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Steve Harrell

@steveharrell.bsky.social

1.8K followers 1.3K following 1.5K posts

Retired professor, unretired ethnographer, polyglot, part-time climate activist, occasional contrarian. Taiwan, China, and Whatcom County--Post mostly plants, mountains, energy transition. Occasionally political snark.

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Pinned

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · Nov 26

I've been advised to pin this.

uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...

An Ecological History of Modern China

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed ...

uwapress.uw.edu

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Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 1d

#Bellingham #Forests 2025, Day 288:

Exotic maples are more colorful than our natives in the fall:

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 1d

#Belllingham #Forests 2025, Day 287

Exotic maple puts down the original red carpet:

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 2d

Nice to see some grounds for optimism, although they're quite qualified.

heatmap.news/economy/nobe...

The Latest Nobel Winner Thinks ‘Creative Destruction’ Can Stop Climate Change

Economist Philippe Aghion views carbon taxes as a tool to decarbonize, but not a solution in themselves.

heatmap.news

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 2d

Not exactly aware of what fossil fuel burning is doing to our planet, but at least he sees the value of solar energy, and doesn't advocate for bringing back coal. Probably the best one can expect from a Republican.

x.com/SpencerJCox/...

Spencer Cox on X: "This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race with China. Our country needs an all-of-the-above approach to energy (like Utah). We should be all in on nuclear/natural gas/geothermal and keeping our coal plants open for as long as possible. However, there are" / X

This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race with China. Our country needs an all-of-the-above approach to energy (like Utah). We should be all in on nuclear/natural gas/geothermal and keeping our coal plants open for as long as possible. However, there are

x.com

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 2d

#Bellingham #Forests 2025, Day 286:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 3d

#Bellingham #Forests 2025, Day 285:

Some vine maples (Acer circinatum) just turn yellow or brownish-orange in the fall, but others approach what in my family was called "fire engine red." We thought this was mostly about habitat, but the native nursery people say it's at least partly genetic.

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 4d

This is great news--from 100 returning sockeye in 1985 to 91,000 this year.

www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/a...

Washington announces record sockeye salmon returns to Baker River system

A record number of juvenile fish — 1.5 million — passed through the Baker Lake and Lake Shannon Floating Surface Collectors in May.

www.bellinghamherald.com

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Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 4d

I know the feeling. My "An Ecological History of Modern China" was finished in '22 and published in '23, and the sections on energy are way out of date. Other things change more slowly.
Now working on a co-edited collection "East Asia's Green Energy Transition," which has these issues in spades.

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 4d

I see your book is 2019, which is eons ago in renewable energy development years. Can you post a quickie bullet list of what is different now, if anything?

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Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 4d

So it looks like parts of this may proceed? There are always environmental tradeoffs with big energy projects of whatever kind (I'm gonna get your book), so could this new approach avoid some of the worst of those without reducing the generation capacity too much?

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Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 4d

#Bellingham #Forests 2025, Day 284:

With the onset of fall rains, the creeks are starting to fill again.

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Reposted by Steve Harrell

Profit Greenly @profitgreenly.bsky.social · 6d

Great image comparing land use of biofuels vs solar.

Søren Have @sorenhave.dk · 6d

Hard agree.

@transportenvironment.org made this nice illustration (for EU): te-cdn.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/files/202303...

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Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 6d

Years and years ago, before we understood things, we thought this would help reduce the greenhouse gases from burning petroleum. That was years and years ago, but the subsidies are still in place. Sigh

Profit Greenly @profitgreenly.bsky.social · 6d

~40% of the ENTIRE corn crop of the US is used to make ethanol. This gets blended with gasoline to power well under 10% of our vehicle miles. If we converted 100% of our vehicles to EVs installing solar on a small fraction of the land this corn is grown on would power them all.

US domestic corn use graph from 1980 to 2020. The orange bar representing "Alcohol for fuel use" (aka ethanol) starts growing in early 2000s, explodes before 2010 and stays huge through the graphs 2022 end. This explains most of the increased corn production in the US.

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Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 6d

#Bellingham #Forests 2025, Day 283:

It may be fall, but that doesn't stop the (in this case vertically) invasive "Himalayan" blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) from doing its invading.

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 6d

But then, on the other hand...

www.canarymedia.com/articles/off...

America’s biggest offshore wind farm will be online in six months

Dominion Energy’s 2.6 GW project off Virginia’s coast is progressing fast. The utility has a new, more definitive target to plug into the grid: March 2026.

www.canarymedia.com

Steve Harrell @steveharrell.bsky.social · 6d

We thought the war was just on wind...

heatmap.news/sparks/esmer...

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

heatmap.news

Reposted by Steve Harrell

The Bee Guy @thebeeguy.bsky.social · 6d

#theBeeAt3
Basic bee facts every day at 3pm.

# 188

Research indicates that the more plant species there are in a meadow, the more bee species are needed for pollination.
‘Rare species’ #bees often forage on and pollinate plants that the more common species of bees don’t.
#bumblebees
#nature
🐝🌍