Who Knew? Sietch Blog In Top 130 Green Blogs On Net
Someone recently informed me that this blog, which I have been doing mostly as a hobby for the last 5 or so years, is ranked in the top 130 green blogs on the internet by Technorati…wow.
Thank you very much to everyone who has read, and contributed to this site. I am sure that I couldn’t have done it without you.
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Year In Review 2009
Well, that’s that then. A whole year, and now decade past. Seems like just yesterday I was a little kid, and now I have passed (gracefully I hope) into my third decade. In what has become an annual January 1st tradition around here (see 08,07,06) I make a number of predictions for the year ahead, and also see how I did the year before.
2009 was a rough year in many ways, it capped off the warmest decade on record. The economy fell apart, the country is in two wars, people learned the folly of “magic money”, and for most of the last decade we have done little to save the human species from the greatest challenge it has ever faced. But things are looking up, we have new leadership, its a new decade, the economy seems to be reshaping to fit into a greener future, and who knows maybe I can finally figure out my personal life.
Lets get to it. Last years predictions were:
1. Cape Wind will get approved. Seriously 2009 is the year. They are so damn close I can taste it.
2. The horrible economy will affect the growth of the renewable energy market. Look for a slowdown in wind and solar.
3. The price of oil will rocket right back up in the summer of 09, look for it to once again top $150 dollars a barrel.
4. The pace of global warming will began to accelerate as feedback loops intensify. The arctic will be ice free this summer, or damn close. The northwest passage should once again open next summer.
5. Obama will (hopefully) make renewable energy and efficiency infrastructure projects a major component of his stimulus package.
6. Troops will start to come home from Iraq in large numbers before the end of 2009.
7. The financial turmoil will continue leading to millions of people loosing their jobs, massive downturns in global production, deaths, famines, and increased problems world wide. I predict 2009 to be a very not happy year for a large number of people.
8. Look for major legal action to be taken against prominent Bush administration people. If we are really lucky, Bush or Cheney might even be included in the mess.
9. Look for major breakthroughs in efficiency technology when it comes to lighting and solar panels. Specifically solar panels that produce energy cheaper than coal, oil, or wind. Look for LED technology to slowly start replacing CFL technology.
10. I will build my first bicycle.
Like I said I am no crystal ball, but I feel I got 2,4,5,6,7,9,10 more or less correct.
The ones I got wrong were 1,3,8
1: Cape wind STILL HASN’T BEEN APPROVED (I can not believe that shit), but it has finalized its agreement to sell power and both the governor of Mass. and the federal government want it built, Senator Kennedy one of the projects biggest foes passed away, and new polls show a vast increase in the demand for the project, so its only a matter of time.
3: Oil didn’t skyrocket this summer in price, instead the world wide global economic melt down actually led to a decrease in oil demand, lowering the price. The price might not have rocketed to record highs again, but it has been creeping up steadily for the last half of the year while the amount of money people made went down. The steady creep in price combined with the drop in disposable income has basically left most Americans in the same spot there were when oil prices were moderately insane.
8: While some Bush era people did see court, not nearly as many as I would have liked for me to call this a correct guess.
My predictions for 2010 are:
1. Cape wind WILL BE APPROVED (I am going to predict this till it is correct), all the signs point to it being approved this year, this is the year!
2. Democrats in the house (and maybe senate) will attempt to pass a climate bill, I give it a 40% chance of passing, and 30% chance of doing any good if it does.
3. China and the USA will come to some legally binding agreement on climate change gasses.
4. The economy will continue to sputter, look for bright spots in the renewable energy and efficiency market.
5. The mid-term elections will leave the democrats slightly weakened, but still with majorities in the house and senate.
6. I will ride my bicycle more than 4000 miles this year, with at least one long fully bicycle powered trip across country.
7. Some sort of major melting event will occur this year, I hope to god it isn’t the west antarctic ice sheet, most likely it will be a ice free arctic this summer.
