The Survivalists

The General Need and Possibility

From Chapter 1 of my free book on the Internet Rural System? Just Dreaming … A For-Profit Conglomerate for Meaningful Jobs Healthful Communities and Improved Natural Resource Management.

However unsure, I'm sure that Rural System can help get it rectified … surely only partially, but at least with an effect that would allow a statistician to claim there to be a positive significant difference. It is a concept that may aspire to some small leadership, probably like Churchill's definition, "going from failure to failure without loosing enthusiasm." History suggests that a small effect is all that I can reasonably expect. But history was short of ideas, technology, and awareness of the perils of continuing as in the past. I want monumental success. What we have been doing is not working. It costs too much, and the amount we spend is not enough. What are we to do? What are we to do!? In the face of such grave problems, before so many people, over such vast areas, with such immediate needs … what are we to do?

We need a new pattern of thought and approach, an alternative structure for old things, for surely all in the past in not "bad." We need a modern holistic systems approach to sophisticated profit-oriented rural resource management. (Someone else may work with the cities.) I'm trying to get it started. Maybe it will be an idea that will unleash energy for making changes. I continue to try to describe it herein and at www.RuralSystem.com. I thought Rural System might have been started by now (2007) and so, often sorrowful over my failure, I write my dream of what it might have been. I try again here just to share the concepts and my design so that the flaws can be found and eventually something good can emerge… for the good of people in the vicinity of Virginia, USA, and eventually throughout the world. Earth is good …and people are intrinsically good … and now is a good time. We can act as if we believe…or dream that.

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Survivalists is a blog of Bob Giles, Professor Emeritus, Virginia Tech, sharing ideas, observations, and notes on his concerns for the future and preparing for it. His Faunal Force blog presents concepts and observations on wild faunal ("wildlife") management systems and related topics. His web site is Rural System, part of which provides design for a proposed modern natural resource system. He can be reached through Linkedin , Academia, and Twitter.

Dumping an Old Dream

It’s time to give up “the American dream” sold to us too long, after we forgot that the dream was for the New World freedoms and way of life.  We can’t buy the new American; we can't afford it. It is time to become realistic as a world citizen. We can dream, but we must be realistic. We’ve been “spoiled” by living in the USA. Everyone is not guaranteed by government, birth, or by anyone that they will be given or inherit the resources that guarantee them:

• full injury/wage, health, dental, eyeglass insurance
• medications prescribed
• an emergency bank account
• family life insurance
• burial insurance
• a house with insurance and maintenance
• two cars  with maintenance
• a college accounts for each child (unlimited)
• retirement accounts for each parent
• a vacation each year, and
• money to “eat out” and consume sweets, wines, and bottled water at every whim.

The above list is delivered as a sales pitch, a tale in a long American TV series, a quaint story of life in “a far-off land.” It has been a real dream, not a “dream” as in “some ultimate quest or goal.” It is a description of wants, not needs, and bears little relationship to the people of the rest of the world. A high quality life cannot be lived surrounded by people in need and suffering.

The “get up” buzzer has gone off. It is morning. No more dreaming. All of the above cannot be bought today for $20,000 or even $50,000 salaries (minus modest saving)! I doubt that it ever was for most people. It has to be gained from work. It is time to get serious, realize our limits, back off of the precipice, become more efficient, waste less, buy more wisely, eat more healthily, and live more safely. We have to relax about the taxes that we must all pay (or be very specific about what of the following general topics they find totally unnecessary): defending us against terrorists, doing medical and disease research, building water works, roads, schools, government buildings, paying police and fire control service, tending people in prisons, tending people who cannot tend themselves, sending up communication satellites, and delivering to us our mail and weather reports. (Complain about the amount; can't we agree on the minimum tax category topics?) We have to learn more and diversify our abilities, thus reducing our risks. At the same time we need to prepare as rapidly as possible for the coming-world of high-priced energy and climatic catastrophes. We have a call to reasonableness, to the real world and to “living within our means.” The means are now being re-defined and clarified. A new dream, writing the objectives for the future for a specific, defined quality of life can now begin.

(I appreciate the ideas of Roberta Zrna in a comment to Bill Moyer’s blog.)

