Iceland Launches New "Piece Corps"

Iceland today has announced that they are sending aid to both the European Union and the USA, in the form of a new "Piece Corps".

Finding themselves with hundreds of unemployed well educated and reasonably well behaved youth, it dawned on them that Iceland is uniquely well placed to be providing desperately needed help and advice to other countries suffering from financial collapse.

Icelandic couch-potato youngsters have by now watched countless hours of financial pundits explaining what happened to them, and having nothing better to do, and wanting to "getoffadisrock" as they say in Icelandic; they have proven eager to volunteer for this new humanitarian adventure.

"Look", Ingrid Ingridsdottir explained, "We've, like, survived it. And when we read the financial news coming out of the ashes of the European Union, and from behind the barricades at the US Federal Reserve - any one of us obviously has a much clearer idea of what's actually going on than any of those dimdims. We just hate to see them suffer."

Starting in mid-April, flotillas of geo-thermal powered kayaks will begin carrying hundreds of eager, blond, idealistic semi-virgin volunteers to the financial centers of the Big 8. The first group is expected to reach New York by April 22, and a second wave is being launched to arrive in Washington DC just a few days later. London and Belfast are on the list, but dates are uncertain.

The volunteers heading for Washington include a second kind of Piece Corps volunteer; engineering students. "As everyone knows, Iceland is the center of the world for real geo-thermal power development." said Ingridsdatsun Ingridsdottirdottirson. "We've been monitoring the thermal signatures of the entire Earth for some years now. The satellite data is absolutely clear; somewhere in the vicinity of Washington DC there is a new volcano erupting. The signature is much hotter than Kilauea in Hawai'i. True, all we can see so far is the immense atmospheric upwellings from the heated air; but that much hot air has to mean a real geothermal source someplace. With our Icelandic expertise, we're sure we can find the source, and tap it. Judging from the satellite data, there's enough energy there to power the entire USA for the entire foreseeable future- no nukes needed."

The entire world wishes these modern saints good luck.

And- I don't know how I missed this when it first came out; but it's an appropriate follow-up to everything else.

The Parable of The Shed: Why 30 years is not forever.

One useful aspect to all of us forcibly attending Camp TEOTWAWKI now, is that many people truly are starting to be more mindful of their choices.   Think before you invest.  Look before you leap off your burning bridges.  That sort of thing.

Guidance in making long term decisions though, is hard to come by, and harder to judge.  Does this expert advisor actually have a clue, or ...  have I wound up with Alfred E. Neuman,  yet again?

Not long after Spouse and I built the Little House, and actually started living here, it became quite clear that we needed more space.  15' x 20'; including a wood stove, piano, and kitchen sink, and dining room table, just does not leave a lot of room for projects, like building a set of shelves.  No place left to walk, while that is under way.

Virtually all farm type operations include outbuildings; a barn, a shed- a workshop.  So it wasn't too difficult to decide that we did, indeed, need a multipurpose shed, not too far from the house.  We figured it should serve as a: work shop, bad-weather wood shed, seasonal storage space (eg. storm windows and skis in summer), materials storage (eg. boards, plywood), tool storage, empty mason jar storage.  You know.  A shed.

So quickly, you get to "where, exactly"; "how big", and "how".  "Where" was pretty limited; by the need to be close; "how big", it turns out, was partly determined by "how".

Standard construction around here would be a "pole barn" - treated wood poles, gravel or concrete floor, pre-fab roof trusses, and sheet metal sides and roof.  You just go the lumber yard, and order the stuff.  And there are loads of experienced construction teams who can zip it up for you in a couple days.

It was very easy to decide not to go that route- we had no money whatsoever.  Which meant- materials out of our 40 acres of oak/maple woods, and/or scrounged materials, and a "barn-raising" party for labor.

Then, you have to work out the details.

Something you pretty quickly find out, when you're living this kind of do-it-yourself life; the details are NOT "important".  The details are EVERYTHING.

Oddly, we teach our children the opposite, these days.  "Sure, teacher, I got the answer to the question wrong, but you can tell I understood it!" - will often get you a pity-pass in schools, even in universities.  But not in real life.  My father pounded this one in when he was an engineering prof, and I was in High School; and I got to listen to him gripe about his students.

  "But Professor, yes, I got the math wrong, but it's just a decimal point!  You can tell I totally understood the problem!"  "I don't give a good goddam if you 'understood' the problem!  Your goddam building FELL DOWN; and 370 people died!!  The only thing that matters is the right answer.  The F stands. "  And he would shake his head in amazement at their incomprehension.

So, I was well trained to do my homework regarding construction, and I'd adsorbed quite a bit of information via osmosis- and from helping my father re-build most of the houses we'd lived in (many).  Looking around at the old homesteads here, I found quite a few old chicken coops and corn cribs that were made with just white oak posts for their basic support; planted in the ground; and easily 50 years old.  Obviously, white oak can last a long time in our soils; the stated lifespan for chemically treated poles in direct soil contact is usually 30-40 years.

