Goodbye ecomafia

On December 18th, 2011, I let my domain name ecomafia.com expire. I first registered it twelve years ago. Even though it has expired, the registrar still has it pointing at this blog, which is where I've had it pointed since I discontinued my Website a year ago. I'll be curious to see if someone else decides it is worth buying for any reason, and when the forwarding will get turned off. Below is my slightly edited explanation of why I chose the name. This explanation used to be posted on the Website.

The idea of "Ecomafia" sprouted on the Negit Islands during summer 1999 CaliforniaGull research. I think it was Justin's idea, but

Seven Solstices

Mike Klapp and I spent seven solstices in a row together watching the sun rise somewhere in the Mono Basin. Well, actually two specific locations: Warren Bench and Black Point. Not the sun, us. This was a grand solstice tradition by the time it ended when Mike

California Utilities Still Freeloading on Independent Solar Power Producers

The state government is still being controlled by the big utilities, preventing full reimbursement for small power producers with Net Energy Metering contracts.

In 2001 I installed Mono County's first solar photovoltaic grid intertie on my Lee Vining home. The electricity was accounted for through "net metering," which means that during a one-year period, you subtract the energy you produce from what you use and pay for what is left--what you used that you did not generate. Typically the net use is positive, meaning you use more than you produce and have to pay a bill at the end of the year. State incentives are designed to create systems that aren't oversized, and prior to this year if you generated more than you produced--a negative net use--your bill would be zeroed out and you would start the next year without a credit.

One remarkable year that happened to me. I really

Boycott Chase Bank

I've never been harassed quite in this way by a bank before. My address changed six months ago and during those six months Chase has sent me 15 pieces of unsolicited mail--that is about one every other week. It is extremely annoying, and when I realized in September that they weren't just going to stop on their own, I called their privacy center at 888-868-8618. They told me I'd be removed from their list, but to allow 90 days for mailings already started to get through their system.

The unsolicited mail (two types of offers 7x each) from Chase Bank I've received during the last 6 months after I moved.

My Dentist's Advice: Eat Ice Cream and All the Halloween Candy You Can (and Exercise, Eating Right, and Brushing are Optional)

I went to my new dentist on Halloween. Yeah, I thought that was funny too. I bought and ate a doughnut afterwards but didn't eat any Halloween candy.

They make their new patients that drive take a test. If you park in the parking lot, you see a sign that has an arrow to the left that says "Back Entrance" for Dr. Herschleb. He isn't listed under "Front Entrance" with the right arrow. When you get to the back entrance, you see only a couple of doctors' names on a small door--with all those doctors listed on the left, there must be another entrance--so you keep walking around the building until you get to the front entrance, which lists all the doctors. It wasn't until I just wrote this a day later that I realized the "Front" and "Back" labels next to the arrows atop the two columns of doctor names on the sign on the parking lot side are not headings for the doctors listed beneath. My wife had the same trouble when she first went to this dentist a few months ago. Don't get me going on poorly-designed signs... I've got another whole blog post in my head about confusing signs at Samuel P. Taylor State Park. It is kind of like designing a Website--some people just shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of making and placing signs, and when they do the rest of us must suffer.

So after managing to figure out how to get into the building, and waiting for the mandatory waiting period for seeing a doctor, I really liked the guy.

Fixing Prop 13

I've always tried to think of ways to bring down housing costs. Houses should be places to live, not investments. Just like high gold prices right now are too expensive for people that actually use gold, if you took the speculation out of the housing market, housing prices might actually be affordable for people that need a house just for living in.

The economic downturn combined with my planned move to Marin County (and knowing that it would be difficult to afford to buy a house here) had me writing a letter to the Mono County Board of Supervisors last year. I proposed

Getting to Know the Local Environmentalists, Part 1: Under One Sky

Last week I attended "Under One Sky: Climate Change and Your Back Yard." It was a climate change discussion sponsored by the Environmental Forum of Marin and Transition Mill Valley at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley. As I walked in the door, I was handed a flyer for "Norman Solomon for congress" by a grizzle-bearded gentleman that told me the candidate isn't accepting any corporate campaign contributions. "Sounds good to me," I thought as I took the flyer, "and also impressive he has dedicated volunteers that aren't dressed and groomed like Jehovah's Witnesses." I looked at the flyer while waiting for the event to start, and liked what I saw. Before sitting down, I spoke to a woman about what "Transition Mill Valley" was, and she told me about some of their upcoming events.

After some preliminaries and inspiring music (this youtube video isn't what they played but you'll get the idea), John Wick of the Nicasio Native Grass Ranch and the Marin Carbon Project gave a very enjoyable and detailed presentation of his work on ranching, carbon sequestration, and

Fall Colors... in July

The fall colors start on the coast in July. This year, I first noticed poison oak turning red on July 25th. Not a lot, but individual leaves on certain plants. The grass was already yellow, and the smell of mid-summer dust on the trails was in the air.

California Bay are evergreen, however there always seem to be scattered yellow leaves within a tree's canopy, which remind me of Christmas Tree decorations. These yellow leaves seem to fall more in earnest in August, piling up on the ground and on the trails beneath the trees and drifting into mini-debris jams at the riffles in the creek. It doesn't seem like the foliage in the tree looks any different, even though the yellow leaves seem to fall more frequently now than in early summer.

