All posts by Richard Ha

Kalakaua at Lick Observatory

August 8, 2015 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Did you know that Kalakaua was a true astronomy buff? He sailed across the ocean and rode a stagecoach up to the Lick Observatory outside San Jose.

My friend Peter Matlock, who just visited Lick Observatory, sent me this account of his visit:

My wife and I were recently at the University of California’s Lick Observatory, built outside San Jose back in 1880.

For all those invoking the monarchy as they protest at the new leading location for astronomy, it might be useful to remind them that one of the first visitors to Lick, and an evident supporter, was King Kalakaua.

When Kalakaua made the trip in the 1880s, there was a single lane dirt road and it took 4 to 5 hours to travel by stagecoach from San Jose—and this after the voyage to get from Hawai`i to San Jose in the first place.

It still takes a high sense of dedication to and appreciation for the science of astronomy to make the trip to the Lick Observatory. Today it’s an hour drive and an elevation gain of over 4,200 feet from San Jose up a twisty narrow mountain road (365 turns, many hairpins)—often with a cliff on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other (and generally no guard rails).

I thought you might like to see some pictures I took there, as well.

When the Lick Observatory was built, it had the then-largest refracting and reflecting telescopes in the world.

This facility was the leading astronomy facility at the end of the 19th century and has a long tradition of scientific innovations and discoveries. These include the almost immediate discovery of the fifth moon of Jupiter, use of photography and spectroscopy to record data and revolutionize our ability to probe and understand the universe, development of adaptive optics technology to improve resolution of astronomical images in real time, and Lick’s newest telescope—the Automated Planet Finder to discover planets outside our solar system.

The Lick Observatory continues to be a pioneer facility in astronomy.

Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative, Lowering Electric Rates

Cheaper Electricity: The Need Hasn’t Changed

August 3, 2015 Richard Ha

Every so often I’m going to repost something here that I feel is still significant.

This article, which I submitted to the Big Island Chronicle and ran in April 2014, talks about some of the important principles behind why we formed the Big Island Community Coalition. It still applies.

***

A Call For Cheaper Electricity

Here is the single most important need facing Hawai‘i today. Everything else radiates from it:

We need cheaper electricity.

It can be done. Recently the Big Island Community Coalition, along with others, helped stop some fairly significant electricity rate hikes from showing up on everybody’s HELCO bills.

And we are very lucky to have resources here, such as geothermal energy, that we can use to generate much cheaper electricity.

Here’s why this is so important:

• We need enough food to eat, and we need to grow it here, instead of relying on it coming to us from somewhere else.

Food security – having enough food to eat, right here where we live – is truly the bottom line. We live in the middle of an ocean, we import more than 80 percent of what we eat, and sometimes there are natural or other disasters and shipping disruptions. This makes a lot of us a little nervous.

• To grow our food here, we need for our farmers to make a decent living: “If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.”

The price of oil, and of petroleum byproducts like fertilizers and many other farming products, keeps going up, which raises farmers’ costs. They cannot pass on all these higher costs, and they lose money.

We use oil for 70 percent of our electricity here in Hawai‘i, whereas on the mainland they use oil for only 2 percent of theirs—so when the cost of oil increases, anything here that requires electricity to produce is less competitive. And farmers in Hawai‘i also pay four times as much for electricity as do their mainland competition, which puts them at an even bigger competitive disadvantage. Fewer young people are going into farming and this will impact our food security even further.

HELCO needs to be a major driver in reducing the cost of electricity. We believe that HELCO is fully capable of providing us with reliable and less costly electrical power, and ask that the PUC reviews its directives to and agreements with HELCO. Its directives should now be that HELCO’s primary objective should be making significant reductions in the real cost of reliable electric power to Hawai‘i Island residents.

At the same time, we ask that HELCO be given the power to break out of its current planning mode in order to find the most practicable means of achieving this end. We will support a long-range plan that realistically drives down our prices to ensure the viability of our local businesses and the survivability of our families. All considerations should be on the table, including power sources (i.e., oil, natural gas, geothermal, solar, biomass, etc.), changes in transmission policy including standby charges, and retaining currently operating power plants.

This is not “us” vs. “them.” We are all responsible for creating the political will to get it done.

