SHOULD HAWAII LEAD THE NATION IN REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS?

NO!  I don't think Hawaii should unilaterally invoke a serious carbon tax!  Hawaii has been a pioneer in land use reform, healthcare, and a variety of human rights legislation.  The problem with resolving the global climate change problem is that the entire world needs to together cooperate.  Why?

Say a community, like, say, Hawaii, decides to pass a law that suddenly jumps the price of fossil fuels by a factor of two.  Energy thus would now cost almost twice as much today as yesterday.  Companies doing business thus increase their cost of operation by a significant percentage.  They would not become competitive with other firms around the world.  Same for government.  Taxes would need to be increased to prevent bankruptcy, and the hit to residents would be compounded by both accretions.  

Hawaii's economy would go into depression, and, further, rule makers would be blamed and kicked out of office.  That in itself would not be all bad, but the point is that legislators are not be so stupid as to enact measures to reduce carbon emissions.  It's a non-starter.

However, today, the Star-Advertiser published an op-ed article by Jeffrey Kim, co-leader of the Honolulu Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby entitled:

   Hawaii could lead national by enacting carbon-emissions fee

He reports:

• He recently traveled to DC for a climate change conference and met with James Hansen, who told him that under a business-as-usual scenario, sea levels could rise 10 feet in as early as 50 years.  (Frankly, I too know Jim, and I can't imagine Hansen so bullishly underscoring 10 feet in 50 years as an expected future outcome.  Worse case scenario, maybe, but hardly business-as usual.)

• Kim says that Hawaii should enact a revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend.  He says this has worked in British Columbia.  Gasoline consumption dropped by a factor of seven while maintaining economic stability.  Factor of seven boggles my mind, but the reality is that fossil fuel consumption dropped 17.4%/capita and the economy appears to doing okay.  It is said that many Canadians simply went across the border to the U.S. to buy gasoline, and the carbon fee was limited.  For example, aviation fuel was not touched.

The Economist also seemed supportive, with this quote:

Stephen Harper, the prime minister, remains unimpressed. In June, when fellow centre-right prime minister Tony Abbott of Australia arrived for a visit, the two leaders dismissed the carbon tax as an iffy hedge against climate change and a destroyer of jobs. But the BC experiment makes that line harder to sustain. “There’s very little evidence—zero evidence—that carbon taxing is related to jobs,” says Brandon Schaufele at the University of Western Ontario, who co-authored the PICS report.

So, maybe there is something to just adding a tax to fossil fuels without hurting the competitiveness of companies.  Six years ago the Huffington Post published my :

     The Carbon Dioxide Credit Program

This was a more draconian measure, but I used the term credit instead of tax, for Republicans hate that latter term, and, in effect, the collected revenues largely returned to the consumer, similar to the British Columbia program. 

I can imagine a pathway to a carbon tax working in Hawaii.  But the effect would take time.  There is value in money being recirculated into the local economy.  If we continue to purchase petroleum, most of this amount paid out leaves our islands.  In time, as renewables gain in percentage, more of our energy costs not only remain here, but multiply in value.  I have not seen a comprehensive study proving this point.

I'm still surprised that British Columbia is doing well with a self-imposed carbon tax.  However, I've been  wrong before, and this could well be a good example of my fallibility. 

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Tropical Storm Erica will remain at around 45 MPH and bring a lot of rain to those Caribbean islands in its path.  However, around the time Erica approaches the north side of Cuba, there will be strengthening into hurricane status, but instead of slamming Miami, the projected path seems to be along the east side of Florida:

Hurricane Ignacio is now at 90 MPH and will attain Category 3 status, before slightly weakening.  All signs point to a path north of the Hawaiian islands:

You can hardly see the islands, but that white composite path shows a northerly route.

