COW POWER

Rivers and Roads

We are out here in the cow-sprouting middle of Texas.

It is stinky. Like cannot breathe stinky. Every time we start to get a whiff of that foul odor, I look at Google Maps (after looking at Jesse inquiring with my eyes if he farted), and every time, I find a cow factory nearby. What these intense farming establishments do to the air is wild. We are in a car, often on the highway, at a distance. And it still stinks. I can’t imagine living near these places (as I run, holding my breath from the gas station pump to the sanctuary of the indoor bathroom). But too many people like their hamburgers. So, some people have to live here.

Today I am thinking a lot about where people live and how they get energy. In what form is energy free, and in what form is it costly?

I did a rudimentary life cycle analysis of our energy expenditure to see if the absurd amount of gas we burn is balanced out by not needing to heat and power an apartment. The short answer is no. We sadly emit more greenhouse gases than the average pair living in an apartment and driving the average amount. (Feel free to reach out for the full details of the analysis). One primary reason for this result is that you can make pretty energy efficient apartments, but driving a heavy gas-powered vehicle with a giant cargo box and rooftop tent is quite inefficient.

Seeing as driving around the country in this particular car is my job, I do not have that much control over the gas we burn. But there are other ways to work the system and hack into “free” energy sources.

For heat and electricity, we might seem attached to the car, but we also have a solar panel and very warm clothes. We use the light from the sun during the day and we go to bed earlier when it gets dark because, well, headlamps make me sleepy and do not have the same daytime ambiance as overhead house room lights. Besides the upfront cost of the solar panel and clothes, the energy we gain after is free. The normal house going person version of this is using renewables to power your home and designing it so that the sun heats up surfaces like stone, and the interior is insulated well so the radiation warms the space. We might beat you in this category, but that doesn’t mean you can’t apply the same ideas.

Our human energy comes from our food. And I LOVE good food (who doesn’t). We see gardens all across the country and I must say I am increasingly jealous of those who eat food they grew, and grow food they eat. You have a yard, a window, some dirt—you can grow a potato or a sprig of green onion—you are lucky. It is virtually free! It’s stealing energy from the sun by facilitating a plant to make sugars for you! Crazy! I tried to grow an air plant and some succulents in the car and they died. Immediately. The temperature swings were too great…and they got knocked over a lot. So, often our food energy comes at a cost. That is the cost of industrialized fertilizer, the machinery spewing fumes for processing, the transportation across countries to bring us strawberries in winter, and smelly poop. You people with houses who can grow things are very fortunate to have that space…so use it and capture some of the sun to eat!

We cannot not drive around since that is our job—to cover space over time and teach. What we can do is try to increase our driving efficiency by maintaining an optimal speed of around 55 mph (seems slow, I know, but it increases our fuel efficiency by about 5%). There are other things that will help eventually, including changing to a rear cargo box or rear tent and, of course, going electric. For now, we will stick to buying food grown close to home, demanding veggies rather than those stinky cows, and honing the sun's power as our way of capturing that free energy out there and reducing our demand for ancient energy.

Things You Didn’t Notice

CLOUD PROTECTION

It feels so warm in Denver, CO even though it is winter. This place is at a high altitude… wouldn’t that make it colder?

What it comes down to is the sun. Winter sun can warm things up even if the air temperature is much cooler. That solar energy is captured and contained in the objects on which the sun is shining, including me and you. In plants, energy is stored in the caloric energy of the sugars they make through photosynthesis. That energy can also be stored as heat in things like rocks or water.

But the sun isn’t the only thing at play here. For some reason, the clear, starry nights seem significantly colder than those nights camping under clouds. Why is that? Is it colder to have cloud cover or clear skies?

Clouds can have a warming or a cooling effect depending on the situation. High clouds at night can blanket the sky and trap the heat from the sun that was stored in objects on the ground during the day. But low clouds during the day block the sunlight and cool the earth’s surface. That is why the winter's perpetual cloud cover in Michigan doesn’t make it feel any warmer, but the occasional cloud cover in Colorado can feel like a nice blanket.

As the climate warms, we might not want so many sunny days, particularly in the summer. Cloud cover can help cool the earth’s surface and protect it from the powerful radiative heat of the sun, much like how it feels to stand in the shade of a big tree. Unfortunately, cloud cover is diminishing with the warming climate which is why we need more trees.