Rising electricity costs act like a giant regressive tax: the people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder get hurt first, and hardest. If our energy costs are lower – and we can absolutely make that happen – our farmers can keep their prices down, food will be cheaper, and consumers will have more money left over at the end of the month. This is good for our people, and for our economy.

We have good resources here and we need to maximize them. Geothermal and other options for cheaper for energy. We also have the University of Hawai‘i, the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center and others that help our farmers.

To learn more about achieving cheaper electricity rates, consider joining the Big Island Community Coalition (bigislandcommunitycoalition.org; there’s no cost). We send out an occasional email with information on what we’re doing to get electricity costs down, and how people can help.

Remember the bottom line: every one of us needs to call for cheaper electricity, and this will directly and positively impact our food security.

Peak Oil

Shale Gas: Should We Take Their Word For It?

July 25, 2015 Richard Ha

Do we really want to bet the Big Island’s future on the Energy Information Agency’s projections? It’s much more prudent to hedge our bets. Have a look at what people are saying about recent projections.

From the Post Carbon Institute:

Shale Gas Reality Check

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released its Annual Energy Outlook 2015. How have their projections and assumptions changed over the last year, and how does it hold up to scrutiny against up-to-date production data from key shale gas and tight oil plays?

In 2014, Post Carbon Institute and David Hughes published the most thorough independent analysis of U.S. shale gas and tight oil production ever conducted, and now that analysis has been updated to assess the most current thinking from the EIA.

The update shows that the EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2015 reference case suffers from even greater optimism than the previous year—raising what were already highly questionable projections for cumulative shale gas production through 2040 by nine percent…. Read the rest

This recent Los Angeles Times article is one example of some of the reality:

U.S. officials cut estimate of recoverable Monterey Shale oil by 96%

By Louis Sahagun

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California’s vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national “black gold mine” of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said…. Read the rest

Steve Horn, Research Fellow with DeSmogBlog, also wrote about the EIA’s projects. This article, Drilling Deeper: New Report Casts Doubt on Fracking Production Numbers, appeared in the Huffington Post:

The report’s findings differ vastly from the forward-looking projections published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), a statistical sub-unit of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

…”The Department of Energy’s forecasts–the ones everyone is relying on to guide our energy policy and planning–are overly optimistic based on what the actual well data are telling us,” Hughes — a geoscientist who formerly analyzed energy resources for over three decades for the Geological Survey of Canada — said in a press release about the reporting’s findings.

“By asking the right questions you soon realize that if the future of U.S. oil and natural gas production depends on resources in the country’s deep shale deposits…we are in for a big disappointment in the longer term….” Read the rest

Current Affairs, Geothermal, Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative, Lowering Electric Rates, Mauna Kea, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Is Our Culture Falling Backward?

June 30, 2015 Richard Ha 1 Comment

This editorial ran in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald today. In case you didn’t see it, I’ll run what we sent them here.

***

The purpose of the Big Island Community Coalition is to work towards reduced electrical energy costs on the Island of Hawaii – where we pay up to four times the national average for our power. We are particularly sensitive to electric power rates as very high rates serve essentially as a regressive tax on our population while greatly reducing the probability of generating jobs in any sector that is dependent on electricity.

There are occasions when events are so alarming that groups such as ours feel compelled to move beyond our primary task. This is such a time.

We have observed with increasing alarm as our community has taken steps that inexorably blunt the forward movement of our economy and even move us backwards. These include:

Anti-Geothermal activists encouraged County government to ban nighttime drilling, effectively stopping expansion of a major source of renewable and inexpensive electric power beyond already-existing permits.This action was taken despite the existing plant meeting all applicable noise standards. It appears that government officials took this action without first going to the site to verify that the noise was disruptive. Once they did go to the site, some years later, government found that the noise was less than other environmental sounds (i.e., coqui frogs) and essentially no more than typical background noise.
Anti-GMO activists lobbied to stop any new GMO products from being grown on the island – despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific, peer-reviewed studies found such products to be as safe, and in some cases more nutritious, as their non-GMO counterparts. Legislation even prohibited GMO flowers – not consumed by anyone – from being grown on the island. Thus family farmers lost the most effective new tools needed to reduce pesticide and herbicide usage while increasing productivity needed to keep their farms competitive.
Now we have anti-Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) activists taking steps to stop construction of the most advanced telescope in the world. If successful in stopping TMT, despite its sponsors following every legal requirement over a seven-year period, we will lose our world leading advantage in understanding the universe.

