Puerto Rico is our future

SUBHEAD: We should think about the kind of society is sustainable and resilient in times of increasing vulnerability to disasters of all kinds.

By Richard Heinberg on 28 September 2017 for Post Carbon Institute-
(http://www.postcarbon.org/puerto-rico-is-our-future/)


Image above: Aerial photo of damage from Maria to hillside homes in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria destroyed much of the infrastructure of the island. From original article.

[IB Publisher's note: Inike did not do as much damage to Kauai as hurricanes Irma and Maria (two category 4 storms) did to Puerto Rico in the last few weeks. Needless to say, Kauai pulled together and overcame major destruction to the island. But that was a different economic and environmental era. As James Kunstler pointed out here (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/09/in-murk.html), there is little to no backup support left.]

News reports tell of the devastation left by a direct hit from Category 4 Hurricane Maria.

Puerto Ricans already coping with damage from Hurricane Irma, which grazed the island just days before, were slammed with an even stronger storm on September 20, bringing more than a foot of rain and maximum sustained winds of at least 140 miles per hour.

There is still no electricity—and likely won’t be for weeks or months—in this U.S. territory of 3.4 million people, many of whom also lack running water. Phone and internet service is likewise gone. Nearly all of Puerto Rico’s greenery has been blown away, including trees and food crops.

A major dam is leaking and threatening to give way, endangering the lives of tens of thousands. This is a huge unfolding tragedy. But it’s also an opportunity to learn lessons, and to rebuild very differently.

Climate change no doubt played a role in the disaster, as warmer water generally feeds stronger storms. This season has seen a greater number of powerful, land-falling storms than the past few years combined. Four were Category 4 or 5, and three of them made landfall in the U.S.—a unique event in modern records.

Puerto Rico is also vulnerable to rising seas: since 2010, average sea levels have increased at a rate of about 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) per year. And the process is accelerating, leading to erosion that’s devastating coastal communities.

Even before the storms, Puerto Rico’s economy was in a tailspin. It depends largely on manufacturing and the service industry, notably tourism, but the prospects for both are dismal.

The island’s population is shrinking as more and more people seek opportunities in the continental U.S.. Puerto Rico depends entirely on imported energy sources—including bunker oil for some of its electricity production, plus natural gas and coal.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) is a law unto itself, a monopoly that appears mismanaged (long close to bankruptcy), autocratic, and opaque. Over 80 percent of food is imported and the rate of car ownership is among the highest in the world (almost a car for each islander!).

To top it off, Puerto Rico is also in the throes of a debt crisis. The Commonwealth owes more than $70 billion to creditors, with an additional $50 billion in pension obligations.

Puerto Rico’s government has been forced to dramatically cut spending and increase taxes; yet, despite these drastic measures, the situation remains bleak. In June 2015, Governor Padilla announced the Commonwealth was in a “death spiral” and that “the debt is not payable.”

On August 3 of the same year, Puerto Rico defaulted on a $58 million bond payment. The Commonwealth filed for bankruptcy in May of this year after failing to raise money in capital markets.

A shrinking economy, a government unable to make debt payments, and a land vulnerable to rising seas and extreme weather: for those who are paying attention, this sounds like a premonition of global events in coming years.

World debt levels have soared over the past decade as central banks have struggled to recover from the 2008 global financial crisis. Climate change is quickly moving from abstract scenarios to grim reality.

World economic growth is slowing (economists obtusely call this “secular stagnation”), and is likely set to go into reverse as we hit the limits to growth that were first discussed almost a half-century ago. Could Puerto Rico’s present presage our own future?

If so, then we should all care a great deal about how the United States responds to the crisis in Puerto Rico. This could be an opportunity to prepare for metaphoric (and occasionally real) storms bearing down on everyone.

It’s relatively easy to give advice from the sidelines, but I do so having visited Puerto Rico in 2013, where I gave a presentation in the Puerto Rican Senate at the invitation of the Center for Sustainable Development Studies of the Universidad Metropolitana. There I warned of the inevitable end of world economic growth and recommended that Puerto Rico pave the way in preparing for it. The advice I gave then seems even more relevant now:

• Invest in resilience. More shocks are on the way, so build redundancy in critical systems and promote pro-social behavior so that people’s first reflex is to share and to help one another.
  
• Promote local food. Taking advantage of the island’s climate, follow the Cuban model for incentivizing careers in farming and increase domestic food production using permaculture methods.
  
• Treat population decline as an opportunity. Lots of people will no doubt leave Puerto Rico as a result of the storm. This represents a cultural and human loss, but it also opens the way to making the size of the population of the island more congruent with its carrying capacity in terms of land area and natural resources.
  
• Rethink transportation. The island’s current highway-automobile dominance needs to give way to increased use of bicycles, and to the provision of streetcars and and light rail. An interim program of ride- and car-sharing could help with the transition.
  
• Repudiate debt. Use aid money to build a sharing economy, not to pay off creditors. Take a page from the European “degrowth” movement. An island currency and a Commonwealth bank could help stabilize the economy.
  
• Build a different energy system. Patching up the old PREPA electricity generating and distribution system would be a waste of money. That system is both corrupt and unsustainable. Instead, invest reconstruction funds in distributed local renewables and low-power infrastructure.

These recommendations met with a polite response in 2013, but there was little subsequent evidence of a dramatic change of direction. That’s understandable: people tend to maintain their status quo as long as it’s viable. However, when people are in dire straits, they’re more likely to listen to unconventional advice. And when denial is no longer possible, they’re more likely to face reality.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein described how free-market policy wonks and neoliberal economists—and the financial and corporate interests that back them—look for moments of crisis as opportunities to trap countries in a cycle of massive infrastructure projects, rising consumption, and debt. No doubt neoliberal vultures are readying to swoop down on Puerto Rico at this very moment with their brand of “aid.”

The government and people of the island will have some important choices to make in the coming weeks—whether to double down on infrastructure investments that lock them into a brittle and unsustainable way of life, or to break out in a different direction. They might take inspiration from Greensburg, Kansas—a town that was devastated by a powerful tornado in 2007 and chose to rebuild as “the greenest town in America.”

Obviously, the Puerto Rican people have immediate needs for food, water, fuel, and medical care.

We mainland Americans should be doing all we can to make sure that help reaches those in the throes of crisis. But Puerto Ricans—all Americans, indeed all humans—should be thinking longer-term about what kind of society is sustainable and resilient in this time of increasing vulnerability to disasters of all kinds.

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Save Hawaii's beaches or property?

SUBHEAD: Climate change and ocean rise is forcing difficult choices on Hawaii now.

By Nathan Eagle on 28 July 2017 for Civic Beat -
(http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/07/save-beaches-or-property-climate-change-will-force-tough-choices/)


Image above: A Waikiki lifeguard station surrounded by ocean water is barely operational today. From original article promo.

A coastal hazard expert briefs Hawaii officials and others about the need to adapt to rising sea levels and warmer temperatures.

With the impacts of climate change bearing down on Hawaii, government officials and community members need to make some important decisions about the islands’ iconic coastlines, said Dolan Eversole, a coastal hazards expert with the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant program.

“That’s the policy question that we’re faced with now — what’s more important, protecting the property or protecting the beach?” he said. “It’s not a simple answer.”

Eversole was addressing a roomful of state and county officials, nonprofit leaders and others Thursday at the annual State of Hawaii Drowning Prevention and Ocean Safety Conference at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu.

Even under conservative projections, he said Hawaii will have to adapt to a suite of issues that are exacerbated by increasing temperatures and rising sea levels, including coastal erosion, hurricanes, tsunamis, high surf, high winds and flooding.

“Climate change is not necessarily an independent problem,” Eversole said. “It’s going to overlie the problems that we have and in many cases make them worse.”

The “king tides” that caused flooding in Waikiki and other parts of the state this summer were in many ways a glimpse into the future, he said.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, at least compared to other coastal states like Florida and Louisana that are also being forced to adapt to climate change.

Hawaii has the advantage of topography, Eversole said. Elevations increase quickly in the mountainous islands, so adapting for some can mean moving to the other side of Kamehameha Highway, which wraps around Oahu’s northern coast.


Image above: Coastal highway on north shore of Oahu threatened by high ocean waves. From original article.

“It’s going to be inconvenient but we won’t have to go too far,” he said, underscoring how that’s not even an option in some other places.

