The Sethmosphere

Mr. Seth Goes to Washington, Part 1

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

(Written January 19, 2009)

Mr. Seth Goes to Washington, Part 1

Hi Friends,

As many of your know I’m in DC for the Obama Inauguration.

The spirit down here is insatiable. The city is abuzz. Everyone is happy. I’ve been able to strike up a conversation with all sorts of people, from police to waiters, to random people. Everyone has as story. Everyone has a perspective. And after this, everyone will have a memory.

I’m staying in the Georgetown neighborhood which is walking distance to all the major attractions. Needless to say, I’ve done a lot of walking already, more than I’ve probably done in years. My legs are sore!

There is so much more I want to say, but I’m so completely exhausted. It’s nonstop. I don’t even have the energy to download the photos.

Peace out, and stay tuned.

Best,

- Seth

Posted in Personal, Futures, Political, Travel | Comments Off

Seth’s Video Channel: Inauguration

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Posted in Futures | No Comments »

Inauguration Interview

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

“I have a renewed sense of my country”.

Posted in Personal, Futures, Political, News | No Comments »

Obama Inauguration Slide Show

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

Posted in Futures | No Comments »

Republicans block U.S. climate bill

Friday, June 6th, 2008

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/06/america/NA-GEN-US-Climate-Congress.php

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell who opposes the Climate Action bill is exactly correct when we says it would be the “largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal”. That is exactly what we need, and exactly what he’s afraid of.

“It’s a huge tax increase,” argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon emissions allowances would produce “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal” in the 1930s.”It’s a huge tax increase,” argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon emissions allowances would produce “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal” in the 1930s.”It’s a huge tax increase,” argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon emissions allowances would produce “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal” in the 1930s.

Posted in Futures, Climate Change, Energy | No Comments »

“We’re going to loose all the arctic sea ice” - James Hansen Transcript

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

[Partial transcript of talk by Dr. James Hansen. Talk give June 1st, 2008 in Lexington, Massachusetts. Transcript notes by Seth J. Itzkan. I’ve added time stamps next to the text taken from the video available below. See further notes on the talk here.]

http://www.lexgwac.org/JamesHansen.html

26:25 “We do need a revolution. It is going to have to be led by the people. We can’t expect Washington to lead it without the pressure from the public.”

We have to close the gap if we’re going to fix the problem.

Our climate system is dominated by positive feedbacks.”

“strong positive feedback”

26:40 “There is this large gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known about global warming by those who need to know, and that’s the public and policy makers…And we have to close that gap if we’re gong to solve the problem.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Futures, Climate Change, News | No Comments »

Dr. James Hansen’s “Ice Cream Parlor Seminar”

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

On June 1st, myself and several colleagues had the extraordinary pleasure of an impromptu and informal ice cream parlor seminar with Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’S Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Dr. James Hansen is the top climate modeler for U.S. government and is considered the world’s foremost authority on global warming. He often speaks to Congress and is regularly cited in the press.

[Picture 1: Dr. James Hansen talks to a group at the impromptu ice cream parlor seminar in Lexington, MA, following a public presentation in the town hall. Photo by Seth Itzkan.]
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Personal, Futures, Climate Change, News, Energy | No Comments »

Boston Archipalego

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Boston under 14 meters of water, as it would look of the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets melt.

See Interactive Flood Maps for Boston and region.

Posted in Futures, Climate Change | No Comments »

What’s the Weather Voting For?

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

Dear Friends,

Even with my eyes closed the lightning is brilliant. Thunder quickly follows. It’s 12:37 AM and like many of you around here I’m not sleeping. It’s more than the sound of the storm that is keeping me up…It’s the fact of it. Something is wrong. Something is dearly wrong. It’s February in New England. This is the second thunder and lightning storm in less than a week and the third in less than two.

Remember last year we had thunder and lightning combined with snow, and Weather.com introduced a new term, “Thunder Snow”? They even had an icon for it. It was as an amalgamation of the lightning cloud image combined with the snow flake image. It was an icon I’d never seen for a phenomena I’d never experienced. What will be the icons for ice sheet collapse and sea level rise?

