From easpeake@kerrcenter.com Mon Jul 1 15:15:47 2002
From: easpeake@kerrcenter.com (Liz Speake)
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 09:15:47 -0500
Subject: [ok-sus] Future Farms 2002 conference
Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20020701091424.00af3330@mail.clnk.com>
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New ideas for farm and ranch enterprises will be featured at Future Farms
2002: A Supermarket of Ideas, a conference and trade show slated for Friday
and Saturday, November 15-16 in Norman. More than fifty speakers will
present innovative ideas for sustainable crop and livestock production, for
adding value and marketing farm products and for alternative farm revenue.
Several intensive workshops will also be part of the lineup. A large trade
show featuring many "made and grown in Oklahoma" food items will be held
adjacent to the conference.
The aim of the event is to expose agricultural producers to a broad array
of alternative ideas. Farmers and ranchers will have a chance to talk to
those who have been successful with these new approaches. The conference is
being sponsored by the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the
Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.
Early registration (before Oct. 15)for the two-day event is just $50; $30
for one day. Student registration is $30; one day, $20. Discounts will be
given for spouses and/or second person from the same farm/company. (For
more information on topics, speakers and registration, go to
www.kerrcenter.com and click on Future Farms. Or call 918.647.9123 or email
maura@oklatel.net or easpeake@kerrcenter.com
The Kerr Center is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit educational foundation.
Liz Speake
Kerr Center
PO Box 588
Poteau, OK 74953
918-647-9123
918-647-8712 (fax)
web www.kerrcenter.com
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New ideas for farm and ranch enterprises will be featured at Future
Farms 2002: A Supermarket of Ideas, a conference and trade show
slated for Friday and Saturday, November 15-16 in Norman. More than fifty
speakers will present innovative ideas for sustainable crop and livestock
production, for adding value and marketing farm products and for
alternative farm revenue. Several intensive workshops will also be part
of the lineup. A large trade show featuring many "made and grown in
Oklahoma" food items will be held adjacent to the conference.
The aim of the event is to expose agricultural producers to a broad array
of alternative ideas. Farmers and ranchers will have a chance to talk to
those who have been successful with these new approaches. The conference
is being sponsored by the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the
Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.
Early registration (before Oct. 15)for the two-day event is just $50; $30
for one day. Student registration is $30; one day, $20. Discounts will be
given for spouses and/or second person from the same farm/company. (For
more information on topics, speakers and registration, go to
www.kerrcenter.com
and click on Future Farms. Or call 918.647.9123 or email maura@oklatel.net or easpeake@kerrcenter.com
The Kerr Center is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit educational foundation.
Message Let me venture a comment from observation, not from proven facts:Today's huge wind machines are just that, HUGE! They have a blade span that is much wider than the Dutch Windmill and not nearly as easy to see. More to the point, the velocity of those blades is phenomenal with the outer ends of the blades moving at great speed. They are stationed across a landscape so that they catch all the wind flow, spaced in rows behind each other in alternate spots so that what was clear between the towers in the first row are caught by the towers in the following row staggered in those "clear" slots from the row in front of them. I don't know what height the blades reach but appear to be approximately 200'. Any bird crossing the area below 200' is playing roulette with the blades from multiple towers that span a wide area, quite different from solitary Dutch windmills.Of course, smaller blades would not cut nearly so wicked a path . . . BUT they are not as efficient. Ah, the dilemmas of technology.Paul Barby-----Original Message-----
From: ok-sustainability-admin@lists.essential.org [mailto:ok-sustainability-admin@lists.essential.org] On Behalf Of Cathy Gardner
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 11:25 AM
To: ok-sustainability@lists.essential.org
Subject: [ok-sus] Wind energy
I'm curious, Terry, in what way you found wind power a horrible thing? The Dutch have used it successfully for centuries. Now I will admit that as you drive over the hill in California and come upon that huge wind farm, it's a startling sight. But it is equally startling to me every time I see the refinery down here burning off their excess junk, with flames shooting skyward and the stench carrying for miles. I think our real challenge is to weigh the benefits and risks of each approach to supplying ourselves with the energy we require - and if you want bad news for birds, check out what the oil industry does to them. The bottom line is that technologies like solar, wind and geothermal simply must be our future - when you dig past all the rhetoric, the bottom line still is that we are running out of fossil fuels, whether it be 10 years or 100 years.
