation, including driving and flying.
Only The Nature Conservancy and Planet Slayer attempt to capture total emissions, or all the emissions “your choices create each year,” as TNC puts it. In the U.S., that’s something like 24 tons (22 if you just look at CO2 or 26 if you include the carbon dioxide equivalent from methane). At least that’s what you get if you divide total U.S. emissions by the number of Americans, which probably wouldn’t include the carbon impact of, say, a TV made in Japan and sold in the U.S.
Carbon calculators are by necessity crude tools. They generally factor in things like how much you drive, how you heat your home, how many people you share your house with, and so on. Your carbon count can start from zero and build as you go or start with an average and shift up or down depending on your energy choices. For everything else – if it’s included at all – carbon calculators generally just plug in a figure based on your country or state’s average. That is, they don’t try to tally up the carbon associated with every iPod, health insurance plan, and public library.
All calculators make the point that you can reduce your footprint by changing how you live, and they try to educate as they count. If you recycle everything, EPA’s calculator takes about 400 pounds of CO2 off your tab. If you eat a lot of meat, TNC’s calculator tacks on a few extra tons. Understanding the impact of those choices is simply a matter of watching the numbers in the right hand column go up or down.
That said, some calculators are more explicit than others. BP’s, for instance, offers direct lessons from a man with green hair, as he sips coffee at home or installs a solar panel on a roof in hardhat and sweater vest. “Compared to a car, public transportation can be a more efficient way of using energy to move people around,” he says as he walks through an airport.
Where most calculators fail, IMHO, is in areas where carbon impacts are harder to quantify. Direct energy consumption is pretty easy, even if some big assumptions are involved – driving a car that gets so many miles per gallon so many miles a year will burn a certain amount of gas and produce a certain amount of CO2. Ditto with flying, home heating, and electricity.
But the carbon behind everything else is harder to figure. Most calculators don’t even try, and rely instead on those big averages. The one that doesn’t is Planet Slayer, which makes the point that there’s carbon behind almost everything we buy and do. One question in its calculator asks, “How much money did you spend all up last year?” Answer less than $10,000 and you, the pig in the trailer, shrink to smaller than the average Aussie pig. Choose $40,000 and you get some extra rolls of belly fat. Pick $70,000 and you turn into a slobbering, snotty swine who can’t keep his gut off the floor.
Planet Slayer explains in the fine print that it’s assuming there’s 1.6 kilograms of CO2, on average, behind every Australian dollar you spend. And that your driving, household energy use, and eating habits account for less than 20 percent of your overall emissions. “The thing that makes a real difference to your bacon-ness is how you SPEND the rest of your money,” it explains.
This expands the common dialogue over carbon footprints from simple things like what we drive and what kind of light bulbs we have to what we eat and what we do for fun. It also leads to some unexpected assertions, like the one that taking a cab is less polluting than riding a bike. “Not really, but because we pay so much to ride in taxis ($1/km), it leaves us less money to spend on stuff that’s even worse for the environment.”
Even if the U.S. economy is more efficient than Australia’s (just guessing here), the idea of a pint of oil behind every dollar is important. When you imagine downing a cup of oil with every cup of OJ, that juice starts to seem less appealing.
Planet Slayer lets you clean up your act by spending on “stuff that’s better for the environment,” like energy-efficient and second-hand items, rather than “ordinary stuff,” like eating, drinking, and going out. The implied lesson isn’t spend less so much as spend wisely.
Partly I blame us media for ignoring this concept. But it also seems like a bit of a third rail for green groups and politicians, even those serious about reducing emissions. Suggesting that people need to buy less stuff is not really going to fly. The effort, justifiably I suppose, has been to reduce the carbon in our economy rather than shrink the economy itself.
In any case, focusing on home energy use, transportation, food, and waste is probably a good start, and complex enough. I tried out the six calculators on my own life and got a wide range of answers. Each calculator asked for different inputs, and none really fit my Alaska lifestyle (living in a dry cabin, eating my own food); Gore’s calculator, which allows you to input the year and make of your car, also mysteriously omitted Toyota’s 1997 line of vehicles. That said, I tried to be consistent with my inputs.
Here’s what I got.
EPA: 12.9 tons (home energy and driving)
Climatecrisis.net: 15.3 tons (home energy and transportation)
Conservation International: 18.3 tons (home energy and transportation)
BP: 12.5 tons (home energy and transportation)
Planet Slayer: 31.9 tons (everything)
The Nature Conservancy: 43 tons (everything)
TNC’s 43 tons is a pretty strong indictment. And according to Planet Slayer, I used up my sustainable share of the planet’s resources in 7.9 years. I think I was unfairly billed for heating and electric costs, and I don’t spend that much money on “ordinary stuff,” but I'm definitely no green pig.

real cold

Here's the iPhone weather forecast for Fairbanks.
Current temp: -42
MON: Hi: -30 Lo: -45
TUES: Hi: -33 Lo: -44
WED: Hi: -29 Lo: -44
THUR: Hi: -33 Lo: -42
FRI: Hi: -32 Lo: -44
SAT: Hi: -15 Lo: -44
Which is to say, it's cold here!
There are some novelty aspects to the cold -- the snow squeaks, it's harder to breathe, and for some reason you can hear car tires on pavement a half-mile away.
But the biggest impact probably has to do with air quality. When it's cold, people burn more fuel to heat their homes, and cars pollute more. The cold also tends to create temperature inversions, in which cold air is trapped close to the ground and air circulation is minimal. You can tell where the inversion tops out by watching where the smoke from power plants stops rising and simply spreads out flat. (The pic is from the university's coal-fired power plant on Saturday.)
Today the borough's Air Quality Index is unhealthy, meaning "everyone may begin to experience health effects." The main cause is PM 2.5, or fine particulate, which has been linked to everything from aggravated asthma to reduced lung function and premature death. The federal 24-hour standard is 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Yesterday's level here was 36.9 micrograms. Today's is 61.5.

coal - clean enough to bring inside?