Eversole is also heartened by Hawaii having a climate adaptation plan underway. The first part of that plan, due in December, will show how sea-level rise will likely affect hotels, homes and other properties in the coming decades.

Honolulu Emergency Services Director Jim Howe, who was the city’s longtime ocean safety chief, said the city has much of the necessary information and has started to respond.

He said the newly created Office of Climate Change, Resilience and Sustainability has held its first major gathering of stakeholders to gain input. A full report from that meeting with roughly 350 individuals from businesses, nonprofits, government and environmental groups is coming, he said, but the preliminary results illustrate the need to focus on the coastal areas and infrastructure.

“We’re going to have to make some priority decisions,” Howe said. “Where are we going to best spend our money? What is going to be the best approach for us as a community? That’s a dialogue that we need to have.”

He said Hawaii has to brace for weather impacts, from increased flooding to more frequent hurricanes.

“All of us in the community need to be prepared,” Howe said. “The more we can be proactive, the better off we’re going to be in the end.”

There’s a lot at stake. Hawaii’s economy largely depends on millions of tourists coming to visit its famed beaches.

Hospitality Advisors, a consulting firm, estimated Waikiki Beach alone contributes more than $2 billion in visitor spending annually.

Waikiki Beach is already in need of millions of dollars of overdue work and there’s still no master plan for the beach, Eversole said.


Image above: The beach at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel is under ocean waves that break against the hotel's porch railing. From original article promo.

And the adjacent Kuhio Beach is a “public safety emergency,” he said, noting how sections of the groin are collapsing in front of a mound where hula dancers perform.

“It’s a mess right now,” he said. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

Studies are underway, including the state’s $800,000 Waikiki Beach Technical Feasibility Study, and public-private partnerships have formed to address the most serious problems.

The Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association is splitting a $1.5 million project with the state to fix the Royal Hawaiian groin, which Eversole said “literally holds together Waikiki Beach.”

Commercial properties pay a special tax that funds the association’s projects, which are all focused on beach management.

Construction may not begin for two years, though, due to permit requirements, Eversole said.

“Hawaii is probably one of the most vulnerable areas to coastal hazards in the world,” he said.

This is not the first time Eversole has waved flags trying to alert the public and policymakers to the problems Hawaii faces due to climate change.

He was lead author of a 2014 UH Sea Grant report, funded by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, that details the current and future effects of climate change in the islands.

Eversole said what concerns scientists the most are the extremes, not the averages, in terms of swings in temperatures and the rates of change.

The rate of warming air temperature in Hawaii has quadrupled in the last 40 years to more than 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. This causes stress for plants and animals, heat-related illnesses in humans and expanded ranges for pathogens and invasive species, he said.

“It could get exponential at some point in the future unless we do something about it,” he said.

When it comes to sea-level rise, the global average is 4 millimeters a year, but it’s not uniform. Low-lying atolls in the western Pacific are seeing 10-millimeter increases annually while Hawaii is averaging 1.5 millimeters a year.

Eversole said that Hawaii should not bank on its below-average increase because projections show it will greatly accelerate.

“Inarguably in the scientific community, climate change is real. There is no question,” he said. “The only question that surrounds climate change is what do we do about it. We’re in a catch-up mode.”
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The Trumpotopia to come

SUBHEAD: President Donald J. Trump has risen... but for how long Trumpotopia last?

By James Kunstler on 23 January 2017 for Kunstler.com  -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/he-is-risen-but-for-how-long/)


Image above: The United States Trumpital on Inauguation Day. From (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/19/trump-inauguration-parade-how-to-watch-live-stream-online.html).

If the first forty-eight hours are any measure of the alleged Trumptopia-to-come, the leading man in this national melodrama appears to be meshuggeneh (Yiddish for "a mad or idiotic person").

A more charitable view might be that his behavior does not comport with the job description: president. If he keeps it up, I stick to my call that we will see him removed by extraordinary action within a few months.

It might be a lawful continuity-of-government procedure according to the 25^th Amendment — various high officials declaring him “incapacited” — or it might be a straight-up old school coup d’état (“You’re fired”).

I believe the trigger for that may be an overwhelming financial crisis in the early second quarter of the year. In, the first case, under Section 4 of the 25^th Amendment, it works like this:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Or else, it will be an orchestrated cabal of military and intelligence officers — not necessarily evil men — who fear for the safety of the nation with the aforesaid meshuggeneh in the White House, who is summarily arrested, sequestered, and replaced by an “acting president,” pending a call for an extraordinary new election to replace him by democratic means.

I’m not promoting this scenario as necessarily desirable, but that’s how I think it will go down. It will be a sad moment in this country’s history, worse than the shock of John Kennedy’s assassination, which happened against the background of an economically stable Republic. History is perverse and life is tragic. And shit happens.

Returning to the first forty-eight hours of the new regime, first the ceremony itself: there was, to my mind, the disturbing sight of Donald Trump, deep in the Capitol in the grim runway leading out onto the inaugural dais.

He lumbered along, so conspicuously alone between the praetorian ranks front and back, overcoat open, that long red slash of necktie dangling ominously, with a mad gleam in his eyes like an old bull being led out to a sacrificial altar.

His speech to the multitudes was not exactly what had once passed for presidential oratory. It was not an “address.” It was blunt, direct, unadorned, and simple, a warning to the assembled luminaries meant to prepare them for disempowerment.

 Surely it was received by many as a threat.

Indeed an awful lot of official behavior has to change if this country expects to carry on as a civilized polity, and Trump’s plain statement was at face value consistent with that idea.

But the disassembly of such a vast matrix of rackets is unlikely to be managed without generating a lot of dangerous friction. Such a tall order would require, at least, some finesse.

Virtually all the powers of the Deep State are arrayed against him, and he can’t resist taunting them, a dangerous game.

Despite the show of an orderly transition, a state of war exists between them. Anyway, given Trump’s cabinet appointments, his “swamp draining” campaign looks like one set of rackets is due to be replaced by a new and perhaps worse set.

Trump was correct that the ruins of industry stand like tombstones on the landscape. The reality may be that an industrial economy is a one-shot deal. When it’s gone, it’s over.

Even assuming the money exists to rebuild the factories of the 20^th century, how would things be produced in them? By robotics or by brawny men paid $15-an-hour?

If it’s robotics, who will the customers be? If it’s low-wage workers, how are they going to pay for the cars and washing machines? If the brawny men are paid $40 an hour, how would we sell our cars and washing machines in foreign markets that pay their workers the equivalent of $1.50 an hour.

How can American industry stay afloat with no export market? If we don’t let foreign products into the US, how will Americans buy cars that are far more costly to make here than the products we’ve been getting? There’s no indication that Trump and his people have thought through any of this.

Trump can pull out the stops (literally, the regulations) to promote oil production, but he can’t alter the declining energy return on investment that is bringing down the curtain on industrial society. In fact, pumping more oil now at all costs will only hasten the decline of affordable oil.

His oft-stated wish to simply “take” the oil from Middle Eastern countries would probably lead to sabotage of their oil infrastructure and the cruel death of millions. He would do better to prepare Americans for the project of de-suburbanizing the nation, but I doubt that the concept has ever entered his mind.

The problems with Obamacare, and so-called health care generally, are burdened with so many layers of arrant racketeering that the system may only be fixable if it is destroyed in its current form.

The overgrown centralized hospitals, the overpaid insurance and hospital executives, the sore-beset physicians carrying six-figure college-and-med-school loans, the incomprehensible and extortionate pricing system for care, the cruel and insulting bureaucratic barriers to obtain care, the disgraceful behavior of the pharmaceutical companies, all add up to something no less than a colossal hostage racket, robbing and swindling people at their most vulnerable.

So far, nobody has advanced a coherent plan for changing it. Loosing the Department of Justice to prosecute the medical racketeers directly would be a good start.

Overcharging and defrauding sick people ought to be a criminal act. But don’t expect that to happen in a culture where anything goes and nothing matters. A financial crisis could be the trigger for ending the massive medical grift machine. Then what? Back to locally organized clinic-scale medicine… if we should be so lucky.

Saturday afternoon, Trump paid a call at CIA headquarters, ostensibly to begin mending fences with what may be his domestic arch-enemies. What did he do? He peeved and pouted about press reports of the lowish attendance at his swearing in. Maximum meshuggeneh.

I’m surprised that some veteran of The Company’s Suriname outpost didn’t take him out with a blowgun dart garnished with the toxic secretions of tree frogs.

Do you suppose Trump is going to improve? That was the hope after the election: that he’d take on some POTUS polish.

