Hothouse Update

I had four solar electric panels I bought more than a decade ago.  I wrestled with whether I should use them.  I bought them when I was a strong advocate for "renewables".  I actually had three high quality solar hot water panels and controls that I traded for a high quality wood cook stove.  

The decision to use the photovoltaics was because I already had them.  I needed to buy a deep cycle battery and some controller/diverter electronics.  I think this will give the next generation to use our farm a leg up.  I had solar panels at my old place that had been up 22 years when I sold the place.  They appeared to be putting out the same amount of electricity as the day I installed them.  The weak link is the batteries and then the electronics. 

Yes, there is a  sense of being a hypocrite given my feelings about "renewables" simply being an extension of the fossil fuel stream.   However, given my feelings about fracking, tar sands, and deep ocean drilling, I am being hypocritical every time I drive, rototill and blow snow.  And so much more.  Damn.

We plan to use this set up at the hothouse/greenhouse to pump water using a 1/2 hp 12 volt motor on our pumpjack,
for  12 volt grow lights, and
when the batteries are full the load will switch to a 12 volt heater in the drying cabinet. 

See also:   http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2012/10/our-hothousegreenhouse.html  

 
  

Our hothouse/greenhouse

This is the work we did this year, 2012.  It will be both a greenhouse for growing and a drying area for preservation of food.  

The area next to the door is a screen opening for ventilation.  There is an insulated (R-11) panel covering it now for the colder times.  The chimney is a solar chimney.  Below the vents is a window facing south with a selective coated copper piece behind it.  This heats the air causing it to rise and creating a draw.  On the outside is a solar collector I made from materials I had from 35 years ago.  I just tested it.  The incoming air was 60 F, the out flow (and there was a noticeable flow) was 140 F.  There is a food drying cabinet below the chimney with 10 2’ x 3’ drying racks.  The collector will be connected to the food drying cabinet so it not only adds hot air but extends the length of the chimney creating more draw.

The skylights will have insulated panels for the freezing months.

The shed roof at the end has a well and water pump that irrigates our orchard and makes water available year round.  The well can be powered with 110, 12 volt dc or manually.  See: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/11/onthewaydown-1.html

We have had freezing nights and 3 days on no sun and the temperature has been 50 F or higher in the hothouse every morning.  The rocks in the front will be an herb garden.rocks in the front will be an herb garden.
It is a grand experiment and a steeeep learning curve.

It is a grand experiment and a steeeep learning curve.

Inside we have the drying cabinet beneath the chimney.  Here it is with shelves and closed.  On the one side is a small opening that will allow air directly from the room to enter.  Not built yet is the duct that will connect the solar panel to the drying cabinet.  The duct will have a door that either allows air to flow into the drying cabinet or allow the heated air to flow into the room.  The scaffolding allows us to work comfortably at the drying cabinet.  It will be used for other purposes as we learn.  (The color of the walls is white but the light off the green wood acts strange?)

 

Suck it up.

This has been on many of the mailing lists about energy, resources and climate that I follow:

“The latest from Guy McPherson... is his saddest yet

30. August 2012

http://guymcpherson.com/

“What are we fighting for?”

In my latest essay in this space I mentioned two phenomena worth fighting for: the living planet and freedom based in anarchy. I surrender. I no longer believe the struggle matters on either front. I no longer think we’ll save the remaining shards of the living planet beyond another human generation. We’ll destroy every — [...]”

Others echoed this position. This is my response.

We can grieve our potential demise as a species. We may cause it. Species come and go. Mortality is a bitch.

But living isn't. It is great joy.

I play cribbage with the senior citizens in my town. At 69, I am the youngest. One of their sayings, "You want some cheese with that whine."

Two of my local friends are farmers. They are both in their 80s. They just stopped milking this year. He has been legally blind since early childhood. Has a rope strung to the barn. I rototill their garden so she can grow their food. They still will cut hay because in is their way. They revel in living.

Because of stupidity, I have emphysema and hardened lungs from radiation that saved me from cancer. When I work, I will often and episodically have to been over to catch my breath. I don't stop working, I revel in it.

We, my partner and I, are building a growing system with rotational fields, trees, berry bushes, large root cellar, new hot house for growing and drying food. Wells that can be worked with human power all for the next generation. We have one young man working with us. We had some 20 somethings visit this summer and they want to come back and volunteer (we will see). I am planting trees and bushes the odds are I may not see come to fruition. If it goes to hell, there is not a damn thing I can do about it. I love the learning, the creating, the work.

