We Had It Once, We Need To Again

Jul 21, 2019 | Essays

On July 20, 1969, my brother, and I were with our parents in a real-life Fawlty Towers on the banks of Lake Como in Northern Italy.

I was a perennially annoyed thirteen-year-old looking forward to this long road trip from Paris to Rome with my parents to be over, not fully appreciating the sights and experiences along the way. This wasn’t a dream vacation.

This was us visiting my mother’s family in Italy, while we lived in France for the years my American father would be working in the Paris office of United Aircraft Corp. We’d be doing it all again the next summer, and the next.

We had been uprooted the year before from our Connecticut home and sent to Europe. My eleven-year-old brother and I missed our friends, being able to watch TV in a language we could understand, and being able to find vanilla extract in the grocery store. (Why do European cookies taste different from American cookies? No vanilla extract.)

Apollo 11 astronauts during the EVA, just after the phone call from President Nixon. Still frame from the Maurer automatic 16mm data acquisition camera (DAC), shot through the LM window. From the Project Apollo Archive.

Being the children of an aerospace engineer, we heard discussions of the Space Program all the time. The achievement of humans traveling to the moon and back was part of normal life for us. Of course it was going to work. We had the technology, and the entire country was working on it. You know the look on the face of an eleven-year-old today when they have to show grandma how to use Instagram? That was my brother and me.

So it was to our vague surprise that the hotel manager called every human in the building to the lobby early of the morning of July 21. We gathered around a small black and white television set on a tiny table. As the realization spread through the room that my family members were the only Americans in the hotel, we were shuttled to the front for the best viewing.

There was silence as we watched, then cheers, and a lot of handshakes and pats on the back. One would have thought my entire family worked for NASA. At that moment, my family represented the whole of the United States of America. To the group in the hotel, we were heroes.

The fuzzy images on the television screen of the astronauts stepping onto the lunar surface jolted me out of my teenage ennui. There were humans on the moon.  More incredibly, we got to watch it happen across that vast distance of space. Even more incredibly, they were going to hop back in their machine and fly back to Earth.

From then on, things would be different. We proved we could go anywhere, do anything. There would be a moon base in no time; travel between the two rocks would be commonplace. We were going to cure disease and poverty and end all wars. We had the technology. We believed in science. And the world looked to us as heroes.

OK, so, a lot of things have, and have not, happened over the fifty years since. I’m now the one who pulls up NASA TV on my computer screen at work to watch SpaceX rockets take off. I’m the one wondering why no one else in the office seems to think this is significant enough to interrupt the day. Humans in space have become commonplace.

Belief in science, however, not so much. Reliance in current science, yes, when we need it; when we are at the doctor or have to go somewhere in a car or wonder why we didn’t detect listeria in our lettuce before it hit the store shelves.

Consider the science that’s going to save us from the climate crisis, cure Ebola, and clean the oceans. Do we have enough faith to put in the money, time, people, and energy needed, like we did when we were racing to the moon?

Let’s aim to be heroes again. Closing our doors to the rest of the world will not move us forward. We need to put aside the tribal bickering and come together for the common cause of saving the planet. We need to put scientists and engineers in charge of the science and technology. We need to give them the respect and resources they need to do the job we need them to do.

We did it once; we can do it again.

Help Keep Birds From Flying Into Your Windows

Jul 11, 2019 | Environment

photo by Chris F. for Pexels

As promised in the 06/16/19 post about Wind Energy, here is some information about bird-window collisions we hope will prove helpful.

The surprising numbers
Studies published in 2009 and 2014 showed the following approximate number of birds killed :
Wind farms in the US: 7000
Nuclear power plants: 327,000
Fossil-fueled power plants: 14.5 million
Collisions with windows: up to 988 million
Nearly one billion birds collide with windows every year.

Why?
Birds cannot see the actual glass as a solid, so they don’t know there is a barrier there.  They do see the landscape reflected in the glass, which looks to them like sky through which they can fly or trees and bushes in which they can land.

When the glass is not reflecting, and the view through it is clear, birds can see the inviting potted trees in the lobby or the park on the other side of the bus stop panel. Windows with another window on the opposite side of the room and corner windows at 90 degrees to each other look like open flight paths right through the building.