 

New River Valley Heft: Gaining Structure

This post first appeared in Handshake 2.0's High Five and is presented here to suggest an incentive- driven approach that may result in great benefits to the people of an area from becoming a greatly linked social network.
In the last High Five I suggested working on developing some kind of structure for the New River Valley, a chunk of land and water in Virginia (partially North Carolina and West Virginia)that many people seem to think can have a special dimension beyond those on a map.

They see the New River Valley and what is within it and in its history can be good for the people living within the boundary and border. Other regions have had such experience. "Why not this one?" they ask. "Maybe better than the others," they suggest.

There are already many New River Valley-related organizations, including:

New River Valley Planning District Commission
Main Street Radford (e.g., related town and county groups)
New River Valley Agency on Aging Advisory Council
New River Valley Community Services
New River Valley Economic Development Alliance
New River Valley Development Corporation
New River/Mount Rogers Workforce Investment Board
New River Valley Competitiveness Center
New River Valley Development Corporation
New River Valley Planning District Commission
Multi-County and Town, Business & Economic Development officers
Multi-County and Town Community Development staffs
Virginia Economic Development Partnership

In the spirit of reducing over-worked leaders, reducing redundancy, increasing efficiency, reducing travel costs and energy use, and gaining synergism� maybe some of these can work together, merge, communicate, or share or pool resources.

I now doubt that Rural System will ever get started but I once thought it would be good for the Valley.

One part of it included developing a membership that gave those living in the Valley more than the joyful feeling of having a special mailing address. Citizens would sign up, pay a few bucks, and start getting some real benefits and access to where their talents, abilities, and knowledge could pay off for them and their Valley neighbors. (This may well be essential for the near regional economic future.)

Such a membership would include for them:

Substantial membership savings on:

• services of all cooperators of the system
• costs of events, annual meeting,  and member tours
• purchases of outdoor clothing and boots
• outdoor equipment and books
• Avi course entrance fees (a new bird-watching sport)
• entries to a specialized local and personal history project

The would receive as members

1. A colored computer map of the Valley and the region
2. Access to a unique web-site and a monthly newsletter, blog, and Internet options providing links and information about the region and the role of its organization within it
3. Notices of special events and opportunities
4. Within-Valley employment opportunity notices
5. Special information about government programs and services available for land holding
6. Access to a specialized tax reduction and wealth management center
7. Access to a regional credit card program
8. Access to prime rate group insurance
9. A personal annual land valuation report
10. Access to information about responsible land buyer, tenants, and Trusts
11. Access to a caretaker for land if one "lives away"
12. Reasonable pooled information about possible impacts of proposed development
13. Notices of several occasional meetings each year
14. Pooled or cooperative projects among internal groups and organizations
15. Priority access to land management consulting and management service
16. Resource-management-improving and energy-saving hints
17. An annual rebate (membership fee) or an award based on total profits
18. Distinctive membership symbols (e.g., lapel pin, bandana, cap)
19. Membership sign for display at property entrance.

I called it the New River Valley's Heft (project/company/initiative/program/etc.)

These suggestions provide grounds for citizens throughout the New River Valley to join together to become one of the most linked social networks anywhere.

Definition: heft - something of great weight (physical or otherwise); to lift something heavy (perhaps to determine its weight) often

Robert H. Giles, Jr. writes High Five for Handshake 2.0, a technology business news and business blog service venture of Handshake Media, Incorporated, a member company of business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks.  The opinions Robert Giles expresses are solely his own and are not necessarily shared by Handshake 2.0 or its sponsors or advertisers. 

You can follow Robert H. Giles, Jr. on http://www.Twitter/bob_giles

To Know Oil Limits

How do you know oil will run out?

How do you know anything?  Philosophers study that question as epistemology and they have about a dozen ways to know.