All of these actions share similar characteristics:

The arguments used to justify such actions are consistently anti-scientific.
“Anti” groups often obscure the lack of scientific evidence to support their position by using emotional pleas intended to incite fear.
The only “win” for many of these groups is to completely stop, thereby making them completely unwilling to consider any facts that refute their position or to make any reasonable compromise.
Long-term consequences are significant both culturally and economically.

Cultures that survive and thrive embrace new technologies carefully, thoughtfully and steadily. Cultures and economies that thrive are innovative beccause they generate ideas and solutions, solve problems and take calculated but careful risks.

Cultures that fall backwards are those that fear advancement, fear change and cling to a mythicized view of yesteryear. The net result is loss of their brightest and most hard working youth. Those youth that remain find fewer and fewer jobs – those jobs having greatly diminished economic value and lower wages. The downward spiral becomes inexorable.

As we look to tomorrow, we need to ask ourselves whether we wish to give our children the exciting and invigorating job market typified by Silicon Valley or a job market that is much closer to the poorer regions of third world countries. It is up to us to point one way or another. Driving TMT out will be one more major step to cultural and economic poverty.

Signed,

Big Island Community Coalition

Richard Ha, President,

David DeLuz Jr., Rockne Freitas, Michelle Galimba, Wallace Ishibashi, Noe Kalipi, H.R “Monty” Richards, William Walter.

History, Mauna Kea, Where We Live

10,000 Hours and a Mountain

June 20, 2015 Richard Ha

Editor Rory Flynn wrote a really interesting editorial in the June 2015 edition of Farmers and Friends.

He talks about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory (from his book Outliers) that 10,000 hours of practice, plus determination, helps some people develop excellence in their field. He cites concert violinists, the Beatles, Bill Gates, and Hawai‘i’s Kolten Wong.

And then Flynn adds to the equation the importance of place.

He takes us through a really interesting look at what the Hawaiian islands’ geography has meant in the past – to Polynesian explorers, 18th-century British explorers, Americans, Chinese, and others, and what opportunities and livelihoods have been generated here from all those interactions.

And he writes about what advantage geography offers Hawai‘i today, Mauna Kea being one incredible advantage.

“It beckons to a fascinating cohort of 10,000-hour people – accomplished astronomers from around the world. This is where the natural resource of a mountain summit 2-1⁄2 miles high intersects with the excellence of people at the top of their game.”

There’s a lot more. Really good article; I recommend it.

It’s easy to forget all the people and opportunities and livelihoods that were here before. Like the people who came before us, we have amazing resources and we should use them in the smartest way we can.

Read Rory Flynn’s article.

Mauna Kea, Water

Checking in with UH Geologist on the Aquifer

June 18, 2015 Richard Ha

There’s been so much talk about the Big Island’s aquifer lately, with the Thirty Meter Telescope about to start construction on Mauna Kea, that I thought I’d repost this March 2010 blog post.

Spoiler alert: We don’t need to worry. The aquifer is not in any danger.

This post is about research Don Thomas, a geologist and volcanologist at the University of Hawaii has been doing. He’s learned that the island has a tremendous amount of fresh water — much more than we realized in the past.

I asked Don what they’ve learned in the five years since then, and he told me this:

We did start the drilling program and we found high level water in the first test hole. Based on the results of the first hole, the regional water table appears to be standing at an elevation of ~4600′ above sea level in the central Saddle region. That elevation of the water table is more than adequate to allow fresh water to displace seawater to 10,000′ below sea level (and a good deal deeper if there is adequate permeability in the rocks underlying the island). That test hole also found that significant water bodies can be present as “perched” aquifers – where low permeability layers can intercept rainfall recharge and hold it at much higher elevations than we had generally assumed.

My 2010 blog post:

FRESH WATER BELOW SEA LEVEL

MARCH 10, 2010 RICHARD HA

Richard Ha writes:

Don Thomas is a geologist and volcanologist at the UH Manoa and UH Hilo. Talking to him is so interesting; it’s kind of like an Indiana Jones novel. He is quiet and unassuming but the stuff he talks about just blows me away.

