August 20th – 29th 2010 | The Village, Cloughjordan, Tipperary | For bookings and further information contact Davie Philip davie@cultivate.ie

Enjoy a full ‘PDC’ immersed in the thriving and innovative environment of Cloughjordan’s ecovillage. Tutors include: Graham Strouts, Albert Bates of the Farm, Tennessee, and Klaudia Van Gool. Also teaching will be other leading thinkers on various sustainability issues covered on the course.

After many years of shitting in a bucket I am now proud to announce the opening of a brand new twin-chamber concrete block toilet which renders my bucket obsolete.

The bucket toilet has served me well: no special equipment required, merely a seat and a bucket and somewhere to chuck it- I have been using large plastic barrels which have done an admirable job at turning my poo into a useful amount of compost each year.

Eventually however I decided that I didnt want to be emptying buckets for the rest of my life and Carpenter in Chief Alex persuaded me a concrete block “brick shit-house” was the proper job.

The main resource for this kind of system- and humanure systems in general- is The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins, all of which is available online.

The new toilet is constructed at one end of the house under a lean-to. Moving the toilet outside has freed up a lot of space in the cabin and is more hygienic.

The toilet works by using one side only for a year, then leaving that and using the second side for a year, by which time the first one should be fully composted and ready to empty.

Each chamber is approximately 1 cubic Meter in size, which should be sufficient for a family of four for a year. The wooden seats are built on top of the blocks.

The chambers are emptied from removable doors at the back.

One of the main issues with a twin chamber system is the potential for smells if there is too much urine: I decided to separate the urine by placing a small funnel at the front and piping it into a gravel swale/potential reed bed that is below the house and currently takes my gray water.

The funnel system seems to work fine for males, and, “depending on aim” I was told so far for females as well.

Some urine in the compost is fine of course but too much nitrogen or liquid in general is about the only thing that can go wrong, so best avoid the possibility. It would be possible to deal with the excess urine by adding carbon- sawdust is easiest, also paper, straw- which I do anyway. I layed a thick mattress of straw on the bottom of the first chamber before starting to use it. Wood ash which is likely to have small pieces of charcoal in it is also excellent and something I also have plenty of.

I installed a vent to carry away any lingering smells, and a drain in case liquid does mange to build up to excess. There is nothing worse than a smelly toilet which is surely guaranteed to put visitors off!

Jenkins seems confident enough in his thermophilic system to use the finished compost on his vegetable garden; I am more inclined to use it on trees and shrubs, but have on occasion used it for above-ground vegetables and am still quite normal.

Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of peak Oil and Gas, is officially retired from his career as oil geologist and Peak Oil pundit but kindly agreed to this interview for the zone5 podcast.

MP3 Download

Colin is the author of several books on the impending peak in world oil production and the implications for modern civilisation including the influential Oil Crisis in 2005 and most recently An Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion

In this interview he discusses his career as an oil geologist and how this lead to an awareness of the limits to future production.

Some listeners may be surprised to hear Colin’s scepticism regarding anthropogenic climate change. When I asked him about it later he assured me that he makes no claim to know much about climate change per se, but pointed me to this important paper by Hook, Sivertsson and Aleklett, which examines the projected supply of fossil fuels in scenarios used in the IPCC Emission Scenarios.

These projections by the IPCC seem to take little if any account of the imminent peaking and decline of fossil fuels in the next few years, assuming higher production rates in some cases than even the industry expects to be feasible.

Perhaps concern about this failure by the IPCC to incorporate such essential information leads to questioning its other conclusions.

My long-time Permaculture and peak oil colleague Davie Philip gave an inspirational talk for Feasta in Dublin last summer.

He includes a nice account of the origins of the Transition movement in Kinsale with the Energy Descent Plan by Rob and his Permaculture students, and his own personal journey with Peak Oil which started even before with the Feasta conference in 2000;the influence on his thinking before that even of John Seymour; then following the story of Rob’s moving to Totnes and the movement starting in earnest from there, bringing us up to now with a discussion of some of the issues now facing Transition.

Took me back to those heady days of the first viewings of The End of Suburbia and flickerings of an awareness of oil depletion.

Davie Philip – Developing a transition mindset to overcome the inertia of the familiar from Feasta on Vimeo.

So far the main routes are being kept open and food supplies are getting through to all but the most remote households, but with ice storms on their way in the next few days from the east expected to worsen conditions in Europe and here over the weekend, shortages could become an issue. Already potato crops have been affected with thousands of tons of unharvested spuds destroyed in farms a round the country.