 

 One way to know is to surround a question with so many uncertainties that the risk of failure is so great that only one conclusion is reasonable…It will run out. This is now at the center of the chaos of:

 

• Liquid oil or other oil (oil shale, etc.)
• “Reserves” meaning: found, reported, probable, accessible with current technology, assessable at today’s prices?
• Available (hostile countries?)
• Available (under protected areas)
• Available (rapid increases in consumption by developing countries)
• Deliverable (ocean safety; pipeline rights and risks, etc.
• Legal use (given air pollution laws)
• Legal and profound requirements to reduce CO₂ levels
• Substitutable? (ethanol, kudzol, coal, etc.)
• Substitutable? (electricity – coal, wind, solar, nuclear, etc.)
• Likely replacement or substitution (prices, inventions, conservation)

 Authority is another way to know. Authorities now know from their reports that we are using more liquid oil than we are replacing in discoveries of new oil. We’ve passed “peak oil.” Reports are estimates and can be off … or fudged, so there is uncertainty. I’ve followed oil estimates for 40 years and none has suggested, increases, likely new fields, or that vast under-estimates have been made.

 

Preston Chiaro (authority) said in 2005 that there are no quick fixes and the International Energy Agency (authority) said that world energy demand will rise 66 percent  by 2030 with fossil fuels (oil and coal) meeting 90% of that. Only by starting changes now (reduced use, greater carbon efficiency, laws and strenuous enforcement, conservation, substitutions, shared technologies, alternatives)… can we achieve desirable conditions. That is a lot of work and we only have 20 years it seems.

 

Why? We know from our sensory base that it takes years for governments and industries to come to grips with any project, intellectually or by investing in physical solutions. We create models of rates of use and discovery and deduce that there are real limits and that the final date of withdrawal is related to all of the above factors and the price of oil which swings with consumer use rates and demand.  The more scarce the oil, the higher the price, and thus the deeper and faster the drilling is done to get top dollar, and thus the faster the total oil supply is depleted and thus the risks to life and its quality. It may not be worth living.

 

There is room for thought and action from survivalists, I, my children, my grandchildren and many others. This is not private knowledge. I just know.

A Rural Energy Strategy Checklist

I'm working on a checklist maybe for 0 to 10 points to be assigned to each factor in the judgment of reasonable people on the approximate satisfactory completion of each tactic for a rural land ownership. I'll welcome addition (and corrections):

1. Keep tractors and other farm equipment in good shape for efficient performance.
2. Use conservation tillage or no-till strategies (as tillage is the primary use of fuel for many operations)
3. Reduce the number of passes over each tillage area
4. Lay out efficient tillage patterns for runs and turns
5. Match tractor size with size of implements being used
6. Weight tractors as needed for proper slippage
7. Shade stored fuels
8. Study crop-drying systems carefully to reduce fossil energy use
9. Reduce soil erosion (minimally, reduce equivalent fertilizer replacement)
10. Avoid using conventional petroleum-based fertilizer (e.g., legumes for nitrogen)
11. Use organic fertilizers on well-prepared areas
12. Reduce wastes of all types (objects have required energy to have produced them)
13. Use local organic oils to reduce rust (i.e., metallic waste)
14. Reduce crop and livestock losses (e.g., from insects, disease, etc. …losses are wastes)
15. Switch to fluorescent and LED lighting
16. Use day lighting, reflective paint, and mirrors
17. Use proper albedo paint and surfacing for building at each site
18. Increase irrigation and electric motor efficiency
19. Catch water and use gravity feeds rather than pumps
20. Carpool to market where possible
21. Reduce human accidents by training and awareness(all having high energy costs for transportation and treatment and lost work hours)
22. Reduce human and animal accidents by local orderliness and traffic patterns
23. Use solar collectors wherever possible (e.g., lights, pumps, heating water)
24. Use planned pickup and delivery services
25. Distribute produce boxes and animals to central locations rather than multiple locations for pick-up
26. Use energy efficient design and construction of all buildings
27. Locate designed structures to avoid catastrophic losses (fire, floods, storms)
28. Use less energy and conserve energy in the homes and offices (alternative checklist being prepared for scoring)
29. Buy high quality long-lasting equipment and tools

In the Face of Terror in India

I received a message from a friend in India, Dr. Bharat Bhushan, relaying a message from a survivor in the recent Mumbai, India, attack. With permission of Rahul Welde, I share his practical ideas on surviving terror.

Mr. Welde was in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai  (late November, 2008) and trapped inside when the Trident-Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels were attacked.

