Late Viriginia Springs?

That's what John Boyd says:

For many years on my Virginia farm I had my corn crop in the ground by the end of March. But that has not been the case for the last 10 years. Spring planting season has become more and more delayed because of changes in our weather patterns. Nowadays, I find myself planting corn in May.

He's in southern VA and I'm in northern, but I don't  think that's right, at least if I compare my vegetable garden to his field corn.  There's been a good deal of variability recently (and I can only remember "recently"), but I don't see climate change as delaying planting.

Not a Good Morning for Farmers in the Post

Two articles in the Washington Post: the toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie is blamed on runoffs of fertilizer and manure; the increase in "intersexed fish" in the Chesapeake over the years is blamed on runoffs of fertilizer and manure.  (An interseced

The Good of Polar Vortexes

Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm rather blood thirstily identifies a major major benefit of the current polar vortex.  (Joel Achenbach at the Post has the proper fogey attitude towards new-fangled concepts, like polar vortex.)

What's the benefit?  Below the break

The Nissan Leaf and Driving

Technology Review reports on a study of usage of Nissan Leafs.  It seems the drivers are going 16,000 miles a year and encountering greater battery fade than they expected.

I wonder if these owners are driving more because the cost per mile is so low (essentially zero).  The law of unintended consequences?

The Good Old Days of Steel and Coal

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money posts 1940 pictures of Pittsburgh.  A reminder that government works.

More Young People Running Small Farms?

One of the fault lines in the green/food movement is shown here.  Ideally they'd like to see more young farmers and small farmers.  They'd also like conservation. But, as quoted from Farm Policy:

“He [Sen. Baucus MT] says there needs to be a balance in the conservation reserve program lands saying, ‘CRP [Conservation Reserve Program] tends to have an adverse effect on some of the smaller towns, on implement dealers for example. Sometimes farmers just go south and have land in CRP and take the income. We’re actually starting to reduce CRP in a way to help younger people get in to agriculture.’”

That's been there since the beginning, or at least the 1930's.  If you take land out of agricultural production, whether for conservation purposes because it's below-average land and subject to erosion, etc., or because you want to reduce production in order to increase prices, you can endanger the people who depend on farmers to make a living and by increasing the value of the remaining farm land you make it harder for people to begin farming.

The old saw goes: there's no such thing as a free lunch, meaning there's always tradeoffs.

Don't Grow Old: Nature Conservancy and Climate Change Denial

I was amused to find two age-related posts in my Grist feed: one reports that the Nature Conservancy's members are old and gray, which causes concern; the other reports that climate change deniers are old and gray, which causes pleasure.

The mantra of my household is: don't grow old.

Blue State, Not So Blue Air

Treehugger has a list of the 20 dirtiest cities (dirtiest air, that is). When you look at it, note that seven of the worst 10 cities are in California.  Except for Houston, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, the other cities are mostly in blue states.  This might be a clue for the reason why conservatives and liberals talk past each other on environmental issues: they look out the window and they see a different reality.

EWG and Direct Payments

EWG released their database on direct payments on Friday. Here's the press release.  A quote I can't figure out:

The EWG database also smokes out the names of the individuals who ultimately cashed the subsidy checks. Their identities have been hidden by these corporate structures and not publicly disclosed by the US Department of Agriculture since the 2008 farm bill.

(FSA quoted EWG what was, IMHO, a ridiculous price for doing the processing necessary to attribute payments made to an entity like a corporation down to the constituent individuals.) I'm not sure how EWG did this.  Their statement about individuals "who ultimately cashed..." is technically inaccurate.  What they mean to say is something like "individuals who were the ultimate beneficiaries of subsidy checks written to corporations."

The Solar Decathlon and the Weather

Several colleges are participating in the "Solar Decathlon", a contest to build green housing within a set of constraints, with the model house erected on the Mall, or this year in West Potomac Park.  U of MD won the architectural award.  This year since Tropical Storm Lee went through earlier this month the sun has been in little evidence.  That's unfortunate, because many of the features of such houses depend on reasonably sunny weather, which the DC area usually has in September, but not this year.