No, what you see is what you get. I can only imagine that what’s going on behind the scenes in various halls of power would make a Matt Damon Bourne movie look like a sensitivity training session — grave professional men and women on all fours with their hair on fire howling into the acoustical ceiling tiles.

Don’t forget that it was the dismal failure of Democratic “progressive” politics that gave us Trump.

His infantile lies and foolish tweets were made possible by a mendacious political culture that excuses illegal immigrants as “the undocumented,” refuses to identify radical Islamic terror by name, shuts down free speech on campus, made Michael Brown of Ferguson a secular saint, claims that there’s no biological basis for gender, and allowed Wall Street to pound the American middle class down a rat hole like so much sand.

You think this is the dark night of the national soul? The sun only went down a few minutes ago and it’s a long hard slog to daybreak.

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Kauai General Plan open house

SUBHEAD: Waimea hosted a westside community meeting on proposed County General Plan update.

By Juan Wilson on 8 December 2016 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2016/12/kauai-general-plan-open-house.html)


Image above: Kauai Planning Department Deputy Director Kaaina Hull explaining the General Plan Update as shown on the presentation boards for Waimea and Hanapepe. Photo by Juan Wilson.

On December 5th, 2016 I attended the Kauai Planning Department Open House on the Kauai General Plan Update proposal at the Waimea Theater.

About 25 people attended the meeting. When I arrived, just before 5:30pm, Leanora Kaiaokamalie (Lea) was setting up presentation boards in the lobby of the Waimea Theater and other staff were setting up tripods with boards of the General Plan proposal in front of the stage.

I asked Lea about setting up boards that I had done concerning the general plan including material I presented to HENA (Hanapepe Eleele Neighborhood Association). These consisted of material I have shared with HENA and material on my website.

She said I would have to wait until her boss arrived. The boss being Kaaina Hull, the Deputy Director of the Kauai Planning Department.

Ken Taylor arrived about that time with his own presentation boards. Ken showed me his boards showing his estimate of property tax increases that the plan's execution would require.

Kaaina Hull was late arriving so Ken and I set up our presentation material at the back of the theater. We engaged with some of the public that were interested and I handed out some presentation material.

Once Kaaina got to the theater the the open house activity got under way. In front of the Hanapepe-Eleele tripod board I engaged Lea in a conversation of the “neighborhood “rings” that seem a core concept across all of Kauai's community population clusters.

Walking Distance and Density
The proposed General Plan describes these "rings" as defined as neighborhoods characterized by walking distance to the community centers.

First I asked her if the names and colors of the nested rings might also relate to greater density at the core and lesser density at the perimeter. A gradient from red (Neighborhood Center), to red-orange (neighborhood General) to orange (Neighborhood Edge) to yellow (Residential Community). Lea  said that was “correct”.

I then asked her if the Planning Department had numbers with the ranges of density to these areas. I asked because I did not see that information in the Kauai General Plan Update Proposal or on the Kauai Plan website. Lea said there were such numbers, but they were not in the public presentation material.

When asked what the density numbers were she said one would have to go online and find them. She said they were buried in “Resources” on the website, but could not give link information or further detail.

One piece of information I have been trying to discover is the growth in population on Kauai that a build-out of proposed General Plan implies. For Hanapepe-Eleele area I have used the upcoming Lima Ola "affordable housing" project developed by the Kauai Housing Division on 75 acres of Alexander & Baldwin property adjacent to Eleele and south of the Kaumaalii Highway.

The Lima Ola project has proposed 550 units in single family, and multi-unit multi-story housing. The Lima Ola project takes up the bulk of the  "Residential Community" in the west Eleele area. The 550 units on 75 acres means 7.33 units per acre.

Using the average number of residence per unit on Kauai of 2.99 this means a population increase of 1,645 people. Projecting that level of development  across the greater Hanapepe-Eleele area could increase the population from 5,028 residents (in the 2010 US Census) to 13,545 new residents, or an increase of 269% people.

Later, after people had a chance to see the material and talk to Planning staff Lea handed the meeting over to Kaaina. He did an overview of the Planning Department effort and the prominent elements of the plan.

Population needs and Hazard planning
He took questions as he spoke, and I asked him why they were showing concentric rings crossing from Hanapepe Heights to Eleele that crossed the breadth of the Hanapepe Valley. I pointed out there was no ring because the landscape could not be traversed between the Heights and Eleele. One had to descend to the hazard area flood plain negating the “ring” function”.

I mentioned that in fact many assets of the community in the river valley would likely have to be abandoned as the hazard area now included our only area firehouse, neighborhood center, and library.

With the possible projected population increase and response to global warming, sea rise and tsunami/hurricane threats to low lying areas, it is likely that some of these community services would have to be expanded and placed at higher elevations.

This would include an additional elementary school in Hanapepe Heights, a neighborhood center in both Hanapepe Heights and Eleele, and a fire house in both neighborhoods.  The fire house would be needed in both locations because the flooding hazard zone has been increased to cross the Kaumaalii Highway and disaster relief and fire fighting might be unable to cross the valley floor.


Rationale for Population Planning
Kaaina made the case that there were compelling reasons the Planning Department had to plan for more housing on Kauai. One reason was the need for "affordable" housing so that the younger generation, our children, could stay on the island.

But also, the Planning Department also anticipated large increase in population on Kauai over the next few generation that necessitated the great expansion proposed in the General Plan update. Their study had shown a Kauai population increasing greatly going out to 2035.

Kaaina said that the bulk of that population increase would not be from the American mainland arrivals or foreign immigrants moving to Kauai. He said The bulk was from “Natural” population growth.

He explained that this was because local people’s births exceeded deaths by between 1% to 2% a year. He stated that it was “unconstitutional” to limit reproductive rights of Americans. Thus the extrapolation of that birth "excess" through 2035 necessitated the current update plan.

The Planning Department has put no other reason to accommodate a doubling of the population of Kauai that I am aware of.

I counter that the the plan will damage the island in many ways. The ecosystem will be threatened in ways not seen before (even discounting global warming, rising seas and less regular rain.) The cost of mitigating the negative effects of greatly increasing Kauai’s population  is not affordable.

• It means more schools need to be built.
• It means existing highways widened and new highways created. 
• It means new recreational, sports, and community services with have to be provided.
• It means greater impact on our delicate natural resources too. 

There are things that cannot be mitigated with "planning". You cannot manufacture additional sandy beaches. As it is, our sandy beaches are threatened by coral die-off, global warming, and sea rise, Just imagine Salt Pond Beach Park with triple the parking needs and Sunday crowds in 2035.

Natural Growth can be Adjusted
I said to Kaaina that the argument that "natural" growth demands we suburbanize Kauai like has happened on Oahu and Maui is false.

My point is, wouldn’t it be much cheaper and more desirable to mitigate the impact of 1-2% “natural” population growth through education, incentives, and other benign motivators. Statistically parents who restrict their offspring to two or less are better educated and do better financially. A birthrate a wee bit higher than two per family can support a steady total population as there is some unfortunate child mortality.

Does the Planning Department mean to say that we have so little self control that we must destroy the island’s nature, charm, culture to accommodate unborn hoards. 

Incentives and education are much less expensive than paving over the landscape building new highways, schools and other infrastructure. The island could even remain rural and be where you wanted to live… meaning living within Kauai’s natural beauty … not just seeing it afar from end of your suburban cul-de-sac amid the sprawl.

Again the Deadline to respond to the General Plan update is December 16th 2016. Island Breath recommends that the Kauai General Plan Update not be adopted as planned. It should be rejected.  A New approach is needed to marginally reduce "natural" population growth and avoid thus avoid unaffordable infrastucture costs as well as environmental and resource degradation.

The plan as written will make Kauai less resilient, and more dependent on off island resources for food and energy. "KEEP KAUAI RURAL!"