One day, he mentioned to me that he was looking for fresh water for the military at Pohakuloa. He told me about this neat instrument that can look down and see the electroconductivity of rock.

He told me that dry rocks have a certain signature and wet rocks a different one. He said that salty wet rocks and hot rocks have signatures that are hard to distinguish from one another. So one could locate heat zones?

Hmmm, I thought—maybe we can find hot geothermal zones?

Don just drops these kinds of info. I had no idea that geology could be so fascinating.

From Don’s email to me:

We’ve always assumed that the understanding of groundwater in Hawaii was pretty well established. The old timers, the guys I learned from when I was a student at UH, did a really fantastic job at interpreting the geology and groundwater hydrology. But, they didn’t have any data to tell them what was going on deep below sea level.

With our deep borehole, we found that some assumptions that were made about the flow of water below sea level was much different from the assumptions made by the earlier hydrologists. The most significant finding was that freshwater was found much farther below sea level than anyone had expected.

For water to be that deep, it meant that seawater had to have been forced out by much higher pressure freshwater than was expected. In order for those pressures to occur, it meant that freshwater was piled up much higher inside Mauna Kea than we had assumed. To prove that, we’ll need to drill a hole from a much higher elevation – in the Saddle.

But, because drilling is pretty expensive, I teamed up with some folks from the mainland who are experts in a type of measurement that can “look” downward into the ground and determine the electrical resistance of the rocks at various depths below the surface. Dry rocks are pretty poor electrical conductors; when they get wet with fresh water, they are better conductors; and when they are wet with sea water, they are even more conductive.

That exploration method is pretty expensive itself – but we were able to make measurements at about thirty stations across the Saddle – with the data we were able to collect, we were able to identify a couple of locations where the conductivity of the ground was similar to that of fresh water saturated rock at about 3000′ above sea level.

That doesn’t guarantee that we will find water there – it’s like in the detective stories – the conductivity of the rocks is only “circumstantial evidence” – it’s possible that other geologic conditions are responsible for the conductivity. The only way we can prove the presence of water at that elevation will be to drill into one of those zones. But, if there is water there, it will mean that we have a pretty large resource stored inside the island.

It’s also important to realize that another of the findings of the deep hole was that the local conditions – where ever you are on the island – will exert a strong control over where groundwater flows. So the conditions in Kona, whatever they are, will likewise have an impact on the water.

It’s just a guess, but my guess is that there is a lot more water stored on the Kona side of Mauna Loa than we have generally expected based on the relatively thin groundwater lens found near the coast. I’d bet that there are buried formations that are controlling groundwater flow – similar to the ones we found in Hilo – that may be forcing fresh water to discharge from that are deep below sea level. But, again, we don’t the necessary geological data to be able to prove that.

Richard again:

This really captures my imagination. It points out the value of education and science in a very practical way. Combine that with getting HELCO to use geothermal as base power—we can get that water at a reasonable cost.

This article predicts that the wet side of the island will get wetter and the dry side drier. If this is the case, then Don’s efforts could be the basis for solving our long-term problems.

I want the people to know the role Don has played and is still playing for the Big Island people’s benefit!

Peak Oil

How OPEC’s Decision Affects Hawaii

June 16, 2015 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Last week, OPEC decided to maintain oil production at 30 million barrels/day. Robert Rapier comments on the issues involved at his blog Energy Trends Insider:

OPEC Crashed the U.S. Rig Count

By Robert Rapier

June 10, 2015

The OPEC Free Fall

There is a popular narrative going around that I want to address in today’s article. Last November, after several months of plummeting crude oil prices, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) met to discuss the oil production quotas for each country in the months ahead. Many expected OPEC to cut production in order to shore up crude prices that had been falling since summer. This was the strategy favored by OPEC’s poorer members, as many require oil prices at $100/barrel (bbl) in order to balance government budgets…. Read the rest

Here’s recent background: In the latter half of 2014, oil prices were declining steadily, influenced mostly by large supplies of U.S. shale oil. When OPEC met in November to decide on production quotas, lots of folks expected it to reduce production in order to push oil price higher, but instead the organization decided to maintain market share by maintaining production at 30 million barrels/day. The price of oil dropped from a high of over $100/barrel to mid-$40/barrel. There was lots of speculation as to whether or not shale producers could sustain themselves at $40/barrel. As it turns out, above $70/barrel or so is where shale production increases and below that price it decreases.

