Pumpkin Bread Recipe

I like this new pumpkin bread I tried. It uses the whole can of pumpkin and gives me a good way to use up the liquid from the garbanzo beans I eat most weeks, though you don't need that.

I based it on the Conscientious Eater's Vegan Quick Bread.

1 15-ounce can of pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
6 tablespoons aquafaba*
2 cups flour (I use whole wheat)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

* aquafaba is the water that garbanzo beans (a.k.a. chickpeas) have been cooked in. I get mine from a 15-ounce can of garbanzo beans, which is a staple dish for me. If this is not a staple for you or you otherwise don't want to use this, you can sub 2 eggs or a different egg substitute.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a bread pan (I use more oil).

Mix the pumpkin, sugar, oil, and aquafaba.

Add the remaining ingredients. Mix those dry ingredients around a bit with each other, then mix in with wet ingredients.

Pour into the bread pan and smooth the top. Bake for 55-65 minutes until a fork inserted in the middle comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge and let cool.

Substitutions:
You could sub your favorite pumpkin pie spices for what I used. And the linked recipe includes alternative quick bread flavors (banana or applesauce instead of pumpkin).

Of course you can also mix the wet and dry ingredients separately before mixing them together, like normal people, or all but the flour the first, like in the recipe (but the baking powder and baking soda start reacting as soon as they get wet, so I like to do that as late as possible in the mixing process).

Additions:
You could add a cup of nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins, other dried fruit, or I bet white chocolate chips would be good. You could decorate the top with pumpkin seeds.

Review: Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know

It took me months to read Joseph Romm's Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (3rd ed.) (2022). I just couldn't take it psychologically for very long. But I've condensed it quite a bit for you, as it is an excellent, well-researched book on a hot topic (pun noted).

First, there are some tipping points we have already passed. There is no avoiding:
* sea level rise of 4 feet (due to the collapse of the Western Antarctic ice sheet glaciers)
* desertification of some regions, leading to higher food costs

Then here's what will happen with a 'business as usual' approach--if we don't make any more improvements than we're doing now. Here is a brief summary:
* much higher sea level rise (1 foot per decade by 2100)
* much worse desertification (1/3 of inhabited, arable land) especially in subtropics (and thus food insecurity, migration, war--like in Syria today)
* more bad storms
* more droughts
* more record-setting hot days, fewer record-setting cold days; more areas with too much heat and humidity to be livable
* worse hurricanes (stronger, less predictable, weakening more slowly, and with worse storm surges)
* worse and more frequent wildfires
* worse and more frequent snowstorms (there's such as thing as too cold to snow!)
* worse tornadoes (more tornadoes per storm, wider paths)
* massive species loss on land and sea
* increasing salinization of rivers
* more smog
* more ocean acidification

Basically, imagine an America where everyone's moving inland and north to places that can't handle the growth, so it's basically like third-world, slum, war-torn living. I'm guessing certain rich people will escape a lot of this, but they are not immune to everything, especially uprisings of angry poor people (like the French Revolution).

We can avoid the worst impacts by doing what UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez says: "We must end fossil fuel subsidies, phase out coal, put a price on carbon, protect vulnerable communities from the impacts of climate change and make good on the $100 billion climate commitment to support developing countries."

(What about geoengineering? Carbon dioxide removal by reforestation or direct capture is relatively safe but expensive. Even just capturing and permanently storing CO2 from coal plants is very expensive. Reflecting sunlight, say, by injecting vast quantities of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes, is possibly affordable but flawed as a solution because it would not slow ocean acidification and could disrupt food production.)

The Good News

And how much would it cost to do what the UN Secretary General requests? "Every major independent economic analysis of the cost of strong climate action has found that it is quite low." I cried after reading that, too. Because then why aren't we doing it?

What do they mean by "quite low"? In 2014, the International Agency "said that a systematic effort to use renewable energy and energy efficiency and energy storage to keep global warming below the 2 degree threshold" would cost about 1% of global gross domestic product per year.

And they said, "The $44 trillion additional investment needed to decarbonize the energy system in line with the 2DS by 2050 is more than offset by over $115 trillion in fuel savings." Plus there would be less pollution and climate change.

'The conclusion that avoiding dangerous warming has a very low net cost is not a new finding.' Comparison: global spending on insurance is 3.3% of GDP. Delaying increases the cost.