We will continue our population stupidity, it is the nature of the beast (all life).

We will continue gorging ourselves on the resource of the earth because it is the nature of the beast (all life).

We will continue to play the us and them game because we are a social animal, we need to belong, we need to have answers no matter how absurd for a sense of control and we will find scapegoats among the "them" because it is the nature of this particular beast.

We will continue to have unintended consequences arising from our acts seemingly well intended and innocuous, again it is the nature of this particular "too smart for our own good" beast.

We will continue to have inequity in power/resource availability whenever we become larger than the gatherer and hunter group size (30 to 200) that we evolve into and lived with for 99% of our existence. Life does not give out the candy of brain and/or brawn fairly. It is the nature of how things shake things out.

I have lived at an incredible time in human history. So many opportunities. So much to enjoy. I am alive because of high tech medicine. I thrive at the knowledge available to me to learn about so much and celebrate the men and women who have contributed to that knowing.

I know I have done it on the backs of others and on the back of "mother" earth. We in the USofA (and much of the west and the rich everywhere else) have benefitted from the rape of others lands, from military incursion when it will be good for business, assassination when necessary and so many other atrocities.

Now it is coming home to roost.

Suck it up.

John Weber

Curmudgeon of Northern Minnesota

Willful Blindness, Willful Hypocrisy, You first. What’s your spin?

Here’s the deal. Research reveals that we lie to ourselves. Not you and I of course, but others do prolifically. Willful Blindness is one of various books and research papers that verify this. We seem to fool ourselves for a variety of reasons. Two of the main reasons, one is self protective and the other is social protective.

From Margaret Heffernan’s Willful Blindness:

“People are highly driven to do things that build self-worth; you can’t transgress and think of yourself as bad. You need to protect your sense of yourself as good. And so people transform harmful practices into worthy ones, by coming up with social justification, by distancing themselves with euphemisms, by ignoring the long-term consequences of their actions. “

Heffernan, Margaret. 2011. Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril. Walker. N.Y. pg. 195.

This is something that I have known for a long time. Here is a quote from my journal written when I was around twelve years of age. It is from a book on psychology but I don’t know which. I started reading psychology books at eleven – Freud, Havelock Ellis, Kraft-Ebing, Jung, etc. Yes, I have always been strange. I didn’t know to copy references at that age.

“We build up a picture of ourselves; hence, we come to expect certain things from ourselves, to value ourselves and to do everything possible to keep this idealized picture of ourselves unspoiled.”

The social protective is our very human need to belong. The essence of being human is being a social animal. We must learn the rules of our particular game early – language, emotional display, right, wrong, and most importantly how to belong. We carry this early training (shaping) with us our whole life. Without it we do not survive physically or psychologically.

“As the pioneering psychopharmacologist Jaak Panksepp put it, ‘social affect and social bonding are in some fundamental neurochemical sense opioid addictions.’ In other words, our desire to seek social connection with others comes from chemical rewards as well as social ones.”

Heffernan, Margaret. 2011. Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril. Walker. N.Y. pg. 132.

Endorphins: Endorphins ("endogenous morphine") are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters.[1] They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise,[2] excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm,[3][4] and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorphin

. . . the general argument is that we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others. To fool others, we may be tempted to reorganize information internally in all sorts of improbable ways and to do so largely unconsciously. . . . the primary function of self-deception is offensive – measured as the ability to fool others.

Trivers, Robert. 2011. The Folly of Fools. Basic Books. N.Y.

Here is the point of this. There is lots of information about the convergence of serious problems. There is lots of information – books, articles, internet, meetings – on these problems and the solutions.

“. . . A lot of people think we were facing our last century as a viable civilization, maybe even as a species. Global warming, overpopulation, the death of he seas, the loss of arable land, the proliferation of disease, the threat of nuclear or biological warfare . . .”

“We might have destroyed ourselves but at least it would have been our own fault.”

“Would it, though? Whose fault exactly? Yours? Mine? No, it would have been the result of several billion humn beings making relatively innocuous choices: to have kids, drive a car to work, keep their job, solve the short-term problems first. When you reach the point at which even the most trivial acts are punishable by the death of the species, then obviously, obviously, you’re at a critical juncture, a different kin of point of no return.”

