John Cronin

The Improving Hudson?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

I was recently contacted by a reporter writing a story about "How the Hudson has improved." 

"What is your premise?" I asked.

"That the Hudson was once called an open sewer and now it is an environmental success story."

I know well the terms "open sewer" and "environmental success story" when applied to the Hudson River.  I spent years helping to make them popular.  Many years.  So many years that by 2009 those phrases have become worn and dated.   The Hudson may no longer be an open sewer,  but neither is it the river most of us thought it would be. 

I have been involved in Hudson River issues since I was 23.  I am 59.  In good conscience I can no longer boast of the river's comeback to a 30 year-old, or a 20 year-old, or my 14 year-old son.  After all, what has happened in their lifetime?

There is no evidence of which I am aware that the Hudson has improved in the last decade.  Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the river is in decline, despite official and unofficial attempts to manage its restoration and protection.  Major fish species, such as American shad, Atlantic sturgeon, and smelt, have been in trouble for over a decade.  Twenty years ago, they were not.  The Hudson's once proud commercial fishery is just about over.  There is more human population and therefore more pollutants being discharged into the river, directly and indirectly.  Invasive species are more prevalent. 

Of Lunar and Human Impacts

If we can crash a machine on the moon . . .

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Occasionally, the juxtaposition of two disparate events renders both in high relief.  Such is the case with today's announcement by NASA that it set off explosions on the moon's surface in search of water, and the story of drought and human devastation coming out of Africa.

Relief agencies estimate that up to 23 million people in the Horn of Africa now face a mortal threat from thirst and starvation.

This morning, NASA  intentionally crash-landed its LCROSS Centaur rocket and Sheperding Spacecraft on the lunar surface, sending up six-mile dust clouds that are being analyzed for the presence of water.  NASA describes LCROSS as a "fast-track, low-cost" mission of $79 million.  

Let's stipulate that an unflattering numerical comparison is not the real point here.  But what of human imagination?  What of great endeavors? 

On any given day, 1.2 billion people on the planet are without drinking water, due to drought, pollution, pestilence, water diversions, crumbling infrastucture, and inequitable privatization.  Is solving this crisis not as great a human endeavor as a moonshot?  A super-collider? 

What Is A Smarter City?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

At its Smarter Cities Forum, held today and tomorrow here in New York City, IBM is presenting a 21st century, real-time vision of the nation's, and the planet's, urban centers. 

This afternoon, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano hosted conversations with  Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg before a standing room audience at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center.  They described a future where everything, moving and immovable, will be instrumented.  Sensors will deliver information in real-time about the operations of urban systems, behavior of the local environment, where people and traffic are located, and where energy is needed.

Electronic health records will provide up-to-the-minute information available to the patient anywhere, and in any medical office, anytime she or he wants them. 

Education programs will emphasize STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, math) and develop an urban workforce to innovate the next generation of smarter cities.

Cities themselves will be living laboratories of instrumentation, increasing efficiency and providing information about every aspect and condition of their services, radically improving  the management, and reducing the costs, of the urban infrastructure. 

To get the ball rolling in NYC, IBM's Palmisano announced a new urban analytics center in Manhattan that will be home to 550 IBM experts.  IBM's most recent Smarter City Forum took place in Berlin last June.  Its next will be in Shanghai in 2010.

During his remarks, Mayor Bloomberg announced an iPhone app for the city's 311 online information system.

The Pale Blue Dot

The narration for the above video is taken from the book Pale Blue Dot by the late Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. It is Dr. Sagan's voice. I chose the images.  The featured photo is by Stephen Codrington.

The Planetary Society explains that the book's title "was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size."

See this post for more on Dr. Sagan, Ann Druyan and the Voyager mission.

Where Do All the Fallen Leaves Go?

Watershed Tea Anyone?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Soon our streets will be covered with newly fallen leaves.  And, shortly afterward, they will be lined with large plastic bags of leaves.  What did all those leaves do before we became so tidy?   They fed streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands, woodlands, parks and rivers. 