Water is also an issue in many towns and cities, with increased demand apparently caused by people staying at home more, and losses due to frozen pipes.

Some homes have also been without electricity as storms and snow damage lines and maintenance vehicles find it hard to reach them.

Already the schools have been closed for next week, and this includes my own college so Ill be grounded for the moment. Martin, who is from Chicago, thinks it is a joke the country is coming to a standstill. Hasn’t anyone here heard of snow tyres? Apparently not, Ive never heard mention of them.

It is 30-50 year events like these that test our mettle and preparedness- as a nation we are failing miserably, such disruption interferes with the Great Plan of Keep on Growing the Economy. We are just not set up for hunkering down and doing as little as possible- sledging and snowball flinging excepted.

What might have seemed fun for some up till now has been a real hardship for others, but the real question is, how long will it last? If they are already closing the schools it hardly looks like the authorities will be able to be more organised than they already are.

It looks highly likely to remain unchanged for the next two weeks but seemingly the last Big Freeze, sometime in the 1960s, lasted well into March, even April in some parts. Another 6-8 weeks of this is surely not something this country is ready for.

I’m someone who is supposed to be more prepared than most, but in truth I am only half way there. Ive spent some of the time coppiceing next winter’s wood supply, the perfect activity for this time of year and weather, the first warming from the cutting of the wood being very welcome.

I have left the van over the bridge because the steep hill up here has been so icy, so it is possible to drive carefully and slowly into town, but I have only been out once this week and am keeping journeys to a minimum.

The cabin really comes into its own with the low winter sun warming the interior to a cosy 18 degrees most days by 11am. I don’t really need to light the range until the evening. Current wood supplies are probably OK for another three weeks; I could stretch it out longer if need be.

Water will be the first to go. It currently freezes each night but thaws out by lunch time. However, my main supply is currently rain water off a shed roof in a 1300L tank. With careful use I only have another maybe 8 or 10 days if there is no precipitation. I havnt investigated the well yet but presumably can break the ice and carry buckets.

One thing I have ample of is solar electricity. The sun is warm on the rocks and dazzling each day. No SAD this year! The electric chainsaw is getting some use, but otherwise apart from the computer I have far more power than I can use- not a situation I ever envisaged at this time of year.

I had made no special preparations for food but have a stock that would see me through a couple of weeks at least if I couldn’t get out at all, including two sacks of Bantry CSA spuds, and a supply of rice and pulses. There is still a couple of large squashes in the store and a few shallots left, but very little in the garden- just some leeks and a little kale. Oh, and some artichokes for when all else fails!

Contact with the immediate neighbours has been more frequent which has been nice, otherwise very quiet, leaving one to dwell on what real survival conditions would feel like, and whether, if the weather continues for long, it will come to that, and if it will be anything like the scenes from Cormac Mccarthy’s novel, now just released as a film, The Road.

Fortunately I was able to get to a doctor who took my temperature, peered down my throat, made the diagnosis- my father had already guessed correctly- and prescribed some antibiotics. The visit lasted only a few minutes- there was no time for a lengthy lifestyle analysis or discussion of my psychological state and so could hardly be called “holistic” but the whole experience was pleasant one, the doctor was chatty and very affable, I hadnt even had to wait long, and most importantly, within 24 hours I had made a miraculous recovery and had no barely symptoms left at all after 48hours.

Now, this is just anecdotal of course and proves nothing- maybe I would have got better anyway- but since this was a very rare trip to the doctor- my mother refers to all doctors as “quacks” – it seems worth noting that it was as pleasant and as trouble-free an experience as I could have hoped for.

However, as I sat in the waiting room I couldnt help noticing a prominent sign advertising the services of Homeopaths and Reflexologists; if I hadnt been so sick and had there been more time I would have loved to have asked the kind doctor his views on promoting such fraudulent “remedies” in his surgery, and to have had a chat about evidence-based medicine and the public perception of in general.

All this is by way of prelude to drawing your attention to the new 10:23 campaign in the UK: “Homeopathy- there’s nothing in it”.

http://www.1023.org.uk/

 This campaign is tackling head on the inconsistent postion of high street pharmacists like Boots who claim to have the best interests of their customers at heart and yet sell sugar pills and water as medicine.

One of the main excuses of homeopaths is that their methods are more “holistic”- they incude a lengthy interview covering many detials of the patients’ personal life before making proscribing the remedy, while allopathic medicine “only treats the symptoms”- the implication here is that there is always some kind of emotional/psychologiclal/spiritual component to illness.

