gearsandbranches

[gearsandbranches]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[gearsandbranches]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

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I doubt this will get much traction but a Canadian company is trying to build a mine on lake superior in Michigan that could completely destroy and contaminate 21% of the worlds freshwater supply if their proposed dam breaks. Please sign this petition if you're in the US to stop the whole project.

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A company making wooden wind turbine blades has successfully tested a 50-meter-long prototype that’s set to debut soon in the Indian and European markets.

Last year, the German firm Voodin successfully demonstrated that their laminated-veneer timber blades could be fabricated, adapted, and installed at a lower cost than existing blades, while maintaining performance.

Now, Voodin has announced a partnership with the Indian wind company Senvion to supply its 4.2-megawatt turbines with these wooden blades for another trial run.

Wind power has accumulated more than a few demerit points for several shortfalls in the overall industry of this fossil-fuel alternative.

Some of these, such as the impact on bird life, are justified, but none more so than the fact that the turbine blades are impossible or nearly impossible to recycle, and that they need to be changed every 25 years.

Wind turbine blades are made from a mixture of glass and carbon fiber heated together with sticky epoxy resin, and these materials can’t be separated once combined, which means they go into landfills or are incinerated when they become too battered to safely operate.

GNN has reported that folks will occasionally find second-life value in these giant panels, for example in Denmark where they are turned into bike shelters. In another instance, they’re being used as pedestrian bridges.

But there are way more wind turbine blades being made every year than pedestrian bridges and bike shelters, making the overall environmental impact of wind power not all green.

“At the end of their lifecycle, most blades are buried in the ground or incinerated. This means that—at this pace—we will end up with 50 million tonnes of blade material waste by 2050,” Voodin Blade Technology’s CEO. Mr. Siekmann said recently. “With our solution, we want to help green energy truly become as green as possible.”

The last 15 years have seen rapid growth in another industry called mass timber. This state-of-the-art manufacturing technique sees panels of lumber heat-pressed, cross-laminated, and glued into a finished product that’s being used to make skyscrapers, airports, and more.

At the end of the day though, mass timber products are still wood, and can be recycled in a variety of ways.

“The blades are not only an innovative technological advancement but a significant leap toward sustainable wind production,” said Siekmann, adding that this isn’t a case of pay more to waste less; the blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber.

Additionally, the added flexibility of wooden blades should allow for taller towers and longer blades, potentially boosting the output of turbine by accessing higher wind speeds.

Now partnered with Voodin, Senvion will begin feasibility analysis in the next few months, before official testing begins around 2027.

[gearsandbranches]

A final for one of my classes, my profesor said i should post this somewhere :)

words belong to Alanis Obomsawin,

an American-Canadian of Abenaki descent, a documentary filmmaker, though this is not where I first heard them.

When the Last Tree Is Cut Down,

The Last Fish Ate

The Last Stream Poisoned.

You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money.

Native American saying, first written in 1972. Still relevant when more than half a century old, and we can see how it manifests itself in real time. I personally came across a version of it in Aurora's song "The Seed," originally titled "Eat Money." Quoting her "It's about human history, about how we've co-existed in the world and how we've forgotten how to live with nature and the power we have."

❗️Do not upload / repost my art anywhere.❗️

[gearsandbranches]

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

[gearsandbranches]

This devastating flash flood caused the death of 72 people so far. And the fact that we are intimidating and imprisoning climate justice activists who are pleading with world governments to DO FUCKING something about impending ecological disasters... it's beyond dystopic.

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[gearsandbranches]

[gearsandbranches]

Misty mountains 49/? - Adlerweg, Tirol, Austria, October 2022

photo by: nature-hiking

[gearsandbranches]

Global Climate Strike - What I´ve got to say

I thought I´d share the speech that I made today at my city´s climate strike. It went quite well and I hope that in this way I can reach a few more people. :)

Hello and thank you all for coming! My name is Sam, I´m here with and on behalf of Klimatstudenterna, a student association at the university.