A story I helped write is out in the New York Times. Click here to see it. There's even a slide show. The story is about people burning coal for home heating, and how the high price of heating oil and natural gas (at least for the 18 months leading up to September, I guess) has renewed interest in the "alternative" fuel.
The idea first caught my attention up here when I read that some 400 tons were being burned each year in the Fairbanks borough. (Tons always seems like a lot, but coal is pretty bulky and heavy -- a typical home uses about 5 tons a winter.) Then, as often happens when new ideas come to your attention, I heard about coal everywhere -- my prof at UAF used to burn coal, the Golden Eagle Saloon burns coal, a friend of a friend burns coal. Honestly, I was surprised anyone was still burning coal. My parents had a small coal stove in New York City, but that was the 1970s.
Here in Alaska, the town of Healy, where the Usibelli coal mine is located, has burned coal for a long time -- at the school, the community center, and a big housing unit for tourism workers, among other places. The mine burns coal at its office building and maintenance shop, and miners get free coal as a job perk. But the trend in the last two years is startling. Lots of people who never burned coal before are starting to. Last year, the mine sold about 650 tons of coal for residential and small commercial. This year -- through October only -- it's already sold 1,500 tons. Here in Fairbanks, you can see people driving around with pickups filled with coal. The community food bank has switched to coal heat, along with about a dozen churches, a laundromat, and a few apartment buildings, according to the owner of North Pole Coal, which sells coal and coal stoves. Coal is locally available and cheap. Vendors say coal-burning technology is better now than decades ago, when pollution was less of a concern, and a lot of the heaters are outside, with buried pipes bringing hot water to the home. Handling coal still leaves your fingertips black, but would you really want to hold heating oil instead?
Coal gets a bad name for its carbon footprint, producing much more CO2 per unit of energy than oil or natural gas, and that's what seemed so backward to me at first -- that Americans would be switching to coal just as the rest of the world is trying to green up, or so it seems. But the numbers are small enough (only about 200,000 U.S. households burn coal, and it's a tiny amount compared to coal burned to make electricity) that the carbon impact isn't a huge deal. More important, at least here in Fairbanks, is what the coal burning is doing to air quality. Fine particulates are becoming a critical issue here, and it seems a cruel twist that people are switching to polluting wood and coal burning just as the borough is considering partial burn bans. And, according to some people, the coal furnaces stink.
The pics are of North Pole Coal's shaker-sorter at the Usibelli mine, an outdoor wood/coal furnace, and Mark Sanford, the owner of North Pole Coal.

when climate change isn't a future threat

Remember Gov. Palin’s sub-cabinet on climate change? Remember its Immediate Action Work Group? Well, that group is still at it, and excuse me for venturing my thoughts after observing only a few hours of a meeting this week in Anchorage, but here goes.
The IAWG seems to be undergoing some growing pains. Last year, the group’s task was fairly clear – figure out which of the expected climate-related impacts have to be dealt with immediately and deal with them. The group did that – recommending and securing about $10 million in state funds for coastal communities threatened by erosion – and with such success that it decided to continue its mission beyond that initial time period.
Now the group’s mission seems less clear. It could simply do round 2, once again identifying immediate (next 12-18 months) needs and addressing them. Or it could expand its definition of “immediate” to include more communities or more threats. The goal of the meeting Monday was partly to identify criteria by which to evaluate new requests for help.
The issue is predictably complex.
First of all, what’s immediate? The working group does have language for assessing various threats, but most of the potential threats deal with coastal erosion, which is tough to predict. Based on historical storms and impacts, dozens or even hundreds of communities are at some risk. A smaller number are at greater risk, based on sea ice trends or the proximity of infrastructure to the shore. But in most cases, there’s no way to know whether the damaging storm will come next summer or five years from now. “The variability of this is extreme,” said John Madden of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Second, what’s a climate impact? Scientists generally believe coastal erosion is increasing with warming temperatures and reductions in sea ice, but erosion has also been happening forever, since long before humans started changing the climate. The question of causality wasn't really an issue last year, as far as I know, but could be in the future. Officials in Ketchikan are blaming a climate-related increase in rainfall for damage to bridges, and officials in White Mountain point to climate change to explain falling river levels, bark beetle damage, and drying soils.
The challenges point to another, larger question the state will have to answer at some point – whether to respond to climate-related threats separately, or through an effort integrated within its departments. Last year, the IAWG addressed a need that was clearly not being met – a wide range of residents and government officials publicly testified to the lack of coordinating agency on the issue of coastal erosion. Things like wildfire management and bridge replacement, on the other hand, already fall under the purview of specific state departments, even if the factors influencing them are changing. The IAWG risks becoming an attractive funding option for local governments or departments frustrated with the slow arrival of cash for priority projects.
I don’t mean to suggest the IAWG is lost at sea. Its latest report – available in draft form on its Web site – is an impressive document.
In one sense, attributing the risks to climate change doesn’t really matter. Coastal erosion and wildfire threats must be addressed regardless of the cause. Extra funds could simply be added to departmental budgets for dealing with new challenges. And encouraging departments to plan for a changing climate seems easier than having a group of climate experts identify climate-related threats across all arenas, from infrastructure to fish and game.
The question of attribution is also complex – are community leaders really in a position to judge what’s causing a given threat? Figuring out if climate change is behind the erosion in a specific village would require at least a soils expert, a cryologist, an atmospheric scientist, and a roomful of elders.
But if the state wants to get serious about addressing climate change, creating a public awareness of its tangible costs would probably help. Imagine the impact of a budget line reading, “Projects for dealing with climate change - $100,000,000.” (Separate groups within the sub-cabinet are already looking at adaptation and mitigation measures.)
But that’s the big picture. At the meeting Monday, the IAWG was trying to figure out what to do in the next few months, mostly with coastal erosion. First there’s the question of which communities are at most risk. Then there’s the question of which projects will best address those risks, and whether it makes sense to invest in communities that may soon be forced to move.
Members seemed engaged and committed to their task, but I can imagine being overwhelmed by the complexity of the issue and the responsibility of assessing threats to life and infrastructure and allocating resources accordingly.
At one point, officials from a few villages were given the chance to testify. Over a scratchy phone connection, many hundreds of miles away, one tried to explain why his village was in danger and they needed money now. He spoke English, of course, but it wasn’t clear he was getting through. The IAWG consulted for a minute and decided he should apply for a specific grant. Just what he wanted to hear, I’m sure.