Helpful solutions
To reduce the likelihood of collisions, make the glass look like a barrier to the birds, while still letting light to the building interior and not completely block the view for the humans.  A quick search of the internet or accessing the links below will show many easily homemade and commercially innovative ways to do this.

Indoors
Most solutions involve the outside surface of the glass.

Simply closing interior curtains or blinds will hide the interior potted plants. Drawing a curtain over the window on the opposite side of the room will remove the reason to try to fly straight through the building. And you can find collections of colorful dragonflies or butterfly window clings specifically marketed as anti-collision, with instructions that say to apply them only to the inside surface.

However, these solutions will not solve the problem of the sky and garden being reflected on the outside. When the glass is reflecting the landscape the birds won’t see the butterfly clings, only the reflected bushes they think will be a perfect place for a perch.

Outdoors
Placing something directly on the outer surface of the glass, or a few inches from it will minimize both the reflected landscape and the invisibility of the barrier

Keep in mind markings or coverings should be close enough so birds won’t be tempted to fly in between them, 2 inches high by 4 inches wide.

Markings
Draw a design or grid pattern with tempera paint or soap.  But use something that will not wash off readily in the next rain storm.

Not one for freehand drawing? Stick weather resistant material to the glass, such as stickers, window clings, or tape.

Tinted translucent designs and sun catchers might be more pleasant to look through from the inside than masking tape and will make cool stained-glass effects.

American Bird Conservancy’s ABC Bird Tape is translucent when viewed from the inside and specially formulated to last four years when applied to clean windows. Cut it into shapes to make patterns. Find ideas on their website at the link above.

One-way films with line patterns, or an overall coating that appears clear from the inside but solid on the outside that you can stick to the glass as one big sheet also exist.  Check out CollideEscape.org.

photo by Brigitte Tohm

Bird-safe glass
If you are installing new windows, consider installing bird-safe glass. There are companies making glass tinted in colors that appear clear to humans but dark to birds.  Use window glass that is pre-patterned with etched lines or decoration.

Scientists think birds can see ultraviolet light. They surmise one reason orb spiders may decorate their webs with UV reflecting strands is to keep birds from flying through them, and perhaps to camouflage themselves while sitting mid-web to keep birds from choosing them for lunch. Ornilux is a company making glass coated with UV reflective patterns that appear transparent to humans but are visible to birds.

Netting
Some deterrents can be installed a few inches from the outside glass surface.

Taught netting or mosquito screens installed about 3 inches from the glass might appear non-fly through, and if not, the bird will bounce back instead of crashing into the hard glass. Make sure the holes in the netting are small enough for the bird not to get caught, 5/8” or smaller.

Curtain
A curtain of vertical cord, installed to the frame on the outside of the window, is available for purchase, or you can make your own by hanging lengths of cord about 4 inches apart from the top of the window frame. Leave the ends just short of the bottom frame to blow pleasantly in the breeze, or attach them to the sill. Find instructions for making, photos of creative solutions for installing,  and ready-made products to purchase, at Acopian Birdsavers.

Shutters
An old solution, closing the shutters on the outside of the building, will hide the window from the birds and keep the interior rooms cooler.

Awnings to shade the window, eliminating the reflection, works as long as there is not also the incentive to fly through to indoor foliage or through to an opposite window.

Feeder Placement
Putting your bird feeders closer to the house may entice the birds to slow down as they approach.

Advocacy
The sources below have more information on human-made dangers to birds.  Did you know roaming pet and feral cats, basically an invasive species introduced by humans, kill four times as many birds as collisions with windows? Or that city lights confuse birds’ instincts to navigate by the moon and stars? The sites also provide information on what is being, and can be, done about them.

There are many ways you, as an individual, and companies and organizations you may be associated with can help bring the number of collisions down and keep our bird populations safe. If you already take measures to help the birds, thank you!

