I have complained more than a few times about how the natural landscape in the U.S. has succumbed to sprawl and industrialization in support of our “car culture”, so I was surprised to read an article about how the U.S. has NOT changed all that much since 1960. Bill Steigerwald recently took a trip around the country along the “Steinbeck highway” to see for himself whether or not things have changed. He claims that the country is still “America the mostly beautiful”. I would have to agree that one can see similar things that were seen back in 1960. Qualitatively, the freeways out in fly-over country (outside of the mega cities) are still four lanes like they were back in 1960. The National Parks are the same. You can still find regional differences in cuisine and lifestyle. However, quantitatively, things have definitely changed. The cities are much larger. You have to drive much farther and look harder to find wide open landscapes and unique things. Almost all of this expansion has been of the cookie-cutter-subdivision-strip mall-gas station variety. Chain restaurants and big box stores are everywhere. You have to search and go out of your way to find unique restaurants and shops. Back in 1960, the “uniqueness” was apparent. Today it is not. Not only that, but the traffic is much worse. Unless you are driving through the Great Plains or Desert Southwest, you will encounter traffic all times of the day on freeways all the way down to the smallest town road. There are other things that are much worse nowadays (trash, food insecurity) but we do a good job of hiding them.

Everyday in the USA

It is my opinion that things have changed significantly since 1960 and for the worse – from the perspective of a farm kid growing up in the Wisconsin countryside. I am amazed at all the people who don’t mind being in debt, living in an over-sized house, and spending most of their lives stuck in traffic commuting 50 miles or more on a mega (polluted) freeway. Even more amazing is that influential people in our society have been demanding more and more of the same in order to stimulate economic “growth”. (See this past blog post about the Federal Reserve imploring people to buy and build more houses). Someone else who has been a big proponent of building more ”stuff” in order to stimulate” growth” is nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman. His general theme/suggestion for many years has been to just print and borrow money to build new stuff and we will get ”growth”. If “growth” means a perpetuation of the environmentally unsustainable car-culture we have, then we have gotten ”growth” in spades – and it is crumbling. So it was a breath of fresh air to see such an influential economist to retract a bit. He has finally noticed that “things have changed”. Apparently he is now noticing the technological progress I have been blogging about for years and hopefully you – dear reader – are better prepared for (better than world-leading economists, anyway). The essential Krugman epiphany is that GDP is no longer a good metric of the well-being of the workforce. When everything is automated, creating more “industrial age” stuff, does not create any more “industrial age” jobs. Even worse, using printed or borrowed money to build more “stuff” only leaves us with more to maintain, a mountain of debt (16 trillion and counting in the U.S. alone), and a devalued currency. (For a more scathing critique of Krugman, see here). I am sure economists who have been advocating debt-fueled industrial age growth policies for the last couple of decades were well-intentioned but the results have been horrible (IMO), especially from and environmental perspective, and even from a traditional human social-fabric perspective.

At least the word is getting out. Automation, technological progress, and software advances will affect almost every “job” on the planet and sooner than most people think. I am certainly not immune and I blogged about it here (a very good read, IMO). Another good read is this recent in depth article from Wired about how robotics are going to change the world. It is a fairly optimistic read about how people will still find jobs even as robots come to fill our factories, hospitals, and homes. I am not so optimistic about people finding rewarding future careers in a manner that has occurred in past economic revolutions. The new jobs will require greater creative problem solving skills and a deeper knowledge of science that most of the labor force does not possess – not even me. But that dos not mean I am pessimistic about the future of the world in general. There is a good chance the near future world will have an overabundance of material wealth. I am optimistic about the welfare of individuals but apprehensive about how our technology will change us. In sci-fi terms, the future looks less like Star Fleet and more like the Borg.