However, perhaps even more ominous is Tropical Storm Jimena, now only at 60 MPH, but expected to attain Category 4 strength, and, while too early to project, seems inclined to move straight to the Big Island:

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ON THE MATTER OF GOD, LIFE AND DEATH

More than half the time when I sit down to do this blog, I have no idea what the subject will be.  Today, I had to get a haircut, and as I had to wait a bit, saw a book in our library that looked like a good five minute reading:  The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, selected and compiled by Robert Byrne.  By clicking on that link, you can get a used hard cover edition for one penny from Amazon.  Byrne graduated from the University of Colorado in civil engineering.  He married the daughter of violinist Jascha Heifetz and is noted at billiards.

So, on the matter of God, life and death:

• If I had been present at creation, I would have given some useful hints.  (Alfonso the Wise, 1221-1284, right, I think)
• He was a wise man who invented God.  (Plato (427-348 BC)
• It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.  (Peter De Vries, 1910-1993)
• God has always been hard on the poor.  (Jean Paul Marat, 1743-1793)

• Man is certainly stark mad.  He cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.  (Montaigne, 1553-1592, right)
• Religions change; beer and wine remain.  (Hervey Allen, 1889-1949)

• The chicken probably came before the egg because it is hard to imagine God wanting to sit on an egg.  (Unknown)
• In England there are sixty different religions and only one sauce.  (Francisco Caracciolo, 1752-1799)
• The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an ever bigger pain the second time around (Herb Caen, 1916-1997, right)

• Life is like playing a violin public and learning the instrument as one goes on.  (Samuel Butler, 1835-1902)
• There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.  (George Santayana, 1863-1910)
• I'm not afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it happens.  (Woody Allen, still alive) 
• The best way to gain praise is to die.  (Italian proverb)

• In the long run we are all dead.  (John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946)
• When you don't have any money, the problem is food.  When you have money, it is sex.  When you have both, it's health.  If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death.  (J. P. Donleavy)

Hmmm...the last well applies to 15 Craigside.  

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Tropical Storm Erica at 45 MPH will traipse through various Caribbean islands, then, strengthen into a hurricane before making landfall near Miami, Florida:

Tropical Storm Ignacio is at 60 MPH, will strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane, but should weaken some, with a projected track just north of the Hawaiian Islands:

But it's a little early to speculate, for the computer models are all over the place:

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A FUTURE FLOATING CITY?

Today I continue sharing information for the Blue Revolution.  Over the past few years, Blue Revolution Hawaii has informally partnered with the Seasteading Institute (SI).  We are involved with the early stage research and development of floating structures to develop our sustainable ocean resources while enhancing the marine environment.  SI is exploring the concept of creating seasteads for sovereign status.  We have similar goals and complementary purposes.

The Seasteading Institute announced the winner of its Floating City Project Architectural Design Contest:  Five Petals by Emil Marvin Rozario Suerte of De La Salle University at Dasmarinas, Philippines:

To quote the winner:

The five petals represent the city’s beauty, water, energy, materials, and equity. In the last decades, the ratio between the natural resources available and the population are not equal which raised the awareness of the community about the way the cities manages its resources to fulfill their needs. These floating cities emphasized that it is not just about creating a city life in the middle of the water but sustaining the needs of people that will live there. The importance of an urban green city influences the community and manifest of bringing back harmony to the earth but also stimulate economic conditions of the community and the equality of all living there. These concept offers an enticing form and be the strength for the furtherance of both the people and the community. It must tender a picture of unified urbanity and environment to magnetize the public to be concerned on their environment and to use the resources they have.

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In the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Erica now at 40 MP appears to have a track similar to Danny, but shows potential for attaining hurricane strength in the vicinity of Cuba, then heading for the Bahamas and Miami, Florida:

In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Ignacio at 40 MPH has popped up, should strengthen into at least a Category 2 hurricane, and move in the general direction of the Big Island of Hawaii:

However, computer models are all over the map:

If landfall results, that would occur around next week Monday.  This series of ocean storms could continue for some time, as right behind is another disturbance:

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HOW THE IRONMAN TRIATHLON BEGAN