When I joined the association, it was out of a desire to meet people who think like me and who care as much about this planet and its incredible, unique nature as I do. I grew up in the alps and I´m spending a lot of time biking, hiking, kayaking, trekking, and diving through this diverse and awe-inspiring wonderland that we call home. But I´ve also been aware of its problems since the age of seven, and now that I´m studying environmental engineering, I´m closer to the gruesome reality that we face than ever before.

We are living in a time of change, and time to change the direction in which we are going is running short. However, today I don´t want to focus on all the negative effects that we are having on this planet, but to offer a change of perspective.

 For most of humanity´s existence, we´ve been at nature´s mercy. At the mercy of the weather, of bad harvests, of the seasons and the animals that competed with us for food and shelter. All of that has changed within less than two centuries. Scientists have declared that the stable period that allowed us to become what we are today, has ended. The Holocene, the geographical age that we´ve been living in for the past 10.000 years, has ended, and we have entered the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Because we are the factor with the greatest influence on planet earth. That is a scary thought. We are no longer cradled within the embrace of the big wide world, the world is depending on our decisions to thrive. Or not to thrive, because this will not be the case for long. In a short few years, climate change will be the decisive factor that will change the face of the earth. We´ve sown wind, and we´ll harvest storm. Maybe more storm than we can take.

However, the window is still open to do something about that. We are in the age of the Anthropocene, and it is up to us to decide in which way we want to shape the planet. Do we want to exploit and deforest it? Or do we want to give that space back to the wilderness? Do we want to keep polluting the oceans with plastic, phosphorus and PFAS? Or do we want to protect and clean them, so our children will experience clear waters and abundant marine live, like our grandparents did. Do we want to be the destructors of this planet? Or its shepherds?

It is a great responsibility, and I don´t like the thought of humanity being this powerful, but it´s time to feel responsible  for all the living things out there, because it really is up to us. We have to decide if we want to be the shepherds or the destructors of this planet. We have to decide that as a species, as a country, as a region, as a commune, and also as individuals. Likewise, every bit of climate action is needed, global action as much as nationwide, regional, communal, and individual action. At the same time, because there is no time to dawdle and argue about who should fix it, EVERYONE should fix it, in their own way and capacity.

Be it biking to work, be it investing in clean energy. Be it voting in favor of the environment in the upcoming EU-election, and any other election, or be it voting in favor of the environment as a part of the EU-parliamen, or any other parliament. Be it making informed purchase decisions, or maybe not purchasing anything at all. Be it growing tomatoes on your balcony or turning your mass production pig farm into a mushroom farm. From parliaments to nursing homes and from work places to living rooms, there is something that everyone of us can do right now to fix this.

I want to be a shepherd of the earth.

What about you?

[gearsandbranches]

DR ADAM LEVY ClimateAdam ROSEMARY MOSCO

[gearsandbranches]

How is electricity actually made? - The Rankine Cykle

What do biomass power plants, coal power plants, concentrated solar power plants, nuclear power plants and dry steam geothermal power plants have in common? The Rankine Cykle.

When I learned about this system, the first question that I asked myself was "how can it be that this is the first time I´m learning this", because it´s such an important element to electricity production. It made me realize that I actually don´t know how electricity is produced, for example in a coal power plant, or in a nuclear power plant, or in a biomass power plant. And the answer is... We cook water.

Okay, it´s not quite that simple, but also not a lot more complicated. Let´s look at it in detail:

(Source: S.Peake (2018): Renewable Energy. Power for a sustainable future. 4th edition. Oxford University Press.)

The first step is the pump. Here, water gets pumped into the system. The water gets pumped into a steam boiler where it gets cooked, so turned into pressurized steam. And that´s what the energy source is for! Be it coal, nuclear, biomass, solar, it´s used to heat water. This pressurized steam is then led through a steam turbine, which generates electriycity. The now low pressure vapour (which is still very hot) is lead through a condenser, to be turned back into water, which then reenters the cykle. Since the cooling water in the condenser is warmed up during the process, it can be user for district heating, which preserves some of the energy that isn´t being used in the steam turbine.