Apart from the fact that this is largely mystical mumbo-jumbo- my tonsillitis for example was caused by the bacterium actinomyces and not by some kind of negative energy in my chakras- this whole process is side-stepped by the fact that anyone can just walk into a chemists’ shop and buy whatever type of sugar pill they fancy straight off the shelf. If homeopaths themsleves think that remedies should only be given by a trained practitioner after lengthy holistic interviews surely they should be coming on board fully behind the 10:23 campaign themselves.

The other aspect of this is that belief in quack medicine is inherently anti-science. I could give loads of examples from conversations I have had with mystically minded folk. Start by telling them that there is no scientific evidence to support the efficiacy of things like homeopathy and they will recount anecdotes along the lines of “homeopathy cured my hamster”, even though many conditions people seek treatments for- like the ‘flu- are self-limiting.

 If like me you are more insistent, 9 times out of 10 they will attack science in general as being biased- “science has been wrong before” “science doesnt know everything” or most infuriatingly invoke something they call “the observer effect”- the idea that you can discount any scientific evidence whenever it suits you on the basis that the observer will affect what is being observed, possibly on the quantum level.

The claim here is that their own opinions are more vaild- infallible even- and less biased than science, which just displays a complete ignorance of the scientific method, which is by definition an attempt to overcome our own personal, subjective bias. Anecdotes are not evidence; lots of anecdotes do not constitute data.

I recently was discussing evidence-based medicine with a herbalist who had just completed a degree. I asked him about whether he had looked at clinical trials during his degree course; he had to some extent, but was quite happy to tell me that he didnt think it necessary to have evidence for everything.

His real interest it turned out was plant-spirit medicine and shamanism (which were not you will be relieved to hear covered on the degree); the degree was just a front to give more credibility for what he was really practicing. Since he made his own preperations from home-grown herbs I asked him how he could control the concentrations of active ingredients, which could vary wildly from plant to plant; his response was just to shrug his shoulders and say, “I know I make good stuff, the clients like it and know it is good stuff”. In other words, weather the treatments worked or not was immaterial; all that counts is can he sell them. 

Another  conversation I had on this topic was with someone I would certainly expect to support the role of science in the environmental movement, specifically climate change. When she questioned the value of evidence-based medicine, I pointed out that clinical trials on medical treatments are routine and trivial compared to say the incredibly complex body of evidence from many different scientific disciplines accumulated over decades that constitutes climate science; yet the evidence that homeopathy and other “alternative” therapies do not work is much less ambiguous than the evidence for climate change. I was shocked that her response was that there is no scientifc consensus on climate change, that science is all just a matter of opinion.

Quack medicine is not just an assault on science and reason but appears to lead people to abandon even the most basic standards of ethics, honesty and common sense.

Unfortunately, as I have covered on Zone5 many times, the environmental movement seems to have no discernment when it comes to quack medicine. Wherever you see the word “Green” or “Organic” you can be sure the homeopaths and the herbalists will not be far behind. Alternative therapists seem to make up a significant part of the environmental movement in general and are keen to protect their public image of progressive, natural and holistic alternatives to the nasty world of Big Pharma.

In fact, the persistence of these practices undermine our ability to understand and respnd to the much more serious issues confronting us and make the green movement the laughing stock of the more rational sections of society, and thereby feeds the climate change deniers’ case.

The 10:23 Campaign looks like being the start of a more direct way of tackling these issues head on, let’s all get behind it.

More information on this week’s episode on the Pod Delusion:

http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/

Fascinating account of the inside world of CAM and more insights into homeopathy here:

http://aillas.blogspot.com/2009/12/open-university-perspectives-on.html

From the Irish Times Dec. 24th 2009. Full text below.

Seasonal salute to those making a difference

A mix of new voices and seasoned campaigners – here is a list of people at the front line of the ecological crunch, writes JOHN GIBBONS

THE YEAR ending was to have been the one when the world finally got to grips with climate change. Instead, post-Copenhagen, the global community “is left resembling an alcoholic who has decided to save up for a liver transplant rather than give up drink”, as a recent editorial in the Guardian newspaper put it dryly.

However, it’s Christmas Eve, and even this column has to take one week off every year to look on the positive side. And since my editor is probably off wrapping my present, this is the perfect opportunity to sneak in a non-peer-reviewed and entirely unscientific list of people who helped make a difference in 2009. Some will be offended at being omitted; others may well be offended at being included; apologies all round in advance.