Comments to the draft can be emailed to plankauai@kauai.gov

or snail-mailed to:
Kauai County Planning Department,
Attention: Long Range Division
4444 Rice Street, Suite A473, Līhue, HI 96766.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Reject the Kauai General Plan Update 11/30/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai County "Keep it Rural" 11/17/16
Kauai County General Plan 2000-2020 undated
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai General Plan Update 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Plan Disappoints 12/9/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Tax Donkey Purgatory - Lima Ola 7/18/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Lihue Loss of Vision 9/5/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Kilauea Development on Agland 4/9/11
Ea O Ka Aina: If a tyrant developed Kauai 3/24/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Potash King's Palace 6/24/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Farm Worker Housing 7/14/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Let Moloaa farmers farm 4/2/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai General Plan 4/2/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Peak Oil Planning 1/29/09
Island Breath: Kauai Sustainable Land Use Plan 11/1/07
Island Breath: LEGS Sustainability Conference 10/13/07
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Cautionary Solar Tale

SOURCE: Ray Songtree (rayupdates@hushmail.com)
SUBHEAD: The idea that solar voltaic panels will be substituted for fossil fuels in a clean energy low CO2 polluting future is false.

By Juan Wilson on 8 June 2015 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2015/06/cautionary-solar-tale.html)


Image above:An illustration showing our wonderful clean solar future provided by British Petroleum, the folks that destroyed the Gulf of Mexico. From (http://bpienvironmental.net/news/category/solar-energy/).

I want to thank Ray Songtree for sending two excellent articles about the limitations of solar-voltaic power because of the variability of sunlight and requirements of the electric Grid, and the level of industrialization and intense energy needed to manufacture and maintain a solar powered world.

The articles below seem a reasonable arguments about the limitations of solar-voltaic panels supplanting the electric power grid we depend on today. However, I would add it appears these arguments are based on the assumptions that the

1. Grid will continue with merely a change in the source of energy and
   
2. Most of the electricity consumed will be through the Grid.

I take exception to those assumptions. It seems more likely that the infrastructure of the Grid will not be maintained (anymore than the Interstate will be maintained). For an increasing number of households that the electricity consumed will be the the power generated from their roof or yard.

In such a world it is difficult to have distributed wind energy; particularly on a small convoluted island like Kauai where many people live on small lots (limiting wind tower height).

Solar is much easier to achieve on a per household basis. It may be that adequate storage is expensive and will not be around long for “modern” living. But keeping a reading light or ham radio working through the night seems possible. To me that is more important than the convenience of refrigeration/freezing.

In my experience off-grid it is the 24/7/365 needs of refrigeration/freezing that are the heavy load. Fortunately for Kauaians the year round food growing capability of our climate could make refrigeration a non-requirement.

I lived in a van for a year on Kauai in 1971-2 without refrigeration. We kept a topless insulated cooler in the shade with a cheese cloth over it to store cheese, eggs, mayo and other “perishables" for many days. The most important item at night was a dome light in our 64 VW bus running off a 6volt battery. We could read, remove a splinter or write a note on a moonless night.

To me even solar is just a transition in the long haul of stepping down from worldwide industrialization. If I live another 25 years, and my solar panels die of old age, I doubt that there will be any affordable replacements, or for that matter, any coal fired furnaces needed to manufacture them.

The real challenge we will face is how we climb down from our levels of consumer consumption - not finding ways to substitute the energy to keep it all running. The sooner we climb back down to the ground the better off we’ll be.

---

Solar Device Industrial Infrastructure

By John Weber on 15 April 2015 for SunWebbber - 
(http://sunweber.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html)

In my posts and blogs, I have constantly spoken about the global industrial infrastructure that underwrites most manufactured things in our environment. Several passages in a novel brought an epiphany of how pervasive, how insinuated, how utterly complex these installations are. I have added those passages at the end of this essay.

Solar energy collecting devices have been challenged from several points of view. The Energy Return on Energy Invested has been noted in extensive research as being low. The dependence on fossil fuel has been noted. Solar enthusiasts act as if the industry stands apart from the fossil fuel supply system.

It is not separate from the present undulating supply plateau nor the scraping of the bottom of the fossil fuel barrel. We will never truly run out of fossil fuels, but the monetary cost and the environmental assaults defined by geology, geography as well as politics will certainly constrain our energy future.

My position has been that the underwriting by the global industrial infrastructure is a necessary consideration. All the things in our world have an industrial history. Behind the computer, the T-shirt, the vacuum cleaner is an industrial infrastructure fired by energy (fossil fuels mainly). Each component of our car or refrigerator has an industrial history.

Mainly unseen and out of mind, this global industrial infrastructure touches every aspect of our lives. It pervades our daily living from the articles it produces, to its effect on the economy and employment, as well as its effects on the environment.

Solar energy collecting devices also have an industrial history. It is important to understand the industrial infrastructure and the environmental results for the components of the solar energy collecting devices so we don’t designate them with false labels such as green, renewable or sustainable.

This is an essay challenging ‘business as usual’. If we teach people that these solar devices are the future of energy without teaching the whole system, we mislead, misinform and create false hopes and beliefs...


Video above: An overview of the Sun-Tech solar-voltaic panel manufacturing facility in China. From original article (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=28&v=IAufbqbUS6k).

(the article concludes with)

...We have looked at charts and videos of making solar energy collecting devices, at the glass process and at the various aluminum processes. We viewed the manufacturing of an inverter that changes the DC energy to AC and the batteries for storing the electricity. And lastly, we viewed two videos on copper; one on production and the other on one of the many tools for which we use electricity.

Solar energy collecting devices have an industrial history. It arises part and parcel out of the global industrial infrastructure, the complexes that brings the many products of our age to our use.

[IB Publisher's note: This is a long detailed and comprehensive look at the industrial requirements for supporting a solar energy system. Read the rest at the source here (http://sunweber.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html).

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Less than the sum of its parts
 
By Barry Brook 5 June 2015 for Brave New Climate
(http://bravenewclimate.com/2015/06/05/less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-rethinking-all-of-the-above-clean-energy/)

The fastest path to decarbonization would seem to be combining every kind of low carbon energy available – the so-called “all of the above” camp of clean energy advocacy.  The argument runs that different kinds of clean energy are complementary and we should build as much of each as we can manage.

This is not in fact the case, and I’ll show that a mix of wind and solar significantly decreases the total share of energy that all renewables can capture.  The “all of the above” approach to emissions reduction needs to be reconsidered.

In a recent essay Breakthrough Institute writers Jesse Jenkins and Alex Trembath have described a simple limit on the maximum contribution of wind and solar energy: it is increasingly difficult for the market share of variable renewable energy [VRE] sources to exceed their capacity factor.

For instance, if wind has a capacity factor of 35%, this says it is very difficult to increase wind to more than 35% of electrical energy.  Lets look at why this is so, and extend the principle to a mix of renewables.

The capacity factor (CF) is the fraction of ‘nameplate capacity’ (maximum output) a wind turbine or solar generator produces over time, due to variation in wind, or sunlight.  Wind might typically have a CF of 35%, solar a CF of 15% (and I’ll use these nominal values throughout).

Jesse and Alex’s “CF% = market share” rule arises because it marks the point in the build out of variable renewables at which the occasional full output of wind and solar generators exceeds the total demand on the grid.

At this point it gets very hard to add additional wind or solar.  If output exceeds demand, production must be curtailed, energy stored, or consumers incentivized to use the excess energy.  Curtailment is a direct economic loss to the generators.

So is raising demand by lowering prices.  Energy storage is very expensive and for practical purposes technically unachievable at the scale required.  It also degrades the EROEI of these generators to unworkable levels.

Jesse and Alex make this argument in detail, backed up with real world data for fully connected grids (i.e. not limited by State boundaries), with necessary qualifications, and I urge you to read their essay.

The “CF% = market share” boundary is a real limit on growth of wind and solar.

Its not impossible to exceed it, just very difficult and expensive. Its an inflexion point; bit like peak oil, its where the easy growth ends.  And the difficulties are felt well before the threshold is crossed. 

I’ve referred to this limit elsewhere as the “event horizon” of renewable energy.

So if wind is limited to say 35% of energy, and solar to 15%, can we add them together and achieve 50% share?  The Breakthrough authors seem to think so, writing that “this threshold indicates that wind and solar may be able to supply anywhere from a third to a half of all electricity needs”.  That would be a very considerable addition of low carbon energy.

But unfortunately this is not the case.

Here’s the problem with adding solar: it produces about half as much energy as wind for the same capacity.  And the capacity factor rule sets a limit on total variable renewable capacity.

So at the limit solar capacity is not additive to wind, it displaces wind, while producing less energy.

Any amount of solar lowers the share of energy that wind and solar together can acquire, and the optimal mix for decarbonization is all wind and no solar.

This is a general corollary to the capacity factor rule – adding lower capacity factor generation to the mix reduces the potential share of variable renewable energy.  It is the energy equivalent of Gresham’s Law – “Bad energy drives out good”.

