Solar

Small ZCT Boats

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

Once I get to a park, I like to explore, preferably without burning carbon. I have a folding e-bike (Gocycle G4) and a folding kayak (Oru Bay) that fit in my car (Tesla 3LR). I also bring an old packraft (Kokopelli) for remote camping trips. [To be clear, I receive zero compensation related to any products or services, neither referral bonuses nor discounts.] Despite some wonderful experiences, I would not recommend anyone buy any of these products, which all have drawbacks. Instead, pick what works best for you.

In many parks—especially for normal folk who don’t visit a hundred a year—the smart paddling choice is to rent. Often the only way to get a pickup / drop off is free with a rental. If you don’t paddle frequently, this ends up being relatively cheap, with less hassle and without maintenance. Many places are very concerned about invasive species, so careful cleaning and drying of your own equipment is time consuming too, not to mention fees for licenses and mussel stickers.

My folding kayak works well for shallow, flat water. I have a spray skirt for whitewater, but it’s best in swamps like Congaree and Big Thicket or in long relatively flat rivers like the Delaware or Big South Fork. Because it tracks straighter than my packraft would go, I can cover a lot of ground, frequently passing younger, fitter raft paddlers. It’s a bit expensive, tippy, and it doesn’t carry a lot of gear, so I use it for day trips. But folks renting $90 a day gear often say ‘good idea’ when they see me pull my kayak out of my car trunk, not realizing this is possible. Their guides look much less pleased with the idea.

I wish I had a lighter packraft, as mine is almost as heavy as my 25 pound folding kayak. But it packs up small and carries much more gear, so that’s the only option when the campsites are far from the car. The Kokopelli is also more appropriate for whitewater than my Oru.

Which brings me to my new inflatable boat (Takacat 260) with electric outboard (E-propulsion Spirit Plus). Charging my new outboard battery with a solar panel (above) is easy, and the battery floats. While heavier than I would like, this is the lightest combo I could find. With a solar panel, I can run this at low speed all day, even charging underway. I find it works best when carrying gear across open bays or trying to cover longer distances when time is short. One surprising benefit is that I can approach birds very quietly and closely both in the water and on rocks or shore, with a more stable platform for photos. If everyone switched to electric, the shores would be much quieter and cleaner.

Climate Consequences

/ bigdiff / Leave a comment

The consequences of our carbon pollution provoke an instinctual reaction, but we must consider them rationally. Let’s clearly understand the cause, consider the consequences, and evaluate our options.

Humans have a history of damaging our environment, including driving many species to extinction, from the Wooly Mammoth to the Passenger Pigeon, last observed by Teddy Roosevelt. We have leached deadly chemicals into water supplies, released clouds of cyanide, bleached corals, created toxic fog and smog over cities, poisoned people with mercury, introduced microplastics into most living creatures, burned holes in the ozone, leaked radiation, made rivers burst into flames, filled oceans with garbage, and spilled oil, leaving dead zones. And that’s just pollution, excluding environments and species destroyed by development, drilling, farming, fishing, hunting, logging, mining, ranching, and war.

But our most continuous and consequential pollution is carbon. Especially since Drake’s Well began modern oil drilling, we have extracted fossil fuels of ancient forests that grew 300 million years ago and burned them into our atmosphere, changing our environment into something of which our species has zero survival experience. The last time we had this much carbon in our atmosphere was twice as long ago as when our most primitive ancestors split off from chimpanzees.

  • Heat has been increasing, contributing to fires and killing more people every year.
  • Droughts have been getting worse, contributing to fires and killing more people every year.
  • Glaciers and snowpack have been shrinking, contributing to late season fires and killing vulnerable species.
  • Storms have been getting worse, contributing to fires, floods and tornadoes, killing more people every year.
  • Sea levels have been rising, threatening to flood low lying cities and coasts.
  • Corals have been bleaching—dying en masse—and oceans have been acidifying, killing marine species.
  • Diseases have been increasing, killing more people and species every year.
  • Soil is becoming less healthy, due to erosion, salinization, loss of micro biodiversity and more.
  • Deforestation, melting permafrost and changing water chemistry are reducing carbon sinks and in many cases releasing carbon pollution, like methane, into the atmosphere at increasing rates.
  • Species are going extinct at an increasing rate.
  • Ecosystems are being damaged, where problems with one or more species affect other species, often in unforeseen ways.

These carbon pollution problems are deadly, unprecedented since humans evolved, are synergistic—meaning that they combine and multiply effects—and will affect everyone negatively, at least economically.

We have alternatives to fossil fuel that cause far less damage and risks to life on earth, especially solar and wind power. In many cases, these alternatives are also cheaper.

Hoping that someone will invent some unknown solution that’s cheap, effective and has no side effects is not rational, given how simple and cheap it is to burn carbon fuel. Carbon capture devices are expensive, especially at the scale needed to shrink total carbon in the atmosphere. Geoengineering is unproven, expensive, and will bring unexpected negative consequences. We do not have any inexpensive, reliable way to mitigate the damage of carbon pollution, apart from reducing carbon pollution.