I’ve lived in New England since 1969, back when we used to have something called winter. February was cold. Thunder happened in July. The Charles River between Boston and Cambridge would freeze and we would skate on it near the shore of the Esplanade. Dumb yes, but we did it. Temperatures near zero for days and up-to-a-week at a time were common. You would step outside and the mucus in your nose would freeze. The big Arctic Chill would wax in from Canada and sit on us like a Sumo wrestler. We were in Deep Freeze lock down. Yes, it was winter in New England. The two used to be synonymous.

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, and the weather cast her vote. Regarding the tornadoes and “super cell” storms that disrupted the election process in numerous states and left an unprecedented trail of wreckage and death, Stu Ostro, the senior meteorologist at Weather.com, wrote what happened was “a historic February outbreak given the number of tornadoes and amount of casualties. It is one of the most prolific and deadliest outbreaks on record for the month”. Note, we were not even one week into the month.

It seemed that the storms stole the “thunder” from the election coverage. They kept interrupting the Romney versus McCain blather to show the extensive tornado damage…a campus torn apart, a mall collapsed, a gas fire, a house with a family of three pulverized, 51 others killed. And of course, many voting stations were closed,…err…evacuated. All of this was in sharp contrast to the slick New York studios were manicured pundits harrumphed over which Red contender was the righteous conservative.

What’s the weather voting for?

- s
2:26 AM. 2/7/08

Posted in New England, Personal, Futures, Climate Change | No Comments »

Yes We Can

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

This feels to me like the best political video of all time. - s

Posted in Futures, Political | No Comments »

T. Boone Pickens Meets Planet Emo: Houston After Oil Blog Post 2

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

Seth Versus Raxos [Seth’s personal musing from the front lines of The Third Annual Conference for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), Houston, TX, October 17-20, 2007.]

[See more Anime Convention Photos]

October 20, 2007

I’m sitting in the middle of the Onicon Anime convention. Waves of teenagers in full video game character regalia have converted the third floor of the Houston Convention Center into a flesh and blood version of virtual reality - life imitating fantasy.

Ninjas, Sward Masters, Commandos, Dark Lords, Centurions, Robocons, and of course, Emos, swarm through the cafeteria brandishing their magical scimitars as the courteous and bewildered employees try desperately to keep up with the unquenchable demand for nacho cheese and chili dogs.

Oh, did I say I was at a conference on Peak Oil?
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Personal, Futures, Energy | No Comments »

What Does the Future Look Like? Houston After (Peak) Oil Blog Post 1

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

null Seth’s personal musing from the front lines of The Third Annual Conference for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), Houston, TX, October 17-20, 2007.

There’s something surreal about the pavement desert with the constant hum of trucks and sweet petrochemical aromas mixing with the humid Gulf air.

[image source www.cleanhouston.org/images/refinery.jpg]

What does the future look like?

Is it endless highways? Strip malls on each corner? Mothers with children filing across Whattaburber parking lots to get to the Mobil Marts?

Houston. Oh, I’m back home again.

Can you believe I called this place home for three and half years? And you know what’s sick? I missed it. There’s something surreal about the pavement desert with the constant hum of trucks and sweet petrochemical aromas mixing with the humid Gulf air. I miss the Dr. Seuss desert plants, probably palms of some sort, ornamentally arranged with scrub oaks and cut grass along 10-lane cross streets. I miss the ocean of Motel 8s, and La Quintas, and Shawnees. And most of all, I miss my wife. I mean, my ex-wife. Because staying at this inn throws me right back to that time in my life. Right back to the joy and the pain. Because, believe it or not, we had fun. A real authentic fun it’s hard to have in the Northeast, actually. Texas is an adventure. It doesn’t end. No wonder it was a country. Indeed it probably should be a country again. That way we could bomb it and get it’s oil. Oh, but it doesn’t have any more oil. Never mind. But that does bring me to the subject of this post, supposedly - Peak Oil.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Personal, Futures, Energy | No Comments »

Thomas Jefferson Returns: Seeks Third Term as President

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

Thomas Jefferson - Gus Jaccaci For Immediate Release:

Thomas Jefferson Returns:
Seeks Third Term as President
To announce his candidacy for President of the United States.
Location: The steps of Widener Library at Harvard at noon on March 9th, 2007.

