Walden...er Emerson Pond

A major coup was scored in New York State in the name of conservation, when the Nature Conservancy purchased a large tract of previously held private land for preservation. But before we get there, here are a few random comments I’d like to share with the general blog reading audience.

• Okay, so baseball season is drawing to a close. And that means the droning, grating tones of John Sterling, and worse Suzyn Waldman will cease permeating my car. But honestly after being subjected to Dan Dierdorf for 3 hours during the Giants game on Sunday, I take back everything bad I ever said about baseball announcers. Listening to him is pure misery.

• I advise you strongly to not ever write anything negative about Geo Metros. It turns out that Geo Metro drivers are very much so pleased with their cars, and do not take kindly to you calling them “ugly,” “hideous” or “deathtrap.” The validity of these statements evidently doesn’t change their minds.

* Have you ever been set up to fail? Given an assignment or task that you are woefully unqualified to complete? This happened to me this past week. I was to give a lecture on subject matter that I’m totally uncomfortable with to fellow graduate students. Best case scenario is I look like an idiot. Worst case scenario, I am an idiot. Despite the feeling of impending doom, it was frighteningly liberating. When you know you are going to bomb at something, you can do so with flair. I feel like this morning when I gave the worst lecture on the Coreolis Force in the history of lecturing, at least I went down swinging.

Okay – back to the blog. Take a gander at this video. Breathe it in.


The property in the above video was recently acquired by the Nature Conservancy. The idea behind the property acquisition is to eventually turn the property over to the state of New York for inclusion in the Adirondack State Park. The property in question is known as “Follensby Pond” and checks in at 14,600 acres. The 14,600 acres includes a 1,000 acre stretch around Follensby Pond where Ralph Waldo Emerson and crew chilled out. Prior to acquisition the Pond was the largest such pond in private possession in the Northeastern United States.

From the Nature Conservancy Website:

Follensby Pond drains into the Raquette River where a 20-mile stretch of silver maple floodplain forest is considered to be the best example of that natural community type in the Adirondacks and among the best in the state. The quiet, slow-moving backwater pools associated with that largely undisturbed stretch of river also earned high ranks in a three-year Nature Conservancy study which assigned local, state, and global rankings to approximately 102 natural community types found in the Adirondacks.

This is a very exciting acquisition for the Nature Conservancy, and eventually for New York State. In addition to being beautiful lands, the region is also ecologically unique, being chosen as the site of Bald Eagle re-introduction.

Follensby Pond was selected as the only site in the Adirondack Park where bald eagles were reintroduced, a process known as “hacking.” New York State Department of Environmental Conservation endangered species unit leader Peter Nye led the effort in the 1980s. “Follensby was an ideal location because it had suitable habitat for current and future use by the eagles, was free from human disturbance, and good for nesting,” he said, adding that it was “a place where eagles could be eagles.”

In 1981 Nye traveled to Alaska, one of the few places in the nation where eagles were abundant, to collect eaglets unable to fly, but old enough to regulate their temperature and tear and eat fish without parental assistance. As many as 60 eaglets were released at Follensby Pond over several years, including one the McCormick grandchildren named “Emerson.” Today, the 12 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the Adirondacks are a testament to the success of those efforts.

It will be some time for New York residents to gain access to the property, as parts of it are currently being leased out for individual recreational use. Full details on the acquisition are available in this New York Times article.

What is so smart about SMART cars?

Well we haven’t had a comment (or a reader) since August, so maybe it’s time to spice things up a bit. Let’s talk cars for a moment.

Both of the cars shown above (pictures taken from edmunds.com) are hideously ugly and would most likely provide little to no safety protection should you get in a horrific accident. One of the cars above gets 33 miles per gallon in the city and 41 miles per gallon highway and will set you back at least $14,000. The other car gets over 50 miles per gallon in either scenario and you could pick one up for less than a grand ($1,000). Did I mention that both are hideously ugly?

Well for all the luxury of a 1994 Geo Metro and only $13,000 more you too can own a SMART Car. So, what exactly is it that has environmentally minded folks rushing to their nearest SMART car dealer to take one home?

Lower Emissions

The smart fortwo is also classified as an Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (ULEV) due to its extremely low exhaust emissions. The catalytic converter is positioned close to the engine for a quick response. An electric pump blows fresh air into the exhaust port when the engine is cold to almost completely oxidize the carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbons (HC) and render them harmless.

The above quote, taken from the smartcar website on “ecology,” implies that the car produces few gasses that are destructive compounds. When we think about car emissions, we are concerned primarily with two sorts of compounds NOx’s and VOC’s. NOx compounds are any nitrogen-oxygen molecules, such as NO2 (nitrogen dioxide), N2O (nitrous oxide), and NO (Nitric oxide). These compounds are quite active in the photochemical (that is to say chemical reactions involving solar energy) reactions that produce ozone. VOC’s are a much more diverse and complicated groups that can be best described as hydrocarbon byproducts of fossil fuel combustion. They are produced from imperfections in your gasoline and incomplete combustion of the gasoline fuel itself.



So the SMART car reduces VOC emissions but not NOx emissions. Why is this important? Well, as many frustrated city engineers have found reducing VOC’s without reducing NOx’s can lead to increases in total ozone! Take a gander at the chart to the right (taken from this website) and see why.

The x axis shows the concentration of VOC’s and the y axis shows the concentration of NOx’s. The curves on the graph show the amount of ozone formed from the amount of VOC and NOx indicated on the axes. Take a set value of VOC say 0.5, draw a vertical line on the chart in your mind. Depending on how much NOx you start with, increasing or decreasing the concentration of NOx can increase or decrease total ozone. Thus we must be careful to reduce both when we reduce emissions.

Recycling
SMART car prides itself on its ability to be recycled. But as far as our waste stream goes, cars are probably some of the most well recycled and reused components. Consider what happens when a car goes to a junkyard, the electronics are removed to be resold, any working components of the car are removed to be sold as spare parts, any and all residual metal is compressed and sent to Asia for recycling – all that is left is plastic, fabric and foam. So any improvements to car design would have to pertain to those waste products primarily.

Ecofriendly Construction
Another major waste from car construction and use are the fluids, paints and chemicals applied to the upholstery of the interior. It appears as if the SMART car takes all of these things into effect in its construction, but details as to what exactly they do (aside from using less solvents in the painting process) are lacking on the website.

I can’t see what’s so smart about a SMART car, that hasn’t been done before. But perhaps someone out there can? This is something that strikes me as "trying to be green" just to sell a product, with little positive environmental impact.