#i follow trans doe network and one of their cases just got identified today or yesterday

[wetslug]

Ms. Slug, do you have any thoughts on the Delphi Murders in Indiana?

ive loosely followed the case; when cases get a ton of mainstream coverage, i kind of lose interest 🫥 mostly bc i have nothing new to add to the conversation bc a thousand ppl probably already said what i was thinking lmao i found the description of the crime scene very strange, and i think 99% of "this must be cult work!!" talk is bullshit and a symptom of satanic panic, but uhhh...in this case i dont dismiss it so quickly (either in a 'genuine cult' way or a 'scene staging' way). but im waiting to hear more. when richard allens trial actually starts ill definitely be following it! when he was first indicted i was just glad they had someone in custody, but now theres been more details that have led some people to doubt his guilt (or i should say more people have been doubting the delphi law enforcement). ive got no strong feelings either way yet (im sure most of the info floating around is biased or lies lmao as is most MSM true crime so again im not really following it rn), so id rlly love to hear all they truly have against him, and what his lawyer has against the department

[hopefulfestivaltastemaker]

August 30, 2020

My weekly roundup of things I am looking at and working on. Topics include agroforestry, carbon sequestration, wildfires, climate solutions playing cards, vactrains, and two years of marriage.

Agroforestry

I got back to drafting a brief agroforestry section for Urban Cruise Ship.

The image under development is a summary of select studies on the yields of agroforestry systems. Specifically, the metric is the land equivalency ratio (LER), which is the ratio of how much land would be required to grow all crops on separate monocultures in the same climate, to how much is required for the intercropped agroforestry system. The LER metric can be applied to any kind of intercropping system, not just agroforestry, and also to agrivoltaics (mixture of crop and solar PV, which evidently also often has LER>1 but I haven’t looked at yet). An LER>1 means the intercropped saves land relative to monoculture. Most of the studies give an LER>1, with the median seeming to be somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0. While the list of studies in my chart is far from comprehensive--I already know of a few more that weren’t included--I think it is a representative sample.

Agroforestry also seems to be generally advantageous on soil health, nitrogen fixation, and erosion prevention, and a mixed bag on water consumption and runoff.

If agroforestry is so great, why are we not doing a whole lot more of it? I don’t have a firm answer, but my instinct from the last time I thought about the question seems to be confirmed by several sources: agroforestry is also more labor intensive and requires greater specialized knowledge to do right. This seems like the kind of problem for which extension programs were developed.

I might want to develop some tangible proposals, which would require a much deeper dive into the economics of agroforestry. But while the yield and other benefits are good, they are not dramatic in the way that yield gains from, say, greenhouse hydroponics or synthetic agriculture are, and I would probably want to focus my attention on where the biggest gains are. There is also the question of how big and how differentiated the agroforestry market potential is.

Carbon Sequestration and Forests

Continuing on with forestry topics, I also added a bit on the controversial and currently hot topic of carbon sequestration and forestry. There’s a lot to parse, but my read of the major recent studies is that there is a theoretical potential of about 200-600 billion tons of CO2-equivalent potential of carbon sequestration in the soil, with practical considerations no doubt putting the limit much lower. The theoretical limit is about 5-15 years of emissions at current rates. Busch et al. estimate that about 0.49 to 1.84 billion tons CO2e emissions could be negated each year through tropical reforestation as a carbon price ranges from $30 to $100/ton. That’s about 1% to 4% of annual emission. Nothing to sneeze at, but biotic carbon sequestration is hardly at the top of the list of most effective solutions. Kim et al. give a theoretical potential of 3.4 billion tons CO2e sequestration annually from agroforestry, though again a distinction is needed between theoretical potential and practical potential.

Wildfires

Speaking of hot topics, wildfires have been on my agenda for the forestry section, and the fact that I came up to it during the peak of ongoing California wildfires is a coincidence.

I was motivated in part by annoyance over the tendency of climate activists to seize upon the fires as a climate change talking point, when wildfire management is a complex and important issue that deserves to be treated on its own terms. Worldwide, it doesn’t seem that there is a clear trend toward more wildfires, but there is in certain hotspots, including California. Furthermore, it is indeed the case that evidence points to climate change as a driver of wildfire intensity and lengthening of fire season. This study says that over half the increase in aridity--a major driver of fires--in California can be attributed to climate change.