8. At least one conflict will have its roots based in climate change.
9. 2010 will be in the top 5 hottest years on record
Once again I find myself making mostly negative predictions. I don’t do this out of a sense of pessimism, simply with eyes fully opened to the reality we live in. A world rich with problems is a world rich with opportunity for solutions. I am convinced humanity will find these solutions and in the process built a sustainable solution for humanity to move forward into a future filled with a positive outlook.
Happy new year everyone, may 2010 bring you a year filled with love and happiness.
Add To Reddit Sietch Nevada: Unfortunately This Isn’t About This Website
I found this to be very very cool. Obviously judging by the name of this website I am a huge Dune fan, good to see others are putting the environmental message found in that book to good use.
From the Sietch Nevada Website:
Description: In Frank Herbert’s famous1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel†and forecasts a dystopian world without water. The few remaining inhabitants have secluded themselves from their harsh environment in what could be called subterranean oasises. Far from idyllic, these havens, known as sietch, are essentially underground water storage banks. Water is wealth in this alternate reality. It is preciously conserved, rationed with strict authority, and secretly hidden and protected.
Although this science fiction novel sounded alien in 1965, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest. Lured by cheap land and the promise of endless water via the powerful Colorado River, millions have made this area their home. However, the Colorado River has been desiccated by both heavy agricultural use and global warming to the point that it now ends in an intermittent trickle in Baja California. Towns that once relied on the river for water have increasingly begun to create underground water banks for use in emergency drought conditions. However, as droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, these water banks will become more than simply emergency precautions.
Sietch Nevada projects waterbanking as the fundamental factor in future urban infrastructure in the American Southwest. Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life. Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, the Sietch is a dense, underground community. A network of storage canals is covered with undulating residential and commercial structures. These canals connect the city with vast aquifers deep underground and provide transportation as well as agricultural irrigation. The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice. Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture. However, the Sietch is also a bunker-like fortress preparing for the inevitable wars over water in the region.
Credit: Andrew Kudless (Design), Nenad Katic (Visualization), Tan Nguyen, Pia-Jacqlyn Malinis, Jafe Meltesen-Lee, Benjamin Barragan (Model)
Check them out here.
Add To Reddit Happy Birthday To The Sietch!
It passed once again without me really noticing, but I realized that this website is now 4 years old! Happy Birthday to us!
I would like to thank everyone who has ever contributed to this website, to the readers, to the people who sent me emails, and anyone else who ever sent me a kind word. This has and always will be a community driven website. I can only hope that over the years we have encouraged people to do right by themselves and by the planet. Lets hope that in the next 4 years I am posting a lot more about solutions and accomplishments, and less about problems, and failures.
To the future!
Thank you everyone
TheNaib
Add To Reddit Year In Review 2008
So in what is now the third (previous 06 and 07) year we have come to the 2008 year in review. Every year around this time I like to review the year, and make prediction in my crystal ball about the future.
So lets look back to last year and what I predicted. (this is the part where the picture goes wavy and the “going back in time” music plays).
My predictions were:
- Look for 2008 to be the year that world governments start to pass serious carbon laws. Look for cap and trade, carbon taxation, and global treaties dealing with emissions reduction.
- A Democrat will win the presidency.
- Feedback loops and continued warming will make 2008 the worst year for arctic and antarctic melting on record.
- Continued droughts and water shortages will bring dramatic lifestyle changes to people in the south west and south east.
- At least one major car company will produce an electric or plug-in hybrid model.
- Look for oil to top 120 dollars a barrel at least once in 2008.
- 2008 will be the year of the green consumer, look for a flood of eco-friendly products and services to take over the market. The second part of this prediction is that we will see massive greenwashing campaigns by companies hoping to cash in on this trend without really doing much in the way of making their products greener.
- I am going to once again predict that renewable energy will explode in 2008, look for 30-50% growth in the solar and wind industry world wide.
- Cape Wind will be approved and perhaps even start construction in 2008.
So how did I do?
1. I am sad to say but I got this one pretty wrong. The world government’s saw the economy fall apart and basically threw climate change under the bus. There is however some hope that these sort of carbon reduction treaties will get passed once the biggest road block to them (the stupid American president and his short sighted administration) are out of office.