Former president Mary Robinson is a significant new voice in the field. Her particular focus is on climate justice, meaning redressing the gross inequity whereby the world’s poor, who have contributed almost nothing to greenhouse gas emissions, are now bearing the brunt of the impacts.

As Ireland’s foremost climate expert and contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, Prof John Sweeney was entitled to a modest share of that year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Modest is a good description, too, of this self-effacing, committed scientist.

Prof Frank Convery, chairman of Comhar, Ireland’s sustainable development council, wants to know why are we still not subjecting all government policy to sustainability impact assessment. It’s a damn good question.

Friends of the Earth director Oisín Coghlan is one of the most effective environmental advocates and communicators, while for many, Duncan Stewart is the public face of environmentalism. His RTÉ programmes have raised awareness about energy efficiency and ecology. He is shocked and baffled at the misinformation being spread by a growing band of Irish so-called “climate sceptics”.

In the realm of domestic politics, the Greens, including Ministers John Gormley and Eamon Ryan and transport spokesman Ciarán Cuffe, have helped alter our disastrously unsustainable trajectory. While the electorate is unlikely to thank them for it, they have in fact succeeded in shifting environmentalism from the fringes to the very heart of the political process. A carbon tax and forthcoming climate legislation are among their stand-out achievements.

After a shaky start, the Labour Party has also found its voice, with Liz McManus proving an effective rapporteur for the Oireachtas Climate Change Committee and the party’s new MEP Nessa Childers engaged at a European level. While there are few signs of the environmental penny having dropped with either of our two main parties, Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney and Seán Barrett have distinguished themselves in this arena.

Author and economist David McWilliams underwent an epiphany of sorts this year as his television series brought him into direct contact with the ecological wreckage that, as he puts it, makes the global financial crisis look like small beer. Another notable Irish-based economist and author is Richard Douthwaite, co-founder of Feasta. He figured out years ahead of McWilliams that the economic model of relentless growth at all costs is a one-way ticket to collapse.

Contrast this with the recent statement from an ESRI economist explaining the economic “silver lining” of the disastrous November floods. Applying this parody of logic, Hurricane Katrina must have been a welcome economic boost to the builders and undertakers of Louisiana.

The Spirit of Ireland project, led by Graham O’Donnell and Prof Igor Shvets, this year offered an intriguing glimpse as to how our huge wind energy resources might best be harnessed. Its viability is uncertain, but hats off for their chutzpah.

Author and retired cardiologist, Prof Risteard Mulcahy, has an acute grasp of the approaching ecological crunch. He sees runaway population growth as the overarching crisis. “As long as our religious fundamentalists continue to oppose population control, I see no prospect of avoiding nemesis,” he told me.

While religious environmental leadership has been almost non-existent, Columban Fr Seán McDonagh is a notable exception, having witnessed devastating deforestation at first hand. Tom Roche of Just Forests has been campaigning for two decades against forest destruction, and to highlight the use of illegally logged timber in Ireland.

Talking about life in a low-energy future is one thing, living it is quite another. Graham Strouts is among the pioneers in a new field known as permaculture who is now living “off grid” in rural Cork. Snigger if you wish; the skills he and others are developing may one day save many lives.

Coming to terms with rapidly unfolding change and overcoming inertia are some of our greatest challenges; Paula Downey and David Youell (dya.ie) are among an Irish vanguard of thinkers preparing in the broadest sense for the unfolding new realities.

Stop Climate Chaos, a broad coalition of NGOs, has battled to try to get public mobilisation; their recent march in Dublin attracted perhaps 400 people who are prepared to stand up and be counted in demanding a safer future. We can all do a lot better next year.

Sincere thanks to the many people who have helped in more ways than I can repay throughout 2009, and particularly to my wife and daughters, who have borne with uncommon grace the many demands this column places on family life.

John Gibbons blogs at www.thinkorswim.ie

The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information. Ill add in the blogroll to my sidebar once i figure out how to do it.

That seems the most appropriate way to start the new year given that I want to announce that Zone5 is now officially listed on the Atheist Blogroll while  Ireland sees the instigation of its  new Blasphemy Law. The 25 Blaspemous quotes quoted here by   Atheist Ireland make for hilarious reading, but especially dont miss No 25:

Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.

Blasphemy is certainly a bizarre concept in the modern world where we prefer to operate within frameworks such as “democracy” and “freedom of speech”.