The Stroud Water Research Center explains that "Historically, most small streams in the eastern United States were forested. Leaf fall from the forest canopy was the dominant food resource for small streams. All ecosystems rely on a steady supply of energy. Solar energy drives photosynthesis that supplies carbon (chemical energy) for  the rest of the system. In many headwater streams, however, sunlight cannot reach the water's surface due to shading of the forest canopy. Therefore, most headwater streams rely on autumn leaf fall to supply much of the carbon needed to support the stream throughout the year."

The Stroud site offers a great primer on the role of leaves in the care and feeding of aquatic ecosystems.  It is a good reminder that a river is more than the water between the two shores.  It is the sum of its parts -- from the tree canopy overhead to the land, and street, underfoot. 

Crabbing with Bob

From INSIDEOUT, Sep-Oct '09. Copyright 2009, John Cronin

(NOTE: You can view a short video of Bob Gabrielson here.)

Bob Gabrielson handed me William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers and told me to memorize it.  “It’s the bible,” he said. It was dog-eared and fragrantly stained with Baltimore spice; Bob had logged many hours studying it over plates of steamed and seasoned blue crab.

The book’s title is a translation of the scientific name for blue crab, callinectes sapidus.  In Greek, “calli” means beautiful and “nectes” means swimmer. “Sapidus” is Latin for savory or delicious.  The cover told me that Warner had won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about the lives of crab and watermen on Chesapeake Bay.  Bob told me, “To catch crab you have to think like a crab.” 

Everything is Hot

 Copyright 2009, John Cronin

There is no such thing as cold.  You cannot produce it, cannot measure it, cannot locate it.

“Cold” is a handy piece of vocabulary, but that is all.  Dictionaries define it in relation to heat and warmth. 
They define "hot" in the same fashion. Recall the most objectionably frigid conditions of this past winter? You weren’t cold, only less warm than you liked.

The winter sun is 92 million miles from Earth.  Its core burns at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.  Midway between Sun and Earth, beyond the thin blanket of atmosphere that contains the solar heat that warms our planet, the temperature in space is minus 455 degrees.  That is 4.67 degrees warmer than absolute zero, the theoretical state at which no heat is present.   I suppose absolute zero could be an acceptable definition of “cold,” except that it has never been found. Anywhere. And no amount of experimentation has achieved it, not even in a lab environment.  The Third Law of Thermodynamics tells us that absolute zero is an impossibility.

A Passionate Advocate for Truth

A Conversation with Andy Revkin, NY Times Environment Reporter

From INSIDEOUT, Jan-Feb '09. Copyright 2008, John Cronin

The Hudson River Valley has yielded some of the great voices of American environmentalism.  Andy Revkin is one.  I speak of American environmentalism not as an ecological ideology, but as a school of critical thought and expression that includes writers, philosophers, artists, advocates, and policy wonks.  Andy fits all of these categories. 

Andy is the environment reporter for the New York Times and the author of the Times blog, Dot Earth, located at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com.  He has covered climate for 20 years and is expert at presenting, in an understandable fashion, the most vexing environmental, social and economic issue in human history.  He brings a deep thinking to his subject, with influences ranging from microbiologist Rene Dubos to Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.  He is a sought after speaker and, among his many honors and distinctions, a Guggenheim Fellow.  Regular readers of his stories and blog are treated to a continuing conversation with the world’s foremost thinkers on energy, environment and climate change. 

So, Dream

From Guts and All, Copyright 2008, John Cronin

In August 2000, I was invited to contribute a letter for a time capsule that was to be buried in Seattle, Washington that October, and unearthed 100 years later.  I was asked to address my letter to “The Children of 2100.”  I agreed happily.

The task took on an unexpectedly eerie aspect.  It was a letter to the future, after all, a one-way correspondence.  I could never expect a reply, nor could my distant penpals send one.

I imagined myself in their place.  I would wonder about the author.  The long-dead author. My worry continued.  When the appointed year arrived, who would remember the buried capsule?   Would it even survive 100 years of Northwest damp and dirt?  Why, for that matter, would anyone care? 

My letter had one of two possible destinies: internment in a permanent tomb or magical transport to another century.  To get the job done, and preserve my peace of mind, I settled on the latter. 

The next matter was the text itself.  What would be meaningful to a generation far from my time and reality? What could I write that would remain relevant for 100 years?