Blackcap Blog

Published at 13:15 on 15 May 2016

Yes, I was there for the action. I left early because yesterday I woke with a cold and felt the need to get back home and rest. I wasn’t planning on being arrested anyhow; my role was more of a support one. Which I did.

Given how I fell asleep at 7:30 last night and didn’t get up until 6:30 this morning and have been napping all day, I would say my assessment that I needed to get home and rest was a correct one.

Published at 10:16 on 18 April 2016

It’s going to be closed while Bertha tunnels under it, and given that there already have been subsidence and sinkhole issues caused by the tunneling, the chance of collapse-inducing damage is greater while at the same time the chance of the collapse actually hurting anyone is far lower.

Given that the Viaduct is on its last legs anyhow, it’s either going to collapse before it is demolished or be demolished before it collapses. And given how it’s already in territory that was previously proclaimed to be unsafe, but retroactively claimed to be safe, because the state doesn’t want to tear it down without a replacement in place, its best that the procrastinating be ended now.

And given that the tunnel project was always an unrealistic boondoggle, it’s better that it be cancelled sooner rather than later, as a result of its subsidence damaging an obsolete viaduct as opposed to a perfectly good and non-obsolete downtown building or two.

And once the viaduct is out of service for good, Seattle will then be compelled get busy with the process of figuring out how to live without it.

Published at 09:43 on 24 January 2016

Well, well, well. The Highway 99 tunneling project has run into problems and been halted. This is a mere several weeks since the tunneling was restarted after having been stopped for two years.

This time the issues are related to “unexpected” subsidence. This is so much not a surprise.

Published at 08:53 on 25 December 2015

That’s the nickname of the giant tunnel-boring machine that’s attempting to excavate a new freeway tunnel under Downtown Seattle.

It had been stuck for two years after being damaged by striking a casing for a test well drilled for the very same project. Yes, that’s how much of a clusterfuck this thing has been. Already.

All these problems, and Bertha is only about 10% of the way home. Given all the above, what are the odds of some other major issue happening? It shouldn’t take a genius to be able to tell this project has major black clouds hanging over it. Moreover, what has already gone wrong pales in comparison to what could go wrong.

Consider another major Bertha breakdown, only this time deep underground beneath a block densly-covered with downtown buildings. There wouldn’t be any way to dig a rescue pit save by purchasing and demolishing some perfectly good buildings, perhaps very large perfectly good buildings. Even if that was done, the rescue pit would have to be so deep that it alone might be an impractical undertaking. Bertha would have to be abandoned in place and the project cancelled.

But it gets worse. The geological strata under Downtown include water-saturated clay and sand beds which are very difficult to tunnel in because they are under pressure and can liquefy when disturbed. Suppose that happens, and subsidence forces most of a downtown block to be hurriedly condemned. There might not even be time for workers to rescue computers, documents and furnishings from the affected buildings. The loss could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars.

Then there’s the matter of the existing viaduct. Excavation of the existing rescue pit has already caused enough subsidence to require a nearby water main to be replaced. The viaduct itself has sank by an amount which was previously decided to be unsafe, then retroactively proclaimed safe simply because they don’t want to close the viaduct before the tunnel opens.

In other words, according to best engineering practices, the viaduct is already unsafe and should have been condemned and closed over a year ago. Given all that, it’s not too hard to see it collapsing. Perhaps a minor to moderate earthquake will strike and do the deed. Or maybe everyone will luck out and there will just be a close call; a viaduct span will partially fail without undergoing a complete collapse and nobody will be killed.

Now, I’m not saying that any of the above will happen, only that there’s a very real chance that it might. In other words, this project is hardly out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

Published at 19:23 on 28 November 2015

This is a good start.

To it one can add that driverless cars will mainly act to increase the capacity of freeways (by enabling cars to safely tailgate each other at freeway speeds). When it comes to congested surface streets in major employment and commercial centers, cars simply can’t move that fast. There’s too many intersections and other hazards to contend with.

Street capacity is already maxed out (or nearly so) in those areas. Making it possible for the freeway system to dump significantly more traffic on those streets will simply make congestion get worse until gridlock develops and the queues waiting to enter the congested area back up onto the freeways and congest them, too.

Self-driving technology does nothing to change the essential fact of personal transportation: that it doesn’t scale. Cars work well only when there are relatively few of them.

Published at 20:49 on 14 August 2015

It’s been a hot and very dry summer. It’s been very unsettling how dry and dusty the woods have been. Sword ferns and salmonberry bushes are withering and dying. I have never seen that happen before in the quarter-century I have lived in the Pacific Northwest.

At 3:00 AM this morning I was awoken by a thunderstorm. It passed, then another one woke me. And another, and another. By daybreak, four thunderstorms had passed. This is an approximate count, because I eventually incorporated the thunder into my dreams, dreaming of a day on the island with multiple thunderstorms. And in my half-awake state, it was hard to distinguish dreams from reality.

Alas, the rainfall from those four storms didn’t amount to much: only .10 inches.

Shortly after noon, Thunderstorm No. 5 announced its presence in the distance with low rumbles. The rumbles grew louder and the sky darker. Checking the NWS radar showed a large blob of echoes slowly (very slowly) working its way in my direction. Would it make it here, or would it fizzle first?

I was not to be disappointed. It took tantalizingly long, but the rain progressed from just lightly spitting to light rain to moderate to heavy at times. The thunder and lightning kept up for over two hours straight, and then the rain lasted for at least three more hours, gradually diminishing as the storm shifted direction, gradually weakened and moved its way west.