And can we adapt if we don't avoid those worst impacts? For sea-level rise, we could use stilts, levees, sea walls, pumping systems, abandonment. (Sea walls don't work in some places with permeable land like southern Florida). It's difficult or impossible to adapt to desertification - it's no coincidence that the word "desert" is both a noun meaning a dry place and a verb meaning to abandon. Agriculture and food security could be easily overwhelmed.

What can (we beg that) the government do? There are four basic strategies:

1) economic - pricing emissions (carbon tax, cap-and-trade) or subsidizing carbon free energy.
2) regulatory - fuel economy standards, energy efficiency standards for appliances, renewable energy percentage standards for utilities, emissions limits from different facilities such as power plants. (In US, Obama's Clean Power Plan).
3) technological - basic and applied research aimed at lowering costs and improving performance of low-carbon sources.
4) forestry/land use policies - fighting deforestation.

(There are loads of details on each, but I'm trying to keep this short--ask questions if you want.)

For energy, the best strategy is increasing efficiency, such as with weatherization, auto fuel economy, LEDs, occupancy sensors, and natural lighting.

The next important strategy is replacing fossil fuels with clean energy like solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy, especially with new battery technology (though the biggest source currently used (another pun!) by the electric grid is "pumped storage" at hydroelectric plants (potential energy). Fascinatingly: "In Denmark, the owners of electric vehicles have been earning as much as $1500/year by plugging in when they park and selling excess power back to the grid when needed."

Next most important is substitution/energy conservation - walking, biking, public transport, internet (the increase in telecommuting, teleconferencing, and internet shopping is helping). This is the only one that requires behavior change. No one is asking us to go back to caveman days, just to make minor tweaks in our current fabulously luxurious and extravagant lifestyles. Reducing consumerism also helps. Changing our diet to consist of more plants and fewer ungulates and dairy helps. The author recommends keeping meat, fish, and eggs to less than 90 g per person per day (not completely cutting them out of your life, even though you could still stay healthy and maybe even enjoy eating). (I've read that there's such a thing as regenerative ranching where the ungulates aren't nearly so hard on the ecosystem, so that's another alternative.)

Finally is taxing gas.

Weekly update: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

I got to have a wonderfully social (and delicious) Thanksgiving with old friends, old acquaintances, and a new(ish?) person, all of whom I quite like. I got to try out a new pumpkin bread recipe, which I liked, so I posted it.

Archery

A friend also celebrated his birthday by organizing a private session at an archery range, with all the equipment we need and a professional to help us all out.

I've shot archery one or two times since summer camp, but the only thing in my brain is summer camp where I earned my Yeoman, Junior Bowman, and Bowman certifications from the Camp Archery Association:
* Yeoman: shooting 30 arrows at 15 yards for a score of 100 points
* Junior Bowman: shooting 30 arrows at 20 yards for 60 points
* Bowman: shooting 30 arrows at 20 yards for 100 points.
I also have evidence that I shot 30 arrows at 30 yards but for only 58 points. I'm also not sure what I mean by "points" but apparently you can get 9 points for a bullseye and lower odd points as your arrow is further from the center. Apparently I was working toward Archer. Also, at each distance, beyond "Junior" and regular are "First Rank" (130 points) and "Sharpshooter" (160 points).

Anyway, at Archery Country where we went, the targets didn't have point values and they put us super close (ten yards?) because there was one person who'd never shot an arrow before. No one was having trouble splitting one arrow with the next one, so it wasn't too close. And everyone was able to mostly hit the targets--there was no shooting too high to retrieve or sliding along the floor or hitting the wall or anything. Though one of my favorite quotes was when I told my neighbor something like, "see that arrow that went a bit wide [in your target]? That's actually my arrow." Most of my arrows did hit the target and none of them went further than the edge of my neighbor's target.

Although I knew better, I still managed to twang my forearm with the bowstring several times, but it was still fun, and there was new technology/more luxury compared to the affordable bows they had at my summer camp three decades ago. First, when you slide the bowstring into the notch at the back of the arrow, it stays there on its own rather than being able to slide up and down the string. So you don't have to hold it there yourself which means all your fingers can be below the arrow while you're shooting. Also, the bow strings now have nocking points, basically a crimp bead at the perfect place for you to attach your arrow in preparation for shooting. Like I said, this did not make me an amazing shooter, but it was fun.