The year was 1977, I was the principle investigator for a National Science Foundation Science for Citizens program at the University of Hawaii, when the director of the effort, Judy Collins, mentioned to me that her husband and their Navy friends were talking about combining the Waikiki Rough Water Swim (2.4 miles), Around-Oahu Bike Race (115 miles) and Honolulu Marathon (26.2 miles) into one giant event.  I laughed, in fear, and said to her, you're going to kill someone (turned out, actually, that there have been at least 43 fatalities--but the death rate is not out of the ordinary compared with whatever else people do with their lives).  This is one of those times when you're glad you failed to prevail, for a little while later, in 1978, they went ahead and did just that, creating the ultimate race for humanity.  The adjustment was reducing the bike portion by three miles so that they could complete the whole thing is one day.  To quote her husband, John:

Swim 2.4 miles! Bike 112 miles! Run 26.2 miles! Brag for the rest of your life!

— Commander Collins, USN (1978), ^[12]

Fifteen men competed, twelve actually finished, including John, and the Ironman was Gorden Haller of the Navy, with a time of 11 hours 46 minutes 58 minutes.  In second place came Navy Seal John Dunbar, who said he would have won if he hadn't run out water and was fed beer by his friends.  The current course record is 8 hours 3 minutes 56 seconds, by Craig Alexander, while the women's record is 8 hours 52 minutes 14 seconds. by Chrissie Wellington:

Appropriately enough, Judy is quite an athlete herself, famous for swimming between various Hawaiian islands.  In 1977, before the first Ironman, she became the first female to swim from Lanai to Maui.

I'm not sure how many times she finished the Iron Man, but while they were here in Hawaii, their two children, I believe while they were in high school, Michael and Kristen, also completed the event.  Judy and John have long lived on a boat in Panama, yes, Panama, but now and then come by to observe the Kona Iron Man, which has become the largest annual event for Kailua-Kona.  Here we are two years ago celebrating one of their returns:

Let me close with two anecdotes.  While we were having lunch, above, at Michel's, they passed on to me an old photo from that later 70's era showing, below, Jim Shon, who later went on to become a State Representative, and  me (I'm not doing the hula), working on one of the NSF activities.  No doubt the most gratifying accomplishment of the Science for Citizens program is that we published a book produced by one of my Technology and Society classes.  The students made a presentation at a major conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and various mayors of the islands asked if the show could make an interisland tour.  That we did, and the book itself became a text for the Hawaii Department of Education/

The second story has to do with my first trip to Miyakojima.  This was more than two decades ago, and I was one of the leaders of an iternational effort entitled Green Enertopica to select an island for each country to serve as the symbol of energy self-sufficiency.  Miyakojima seemed to be the ideal site for Japan, so I flew there and met with the Mayor over dinner.  He seemed disinterested in what I was saying until I noted that the island had something called Strongman, the triathlon of Japan.  While it ends with a marathon, the other two segments are shorter than the Iron Man.  Anyway, it turns out that, like Kailua-Kona, this is their biggest event of the year.  While the Mayor's face lit up when I mentioned Strongman, he then practically gave me the key to the city when I mentioned that, by the way, Judy and John Collins, the inventors of the concept, were good friends of mine.  This interaction went a long way into making Miyakojima, now, the solar island of Japan.  I gather they survived Typhoon Goni.

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Of all the interesting things, Typhoon Goni, still a dangerous 125 MPH storm has shifted, and now will largely bypass Kagoshima, but get close to Nagasaki, miss Korea, but head in the general direction of Vladivostok:

Tropical Depression Kilo, now at 45 MPH, will strengthen into a hurricane, but appears now to be moving west away from Kauai:

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STANLEY KIYOSHI TAKAHASHI: A Fabulous Human Being

My brother Stan, the individual who had the most influence on my life, passed away at the age of 84.  I had just visited Las Vegas, where he and his wife Ann, were being cared for by her sister Jean and husband Bob.  It was clear Stan had only a few days left, and his condition was such that passage, on balance, was probably best for the family.