the hunt

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I'm getting pretty into hunting. I bought my first shotgun last month and have been out after ptarmigan, grouse, and hare when I have the time and the sun is up. The allure is partly just getting outside, but it's also something more -- something cultural or even spiritual, I guess. I'm far from being a subsistence hunter, and the supermarket is closer and easier than the woods, but a few weeks ago, as I was tramping through the snow and trees, it occurred to me that I was out there looking for food -- something people have done forever. I felt more in touch with that history, and more aware of the animals I was after. I went down rabbit trails. I followed grouse footprints in knee-deep snow. I saw the sunrise and the sunset. Yes, I could admire the animals without a gun, but there is something different about (respectfully) becoming part of the ecosystem as a predator in it.
The pics are from Murphy Dome (top two) and the hike a few weeks ago, along the Circle-Fairbanks Trail.

bernie karl's vision for alaska

Can Alaska become energy independent?
That was the title of a talk tonight put on by the university's energy research center. It was supposed to be a panel discussion, but no one wanted to debate Bernie Karl, so it became a talk. Local author Niel Davis started with a brief history of energy use in Alaska -- he literally wrote the book on it -- and then it was on to Karl, whose "talk" was actually an hour-long, half-shouted rant that included a fair amount of cursing (about the foolishness of our addiction to oil, among other things) in the library auditorium.
Karl owns the Chena Hot Springs Resort off the grid about 60 miles from Fairbanks, which made some waves (and the Today Show) recently for its use of ground-breaking geothermal energy technology. Disneyland will be using similar technology soon, and Karl is trying to interest oil companies in it to make power from hot water raised during oil production. That project led to a brief affair with hydrogen electrolyzed with excess green power (not sure where that project's going) and some serious dabbling in year-round, sub-arctic greenhouse production, which enabled Karl's "better than sex" tomato soup. Next year Karl hopes to bring in a pair of small, electric vans made by disabled veterans in Minnesota.
One project that hasn't panned out is the petroleum-free village of 200 homes fueled by hot water (I think) and willows. But, as Karl says, you have to be OK with rejection if you're going to get serious about alternative energy. Or, better yet, turn that rejection into something positive.
The idea is something of a mantra to Karl -- take what others see as waste and make something good from it. Karl seems truly surprised -- and ashamed for us as humans -- that power plants waste perfectly good heat right up their smokestacks, along with huge amounts of water and carbon dioxide. One of Karl's other businesses is a giant recycling center near North Pole that stockpiles and sells scrap metal. And his latest energy scheme is firmly based in the idea of making use of waste. The plan is to build a "smokestack-free" power plant based on the Chena technology but fueled by waste paper, cardboard, and willow rather than hot water. The plant will be located at his recycling plant and rely on 600 acres of willow grown on a three-year rotation. Waste heat and water will fuel a 1-acre greenhouse producing 3,300 heads of lettuce a day. CO2 will feed single-cell algae and, in times of excess, the willow farm. (Karl doesn't have a clue how extra CO2 will affect plant growth, but would rather test it on 600 acres than on a few trees in a lab.)
Somewhere in the middle of explaining his vision of sustainability and trying to prove his sanity, Karl took out his rubber-band wallet and flipped through a wad of bills, saying, "I turn it all to green." ("It all" in this case being household waste, heat, water, pollution, and so on.)
Karl is a journalist's dream. He's remarkably entertaining and quotable, to the point that anyone speaking after him seems unimaginative and overly serious. But he's also a nightmare in the sense that you never know if he's for real. I've seen the tomatoes and soaked in the hot springs, so I know they're real. But Romanian willow farming? NASA sampling the algae at Chena? Maybe it's irrelevant, but he's also un-PC in a way that can make you cringe and not just laugh.
When Karl finished his rant, he held a friend's young baby in one arm and explained how the economics of green-power projects look better when you consider the value of not trashing the earth. "It's their future," he said. "What value do you put on that?" The baby stared at the side of Karl's head, then started to whine.
I'm not sure Karl ever directly answered the question at hand -- whether Alaskans can really heat their homes, power their tools, and fuel their cars with sun, water, and algae -- but the implication was yes. According to Karl, the only things missing are vision and some imagination.
"Sustainability is there -- if you want it," he said.