Doing more homework- the expected lifespan for white oak fenceposts around here is less; 20-30 years.  The difference is attributed mostly to the roof- poles under a roof should spend more of their life dry.

Most of my available poles are not exactly "white oak" - Quercus alba; but burr oak; Q. macrocarpa.  The textbooks say, though, that in this case, they're pretty much the same in regard to rot resistance.

So, using my own oak poles, we should be able to put up a shed that will last 30 years; no sweat.  We had a good supply of 12"-8" diameter red pine poles for rafters and plates; pine boards and 2/4's for other structure- and we helped a friend tear down a local railroad station for windows and siding.  We did buy metal for the roof.

When you're 30 years old- 30 years into the future looks indistinguishable from "forever", or "until we die."  And, guess what?  It isn't.  Here I am- 30 odd years later-

And sure as heck; the time has run out on some of my burr oak poles.

This is the SW corner pole.  And, as you can see- it's entirely rotted off- the bottom of the pole is now a good 6" above the ground.  Hm.

We just discovered it, absurdly enough.  The shed had gone through a phase where it got increasingly cluttered and useless, to the point where I only referred to it as "The Dread Shed"; and it got to the point where Middle Child and his wife decided to totally overhaul it, bless them.  Unburying the corner- where we already knew a woodchuck had chewed through the outer wall (and wrought havoc inside for months); we discovered the rotted off pole.  Oh, so that's why the windows have been breaking.

The shed is not falling down.  One of the advantages of using big logs for plates and rafters- they're enormously strong, and well secured on the other poles- most of which are not rotted off.  This corner is the wettest one.  But- the building is sagging, putting stress on everything.  

So now what?  Fix it?  Tear the shed down and rebuild?  I don't want to.

Dammit, I'm 60 years old now, busy, and I want the bloody shed to be in usable shape; I don't want to be building, or fixing.

Why didn't I build it to last in the first place?

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That turns out to be a complex, and highly significant question.  Lissen up; and maybe you can avoid my mistakes.

A)  I was young (30) and stupid.  I thought 30 years was forever.  It really really isn't.

B)  Everybody I asked thought 30 years was forever, too.  Or plenty long enough.

C)  The entire construction industry is built around the idea that structures should not last more than 50 years; even homes.  Then you should build a new one.  You want to benefit from the constant improvements in modern materials and design, don't you?  Well then.  They really like that- so if you read their text books, or go to them for advice- that's what they'll tell you.

and

D) Building structures with longer life-spans is quite a lot more expensive.  Like double.

E) Financial advice is always- that investments in durable structures are not sensible.  The reasoning there: if you put that money in the stock market instead, it would give you better returns (no laughing, now); and, they're quite sure you will move to a better, more expensive location later in life, as you become more successful; so you won't get the benefit of the more durable structure anyway; and whoever you sell your old place to will not pay you any premiums for the better buildings; people just don't.

F)  That's the way we build stuff in the States- always have.  Ever since Europeans arrived here- they've been sure they were going to move in the next 10-20 years, to someplace better. Why build for the long term?

See any holes in any of the logic here?

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I'm cogitating, pondering, and kneading all this stuff right now for a couple of specific reasons; I've got to figure out what to do about this shed; and- about future construction here.  We're in the process of building space for animals (guineas! ) - and you can check out a recent rhapsody on barns by Sharon, here.

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More in the next post.   Think about it!  And think about all the stone farmhouses in Europe... and how old they are...

UnEconomics

We finally managed to get a definitive diagnosis for Spice's ear-jaw pain. The bad news is it may be chronic. The good news is, we caught it very early, and might be able to keep it from getting worse. At least we're getting the right meds now.

At the moment Spice is rebounding from weeks and weeks of zombiehood- now I'm afraid she's going to blow a gasket, zooming around trying to "catch up".

I want to get back to Friedman's article for last Sunday's NYT Magazine, The Power of Green

If you haven't already, I'd suggest you read my post here from Sunday, "Muscular" Green; it will explain the conversation much better than any attempt to summarize. The comments are enlightening, too. Friedman's article got a huge amount of attention; it was #1 on the NYT "most emailed" list for 2 days; and stayed on the list somewhere until Thursday.

I was interested to discover that the major focus for this post was already on my list of topics: "the only way..." - I'd actually forgotten.

Friedman uses that phrase at least twice in his article:

"The only way we are going to get innovations that drive energy costs down to the China price — innovations in energy-saving appliances, lights and building materials and in non-CO2-emitting power plants and fuels — is by mobilizing free-market capitalism."

and "The only way to stimulate the scale of sustained investment in research and development of non-CO2 emitting power at the China price is if the developed countries, who can afford to do so, force their people to pay the full climate, economic and geopolitical costs of using gasoline and dirty coal."

