flwyd | Entries tagged with sun

As we hit the road, 7 day weather forecasts for the eclipse were looking dicey. The "raining all day Monday" forecast quickly turned to "partially cloudy all day," with a line of clouds along the eclipse path from the Rio Grande to the Ohio valley. We were committed, though, and set off to our campsite in Arkansas. "Pray to your favorite weather and sky gods," I said in my email to campers.

Weather in the Ouachita Mountains turned out to be fantastic. The first night was a bit chilly, but the rest of the week featured sunny days and a few high wispy clouds. It's refreshing to camp in a state that's damp enough to have a campfire without hypervigilance that you might burn down the whole forest. And as someone who's used to spending vacations on festivals or distant adventure travel, having a vacation with just a couple dozen people and no schedule of events was a nice change of pace. The night before the eclipse the forecast was still calling for "partly cloudy," with with wispy clouds that might still show the great gig in the sky. As the Earth turned to Monday we were greeted with completely clear skies, the sun perfectly visible through a clearing at our campsite. Jupiter also made an appearance, though we couldn't see the passing comet.

Many times during the two-year planning period for this adventure I was rather amused that I was driving a thousand miles on a two week adventure for a four minute experience. Totality was indeed pretty neat: "evening" came on quickly, then a dark sky with wispy solar promenances visible to the naked eye. Our position at the base of the trees didn't offer much of a views to the horizon, though I could see sunset hues in each direction. I would've loved to bask in the experience for an hour; between taking photos (a few of which turned out alright) and looking around to see what all was different I didn't get a chance to really tune into the eclipse vibes, man. Now that I've got a solar camera filter and I know solar binoculars are a thing I should spend more time just gazing at the sun.

In the days before the main event I hoisted two wire antennæ into the trees and managed to get the fake internet points award for making contacts on 10 amateur radio bands. I didn't actually make a lot of contacts, since I seemed to only call CQ on bands with poor propagation or nobody was listening. I did make a lot of park-to-park contacts—I wasn't the only one with the idea to have a radio campout for the eclipse—and made some very low-key contributions to science by participating in the Eclipse QSO Party before and after totality.

En route, I played ham radio on the Santa Fe Trail in Dodge City and the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge. The former had a really high noise floor for some reason, maybe machinery at the agricultural processing plants. The latter was a lot of fun: we started by digging for selenite crystals that form a short dig below the crust of the salt basin. The radio waves liked the site as well; I had a steady pileup for most of an hour. Sea water helps HF propagation, and a field of salt with water a foot below the surface seems to have the same effect.

We spent a day in Tulsa visiting the Greenwood Rising center and the Woody Guthrie museum. Greenwood Rising opened 100 years after the Tulsa race massacre when a white mob burned down "Black Wall Street," the black neighborhood of Greenwood, one of the largest concentrations of black wealth in America. This is an incident that wasn't talked about as part of Americas history until recently. Despite attending a racially-conscious elementary school and using Howard Zinn's book as my first high school history text, I was unaware of the Tulsa race massacre until 2019. Greenwood Rising isn't just about the massacre, but does a good job creating a sense of the place before it was destroyed and what it meant to have a thriving black neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. Modern museums are big on interactivity, and Greenwood Rising does a good job of creating an immersive experience to enhance the educational goals. The Guthrie Center was also a good visit. I hadn't known that Woody was a prolific sketch artist, many with the same incisive yet accessible social commentary as his songs. I'd also thought the Dust Bowl was an extended dry period with poor farm soil care practices leading to the fertile land slowly blowing away. I hadn't realized that there was a specific day, Black Sunday, that blocked the sun and buried entire towns.

The big rain event that had all the eclipse chasers worried all week managed to hold off in Arkansas until about 10pm; enough time to pack up most of our camp and switch from the canvas tent to a dome tent, easier to wrangle when wet. And despite a wet night, the weather gods smiled on us again, pausing the rain in the morning so we could pack the final bits. We got to enjoy some lovely scenic pullouts along the Talimena National Scenic Byway. At the top I activated Queen Wilhelmina State Park at the top of the mountain while the clouds closed in to form a wonderfully liminal cloak. Despite the high elevation all my strong signal reports were coming from Georgia, a mysterious pipeline through the ionosphere.