For more information, contact Joanne Jaccaci
Telephone: 207-926-5933
E-mail: socialarchitects@earthlink.net
http://jefferson2040.org/

Thomas Jefferson will announce his candidacy for President of the United States on the steps of Widener Library at Harvard at noon on March 9th, 2007. Declaring that the great American experiment in self-governance is foundering, the author of the Declaration of Independence feels compelled to return to seek a third term as Commander in Chief.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Futures, Political | No Comments »

The Flower That Forecast the Future

Monday, January 8th, 2007

A New Year’s Observation

By Seth J. Itzkan

CherryBlossom Dear Friends,

As many of you know, each New Year’s Eve I spend a few hours in meditation. The objective is to discern within myself the theme of the previous year, and it’s trajectory moving forward. Sometimes I walk by myself, sometimes I join in Boston’s First Night, or other festive events, but always with an eye toward discovering the single image, sound, theme, or otherwise “signature” of the previous year.

On this New Year’s Eve I was struck. I found the most important such “sign” ever in my annual quest. It hit me with the magnitude of a Nor’easter. And now as I finally find the time to write about it, a week later, I am still taken aback. What was this sign, and what does it foretell?
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in New England, Personal, Futures, Climate Change | 1 Comment »

Unlike the Slopes we Used to Know

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

Boston Globe Cover - Barren Slopes This Boston Globe story says it all…

Wish list for ski areas: snow and cold

By Tony Chamberlain, Globe Staff | December 21, 2006

SOUTHINGTON, Conn. — This time most Christmases the quaint red barn greeting skiers to Mount Southington ski area wears a blanket of snow on its Dutch-colonial roof, and lots of families from this rolling hill country southwest of Hartford usually are planning their vacations around the skiing and riding here.

Mount Southington is a classic Connecticut area, one where operators learned generations ago that the key to survival is knowing how to make the kind of snow people like to ski and ride on — soft and well-groomed.

Read full story… | See larger image.

Other links:

Many didn’t warm to snowless holiday |
Boston on the brink of setting record for warmest December

Posted in Futures, Climate Change | No Comments »

Miracle on Merrimack Street

Saturday, December 16th, 2006

Hi Folks,

Please see my Miracle on Merrimack Street article from the December 2006 issue of The Valley Patriot, and posted on the Innovation Vally site.

Monarch Lofts, Lawrence

There is a miracle occurring on Merrimack Street in Lawrence.

On less than one mile of riverfront property, the seeds of a new economic revolution are taking root. The world’s largest green condo development is underway in the conversion of Wood Mill. This is a 1.3 million square foot retired wool factory that, when built in 1905, was a cornerstone of industrial prowess in America. Today it is becoming the cornerstone for Lawrence’s revitalization and helping to set the mold for how old industrial cities can reinvent themselves with green sustainable thinking. In doing so, the project is showcasing the tenacious power of Northeast ingenuity.

Read full story.

Posted in New England, Innovation, Futures, Housing / Development | No Comments »

Stockmarket Report From the End of the World

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006

STOCK MARKET REPORT

After The End Of The World:

The Tao is unchanged…

Posted in Personal, Futures, Sayings | No Comments »

And Then Came The Mushrooms!

Monday, November 13th, 2006

Mushroom Earth

An event not to miss: And Then Came The Mushrooms!

This Thursday.

Dear Friends,

Consider these questions:

* How would you restore a Redwood forest on barren hills?
* How would you clean a toxic brownfield without chemicals or drudging?
* How would you produce dietary protein for a planet in a post fossil-fuel era?