Far from targeting a “mix of renewables”, we are better off targeting just the one with the highest capacity factor.

We should build wind and not solar.

You can see this dynamic in the following figure, which plots the limiting share of wind and solar energy (VRE) in the grid as a function of solar’s share of wind and solar capacity.  Adding solar capacity cannibalizes wind capacity, and reduces the total amount of low carbon energy that these sources can ultimately provide.  Solar is not additive to wind; its subtractive.


The situation becomes even clearer if we shift focus from installed capacity to energy delivered.  In the plot below, the x-axis now shows the fraction of wind and solar energy that is produced by solar.
Introducing solar energy into the mix causes a rapid drop in the maximum grid penetration of all variable renewable energy.  Wind alone could potentially achieve 35% of grid energy share. 

But with 50% solar, the maximum share that wind and solar together can achieve is just 21%.
In other words, building out solar effectively robs us of a whole climate stabilization “wedge”.


It should be remarked that this capacity factor rule sets too optimistic a limit.  The Breakthrough writers cite estimates that only 55%-60% of grid energy could be replaced by variable sources, due to stability requirements.  This means VRE share will struggle to exceed 60% of capacity factor, and the limits described above will be reduced by that factor.  So while wind alone could achieve up to about 21% of all electricity, a 50-50 mix of solar and wind is practically limited to only 12%.

This is a lot to give away.

So long as we only have a small amount of solar and wind we can build as much of either as we like.  The limit only becomes apparent at higher penetration.  But this happens much more quickly if there’s a lot of solar in the mix.

There may be good reasons to build solar in the early stages of a clean energy expansion.  The rate of emissions reduction matters, and while supply chains are developing, building both solar and wind might help.  But if this trajectory is to continue we will need to shift resources to wind fairly early on, and allow solar capacity to decline.

This should prompt a rethink of the simplistic “all of the above” response to emissions reduction, and the popular notion that there should be a mix of renewables.  If it doesn’t even work for wind and solar, does it work anywhere at all?  Its time to pick some winners, and support for renewable energy at scale should increasingly favour wind over solar.

And we should also think about how to decarbonize the remaining eighty percent of the grid that variable renewables can’t touch.

Crossroads on Global Infrastructure

SUBHEAD: Massive infrastructure projects could prevent sustainabity while undermining Earth's life support systems.

By Brent Blackwelder on 9 February 2015 for The Daly News -
(http://steadystate.org/crossroads-on-global-infrastructure/)


Image above: Rendering of concord an interior concourse in the latest plans for futuristic London airport to be located on Thames Estuary by architects from Genseric, who built dozens of airports, and are one of the largest consulting companies in the world. From (http://raredelights.com/the-futuristic-airport-in-the-world/).

Plans by the world’s most powerful countries are well underway to spend trillions of dollars for new mega-infrastructure projects to rejuvenate the global economy.

The hope of the G-20 nations, the World Bank, China, and other powerful actors is that the infusion of several trillion dollars for infrastructure will boost the growth of GDP by 2.1% over current trends by 2018 and rescue a “sluggish” global economy.

The new feature of this approach to infrastructure involves expanded use of public money (taxes, pension funds, and aid) to offset the risks involved in huge projects. The approach also relies heavily on public-private partnerships, where the issue of accountability and failed projects has been a serious concern.

Those seeking a sustainable, true-cost, steady state economy should be alarmed at the new approach to global infrastructure because trillions of dollars spent on mega-projects in the energy, transportation, agriculture, and water sectors could put a sustainable, true cost economy further out of reach. Reviews of completed projects in these sectors have raised questions about corruption, cost overruns, fiscal accountability, human rights abuse, and the alarming destruction of natural resources.

Who are the Major Players?
The primary mover of a global infrastructure plan has been the G-20 nations (see here for the list of member countries). Afraid of being marginalized by the G-20, the World Bank has jumped into the scramble. In October of 2014, the World Bank launched a new Global Infrastructure Facility to reclaim the leadership on global infrastructure from the G-20.

Just before the G-20 Summit last November, the World Bank and the IMF, along with seven multilateral development banks, issued a press release announcing their intention to provide $130 billion annually for infrastructure financing.

In 2014, China launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank with 21 Asian countries as founding members, along with $100 billion in capital.

The Crossroads
A momentous choice is before us. On the one hand, the G-20, the World Bank, and other international lending institutions want more mega-highway projects, more centralized electric power plants and electricity grids, more mega-dams and gigantic irrigation schemes with huge water transfers, and the like.

On the other hand, an entirely new approach to infrastructure is possible. An approach that, for example, eschews big central electric power plants and relies more and more on decentralized wind and solar investments and avoids the horrendous mistakes made in the past in transportation, energy, water, and agriculture.

Those interested in a true cost, steady state economy should advocate change in the massive new infrastructure lending so as to support projects that enable society to stay within the carrying capacity of planet earth. Such projects could lead the way toward a different type of global economy as they shift away from the business-as-usual approach in energy, transportation, water, and agriculture.

We know the impact of too many of these schemes is the destruction of ecosystems and undermining of the life support systems of the earth. They are pushed by the economic or finance ministries that have little understanding of the limits to growth, the significance of biodiversity, and the functioning of ecosystems that make life on earth possible. Environmental ministries are likely to have little influence in the choice of mega-projects.

There is not enough time to present the infrastructure investment choices in energy, agriculture, water, and transportation that would be made in a steady state economy, so I will mention a couple of examples in the transportation sector.
 
Consider the unsustainability of the US transportation system that has focused almost entirely on highways to the neglect of passenger and freight rail and public transportation.

The US is a poor transportation model for the world. Even with state and federal gasoline taxes, the revenues are insufficient to halt the massive deterioration of road and bridge networks, to say nothing of billions of dollars of backlog in deferred maintenance.

The United States let passenger railroads go to hell and allowed the movement of more and more freight by trucks rather than trains (which are three to four times more energy efficient than trucks). This proved to be the wrong infrastructure choice.

Decades ago, some US bankers were questioning the viability of maintaining the infrastructure to support sprawling suburbs. A Bank of America report likened the servicing of sprawling suburbs to the nightmare that a military commander would face in trying to keep a 1,000-mile-long battlefront line supplied with food and ammunition.

Take a look, for example, at transportation required to supply our food.

One study in Germany focused on a container of yogurt on a grocery store shelf where all of the ingredients were available locally, but in this case had traveled over 1,000 kilometers to reach the distribution center. A greater emphasis on local food production could result in dramatically reduced “food miles” and utilize a much smaller transportation network–an affordable network that could be maintained.

We are at a critical moment where two approaches to infrastructure are diverging. The infrastructure path of a true cost economy can lead to smaller-scale, smarter infrastructure and a healthier earth. The proposed path of the G-20 and World Bank, on the other hand, will replicate and intensify numerous unsustainable projects and cause human civilization to exceed the carrying capacity of the earth.

Scientists point out that we are already consuming about one-and-a-half planets’ worth of resources. Infrastructure choices need to be made to alleviate rather than exacerbate this situation.

Note: For more information see the report by Nancy Alexander, “The Emerging Multi-Polar World Order: Its Unprecedented Consensus on a New Model for Financing Infrastructure Investment and Development,” Heinrich Böll Foundation.

.

We built for a different Earth

SUBHEAD: Our agriculture, power-grid and infrastructure were built for another planet we no longer live on.  

By Curt Kobb on 29 July 2012 for Resource Insights - 
(http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2012/07/our-current-infrastructure-was-built.html)

 
Image above: Fantasy illustration from 2005 of effort to terraform Mars into having a "earth-like" atmosphere - as if we can even maintain one on our own planet! From (http://www.redcolony.com/newsarchive.php?month=08&year=05).
 

It's easy to forget that every piece of our current infrastructure--roads, rails, runways, bridges, industrial plants, housing--was built with a certain temperature range in mind. Our agricultural system and much of our electrical generating system (including dams, nuclear power stations and conventional thermal electric plants which burn coal and natural gas) were created not only with a certain temperature range in mind, but also a certain range of rainfall.