Wilson, Robert Charles. 2005. Spin. Tom Doherty Associates Book. N.Y. pg.127-128.

In essence few if any of us are really doing a damn thing about it. We all have our spin.

From the Energy Round Table – a quote from the moderator and in italics a poster:

"Hitting the gas pedal decades ago is not something that

I think anyone who understood the problem would have

done. Why would anyone with half a brain make a plan

that severely damaged the biosphere of the planet that

their descendants would have to live (or die) on??"

Bill Tamblyn – Moderator

If we don't use all the water, someone else will.

If we don't use the oil, someone else will.

If we don't burn the coal, someone else will.

If we don't spread GMO crops, someone else will.

If we don't make more babies, someone else will.

If we don't waste the biosphere, someone else will.

If hitting the oil or coal or baby or gas pedal

gets me ahead or more status, then I must do it.

Was this a plan or lots of little plans?

More likely we just can't help ourselves?

Does tragedy of the commons fit here?

Arlen Comfort

My partner in answer to using a banana each day at breakfast and buying strawberries grown a thousand miles away said, “But I don’t buy roses.” Friends, who I love dearly and who are very environmentally and energy conscious, have a business totally dependent on driving to supply it and tourism for its success. They modified their distribution paths and feel they have made a significant change.

WHAT IS YOUR SPIN?

Let’s be clear. Every mile we drive supports fracking, tar sands, pollution of the oceans, underground water, rivers, the air, and our food. Each meeting we attend to save the earth from whatever surely makes us feel good. Each thing we write, each time we talk about this, we are playing the Transactional Analysis game – “Ain’t it Awful?”.

Each of the maybe billion of us at the top of the energy/resource heap are rushing towards the cliff. I do not to excuse myself from the spinning. This from one of my other essays:

Just say I.

I am polluting our ground water by using the natural gas from fracking. I am creating havoc in the oceans by spilling life-killing oil. I am also plasticizing the oceans. I am also limiting or eliminating species after species in the ocean, on the land, in the air. I am putting my medicines into the rivers and the water supply. I am greedily creating food sources that only I control. I am removing the topsoil. I am gouging huge holes in the earth. I am burning coal and creating nuclear waste for thousands of years to come for my flat screen television, my computer and my DVD player. I am putting mercury and acids into the air, water and life. I am melting the ice caps and the glaciers. I am heating the planet to drive my snowmobile, my wave runner, and my four-wheeler and to drive to any damn place I want. I am using many people to cater to my many whims.

I saw the DVD “What a Way to Go” yesterday. It was very well done in listing the freight train laden with our woes coming straight at us. The many speakers continually said, “we are doing this” and “we are doing that”. They must have been talking about me. Because I am aware of these things and more and I keep doing it.

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/just-say-i.html

John Weber

Busy in Northern Minnesota doing all these things and more.

So enjoy while you can. I am.

Some internet sources:

http://climateandenergynews.zparking.net/

http://www.peakoil.com/

http://www.energybulletin.net/

http://guymcpherson.com/

My site: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/

Abelson, Robert P. 2004. Experiments with people : revelations from social psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum. Mahwah, N.J.

Bayne, Tim and Fernández.Jordi, editors. 2009. Delusion and self-deception : affective and motivational influences on belief formation. Psychology Press. New York.

Berne, Eric. 1964. Games people play : the psychology of human relationships. Grove Press. New York.

Berners-Lee. Mike. 2011. How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Greystone. Vancouver.

Cumpsty. John S. 1991. Religion as Belonging. University Press of America. N.Y.

Fonseca, Eduardo Giannetti da. 2000. Lies we live by : the art of self-deception. St. Martin’s Press. New York.

Gianetti, Eduardo. 1997. Lies We Live By: The Art of Self-Deception. Bloomsbury. N.Y.

Hirstein, William. 2005. Brain fiction : self-deception and the riddle of confabulation. MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass.

Keyes, Ralph. 2004. The Post-truth Era. St. Martin’s Press. N.Y.

Kurzban, Robert. 2010. Why everybody (else) is a hypocrite. Princeton.

Lockard, Joan S. and Paulhus, Delroy L. Editors. 1988. Self-Deception: An Adaptive Mechanism. Prentice Hall. New Jersey.

Mele, Alfred R. 2001. Self-deception unmasked. Princeton University Press. Princeton, N.J.

