Ode to Aphids
I follow The Prairie Ecologist's blog because he has beautiful photos and well written posts about, well, prairie ecology. He is an example of someone who is an explorer, a prairie ecology explorer.
Climate Change Is Still Worse
My city is a municipal utility, which means the city owns the electric utility that provides the electricity to the community. An insert in our recent electric bill caught my attention. Apparently, there is a possibility of controlled energy outages which means under energy emergency conditions we would have to take assigned turns using electricity until demand goes down. The city's explanation of contributing factors to the need for controlled outages was a deep sigh moment. For someone who isn't familiar with our national electricity grid (no shame, it's generously described as arcane) this reads as if renewable energy and closure of coal-fueled energy generation were the definitive reasons for the controlled power outages. This is an oversimplification. The more technically precise reason for the controlled power outages is the lack of energy storage capacity on the grid. In other words, we have to store electricity made by renewables when they are producing for tim...
