Date: January 11, 2008*
Setting: A bar on Broad Street, Nevada City, California
People: Five from Engineering: two Independents(I), one “leaning towards Democrat”(D), one Republican(R), one Libertarian(L)
Sources of information:
* Text: 4 of 5 read the local newspaper; 1(I) reads science magazines
* Video and Audio: Discovery Channel(I,D); Great Global Warming Swindle(R); Jon Stewart(L); NPR(I,L)(“but it seems one-sided, pretty liberal – though maybe that’s the reality?”)

Q: “What’s the scientific consensus on whether the world is warming due to greenhouse gases that humans are putting into the atmosphere?”

Answers:
* “Yes there’s some human-caused warming, but it’s on top of a natural cycle” (I,D)
* “It’s a hoax; the scientists and [clean energy]industry are in it for the money. It’s cooling now, and if there’s a big volcano it’ll get really cold; cows and termites put out more greenhouse gases than we do” (R)
* “Not sure about right now, but if we keep adding people and they keep putting out CO2 it’s eventually going to be unsustainable” (L)
* “Yes it’s real” (I)

Q: If there _is_ a consensus among climate scientists…what would that make you think?
A: “There’s no such thing as a degree in climatology, so those guys really don’t know very much” (R)

Q: “Has it been warmer in the last 10 years than in the previous 50?”
A: “Yes”, “no it’s cooling”, “I’d guess about the same”

Q: “Are you aware that the tobacco industry made a concerted effort, first to convince people that there was no proof smoking caused cancer, then to portray smoking as a matter of personal freedom, that it was a personal choice that people could make or not make?”
A: “Yes” (all)

Q: “Are you aware that there’s a similar effort being made by the Exxon and friends to spread doubt about global warming, and that it’s being run by the same PR companies that were set up by the tobacco industry to spread doubt about tobacco?”

Only one (NPR and science magazines reader) said yes (“All companies do that.”)

A belated recommendation for all: UCSD historian of science Naomi Oreskes’ talk on the history of the science of global warming and the history of the resistance to it.

——————————

* Caveat: some of the above was from memory, and alcohol was involved. (But the vastness of time wasn’t – I did write it up that same evening)

Who are you leaning towards for the next presidential election?

- Sam Spooner, Columbia Hill

- Sherri Walker, Grass Valley

- Joe Mayer, Alta Sierra

- Christina Billeci, Marysville

- Greg Powell, Nevada City

This apple came from a health food store, but it seems to be having some health problems of its own. What happened?
(and if you are what you eat, what will become of you, if you eat it?)

This apple has undergone lenticel breakdown:

Lenticel breakdown is a skin disorder that becomes more of a problem as large, mature apples are held longer in storage. Late-harvested fruit are more often affected. Washing fruit with high concentrations of soap and placing them in hot dump tank water can worsen the symptoms. Affected fruit appear to have a mineral imbalance. This is a problem mostly on Gala but can be found on Fuji as well as a few other cultivars.

Effect on taste: the apple was delicious.
Effect on health: none mentioned online that I could find; but if I break out in brown spots, I’ll let you know.

And these guys tell you everything you ever wanted to know about lenticels:

Lenticels are normal parts of the skin of most plants and fruits. Lenticels are thought by some scientists to arise as the hairs of young fruit drop off. A lenticel has two guard cells, is filled with tissue, and underneath is corky. Over time the intercellular space increases and corks over beneath the opening. …

Christmas lights use lots of energy, but never fear, PowerUp is here with a free Christmas light exchange. They will happily give two strands of super-efficient L.E.D. lights in exchange for your old power-guzzling traditional Christmas lights.

Set aside 2 strings of traditional lights and come and visit them this Sunday, December the 2nd in the Bonanza Market parking lot, on Broad St. in Nevada City. They will be there from 10am to 1PM, or until they have given away all the Christmas lights. As an added bonus you can pick up two free CFL lights for use in your home fixtures.

10 AM to 1 PM on Sunday December 2nd
421 Broad St. Nevada City
Bonanza Market Parking Lot

Bring 1 or 2 Strands of traditional Christmas Lights and
Your PG&E bill or account number.

Received by email.

[Edited Dec. 1 to include retired engineer George Rebane's new blog ]
Mr. Russ Steele, retired engineer and proprietor of NC Media Watch, has emailed saying it seems unfair [to the others] to lump Martin Light’s Light on Nevada County and Dr. George Rebane’s Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation blog in with his, under the “global warming deniers” warning in the far right column of Nevada County Voices.