The whole process is not perfect, the level of efficiency which we used to calculate with in our classes and which is for example given for nuclear power plants here is about 33%. That means that only one third of the energy that is used for heating the water is actually turned into electricity. It gets a bit better if you use the residual heat for district heating, but the rest of the energy is lost. The system works essentially the same for everything you burn to produce heat, coal, biomass etc. It works a bit different for nuclear, where it´s the excess heat of the nuclear fission producing the heat, and in concentrated solar power plants, the heat from the sun melts salt, which is then used to produce stem. This enables the solar power plant to produce electricity even at night, since the salt can keep the heat for a few hours.

I think in order to decide which kind of energy production we should be using, it is important to know how they work. I was surprised how little I knew about the Rankine cycle as the general principal of energy production and I hope that I can spread the knowledge a little bit further.

Source: Source: S.Peake (2018): Renewable Energy. Power for a sustainable future. 4th edition. Oxford University Press. Pages 33-35.

Rankine Cycle - Steam Turbine Cycle | Characteristics | nuclear-power.com

[gearsandbranches]

[gearsandbranches]

Why am I here? It´s storytime

Today I want to write about something different. About something personal. About the reason this blog exists and why I´ve created it in the first place. About nature and love and anger and hope.

In 2020, the profile picture of this blog was taken:

It was taken on a solo hike through Sweden, a hike that didn´t go as planned from the beginning, but couldn´t possibly have been more impactful and fantastic and marvellous than it was.

I wanted to follow the Southern Kungsleden, a hiking path from the southernmost mountain ranges in Sweden northwards. I had planned this meticulously, every single day, every grocery store availiable (there were three spread out over the 18 day hike), every ecological zone I would be in, every possible spot to spend the night. And I got stopped in my tracks on day two, because I landed in the middle of snowmelt and bad weather and it just wasn´t doable, even less so alone. I had to reconsider, get out of there, back to safety, and plan again. And when I set out on the second part of that adventure, after a few chaotic days, my planning consisted only of a biking map in a way too big scale to be of any use, the actual map, diverted into 10 pdf´s on my phone, and a vague scrolling through a few travelling blogs.

The second hike was the Siljansleden, a hiking path around one of the biggest lakes in Sweden (but when they say "around", it means, 30 kilometers away from it and then back in a biiig sweep). It was me, alone, in deep forest, populated by moose, wolves, bears, wolverines, lynxes, and many other things that hikers are afraid of. But you still have to sleep somehow, so you have to find your peace with that. And I did it by seeing myself as just one more creature of that forest going about my business. Trying not to bother anyone. Trying not to get into anyones way. Just one of the many beings roaming the vast forests, not to disturb and not to be disturbed. I slept in a tent in the middle of the forest, and in the depth of night, when nothing was to be heard but the whistle of the wind in the trees, when the bright midsummer night spread a soft, shadowless light around, I felt safe, calm and deeply at peace.

And so I went on, for 2 weeks, alone with the forest except for 2 stops in small towns where I stocked up on food and rest. Just me and the forest and the occasional chat with a friendly stranger. I encountered animals of different kinds (including a lynx, that was magical, but to be alone with a cat whose head is almost as big as yours at 2,5 meters distance in the middle of the night is, let´s say, INTENSE). I had good and bad and fantastic days, and while I wouldn´t necessarily say that hiking alone in the wilderness is an easy life, it is a simple one: stay warm, stay fed, stay hydrated, stay dry, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. During those two weeks, I turned from a stranger and a visitor in the forest to someone who was at home there. Coming back to civilization afterwards was shocking and jarring, as dramatic as that sounds. I had to walk along a road to the campground in the town of my destination, it was 1,5 kilometres and it almost drove me to tears. The asphalt was too hard and too hot, the sun getting reflected off of it weirdly, the road wasn´t even super busy, but the cars where so loud and it was just TOO MUCH! Was that really meant for us humans to live in? Why? It took a long time to get used to it again, and I never did the way I was before. I also never step into a forest in the same way I did before. Even though I don´t think I could immediately sleep as calmy out in the forest as I did then, the feeling of being at home there still echoes. I know it´s possible. I know what it feels like, to just be one more creature of the forest, to be embraced by it. I know if I went back for a few days, I would feel the same simplicity and joy and peace again. Now, imagine what it feels like when that forest is cut down.

