Winter colors of the Arb

I have been hearing some gripes and grumblings lately, alleging that this midwinter is “bleak.” Really? Cold it might be, but especially in the Arb, there is nothing charmless or dreary about the midwinter landscape. Our winter white blanket is returning as I write this, but even its brief, muddy, puddled hiatus left much to be appreciated and hoped for.

A few weeks ago in "World of Greecraft?" Eliza Berry reported on a new computer program being developed to harness the potential of "smart meters" to motivate people to lower their energ consumption.  On Carleton's campus we are looking forward to the installation of these smart meters in our two new residence halls and investigating their installation in buildings across campus.  In the following article Nora Mahlberg gives another update on the potential of smart meter data and the power of competition for lowering people's electric consumption.  If there is a trend here it is that these smart meters are one of the biggest new things in massive-scale energy consumption on our campus and in our society.

The growing rash of piracy off the coast of Somalia has been consistently present in international news for the past several years, and has had a major impact on the security and economy in the region.  Western nations have stepped up anti-piracy patrols in an attempt to re-establish key shipping lanes, as well as to make the gulf and its highly productive fishery safer for fishing vessels.  However, little press has been given to what role these international fishing vessels may have played in the development of Somalian piracy in the first place.

If you've been looking east this morning you may have noticed that Carleton's wind turbine blades haven't been doing much turning.  While we'd like it to be cranking out clean power the reason for the temporary shut down is impressive indeed.  Northfield, in the midst of an uncharacteristic several day long warm front, has also been experiencing some rather blustery winds, above 40 mph at turbine hub height.  These gusts have most likely knocked some sensors off balance.

It is Sunday night, around eleven or eleven thirty, and the short walk from Davis Hall to the library seems to take forever, weighted down as I am with a bag full of books. Preoccupied with dread of those books I do not at first realize what I am hearing. Crows. Wait…Crows? There throaty cries sound strange and unfamiliar in the darkness and I look up. My eyes search the darkness until, suddenly, I see it; the silent cause of all that ruckus, flying out of the pine trees that line the driveway behind Leighton. “Owl!” I yell.

Applications are now available to be a student farm intern for the 2009 growing season of the Carleton Student Farm.  Two student interns will be accepted for the position this summer. The season will begin with a farm-planning independent study this spring, continue with experiential education every day in the Carleton garden and in field trips to surrounding farms through the summer, and end with fall harvest.

Over the last few years, the popularity of smart meters has grown substantially.  Something else that has seen massive growth in use are online social networking and role-playing games.  Recognizing what a powerful tool both of these can be Stanford Professor Byron Reeves (a specialist in psychological processing of media) has decided to design a computer game that encourages productive use of smart meters.  His prototype will connect a virtual world, where players interact and compete, with the real data of home, building, and city energy consumption.  The hope is for more motivated citizens, higher efficiency in energy use, and more saved money.  This article contains a YouTube demo video well worth your time.

It’s February, Carleton, and you know what that means: GREEN WARS! Time to study by candlelight, share showers, and put off doing your laundry for another month! Or in other words, be conscious about your energy use and deliberate about reducing your impact on the planet.

Last week a 3 day cold spell saw Northfield wind chills reach as low as -40º F and -50º F.  Such temperatures make walking across the street a chore and test the patience of many.  But air that cold has a quality to it; it dresses the world in a kind of foreignness that offers us the rare chance to see our most familiar surroundings entirely anew.  To me that opportunity is not so different from the opportunites I see in the environmental and sustainability movements.

Beavers are afoot. Last week Arboretum Director Nancy Braker took the student naturalists on a walk along Spring Creek between Bell Field and the Upper Arb. The highlight of the trip was the discovery of a pile of sticks beneath the surface of Spring Creek. The pile of sticks that we discovered is the remnant of a beavers’ winter food stash.

I recently read an article in the New York Times titled “Moving Day Without All the Waste” about “green” moving companies.  While not all of the energy-saving techniques are feasible for our moving situation at Carleton, there are definitely some changes that we could make inspired by these companies.