2. Got this one 100% right! Hurray for my mad predictive skillz!
3. Sadly I got this one right as well. The arctic and antarctic got hammered this year. With dire predictions for the year to come. (see here here here here and here)
4. Sadly this turned out to be true as well this year, as the strange climate changed the south east and southwest of America suffered some serious drought this year. Luckily near the end of this year they got a little rain, but not nearly enough to make up for the severe lack. This is what global warming looks like. (see here and here)
5. Well for all the talk of the Chevy Volt, and the “new” Prius, I got this one pretty wrong. There was a couple of electric cars made this year, but they didn’t get rolled out the way I had hopped. I am going to go with 30% right on this one…which is another way of saying I got it wrong.
6. Ohh man when I predicted that oil would top $120 in 2007 I though that I was talking crazy…Little did I know it would eventually almost hit $150! The resulting global freak out that ensued was, how to put it mildly, not good. This lead to a massive reduction in miles driven, a huge resurgence in biking, and overall a lot more talk about renewable energy, that is until the economy fell apart, the world oil market crashed and the price of oil dropped like a stone. All of this in the long run indicated we are in a post peak oil scenario that will be characterized by massive volatility and a nightmare for long term planners. (see here here here here and here)
7. Green products, and green washing were the rage in 2008. I would say humbly that I got this one so right it hurts. You can hardly throw a rock now without hitting some locally grown, bamboo, free trade, shade grown, solar powered, carbon neutral, BPA free, biodegradable this or that. No one has chronicled the rise of green washing better than Keith over at The Unsitablog.
8. The renewable energy industry didn’t let me down this year. They once again had amazing growth in the ranges I specified. Hurray for renewable energy. The sad fact is however the Oil companies also had bumper years making more profit in a single year than any companies in all of HUMAN HISTORY. (see here here, here, and here)
9. Oh Cape Wind, how silly is your story. I was so close to getting this right. The Minerals Management people, the ones in charge of giving the thumbs up to Cape Wind, nearly did so this year. But then a bunch of dumb ass NIMBY politicians (I am pointing the finger at you Ted Kennedy!) decided the view from their beach front mansion was more important than fighting global warming.
So there you have it, 6 out of 9, not really that bad. I should start charging for this service.
So what are my predictions for next year?
1. Cape Wind will get approved. Seriously 2009 is the year. They are so damn close I can taste it.
2. The horrible economy will affect the growth of the renewable energy market. Look for a slowdown in wind and solar.
3. The price of oil will rocket right back up in the summer of 09, look for it to once again top $150 dollars a barrel.
4. The pace of global warming will began to accelerate as feedback loops intensify. The arctic will be ice free this summer, or damn close. The northwest passage should once again open next summer.
5. Obama will (hopefully) make renewable energy and efficiency infrastructure projects a major component of his stimulus package.
6. Troops will start to come home from Iraq in large numbers before the end of 2009.
7. The financial turmoil will continue leading to millions of people loosing their jobs, massive downturns in global production, deaths, famines, and increased problems world wide. I predict 2009 to be a very not happy year for a large number of people.
8. Look for major legal action to be taken against prominent Bush administration people. If we are really lucky, Bush or Cheney might even be included in the mess.
9. Look for major breakthroughs in efficiency technology when it comes to lighting and solar panels. Specifically solar panels that produce energy cheaper than coal, oil, or wind. Look for LED technology to slowly start replacing CFL technology.
10. I build my first bicycle.
So there you have it, my hat is in the future prediction arena. I hope all you have a wonderful 08 and that 09 is even better for you. Sadly a lot of my predictions for the future are bad ones. Take good care of your family and friends, and just between you and me, start planning to revamp your life to get ready for some hard times. I am not suggesting you go live in a bunker, but you know, get your financial house in order, start using less energy, ride your bike, get ready for some lean times.
We are all going to have to live on a smaller scale in 09 (and the foreseeable future). This is not a bad thing! Humanity has been living outside it’s means for a long time, and faster we switch over to a 0% growth system the happier and healthier we will all be.
Happy new year everyone!
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