climate spending

Gov. Palin released her 2010 budget plan yesterday, and while she hasn't exactly pitched a plan for tackling climate change, there is a fair amount of climate-related spending. Palin is proposing to spend about $6 million to deal with coastal erosion ($3 million for Shishmaref, $2 million for Newtok, $800,000 for Koyukuk) and another $50 million to jump start renewable energy projects (a legislative mandate). She included $184,000 for her own climate change sub-cabinet group, which is studying adaptation and mitigation measures, and another $300,000 for the state's climate change impact mitigation program, which started last year. There's also $5 million for public housing energy-efficiency upgrades, which are apparently a HUD requirement. Minus the $300 million shot in the arm for weatherization and energy efficiency programs, that's about what the state spent this year.
It's hard to really judge Palin's plan for dealing with climate change. On the one hand, the spending on coastal erosion is significant, and the money for renewables -- if lawmakers allow it to be spent -- is huge. On the other hand, Palin's spending is not a direct acknowledgement of the human role in climate change -- coastal erosion is an emergency no matter what caused it, and renewable energy is attractive economically. The governor has been less generous with things that only make sense if you acknowledge the human role. (To be clear, Palin does acknowledge a human role, but seems skeptical -- like many Alaskans -- of the IPCC assetion that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming.) Palin's sub-cabinet is taking the bargain-basement approach to crafting its climate action plan, as far as I can tell, and the governor has been reluctant to increase funding for climate-related research. This year, when the university asked for new money for energy, engineering, and climate-related programs, the governor went with energy alone. Then again, the focus is renewable energy.

the power of green building

John Davies, a geophysicist and research director at the Fairbanks-based Cold Climate Housing Research Center, got a little choked up today talking about green building. Well, to be fair, he got choked up recounting how Desmond Tutu, at a green building conference last month in Boston, explained to a bunch of builders how the election of Barack Obama had restored "the world's" faith in democracy. Whatever. In any case, Davies' passion for green building was clear.
Davies was giving a primer on the relatively new LEED program for residential buildings (and, more generally, the benefits of building smart) to a Democratic party group here in Fairbanks. The residential certification program, put together by the US Green Building Council, follows the commercial LEED program that's been in place for years. It takes into account everything from site selection and building materials to air quality and energy use. Builders must meet basic criteria in all fields, then earn the extra points needed for certification by doing extra things within any field. Certification comes in different levels -- silver, gold, and platinum -- and can even apply to entire neighborhoods.
The way Davies described it, green building done right is a win-win all around. It's healthier, better for the environment, and saves money. Even if the upfront construction cost is higher, the energy savings make up for the higher costs. (Combined mortgage and utility costs are typically lower, Davies claimed.)
This got me thinking. Surely people consider the "operating cost" of a home before buying or building -- but not like they consider the miles per gallon on a car. I asked Davies about this after and he said people often don't consider operating costs, and would have a hard time estimating those costs if they did. Davies likes the idea of requiring an energy audit upon sale of a house, or even a Energy Star-like rating for a house -- stick it on the breaker box.
When I asked why anyone wouldn't go green, his first answer was "sloth." People have other stuff to do, he said. But it's also a lack of education, he added. Home builders need to know how to design and install the stuff, and homeowners need to know how to maintain it.
Davies tossed out some impressive numbers on green building -- 30 to 60 percent less energy, 70 percent less waste -- and mentioned Obama's ambitious plans for greening the economy. But echoing Tutu, he also warned against aiming too low -- billions of people using small amounts of finite resources won't work in the long run. "Less bad isn't good enough," he said.
We need zero-emissions homes, zero-energy homes, Davies went on. "It's a pretty daunting challenge."
When he first considered the challenge, Davies recalled, he thought, "Zero-energy homes in Fairbanks? How the heck do we do that!?" But that's what we need.
Davies got kind of serious. I could see the former state lawmaker in him.
"We have to get to sustainability," he said, "or eventually Mother Nature will get her revenge."

the reasons i'm here

Excuse my delinquency. I've been taking advantage of a flexible schedule and some outdoorsy friends to get outside and enjoy the best of Alaska. Over Halloween weekend I did another caribou hunt with my friends Ian and Trystan up on the haul road. The obligatory 5-mile hike out only added to the adventure.
This last weekend, I skied with some other friends the 11 miles out to Tolovana Hot Springs -- a few rustic cabins and natural hot tubs tucked away in a recently burned black spruce forest. It was about 10 degrees the night we stayed there, and the wind blew hard the next morning. Ice crystals formed in our hair as we soaked in the tubs

temperature change

No, not global warming, just coming back to Alaska from Virginia. I got back Sunday night and pretty much stayed inside all week. It's been unusually cold for October -- this weekend the high is about 10 degrees -- and I've been a bit of a wimp. I went out Friday night and the car started doing those wintery things -- the oil is thick like molasses, the tires are hard, the suspension stiff, and I'm pretty sure the crack in my windshield got a little longer when I turned on the defrost. Anyway, I finally went outside yesterday, first to help a friend put a roof on his cabin, then to ski around the dog mushing trails, and realized the cold isn't all that bad if you just dress for it. Today it's sunny and beautiful.

wild. wonderful. coal.

