Climate and energy

News first: this year’s Kansas City Home Remodeling Show is going green, with an emphasis on energy efficiency and renewable energy. The event will be held at the American Royal Building February 8-10.

Ethanol producers are looking for transportation options for their product, and the existing oil infrastructure looks quite attractive (Reuters). I’ll admit – I read that article’s headline and first thought, oh dear, that’s like when my cat fell in love with a stuffed animal and the two of them just were not compatible for a long-term relationship.

However, it now appears that there are some technologies underway that could make it possible for ethanol and oil products to share the same infrastructure. My poor cat never got so lucky.

Via my awesome web designer Ramsey, a post from the GreenTech Pastures blog on the potential of switchgrass. Funny headline: “Fifty million buffalo were right.” Part of switchgrass’s appeal is that it can be treated as a perennial crop. This has the added benefit of its intensive root system keeping carbon fixed in the soil. Quotable re its other benefits:

A five-year federal study found that switchgrass can produce 540% more energy than it takes to farm it. Wow, that’s very different from the heavily subsidized and fertilized corn crop now being used to produce ethanol biofuel. Corn produces only about 25% more energy and even soy-based biodiesel is less than 100% more energy productive. Switchgrass could also be used to produce ethanol. That would reduce greenhouse emissions compared to current gasoline.

Lovely rainy day out there. Good moment to get philosophical. I’ve mentioned the recent Kansas ice storm once or twice on the blog, and it came up again the other day when I was talking to Dan Nagengast, director of the Kansas Rural Center.

One of the effects of the storm, of course, was that it took down big chunks of the grid. Lots of people lost power, some for weeks. Oklahoma was in even worse shape. Utility linemen from all over the country poured in to help our region out. This week, those same guys are probably in California and Utah, picking up after the storms out there. Next week, who knows where else they will be.

Well – Dan and I were wondering about the human costs to their families, having a loved one gone so unpredictably all the time. And how climate change could increase human costs like this, in ways that are very hard to quantify and track.

As the wife of a firefighter-paramedic, I feel I have some insight into this problem. I’m not crazy about tornado sirens to begin with (who is) but when they go off, his beeper goes off, too, and away he goes. Heavy rains, high water, heavy snow or ice accumulation – these are events that I often handle on my own, because he is helping other people. Linemen and linemen’s spouses are probably in a similar situation.

And on one hand – sure. We’re used to that. I’m used to it. I knew it when I signed up, so to speak. There’s times I’m not too pleased, but that’s part of life. Instead, you just concentrate on when you get to have him back.

However – what if the frequency and intensity of these sort of extreme weather events changes? (That article links to a study about the possibility of increased tornado frequency with climate change, from Scientific American.)

Like I said, the human costs – the impacts on families – would be very hard to quantify and track. Unfortunately, that does mean they would take any less of a toll.

— Maril Hazlett

Want to know more about climate and energy issues in the Midwest? Check out www.climateandenergy.org.