I always get a kick out of people who say that camping in state or national forests are free, or visiting the public library is free. Free camping or hiking or reading is a joke. Indeed, it’s not free at all. Somebody pays for it, most likely you and I do.
Most of us pay a weekly or bi-weekly “subscription” fee to use those services, in the form of payroll and other taxes.It’s very hard to measure whether or not one is using their fair share of services. Many government services benefit not one individual, but society as a whole. Many promote economic growth, which also benefits us all. Others promote society’s well being, even if we do not personally take advantage of the services.
… there is No Such Thing As Free to Use Government Services.
Human occupation of the Adirondack region took place immediately following the Wisconsin glaciation period (10,000‐8,00BC). Native American artifacts representing all periods of New York prehistory have been found throughout the region, most sites being associated with water bodies. The Oswegatchie River, which is an important resource for this unit, was a boundary between the easternmost of the Iroquois nations, the Mohawks and the Oneidas. Most of the recent history of this unit revolves around hopes and dreams of early speculators and the harvesting of timber. Unfortunately much of this history has gone undocumented.
The major historical events and dates that influenced this unit are described below:
Pre 1770’s ‐ Occupied by Native American Indians
1792 ‐ Alexander Macomb purchase nearly 4,000,000 acres in northern New York for 84 an acre. Shortly following this purchase Macomb was sent to debtors prison. His holdings were taken over by his partner William Constable.
1796 ‐ James Watson acquires 61,433 acres in Herkimer and Lewis Counties comprised of two triangular pieces joined only by a narrow isthmus.
1809 ‐ James T. Watson inherits the lands of his father, James Watson.
1854 ‐ James T. Watson commits suicide; his holdings in the east triangle, are split among 44 surviving cousins.
1854‐1907 ‐ Through subsequent tax sales all of Watson’s former lands in the east triangle come into State ownership.
1907‐1912 ‐ Through tax sales the State Comptroller sells these same lands to the International Paper Company for a total of approximately $7,600.
1986 ‐ The State of New York acquires title to the remaining lands of International Paper within the Watson’s East Triangle.
1989 ‐ The State acquires 6,737 acres of the Lassiter Tract in fee, and purchases a conservation easement (Oswegatchie Tract) from the Nature Conservancy on 17,749 acres in Lewis County.
1999 ‐ Champion International sells its land holdings in New York State. The State acquires a conservation easement on 110,000 acres of these lands throughout the Adirondack Park, including the Croghan Tract. The State also acquires 29,000 acres of these lands for inclusion in the Forest Preserve. The lands acquired by the State in fee consist mostly of river corridors and other ecologically sensitive areas.
2000‐ The former IP lands are classified by APA, with much of the acreage going into Watson’s East Triangle Wild Forest, while some is classified wilderness along with reclassification of some existing acreage of WF to wilderness.
2006‐ Lands acquired in 1999 from Champion International are classified and added to the unit.
I’ve always wondered what the fascination with battery technology is, when the proven technology used by trolleys and streetcars for over 120 years is electricity via rail or wire. There are no limitations on range or power delivered electrified lines, and use avoid the inefficiency of power stored in a battery.
I could envision the car of a future being a gasoline engine with complete cylinder deactivation, where the complete engine is shut off by a solenoid disconnecting the rocker arms controlling the valves ala the Active Fuel Management widely used in General Motors pickup trucks today.
On major highways and other high traffic roads where “electric wires” are available, as sensed by a radio signal, the car would automatically pop up trolley poles through the roof like a power radio antenna. Electric consumption and billing information would be transmitted through a signal in the wire to the billing municipality, public authority, or power company.
An electric motor/generator in the transmission of the car would spin the drive train and engine, including pushing up and down engine pistons (using the exhaust in the cylinders and shut valves as a choosen) and flywheel. When braking or going downhill, the motor acting as a generator would put recovered power back into the electric line.
The nice thing about this system is there is no range or weight limitation, and uses existing technologies. You could power even semi-trucks or buses with this technology. Moreover, if you become disconnected temporarily from the electric line, the motion of engine’s pistons decompressing the exhaust left in the cylinders and the standard flywheel, would keep the car coasting until electricity came back or the solenoids reconnected the push-rods to the rocker arm and started feeding the engine gasoline once again (the later could happen basically instantly if there is such a power demand).
