February 13, 2008
Another snow day here on the seacoast, the fourth already this winter. Unfortunately the snow has turned to freezing rain so it’s not a great day for sledding or snowmen, and the driving is too sloppy to sneak in a ski day. I’d rather have my kids in school today since at this rate, they won’t finish the school year until late in June. But if you love winter, this has been a winter to love.
Does a good snowy winter like winters of old mean that climate change isn’t happening? To answer that, you have to look beyond the immediate weather and look at long-term trends – that’s the difference between the weather and the climate. Also, you have to look beyond your own back yard.
I asked Cam Wake, a good friend of Now or Never and a research associate professor at University of New Hampshire’s Institute for Earth, Oceans and Space, how he answers this question. He just finished a study on changes in winter climate across the Northeast US using the most comprehensive analysis done to date. The data show that winters have been warming over the past four decades at an average of .77 degrees F per decade, and that snow-covered days have been decreasing at a rate of 2.6 days per decade. That adds up to about 3 degrees and 10 fewer snow days over in my 40+ year lifespan. I’ll let you know what Cam has to say when I hear from him.
So I’m really treasuring this winter, and so are my kids. We love to ski, to be outside when it’s cold, to skate on nearby ponds, to listen to the silence of snow falling in the woods, even to lose power at home (if it doesn’t last too long!) when the cold icy winds knock trees down on nearby power lines. It brings us back to the basics of being New Englanders.
MP
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Wire
January 31, 2008
Our local freebie newspaper, The Wire, came out today with a nice spread about Now or Never. Click here to see “Lights, Camera, Climate Change Action”. It’s a pretty good article about our project though it stresses the web-based components of the project more than the longer format programs for broadcast. Now or Never is doing both – we’re developing dozens of stories as part of the larger documentary series and along the way, we’re putting out short vignettes, our “podcast”, so people can get excited about the stories we’re telling and share their own with us.
Check it out at
http://www.wirenh.com/Film/Film__general/lights%2C_camera%2C_climate_change_action_200802072743.html
MP
Our local freebie newspaper, The Wire, came out today with a nice spread about Now or Never. Click here to see “Lights, Camera, Climate Change Action”. It’s a pretty good article about our project though it stresses the web-based components of the project more than the longer format programs for broadcast. Now or Never is doing both – we’re developing dozens of stories as part of the larger documentary series and along the way, we’re putting out short vignettes, our “podcast”, so people can get excited about the stories we’re telling and share their own with us.
Check it out at
http://www.wirenh.com/Film/Film__general/lights%2C_camera%2C_climate_change_action_200802072743.html
MP
The Ice
January 28, 2008
What an awesome day! Bill and I spent the day with David and CC White, our New Hampshire homesteading friends, and a small crowd of hard-working people on Squam Lake for the annual Rockywold- Deep Haven ice cutting event. For over one hundred years, this family camp on the shores of the lake has been cutting thousands of blocks of ice from the cove and packing it away in ice houses to use for refrigeration during their busy summer season. It’s probably the longest-running ice harvest in the Northeast, and Norman Lyford has been running it for the last 63 years. He’s a taciturn guy – I asked him what changes he’s seen over the years. He paused for awhile and said, “Not much really, except we used to use hosses”. That would be “horses” to the rest of us.
The ice was pretty good this year – 14 inches thick, about half was black ice and half snow ice. This is just the right thickness, since they can’t cut it if it’s more than 16 inches thick since that’s the diameter of the saw they have, rigged up on something that looks sort of like a snowblower. It’s a carefully executed process of plowing the frozen cove, cutting a channel that will connect the ice fields to a loading ramp, then scoring the field with the ice cutter so it will produce about 280 blocks of ice 20”x20”x14” each, at a time. It’s like watching a giant checkerboard get laid out on the lake. It’s really a precision process so that no body or equipment falls in the icy water. After everything’s scored, Norm and the front guys work row by row to break the last inch of ice free with their pokers, then it gets herded along down the channel toward the loading ramp. It was fun to prod the bobbing blocks of ice, sort of like herding sheep and lining them up. Then, 5 at a time, the loaders used a motorized winch to pull them up into the beds of waiting pick up trucks, which take them to the ice houses to get stacked and packed with sawdust. There they’ll sit till summer. Rockywold used to use them for all their refrigeration but now it’s more of a nostalgic touch – a block of ice is brought to each cabin once a week to keep drinks colds.
But David and CC hauled about 150 blocks to their ice house in Sandwich which they’ll use for an entire year’s worth of refrigeration. The ice, along with their new solar-powered, high efficiency freezers, provides all the cooling they need.
Very cool.
MP
What an awesome day! Bill and I spent the day with David and CC White, our New Hampshire homesteading friends, and a small crowd of hard-working people on Squam Lake for the annual Rockywold- Deep Haven ice cutting event. For over one hundred years, this family camp on the shores of the lake has been cutting thousands of blocks of ice from the cove and packing it away in ice houses to use for refrigeration during their busy summer season. It’s probably the longest-running ice harvest in the Northeast, and Norman Lyford has been running it for the last 63 years. He’s a taciturn guy – I asked him what changes he’s seen over the years. He paused for awhile and said, “Not much really, except we used to use hosses”. That would be “horses” to the rest of us.
The ice was pretty good this year – 14 inches thick, about half was black ice and half snow ice. This is just the right thickness, since they can’t cut it if it’s more than 16 inches thick since that’s the diameter of the saw they have, rigged up on something that looks sort of like a snowblower. It’s a carefully executed process of plowing the frozen cove, cutting a channel that will connect the ice fields to a loading ramp, then scoring the field with the ice cutter so it will produce about 280 blocks of ice 20”x20”x14” each, at a time. It’s like watching a giant checkerboard get laid out on the lake. It’s really a precision process so that no body or equipment falls in the icy water. After everything’s scored, Norm and the front guys work row by row to break the last inch of ice free with their pokers, then it gets herded along down the channel toward the loading ramp. It was fun to prod the bobbing blocks of ice, sort of like herding sheep and lining them up. Then, 5 at a time, the loaders used a motorized winch to pull them up into the beds of waiting pick up trucks, which take them to the ice houses to get stacked and packed with sawdust. There they’ll sit till summer. Rockywold used to use them for all their refrigeration but now it’s more of a nostalgic touch – a block of ice is brought to each cabin once a week to keep drinks colds.
But David and CC hauled about 150 blocks to their ice house in Sandwich which they’ll use for an entire year’s worth of refrigeration. The ice, along with their new solar-powered, high efficiency freezers, provides all the cooling they need.
Very cool.
MP
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