“I was … in my room at the Taj Hotel the fateful night of the terrorist attacks. I managed to escape by the skin of my teeth at around 4 am, in sheer denial of allowing fire and smoke to swallow me.

“By God's grace, I managed to make the run down six floors and some few metres without the devil in my way. You can imagine how happy I am to be here typing this away…. I leave a few messages which might be of help to all good people.

“In the modern day world, risks are a plenty. Terrorists, tsunamis, earthquakes - the list can go on. None of these check on your profile, company, religion, class or seniority when they hit. They just hit. And we know now it can happen anywhere.

“Here are a few things we could all do to keep it safer and better.
1. Value your family and friends. Make sure you are covered well by insurance. Even if you are well off; leave them better off if the unfortunate were to happen.
2. Let them know details on things like bank accounts, investments, etc. Keep a folio with your spouse and close family members.
3. Use every waking moment to cherish what you have - family, friends, nature. Stay smiling, laughing and caring.

“Admittedly these aren't things I'd thought about deeply till now. I shudder at the thought of what if...

More practical, … “a few lessons that I want to share:
1. When in a hotel or a new place, please NOTE where the FIRE EXIT is. The fire exit route saved my life. I had no clue of where it was and why I ran where I did. Why I turned left or right. Providential escape for me - nothing more. I've stayed in hotels for years and don't remember ever paying attention to this. It's a few seconds invested that can save you from big trouble.
2. Insist on taking a room in the outer periphery - where the fire brigade can reach you. My room was on the inside and I tell you there was no chance the fire brigade would ever reach me. They would have always been a few yards, but several hours away. Ever thought of this detail?
3. A key item on your survival kit is your cellphone. I give it to Apple for developing the iPhone … Whatever your phone – a critical checkpoint is battery life. Often we wait for the battery to go down before charging. Don't! Keep it fully charged all the time. All the SMSes saved my senses and maybe even my life.
 4. I learned for the first time that when running through fire and/or smoke - run bending down and wrap a wet blanket around you. I did that, thanks to a friend who advised me. It's a different story I chucked the blanket thinking that the cops would gun me down, mistaking me for a terrorist. Good tip nevertheless.
5. Don't miss the aspect of staying fit - in running shape. Can help you and maybe even you can help someone.

“These last few days I have heard and read a lot about peace marches and candles and politician bashing and police bashing and whatever else. I am sure a lot of energy will go in all that. Having been there, I can only say that every soul - the cop, the fireman, the medico and even the common man on the street was doing the best he could. I don't blame anyone. I am sure good will prevail over evil in the long term. The short term blips we cannot avoid.

“I have a lot to say and yet not much more. God is the greatest and leads to the ultimate destiny. I am thankful for all that has been and all that there is now.”

Ocean Crisis

I live in the mountains far from the ocean. "Out of sight; out of mind" has been my condition. I have crises threatening crises for prominence. Which will be most critical, first to gain mass attention; first to create havoc?

Now I have another competitor. I have been assaulted by publications from many sources in the past year, many more than in the past about the crisis in the ocean. I had been concerned previously and developed a computer game for students, reflecting on the loss of  fish and crustaceans resulting from mismanaging the land and thus effects on the coastal estuaries. Coastal really does not sound like "oceanic" but of course it is.  I had reviewed David M. Lavigne, (editor, 2006) Gaining
Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability, International Fund for Animal
Welfare, 555 Admiral Drive, London, Ontario, Canada N5 V 4L6, 425 pages) and have been tormented by the information on major losses of ocean fisheries. I thought I was well-informed; I was not. Ocean warming, pollution, and over-fishing are now much worse than I knew.

Now awareness that carbon dioxide is causing climate change is topped by awareness that its increases are making ocean waters more acidic. The "so what?" of that is that certain plants are being lost but more importantly, the calcium carbonate coverings of so many ocean creatures (oysters, corals, etc.) are being dissolved by these acidic waters. Species are being lost! Conspicuous corals are being lost and their physical functions and roles in reef building are being lost. Reefs affect coastal current and coastline structures and protection.  Inconspicuous life forms with calcium-carbonate shells, the major food of major fish populations (and human food), are being harmed.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Northern California, and December, 2008, editorial in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment claimd that countries must lower CO2 levels in air from 385 to 350 parts per million, about 25% by 2020. Such change seems highly unlikely. Someone must have advice, solutions, reasonable suggestions. Pious appeals to education of Congress and the public will not work. Knowing sea creatures are important will not reduce air pollution.