Because your still moving the pistons up and end down and compressing waste gases, the engine never gets cold, always has warm coolant to heat the inside of the car, and is always ready to burn gasoline at proper operating temperature whenever electricity is dropped.
I can not imagine a future where cars don’t have at least some kind of internal combustion engine that burns gasoline or diesel, at least part of the time. We have been refining Internal Combustion Engines for 110 years now, and the technology is so well engineered and reliable, that it seems likely that cars will use Internal Combustion Technology of some sort for at least another 110 years, if not longer. Internal Combustion Engines are only going to be come cleaner and less polluting as pollution control standards and technology improves, and they are only going to burn less gas or diesel in decades to come.
A local environmentalist put together a spreadsheet with the data from the November 2010 Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Electricity Generation Plants. It shows why most new power plants constructed in recent years use either natural gas or wind, as by far they are the most cost-effective fuels. Evens with even a modest carbon regulations, new coal plants will become the exception and not a rule. It seems with the current economics, coal plants already seem like a waste of money and non-economic.
Note: Power Plants come in all different sizes. This analysis normalizes plant costs down to lifespan cost per kW during the plant’s lifespan, typically around 75 years. Therefore, a 500 MW Natural Gas: Advanced Combustion Turbine (CT) Plant based on the table, operating at full capacity would cost = $671.70 x 500,000 = $335 million over it’s lifespan.
A local Climate Activist suggested I take a look at a new book that came out last year, known as Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. As somebody who has had a longtime interest in Climate Change and Energy Policy more generally, I was excited to find it at the Albany Public Library. I brought it home on a Friday night, and spent half the night reading it from cover to cover. Merchants of Doubt is the story of “How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”. It details and follows the lives of some of the most well known scientific contrarians specifically, the late S. Fred Singer, Jim Tozzi, and Steven Milroy. These people spent most of their later career criticizing scientific reports, emphasizing uncertainty and cost of implementing reform.
The book is very critical of these contrarians, arguing that they have both mislead the public, the media, and policymakers. The book says due to the abuse of science, many Americans and policy makers make bad decisions. The book also argues that artificial delay and debate over policy response has had a negative effect both on environmental and human health, and increased the costs of resolving problems. Yet, are all these concerns expressed in the book with the scientific contrarians really legitimate? I find that conclusion hard to accept. In a pluralistic democracy, having more voices is a good thing. It is good to have debate and allow “popularizers” on both sides of political debates to take scientific research and make it easily accessible to the public. Science is much too technical for the layman to understand it unless an effort is made to make it accessible.
One can make a legitimate complaint when a “popularizer” distorts scientific reality in a way that is completely contrary to what widely accepted research says. It for example is not right for a “popularizer” to claim that Man-Made Climate Change is not happening at all whatsoever, when the evidence is clear to the contrary. It is however the moral obligation for the popularizer to put that scientific research in context, emphasizing what he or she believes is the proper political context for it to be considered in. Smoking causes cancer. Excessive sulfur dioxide emissions from large power plants causes acid rain. Climate Change and the associated disruptions is caused by excessive carbon dioxide by the mass burning of fossil fuels. These are all well established facts. It’s not a fact that we should use control greenhouse gases or sulfur dioxide emissions – that is a political choice.
There are many policy choices that ought to be debated. Just because science can predict a result does not mean we should necessarily adopt any one policy. Some may try to dodge reality because it’s easier then facing the facts, or admitting the true costs of one policy choice. That is a bad thing. However, nobody should act just because the science says one should do one thing. It’s unfortunate that Oreskes and Conway did not make it clear that while facts should not be debated, policy choices should. We should look at the science, weight costs, and decide on action or inaction. Regardless, it’s a interesting read, well worth your couple of hours time.
Early settlers were subsistent farmers, relying on the land for the majority of their needs. Evidence of the difficulties associated with clearing the fields can still be seen. The ubiquitous stone walls were built from stones laboriously cleared from fields to make them tillable. Dairy farming was an important activity for the early farmers, with excess milk being shipped to cities in the form of butter. Early crops no longer grown in this area included wheat, tobacco and hops.In 1875, Schoharie County was the fourth largest producer of hops in the State. Hops were said to exhaust soil rapidly and by the late 1800’s, hop production was in rapid decline.