Final total for the day: 1.30 inches. The woods are fresh and moist again. All in all, one of the most satisfying rain storms I can remember.

It’s not enough to end the drought, but it did cut the summer dry spell in half, which I believe will really ease the impact on the struggling vegetation.

Published at 07:41 on 27 July 2015

That much seems sure.

Yes, that’s what the experts said last year, too. But not really: If you dug into the details, last summer there were signs of a possible El Niño, but many of them were muted and wavered. It was a “this is probably going to happen but we’re not completely sure” type event.

This year, the signals are strong, and are consistently getting stronger over time. That means something is almost certainly up. The question this year is not whether the coming winter will be an El Niño winter, but what sort of El Niño winter it will be.

Many in journalism are playing up the angle on how strong the signs are. The rub is that super-strong El Niño events are super-rare. The 1998 event was the strongest in history. So the chance of the coming winter being as strong or stronger, while it exists and is actually plausible given the evidence, is still a pretty remote chance.

Odds simply don’t favor it; they favor something weaker. So far, the signals have been growing and growing over recent months. But there’s nothing to say they won’t stop growing, and start wavering. Mind you, everything will still be squarely in El Niño territory if that happens, just not a super-strong event. More of a garden-variety one.

What’s up for us in the Pacific Northwest? If you go here, you’ll see that the overall correlations are not as profound here as there are in California. Temperatures have very little signal, and precipitation seems to end up slightly drier. If (and note the if) it’s a super-strong event, as it may turn out to be, then temperatures end up distinctly warmer than normal and it ends up slightly wetter than normal.

That’s bad news for snowpack in our mountains, particularly after last winter being so terrible. But odds are it will be less terrible than last winter, which was so bad that even most El Niño winters had far better snowpack.

What’s interesting (in the overall situation) is the temperature disconnect between coastal and inland areas of the Northwest. (Inland areas end up distinctly warmer, but there’s little or no overall temperature signal on the coast.)

That’s explainable by there being far fewer arctic air outbreaks in El Niño winters. (In fact, the warmer winters in the while US from the Midwest east are.) It’s rare for such outbreaks to make it past the Cascades, so the loss of one such event (if an arctic front makes it across the mountains, it’s rare for it to happen more than once in a given winter) doesn’t affect temperatures here on the west side much. By contrast, arctic outbreaks are a typical winter feature east of the Cascades, and in particular east of the Rockies, so the loss of a good fraction of those would be expected to have a major effect.

Published at 05:48 on 10 July 2015

Because the austerity is continuing, odds are the depression there will continue, and so will a lack of ability of Greece to repay. Though the beginning of the process of writing off those bad loans is encouraging, the can has merely been kicked a few more years down the road.

And I’m outta here to for a few days to do botanical surveys in the Okanogan Highlands. It’s a part of the state I haven’t seen in about twenty years.

Published at 10:39 on 1 July 2015

So, the one that came with the home I bought is starting to make strange noises in the present heat wave. It’s obviously on its last legs.

It was made in 1993. I did some quick research and it’s easy to find utilities that are offering low-income households to replace for free perfectly good refrigerators made before the year 1999. They’re that inefficient compared to current models. So it’s obviously not worth throwing money at trying to repair the refrigerator I have.

At this point, I start researching efficiency. A super-efficient refrigerator used to mean buying a SunFrost of a VestFrost. But efficiency of the normal big US brands in the USA has increased so much in recent years that you basically gain nothing (except a far lighter wallet) from purchasing a specialty, energy-efficient brand these days.

If you get an EnergyStar model, particularly a smaller, no-frills fridge without energy-wasting features like a built-in icemaker or an in-door ice/water dispenser, you’ll do as well as one of the specialty brands. Plus you’ll have one with standard US dimensions that fits in your existing kitchen without having to remove overhead cabinets (refrigerators built for the European market tend to be taller). So that’s what I did.

The rub is that smaller, no-frills fridges are not carried in stock these days. Everyone wants big and feature-laden. Not me. Not only do those features cost money and waste energy, they also reduce reliability; they are just something more to break. (That’s particularly the case for automatic ice makers.)

When one gets to reviews from Consumer Reports, it’s basically the same story. The smallest model (other than super-tiny dorm-sized fridges) they reviewed was 18 cubic feet. The largest size I am willing to consider is about 15 cubic feet.

So I’ve been compelled to order one sight unseen, despite my worries about noise. The model I chose only had one review I could find complaining about noise, and the noise was caused by for a factory defect and went away when the unit was repaired under warranty. By contrast, several reviews mentioned quietness. Plus, it’s a Frigidaire, and Frigidaire is owned by Electrolux, a Swedish corporation, these days. European brands tend to be better on noise than US ones.

So I’m cautiously optimistic about the noise aspect. We shall see.

Published at 12:49 on 10 June 2015

Despite how Tacoma has had a successful, municipally-owned cable TV and Internet utility for years, Seattle’s idea on doing anything vaguely similar is a big no-can-do. It’s basically the same attitude that made Seattle about forty years late to the game when it comes to building a rail mass transit system.

Of course, any time a billionaire wants pet projects for that entire neighborhood which he owns, or a taxpayer-funded sports stadium for his team, the City of Seattle sits ready and eager to bark on command. Same if it’s a freeway project, even if it uses a risky, unproven technology and it’s a road which would normally be the state government’s responsibility, anyhow.

Because, well, priorities. Duh.

This is another one of those days where I get to feel smug and satisfied about living outside the Seattle City Limits.