I disagree. Nevada County Voices aims to be fair to you readers, and part of that entails trying not to silently sit back and allow you to be misled, especially on an issue as critical as this one. Writers of the four blogs lumped in as “global warming deniers” are global warming deniers -e.g. see Martin’s Light on Nevada County here (“With all the hoopla about global warming…”), here (“… I figure Oscar Al must have several highly paid linguistic experts on his staff to stay a step ahead of the real scientists who are debunking his cry of ‘we are all doomed’.”), and here (“Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ has moved global warming from scientific theory to dogma by means of the media, which now treats global warming deniers nearly the same as ‘holocaust deniers.’ The jury is still out on the scientific basis of climate change but according to the media anyone questioning it is being very ‘un-PC.’”) – and see George Rebane’s Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation (background) here (no soundbite; it would call for the Heimlich Maneuver) (and his reavowal of his views in Nov. 2007, here.)

And if anyone wants to posit that these bloggers’ views on global warming shouldn’t reflect on their other posts, may I recommend spending some time with Daniel Davies’ One Minute MBA – and with Skeptical Science.

Anna Haynes
__________________________________

Addendum, from here:

…the neocons have a point: The personality of the global warming movement is fairly self-adoring, kind of sickening. Enthusiasm for the movement seems to be an identity thing, too.
But this is not important, or at least it shouldn’t be. Just because you don’t like people who wear biodegradable underwear doesn’t mean global warming is a hoax. …

(actually by Virginia Moran)
“What a perfectly adorable flower!” my friend Lorna said as she bent down to look into the face of this wildflower in the way an adult bends down to talk to a child. Indeed. What a perfectly adorable flower!

If you have not looked into the face of this pretty one, then you must, especially if you are having a bad day. I have never met a flower capable of making people smile as much as this one; it’s in flower by the hundreds right now in our foothill fields.

What is it?

Click here to find out.

No worms-and-fluffy-soil for this compost bin – a voracious horde of inch-long crawlers moved in, and you wouldn’t want to run your hands through the result. This writhing mass swarms over, engulfs, and – like Midas, only not exactly like Midas – transmutes anything it can reach into gobs of brown slime.
What is it?

(and why is this black wasp loitering nearby?)

Nevada County’s Agricultural Biologist emeritus Eric Gunderson has an answer: “your compost bugs look like…

…larvae of a Soldier Fly. They are one of the finest compost makers and are in no way harmful. The [black] adult fly is the adult of the larvae in the compost. They try to look like a dangerous wasp, but have only two wings and of course no sting.

That’s a relief – much better than raising a binful of cutworms.

Consulting the web yields further information:
The Soldier Fly, Hermetia illucens, is partial to “outdoor toilets, poorly managed compost and poultry manure”, and in agriculture, the larvae can help with manure management:

Black soldier fly larvae (BSF) consume fresh manure, immediately converting protein and other nutrients in manure into insect biomass. Immediate larval consumption and digestion of manure removes nutrients that are potential pollutants, and concentrates these nutrients into the biomass of the larval mat residing on the manure residue pad. This activity not only reduces manure volume (50% or more) and nutrients (50-70%), but gives 94-100% house fly control.

So you can employ the Soldier Fly to turn poop from other species into healthful, tasty larval treats for your poultry or fish (“A simple ramp and pipe system directs the migrating prepupae to collection vessels”). Just make sure to cook well before sampling them yourself, since…

Occasionally [soldier fly] larvae accidentally infest the intestinal tract of man or animals. Fortunately, such cases are not common and the maggots pose little real threat.

We’d like to apologize, if you were eating when you began reading this.

“If we continue the direction we’re going, we’re likely to end up where we’re headed.”

How do we help Nevada City citizens act to reduce their carbon footprint and fight global warming? Sunday’s Global Cooling Cafe brought together about 40 people and the Low Carbon Diet workbook to answer this question.

This was the last of three Cafes held after this spring’s Step It Up 2007 “Day of Climate Action” event. The Cafes’ goal has been to engage people’s ingenuity and help them come together to plan and take actions to help our community reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

I’d missed the first two, but a neighbor’s rave reviews brought me to this one. And I figured if I was going to attend, then you, dear reader, should get to come along; hence this account.

Please read this account with no little skepticism; keep in mind that its author is only one person, with only one viewpoint, and with an acknowledged, unfortunate and excessive tendency to carp from the sidelines.
(Also, apologies in advance – the account would have benefited from better notes on who said what.)

The Global Cooling Cafe isn’t quite an Unconference or full Open Space Technology, but it was still a refreshing change from the standard “speakers speak, audience listen” event format.