Triandis, Harry Charalambos. 2009. Fooling ourselves : self-deception in politics, religion, and terrorism. Praeger Publishers. Westport, Conn.

Twerski, Abraham J. 1997. Addictive thinking : understanding self-deception. Hazelden. Center City, MN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

“. . . The farther removed we become from our neighbors, the more siloed in our self-sufficiency, the easier it is to treat people as things, to turn a blind eye to the human costs of toxic cultures and to make immoral decisions.

LIES

Credibility gap

Reframing

Terminological inexactitudes (Winston Churchill’s)

Poetic truth

Parallel truth

Nuanced truth

Imaginative truth

Virtual truth

Alternative reality

Strategic misrepresentations

Creative enhancement

Nonfull disclosure

Selective disclosure

Augmented reality

Nearly true

Almost true

Counterfactural statements

Fact-based information

TO LIE

Enrich the truth

Enhance the truth

Embroider the truth

Massage the truth

Tamper with the truth

Tell more than the truth

Bend the truth

Soften the truth

Shade the truth

Shave the truth

Stretch the truth

Stray from the truth

Withhold the truth

Tell the truth improved

Present the truth in a favorable perspective

Make things clearer than the truth

Be lenient with honesty

Spin

Keyes, Ralph. 2004. The Post-truth Era. St. Martin’s Press. N.Y. pg.15-16.

Our New Greenhouse

When it is done, I will provide actual pictures. My friend and building budding put this mock up together.

Nuclear Power

I received this email:

Hello,

I read your SunWeb blog. What are your thoughts on nuclear power, including fusion and fission power?

As for fusion, it has been ten years away - for decades. The best place for fusion is on the sun and the best way to use it is photosynthesis and passive solar. In other words, the sun provides energy through plant foods, animal foods, animal power, wood, some biomass, windmills (non electric) and well-designed structures.

There are four major reasons that I don’t support nuclear fission power now or in our future.

The first is simply, nuclear fission would not exist without fossil fuels. I mean the research, experimentation, testing, construction, maintenance, storage and decommissioning. It is an extension of the fossil fuel supply system. Both the economy and fossil fuel energy availability and cost will challenge present reactors. Without fossil fuels, nuclear power stations will not be built and will represent a serious danger over and above the danger the waste currently presents.

DNA India 2012-03-13: Eighty percent of the world's nuclear power plants are more than 20 years old, raising safety concerns, a draft UN report says a year after Japan's Fukushima disaster. Many operators have begun programmes, or expressed their intention, to run reactors beyond their planned design lifetimes, said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) document which has not yet been made public. "There are growing expectations that older nuclear reactors should meet enhanced safety objectives, closer to that of... more »

http://article.wn.com/view/2012/03/13/Older_nuclear_plants_pose_safety_challenge_IAEA/

The danger of waste is the second reason. The thousands of years required to allow some of the waste to become non-toxic requires a stability in the world of which history shows no evidence.

Nuclear power is seen by nuclear utilities and congress as such a risk that:

The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (commonly called the Price-Anderson Act) is a United States federal law, first passed in 1957 and since renewed several times, which governs liability-related issues for all non-military nuclear facilities constructed in the United States before 2026. The main purpose of the Act is to partially indemnify the nuclear industry against liability claims arising from nuclear incidents while still ensuring compensation coverage for the general public. The Act establishes a no fault insurance-type system in which the first approximately $12.6 billion (as of 2011) is industry-funded as described in the Act. Any claims above the $12.6 billion would be covered by a Congressional mandate to retroactively increa

se nuclear utility liability or would be covered by the federal government. At the time of the Act's passing, it was considered necessary as an incentive for the private production of nuclear power — this was because electric utilities viewed the available liability coverage (only $60 million) as inadequate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price–Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

Nuclear operators are not liable for the entire costs of their own nuclear accidents, and the financial burden for this risk is inappropriately transferred to taxpayers. Since corporations under Price- Anderson are only responsible for around two percent of the estimated cost of a serious accident, nuclear power corporations can largely ignore (from a financial perspective) the dangers that reactors impose on American communities.

www.citizen.org/documents/Price-Anderson-Factsheet.pdf

The story of the Price-Anderson Act

: how Congress made nuclear power financially viable in the U.S. by eliminating accountability for risk.

http://legalplanet.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-story-of-the-price-anderson-act-how-congress-made-nuclear-power-financially-viable-in-the-u-s-by-eliminating-accountability-for-risk/

Chernobyl and Fukushima speak for themselves as the third reason. They are the Black Swans (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) we can perhaps imagine, but not predict. One was direct human error; one was natural catastrophe with of course indirect human error. How many more? These are some of the unintended consequences of nuclear.