Larry Gibson isn’t impressive in stature. He’s not much more than 5 feet tall, has a bit of a belly, and was wearing Velcro shoes and a bright yellow T-shirt when we met him Thursday – so he wouldn’t get shot, he half-joked.
But he is an impressive speaker. Gibson is an advocate against mountaintop coal mining, and he apparently gets quite a bit of press. His T-shirt read, “WE ARE THE KEEPERS OF THE MOUNTAINS. LOVE THEM OR LEAVE THEM, JUST DON’T DESTROY THEM.” Then it listed a few phone numbers.
“I don’t want to just be seen,” Gibson told me and a big group of reporters on a coal-focused field trip, "I want to be heard." (I’m at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference.) We had driven about three hours from Roanoke, Virginia to eastern West Virginia and climbed a long dirt drive to a small collection of homes. Now we were standing under a tin-roofed shed and listening closely.
Gibson wanted us – and the people who read what we write – to hear how coal was fouling the air and making people sick, how it wasn’t sustainable or necessary (he’s pushing for wind turbines on mountain tops instead), and how mining jobs weren’t that great anyway.
We took notes and snapped pictures as he talked.
When Gibson finished, he introduced his friend, Chuck Nelson, a retired underground miner. Nelson had wrinkled, dark skin and big bags under his eyes, and before he spoke, I wondered if he’d been crippled in some way by his profession. (It turned out he wasn’t.)
Nelson’s case was also multi-faceted. With mountaintop mining, the jobs have shrunk dramatically; people are getting sick in awful ways (brain cancer, gall bladder problems); and mining is destroying the land. Nelson said he used to pick wild ginseng, gather nuts, and hunt – “Everything we needed, the land provided for us,” he said. Now it’s useless.
Nelson held a half-pint mason jar as he talked. He argued that coal was neither “cheap” – at least for people living here – nor clean, and said mining coal was even dirtier than burning it. He talked about sludge ponds and a particular disaster where one fell apart and spilled.
“This is some of the sludge that come outta that pond,” he said, holding up the Mason jar.
The jar got most of the way around the group before one woman unscrewed the cap and popped the lid off like it was a jar of jelly. The sludge was thick and dark and had globs of stuff in it. One reporter snapped a picture with his iPhone; another touched the substance – as if in solidarity – then wiped his finger on his sock. Nelson charged that big papers and politicians had failed to act because they were bought out by the coal industry.
It started to drizzle, so we set off to see the mine before the rain came. We hiked down a rocky road past big walnut trees and trailer homes with furniture outside, then up a slight hill till we reached a metal gate. Gibson called it the “Gate of Life." Before it was natural and alive, he said. Beyond it was dead.
Gibson explained that we’d actually be on mine property once we crossed it, adding that he personally didn’t mind getting arrested. He’d been arrested before, he said.
A man with a video camera filmed as Gibson spoke.
We climbed through the gate and followed Gibson up a grassy trail and out onto a small plateau. A little further, the land dropped off beneath us and the mine appeared below. Haul trucks rumbled along wide dirt roads with loads of rock, dumping the waste over dirt banks. The mine itself was a combination of flat spots and uniform slopes. One knob in the distance was still covered in trees.
The mine has already taken down the mountain about 900 feet in four years, Gibson told us, and has another four years of mining to go. “This mountain’s got 39 seems of coal,” he said.
Off to the right, a slope was covered with a man-made product aimed at restarting plant growth. To the left, charges were already set in the rock. In the distance, the leaves on the trees were starting to turn gold.

Our next stop was another mine a 45-minute drive away. This time we had permission, and guides from the mine and a West Virginia mining association.
The mine’s general manager, Rocky Hatworth (I think), got on the bus and joked about bringing a bunch of reporters to a coal mine. (The suggestion was that environmental reporters are environmental advocates, a label I try hard to avoid myself, but that’s another story.)
We drove up another dirt road to the mine site and parked on a wide, flat spot above the operations. A miner followed us there in a big haul truck, and when he parked it next to the bus, reporters went over to have their pictures taken by the giant tires. Down the hill, the ground was shaped in rigid contours, some of it with grass starting to grow back. Haul trucks carried loads of dirt and dumped them over a bank. Reforestation techniques are getting much better, the mining association guy told us.
We gathered by a small cabin parked on the dirt and met the mine’s owner, Andrew Jordon. Jordon is huge, but has a boyish and gentle look. Despite the cool air and drizzle, he wore only a T-shirt.
Jordon talked about growing up in the area and hunting in the hills around the mine. He explained how he got his degree in mining engineering, started his company, and developed the mine.
“To me, it’s very important to do this right,” he said.
Jordon said the hunting was still good around the mine and explained that the cabin was actually a hunting cabin for his employees. The cabin was built entirely of oak – from floorboards to bunk beds – that workers had rough cut from local trees. (They don’t just mine the mountain; they cut the forests on top.)
Jordon and Hatworth talked about replacing topsoil, bringing back local trees, and working with local university researchers to find the best ways to reclaim the land. In short, they argued that the impact on the land didn’t have to be that bad, or even negative at all – the woods would come back, and the valleys they filled in didn’t have real streams anyway. It seemed like they believed it.
The mine was fading into fog and drizzle, but we could still see the new shape of the land and the old shape of the hills around it.
Some, I thought, would see little more than destruction and waste in the vista. I figured Jordon saw something more like temporary disturbance.
Reporters huddled around and interviewed the coal guys, who were friendly and funny and not like the big, bad “coal industry” one hears.
I asked Jordon an admittedly vague question: If everyone agreed on the facts – the impacts on streams and forests, for instance – would there still be a battle over the more subjective things, like the importance of local jobs and the value of leaving a mountain a mountain?
Yeah, probably, he told me. People who don’t support the surface mining just don’t want things to change, he said.
A few minutes later, we boarded the bus and started back to Roanoke, surrounded, it seemed, by coal. Coal filled trucks on the road and barges in the river and thin seems in the rock cuts of the interstate.

coal country

Misty mountains, grazing cattle, golden fall colors, and rocky streams. I'm in West Virginia today on a field trip with the Society of Environmental Journalists to learn more about mountain top coal mining. We're getting a somewhat lopsided perspective on the issue from local academics and others, namely that mountain top mining and maybe even coal mining altogether needs to stop. I say lopsided because of the real value of the mining jobs and the overwhelming local political support for coal mining. That said, it's not hard to see the destruction of landscapes as a huge loss and real lack of vision.

winter

Back on the skis!

source or sink?