Of all the states, Hawai‘i is the most dependent on oil. As soon as oil prices plummeted in November, we knew it would be good for us. The University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization (UHERO) has forecasted that Hawai‘i County will have economic growth for the next several years.

So what will happen between now and OPEC’s next meeting? If demand increases, then when oil hits $70/barrel, U.S. shale will start to crank up and that will hold the price around $70. If demand is not sufficient, prices will decline. Either way, it’s good for Hawai‘i.

What about the next OPEC meeting in November? Robert Rapier says that OPEC will probably be dealing with the effect of Iran’s increase in supply if a nuclear deal is made. This means lower price pressure, assuming the world’s political problems remain manageable.

Now if we can find a solution to our liquid transportation problem sooner rather than later, we in Hawai‘i will be well on our way to energy security. Think hydrogen for ground transportation and the Big Island will be in the best possible position to achieve energy security.

Mauna Kea

False Alarm, But Let’s Keep Our Cool

June 10, 2015 Richard Ha

An article posted online by the Hawaii Tribune-Herald on June 8th says that, according to a Subaru Observatory spokesperson, the hole I wrote about in the last post was caused by the door “hitting a bolt sticking out from an intake manifold next to the side entrance.”

Thank goodness it was a false alarm. It’s a huge relief.

This warning did cause us to all pay closer attention to what is going on around us. It also made us realize we are all in this together, and that we need to dial down the temperature of the discussion going on about Maunakea.

The protectors are doing their best to maintain kapu aloha on the mauna.

As we go forward, let’s all choose our words carefully as we engage together.

Mauna Kea

Bullet on the Mountain – Where are the Leaders?

June 7, 2015 Richard Ha 7 Comments

Someone seems to have shot a bullet into the door of the Subaru Observatory at the summit of Mauna Kea over the weekend.

This is what I’ve been talking about when I say we need Hawaiian leaders to dial down the temperature on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) issue in the anti-TMT camp for the sake of safety.

Now it looks like someone has shot at one of the observatories. What next? Where are their leaders?

We have also seen posts like these:

I contacted Lanakila and he told me he advised the police about that second post. We are both concerned about safety for all on the mauna.

My concern is not the folks from the Big Island, but people who may come from off-island.

This is really getting out of hand.

Mauna Kea

Dialing Down the TMT Temperature

June 5, 2015 Richard Ha 9 Comments

Here’s a sample of some recent comments I saw about something I wrote about the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Facebook:

I’m certainly not trying to tell people they need to change, or think like I think. Everybody can have their own opinion and say what they want to say, but I’d like to see the communication be more respectful than this. We need to keep the spirit of aloha with us.

I cannot remember a time when Hawaiians were attacking other Hawaiians loudly and in public. We need to dial the temperature down. Our native Hawaiian leaders need to step forward and lower the temperature.

I do know the Royal Order of Kamehameha stepped up early on and prohibited the use of the war god Ku up on the mountain. Before they did that, Lanakila was running around with an image of Ku. We need more such positive leadership examples.

If folks want to protest or engage in civil disobedience, that is their choice. People have given their lives so they can do that. But we all know that the TMT will start construction and it’s important to remember that it’s a dangerous environment on the mountain. We all need to be careful and respectful and abide by kapu aloha.

What some of the anti-TMT people are not hearing is that my point is really about the maka‘ainana. I always, always advocate for the maka‘ainana, the “rubbah slippah folk,” who are a huge part of Hawaiian culture.

I often wonder how many of the anti-TMT folks have studied up on and understand why so many of us consider geothermal, GMOs, and the TMT important to the Big Island’s future. We hear so many of their arguments based on incorrect assumptions.

We’re also hearing a lot about sovereignty and Hawaiian Kingdom issues wrapped up in the TMT. I don’t take a position on those issues. They will be decided over time. We’re talking here about the TMT.

Too often in the discussions surrounding geothermal, GMOs and astronomy in general, the consequences to the rubbah slippah folk are not taken into consideration. Too often the end justifies the means whether it makes sense or not. I don’t agree with that.

I’m open to discussion about any of these topics. My Facebook page has always been set to public. I’m pretty active there and also respond here at my blog. But for safety’s sake, we need to see the temperature dialed down a bit.