Each of the above are premium and primary reasons why I do not support nuclear power; however, there is a fourth that is truly my main reason. We humans, as a group and as most individuals, are not smart enough, wise enough, moral enough or mature enough to handle such power. All technology carries with it the unintended consequences mentioned above. We rush blindly into technological innovation because it will make life “easier”, it will immensely benefit some economically and we simply can not predict the complex effects.

Dillworth, Craig. 2010. Too Smart for Our Own Good. Cambridge Univ. London.

McCorriston, J. & Hole, F. 1991. “The Ecology of Seasonal Stress and Origins of Agriculture in the Near East.” American Anthropologist. V. 93. p. 46-49.

There is also the continued tendency of power technologies to be more centralized, demanding more draconian control measures and creating a dependency that makes humans beholden to the power distribution brokers. I find this an unhealthy trend.

Our human tendency of creating US-against-THEM thinking to strengthen our sense of identity and belonging adds a dangerous component to all potential technologies of such intrinsic power.

Eller, Jack. 2006. Violence and Culture. Thomson. Canada.

Eller, Jack David. 2010. Cruel Creed, Virtuous Violence. Prometheus. N.Y.

Avalos, Hector. 2005. Fighting Words. Prometheus. New York.

Berreby, David. 2005. Us and them : understanding your tribal mind. New York : Little, Brown and Co.

Cumpsty, John. 1991. Religion As Belonging. University Press of America. N.Y.

Docker, John. 2008. The Origins of Violence: Religion, History and Genocide. University of New South Wales.

Kiernan, Ben. 2007. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale Univ. New Haven.

Rozenblit, Bruce. 2008. Us against them : how tribalism affects the way we think. Kansas City, MO : Transcendent Publications.

Volkan, Vamik. 2004. Blind Trust. Pitchstone. Virginia.

Wellman, James. 2007. Belief and Bloodshed. Rowman and Little. N.Y.

Wentz, Richard. 1993. Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion. Mercer University Press. Georgia.

It is clear to me sustainability is a living process and a process of living. Nuclear does not fit this process.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I was born in Deland, Florida, on April 7, 1943.  I grew up in Hialeah, Florida.  During the fourth grade I was in a combined fourth and fifth grade class.  I participated in both so was advanced directly to the sixth grade.  At the age of eight I started a lawn mowing business that was year round in Florida.  By the time I graduated from Miami Jackson High School I had worked at various jobs including movie usher, at a fast food drive-in and summers loading trucks in a warehouse.   Along with keeping up with my studies and the working, at the age of 13 I made Eagle Scout, one of only four in the United States to accomplish this at that age.

I attended the University of Florida to study psychology but after a semester and a half I became restless, quit school and roamed around the south until 1961 when I joined the Air Force.  After having high entrance testing results and further testing I was placed in intelligence and sent to Indiana University to study Russian.  Not being a good match for the work in intelligence, I was transferred to photography.  

I spent the rest of my military career at McCord AFB in Tacoma, Washington.  Once, they removed the double doors from a Gooney Bird the C-47, put ropes across, roped me to it and flew at a slant while I took pictures of an airfield.  Prior to being discharged, I was in charge of the photo lab and had 11 people under him, all of whom outranked him.  During his time in the service, I had night jobs and also picked up college courses at the University of Puget Sound.

After the Air Force, I had a desire to learn about either marine biology or anthropology, interests gained from reading during the service.  I went back to Miami, went to night school and worked full theme at the University of Miami Marine Lab on Key Biscayne.  Deciding on anthropology (the scientific study of the origin and of the physical, social and cultural development and behavior of humans) I attended Florida State University and graduated in 1968.  To pay my way, I had three jobs along with the GI Bill and some scholarships.  I worked at the university pool on the weekends, at the anthropology department and as night auditor at the Holiday Inn.