The Irish government’s excuse for this appears to be that because ireland is becoming more multicultural these days, there are now lots more ways that people might take offence, so we need laws to protect them. There will be a widespread suspicion though that this law has been sponsored by the Catholic Church perhaps to deflect critisism of its apparent true function of  instituionalised of child rape.

The whole thing begs the question of what is a religion of course, and indeed atheism as well as “science” and “rationality” are themselves often called a religion- by the religious, or by religious apologists- as a way of denigrating reason and skepticism, which is odd since you would think that, if religions are “true” then atheism should, to the religious, gain in stature should they take on the religious mantel… paradox upon paradox…

Another interesting case of this was that of Tim Nicholson who was sacked for contesting some of his companies’ policies on environmental grounds:

The case involved Tim Nicholson, 42, who was laid off last year from his job as head of sustainability at Grainger Plc, Britain’s largest residential-property company. Nicholson contended he was laid off because his views on the environment were not shared by Grainger executives, and he sued the company for unfair dismissal under Britain’s six-year-old Religion and Belief Regulations, which make it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of their religious or philosophical beliefs. Grainger argued that Nicholson’s climate-change convictions did not qualify for protection under the law. But in a landmark ruling on Nov. 3, Justice Michael Burton found that “a belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of [the 2003 law].”

This might be good for Mr. Nicholson but is a disaster for the environmental movement, which must promote itself as being based on science and reason if it is to retain any credibility at all. Many aspects of environmentalism, from Biodynamics to Fairy-worship, the naturalistic fallacies of the organic Movement and the de-la-la land of quack medicine could indeed be properly seen as faith-based and therefore religious, and should be rejected by self-respecting environmentalists, but climate change does not come into that category, despite being frequently critisised as such by climate deniers.

This whole issue is all the more relevant and disturbing given another story from this very young year of 2010, of a near fatal attack on the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who has been living under police protection since his 2006 cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb under his turban produced death threats from sections of the Mulsim community.

It seems horrific that the government of Ireland should pass laws to appease groups like this: “Say anything that makes our religion look anything but peace-loving and we’ll kill you!”

Perhaps there are however some cases in which blaspemy does indeed go too far, and some kind of legal restraints may need to be invoked to protect those who, like myself,  follow The One True Faith:

Having now reached the shortest days of the year I am in a position to evaluate its performance, and I can say it has served me very well. Obviously there has been a huge difference in power availability between summer and winter, but in fact the last 10 days here have seen constant sunshine -along with freezing temperatures- and I have probably had more power so far in December than October.

As I said in the earlier post, on a system like this you cut your cloth according to your measure, so giving an account of my energy consumption would be misleading- I would use more electricity if i had it! In fact though I use and need very little- on average 1-2Kwh/day would be loads to run computer, one or two lights, radio and some power tool use. Some days I would use more, and I made good use of an electric chainsaw during the longer days. The only major increase in power consumption is likely to come from a washing machine which I intend to get in the near future, the model I am looking at only uses 1.2kw per cycle, and would easily be achievable on any sunny day any time of the year.

I did run short of power a couple of weeks ago and have invested in a small petrol generator as a back up, mainly to protect the batteries, and to ensure I need never be without some power if I want it. I have only had to run the generator on a handful of evenings during cloudy weather when I have run the batteries down with power tools during the day; it would not however be too much of a hardship to do without the generator and only use power when available.

To increase power availability I could put up a wind turbine, but at this stage it might be better to invest in more batteries- I only have approx. 1000Amph storage at present- and maybe a couple more PV panels. This might be sufficient as I dont expect to be increasing my electricity consumption drastically any time soon. The great advantage of PV over wind is that there are no moving parts, no maintenance and they are modular- I can add in more panels whenever I have some spare cash.

In short I am satisfied that I can live just on a modest solar array even in cloudy gray Ireland. For my situation it has been a good option; for a family of four, maybe not unless supplemented by wind.

I also want to mention my new Rayburn wood burning range that I  installed in the cabin just this weekend. It replaces a cast iron stove, but I missed the range  from the roundhouse for baking, and I am delighted with it so far. Ranges are a great option, doing everything at once: space heating, water heating, oven for baking, hob for cooking. It might require a little more wood than the stove, but that is one source of fuel I have plenty of. It should mean I use less gas for cooking at least in the winter months, and increases resilience as I could do without gas altogether if I had to.

Best of all, the range was free- many thanks to Liam and Ger who were replacing it with an oil burner, and to Ciara who pointed them in my direction!

We also got to play with the PV demonstration panel we have at the Kinsale college.

The meter reads 3.19 amps from an 80watt panel.