I'm not trying to be argumentative. It's just an unfortunate fact of human existence on this planet that every one of our actions has immeasurable consequences and it's sometimes difficult to clearly determine our best course.
Cat
I'm back to updating the family website. Check it out!:
http://cathy_canfield.tripod.com/wolfcreek2000/
Do You Yahoo!?
Sign-up for Video Highlights of 2002 FIFA World Cup
-- Earl Hatley Director of Tribal Environmental Management Services College of Law - NELPI University of Tulsa 3120 E 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104 (918)631-3049
How Hot Is Too Hot? ----- Original Message -----From:Shauna Struby
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June 24, 2002
How Hot Is Too Hot?
By BOB HERBERT
ne of the more startling stories in The Times recently was Timothy Egan's article on the climate in Alaska, where the average temperature has risen seven degrees in the last 30 years and mosquitoes have shown up in normally frigid Barrow, the northernmost town in North America.
Large portions of Alaska are melting and other strange things are happening. Just a few hours' drive from Anchorage, a four-million-acre spruce forest has been killed by beetles, a development that is both astonishing and depressing. It is believed to be the largest loss of trees to insects ever recorded in North America.
"Government scientists," wrote Mr. Egan, "tied the event to rising temperatures, which allow the beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate."
Meanwhile, enormous wildfires have been raging in bone-dry regions of the West and Southwest. Fires whipped by high winds in the mountains of eastern Arizona have driven thousands of residents from their homes. One local official, Jim Paxon, said: "The forest is burning like you're pouring gasoline on it. And the wind is like taking a blow torch to it."
In Colorado, which is enduring its worst drought in decades, residents have been trying to cope with at least five major fires, including the so-called Hayman fire, the largest in the state's history. Investigators believe it was deliberately set by a U.S. Forest Service worker. The long drought and continuing hot weather provided the conditions that enabled this apparent act of arson to explode into an unprecedented conflagration.
Big fires are becoming the rule. By late last week authorities reported that in the first six months of this year, nearly two million acres have burned or are currently burning in the United States, which is almost twice the average of the last 10 years.
Strange, indeed. Mosquitoes in northernmost Alaska. Much of the West and Southwest ablaze. Extended droughts. Extreme heat waves.
Can you say global warming?
The year 2001 was, globally, the second hottest on record. The hottest was 1998.
Now imagine that just a few more years go by and the world becomes hotter still, which will almost certainly be the case. What then?
Do you think, maybe, we should be paying more attention to this?
What is missing in most conversations in the U.S. about global warming is a sense of urgency. A Bush administration report earlier this month acknowledged that human activity — the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere — was the primary cause of the recent warming of the planet, and that the warming will result in some extremely serious consequences in the U.S.
President Bush (who has distanced himself from his own administration's report) wants to rely mostly on voluntary — not mandatory — efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the president's strategy, it's estimated that emissions will actually increase over the next decade. We're speeding toward a wall and the president is not only refusing to step on the brake, he's accelerating.
Ten years is too long to wait to do something real about this problem. Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton who is an expert on climate change, has studied the imminent threat that planetary warming poses to the world's coral reefs. These are ecosystems so abundant in animal and plant life that they are sometimes called the rain forests of the oceans.
Dr. Oppenheimer noted that one of the essential questions of the global warming debate is, "How warm is too warm?"
When you consider that the increased warming is already threatening to decimate the world's coral reefs, and that we're already seeing the melting of the tundra in Alaska, and that alpine ecosystems are already being squeezed off the tops of mountains, it's not too difficult to reach the conclusion that "too warm," in Dr. Oppenheimer's words, "isn't awfully far from where we already are."
Closing our eyes and pumping another decade's worth of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the current very dangerous rate would not seem to be a very bright idea. The gases remain in the atmosphere for centuries, and in some cases millenniums, which means the damage cannot quickly be undone.
What a miserable legacy for this generation to leave to its children and grandchildren.
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-- Earl Hatley Director of Tribal Environmental Management Services College of Law - NELPI University of Tulsa 3120 E 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104 (918)631-3049