northern flux

glaciers, grizzlies, and Alaska's big city

2009-10-20T14:28:00.004-08:00

I have to admit I'm warming up to Anchorage. I still think the city itself is kind of a dump, but the land around it really is amazing -- mountains, glaciers, salt water and fresh water.
On Saturday, Toby took me for a hike up Ram Valley, where neither of us had been, to climb Raina Peak, at 6,795 feet. We parked the car at about 1,400 feet and hiked under a power line, along a narrow road, and up through tall, dead grass and thick alders more suited to bears than humans. After bushwhacking and sidehilling, we popped out in the valley to see a big grizzly eating overripe blueberries 400 yards away. Before he could hear or smell us, the bear dropped to his belly on the tundra in a way that must have been efficient but was not very stately. We chose a path around him and checked over our shoulders as we hiked to see that he hadn't moved. Then he disappeared. We worried he had dropped into alders between us and him, but we kept an eye out and never saw him again.
We hiked steadily up the tundra to a spit of rock coming down from the peak, then followed that up, climbing over rock ridges as necessary to avoid spots that were too steep to climb without ropes. Not having hiked much this year, I got sloppy after a few hours. Footing was hard on the loose rocks. We turned around a few hundred vertical feet from the top. The views were amazing, and even more so because of the quick transition from wooded lowlands to soft tundra and finally to rock, covered only by multi-colored lichen. We half-ran down scree fields and rushed across the tundra to make another friend's birthday party nearly on time.
On Sunday, Toby and Darcy and I set off on another expedition -- to hike and float from Girdwood to Eagle River over Crow Pass and down the north fork of the Eagle River. It's a trip that people do fairly often on foot, I understand, often spending a night or two on the trail. There's also a trail marathon along the route, for which Toby once held the course record. Once again, the hiking was spectacular. We climbed past old mining operations, along short cliffs, and past waterfalls. We paused at the pass and soaked up some sun, then hiked another bit to where we could see a handful of glaciers. We passed mountain goats on the trail, seemingly unafraid.
The trail covers about 13 miles of rock, grass, and fairly thick woods before reaching Eagle River a little below the glacier that gives it life. There wasn't enough water to float, so we crossed the milky, fast water and picked up the trail on the other bank and kept hiking. After a few more streams added their water, we blew up the packrafts we'd carried over the pass and paddled a few miles. Canyon-like walls rose from the glacial valley. A grizzly sow and two cubs lumbered up the bank 100 yards from us.
Our route proved somewhat ambitious, and despite hiking fast all day with little rest, we still had miles to go when we pulled our boats from the river at nightfall. The sun had long since disappeared, and even as we floated, ice formed on our packs and paddles. On the trail, fresh frost glistened back at us from the light of our headlamps. We reached the nature center and road a little before 10. The night was clear, and the stars came out as bright and unpolluted as from my Fairbanks home, maybe even brighter.

yukon fish

2009-10-05T08:32:00.003-08:00

Yay! Jesse and I had a story come out over the weekend in the New York Times. It's about the poor runs of king salmon on the Yukon in recent years and how they're affecting people. Be sure to check out the slide show. Both can be found here.

mighty mighty yukon

2009-09-06T19:56:00.004-08:00

We're done! After 50 days on the river and about 935 miles in the canoe, Jesse and I made it to the ocean on August 31. Against the advice of nearly everyone we met and despite a stern warning from a volunteer with the search and rescue squad in Emmonak, we paddled the last 11 miles to the Bering Sea in a fall storm that kicked up 30 mph winds and threatened to push the surf over the low ground. It took about 6 hours of paddling -- at times so hard we had to grunt -- and large quantities of chocolate, but we managed to get there through wind and waves and even stay dry at our ocean camp. Like most of the trip, the weather proved erratic, and we had a few moments of sun on the first day of September. The beach, if one can call it that, looked something like the Great Plains and something like the Serengeti, or so said Jesse.