UAF prof Chien-Lu Ping has published new findings about the potential for arctic tundra to spew huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. Basically, Ping went around the state with a jackhammer (and willing helpers!) and dug test pits in the frozen ground -- more than 100 in all, according to a news release from the university. He found there was a layer of organic matter just above the permafrost and in the top of the permafrost that scientists hadn't accounted for and that could release large amounts of greenhouse gases under continued warming.
According to the release, Ping predicts that a 2-3 degree rise in temperature (unclear whether that's C or F) could switch the tundra from a carbon sink to a carbon source. I need to research that more, because there's been talk for a decade about the arctic tundra becoming a carbon source, although I do remember something about flaws in those old findings...
Photo courtesy of UAF.

critical habitat on the way - maybe

Conservation groups have reached agreement with the feds on one big issue related to the polar bear listing -- the designation of critical habitat -- although it's still unclear what will come of it. The agreement came Monday in the form of a settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity and two other green groups on one side and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the other. Basically it forces the feds to make a final determination on critical habitat by June 2010 and issue final guidelines for bear deterrence procedures by March 2010 (and issue proposed guidelines and determination in time to meet those deadlines). Conservation folks say the feds were supposed to do the habitat listing already (the law actually allows an extra year in cases where critical habitat is "not then determinable") and say they've been slacking on designations with other species listed under the Endangered Species Act. The agreement is essentially an affirmation of existing law, but an important one, according to conservation groups.
That said, it's still unclear whether any habitat will be designated.
"The difficulty is that the ocean per se is not the habitat, the sea ice on the ocean is the habitat," FWS spokesman Bruce Woods told me last month. And the sea ice is constantly moving.
Conservation folks, meanwhile, say it would be a complete violation of the law not to designate any habitat.
The designation of critical habitat steps up protection for the animal by barring activities that would jeopardize the habitat (and not just the species), and by extending Sec. 7 consultation requirements "from the critter to the critical habitat," as Woods put it. Federal agencies would be barred from doing anything, such as permitting oil and gas exploration, in a designated area if the action would result in "destruction or adverse modification" of the critical habitat.
"It could have a pretty big impact," an attorney for CBD told me last month.
But the Interior Secretary also has some discretion in designating habitat. Critical habitat is defined as areas within the species' range "on which are found those physical or biological features (I) essential to the conservation of the species and (II) which may require special management considerations or protection." (The Secretary can also designate some areas outside the species' range if those are found "essential for the conservation of the species.")
Unlike with the listing itself, the Secretary can -- and must -- consider economic impacts of designating critical habitat. "The Secretary shall designate critical habitat . . . on the basis of the best scientific data available and after taking into consideration the economic impact, and any other relevant impact, of specifying any particular area as critical habitat." The Secretary is only required to designate a certain area if he determines, based on the best science available, that failure to do so "will result in the extinction of the species."
The other part of the settlement forces the feds to come up with guidelines for the non-lethal deterrence of bears that pose a threat to public safety.
The conservation groups are still seeking to have the bear listed as endangered rather than threatened and to overturn the special rule issued along with the listing.
For what it's worth, the settlement is technically a victory for the conservation groups. Under the agreement, the feds acknowledge the plaintiffs (the three enviro groups) are the "prevailing parties" regarding the two issues and agree to pay for plaintiffs' legal costs.

parsing palin's language

Palin offered a few more clues last night on her position on climate change, although she spoke so generally as to not really say much at all.
In response to Gwen Ifill's question, Palin first acknowledged that the climate was changing. Then she said she's "not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in climate." (Isn't that backwards?) "There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet," Palin said.
Biden was more direct. "The cause is man-made. That's the cause. That's why the polar icecap is melting," he said.
Taken simply at face value, I bet most scientists would be more comfortable with Palin's conclusion -- at least here in Alaska, it's pretty clear that cyclical patterns are playing a significant role in the recent warming. But in the context of the climate "debate," Palin's language signifies skepticism of the current scientific understanding while Biden's signifies trust in it.
Palin also echoed the idea she offered to Katie Couric, namely that the causes don't matter so much as the solutions. But those solutions don't make sense without an acknowledgement of the causes, and Palin's subsequent statements demonstrated that she at least sees human activities as a factor in climate change. Palin said she supports capping emissions of greenhouse gases and wants to ensure that other countries are also subject to caps. "We've got to reduce emissions," she said.
Andy Revkin at the NY Times had some good points on the vagueness of both candidates' comments on cap-and-trade legislation and "clean coal."

palin v polar bear

Palin might point out that her beef is with the Interior Secretary (for listing the bears as threatened) and not with the bears themselves, but here's a witty analysis from the Guardian on how Palin might fare in a battle with a bear -- pretty well, it concludes, "unless the Alaska Legislature suddenly decides to uphold the right to arm bears." Read the whole thing here.
The polar bear listing is a legal mess right now. Palin has sued Secretary Kempthorne in an effort to overturn it completely. The oil group API (et al.) and the Center for Biological Diversity have both sued over the special rule Kempthorne wants to use, although with different requests. The CBD also wants the bear listed as endangered rather than threatened, which would require stronger protections.
The special rule was implimented immediately at the time of the listing in May, but only on an interim basis because it hadn't gone out to public comment. The public comment period is done now, but the Interior Department has yet to issue a final special rule.
I wrote a summary of the bear listing last week for Petroleum News.

palin and climate

I was too busy grabbing quotes from folks at the Big I tonight to hear Palin's comments on climate change, but I did write something yesterday about her record on the subject. Basically, I argued that her hesitation to blame human activities could partly be populist politics, and that, whatever her motivation and beliefs, she's actually done some meaningful stuff. (And that a time will come when she really has to act or not.)
Anyway, that's at Alaska Dispatch.
A blogger at the Christian Science Monitor also looked into Palin's record and particularly the question of how one can address climate change without acknowledging its causes.