After getting my degree, I went back to Miami and found a job with a linguist at the University of Miami. The linguist had done communication work with porpoises along side Lilly, who wrote Mind of the Dolphin and THE Human Biocomputer.  My boss and I recorded sounds from porpoises and killer whales at the Miami Seaquarium.   I had the opportunity to swim with seals and wild porpoises.  After a while this grant ran out. I still had an interest in anthropology especially in the field of religion and medicine.  I went to work with Julia Morton (an internationally famous botanist) at the Morton Collectania on the University of Miami campus.

In 1968 while fishing in Biscayne Bay, I was looking at the Miami skyline, thinking about how civilization took away too much of the humanity of too many and stuffed us into areas with too many of our own kind and not enough connection to the natural world.  I had a strong realization that civilization, as we know it today cannot endure.  It was at that time in 1968 that I decided to “go back to the land”.  In this quest, I traveled to Mexico (six months), and then to Oregon were I purchased a house and lived for two and a half years.  I also visited Hawaii for three months where people I knew from the porpoise research lived.  I sold the Oregon house and went looking for land, finally ending up in Central Minnesota in 1973.

In 1972, Limits to Growth came out.  So besides not being healthy for humans psychologically, sociologically or spiritually, I learned we are creating an unsustainable, environmentally devastating and devastated world.
 Further reading reinforced my knowledge from an ecological and environmental perspective -  Energy for Survival by Wilson Clark, Energy Basis for Man and Nature by Howard T. Odum and Elisabeth C. Odum, The Fires of Culture by Carol E Steinhart.

In Central Minnesota, I purchased 93 acres outside of Long Prairie with money from the sale of the Oregon house.  I built a home having never done construction and my first winter dumped one of the largest snowstorms in Minnesota history.   Not being completely finished, it rarely got above 50 degrees in the home all winter.  I remembers my third winter in my home, this Florida boy who didn’t see snow until I was eighteen, when I ran out of wood in March and had to lasso dead branches out of trees to stay warm and cook.  In my home, I used kerosene lamps and cooked on a 1935 copper-clad wood cook stove that I got for $25.  I heated with a wood heater I helped to build and pumped my water up to a retaining tank for gravity feed around the home.

During my first year in my new home, I made a deal with a neighbor farmer that I would work for him if the farmer would feed me one meal a day. I cleaned calf barns, helped milk, tore down a tractor, and threw silage down.   All of this work taught me a deep respect for our old time farmers

I purposely built without electricity and lived that way the first ten years because I do not believe nuclear waste should be our legacy to the future. In 1974, I went to work for the Tri County Community Action Program out of Little Falls, Minnesota, where I wrote the first proposal and ran the first Low Income Weatherization Program in Minnesota.  In this proposal I put in a small part to build window box solar collectors.  From this solar connection, I built a business called Creative Alternatives where I designed, tested, manufactured, and installed solar panels.  I had ten dealers around the state.  I built a garage on my land near the road where I brought in electricity to build the solar hot air panels. 

THE 70s was a busy decade for me.  Besides running my solar business, I was elected chairperson of the Solar Resource Advisory Panel for three years, which advised the state and organized solar activities.  I also sat on the Mid-America Solar Energy Complex, a federal project with headquarters in the Twin Cities.  Also during this time I went back to school to get a degree in psychology from St. Cloud University.  I did all my work at home using kerosene lamps.

In 1983, I erected a wind generator built in 1935 that I found for $300. I also put up some solar panels.  I spent more time forty feet in the air trying to get the generator working then I did getting electricity from it.  During the next years I went through three generators and bought more panels.  I had a small inverter to run my computer and other appliances like a vacuum cleaner.  I lived on approximately 1-kilowatt hour a day. Most homes use 20kWh a day or more. 

In 1983, I decided to leave the solar business and use my psychology degree.  In 1985, I received my license.  I sectioned off a part of the garage and built an office.  Many of my clients were women who had experienced childhood abuse.  I received referrals from Todd County Social Services and ultimately my business was word of mouth.  During this time I was asked to work under contract with a program at the St. Francis Center in Little Falls, Minnesota.  Women of all Catholic orders came in from all over the world for nine months of spiritual and psychological growth and development.  I facilitated three groups of approximately ten women in each group once a week.  I also worked with the director on more difficult cases.   All the staff were Sisters except for me nor was I Catholic.   I feel this was one of the most important and growthful experiences of my life.   The women were absolutely amazing.