There was a strip of forest that was a former nature reservation close to where I live. Ten acres of it got cut down last year to built a bigger road with three roundabouts. I´ve known this patch of forest. I biked on a trail in it back from work. I´ve explored it with skis and by foot and collected mushrooms there. It was beautiful and it was erased for a stupid road project that won´t solve any of the problems it´s being built for, because bigger roads have seldomly led to less traffic, quite the opposite. We protested, we talked with the city government, we screamed and begged, but it still happened. Our local community then met up after the forest was cleared, to celebrate our activism if nothing else, to mourn together and to find comfort in community. I went there and I saw the destruction and I was FURIOUS! I´m normally a positive, peaceful person, but that made me just BURN with anger. I wanted to DO something, SCREAM at someone, throw a molotov cocktail into the office of the municipality and watch it burn, just as they had watched that forest fall without feeling anything. Quite possibly without knowing what they had destroyed, because they had never been in or with the forest in the same way. I was so incredibly angry and I wanted SOMEONE who was responsible for this to hurt as much as I did. And then I started to collect cones. Because more destruction wouldn´t lead anywhere and because I wouldn´t change anything by being sued for vandalism. It wouldn´t make anything better. But I collected cones and dried them and put the seeds in one of the planting pots on my balcony. And now I wait and hope that they´ll grow in the spring and that I will find a safe place for them to grow big. The trees that were growing in that spot are gone, but maybe their offspring will have a chance.

I still struggle with that anger. It makes me hateful and cruel and I think about spitting that hatred into the faces of every person responsible for environmental destruction. But I start to understand that this anger is not leading anywhere good. My mom once told me a proverb that says "holding a grudge is like poisoning yourself and hoping the other person dies". Being angry won´t lead anywhere and throwing that anger at the immovable wall that is world politics is only going to leave me drained and depressed. So I try to put my energy somewhere else. Planting trees. Working together with the local activist group. Finishing my studies and working for a better future. I still get angry. But I will try to channel it in a different way. Like writing a blog post about it and trying to update more often to spread the knowledge I gained at university and elsewhere.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you have a wonderful day!

(PS: if by any chance (which is close to 0) that story about the hike sounded familiar, I do have a side blog where I wrote about it before, named @theopeneye)

[gearsandbranches]

PLEASE READ!!! I DON'T POST STUFF LIKE THIS AND THIS IS SERIOUS TO ME! ELON MUSK IS TRYING TO DUMP THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF WASTE WATER INTO THE LAGUNA MADRE IN SOUTH TEXAS!!!

The Laguna Madre is a beautiful ecosystem that houses so many species of wild life and many migratory species of shore birds go there to eat and rest. Its all thanks to the sea grass that grows there, and after the big freeze of Texas in 2021, it is slowly making its recovery and now it's in danger again!

(Black Skimmer with chicks shown here)

If Elon continues with this disguising act, nitrogen and hydrogen rich waste will be dumped and plankton and algae will begin to overpopulate and create a cloud of themselves over the sea grass causing it to not get the sunlight it needs to photosynthesize. It will basically be suffocated by the overpopulation of microorganisms and die out and so many species of animals will lose that shelter they need to feed, breed and even escape dangers like predators. This grass also feeds the endangered green sea turtle and was even given the name "Turtle Grass" for its huge importance to these creatures.

(Green Sea Turtle grazing) Not only that, but the South Padre Island is one of the largest ports in America and has many shrimping and fishing companies that rely on the environment to make a minimum wage. And once the water gets polluted, so many people can get sick or worse if they eat the fish and shrimp that have been exposed to it!

(South Texas Shrimping Boats) This is serious! And if you or someone you know lives in Texas there is a way you can make a comment and state how you DON'T WANT LITERAL SLUDGE IN THE OCEAN! IT WILL HURT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AND ANIMALS AND THE VAST AND DIVERSE ECOSYTEM THEY LIVE IN!

You can find the link here:

PLEASE DO WHAT YOU CAN! WE CAN'T LET MUSK DO THIS!!!