How the Cafe works -
The Cafe breaks the group down into tables for conversation and brainstorming on a prespecified topic; this is typically more effective than trying to engage the whole room.
There is etiquette:
1. Focus on what matters
2. Contribute your thinking and experience
3. Listen to understand
4. Connect ideas
5. Listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions
6. Play, doodle, draw

The “cafe” discussions proper turned out to be just the last segment of Sunday’s event; first we watched a slide show, heard from the organizers, and heard progress reports for projects hatched at the previous two Cafes.

This Cafe was centered around the Low Carbon Diet workbook – the goal is to drop your emissions by 5000 pounds of carbon per year.
(does anyone else find it counterintuitive to talk about the weight of a gas?)

Desired outcomes of this Cafe were prespecified, on a flip chart at the front – we were to
* learn about the Low Carbon Diet
* pledge to reduce our CO2 emissions
* buy the Low Carbon Diet workbook
* become Agents of Change
* form teams
* enhance the movement’s visibility

And the Cafe aimed to remove these 4 barriers to action:
1) where to start?
2) which are the important actions?
3) how do I take them?
4) will it make a difference?

“7 actions you can do” were:
Lower your emissions;
Help others to lower theirs;
Start a Cool Communities campaign;
Lead a C.C. Cafe for your social network;
Give money or time to an existing group;
Engage in political action;
Visualize – hold a vision of what’s possible (crisis == opportunity)

Notes (incomplete) from talks and/or slideshows:

This year’s PowerPalooza (held the previous day) had roughly triple the attendance of last year’s; this event will be around for years to come.

This is part of the biggest grassroots social movement ever (see Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest), it has no leaders, and it still has no name…

Our focus – on motivating individuals to act – is based on the observation that “personal actions trigger desire for change in policy”

Further Climate Change Conversation Cafes are scheduled for 6-7pm on the first and third Thursday of the month at Broad St. Bistro and Gallery (the former Wisdom Cafe), starting Sept 6.
One speaker – “I think we’re at a stage where we can depoliticize the movement.”
Another – “We need to elect the right people [who'll take action on climate change.]“

People did not always realize that they were talking past each other.

Local Food group: organized a solar-oven potluck and film screening (Cuba – power of community), and helped with a Permaculture booth at the fair. Good news: landowners are coming to the group offering their land to be farmed.

Effective Schools: Katie R., an NU senior, plans to do a Seed of Life garden for her Senior Project. And there’s a movement to green Nevada Union high school. And a recycling clown may show up at an elementary school near you…

Spiritual/Emotional: What a Way to Go – Moving through grief to empowerment – road show Sept 7-8 …

Clean Air/Solar Cooking solar oven demo happened at SPD; more to come?

Sequence envisioned, post- Step It Up -
Continue the momentum to Power Palooza
Widen and deepen the climate change conversation
Sustain and make visible what we’re doing

———————–

Not much to report here on the final “Cafe conversation” part, since your correspondent only stayed for a few minutes before exercising Open Space Technology’s Law of Two Feet; the Cafe had an unfortunate dynamic whereby at formation, already good-sized “topic” groups became still larger (and consequently less productive), so there turned out to be only 3 or 4 groups, and the ‘marketing/non-schools-outreach’ one turned out to have a different, narrower, “our goal is to promote the book to the community” aim from what your correspondent had assumed. This was also true for the event as a whole – it turned out to be more “get Nevada City (county?) to adopt this book and the actions therein” than “get us to consider what actions we can take to reduce emissions”…
And some of us aren’t used to coloring within the lines.

(For example, it would have been great to be able to present Doug’s excellent “Whitecap your car” action idea (I, II), but this didn’t fit within the structure so it never came up.)

Another recommendation: Since it’s easy for one’s words to veer toward “here’s what this other group should do and-I-dont-have-time-or-interest-its-their-job” rather than “here’s what I should/will do”, a ground rule should be always to frame one’s points as “I-actions” (“here’s what I can do”) rather than “they-actions” (“here’s what they should do”).

Of course, your correspondent might consider following this guideline as well…

——-
Aftermatter:

Related links: Initial Cafe press announcement, Global Cooling Cafe announcement template, Yubanet on Saturday’s Power Palooza, PowerUp-NC website and weblog,

An organizer-attendee has shared his (more extensive & knowledgeable) view of Sunday’s Cafe in the comments.

If you were there, what were your impressions? what have we missed? Please contribute in a comment below.
(be forewarned, your first comment will be held for moderation so won’t appear immediately.)

“It’s that season again. The dog showed up with dreadlocks and soon these little annoying balls of velcro will be everywhere: in the rug, in my socks, in my shoes, and of course, taking full advantage of my dog.”

What is it?

Click here to find out.