Have a swell Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Environment, Pollution, Technology

Just a couple of updates for today. You know I am excited for the arrival of self-driving cars. If airplanes (jet-liners) are any guide, then highways will soon be as safe as the skies when computers take over. Besides safety, there will also be major improvements in traffic flow and efficiency. It is a win-win-win in my view. Google has logged 300,000 miles with their self-driving cars and have not logged even 1 accident. They will soon have some of their employees commute to work by themselves in the self-driving cars.

So what could go wrong? A lot, actually. The cars will of course have to be tested more rigorously and there will have to be fail-safe options where the human passenger can take over driving in extreme situation. But besides that, there is also the fact that you will no longer be as in control as you once were. The computer driving the car will have more control over the speed you are going, the route you are taking, and how to react in potential accident situations. There is also the creepy aspect of “big-brother” (government) or hackers being able to take over your car and make it stop or drive you to prison or other potentially nefarious things. Also, people who enjoy driving and are good at it will of course feel a loss if they are no longer allowed to. Eric Peters goes into a long list of why he doesn’t like the thought of self-driving cars. In the end, I think the safety record of self-driving cars will win out and those who want to drive themselves will dwindle in number. Regulations (and insurance) will probably end up raising the cost of human driving so far that it becomes impractical. People in the U.S. will probably lament the most because we have such a love affair with our cars, but it won’t be that much different than getting on a train or airplane where you are not in control and computers operate them very safely.

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In case you were wondering about the Curiosity rover – not too many pictures yet. It will have to go through about a week of tests before it really starts exploring. I just hope it moves faster than the last two rovers. Opportunity has traveled quite a bit in 9 years of operation but it moved only at a snail’s pace – usually just a few feet a day. Curiosity is powered by nuclear decay which should last a couple years at least. If there is nothing interesting to see where it landed, hopefully it can quickly move/drive to a different place. It will be interesting to see if Curiosity can outlast Opportunity. All I have heard from mission planners thus far is that the nuclear power should last “years”.

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Noctilucent Clouds

On the subject of noctilucent clouds (see this past blog about it), scientists are converging on an answer of how they form. It seems meteor smoke might be mostly responsible. Volcanoes have created these clouds in the past but many that are being seen nowadays are probably be seeded by meteor smoke.

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I have been harping on growth lately and how, perhaps, traditional economic growth metrics that include paving over things and building more things are probably not a good measure of the true ”health” of the economy. Here is another blogger speculating that Best Buy’s (the electronics store) woes could be due to the crash of the exurbs and suburbs. Not only have house prices declined most aggressively in the suburbs, but there is a demographic shift going on that suggests the hey-day of strip malls and big box stores might be ending.

Have a swell Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Space, Technology

I couldn’t help but comment on a story we aired on WAOW-TV yesterday about the “orange barrel season” or road construction season. Some officials in the story were quoted as saying ‘we will be better off in the end/future’ – that the construction is necessary and traffic will be better off in the future.

I am here to say that is not true.

It is certainly not true for the amount of construction that occurs every year. In some instances, new roads and new designs can help with the flow of traffic – at least temporarily – but in the end the orange barrels just multiply like rabbits. Some people might live under the illusion that road construction today means less tomorrow, but that would fly in the face of math and logic. I can tell you with much certantity that I have witnessed more road construction every year of my life. It never decreases. It ALWAYS increases.

The reasons are simple. The population grows. Cities and suburbs grow. Roads become bigger and more numerous. They all wear out at a certain rate. More roads and more traffic means more construction every year. It is fait acompli. I detailed the positive feedback loop of more roads and suburban sprawl in The Concrete Life (also part 2 and part 3). Our current society (in the U.S.) is organized around the automobile. Unless someone invents an indestructible material with which to build roads and/or we move to more mass transit and/or the population begins to decline, it will be ever increasing construction every year into the future. The most disturbing trend I have seen in recent years is that more and more remote roads in northern Wisconsin with tiny volumes of traffic are being paved over. What were once easy and cheap maintenance gravel roads are becoming huge future tax liabilities. Paved roads require more expensive maintenance – and more orange barrels.