waiting for walrus

Last summer, the sudden shrinking of sea ice and subsequent haul-outs of thousands of walrus caught scientists somewhat off guard. This summer, they were ready.
Chad Jay, a research ecologist with the USGS in Anchorage, had lined up a hunter in Point Lay and was ready to tag walrus there and in Cape Lisburne to help figure out how the walrus survived when they couldn't rely on ice.
"Basically we were all set, ready to go, tags in hand and just kind of waiting for the walruses to come to shore," Jay told me today. "But they never did."
A few reports have trickled in of walrus hauling out, but nothing like last summer, when walrus lined the beaches and caused scientists to worry about potential stampedes. This year, the lack of haul-outs came as something of a surprise.
And not because the sea ice didn't shrink. The ice did what scientists expected and disappeared far to the north, Jay said. It's just that bits of ice remained.
"There were some small oases -- micro bits of ice -- that were enough to sustain animals in offshore waters," said Joel Garlich-Miller, a walrus expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Satellite images couldn't pick up the ice chunks, but people passing in boats could.
"We were wondering," Garlich-Miller said, because walrus the USGS had already tagged were showing up in places satellite images showed to be ice-free. "We were wondering what was holding them there."
The lesson, or one lesson anyway, is that it's not just the size and location of the main ice pack that matters, but the quality of the ice there and elsewhere. (Sea ice extent measures the area of water covered by a certain density of ice.) UAF's David Atkinson stressed this point to me last year; this drove it home.
Generally speaking, 2008 was another grim year for sea ice. For the month of September, the average extent was 1.8 million square miles, the second-lowest figure in the 30-year satellite record and only about 9 percent more than last summer's record low, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. The drop in 2008 made it harder to see 2007 as an anomaly.
Mark Serreze, the oft-quoted NSIDC scientist, said last year the Arctic was "screaming." In a news release posted today, his language was less colorful but no less urgent. "Both within and beyond the Arctic, the implications of the decline are enormous," he said.
And while there was more ice cover than in 2007, scientists suspect there was less ice volume, as the proportion of thick, multi-year ice continued to shrink, according to the release.
Dwindling sea ice was the main justification for the Interior Department's decision in May to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Conservation groups are pushing for similar designations for walrus and four species of ice-dependent seals.
As the ice shrinks, scientists expect bears and walrus to spend more time on land, where finding enough food becomes an issue. That's what Jay was trying to figure out -- how and where the walrus feed when the do have to haul out. But he's doubtful any big haul-outs will happen this year.
"It's good for them," he said, "not good for us, looking to learn about their behavior.
"We'll try again next year," he added.

fairbanks emissions

Fairbanks got a report card last week in the form of a borough-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory. How'd we do? Depends on how you look at it. Borough residents produced the equivalent of about 39 metric tons (about 85,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide per person per year (excluding any emissions from airplanes), which is quite a bit higher than the national average of 24 metric tons. But if you factor in the need for space heating up here, which overwhelms the need for heating and cooling in the Lower 48, we actually do more with less CO2, so to speak. In the big picture, of course, 85,000 pounds per person is completely unsustainable, but that's another story.
The inventory was done by the University of Alaska Fairbanks' energy research center, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, under the direction of Gwen Holdmann, the woman behind many of the energy projects at Chena Hot Springs. It serves a few purposes. First, it completes the first step in the borough's efforts to reduce its emissions through the ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection program. Second, it provides a baseline against which to evaluate the coal-to-liquids project some are pushing hard for the Fairbanks area. Proponents have promised to only support the project if it would reduce emissions overall.
The state finished its own inventory last year.
I won't bore you with too many details from the Fairbanks inventory, but here are a few that stood out to me.
-Each resident is responsible for about 500 gallons of heating fuel per year just for residential heating and 3,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity
-Coal-fired generation is a killer
-The Flint Hills refinery in North Pole, which burns mostly light straight run gasoline, is responsible for nearly 1/10th of the borough's emissions
-Lots of people drive pickups (there's about 1 registered pickup for every 2 cars)
-Eielson Air Force Base blows through about 45 million gallons of jet fuel every year, which produces more CO2 than all other non-aviation transportation in the borough
The full report is available at the ACEP Web site. Anchorage, Juneau, Kodiak, and Homer have also teamed up with ICLEI, so presumably they've done them, too.
Here's a shot of the Golden Heart City from the Chena River.

the noatak!

I'm back! Actually, we've been back for a few weeks; I've just been a lazy blogger. But hey, it's summer in Alaska. Here's one of my favorite pics from the high peaks up at the Noatak River headwaters. And here's the account I penned for the News-Miner. While we were up there, Anchorage-based writer Bill Sherwonit was on his own adventure. And my paddling partner Diana's brother Sam was having another not far away. If it sounds crowded, it's not. The land up there is amazing -- wild even by Alaska standards. I quit the News-Miner in July and am working as a freelancer. I've been writing for Petroleum News and a bit for the French news agency AFP and the new Alaska-focused online rag Alaska Dispatch. The goal is to have more time to write about energy and climate change. And, of course, more time to get outside . . .

climate change in Alaska

My opus on climate change in Alaska is finally out in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. It looks at four different areas that are already changing or might see big change in the future. It's just a start at that, and also skips completely any talk of what the state is doing or should be doing to respond. So there's stories to come!
You can find the series here.
On another note, I've left the News-Miner after two and a half pretty exciting years and am trying my hand at freelance. The goal is to spend more time writing about climate change, energy, and how Alaskans choose to use their incredible land (i.e., development issues).
But first, I'm going paddling for a few weeks way up north in the Brooks Range. Bears, wolves, grayling with giant sailfins. We're paddling the Noatak, a wild river even by Alaska standards....

renewables

I got to write about renewables today. Here's the story, but first...
This is pretty amazing.
For one, these aren't small projects. I looked mostly at the ones sponsored by Golden Valley up in Fairbanks, two of which top out at 50 megawatts. GVEA's entire load is a little over 200MW.
Second, they seem to make economic sense, in that they'll save more money over the long run than they cost to build, in some cases two or three times as much. This sounds obvious, but in a lot of places customers are willing to pay a premium for "green" power. Here the green isn't even counted as a benefit and is simply icing on the cake.
Third, I'm pretty sure these are the conventional projects -- solar thermal, in-river hydro, wind power, geothermal. The state isn't funding the really far out stuff yet.
And last, this is just the start. Not all these projects will get built, most likely, but if $5 million in grants jumpstarts a few $10 million or $100 million projects, imagine what $50 million in grant money will do next year.