Forests not cleared for farmland were used for many purposes. Potash and charcoal production were two early farm industries that made use of hardwood forests. Potash was used locally and also shipped to Europe. Charcoal was used in blacksmith shops, tin shops and iron foundries located in every town.
Hemlock was cut for its bark. Tannin extracted from the bark was used in the leather tanning industry. In 1840, there were l4 tanneries in the county. Large tanneries in Gilboa were obtaining bark from the area of the Eminence Management Unit. In addition to its use in the local tanneries, large quantities of tannin were shipped to Europe.
Other wood based industries included sawmills, shingle mills, cooper shops, wood tool factories and a paper mill. There were mills of various types on Betty Brook, West Kill, Panther Creek, Doney Hollow Creek, Mill Creek, and their tributaries. Portions of these streams are located on the Eminence Management Unit. Early settlers, up to the late l800’s, could not own the land they worked.
This “Patroon” system probably resulted in heavy cutting of the forests because the renters had little interest in the future of their lands. With the widespread cutting taking place, probably every acre of the present day Eminence Management Unit had been cut by the late 1800’s.
Fish and wildlife populations were also decimated during this period. The wild turkey, beaver,black bear, wolf, eagle, and white-tail deer were all extirpated from Schoharie County in the 19th and early 20th century. Stream habitat for native trout and other fish was also damaged by pollution from industry and agriculture. Fish and game laws which established seasons and size limits were non-existent for most of the 19th century.
From the very beginning, these were only marginal farms. By the mid 1800’s, the poor soils of some of these hill top farms had been exhausted, and farms were being abandoned. By l930, large tracts of farmland had been abandoned.In 1931, under the State Reforestation Law, the State began acquisition of some of these abandoned farmlands. Most of these early purchases were for about $4.00 per acre and by l940, land acquisition in the Eminence Management Unit essentially ended.
In the Spring of l93l, State crews began planting tree seedlings on the open land. A Civilian Conservation Corps camp was established in 1934 at Boucks Falls and the CCC’s joined State Forest crews planting trees. To date, over 6 million trees have been planted on the Eminence Management Unit. Other early projects included timber stand improvement, stream improvement and protection,construction of truck roads, seed collection for the State tree nursery, forest insect and disease control projects and construction of fencing between State and private lands.
Fire Hazard Reduction (FHR) was another project. FHR included construction of water holes, clearing roadsides of slash, building fire breaks around newly established plantations and slash reduction in heavily cut over natural stands.When the State acquired these lands, the previous owners usually reserved cutting rights. They had up to two years to cut any trees down to a six inch stump diameter. As a result of this logging, and other cutting that took place in the decade before the State acquired the land, there was little timber of any value present. Broken and deformed trees were all that was left in the majority of the forested areas.
There were few sales of forest products until the mid 1950’s because of the poor condition of natural forests and the small size of the planted trees. Significant sales did not begin until the 1970’s. To date, about 2 1/2 million board feet of saw timber, 22,000 cords of firewood and 67,000 cords of pulpwood have been sold for a total revenue to the State of over one million dollars. About two-thirds of this revenue came from the plantations which comprise about one-third of the Eminence Management Unit. In the mid 1980’s, harvesting and replanting of mature red pine stands was begun.
The Department of Correction Youth Camp was constructed around 1960 on State lands in the Town of Fulton near Summit. This recently became the Summit Shock Incarceration Camp. Projects accomplished by inmates on State Forests include forest road maintenance, wildlife habitat improvement, stream improvement, recreational trail construction and maintenance, timber stand improvement, tree planting and cone collection for the State tree nursery.Land acquisitions in the 1960’s through the 1980’s improved access to the Eminence Management Unit, enhanced recreational opportunities, provided additional protection for the streams on the unit and consolidated the unit with the acquisition of interior parcels. Six of the State Forests on this unit now contain over 12,000 acres of contiguous public ownership. This large block of public land will become even more valuable in the future, considering recent trends toward subdividing adjacent private lands.
Many of the wildlife species that were once extirpated have returned to the area. Their recovery can be attributed to the restoration of natural habitat and the enforcement of hunting and fishing regulations. Now that fish and game are once again abundant, the state lands have become very popular areas for fishing and hunting pursuits.