Is there any hope for the future? Yes. We may have recently seen “Peak Car” and “Peak Travel” here in the U.S. Younger generations are not buying cars or populating suburbs to the extent of earlier generations (also detailed here). Retiring baby boomers are moving closer together and closer to the services they need in urban areas to make retirement more enjoyable. These trends point to a distant future where the curse of the orange barrels might recede.

Lastly I want to make sure that I am not necessarily faulting the “officials” for trying to comfort people during the frustrating construction season. They know people will be angry with travel delays once Summer rolls around. They have to try and put a positive spin on things. Everyone who is complaining should look in the mirror if they want someone to blame. As long as citizens – in aggregate – choose to live in far flung suburbs and exurbs, choose to commute through snarled traffic an hour a day, choose to shop at strip malls situated on formerly productive farmland, then it will be road construction for as far as the eye can see, every year, forever.

Have a fine Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Environment, Pollution

Just a couple weeks ago I was extolling the virtues of natural gas as a bridge fuel to the future. Sure, from the perspective of AGW, it is not the perfect long term solution, but it is better than coal or oil and it is much cheaper (right now). I was heartened to read the other day that natural gas electric power generation in the U.S. has surged so much in recent years that it is getting close to even with coal. Coal currently generates 36.7% of our electricity while natural gas generates 29.4%. A revelation of the data is that the oft-cited statement that the U.S generates 50% of its electricity from coal is no longer true – not by a long shot. We are not a coal-electric country anymore. The electric cars on the road cannot accurately described as coal cars. Now I hope that we will also move away from fossil-fuel cars altogether, but that is a bigger challenge because electric cars are still quite expensive. The good news is that the technology works! Exibit A is the Tesla Model S sedan that achieves over 300 miles per charge – and it looks gorgeous. Add in future autonomous vehicles and road travel will not only be cleaner and more efficient but safer as well (cool video of the google car). Not everyone is all “jazzed” about more electronics coming too vehicles. Along with autonomous cars perhaps coming to roads near you, the U.S. government will require that all vehicles come installed with a black box starting in the year 2015. I agree it is kind-of creepy, that the government will be able to monitor your driving habits and where you are at all times in your vehicle. I know that the point is not to monitor people, but some authoritarian governments have been known to abuse spying powers throughout history, it is just a fact. So maybe the fact that more and more younger people are not driving and buying cars is a good thing. They can save a ton of money by not owning a car. Most urban centers have plenty of means for getting around town. Not moving out into the suburbs and buying a car means that you will not have to spend so much of your life stuck in traffic jams. Hopefully this trend will continue and there will be less pollution and smog from automobiles in the future. I get the fact that freedom and cars have seemingly gone hand-in-hand throughout much of American history, but things change, and I think this change (younger generations not buying carts) is one for the better. Here are a couple of more articles about the possible decline of the United States of Suburbia, often labeled by yours truly as sprawling environmental disasters. Article 1. Article 2.

But I digress. Back to the natural gas story, the main reason why power companies are switching to natural gas is because the price is quite low and the U.S. has a HUGE supply that could easily last decades (maybe peak oil is not such a big threat - something I have argued for years). People prefer low prices. An interesting survey recently found that a majority of Americans wouldn’t mind paying up to 13% more for electricity, if they knew it came from alternative sources. I doubt it. The reality is in the market. People want cheaper prices for the most part. That is why power companies are using nat gas more right now. If people were so willing to pay 13% more, power companies would have already made more of a move toward wind and solar.

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Now an update on the snowmelt contest. I walked up Rib Mountain to get a picture of the snow yesterday. There is still a sizable pile of snow but it is noticeably shrinking. The pictures probably do not do the melting justice. That being said, we are most likely a few days away from the winning date. Good luck to everyone who predicted dates in mid to late May.

Snow Picture from May 13thSnow Picture from May 13th