 

 Rainfall, whether it is excessive or absent, can become a problem if it creates 1) floods that damage and sweep away buildings and crops or 2) if there isn't enough water to quench crops and supply industrial and utility operating needs. This summer has shown just what can happen when those built-in tolerances for heat, moisture (or lack of it) and wind are exceeded. The New York Times did an excellent short piece providing examples of some of those effects:

1. A jet stuck on the tarmac as its wheels sank into asphalt softened by 100-degree heat.
2. A subway train derailed by a kink in the track due to excessive heat.
3. A power plant that had to be shut down due to lack of cooling water when the water level dropped below the intake pipe.
4. A "derecho", a severe weather pattern of thunderstorms and very high straight-line winds, that deprived 4.3 million people of power in the eastern part of the United States, some for eight days.
5. Drainage culverts destroyed by excessive rains.

Past attempts to forecast the possible costs of climate change have been largely inadequate. They failed because of unanticipated effects on and complex interconnections among various parts of critical infrastructure. Back in 2007 Yale economist William Nordhaus wrote in a paper that "[e]conomic studies suggest that those parts of the economy that are insulated from climate, such as air-conditioned houses or most manufacturing operations, will be little affected directly by climatic change over the next century or so." Having air-conditioning does not do you much good, however, if the electricity is out. And, manufacturing operations depend on reliable electric service. Many manufacturing operations are also water-intensive and so will be affected by water shortages. In addition, damage to transportation systems (as detailed above) could hamper the delivery of manufactured products. Where Nordhaus does acknowledge considerable effects, he seems to underestimate the impact:

However, those human and natural systems that are “unmanaged,” such as rain-fed agriculture, seasonal snow packs and river runoffs, and most natural ecosystems, may be significantly affected. While economic studies in this area are subject to large uncertainties, the best guess in this study is that economic damages from climate change with no interventions will be in the order of 2½ percent of world output per year by the end of the 21st century.

I have commented on this assessment in a previous piece. Nordhaus imagines that because agriculture, forestry, and fisheries make up only about 1.0 percent of the U.S. economy, negative effects on these from climate change would do minimal damage.

We cannot, however, look only within the border of the United States for effects, though those have been bad enough. Extreme drought in the grain-growing areas of the world's major exporter of grain has already sent soybean and corn prices to record highs.

 This has the potential to affect political stability in countries where food costs are a much larger share of income. If high prices persist, then it's possible we'll see food riots similar to those in 2007-2008 that were a precursor to the Arab Spring which destabilized so many regimes in a short period of time.

This kind of disruption to an economy and society is far beyond anything Nordhaus anticipates. Naturally, the oil industry agrees that the problem of adaptation will be fairly minor. Rex Tillerson, current CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest international oil company, recently told the Council on Foreign Relations the following:

We have spent our entire existence adapting, OK? So we will adapt to this. Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around--we'll adapt to that. It's an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.

Not surprisingly, Tillerson doesn't understand that costly existing agricultural infrastructure won't be easily moved or replaced. He also doesn't seem to understand that soil quality is not uniform from place to place.

Does he think that as temperatures warm and devastate the American grain belt with recurrent drought, we can simply transfer the growing of much of the world's export grain crop north to the Canadian Shield which has soil so thin it has never supported agriculture?

Writer Bill McKibben, who sounded one of the first warnings about climate change in his 1989 book The End of Nature, has explained in his recent book Eaarth that we now live on a new planet, one created by irrevocable and increasingly rapid climate change. One of our biggest problems is that our current infrastructure was built for the old planet Earth.

Neither Rex Tillerson, who leads an organization that has consistently put out disinformation about climate change, nor William Nordhaus, who has long acknowledged that climate change is a problem, seem to understand the scope and scale of our infrastructure predicament.

• Kurt Cobb is the author of the peak-oil-themed thriller, Prelude, and a columnist for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen. His work has also been featured on Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, EV World, and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights.

.

Warning on Virginia nuclear plant

SOURCE: Brad Parsons (mauibrad@hotmail.com)
SUBHEAD: North Anna nuclear plant was knocked off grid during aftermath of 5.9 earthquake on 23 August. Some cooling trouble may have ensued after back up generators kicked in.  

[IB Publisher's note: Eight inches have fallen on parts of Virginia as of 4pm EST. It may be a blessing for the nuclear plant operated by Dominion Energy in North Anna, Virginia... if that's all that happened. The article and video below demonstrate how unsafe nuclear power is with an ever fragile power grid - in the age of Post Peak & Climate Change - meet in a natural disaster.]  

By Ms. X on 26 August 2011 for Pissin' on the Roses -  
(http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/2011/08/alert-for-families-downwind-and.html)


Image above: Still image from WTVR.com CBS video, purportedly demonstrating the recent drop in water level on North Anna dammed lake. From original POTRblog post below.

Below is another video by POTRblog with a detailed analysis of the Lake Anna nuclear plant's dropping lake levels; decay heat steam discharges; earthquake design limits; and the key indicators that one should evacuate the immediate crisis zone before Hurricane Irene arrives. New information, most of which is foggy, indicates a new vector for cooling loss at the North Anna Nuclear plant. Working on the presumption that positive information does not remain foggy, wise risk mitigation would indicate that further vigilance and preparation is required by those that might be affected by a radiological release.

Delving through the fog of officially UN-clarified data, the risks are as follows.

Risk 1:  
The decay heat steam venting is dropping lake levels at potentially ONE MILLION GALLONS PER MINUTE. Lake levels are already dropping and obviously this cooling mechanism cannot continue indefinitely. Note the freshly dropped lake levels in this photo. To resolve this issue the plant must restart electrical generation post haste. Apparently North Anna Nuclear is aware the need for speed in restarting generation, BUT they claim they are hurrying because they want to lower their customers electrical bills. "Because the nuclear plants are the lowest-cost source of generation for our customers, we're making all efforts to return the units to service as soon as possible,"  

RISK 2:
Despite claims to the contrary, it is exceedingly plausible that the earthquake design limits were exceeded. This probability decreases the likelihood that the plant will restart safely and quickly. It also increases the likelihood of a single point failure in the decay heat steam cooling leading to a radiological escape. All of which increase the magnitude of RISK1 above. A North Anna spokesman has stated on television that the plant was designed for a 6.2 earthquake and that they were "ready for this". To the contrary, because of the shallow nature of the quake, the probability is that ground motion and acceleration exceeded the design limit of the plant (but remained within the ultimate limit). It is disturbing that a North Anna representative would declare the plant safe based on a general Qualitative measure such as a 5.8 earthquake being less than a 6.2 earthquake, as opposed to a specific Quantitative measures such as ground motion and acceleration of this quake versus the specific engineering limits for those values. Had the seismographs not been removed from the plant because of budget cuts, some of the fog regarding this issue would be clear-able.  

RISK 3:
Another Emergency has been declared at North Anna as a result of the 8/25/11 after shock; Event Number: 47196. The report states that "There was no radiological release". However, that statement is contradicted by reports that "No release of radioactive material occurred beyond the minor releases associated with normal station operations" One has to ask what exactly are normal releases when the plant is operating in an emergency mode, do they mean no more than expected under this type of emergency? The fog of Risk3 aside, given that the probability the plant exceeded its design limit from the initial quake, further aftershocks increase the potential of surpassing the ultimate limit of the plant.  

Mitigating factor:
A mitigating factor for all of these risks is that the quake did not cause massive infrastructure disruption, hence the logistic response capability appears not to be affected. See video below for a detailed analysis of the Lake Anna nuclear plant's dropping lake levels; decay heat steam discharges; earthquake design limits; and the key indicators that one should evacuate the immediate crisis zone before Hurricane Irene arrives.


Video above: Explanation of risk to North Anna Power plant in Virginia. Posted at (http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/2011/08/urgent-north-anna-nuclear-hurricane.html) 

Also at (http://youtu.be/0GbxV7gOiwA)

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Time for a Cold Shutdown 6/17/11 .

