3. Right, so we're hearing more and more about biofuels these days- but will they ever be effectively used? I find myself agreeing with this statement from the article I chose: "...for now the business [of biofuels] more closely resembles a science-fair project than Big Oil." Basically it's as if scientists all over the world are going on fun scientific field trips to find the next energy source for us to deplete. They're playing with all kinds of different things, from corn to algae, and most are convinced that they have found the ultimate solution. Of course, that doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to abandon all our previous environmentally unfriendly energy sources, even if we did actually find some sort of magical power that allowed us to harvest energy with no lasting consequences whatsoever.
The problem is that the current 'energy industry' is controlled by the rich and powerful- what do they care about the environment? (And in the slim chance that they do, they obviously don't care enough). It isn't going to be easy to shift our entire way of life from one energy source to another, simply because all of our machinery may not be compatible with these new biofuels (and because the rich oil companies wouldn't want their way of making money to simply stop existing). Furthermore, the corn-ethanol industry (which apparently "grew fat" at first) "crashed" last year- scientists had found out that using corn as a fuel would only lead to even more problems than we have today (namely food-price inflation and even higher levels of green-house gas emissions than gasoline). Gee, you'd think they would have found out about that before we wasted our time on this industry.
Here's (one of) the next potentially perfect biofuel we're looking at now- algae (or as the article refers to it: "pond scum"). It sounds like a brilliant idea- algae can be grown virtually anywhere warm and sunny, and it doesn't need our precious fresh water to grow in. Also, algae eats carbon- how wonderful! All of this sounds almost too good to be true! (I'm just waiting for them to find some sort of crucial drawback to this energy source.) Of course there is some criticism directed towards this new potential branch of energy, but it seems as though NOT using this may just be the worst thing we can do.
Again, gov't policies play a huge role in this whole biofuel industry. It is because good policies are yet to be made that biofuels only seem like a science project at the moment. The best (and inevitable) step the gov't must take is to make policies "favoring fuels based on their carbon footprint, not where they come from or who grows them". THIS is the main obstacle right now- we have the options, but we're being held back by our own rules and regulations. When will we see biofuels in action?
Paul Woods didn't blindfold me as we drove through the overgrown plantations outside West Palm Beach, Fla., but he looked as if he was considering it. Woods is the brash 46-year-old CEO of biofuels start-up Algenol — and he takes his company's secrecy seriously. Aside from officials from the U.S. Department of Energy, I was the first outsider ever to visit Algenol's modest testing facility. We turned off a country road opposite a llama ranch, and stopped at an unmarked circle of trailers in the middle of a clearing in the palm trees. There, sitting on a section of concrete half the size of a basketball court, was what Woods has been hiding from the world: several rows of long white tubs fitted with plastic windows that let in sunlight, each filled with a liquid the dark green of moss. The mixture was water and algae — microscopic plantlike organisms that feed off sunlight and carbon dioxide. With the proprietary algae happily multiplying, Woods explained that he and his partners intend to produce a biofuel greener and cheaper than oil or corn-fed ethanol: "We want to do 20 billion gallons eventually, and we will compete on price. We're a year away from sales."
This sort of audacious prediction used to be commonplace in the biofuel industry, but 2008 was not kind to those who want to replace petroleum with plants as delegates gathering at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 19 are sure to discuss. The U.S. corn-ethanol industry, which had grown fat on government subsidies, crashed last year. Perhaps worse, a series of influential studies argued that, far from being a green alternative, corn ethanol drives food-price inflation and produces higher levels of greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline, because biofuel subsidies encourage forest-clearing. "If anything, traditional biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel are moving us in the wrong direction," says Nathanael Greene, an analyst at the U.S.'s Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
But it would be a mistake to abandon the biofuel option now. The fact is that cars, trucks and planes contribute 13% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions — the rates are far higher in developed countries — and there are no immediate solutions capable of breaking the planet's dependence upon jet aircraft and internal-combustion engines for transportation. Even promising technologies like electric vehicles remain years away from reaching critical mass, and would require vast changes to transportation infrastructure in the form of recharging stations and cleaner electricity. "The bottom line is that it is simply premature to rule out any option," says John DeCicco, senior fellow for automotive strategies at the U.S.'s Environmental Defense Fund. "The problem is too big." Fortunately, firms in the U.S. and Europe are exploring alternatives to food-crop biofuels, using everything from switchgrass to algae. Each technology has drawbacks, and none is fully ready, but in a warming world of finite oil supplies, we have little choice but to pursue them.
