Energy is the number one environmental problem today. But we don’t want to minimize our use of energy — abundant energy makes possible civilization, especially our kind of high-technology civilization. So the question is: how can we maintain abundant sources of energy without ruining our environment? Here is some information that can help.

Pros and Cons of Some Energy Sources

Pros and Cons of Energy Sources: More Information

Copyright © 2007 Daniel B. Botkin
From his forthcoming book, Energy Forever: A Voter’s Guide to Energy

The underlying reason that we are having trouble dealing with global warming is that we are not used to dealing with environmental change. This is true both in the history of beliefs and ideas in Western Civilization and in modern environmental sciences, which are formulated primarily in terms of steady-state conditions and theory. In Western Civilization the idea is known as the Great Balance of Nature   that nature undisturbed by people achieves a permancy of form and structure which is best of itself, for us, and for all life. (I discuss this in my book, Discordant Harmonies, and pursue its many implications in another book, No Man’s Garden.)

Case in point: In 1991, I and several colleagues published a forecast about how global warming would effect the Kirtland’s warbler, an endangered species that nests only in Michigan. The state of Michigan had set aside 38,000 acres of jack pine forest, the only kind of forest in which this bird nested, and managed these for the warbler. 

The warbler nests only in young jack pine woodlands, and jack pine only comes in after a fire. It can’t grow in the shade of taller trees, so if there are no fires, jack pine disappears. Periodic fires set intentionally in the Kirtland’s warbler’s forest were benefiting the bird. This raised the question: if the climate warms and jack pine can no longer grow in the part of Michigan where the warbler nests, what will happen to the bird’s habitat? (For reasons not completely understood, the warbler only nests in a specific kind of sandy soil found only in southern Michigan, so the bird is unlikely to migrate north.)

The computer model of forest growth that I developed with colleagues at IBM Thomas J. Watson Laboratory (available to download at  www.naturestudy.org) forecast that by 2015 jack pine would decline significantly and the warbler would begin to get into trouble.
Oddly, although there is so much written and said about global warming, and although this 1991 prediction got the attention of newspapers around the world, no one has tried to see if the forecast is turning out ot be valid. Here’s an opportunity to test at least one global warming forecast. Why is nobody taking advantage of this test? (Stay tuned.)

Forecast Jack pine forest under present climate and 40 years in the future

These forecasts are based on the use of the JABOWA forest model (see www.naturestudy.org) and a standard climate model.

Copyright © 2007 Daniel B. Botkin

The government of British Columbia, Canada, approved a request by the Redfern Corporation to build a 100 mile long mining road through the traditional land of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. But they approved this road without asking the permission of hte First Nation.  If I understand things correctly, they didn’t even ask the First Nation.  And The land lies in northern British Columbia and is said to be one of the largest remaining wild areas of northern forests and tundra left in North America.  A mining road like this could have big effects on the wildlife, on the scenery, and most important on the culture and way of life of the Tlinglits. 

The First Nation asked me write a report about the possible environmental effects of the mining road, and I did this in the early fall of 2004, getting a small group of scientists and engineers together who had experience and knowledge about wilderness ecosystems, wildlife conservation, and road-building. Directing this kind of meeting of a small group of scientists and technical experts is something I have done repeatedly in my career, and I agreed to take on the work. (more…)

Late in 2003, Friends of Animals and The Audubon Society were at odds over deer. Too many deer is a national problem—- what to do about them? Who can be against an individual deer, a bambi, grazing in a pasture, looking up with big eyes? And who can be against the conservation of an entire endangered species of a bird? Could it be that the Audubon Society does not like bambi? Could it be that Friends of Animals could want to cause the extinction a species? Seems impossible, but it appears to be at the heart of the controversy reported in Wednesday’s New York Times where Priscilla Feral, President of Friends of Animals in Darien, Connecticut, publicly opposed a deer hunt on Audubon Greenwich land, a hunt whose intention is to protect the habitat of endangered species of birds. How can two organizations, both appearing to be of good will, be on opposite sides of an issue about the health of nature and its wildlife? (more…)

Now that it is generally accepted that global warming is happening and is at least in part the result of burning fossil fuels, the question is: what do we do about it? One answer is energy sacrifice — that we try to use as little energy as possible, each of us, everywhere, forever. In my view, that’s unrealistic — consider how unsuccessful we are at depriving ourselves, even for a little while, of anything we greatly want or need. But more important, it’s not a good idea for human societies, civilization, or humanity.

