Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

A closer look at producing ethanol from poplar trees

Oregon Public Broadcasting is reporting on the efforts of a WSU researcher to turn poplar trees into transportation fuel:

[P]oplars [are] an on demand fuel source. Trees can be chopped down year round, chipped up and then fermented to create ethanol.

According to the researcher, an acre of poplars could supply about one thousand gallons of ethanol per year -- which is about three times the per-acre yield of corn ethanol, with a lot less plowing and fertilizer consumption. Cool!

Of course, inveterate skeptic that I am, I had to run the numbers ...

Fear of traffic snarls led to easier commutes in Seattle

We tend to think of traffic as an immutable -- that there's literally nothing we can do in our day-to-day lives to drive less.

But Seattle's continued and mostly unexpected free-flowing traffic -- in the midst of a major construction project that some feared would trigger a morass of congestion throughout Puget Sound -- shows that this is simply false. Far from being rigid and incompressible, traffic and travel patterns are surprisingly fluid. Seattle's experience demonstrates that, when drivers are given good travel choices and the right kinds of information and incentives, they can get out of their cars. And in Seattle's case, when lots of people got out of their cars, it made getting to work a relative breeze.

How lazy people can conserve energy

I love this idea: a single off-switch for your whole house, to power down all of those nonessential appliances that suck electricity while you're at work or out on the town.

OK, so it's just a concept at this point. But it's a good one.

Debunking the notion that walking is bad for the planet

Sheesh. Wouldn't you know it, the "walking is bad for the planet" meme has reared its head yet again, this time in a British newspaper:

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk ... than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes.

This made its way to the top of Digg over the weekend, and it's little wonder. It's got all the characteristics of a "sticky idea": it's simple, it's memorable, it seems credible, and most of all, it's unexpected -- which makes it perfect for passing around at the water cooler.

Yet it's actually nothing new. Versions of this idea have been circulating since at least the 1980s. I blogged about a similar claim a year ago. Moreover, as I found out when I ran the numbers, there's a good reason this claim is so counterintuitive: it's false!