Fire suppression has been flagged by many researchers as a major contributing factor to the increase in wildfire intensity in the US West since the 1980s, and this seems to be a generally known and accepted fact among people who are familiar with the issue. For those unfamiliar, the basic idea is that suppression disrupts the normal ecological process of fire, causing forest biomass to accumulate and therefore increase fire risk in the future. I would be very interested in some good quantification, though. For instance, how does suppression compare to climate change in portion of observed trend explained? I would also like to know how much of a cost deferment can be identified from suppression practices. If we could put a number on how a suppression operation is going to impose costs in the future, then it should help make better decisions, especially if there is a way to incorporate that “fire debt” into the Forest Service’s budget.

Aside from cutting back on suppression, controlled burns and forest thinning--the removal of small trees and other excess biomass--can help reduce the risk. Some people argue on ecological grounds that fire is to be preferred to thinning as a better way of recycling nutrients and maintaining biodiversity. There is also ongoing suspicion (or maybe hope) that thinning is a back door for the timber industry.

There is also the issue of the wildland-urban interface, which is the fancy term for how much human development is exposed to wildfire risk. Since the Forest Service can be relied upon to attempt to defend property, there is a cost of WUI development that is externalized both to the private homeowner and to the city/state governments that make zoning decisions. I think it would be worthwhile to quantify and internalize this cost. Without endorsing all of the proposed solutions, this report goes deeper into WUI development issues.

If I were to pick one reading to recommend (which I am), it would be this one from FUSEE, an advocacy organization for an ecological approach to wildfire management. It goes into detail about the Forest Service’s practice and some interesting history. It’s from an advocacy organization, so I won’t vouch for the objectivity of the report, but it is a good education piece.

Climate Solutions Playing Cards

A whimsical idea: with a good illustrator, I would design and have printed a line of playing cards, each featuring a climate change solution and a line or two of text. If anyone is reading and wants to steal the idea, go right ahead.

I think I would go with the following solutions. For each rank, solutions are presented in the following order: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades, and generally in that order from the most established to the most speculative ideas. The ranks, from Ace to Two, are meant to capture my subjective estimate of the relative importance of the solutions. Aside from the Jokers, I would endorse each idea, though maybe with qualifications or in a limited way. Since there are only 54 cards, I can’t be comprehensive, so my apologies if your favorite solution is left out.

Two: Onshore Wind, Offshore Wind, Building-Integrated Wind, High Altitude Wind

Three: Agroforestry, Precision Agriculture, Hydroponics, Synthetic Meat

Four: Carbon Capture on Coal, Carbon Capture on Gas, Bioenergy and Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Direct Air Capture

Five: Afforestation, Enhanced Weathering, Solar Radiation Management, Ocean Iron Fertilization

Six:  Recycling, Energy Efficient Buildings, Urban Density, District Heating and Cooling

Seven: Demand Response, Microgrids, Energy Storage, HVDC Supergrids

Eight: Hydropower, Biofuels, Geothermal, Ocean Energy

Nine: Electric Vehicles, Catenary Wire Trucks, High Speed Rail, Remote Work and Events

Ten: Low Carbon Steel, Low Carbon Cement, Industrial Ecology, Non-fossil Chemicals

Jack: Solar PV, Solar Thermal, Rooftop and Building-Integrated Solar, Space-Based Solar

Queen: Hydrogen Electrolysis, Clean Ammonia, Clean Methanol, Electrofuels

King: Generation III Nuclear, Small Modular Reactors, Generation IV Nuclear, Fusion

Ace: International Climate Agreements, Clean Energy Standards, Public R&D Investments, Carbon Pricing

Joker: Degrowth, Population Control

Trans-Planetary Subway Systems

I came across this paper this week from 1978, proposing a network of deep subway tunnels spanning the Earth and advanced tunneling methods. I have no idea how feasible the idea is, though clearly not much has happened in the 42 years since. Now there is the Boring Company, but I don’t think even Elon Musk is attempting “hypersonic projectile spallation, laser beam devices, and the ‘Subterrene’ heated tungsten probe that melts through igneous rocks”.

I’m all for ideas that are bold and attempt to build entirely new systems, as opposed to merely tweaking existing systems.

Two Years of Marriage

Today my wife and I celebrated our second anniversary. It is customary to use such occasions to talk about martial bliss and the beauty and perfection of it all, but the reality is that I didn’t know going into the marriage if I would be cut out for married life, and I still don’t know.

A person should go into marriage fully aware that it is hard work, that events are not going to go according to plan, and that one’s life priorities will be very different. The same conditions are true of having children, I would assume, though we haven’t gotten there yet.

Anyway, I’m glad we made it this far.