yukon paddle

2009-07-05T14:52:00.004-08:00

For the last several weeks, the floor of my cabin has been cluttered with gear: waterproof totes and bags, buckets, cooking pots and rubber boots, tent stakes, sleeping bags, wool clothes, bug nets. Yesterday I finished making a pair of canoe paddles, cut the handle off my $3 frying pan, and bagged up 145 pounds of food.
In less than a week, I'll be leaving Fairbanks on a five-week paddling adventure down the Tanana and Yukon rivers. If all goes well, we'll make it 900 miles to the Bering Sea before fall storms kick up in mid-August. I'm paddling with a friend from college, a freelance photographer now, and the goal is to do some stories about the trip and how the horrible returns of king salmon are impacting Yukon River villages.
In planning, I've felt a bit like an amateur. What do we do about bears? How long should our painters be? Which is not to say I've never been on a wilderness trip. In 2002, I spent 30 days paddling solo down the Hudson River, and last fall I kayaked the Noatak -- one of the most remote rivers in all of Alaska. But most of the Hudson is settled, and on the Noatak, I relied on experienced companions.
So I've been preparing -- gathering gear, reading, talking with people, paddling. Last week I did a test run of sorts, floating the first 50 miles from Fairbanks to Nenana with my friend Ian. The last time we did it, two years ago, I was newer to Alaska: "There's signs of life, like little marks on trees for fish camps, I'm guessing, and a sign for Skinny Dick's, but mostly the river is wild," I wrote. "Ian likened it to a highway -- it's fairly well traveled, and you can't really get lost -- but I mostly saw it like a big, remote river."
Well, this time was different -- I saw the highway. The current is strong, but manageable, the river braided, but easy to follow. The river feels more like a path through wilderness than wilderness itself. There will be sections of river more than 100 miles between villages, but it all seems doable now with some good gear, paddling skills, and common sense. I think I'm getting that Alaska perspective.
I can't imagine blogging much during the trip, but certainly upon return!

fishing for fish

2009-06-22T18:02:00.005-08:00

In the end, the money worked out about the same. Fred Meyer was selling whole Copper River reds for $3.99 a pound Thursday afternoon when we left for the Copper River, the truck loaded with empty coolers, long-handled dipnets, sleeping bags, a hand truck, and enough cheese, chocolate and salami for a few days. We made it back Saturday night with about 40 pounds of fish -- 30 pounds headed and gutted -- and spent about 90 bucks on gas and another 30 on miscellaneous stuff, for a total of about $120, or $4 a pound.
That wasn't how it was supposed to be. The limit is 15 fish per person, but somehow we ended up in Chitina during a lull and netted only eight fish between the two of us. The day they were running strong, I had to work. We both caught kings, which would have more than doubled our take (and given us the most highly-coveted, oily salmon species), but the Alaska Department of Fish and Game isn't letting dipnetters keep kings this year. Runs have apparently been bad around the state. I respect the idea of conservative management, but there certainly seems to be a lot of politics around who gets to keep the fish that are taken.
In the end, the time, work, and effort we put into fishing seemed large for a sinkful of salmon. On Friday, we spent 17 hours hiking in, scrambling down rocks to the river, and standing with a net in the silty, roiling glacial water waiting for the tap of a fish hitting the net. The idea of driving 320 miles one-way to gather our own food seemed like an odd twist to the idea of eating local.
But time and money are poor measures for the experience itself -- for learning again how to do it, for getting up early and pushing the body as hard as it will go, for truly knowing where your food comes from and how it got to your plate. We cleaned the fish in my cabin Saturday night and broiled a fillet around midnight. Oily, mild, and good enough to eat the skin.