Hot Topic

FREE ENERGY

We all need energy. But it tends to come at a cost. Does it have to be that way? The sun spouts out energy for free.

The 7th Sustainable Development Goal is to “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”

There are two angles at which we must tackle this goal. We must increase the efficiency of our energy-consuming behaviors and source clean electricity to meet everyone’s baseline needs. But, the problem is that two inherently opposed economic incentives are at play. The more we save fossil fuels, the cheaper they become, and the more clean energy we can produce, the less pressure there is for reducing energy consumption. Seems like we might have to rely on cooperation rather than capitalism for this one.

“Modern renewables power 30% of electricity but remain low in heating and transportation.”

The heat and transportation power sources are dominated by natural gas and liquid petroleum products. For power-intensive heavy machinery like cars and airplanes, the energy density of liquid fuel is hard to beat. While batteries are getting better, they are not light enough to carry in a plane. But, there is still a question about biofuels. Plant-based biofuels are expensive to make at the moment and take a lot of land that competes with our food production system.

The first commercial biofuel powered flight to cross the atlantic, flew last November. That was a win in demonstrating that biofuels work as well as petroleum fuels to power a plane, but there is a 15.8 billion gallon road ahead of us till the US is able to fly all its airplanes with biofuel. We are less than 1% there in terms of current production. I performed research on algae-based liquid biofuels for my master’s thesis. I will be the first to tell you that if you think that we have a surplus of algae (see algal blooms around Florida), so it should be easy to have a surplus of biofuel…you’d be (just like me, but) wrong.

So where else can we look for energy? It turns out…cows.

Biogas, to be more specific. This unlikely source is really quite funny to me because I love that our evolution of energy production puts using cow farts as gas to cook our food and heat our homes as positive progress. It is even getting some bipartisan attention in this U.S. election cycle. Collecting cow manure and putting it through a process called anaerobic digestion captures methane (a highly flammable and potent greenhouse gas), reduces odor, and cleans the gas for the use of heat and electricity in lieu of fossil fuels. Gas burns cleaner than coal, but the sustainability of biogas is mainly derived from the fact that the carbon it emits when burned was initially sequestered in the plants grown to feed the cow. It was carbon already in the atmosphere—not carbon that has been trapped under the earth’s surface for millions of years.

While biogas from cow manure is an important part of improving our energy sustainability, it does come with flaws. One big one is the cows. They are a much less efficient use of land and water than biogas made directly from plants and food waste. So the closer we get to capturing energy from the plants that get their energy from the sun rather than from the animals that get their energy from the plants that get their energy from the sun, the closer we are to harnessing the sun’s free energy, together.

Refresh

• Health: Who are you calling a couch potato? Here are 10 fun ways to move more. My favorite—have a dance party.

  

• Transportation: Uber bought up a company that shares cars and started a trial service in the US. Imagine how few cars we’d need if they didn’t always sit parked on our driveways and streets. See how one family approaches car sharing in Australia.

• Mentality: My new favorite Instagram account.

  __we_love_you_

  

  

  View more on Instagram

• Community: It’s like Santa’s Workshop, except you make both things and friends. Welcome to the world of maker spaces. Bonus points if you explore the world of fixing things.

Mouthwatering

A MYSTERIOUS PHO

I once saw a tip that you could freeze vegetable scraps instead of composting them immediately to save them up and make a broth. I thought I’d give it a try. I froze parts of bell peppers, red and yellow onions, jalapeños, cilantro, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and lemons. When I mashed and simmered all these together, they created a broth that had a kick (thanks, jalapeños). It reminded me of the savory, fresh taste of Pho. So I added some of the spices found in Pho, and WOW, I had created the best broth of my life—with no meat. Ha—take that, stinky cows.

In that spirit, here is a recipe for Pho, but know you can get away with no beef.

Game Time

MY COW

Since we’ve been talking about cows so much, this one is a classic combo of cars and cows.

My cow is a game of symbolic possession of cows spotted along a drive. The rules are as follows.

1.     If you see cows, whoever says “my cows” first gets all the cows spotted. You get however many you can count in that herd.

2.     Whoever has the most cows by the end of the ride wins…but beware…there are threats to your cows.

3.     If you pass a cemetery, whoever calls “your cows are dead” first, can point and kill all the cows belonging to a fellow competitor.

Alternative rule: If you are able to spot a hospital within an agreed-upon amount of time, you may save your cows from dying.