JUNEAU — With a little help from the state, Golden Valley Electric Association is looking to cut back on fossil fuels and start making hot water and power from the sun, the wind and the Nenana River current.
The Alaska Energy Authority, a public corporation of the state, this week gave the utility $212,000 to study four alternative energy projects across Golden Valley’s coverage area.
Two projects involve hydropower. The first would generate up to 50 megawatts of electricity at a dam on the Tanana River near Delta Junction. The second would make 10 megawatts of power from the Nenana River near Healy using generating units in the river rather than a dam.
A third project would generate up to 50 megawatts from wind turbines in the Eva Creek area near Healy, and the fourth would actually cut electricity usage by relying on solar energy to heat water at two facilities near Denali National Park and Preserve.
“This is kind of an opportunity to come up with some things that might be a little outside the box,” Golden Valley spokeswoman Dianne Porter said Thursday.
The grants are small in relation to the overall project costs. AEA put just $60,000 toward the dam project, which is expected to cost $130 million.
Porter said the grants will allow Golden Valley to assess the feasibility of the projects without using members’ money. The utility has pursued the wind power project for years, but the others are relatively new.
A total of about $5 million in grants was awarded statewide through a collaborative effort between AEA and the Denali Commission, a federal-state partnership.
Most of the 33 grants were awarded for pre-construction studies, but some grants were given for construction of alternative energy projects, including a geothermal power plant at Manley Hot Springs and a wood-fired heating system in Fort Yukon.
To qualify for the grants, project sponsors had to show the projects would save enough money in displaced fossil-fuel costs to offset the cost of construction. Three of the Golden Valley projects — all but the solar thermal project — are expected to pay for themselves two or three times over.
Karsten Rodvik, a spokesman for AEA, described the grants as a first step toward displacing costly fossil fuels and bringing down the cost of energy.
“The goal, of course, is the development of a long-term plan that provides low-cost, reliable, sustainable power,” he said.
According to Rodvik, AEA is planning to issue a similar request for proposals this summer for $50 million in grant money, or 10 times what was awarded this week, although the project criteria will likely be different.
The grants are considered helpful because alternative energy projects typically cost more to build than conventional energy projects. The projects can ultimately save money because they don’t require fuel.
State lawmakers and Gov. Sarah Palin agreed this year to put $250 million toward alternative energy projects during the next five years.

summer

What better way to welcome summer than with some snowboarding?
Here's Gold Ridge at 6:45 a.m. It's been light since about 2:30.

gold ridge

I hiked up the ridge again yesterday, this time with a friend and my ski-swap snowboard. We went as high as Gold Ridge, then turned around and came down in soft snow and steep terrain. Julie fell in a crevasse and I crashed hard, but otherwise it was a pretty mellow, wonderful Juneau hike. We saw ptarmigan (and their black fan tails) and a fat marmot. Still plenty of snow.

treadwell ditch

Another trip report here.
I tried this one last week, and it turned out to be kind of a disaster. I told someone about if after and she said, Oh yeah, everyone tries riding the Treadwell Ditch Trail once.
The problem is, the trail sounds sweet. It follows a ditch (an inglorious name for a pretty neat piece of engineering) that was cut into the mountains and brought water from various streams from one end of Douglas Island to the other for mining operations 100 years ago. It's basically a dozen miles of downhill singletrack.
I started at the beginning, which you can access by slogging through some mud off the road to Eaglecrest. The forest is rich and green and wild, even if you can still hear cars on the road. I saw a bear climb into the woods about 40 yards away, and three porcupines over the course of the day. The trail was gently downhill, as I expected, but was not very rideable. I probably dismounted 75 times or so, and crashed about a dozen times, at one point grabbing hold of a sapling as I flipped over the handlebars and into a patch of devils club. (I still have the needles in my hand.)
The number and diversity of obstacles was almost laughable -- roots, rocks, wash-outs, avalanches, downed trees, a landslide, log bridges, collapsed bridges, foot-numbing streams, snow, and mud. I think that's it. I rode for about six hours and gave up above the town of Douglas when I reached Paris Creek without a bridge and no visible route up the other bank.
I'd like to say there are nice sections worth riding, but the trail pretty much stunk, at least for biking.

my sunday

I've been wanting to do this trip for weeks, so this morning I tried it -- hiking up past the tram to Gold Ridge, past Gastineau Peak, and over Mount Roberts to Sheep Mountain, then skiing down to the Perseverence Trail. I made it to Roberts but ended up in blinding clouds and, believe it or not, light snow. I turned around after starting down the wrong ridge because I couldn't see anything. When I could see the ridge toward Sheep, it was narrow, scary, and covered in cracked cornices. I ended up skiing down from Gastineau to the trail through Icy Gulch, which was filled with the snow of many avalanches. Toward the bottom, a sizable stream flowed under the snow and popped out where there were holes.

palin on bears

Gov. Palin was on Fox News Wednesday talking about the state's decision to sue over the polar bear listing. A few things of note:
-She's openly expressing concerns about impacts on development now, instead of just criticizing the scientific evidence.
-She's using the claim that U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens has been using about polar bears having a healthy population that's increased dramatically in the last 30 years. (I'm not sure to what extent that's true.)
-She's adopted the term "extreme environmentalists."

. . . But, you know, I will tell you, Neil, as you know, if extreme environmentalists have their way — and we do believe that what they would like to see, some of them, is oil and gas development shut down on Alaska's North Slope — then the economic impact to our nation would really be catastrophic there. . . .

Click here for a transcript.