immediate action report

2009-03-31T16:29:00.005-08:00

The silence on climate change here in the capitol has been deafening, as the saying goes. I spend a good chunk of my time in the building, and aside from a few side mentions from the public during testimony on energy-related bills, there has literally been no mention of the issue. Gov. Sarah Palin mentioned climate change in her state of the state address, but only to note that her sub-cabinet group on climate change was studying the issue.
Anyway, the Immediate Action Work Group, a temporary group set up under the sub-cabinet, just issued its latest report. It has a few broad policy recommendations that suggest they're still trying to come up with a process that makes sense. But it also has several FY 10 funding requests, many of which are not currently in the budget bills working their way through the Legislature. If any of them are going to make it in, it's going to take some quick, effective lobbying. The session ends April 19. As for who will do that lobbying, beats me.

dan moller

2009-02-22T11:19:00.003-09:00

This is why Juneau is amazing. Drive across the bridge from town to Douglas Island and up the hill about half a mile, then hike for a few hours and you end up here.

jumbo, and other news

2009-02-20T12:41:00.003-09:00

Sorry for the delay. I had a story about renewable energy run in the New York Times, with photos, video, and a blog post to boot! More on that later. And yesterday afternoon I climbed a small mountain on Douglas Island. The snow was deep, and came all the way down the water. The trees are huge, of course. And the bits of blue in the sky and white of the mountains down the channel were striking -- so blue at times that I mistook the sky through the trees for something man-made. I made it to the shoulder on Jumbo just as it was getting dark, then skied down the winter trail (snowmachine trail) with shaky legs as the trail disappeared and lights came out in Juneau below.

soggy juneau

2009-02-01T23:34:00.003-09:00

Alas, I missed the powder day at the mountain this weekend. That was yesterday. I got out today, when the sky was so thick you could hardly see across the channel, and hiked up to the tram. It was only a few miles, but offered a taste of the mountains all the same: the chill of wet skin at the top, the warmth of good clothes and exertion, the perfect asymmetry of the hike up and down. The snow, knee-deep at the top, thinned and turned to slush on the way down.

wind-powered gas line?

2009-01-26T21:53:00.002-09:00

There was a funny moment today in the Capitol when a VP from Canadian pipeline builder TransCanada updated lawmakers on his company's proposed $26 billion natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to Alberta. Trying to demonstrate the small footprint of the pipeline's compressor stations, which pump gas down the line, the VP, Tony Palmer, compared the facilities to wind turbines -- a whole station would cover an area smaller than the spread between two turbines, he said, and the tallest building would be only one sixth as tall as a wind turbine. It seemed like an odd comparison. Palmer actually said something like, "So if you're familiar with wind turbines, . . ." which I imagine most Alaska lawmakers are not.
Once on the subject, Palmer took the opportunity to mention that TransCanada is building Canada's largest wind farm -- totaling 740 megawatts, or several hundred utility-scale turbines. This also seemed like an odd thing to note. Did Palmer think oil-state legislators would be impressed by the green-power project? Lawmakers did include a softly worded requirement in recent pipeline legislation requiring companies to say how they would handle future carbon regulation, but environmental concern is rare here.
Palmer went on with his presentation, and a little later, one of the committee members, Bryce Edgmon, returned to the turbines. Is TransCanada planning to put turbines in Alaska? he asked.
This really was an odd question. Lawmakers have studied this project for many months, and it's hard to imagine that something like using wind turbines to power a giant natural gas pipeline would simply slip past unnoticed.
But Palmer's response suggested the idea wasn't completely off base. TransCanada is planning to use natural gas to power the compressor stations, he said, but the company has used electricity on other pipelines, and has built power plants (burning natural gas) at some compressor stations.
"Will those be things that we look at?" Palmer asked himself. "Clearly they will be."
So maybe Edgmon is onto something.

dan moller

2009-01-25T14:57:00.006-09:00

It's been another weekend of beautiful weather and marginal snow. I skied Saturday above the Dan Moller cabin, atop a ridge on Douglas Island with views down Seymour Canal and Stephens Passage. Tonight we're all hoping for snow. And no, that's not my dog.

