Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

Sooner or later one of the local schools is going to need a new roof. Maybe by then awareness of new developments in construction “high technology” will have reached the provinces. Even this one.

If it hasn’t reached the general population, then the school board. Or do I have that backwards? Would it be the school board (or at least a majority of them) exhibiting recalcitrance, and the population at large being quite willing for there to be a green roof on a local school building?

Especially if there was a nice grant to go with? I have a hunch if some government agency or giant corporation had stepped forward with the moolah to fund artificial turf, it (and the soccer field) would be up there at Gator Stadium right now.

Those so in love with nature as not to want to part with natural turf (with its short growing season and its need for chemical fertilizers (or would manure be preferable?) should have no objection to applying some growing medium atop a non-permeable membrane, and plants that would self-seed, self-mulch, provide insulation and maybe even some biology lessons and greens for the cafeteria.

Two school renovations ago I harped about a green roof option, to the great amusement of the then board president. But maybe another project or so down the road or up in the air, awareness will have been raised.

Or how about rooftop solar energy? There are homes in the area using passive solar, most of them through use of a solarium with some heat absorbing materials, optimal orientation and well designed convection.

But those ways of using solar power would not work well at our schools. Maybe such innovations would be considered in Coudersport, where the greenhouses are wonderfully utilized, and incorporated in the curriculum and the food service program. But our high school shucked off its greenhouse years ago. We aren’t a bunch of farmers, in port Allegany

Well, there are some pigs and cows and beef cattle and horses and goats and alpacas, and at one time there were known to be 14 rabbits in a hutch (according to a disapproving announcement in a borough council meeting). But no, we are NOT that agrarian, thank you very much. We are into industrial development, and tourism, and the arts (or whatever artisans do).

Well, then, we should be excellent candidates for going solar in the photo-voltaic sense! PV is hip, PV is hot, PV is trending, there is ROI. Best of all, the U.S. Department of Energy has a SunShot program that hands out grants to school districts for implementing solar.

I know what you’re thinking. Solar works in the southwest. It works in warm climates, and where there aren’t hills in the way, or at high elevations like Denver.

But to my surprise, I found that this is not the case, as I followed some links in a Care2 email.

True, the most recent studies reported on were prepared by The Solar Foundation, and funded at least in part by the Solar Energy Industries Association. But it’s also true that thousands of K-12 schools are using solar energy, and it is saving them money.

And those solar-projects are in schools in New England, and in our region and the south and California and pretty much everywhere except the Great Plains.

Some PV solar projects are modest, and dedicated to lighting part of the school or assisting more conventional energy systems. Some are ambitious, and cover fields and hillsides with PV units, or feature huge PV arrays propped up at the optimum angle. Some arrays even trace Apollo’s chariot’s journey, altering orientation as did Heliotrope’s gaze, until she turned into a flower.

Some school energy projects have combined solar with wind. Those generate power rain or shine.

The schools using solar have saved an average of $21,000 per year per school.  According to EcoWatch, more than 70,000 additional schools across the country would benefit by using solar. Another stat says 40,000 to 72,000 could switch to or add solar cost-effectively.

That implementation of science isn’t your cup of tea? (What? What did I say? Hey, not every mention of tea is political! Would I go all political on you in TechTalk? Only in the other column. And the photo should be turned around in one of them so it does not indicate that I face right all the time. That shot must have been from the WANTED poster.)

What I was about to mention was that we don’t need to get our undies knotted like macramé, for goodness sakes, at the thought we might ingest some genetically modified food.

It is not going to alter our genes. Although I think maybe the cotton in some of those holey jeans we are seeing could have benefitted from some genetic moth killers. But see, there we are talking about genetically modifying something by adding insecticide, like the Bt added to some strains of corn to kill root worms.

Turns out those worms turn. They mutate to become resistant to the Bt in that corn, so Monsanto has to modify corn some more, etc. Part of the problem is that farmers are not carrying out the terms under which they receive that GMO seed, which call for planting fields of non-GMO in between fields of the worm resistant kind. That way there will still be normal, non-mutant worms around, see?

There are many other kinds of genetic modifications that do not involve adding pest-resistant abilities. Some of those have kept severe famine from killing millions of people in India. Some are adding Vitamin A to rice. What is sinister about vitamin A in rice? As it is, the people whose main food is rice might not have access to carrots and pills, as we do.

Creating hybrids the way Luther Burbank did was genetic modification. There was no gene splicing involved, but if such wizards had had access to that technology, they’d have used it and saved themselves a lot of time.

Genetic modification has rescued economies and headed off food shortage disasters all around the globe. Often Monsanto is not involved; and sometimes that company and others have been on the side of the angels. When they act from corporate greed, they should be exposed, stopped and sanctioned.

GMO, in and of itself, is not evil, any more than antibiotics are. Misuse of those marvels is the problem.