Sources

Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2009. “Contextualizing avian mortality: A preliminary appraisal of bird and bat fatalities from wind, fossil-fuel, and nuclear electricity,” Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2241-2248, June.
https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v37y2009i6p2241-2248.html

Scott R. Loss, Tom Will, Sara S. Loss, and Peter P. Marra “Bird–building collisions in the United States: Estimates of annual mortality and species vulnerability,” The Condor 116(1), 8-23, (2 January 2014).https://doi.org/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1
https://bioone.org/journals/The-Condor/volume-116/issue-1/CONDOR-13-090.1/Birdbuilding-collisions-in-the-United-States–Estimates-of-annual/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1.full

American Bird Conservancy
Stop Birds Hitting Windows
https://abcbirds.org/get-involved/bird-smart-glass/

photo by Snapwire

CollideEscape.org
https://www.collidescape.org/

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
All about Birds
Why Birds Hit Windows – And How You Can Help Prevent it, May 2017
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/why-birds-hit-windows-and-how-you-can-help-prevent-it/

Audubon
What does ‘Brid-Safe Glass’ Even Mean?
Clara Chaisson
https://www.audubon.org/news/what-does-bird-safe-glass-even-mean

Ornilux Bird Protection Glass
http://www.ornilux.com/

Austral Ecology, November 24, 2003
Effect of abiotic factors on the foraging strategy of the orb-web spider Argiope keyserlingi (Araneae: Araneidae)
M. E. Herberstein, A. F. Fleisch
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1442-9993.2003.t01-1-01319.x

Fatal Light Awareness Program, FLAP Canada
https://www.flap.org/

Ways With Water: A List of Hydropower Systems

Jul 2, 2019 | Sustainability

Water is heavy
One liter of liquid water can generally be said to weigh one kilogram, or one gallon weighs about 8.34 pounds. In other words, it’s heavy, as anyone who has had to carry buckets of it with those metal wire handles while not wearing gloves can tell you.

Water moves
Gravity tends to have a big effect on liquid water. It will spread out as thin as it can over a level surface and will readily run down the slightest incline, as anyone who is wondering how it found it’s silent way from the leak by the chimney to the far end of the house until it showed up as a growing stain in the wall, can surmise.

Water wants to keep going until it gets to the ocean. It’s often in a furious hurry and does not tolerate anything in its way, as anyone who has survived a flood knows.

Water is hard
For something you can slide your whole body into, it’s surprisingly solid if you approach it too fast, as anyone who’s ever flubbed a dive can attest. It can be pushed against, as in propelling a canoe with a paddle. And it can push, as in turning the paddles of a water wheel.

Water has Energy
The impressive force of moving water is a non-polluting, renewable source of energy in use by humans for thousands of years. The US has been generating electricity from flowing water since a Michigan furniture company used a water turbine to power factory lighting in 1880. According to this article on the US Energy Administration web site, “In 2018, hydroelectricity accounted for about 7% of total US utility-scale electricity generation and 41% of total utility-scale electricity generation from renewable energy sources.”

Storage Hydropower
First to come to mind upon hearing the word “hydropower” are the large hydroelectric dams built on major rivers, where water is stored in a reservoir for total control of the rate of release. Second is their environmental impacts: creating lakes were there were none, changing the quality of water flow downstream, and blocking the migration of fish.

Mitigating environmental impacts is not in the scope of this article. Neither are the licensing, politics, policies, economics, management, and distribution issues surrounding constructing and running small and large hydro energy systems across the globe. Here we are simply admiring the many ways humans have configured to harness energy from water. Some have been established and operating for a long time, and some are early iterations currently being field-tested. All are ingenious and worthy of recognition.

Pumped Storage
A pumped storage system is one where water stored in an upper reservoir, and allowed to move through turbines to a lower reservoir when needed, then pumped back up to the first reservoir to go again. The system takes some of the generated electricity during times of low demand to pump the water back to the upper reservoir.

Run-of-River
A less disruptive design is a streaming system known as run-of-river hydropower.  They are ideally located where there is a year-round flow of water and a steep slope, such as a mountain creek.  A much smaller geographical area is disrupted because a large dam and permanent lake are not constructed. Instead, a portion of the water is diverted off to the side and down a tunnel to the turbine. After pushing past the turbine blades, the water re-joins the river current further downstream.