In 2003, I was diagnosed with severe lung cancer and given a few weeks to live.  While receiving extremely harsh radiation treatment and chemotherapy for seven weeks, I still continued to split wood because it was March and I needed it for cooking and heating.  My neighbors did come over and help me out considerably.   The Sisters drove me to treatment every day for the seven weeks even though by this time I no longer worked at the program.

During treatment, I asked to see a regular picture of his CT Scan.  I had them put this on a CD and created a picture using my computer.  From this I contacted the Coburn Cancer Center Foundation hoping to make T shirts for kids to wear.   This led me to the drug prevention program at the St. Cloud Hospital.  For the next two years, while still recovering from treatment I went around the state talking to over 2000 youngsters about not smoking.  I also by myself purchased billboard signs showing a picture of my cancer tumor and a plea “Do Not Smoke.”   Several of the students at schools where I spoke held bake sales and with the help of the Lions Club put up additional billboards. The American Lung Association out of Duluth also paid for a billboard when I went to Duluth to speak to classes.  The last of these could be seen on Highway 200 going east from the casino.  It was take down after five years (when I only paid for one.)

My neighbor went with me to my student presentations and video taped it.  The neighbor then created a DVD of the presentation.   This DVD is in various countries of the world including the following: Brazil, South Africa, England, Switzerland, Norway, Japan, Australia and around the United States.  Having survived cancer and its treatment, I am in remission and doing fabulously.

Just prior to his cancer, I reduced my psychological practice to two days a week because of the toll that hearing so much pain takes on a person.   I began developing websites and doing graphics.  I joined the board of Central Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association.   Through them I put on two conferences in 2000 and 2001 on Alternative Energy and Global Warming respectively.

I sold my place near Long Prairie in 2004 and moved with my partner, Kathryn Wagner, to live on Wabedo Lake where we have a 3kWh solar electric grid-thee system that gives electricity to the home.  When there is extra juice it feeds the electricity back into the power line.   We also have a garden and we recently built a greenhouse at the lake home.  

We are bought a piece of land near us. We have developed an orchard and a truck garden.  We put in fencing and reconditioned the small home there.  A well was put in that uses a pumpjack like in the old time so that it can ultimately be powered by solar panels and a 1/2 horsepower 12 volt DC motor or a bicycle with a pulley to the pumpjack.   We put in irrigation and worked up an area for blueberries where we now have 400 plants to be a pick-your-own enterprise.  We are also developing a specialty potato business.

Although I used solar and wind, I believe these are at best transitional technologies.  We will ultimately live at a much simpler, less energy intensive per capita level.  Solar and wind require equipment that requires mining, refining, manufacturing and transporting.  All of these processes rely on fossil fuels.   This actually makes these sources of energy not renewable.   A horse is renewable, an oak tree is renewable.  Ultimately, any source of energy we use must be able to renew itself.  I believe that our children and certainly their children will live not in Star Trek, but far simpler.

I refer to King Hubbard, a petroleum geologist for Shell Oil who wrote a paper in 1956 predicting that the ability of the US to produce oil would peak in 1970 and decline there after.  Except for Prudoe Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, which only added two additional years, the ability of the U.S. to produce oil has been on the decline.  Petroleum geologists have continued this work looking at world oil peaking.   All the data coming from multiple researches indicates easily accessible petroleum peaked in 2005 and petroleum from many sources peaked in 2008.  Now we are “scrapping the bottom of the barrel” with fracking, tar sands and deep ocean drilling to get the dregs that are expensive not only energy and financial costs but also environmental devastation. I say beware of snake oil and fantastic claims that do not hold up under the scrutiny of geology and physics. The way we live today is a global web so to maintain this lifestyle any solutions we consider must be global.

I feel my life has been a wonderful adventure including the experience of the cancer and the four stents they put into his arteries the year after cancer treatment.  I wished often that I could share the joy of being alive with the young people I spoke with about not smoking.  I am concerned that, like I denied the seriousness of smoking, people are ignoring, denying or finding other psychological defenses to avoid accepting the convergence of so many issues that will change the way we live. 

In November of 2015, I went into the hospital for an operation on my lungs.  The first one didn't take and they had to repeat within a week.  I laid on my back for the month of November with two huge tubes coming out of my back.  Then I was totally bed ridden for December and January.  Finally I am coming around to much more activity.  I am on oxygen 24/7 but have gotten the gardens rototilled and lots of other work done.  This is the second time I have had to fight back.  Whew.