Rationally, the choice to stop burning so much carbon and convert to renewable energy in order to avoid these ill effects is clear and simple. Dishonesty about the causes, effects, alternatives and consequences is part of the problem. Science, including economics, supports reducing carbon emissions before damage and costs worsen. History shows that violent conflicts arise when living conditions deteriorate and governments struggle to feed and house people.

Instinctually, our fear of death should motivate us to stop burning so much carbon. In future posts, I will discuss other ways of thinking about our climate crisis, but I suspect the problem may not simply be how we think. The basic problem may simply be that we aren’t thinking at all.

Voyageurs National Park

/ bigdiff / Leave a comment

I have dreamed of Voyageurs since childhood. Imagine, a park dedicated to canoeists, fur trappers, traders and explorers, with remote boat-in campsites along the Canadian border in Minnesota! The Kabetogama Peninsula is almost an island with only a short portage around some rapids connecting it to the mainland. To the north lies the large Rainy Lake. Kabetogama, Namakan, Sand Point & Crane Lakes lie to the south, with three visitor centers open in summer.

Time limited, I focused on Ash River and took a tour boat out to Kettle Falls, where the southern lakes flow north on their way to the Arctic Ocean. There’s an old hotel there with a wide porch & lawn for enjoying sandwiches & summer sun. There’s another busier portage here, along with a dam and one of the few places in the states where you look south to see Canada. The highlight of the tour for me was going through the islands and stopping briefly at an old resort (see photo).

The park is on the old trading route from Montreal to Great Slave Lake all along the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. Glaciers pushed most layers of soil and rocks south, revealing some of the oldest bedrock in the US at 2.8 billion years ago. The Ojibwe are the traditional gatekeepers of the lands northwest of the Great Lakes. After the Voyageurs, or French fur traders, came miners, lumberjacks, and eventually a few hearty resort owners tried living here. Huge blocks of ice were cut and dragged out of the lake and stored through summer. Logging was massive and filled the coves with timber to be loaded on rail.

Now the forests have begun regrowing, and some wildlife, like elk, have mostly moved north due to climate change. I saw maybe a dozen bald eagles total, including juveniles flying high. The few remaining moose are rarely seen, preferring the swampiest areas far from trails.

I hiked a scenic trail out to Kabetogama Lake Overlook from the Ash River Visitor Center, and there are a couple of other boat tours, one which goes to a rocky garden. I stayed in Chisholm to be near a CCS charger (Combo Adapter needed) and a delicious ‘supper club’ called Valentini’s (order the Walleye). The biggest improvement opportunity would be to have more electric vehicles. There are a lot of noisy gas-powered fishing boats, some being towed by large houseboats. Sound carries far across the lakes, so they definitely detract from the natural setting (and pollute with carbon). Houseboats, slow-moving, sitting in the sun for long periods with large flat roofs, would convert well to solar-electric.

Castle Mountains National Monument

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

Almost forgot, but on the way east from California, I finally stopped at this obscure unit between Mojave National Preserve and Nevada. This is an undeveloped park in all senses of the word. There are no park facilities (besides the small sign), and the center of the park is still a open pit, unprofitable gold mine, which is supposed to be transferred to the park service soon. Not much to see, despite lots of warnings about not running over the Desert Tortoises. From the Castle Mountains on the left, you can look across at the Castle Peaks on the right, but the former don’t look like castles and the latter are outside the park in the New York Mountains. (I blame the miners for the naming confusion).

The “roads” in the park are 4WD high clearance only and sometimes wash out completely. Since I’m trying not to damage my car again (Chaco!), I thought I’d test out my new e-bike on the 10 mile road in from Clara Bow’s old ranch (now a Nature Conservancy reserve). My car would have bumped along well enough until the park entrance, but then it might have gotten tricky. There’s another even rougher way in from the Ivanpah Road. (If you’ve ever driven around here, you’ve seen the Ivanpah Solar Towers which use mirrors to boil salt but burn natural gas each morning to get warmed up. And they kill birds.) Anyways, there was a nice sunset lighting up some of the Joshua Trees, but I didn’t stop to take another photo on my way out.

Golden Spike National Historical Park

/ bigdiff / 5 Comments

The two sides racing to complete the transcontinental railway actually went far past each other before they finally agreed to meet here. The celebration drew many, as did the centennial, but the location is fairly remote and sparsely populated. There’s a plaque honoring Chinese laborers who contributed, even though many were not allowed to remain in the US.

Many visitors come to see the old style trains shown periodically, but the site is most interesting as a historic symbol of a new age dawning. There’s a large solar array under construction nearby, and hopefully our next transportation revolution from fossil-fueled to electric vehicles can be as dramatic and sudden as the shift from horse to train and telegraph.