The scale of operations is smaller than the large dams, they can be located closer to where the resulting electricity will be used, and fish migration is not blocked. However, even this seemingly benign set-up can be disruptive to the fragile eco-system of a mountain creek because of access roads, transmission lines, and changes in water temperature and flow rates.

On an even smaller scale, the electricity needs of a single home can be met by a turbine in a nearby stream as long as it runs year-round and has enough of an elevation drop.

Instream Energy Generation
The mechanical power source for grinding grain, milling wood and making cider, traditional waterwheels are now being used for electricity generation. They don’t need a significant change in elevation or a reservoir, just a strong water current. Waterwheels can also be attractive and are mesmerizing to watch.

Conduit Hydropower Generators
Another version of streaming hydropower is making better use of what we have already built; one of those forehead-slapping-obvious ideas that make total sense. Water traveling through decreasing diameter pipes, as from a reservoir, builds up pressure that is relieved by pressure-reducing valves. If a turbine is put in place of the valve, the pressure can be used to generate electricity.

This solution can work on small and large pipes and does not create any additional impact on the environment. It is making use of energy that is already there and would otherwise be wasted.

Soar Hydropower’s website, https://soarhydro.com/,  has a good explanation of how this works accompanied by informative illustrations. (Disclaimer: just appreciating their communications; I have no connection with them, or the company mentioned below.)

Another company, Lucid Energy (lucidenergy.com), is installing specially designed turbines inside of existing pipes, to turn generators on the outside of the pipes, to convert the energy of the flow to electricity. They claim it does not interfere with water delivery.

Tidal Energy
Humans have been taking advantage of the predictable ebb and flow of the tides since ancient times. A dam built across a tidal inlet that allows an area to fill with water as the tide comes in. The captured water is then let back out, passing through a waterwheel or paddles, providing mechanical energy to a mill for a few hours each day.

Modern barrage systems use turbines to generate electricity. The environmental impact is high as it completely disrupts the eco-system of a tidal inlet or estuary the dam or barrage spans. Less disruptive tidal lagoon systems only partially blocked inlets, where the wall is so low it is submerged at high tide. Fish and animals can navigate around the barrier.

Other systems use both the incoming and outgoing currents to spin turbines placed in tidal streams.

Wave Energy
Ocean waves are another constant and forceful source of moving water. Engineers are exploring different systems, from harnessing the up and down movement of the surface,  to having the onslaught of wave action toward the shore fill a reservoir to power turbines upon release back into the sea. The potential is huge. The tasks are finding something economically feasible and determining the as yet unknown environmental impacts.

Thermal Conversion
Lastly, we have to mention another mind-blowing way to harness energy from water, and it comes with a bonus.

In tropical seas, the surface water is a great deal warmer than the deep water. In a thermal conversion system, the warm water is run through an evaporator, so the resulting water vapor can power a turbine to generate electricity. The water vapor is then cooled in a condenser by cold deep water, resulting in a bonus of collectible desalinated water. There is a successful test facility in Hawaii run by The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.

Water covers over seventy percent of the planet.
Very briefly mentioned here are eight different ways to harness its energy. Environmental concerns need to be addressed, and testing will lead to more iterations. It is encouraging and exciting that engineers everywhere are innovating with this resource and that they will successfully contribute to reducing the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

 

Sources:

US Energy Information Administration
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=hydropower_home

Union of Concerned Scientists: Environmental Impacts of Hydroelectric Power
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-hydroelectric-power.html

Energy BC: Run of River Power
http://www.energybc.ca/runofriver.html

WhyHydroPower.com: Environmental Considerations, Contrasting Reservoir and Streaming Hydropower
http://www.whyhydropower.com/HydroTour3d.html

British-Hydro.org: Types of Hydro Generation
http://www.british-hydro.org/types-of-hydro/

Tidal Electric, Inc: History of Tidal Power
http://www.tidalelectric.com/history-of-tidal-power

National Geographic.org: Resource Library, Encyclopedic Entry: Tidal Energy
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/tidal-energy/