I'm afraid I'm going to be a little rude here, but I just don't know any other way to say this- I've really come to believe that anyone who uses the phrase "the only way..." - has not truly thought about the problem they are discussing.

My basis for making that statement? All of history.

One of the basic problems in science is: how do you manage to think a thought; conceive an idea, that has never occurred to anyone else before?

It's extremely difficult to crack loose from all our training and cultural blindnesses; and see anything from a genuinely new perspective. But that is where all real "progress" comes from.

I've studied the history of innovation all my life; collecting stories on how breakthroughs occur. One of the lessons of history is; repeatedly - major breakthroughs in thought USUALLY come after a long stagnant period, where all the experts keep reciting:

"We completely understand this problem; we've studied it exhaustively; there is nothing more to discover."

People who say that- historically - are ALWAYS wrong. Isn't that astonishing? Always.

I now use that kind of statement as a warning signal - when I hit them in something I'm reading, it makes me look harder for logical errors.

Friedman goes on with this statement; another form of "the only way...":

"Summing up the problem, Immelt of G.E. said the big energy players are being asked 'to take a 15-minute market signal and make a 40-year decision and that just doesn’t work. ... The U.S. government should decide: What do we want to have happen? How much clean coal, how much nuclear and what is the most efficient way to incentivize people to get there?'
He’s dead right. The market alone won’t work. Government’s job is to set high standards, let the market reach them and then raise the standards more."

If you can decipher some to the Big Biz Speak- he's actually contradicting his first statement above - "mobilizing free-market capitalism", he now says, is not only "the only way", but will not be enough. Hm.

Very flat statements like this - besides tending to make readers think "gosh, this guy must really know his stuff" also tends to make the readers NOT think for themselves. It can be a kind of manipulative writing; " don't bother to think about this; I've already done the thinking for you." And please don't check my facts. It's a trap for the unwary reader- watch for those words.

Ok. So, what you're thinking right now is "Yeah? So far, you're not doing anything he wasn't- blather, blather. Show me."

Deal.

Here's a HUGE problem in our attempt to move into a sustainable world; our "science" (HA!) of Economics is based on "money". They count it, print it, move it, "earn" it. Squeal loudly if take it away; and will defend to the death their right to make a "fair profit."

Our whole Western civilization has bought this concept- Friedman speaks the language fluently- China is adopting it as fast as it can go- and it's a deadly dangerous fantasy. IT HAS NO BASIS IN REALITY - the reality of ENGERY - costs, savings, benefits, etc.

For a very specific example-

UnEconomics

That's a very good article on shrimp farming, in the USA. Some bright kids have built a commercial scale system that grows shrimp, indoors- with NO waste water outputs. Way cool.

But because of the unrealities of economics- most of the shrimp we eat in the USA comes from the other side of the freaking world. Where it is raised by workers paid next to nothing.

From the article: "With the competition from imported shrimp, it's virtually impossible to make a profit in shrimp farming," says Bob Rosenberry, editor and publisher of Shrimp News International. "People have been trying to grow shrimp in this country for 40 years, and to the best of my knowledge no farm has made a consistent profit over several years."

Now. What would you guess, energywise? SHOULD it be cheaper for a shrimp lover in Virginia to eat shrimp farmed in Virginia, or in Bangladesh? What would be the energy inputs- which is what REAL costs should/must be based on?

There's just no way that shipping FROZEN shrimp to the other side of the globe should be cheaper than eating unfrozen local.

BUT IT IS- because our "economics" and money systems are based on weird traditions; not realities. One of them being the "exchange" rate; where Bangladesh money is worth very little, and US money is worth a great deal. So a shrimp worker in the US gets paid $200/day; and a Bangladeshi maybe $200 a year.

That's what supports this insane waste of energy.

" Imports totaled more than 1.1 billion pounds last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau." Somebody should (you!) figure out the carbon/energy costs involved in a) freezing 1.1 billion pounds of shrimp; taken from very warm tropical waters; b) keeping them frozen before shipping; c) shipping 1.1 billion pounds of shrimp in freezer ships to the other side of the world; d) trucking them in freezer trucks to the other side of the continent, and e) HEATING 1.1 billion pounds of deep frozen shrimp to the cooking point. It'll be HUGE, I guarantee. The other aspect- the cheap shrimp from Asia price breakdown- how much of your dollar goes for oil- and how much to the laborers? My own guess- it'll be about 50% oil; 5% wages- 45% profit.

Hey, I'd love to make a profit myself, someday. A fair one. But this kind of thing is - insane. With the full literal force of that word.

Ok, gonna quit; this is getting long- but the next post will continue this line- with a specific suggestion for something we could DO to help shift energy costs into the real world. Actually doable, I guarantee.

Then back to personal green living, promise. Stick with me.