I could have titled this posting GRATITUDE...NOT GRIEF, AGAIN, which was a Huffington Post article I wrote six years ago upon returning home from Kuakini Hospital, when my wife, after 47 years of marriage, passed on.  We had a celebration of Pearl's life (that's the final photo I took of her the day before she made that fateful trip to the hospital emergency room--which, I just noticed can be discerned in the background), but not a funeral.  Since then I've only been to one funeral, as I was asked by his wife to provide the eulogy for my best friend, Paul Yuen.

Stan was born in a period when Hawaii was a Caucasian-run community.  His personality was shaped by those times, and he was extraordinarily helpful and nice to a fault, maybe even subservient.  After the war and rise of the survivors of World War II, the sociological and political climate of Hawaii shifted to Japanese-American leadership .  This was when I grew up, and my personality included a measure of assertion that blended with aloha.  My younger brother was even more personally confident, and became an Army colonel.

My mom was influential on all of us, and Stan, in particular, best followed her advice by exercising before breakfast, always followed by a fruit for breakfast.  He became a judo black belt and could play tennis with both hands.  I was third singles on my McKinley High School tennis team, but I don't think I ever beat him.  He went on to the University of Hawaii where he graduated as a civil engineer.  He did graduate studies at the University of Michigan and UCLA.  He went on to become a noted researcher at the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory at Port Hueneme (NCEL).  

I recall sitting at a lunch table in Japan with several engineering professors, when one of them, Toshitsugu Sakou, Dean of Marine Sciences at Tokai University, asked me if I had any brothers.  I mentioned Stan, and he wondered if that was the researcher at NCEL.  He was impressed, for he remarked that Stan was the foremost marine structural engineer.  He led a number of group visits for Navy and engineering society teams to Japan.

As he was ten years older than me, much of what I came to be I owe to him.  However, one memorable anecdote is that he left his white wedding shoes at home when he and Ann left for the mainland.  One day I noticed it, and it fit, so I wore it to high school.  My friends wondered why I was wearing white shoes, for no one in those days did so.  That night on TV Pat Boone became a big star wearing white bucks.  I became a fashion trendsetter.  While this was pure accident, I learned something about how to innovate, and I give Stan credit for that.

When I graduated from high school, he provided a transition to college for me by finding me a summer job at the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory.  I also lived with his family, not only then, but for three subsequent summers.  However, I thought, what he was doing--measuring deformations in concrete beams--was so boring that I majored in chemical engineering.  I eventually obtained a PhD in biochemical engineering, and wanted to return home.  However, the University of Hawaii did not have a chemical engineering department.  I was accepted into the general engineering department, but soon after I arrived, they disestablished it.  Fortunately for me, the Civil Engineering Department accepted me.  Stan's eminence with a couple of members of this group was so significant that when I came up for tenure, they were the difference makers.

Ann and Stan's home in Oxnard is almost magical.  In their backyard are two orange, lemon and grapefruit trees each.  For the half century they lived there, they were able to pick oranges, lemons and grapefruits every day.  The climate of Oxnard (typically 60 F in mid summer when it is 95 in Los Angeles, 60 miles south, and 115 in Santa Paula, 15 miles east) allows these trees to fruit all year.

Stan and Ann had a ukulele and halau group that entertained throughout Southern California.  Their two children, Diane, is a Patsy Cline professional performer, and Warren, with  his group, entertain at weddings and nightclubs during the weekends.  I'm afraid he had no influence on me when it came to music

What made Stan fabulous was his personal demeanor.   It was how he treated people.  The dedication to principles and culture.  He was a leader of his community and a pioneer in marine structural engineering.   He will be missed, but without regret, for he lived a grand and fruitful life.  There is no question, if there is a heaven, he made it.

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Tropical Depression Kilo will strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane, but at this time is projected to track a meandering path sufficiently west of Kauai:

Typhoon Goni is at Category 3, 115 MPH, but gusts hit a record 159 MPH over Ishigakijima, affecting Miyakojima today:

The eye is sufficiently west of Kumejima that the effects should not be devastating.  Goni then will move to the west side of Kyushu and perhaps cause problems for Busan, South Korea by late Tuesday.

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