I asked our instructor if there is a traditional exclamation for hitting a bullseye. (I had just said, "Bay-BAY," which, ugh, surely I can do better!) Unfortunately he did not know of one, though he did say that he knows one person who says, "BOOM town!" Much better. (Per https://badaxethrowing.com/axe-throwing-terms-culture/, the exclamations "boom!" and "nailed it!" are traditional.)

When someone got one arrow right next to another arrow, though neither were all that close to the bullseye, I enjoyed shouting, "BOOM pueblo!"

Other Possible Adventures

Archery is one of the activities in the Adventure badge in the Rebel Badge Book. I haven't wanted to do this badge because you are supposed to try five different things in only three months. I guess I'm not that adventurous. I've tried five of the things over my lifetime:
* archery
* bouldering/rock climbing
* high ropes/tree climbing
* horse riding
* skiing

Just for fun, I looked to see how many things I hadn't done that looked like they might be fun:
* axe-throwing
* go-karting
* parkour
* zip lining (though I've already bypassed several opportunities to try this)

I also realized there were several activities listed that I've never heard of:
* abseiling - Turns out that's rappelling. I've sort of done that on the way down from rock climbing.
* canyoning (aka canyoneering in Utah) - Apparently this is a combination of things you can do hanging out in canyons such as rock climbing, hiking, swimming, jumping, and rappelling.
* coasteering - Apparently this is like canyoning but on a rocky coastline, involving such things as walking, swimming, and body surfing. (It started in Wales.) I think I did this informally at beaches, plus the swimming pool equivalent, throughout my childhood.
* quad biking - all-terain vehicle
* zorbing - 'rolling downhill inside an orb, typically made of transparent plastic.' Okay.

Then I realized I've done a few other things that seem similarly adventurous:
* bumper car basketball
* canoeing down a river
* dune sledding (okay, I tried this but it didn't actually work)
* kick sledding
* helicopter riding
* laser tag
* paddleboarding
* pub crawling (by which I mean the 12-person bicycle we used for this activity)
* roller skating/roller blading
* sledding, tray sledding (using cafeteria trays at college)
* tubing

Climate Change Nonfiction and Fiction

I finally finished the climate change book I was reading (see previous post for review). And at the end of it I was simultaneously reading Neil Stephenson's new book, Termination Shock (2021), set in a near future where we have done business as usual and one man has decided to inject sulfur into the stratosphere (as described in the other book I'm reading).

The book starts off depressing because it's crazy hot but people are still being morons by using as much gas as possible. But then we get to meet several interesting characters. In this book a spoiler is that three of the four main characters get a new job and one keeps their current one. Well, it's a semi-spoiler because you still get to guess which is which.

Reading this book, you can also learn a little more about Texas geography, the Dutch monarchy, people with multiple racial/ethnic backgrounds, drones, mining, Papua New Guinea, welding, gatka (a martial art popular in the Punjab region of India), the border between China and India, falconry (with golden eagles), and Commanches. And this book is set in modern times where everyone has a smartphone and it never has to be broken for the plot to work. Well, okay, once, but it was a weapon that took out all kinds of things.

The pacing was varied. I enjoyed the start--get one person's story, then another person's story, then they intersect. The next third of the book is a bit slow. Then we get another exciting story. And then the dreaded "Eight Months Later." So first I complain about it going too slow, then too fast. Then we get several more stories. And then there is a semi-satisfying ending. I want to know more, but maybe not enough to want a sequel. I like most of the characters. But there are a lot of disturbing things about how people react to things. I liked it but I don't love it.

It was weird to be reading this at the same time as Douglas Adams's Mostly Harmless because this book starts with a jet practically in space and with wild pigs taking over the landscape and the world is depressing after climate change and the other starts with an earth that still exists but is overrun by wild pigs and is depressing. The scene with the Chinese operative was also surreal in that context. Then it was weird to read it at the same time as Adams's Dirk Gently book, which also features golden eagles.

(Why am I reading so many books at the same time? I'm generally in the middle of three books: one I can read on my iPad in bed at night, one I want to take notes on, and one I can just read in the daylight without needing to take notes.)

Trevor Noah

I also learned that Trevor Noah has a new podcast on Spotify called "Now What?" So I need to look into Spotify.

Reading Challenge Complete

I've finished my library's reading challenge for this year, reading at least one book in each of at least ten categores. And I got a pin for it! But my personal goal is to read at least 3 books in each of all 12 categories, after which I'll give you a summary of what I read.