mt troy

2009-01-20T18:53:00.003-09:00

Well, the boots are out. I've been a little busy lately, but did get outside this weekend. On Saturday, I hiked up to the tram with my snowboard, although I didn't bother with the heavy, wet snow. On Sunday, I skinned up Mt. Troy with some folks and got in a few turns, despite crusty ice at the top and small ridges formed by runoff below that (shown here). With any luck, it's a temporary downturn in the skiing conditions. I can't complain about the sunny skies and T-shirt weather.

stuck in a cold place

2009-01-13T13:35:00.002-09:00

I made it to Juneau.
I mention this because for a while there, I thought I might not. I left Fairbanks on Friday, a little later than planned, and promptly got stuck a few hours down the road in Tok, the place that was so cold last week it made national news. I’d stopped to send an e-mail and noticed smoke from under the hood. It was just getting dark. A woman stopped behind me – as people will do when it’s cold in Alaska – and offered to follow me into town. Later, when I ran over a rabbit and stopped again, we checked the oil, found none, and added a quart. It was windy, and you had to be careful with your fingers. The oil turned to molasses in the minute it took to pour it.
This woman and later her husband, longtime Tok residents, showed a kindness that went beyond helping the needy traveler and took me somewhat by surprise.
I followed the woman to her house, where her husband added some more oil. When I noted the cold, the husband explained that it had actually warmed up – it was only 62 degrees below zero, and had been 69 below a few nights before. We could see now that oil was splattered on both sides of the engine.
I spent the next 20 hours at Fast Eddy’s restaurant, the accompanying motel, and the towing and service shop across the highway. I once tried walking the half-mile to the gas station for a candy bar, but turned around when my nose started to tingle. The temperature never got above 39 below.
At first I considered pushing ahead, as the problem itself wasn’t that bad (there was oil in the engine, it just wasn’t showing on the dipstick) and would presumably resolve itself if I could just get out of this frigid cold.
But it wasn’t a good time or place to be driving an unreliable car. Even with bunny boots and down, 60 below would give you a chill fast. And the Yukon isn’t exactly populated. I remembered that awful Jack London story about the man whose life depends on his ability to start a fire in the cold, and I decided to get the car fixed.
The shop, Willard’s, gracefully fit me in to what was clearly a booked schedule – cars, tractor trailers, even a U-Haul were failing in the cold. My problem proved to be a frozen pressure control valve, which meant the truck basically just had to thaw out. The mechanic, short on sleep and with hands that looked like he’d given up on washing them, worked the ice out of various tubes and valves.
At Fast Eddy’s, where I must have drank a quart of coffee, everyone was talking about the weather – about the dog musher with the totally white nose, or the thermometer bottoming out at 65 below, or the pipes that froze in the school and flooded the computer room. I eyed humongous plates of food and watched the cars drive by out the window. I had already missed one ferry to Juneau and worried I would miss another.
When I finally got my truck back at 4:45 Saturday afternoon, I got in and drove. I reached Canada a few hours later, crossed Chilkat Pass around midnight, and drove back into the U.S. a little after 1 a.m. The snow was deep, the trees huge. And it was warm.

how to tan a caribou skin

2008-12-29T22:45:00.001-09:00

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

2008-12-29T14:06:00.000-09:00

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

2008-12-29T12:04:00.002-09:00

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?

2008-12-28T12:47:00.004-09:00

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

2008-12-28T12:24:00.002-09:00

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

2008-12-26T19:44:00.000-09:00

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

2008-12-17T21:43:00.004-09:00

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

2008-12-15T14:54:00.015-09:00

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

2008-12-12T14:37:00.003-09:00

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

2008-11-10T13:57:00.006-09:00

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

2008-10-26T13:13:00.003-08:00

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.

2008-10-18T09:44:00.007-08:00

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.