Elixir

Just finishing up on Elixir, A History of Water and Mankind, by Brian Kagan.  It's quite interesting, filled with facts.  See the Amazon reviews; it's getting about 4.5 stars.  What was most striking to me was the extent and sophistication of early efforts to control water, in many areas of the world long before I would have thought.  For example, the tunnels in ancient Crete and the qanats in the Middle East (Google wants to give you "Qantas" results when you search for "qanats").

It's also striking how often humans were succeeding in living in very marginal environments for many years, but then their efforts were overturned by a sharp change in the climate.

How To Spin the Election

Brad Johnson at Grist puts a good face on the election--most of those who voted for cap and trade in the House won.  What he doesn't do, and should, is look at the percentage of winners among those who voted against cap and trade.  I'm assuming, since the Reps only had a couple seats lost, the percentage would be close to 100 percent. Sometimes it's best to just suck it up and say we lost.

Government's Achievements

No oil slicks around the Statue of Liberty recently.  See this photo  (from early 70's)

It's easy to forget, except sometimes for geezers.

Fighting the Last War

That's what bureaucracies do, whether it's the Army or the Coast Guard and Interior.  There's a good interview with Adm. Thad Allen at Government Executive, which explains the Gulf spew.  Part of the explanation: the system was dominated by the lessons of the Exxon Valdez spill.

The Downside of Absentee Landowners

Back in the day every farmer owned and operated his quarter section (my "day" was long, long ago and in a different country).  But today most farms are a combination of rented and owned land (at $5-7K an acre, it doesn't take long for land ownership to involve some real money).  And Chris Clayton, whose thoughts never stray far from business, wonders if the dead zone in the Gulf isn't related to the renting. (Actually, the dead zone is my attempt to amp up the significance.)  He and his family float down a river and see corn and soybeans planted with no filter strip bordering the river, consequently nitrogen, phosphorus and top soil fall into the river, thence to be flushed down past New Orleans to the Gulf.  His guess is that the farmers were renting and going for max production, not worried at all about the land.

Chinese Trash

Early in the week there were some stories (WSJ here, with slide show) about trash on the Yangtze river threatening the operation of the Three Rivers Dam in China.

That's a reminder of how far and fast China has come--even in the western interior of the country their citizens have become wealthy enough to have trash.  I remember when they were so poor and so thrifty they recycled everything.

A Fairfax Green at the Recycle Dropoff

This morning my wife and I drove to the local dropoff point for recyclables, part of our Friday routine which also includes grocery shopping.  The place is set up as an "Y", with the bins for paper products on one arm, the bins for glass and plastic on the other arm, and the junction point is just wide enough for cars to come in, park, reverse, and go out.

When we arrived a young slender woman in a white car had backed up to the paper bins and was disposing of her paper. I parked further in; my wife dumped the paper and I dumped the bottles.  As I glanced in the mirror before backing to turn around, I saw the woman had now backed her car up to the glass/plastic bin and was disposing of her bottles.

The walking distance between her two parking places was no more than 25 yards.

The car was a Prius.

GWB and the Environment

Treehugger has a post on our greenest President, GWBush. (Greenest at least in private life and in Texas.)

Those Wimpy Liberals

Turns out we're easily "nudged" to save energy or otherwise be environmentally correct.  Meanwhile, those stalwart, independent-minded conservatives react to such "nudges" by wasting more energy.

(Or maybe I could interpret this as liberals being rational, conservatives irrational? Feels better to me.)

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

The greens foodies regularly bash the plutocrats of agribusiness who push processed foods down our throats.  But they don't think much of corn-based ethanol, which means they wake up in bed with:

“But when Illinois and Missouri members of Congress opened a new effort recently to extend the tax breaks, a phalanx of opponents quickly mobilized. They include the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the American Meat Institute, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, environmental organizations and pro-taxpayer groups.”

From Farmpolicy on ethanol