California Buckeye is

Tiptoeing up a mountain

The most careful mountaineers are the ones that wear sandals. I realized this two weeks ago when I was on my way up Mt. Warren, in the Inyo National Forest just east of Yosemite National Park--in my Chaco sandals.

Rising Air

This is the wettest place I've ever lived--over 44 inches of rainfall per year on average. Even a year with only half of average rainfall here would be wetter than the average rainfall of any place I've ever lived. This is the farthest west that I've ever lived and the farthest north I've ever lived in this hemisphere.

On the isohyetal map of West Marin in the "Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula" by Jules G. Evens, it shows 50+ inches of rainfall in the Kent Reservoir watershed. It really increases dramatically from Pt. Reyes, with only about 12 inches of rain a year at the lighthouse. I've moved from a rain shadow, where a reversed-but-similar-magnitude gradient exists east of the Sierra crest (close to 40 inches near the crest to 12 inches near Lee Vining), to an orographic hotspot. I'm now living on the wetter end of that gradient.

Peter was telling me about how the wettest area in Marin County is

Watershed Stories

For most of the last sixteen years I lived twelve miles from the divide separating my terminal-basin watershed from that of the Pacific Ocean. I am a mountaineer, striving to live like John Muir did. The high peaks that he climbed at the top of Yosemite's watershed sheltering the living glaciers so intently studied by him were the same ones that I climbed at the top of mine.

I lived so close to that divide that I climbed many of those peaks from my home without the aid of fossil fuel--once I

The Obama Administration creates another job overseas

May 4th, 2011:

Fair use is limited to reproduction on social media. To purchase permission for any other use, please contact Greg Reis by commenting on this post.

Japanese Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima

I'm not a nuclear expert, but I do specialize in environmental impact avoidance, mitigation, and restoration. So I'm always looking at the relationship between humans and the environment, especially during disasters.

As we watch the nuclear disaster go from bad to worse following the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, I've been shocked and disappointed by the efforts of the media to downplay the risks. It reminds me of the propaganda of the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq war--easy to see through as B.S., if you are paying attention.

Expert after expert from the nuclear industry has appeared on CNN and the other news networks telling us not to worry, downplaying the disaster with almost a cavalier attitude. It seems like in the absence of reliable information, the one talking point everyone agreed on was to try to avoid saying anything that could cause a panic--regardless of whether panicking was necessary or a good idea.

The news reports go from bad to worse and the information gets revised daily.

John Muir

I aspire to live like John Muir. He really knew what true freedom is. I've read most of his works and attempted to copy some of his adventures (like his first ascent of the Mountaineer's Route on Mt. Whitney and his ascent of Mt. Ritter minus the near-death part). And he was fallible--it is interesting to read some of his stuff on Central Valley irrigated agriculture; and his thoughts on preventing fire have turned out to be harmful in the long run. Following are some of my favorite John Muir quotes.

"I am losing the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains and learn the news." --Muir, as quoted by Samuel Hall Young in Alaska Days with John Muir

"No two streams are alike. I fancy I could discriminate between Merced water and all others. Merced water is one thing, Tuolumne another, Kings River another, while town water, deadened and lost, is nothing--not water at all." --August, 1875

"The common purity of Nature is

Apothegms

Nuclear power is "so uneconomical that it is cheaper to write off a newly built nuclear plant than to run it." --Amory Lovins, 1992

A poignant quote in light of Japan's nuclear disaster--not that they needed a man-made disaster on top of two natural ones. Not that anyone needs a technology that is so potentially dangerous in the hands of humans, whether it be the hands of terrorists, governments, or power companies--requiring loss of freedom and excess militarization to lock it up as well as we can against any threat. Now insuring nuclear plants will get even more expensive, and our government will insist on continuing to subsidize it instead of spending the money on safe renewable energy like solar and wind that can come online in a fraction of the time as a nuclear power plant. So, to honor the painful irony of that quote, and celebrate the wondrous insights and inspiration contained in pithy aphorism, I'm reprinting here the apothegms page I used to have on Beyond the Batholith--Essays from the Eastern Sierra, and including new ones as I find them worthy of this page. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

apothegm, n. a short, pithy saying; aphorism aphorism, n. a terse saying embodying a general truth or astute observation

"Humanity now appropriates for its own use more than half of Earth's

My Great Great Grandmother - A Mystery

There are some really fascinating genealogy Websites - even the free ones give you some amazing resources. I was recently repeating a search for my oldest ancestors in L.A. to see if anything new popped up--I'd really like to find out where they came from.

Instead, I found something that raises a lot of new questions.

My great great grandmother was Dona Encarnacion Marteniz, who married Ignacio Bilderrain. In searching for her maiden name, I came across a biography of William Richard Rowland. It refers to his mother, a Dona Incarnacion Martinez Rowland.

Water Supply Solution: How California can thrive during the next mega-drought

The main constraints to having sustainable water systems (both human and natural) in California are not technological or economic, but political and social. There is a very simple (simple to lay out but hard to politically follow through) process we need to go through to achieve sustainability. And if the word "sustainability" rubs you or your audience the wrong way, then just replace it with "reliability" which means the same thing over the long term.

Right now we try to "use" every bit of water we can. In a variable climate like California's, and with a water rights system like ours, that is a recipe for disaster--we expand our "needs" in wet years and they must inevitably contract in dry years. This is not sustainable, or reliable, or any way to try to build anything stable. The Westlands (a low-priority water right) should never have been irrigated because