State Abandoned Dam Inspections

SOURCE: Hope Kallai (lokahipath2@live.com) SUBHEAD: Under Governor Linda Lingle, DLNR Chair Peter Young covered up state forsaking dam responsibilities. By Rick Daysog on 26 January 2009 for Honolulu Advertiser - (http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090126/NEWS01/90126) Image above: From (http://islandbreath.org/2006Year/03-environment/0603-07ReservoirFails.html). Three months before the fatal collapse of the Kaloko Dam on Kaua'i, the state issued a notice suspending all dam safety inspections and emergency flood responses and later attempted to conceal the suspension, according to documents obtained by The Advertiser. And while the suspension was in place, state dam safety inspectors did not respond to reports of flooding near the Kaloko Dam a month before the March 14, 2006, disaster, missing a potential chance to identify problems with the dam. Memos and e-mails issued by state Department of Land and Natural Resources officials paint an unflattering picture of the department's actions leading up to tragedy, which killed seven people and caused millions of dollars in damage. The memos also could increase the legal exposure for the state, which is being sued along with retired auto dealer Jimmy Pflueger by the relatives of the seven victims. "The state is basically saying it is abrogating all of its legal duties," said Dennis Binder, a dam safety expert and law professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, who reviewed the memos. "That's a hell of a smoking gun." Budget problems In a Jan. 26, 2006, internal memo, the DLNR's chief engineer, Eric Hirano, said he was temporarily suspending all dam inspections and emergency responses to floods due to budget constraints and lack of personnel. A month later, DLNR Chairman Peter Young instructed Hirano to refrain from stating that the inspections have been halted, saying "we need to look at another way of handling this." "We should not state we are doing nothing, but rather state we will respond to issues and questions related to these items," Young said in his Feb. 14, 2006, e-mail to Hirano. Young did not rescind Hirano's decision to suspend inspections. And after the memo was issued, DLNR officials did not conduct any dam inspections until the collapse of the Kaloko Dam. That could be taken as an endorsement of Hirano's memo, according to Binder. By law, the state is supposed to inspect all dams every five years but the Kaloko Dam was not inspected. Young, who was voted out as DLNR's chairman by the state Senate in 2007, referred questions to the attorney general's office, citing the pending litigation. Young's ouster was partly the result of his handling of the Kaloko disaster. His replacement, Laura H. Thielen, declined comment as did a spokeswoman from the attorney general's office. To be sure, Hirano's memo and Young's response came at a time of heightened sensitivity about the state's dam system. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused dozens of levees in New Orleans to fail, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The Advertiser reported in October 2005 that 22 Hawai'i dams were in urgent need of repair. The story quoted Edwin Matsuda, the engineer in charge of dam safety, as saying the state was fortunate not to have had a major dam failure. Prior flooding Because of the suspension of its flood response duties, the state may have missed some vital clues as to the condition of the Kaloko Dam prior to the breach. On February 27, 2006, DLNR's Hirano said in an e-mail that he received a report from Kauai County Public Works officials that a 4-foot high wall of water flowed from the Kaloko Reservoir area downstream to nearby Moloa'a, where it destroyed a small bridge. Rather than sending out its own inspectors to the site, Hirano took no action, even though his e-mail says he was unsure whether the flood "may or may not be attributable to the Kaloko Dam." "At this point, (Kaua'i County Public Works) will not be following up further and we'll take a wait and see approach until any news is reported and confirmed that the dam was involved," Hirano said in his e-mail.

"If the dam were to be involved, the most we would do at this point is to conduct an investigation of the situation."

The following month, the Kaloko Dam collapsed during heavy rains, sending an estimated 400 million gallons of water through Kaua'i's North Shore, killing seven people and destroying parts of a state highway and large sections of an ocean reef. Criminal charges The tragedy has resulted in criminal charges against the 82-year-old Pflueger, who owns the land under the dam. The state believes Pflueger altered a key safety feature for the dam known as a spillway. The absence of a spillway, which acts as an overflow valve, may have contributed to the dam breaking during a month of heavy rain. In November, Pflueger was indicted by a Kaua'i grand jury on seven counts of manslaughter and one count of criminal endangering. Pflueger has pleaded not guilty and has denied filling in the spillway. His attorney, William McCorriston, has argued in the past that the breach of the century-old dam was not due to overtopping and the filling in of a spillway but was likely due to the collapse of the ground beneath the dam. McCorriston also has denied that Pflueger was responsible for the upkeep and inspection of the dam, saying while Pflueger owns the land beneath the dam, he does not own the dam itself. Pflueger's deed to the property is subject to a private contract that assigns responsibility for maintenance and inspection of the Kaloko Dam to a private company, called Kilauea Irrigation Co., McCorriston has said. Defense attorneys may argue that the state is holding Pflueger responsible for inspecting the dam when the state, which is required to monitor dams, dropped the ball. The documents also could add fuel to arguments by Pflueger's legal team that the state has a conflict of interest in pursuing criminal charges against his client since the state is a party to a civil lawsuit. McCorriston has argued that the state has a vested interest in pursuing the criminal case against Pflueger since it also is being sued by the families of the victims. But Binder, the dam safety expert, believes the state's inaction does not absolve Pflueger of any potential criminal or civil liability, even if it increases the state's potential exposure. Under Hawai'i's Dam Safety Act of 1987, the repair and maintenance of a dam remains the responsibility of the owner. "That duty is not dependent on any action or inaction by the state," said Binder. See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Remove Moloaa Stream Diversion 8/18/11 Ea O Ka Aina: Ka Loko Dam Culpability 2/7/10 .

L.A. Carpocalypse

SUBHEAD: This will be the weekend the busy 405 freeway in Los Angeles will stand still still. By Reza Gostar & Shawna Burreson on 9 July 2011 in Brentwood Patch - (http://brentwood.patch.com/articles/carpocalypse-the-weekend-the-405-freeway-will-stand-still) Image above: Illustration of traffic jam. From (http://66.147.244.241/~coastto5/?p=696).

It has been called “Carmageddon,” "the nightmare on the 405" and "the mother of all traffic jams." Considering the psyche of drivers in Los Angeles, these sensationalized nicknames for the massive shutdown of the 405 freeway on July 15-18 might not be too far off the mark. We are Angelenos, after all, and if there is one thing we have the right to do, it’s to get behind the wheel of our eco-friendly-sporty-SUV-Lexus-BMW-Toyota-hybrids and drive. Preferably while sipping on a latte, talking on our “hands-free” device and listening to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” For many of us, getting behind the wheel is a form of meditation. It’s time to blow off some steam, think about work or wonder what that personalized license plate on the car ahead is supposed to mean. The freeway, whether good or bad, has become a venue of release for pent-up rage, stress and frustration. However, I fear that our psyches might not be able to withstand a traffic jam of this magnitude.

Imagine the fictitious river of gooey supernatural liquid flowing below New York City, which was fed by people's rage and hatred in the movie Ghostbusters II. The 405 is very similar. Now picture a dam blocking that flow of rage and frustration, which is essentially what will happen when the 53-hour construction project commences.

In spite of the freedom the 405 provides, it’s also a cesspool of negative emotions so heavy it sucks the light from the casual passer-by, transforming even schoolteachers into homicidal maniacs. If you have never watched the movie Falling Down, I suggest you rent a copy, stock up on supplies and stay home that July weekend. Perhaps California should declare a holiday or a state of emergency not only to commemorate the weekend that the most congested freeway in the world was completely shut off from the city’s traffic flow, but also as a way to offer busy and beleaguered commuters a few days off of work and a few days of freedom from the stress of struggling against Hummers, SUVs and semitrucks to make it on time. But if the powers that be neglect to take advantage of this momentous opportunity for a holiday, at least it’s a good excuse for making it into work late, or not at all.

Officials are expecting traffic conditions on local streets and freeways within L.A. County and beyond to be severe, with multi-hour delays.

Here is some information from officials about alternates routes, closure times and advice about how to get from point A to point B without losing your mind.

The specific freeway closure boundaries are:

• Northbound I-405: 10-mile closure between I-10 and U.S. 101 • Southbound I-405: 4-mile closure between U.S. 101 and Getty Center Drive ramps

Alternate Routes:

Officials are advising motorists who must travel through L.A. to use alternate freeways within the region, including the 5, 15, 23, 55, 57, 101, 118, 126, 210, 605 and 710, to bypass the impacted area.

In addition, officials are urging the use of public transportation such as the Metro Rail service within L.A. County and Metrolink servicing the five county Southern California region.

Additional alternate route information will be made available on the project website at www.metro.net/405.

Closure times:

On Friday, July 15, ramps will begin to be shut down as early as 7 p.m., and closure of freeway lanes will begin at 10 p.m. to ensure full freeway closure by midnight. The closure will continue until 5 a.m. Monday morning, July 18. Ramps and connectors will be reopened by 6 a.m.

Conditions:

Sepulveda Boulevard is intended as an alternate route for local resident access only. Sepulveda will not have the capacity to accommodate both local and diverted freeway traffic. Those using Sepulveda should expect extreme congestion and lengthy delays. Motorists should instead use alternate regional freeway routes to completely bypass the Sepulveda Pass, officials said in a statement.

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Failing Future Infrastructure

SUBHEAD: Will we be able to maintain & replace our energy & transportation infrastructure in a post-peak oil world?  