I do not know what to do. I live in the mountains.

A Local Waste System

I just learned of  Valley Curbside Recycling  being developed by Jeremy Hart and Ryan Stewart. 

It is a great idea for a much-needed social system and is as theoretically solid as survival. The minimum rules of biology learned from nature over centuries by thoughtful generalizers are:
• Get energy and water
• Store and save energy
• Reproduce
• Tend wastes

Even the most ignorant peasant is quite aware that the rain falling upon his dung-heap washes away a great many silver dollars, and that it would be much more profitable to him to have on his fields what now poisons the air of his house and the streets of the village; but he looks on unconcerned and leaves matters to take their course, because they have always gone in the same way. from The Natural Laws of Husbandry, p.275, 1863 Justus von Liebig

There are silver dollars being lost in waste; there are dollars to be made in waste moving; there are dollars to be made in waste processing. When it come to “value adding” strategies, when something seems worth nothing and it becomes of value, that’s real value adding …about a gazillion percent.

Hart and Stewart have started, wisely as many have told me about Rural System, “start small.” I admire them for what they have done … select a small community in Christiansburg, Virginia, and pick up select clean waste from the people there who are producing about 3.5 pounds of waste each day. They outline the things they will pickup and deliver to a processor point. “They” is one guy that they are recruiting.

There have to be related neighborhood options that they might develop for local home composting for gardens, also for new strategies within the forming carbon market.

I’ve shared my modest waste-related files with them on waste management, community waste related objectives, a few facts, a few links, and a few profound sayings  and wish them great success and thanks for the local service.

First the neighborhood, then the towns, then more … then the world. Who knows the power of a system of systems?

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
Goethe

The Dominant Pair: Water and Energy

Michael E. Webber  said: "Regardless of which energy source the U.S., or the world, might favor, water is ultimately more important than oil because it is more immediately crucial for life, and there is no substitute. And it seems we are approaching an era of peak water—the lack of cheap water. The situation should already be considered a crisis, but the public has not grasped the urgency."  from "Energy versus Water: Solving Both Crises Together" Scientific America,  October, 2008.

Twelve Years for Coal

I learned at a conference last month, before the current great recession seemed real, that significant coal mine operations in Central Appalachia will be completed in 12 years. That’s the 7 coal-field counties of Virginia, and much of West Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and northeastern North Carolina. That’s not just area but the people there. Twelve years is only the time needed for your baby to become a teen-ager --- overnight.

Coal has been a major energy source in the development of America – for transportation, heating, steel and other manufacture. It is the basis now for the likely future of China … but we are “running out of it.” That’s impossible to believe because “it” is not what it seems to be. “It” means readily accessible, low ash, low sulfur coal that can be gotten with current equipment profitably and within safety requirements.” It means coal that can be sold within reasonable distances to coal-burning plants producing electricity but within the limits of the well-established air pollution laws and new laws seeking to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. The climate is changing because of coal use. It’s coal that if burned in a plant, there will be required for it, like nuclear power plants needing waste storage, a place to store its carbon not released to do climate-warming.

I know coal from having tended coal furnaces as a child, watched men haul in bags of it to my basement. I’ve seen coal augured from the hill sides, and then prices inflate so that the cost of stripping the land off of the remaining coal become profitable. I’ve also watched monster equipment of unbelievable scale take coal from its millions-year rest. I’ve not gone miles deep to see the reserves being taken.

I try to be positive. I hate being in the hole where my thoughts of resource depletion lead me. Maybe remaining coal, priceless, will be used, but more wisely. Maybe new applications of carbon-capture will be made … but continuing the rate of depletion of the national coal resource (to a price where future use is infeasible). (Wars are fought over tariffs and access to remaining reserves (as for oil) in other countries. Substitution of “we can use electricity” slogans for former coal-source electricity can only mean high energy costs for those sources.

Today I imagine being on the crew of a small ship landing on the coast of America, thinking it was some other grand place. Today I am a pilgrim in a new country.