Richard Ha writes:

Professor Charles A.S. Hall is giving two free lectures on O‘ahu. One is today at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. It’s at 3:30 p.m. in the Architecture Auditorium.

The second is tomorrow, January 10, 2013, from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m., also at UH Manoa. It’s at Holmes Hall 244.

His talk is titled “Peak Oil, EROI and Your Financial Future in Hawai‘i.”

We’ve been going around. I took Charlie and his wife Myrna up to see the sunset at Maunakea.

Here is Dr. Hall talking with Mike Kaleikini, general manager of Puna Geothermal Venture, as we toured the Puna Geothermal plant.

Professor Hall is a hands-on guy. At the farm, he took off his shoes and got into the flume. He started turning over rocks in order to evaluate the health of that environment. It is relatively impoverished, he said.

At ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, he talked to Master Navigator Kalepa Baybayan, who has captained voyages to the South Pacific and back using traditional navigational methods. Kalepa was describing how certain star clusters move in the sky as your position changes.

We had coffee with with Monty Richards at his home. He is a wealth of information and history. He told us about the possibility of combining wind and 600′ pump storage using sea water, so one is not limited by the availability of fresh water. Although the soil is porous and cannot hold water, his reservoirs are lined with cheap plastic, which is common on the Big Island.