On the way home we spent another couple days in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation. Subdivision of Cherokee land under the Curtis Act, along with many other factors, makes the Oklahoma nations feel a lot different than the Indian reservations folks in the U.S. west are used to. Tahlequah feels like an ordinary town where several parcels are owned by natives and the tribe. There are several good Cherokee museums and a casino, but everything else feels like a typical mid-sized American town in the southeast from fast food and barbecue restaurants to big ranch houses out towards the lakes. Funky res cars, res dogs hanging out in the shade, and the smell of frybread that you might imagine on a reservation in the southwest or on the plains doesn't show up in Tahlequah or elsewhere we saw among the five "civilized" nations.

North American eclipse hunters will have to head overseas for the next two decades, so I'm glad I made a trip out of it. The 2045 eclipse will pass right over the same campsite but I think I'll stay closer to home for that one since it passes across Colorado as well. I wonder how early Valley View will take reservations…

Mood: quixotic
Location: 1 AU from the sun
Music: The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun

For a trip I've been in some stage of planning for more than two years there's a surprising amount left to the last minute.

I didn't really think about taking pictures of the occluded sun until a week and a half ago. Mike's Camera had solar lens filters, but no adapters to fit my lens; fortunately I had a week to get an Amazon delivery. I almost forgot to get an oil change before the road trip. Duffel bags sat empty in my bedroom for a week and a half, not summoning the energy to select clothes until 40 hours before departure.

The truck jenga situation is kind of amusing; the truck seems more full for a 5-day camping trip in Arkansas than it was for two people's Burning Man stuff (including bikes) last year. "This is kind of my favorite part," Kelly says. "We get to recreate a small version of home."

It looks like we might hit near the sweet spot in attendance, which is kind of amazing. A friend and I booked two adjacent group camp sites a year in advance on the assumption that we'd find enough folks who wanted to join an eclipse adventure. But you don't want to advertise such a thing too widely, since there's only space for so many cars. So it was word of mouth with selective invitations and a kind of mental tabulation on people count, with a lot of "I don't know what I'll be doing in eight months." A month and a half ago I was worried we might be squeezed for space. A week and a half ago we were worried that we were going to have a lot of extra space, and miss out on having enough friends to share the experience with. Now it looks like we'll have every driveway in camp occupied, though a lot of folks are coming in the night before the great gig in the sky so we won't get to have as jolly a time in the woods as we might otherwise.

Despite all the last-minute scrambling, I've had all the Parks on the Air sites sorted out for several weeks though. When traveling, it's important to prioritize places to stop and play radio. There's even a Solar Eclipse QSO Party so hams can help scientists understand propagation in the ionosphere.

Google's extended forecast predicts rain all day for the eclipse; another app predicts afternoon thunderstorms and evening rain. National Weather Service's forecast only goes out 7 days, but Sunday currently predicts about a 25% cloud cover for Arkansas on Sunday; let's hope that holds out to Monday. A cloudy day would be anticlimactic for an event I've been anticipating for two years. But at least I'll get a good camping trip out of it, and some road trip adventures in Oklahoma. And if the sun's not worth looking at during totality, I can get 100 extra points in the solar eclipse QSO party for being on the radio during totality.

Mood: quixotic
Location: Boulder, CO
Music: Arkansas Traveler

The other day in the shower I was thinking about how most of our forms of energy are essentially either solar radiation (possibly assisted by gravity), tectonic forces, or stored results of these processes.

Solar energy comes from solar radiation, of course
Wind energy comes from solar radiation, causing motion of air (and helped by past tectonic activity to focus the flow)
Hydroelectric power comes from solar radiation evaporating water, wind depositing it elsewhere, and gravity pulling it towards a generating station (with past tectonic activity providing a narrow channel)
Geothermal energy comes from tectonic processes, bringing energy up from Earth's hot interior
Biofuels like ethanol and wood come from solar radiation helping plants grow
Coal comes from plants that grew thanks to solar radiation, then got concentrated thanks to tectonic forces
Petroleum comes from plants that grew thanks to solar radiation, then got concentrated thanks to different tectonic forces
Natural gas comes from plants that grew thanks to solar radiation, then got concentrated thanks to more different tectonic forces (consummate forces!)
Tidal power is an outlier, depending entirely on gravity (and, I suppose, tectonic forces from long ago)
Nuclear power doesn't fit this model, and derives from the atomic strong force

So, I thought to myself, could you harness the power of solar radiation plus gravity by intercepting falling rain or snow? Like a turbine that gets turned by sufficient raindrops? Or a fulcrum which raises one side when the other side gets covered in snow, creating potential energy which can be converted?