By Jeffrey Brown on 4 April 2011 in ASPO - 
  (http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2011/04/will-we-be-able-to-maintain-replace-our-energy-transportation-infrastructure-in-a-post-peak-oil-world)

 
Image above: Bridge over the Mississippi River catastrophically collapses on I-35 at rush hour in Minneapolis in 2007. From (http://www.uaprogressiveaction.com/node/340).

Developed countries worldwide are facing enormous financial costs associated with maintaining and ultimately replacing their aging energy and transportation infrastructure of pipelines, refineries, power plants, electric transmission lines, roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, etc. Given the reality of an energy-constrained global economy, especially in the context of a long-term decline in global net oil exports, it seems inevitable that, at best, our current energy and transportation infrastructure will only be partially replaced in future years.

Given a long-term expectation of partial infrastructure replacement, it seems likely that inevitable natural disasters - like earthquakes/tsunamis such as recently hit Japan, and hurricanes like Katrina and Rita that hit the US Gulf Coast in 2005 - will only aggravate the infrastructure problem. It seems likely that many areas heavily damaged by natural disasters will not be rebuilt, or will only be partially rebuilt. Government officials in Japan are considering exactly this scenario regarding many coastal fishing villages that were damaged by the recent earthquake and tsunami. In the US, civil engineers have been warning about failing infrastructure for years.

In 2009, they gave US infrastructure a “D” ranking, just barely above failing. Executive Director Patrick Natale of the American Society of Civil Engineers told CNN in 2009: “The bottom line is that a failing infrastructure cannot support a thriving economy.”

Unfortunately, when we consider the probability of an ongoing and accelerating rate of decline in global net oil exports, we have to consider the predicament of failing infrastructure combined with a declining economy. Of course, the conventional wisdom is that we can have a virtually infinite rate of increase in our consumption of a finite fossil-fuel resource base.

Most governmental planners in the US are still making plans to cope with a vast increase in US automobile traffic in future decades. The irony of this point of view is that there is already evidence that we can’t fully maintain, let alone consider replacing, the current road system.

Already, many county governments in the US are being forced to stop paving county roads and turn them back to gravel roads. In Texas, in order to help balance the state budget, legislators are debating a proposal to completely eliminate state funding for county road maintenance.

However, when we look at the global economy from the point of view of a long-term decline in global net oil exports, it seems very likely that, to paraphrase a famous quote, what can’t be funded and maintained won’t be funded and maintained; and that the funding and maintenance problem will probably continue to become most apparent in the short term in American suburbia and exurbia (which is very remote housing developments at great distances from job centers).

Jim Kunstler famously called American suburbia the “Greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” In a number of books and lectures, Jim has described how the US had a pretty good and highly energy-efficient urban system, up until immediately after the Second World War, when the long national nightmare of out-of-control suburban development really began.

I would agree that the Late Forties was the inflection point, for a number of reasons.

First, the Late Forties was really the starting point for the post-war boom in the US. Second, in 1948 the US slipped into net oil-importer status, after serving as a primary source of oil for the Allies in the
Second World War only a few years earlier.

Third, 1948 marked the high water point for many urban electrified-rail mass-transit systems.

For example, in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the Forties there were up to 250 miles of electrified streetcar lines in 1948, connected by a regional electric interurban rail system, all of which began to be abandoned that very year.

So, how should we address the problem of failing infrastructure in an energy-constrained future?
I have previously argued that we need to look at a triage plan. The simplest triage approach, given a mass casualty event, is to divide survivors into three groups:

(1) Those who are likely to survive, regardless of the care that they receive;
(2) those who are likely to die, regardless of the care that they receive; and
(3) those for whom immediate care might make a difference in outcome.

With that as background, here is what I argued for in a 2006 essay entitled, “Net Oil Exports Revisited“:
 
A Proposed Triage Plan
I believe that vast expanses of American Suburbia are going to become virtually abandoned in the years ahead. Alan Drake has noted that a good deal of suburbia was so poorly constructed that a lot of it is biodegradable. Alan has outlined how we can go back to what we used to have: electric trolley cars connected to electric light rail lines.

CBS Sunday Morning, on 8/20/06, had a segment on “tiny houses.” They profiled a home designer and builder who specialized in building very small functional homes of about 100 square feet. You can find more information on his website.

What this builder has realized, and what millions of Americans are just beginning to also realize, is that anything over 100 square feet or so per person is not a necessity; it is optional consumption, a want, instead of a need.The US is not Switzerland, but Alan Drake has described how Swiss per capita oil consumption in the Second World War was about 0.15% (later estimate of 0.25%) of current US per capita oil consumption. They did it primarily by electrifying their transportation system.

I propose a sort of triage operation: “tiny” homes and multifamily housing along electric mass transit lines. In my opinion, it is the only way that we can preserve some semblance of a civilized society. The suburbs are, by and large, a lost cause.

If we apply “Triage Rules” to infrastructure, we need to focus dwindling resources on areas that can be rehabilitated.

Of course, at least for the time being, the probability of a serious discussion, let alone implementation, of an infrastructure triage plan is somewhere between negligible and none.

On an individual basis, I would suggest that one consider living in an area that was doing well with the infrastructure and energy consumption levels that we had in the Late Forties. Unfortunately, when one considers population growth, total US oil consumption, even at Late Forties per capita levels, would still be quite high. US per capita oil consumption in 1949 was 14.2 BO (barrels of oil) per person per year. In 1978, US consumption had increased to 30.8 BO, before beginning to decline. In 2005, the US consumed 25.6 BO, falling to 22.8 BO in 2009 (EIA & Census Bureau).

In terms of total volume consumed, in 1949 the US consumed 5.8 mbpd (million barrels per day), increasing to 20.8 mbpd in 2005, falling to 19.3 mbpd in 2009.

However, the US population has increased from 149 million people in 1949 to 309 million people in 2010. So, even if, or more likely when, US per capita consumption falls back to 1949 levels, the US would still be the world’s largest oil consuming country, consuming about 12 mbpd.

Interestingly enough, note that France’s per capita annual oil consumption in 2005 (12 BO, Nationmaster) was well below the US per capita annual oil consumption in 1949 (14.2 BO).

Therefore, as low as our per capita oil consumption was in 1949, it seems likely that a 1949 per capita consumption level will only be a milepost along our path to a much lower level of per capita oil consumption.

Obviously, given this outlook, trying to maintain a long commute in a gas guzzling SUV to a large suburban mortgage would not be advisable.

In early 2007, I outlined my advice for a post-Peak Oil environment in my “ELP Plan” essay. ELP stands for Economize, Localize, Produce. An excerpt from that essay follows:

In this article I will further expound on my reasoning behind the ELP plan, otherwise known as “Cut thy spending and get thee to the non-discretionary side of the economy.”

I have been advising for anyone who would listen to voluntarily cut back on their consumption, based on the premise that we were probably headed, in a post-Peak Oil environment, for a prolonged period of deflation in the auto/housing/finance sectors and inflation in food and energy prices.

To put our current rate of worldwide crude oil consumption in perspective, during George W. Bush’s first term, the world used about 10% of all crude oil that has been consumed to date, and based on our mathematical models, the world will use about 10% of our remaining conventional crude oil reserves during George W. Bush’s second term. . .

Recently people who have followed some version of the ELP plan, either because of my recommendations, or based on their own evaluation of the present environment, have had considerable reasons to be glad that they voluntarily downsized. So far, I have not heard any regrets from anyone who downsized.

Or, turn it around. Does anyone now wish that they had bought a large SUV and large suburban McMansion–all with 100% financing–on January 1, 2006?

In the ELP Plan essay, I recommended that readers:

(1) Try to live on half or less of current income;

(2) move to smaller, energy efficient housing, close to where one works, ideally along a mass transit line and

(3) become, work for, and/or invest in providers of essential goods and services. Perhaps something like the ELP Plan is the most sensible approach that one can take, as we begin the second decade of what is going to be a most “interesting” century.

[IB Editor's note: I agree that most people will live in “tiny homes and multifamily housing along electric mass transit lines" as the only way that to preserve some semblance of a civilized society. However, I would add that at one extreme of the mass transit line there will be open country (abandoned suburbs) and at the other a real city (with all buildings requiring elevators pretty much abandoned). In a century or two a new form of "natural" disaster will be the occasional toppling of a Sears or CitiBank tower.]

 
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