Why? The answer lies in a story about whales, whaling, and people, a long time ago. Put yourself back to about 500 A.D. or a few centuries later, and think of yourself as part of a small group of Eskimo struggling northeastward near the Bering Strait and crossing into what is now Alaska. Life for you and your ancestors has been a struggle — living at the margin, barely enough food, hard to keep warm, often without enough energy left over to do much more than think about the next meal. This was the life of most of the Canadian Eskimo at that time, a struggle for existence. (more…)

A Walk Through an Irradiated Forest 

With growing recent advocacy for more nuclear power plants, I have been thinking about a little-known, unique and curious experiment conducted in the 1960s and 1970s at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, NY: the laboratory radiated an entire forest. Back in those cold-war days the danger of a nuclear war and of other releases of radioactive materials seemed real. One response of the Federal government was to sponsor three experiments examining the effects on natural ecosystems of releases of radioactive isotopes, the kind of things that make electricity in nuclear power plants or are by-products of that production. (more…)

A New Symbol For Our Times!

Copyright © 2004 Daniel B. Botkin

Is it just chance that people are about two meters tall, or is it a result of laws of nature?

Life comes in many sizes. The smallest creatures are bacteria. The smallest of these are about one millionth of a meter long and half that wide, and weigh less than a billionth of a billionth of a kilogram. The longest and widest creature is a surprise — not an elephant, not a whale, not a giant sequoia tree. It is a huge fungus that lives in soils in western North America, just under the ground. Some of these individuals stretch across two kilometers! If one of these giants were merely 10 cm thick, it would weight about 314,000 kilograms. These fungi live by digesting decaying vegetation in the soil, a vital role in the eternal cycling of life’s chemicals. Thank goodness, however, they have no sharp teeth or legs to walk on, or an interest in feeding on living flesh.

The heaviest organism is probably the largest of the giant Sequoia trees of California, known as the “Del Norte Titan” sequoia. It stands 94 meters high and is more than 7 meters in diameter, and weighs more than one million kilograms. (more…)

Restoration of nature and sustainability of natural resources have become popular terms these days. They sound straightforward enough, but they come with their own loaded meanings. If you restore a painting, you make it look exactly as it did when it was first painted – you put it back into its original state. So it is with restoring houses, gardens, antique cars. Restoration has always meant to bring back to a single original condition.

The idea that nature can be restored – and will restore itself – to a single, best, perfect state is ancient. It forms the basis of the great myth of the Balance of Nature – stated and believed by the ancient Greeks and part of Western civilization ever since. According to this belief, nature exists in a perfect balance that will persist forever, and, if disturbed by human action but then released from that disturbance, will return to that single perfect state. (more…)

Augusta, Maine: The taking down of Edwards Dam — the first intentional removal of a major hydropower dam in United States history, was scheduled for 9:00 am on a beautiful spring morning in 1999. We arrived early to find a parking place and watch preparations. As a crowd gathered along the east bluff, a great blue heron flew low above the Kennebec River, traveling downstream from where water still flowed smoothly over the 161 year-old structure. Soon out of view, the heron had been disturbed from its usual stalking territory, perhaps by the big diesel shovel digging bucketfuls of soil from a temporary dam across the river, or the large crowd on the opposite shore, a unique mass of white and bright colors in the heron’s habitat. Or perhaps it was the noise of a helicopter and a float-plane circling overhead carrying television crews.The dam was being removed to save migrating fish, restore the river’s habitat, and improve fishing and boating. If fish increased in the river, it might be a boon for the heron. Built in 1837, the dam was operating when Henry David Thoreau canoed Maine’s rivers in the 1840s. (more…)