I was thinking this could be deployed in places that get a lot of rain like Mount Wai‘ale‘ale, Mawsynram, or López de Micay or a lot of heavy snow like Sapporo or Syracuse.

I wonder if the problem with this idea is the wide coverage area needed to get a reasonable amount of power. A hydroelectric dam gets to use time-delayed rain from a whole region, but misses out on the cloud-to-ground potential energy.

Mood: quixotic
Location: a rainy Boulder, Colorado
Music: KGNU - Smash It Back
Crossposts: https://flwyd.livejournal.com/388960.html

The point about the Roman Empire growing easily while there's still treasure to plunder and then having to rely on the output of the sun fits a big idea I've been thinking through recently:

Most of our business and much of our political culture fixates on growth. And lots of endeavors can grow quickly and effectively for a while, producing good returns. But in a world with conservation of energy, there comes a time when the resource stockpile or service opportunity runs out. And then you're basically limited by how much of the sun's free gift of 175 petawatts you can make productive use of.

This, in a nutshell, is sustainability.

Originally posted by

bruce_schneier at Resilience

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/06/resilience.html

There was a conference on resilience (highlights here, and complete videos here) earlier this year. Here's an interview with professor Sander van der Leeuw on the topic. Although he never mentions security, it's all about security.

Any system, whether it’s the financial system, the environmental system, or something else, is always subject to all kinds of pressures. If it can withstand those pressures without really changing its behavior, then it’s robust. When a system can’t withstand them anymore but can deal with them by integrating some changes so the pressures fall off and it can keep going, then it’s resilient. If it comes to the point where the only choices are to make fundamental structural changes or to cease existence, then it becomes vulnerable.

And:

I’ve worked a lot on the end of the Roman Empire. Let’s go back to sometime before the end. The Roman Empire expands all around the Mediterranean and becomes very, very big. It can do that because wherever it goes, it finds and then takes away existing treasure that has been accumulated over the centuries before. That treasure pays for the army, it pays for the administration, it pays for everything. But there’s a certain moment, beginning in the third century, when there is no more treasure to be had. The empire has already taken in all of the civilized world. At that point, to maintain its administration and military and feed its poor, it must depend basically on the annual yield of agriculture, or the actual product of solar energy. At the same time, the empire becomes less attractive because it has less to offer, because it has less extra energy. So now it has to deal with all kinds of unrest, and ultimately, the energy that it has available for its administration is no longer sufficient to maintain the empire. So between the third century and the fifth century, the empire has to make changes. That is the period when it adapts its behavior to all kinds of pressures. That is the resilience period. At the end of that period, when it is no longer able to maintain that, it quickly becomes vulnerable and falls apart.

And here's sort of a counter-argument, that resilience in national security is overrated:

But it can go wrong. Rebuilding a community that sits in a flood zone shows plenty of resilience but less wisdom. American Idol contestants who have no singing ability but compete year after year are resilient -- and delusional. Winston Churchill once joked that success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. But there is a fine line between perseverance and stupidity. Sometimes it is better to give up and pursue a different course than continuing down the same failing path in the face of adversity.

The potential problems are particularly acute in foreign affairs, where effective resilience requires a tireless effort to adapt to changes in the threat environment. In the world of national security, bad things don’t just happen. Thinking, scheming people cause them. Allies and adversaries are constantly devising new ways to serve their own interests and gain advantage. Each player’s move generates countermoves, unintended consequences, and unforeseen ripple effects. Forging an alliance with one insurgent group alienates another. Hardening some terrorist targets leaves others more vulnerable. Supporting today’s freedom fighters could be arming tomorrow’s enemies. Effective resilience in this realm is not just bouncing back and trying again. It is bouncing back, closing the weaknesses that got you there in the first place, and trying things differently the next time. Adaptation is key. A country’s resilience hinges on being able to adapt to continuously changing threats in the world.

Honestly, this essay doesn't make much sense to me. Yes, resilience can be done badly. Yes, relying solely on reslience can be sub-optimal. But that doesn't make resilience bad, or even overrated.

Mood: quixotic
Location: Boulder, where we're getting an extra dose of the sun
Music: The Herbaliser - Take London