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Howard Silverman's comments:
on Obama Rolls Back Bush Logging Plan
Worth including in this thread the findings from the recent OSU study:
> Contrary to accepted views on biomass stabilization and decline, biomass is still increasing in stands more than 300 years old in the Coast Range, Sierra Nevada and the West Cascade Range, and in stands more than 600 years old in the Klamath Mountains;
> The entire study region of Oregon and Northern California, as far south as San Francisco, holds a total live biomass of about two billion tons of carbon – about 14 percent of the biomass in the whole nation;
> If forests in this region were managed over hundreds of years to maximize carbon sequestration, the carbon in live and dead biomass could theoretically double in the Coast Range, west and east Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada; and triple in the Klamath Mountains.
posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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on Which Protests Work?
Jon Agnone, PhD Candidate in Sociology at UW, studies these questions from various angles. Here's one abstract from his website.
"Amplifying Public Opinion: The Policy Impact of the U.S. Environmental Movement." (pdf) Social Forces
Time-series data from 1960-1998 is used to test hypotheses regarding the impact of protest and public opinion on the passage of U.S. environmental legislation. An amplification model of policy impact is introduced which posits that protest impacts legislative action independent of public opinion as suggested by protest event theorists, whereas the impact of public opinion on legislative action is greater depending on the level of protest. Evidence is found for the existence of an amplification mechanism between environmental movement protest and public opinion, where public opinion impacts policy above and beyond its independent effect when protest raises the salience of the issue to legislators. These findings point to the need to restructure analyses of the impact of social movements on public policy.
posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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on The Switch: Biomass
I'm a little late to the discussion - only heard about it after the fact. Feeling appreciative for the asynchronicity of mp3s.
Congratulations on an excellent program!
Dave, one problem. You fell into a common assumption of framing the discussion as: biomass as an alternative source of electricity. What we should be discussing is biomass as an alternative source of heating or cogeneration.
The authors of a recent article in Science address this topic in response to a group of letters prompted by their article, Wood Energy in America.
"[O]ur Policy Forum emphasized that wood is too valuable to waste with inefficient combustion and that community-based advanced wood combustion (AWC) systems used for heat, cooling, and power operate at two to three times the efficiency of electricity-generating facilities being planned in response to the Congressionally proposed Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Burning wood solely for electricity is not AWC as defined in our Policy Forum, given that these facilities will waste 60 to 75% of the energy stored in wood. Such RES-promoted wood electricity helps explain Casten’s recent remark that 'separate generation of electricity and heat is utter madness'"
posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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on The Future of Coal
The conventional wisdom of ensuring baseloads should be discussed further.
Below from a March 2009 article ("The energy should always work twice") in the scientific journal Nature:
"A common question is whether a distributed generating system with many small seasonally variable suppliers can ensure that peak demand will be met.
"But, says [German energy consultant, Thomas] Ackerman, in a reversal of the standard cliché about free-market United States and socialist Europe, “we don’t talk about guaranteeing power from wind or other sources all the time – we just believe that the market will cope.” In Germany, he says, peak demand is about 74 gigawatts and the market can supply about 120 gigawatts, so that as demand waxes and wanes, more expensive producers enter and leave the market, and the price of electricity rises and falls. … “The US system looks like our system did maybe 25 years ago,” says [head of Denmark’s state-run Energinet.dk, Per] Lund."
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090311/full/458138a.html
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on Veterans' Affairs
Voices of Veterans: A Welcome Home Ceremony
For veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other wars
November 11th, 2008 ~ 6 PM
First Unitarian Church
1011 SW 12th Ave Portland, OR
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1258287
posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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