The answer for all those questions may be staring at you from the bottom bin of your refrigerator .
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Futures | No Comments »

Jill Stein’s Candidate Statement

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

9/17/06

My name is Jill Stein and I am running for Secretary of State because it’s time to take our democracy back. It’s time to open up Beacon Hill, get the big money out and let the people back in. We need people - not the powerful and politically connected - to be the drivers in our political system. Only then can we begin solving the serious problems we’re facing, and start building the healthy, just and sustainable Commonwealth we deserve.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Futures | No Comments »

ASPO Conference - Electric Car

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Karl Electric Car Electric Car - No Gas

Karl Thidemann showed off his Solectria electric “No Gas” car at the ASPO-USA conference (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas - USA).

Link: http://www.aspo-usa.com/

Posted in New England, Metro Boston, Innovation, Futures | No Comments »

Jill Stein Event Invitation

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

Annette Itzkan & Seth Itzkan

would like you to meet

Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Secretary of State

Jill Stein, M.D.

“I come to the race as a medical doctor and community advocate, with years of experience helping people engage the democratic process to improve our lives and communities.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in New England, Personal, Futures, Political | No Comments »

Forbes Green Development Visit

Friday, October 13th, 2006

Forbes Visit Group Photo Our visit to the Forbes Development in Chelsea, Mass. This will be be the home of a mixed use green development, employing state-of-the-art innovations.

Pictured to left to right are Josh Dobbelaar, Blair Galinski, Seth Itzkan, and Karl Thidemann.

Below are photos of the visionary developer, Blair Galinsky, and me in Blair’s Smart Car. I just had to try it!

Link: Forbes Mixed Use Green Development
Link: Photo Album of Site Visit

Blair Galinsky Seth with Smart Car

Posted in Metro Boston, Innovation, Futures, Housing / Development | No Comments »

Mushroom Inoculation

Monday, August 14th, 2006

The future of food in a post-fossil fuel economy: Inoculating hardwood pellets with oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) spores.
seth&mushroom mushroomJar wateringPellets stirringMushroomPellets

Posted in Personal, Futures | No Comments »

Too Hot Not To Handle

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

TooHotLine

Last night I saw the premier of HBO’s global warming documentary, Too Hot Not To Handle, at the Harvard Square Lowes Theater. This promotional event was attended by two of the scientists interviewed in the program as well as the director of corporate affairs for HBO. These folks were:

* Paul Epstein - Associate Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School
* Kevin Knobloch - President, Union of Concerned Scientists
* Suzanne Pinto- Director, Corporate Affairs, HBO

There was a question an answer period afterward.

The program was 1 hour and will air on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, 7 PM, ET / PT

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Futures, Climate Change | 1 Comment »

Google Mars Maps

Monday, March 13th, 2006

http://www.google.com/mars/

Posted in Futures | No Comments »

Alito & King

Wednesday, February 1st, 2006

I wonder if there is some cosmic undercurrents in having Judge Alito sworn in to the Supreme Court on the same day the Correta Scott King dies?

Although these events are of course unrelated, the juxtaposition non-the-less gives one pause.

May the legacy of Mrs. King not yield to the forces that would undermine her and the march of Human Rights and Civic Progress.

In eulogizing her, on the very day that Alito swings the court far from the course of freedom that she lived for, I can think of no other words than those uttered by Lincoln himself at Gettysburg. How
true they still are:

“… we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Rest in peace Mrs. King. Your cause lives on.

Posted in Futures, Political | No Comments »

Peak Oil resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives

Friday, November 25th, 2005

Posted in Futures | No Comments »

200 Yeas Ago Today, Lewis and Clark

Monday, November 7th, 2005

Of Sequoias and Democracy: Two hundred years ago today

Two hundred years ago today, November 7 1805, Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition penned what is considered one of the most famous journal entries in all American history: “Ocian in view! O! the joy“. It marked (what he believed to be) the first sighting of the Pacific coast after a two year journey into the unknown (see detailed explanation below). It would be the equivalent today of a manned journey to a planet outside of our solar system and outside of our view or radio contact.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Futures, Political | No Comments »