Applying the Science Corn and sugarcane were the first crops to be turned into biofuels because it's easy to ferment the sugars in the plants' starches into ethanol. But there's more to plants than just edible starches and sugars. Take cellulose, the tough, abundant organic molecule that composes the cell walls of all plants. Nature provides enzymes — in the stomach of a cow that chews grass, or in a termite that eats through wood — that turn cellulose into sugar. But on an industrial scale, converting cellulose to a usable form to make fuel "is currently too expensive," according to Lee Lynd, an environmental engineer at Dartmouth College in the U.S. and co-founder of Mascoma, a biofuels start-up that's experimenting with cellulosic technologies.
Progress in the field is slow. Now, however, several American companies are vying to become the first to market cellulosic ethanol, aided in part by a new U.S. tax credit worth $1.01 per gallon for makers of such biofuels. That state aid will help defray high initial costs, and make cellulosic more competitive with oil. At Mascoma, Lynd is focused on finding and using bacteria that can digest cellulose and spit out ethanol in a single step — he calls it consolidated bioprocessing. It could reduce production costs so dramatically, he believes Mascoma will eventually be able to churn out ethanol more cheaply than gas, even without government subsidies. Big players are interested (Mascoma recently signed a deal to develop cellulosic fuel for General Motors), and the company plans a commercial facility in Michigan.
Others are also forging ahead. Verenium, a two-year-old firm based in Cambridge, Mass., has almost completed a demonstration plant in Louisiana — the first on American soil — that will produce 1.4 million gallons (5.3 million L) of cellulosic ethanol a year, chiefly from sugarcane residue. Verenium hopes that a recently formed partnership with energy giant BP can speed up the process. "You can do something in a lab and it will be perfect," says Verenium's CEO, Carlos Riva. "But what happens in the real world is quite different. You have to learn by doing."
Few companies have more experience in the practical work of breaking down cellulose than Denmark's Novozymes, the world's leading maker of industrial enzymes. Novozymes has traditionally manufactured enzymes for bio-industrial purposes like waste-water cleanup, but for the past several years the company has moved into biofuels — an initiative that is now the fastest-growing slice of its business. Novozymes employs enzyme hunters who scour the world to find the best bugs to digest cellulose. (It's messy work — compost piles are among the best places to search.) But why settle for what nature gives you when you can use the tools of biotechnology to build a better enzyme in the lab? At its research facility in Davis, Calif., Novozyme scientists are tweaking the genetic structures of selected enzymes to improve their ability to break down cellulose, a process called directed evolution. "Cellulose has evolved to resist degradation," says Lars Hansen, president of Novozymes North America. "But biotech is rising to that evolutionary challenge."
The Hope for Biotech Even more promising, biotech may be able to manufacture a better biofuel. One of the disadvantages of ethanol is that standard automobile engines need to be retrofitted to burn it. What's more, ethanol is too corrosive to be transported through the pipelines that carry petroleum to market. But Amyris, based in Emeryville, Ca., is using genetic engineering to produce yeasts that can yield custom-designed, renewable fuels that have all the advantages of hydrocarbons — like ease of transport and high energy density — without the environmental drawbacks. "We want something that can drop into the existing infrastructure tomorrow," says Neil Renninger, Amyris' co-founder. The company opened a new pilot plant in November capable of producing 2.4 million gallons (9 million L) of renewable diesel a year, and aims to manufacture 200 million gallons (900 million L) of fuel commercially by 2011.
There's just one problem: Amyris' designer fuels still depend on a food crop (right now it's sugarcane) as a feedstock. Although sugarcane is a much more efficient source of fuel than corn, it's still a food crop, and it's hard to see how Amyris could truly scale up its technology without impacting food supplies. But there could be a cheap, abundant alternative, one that has none of the inherent drawbacks of agricultural feedstocks: pond scum. Unlike even cellulosic ethanol, which requires farmland of some sort, garden-variety algae can be grown anywhere warm and sunny, and it can thrive in saline water rather than precious fresh water. Not only that, algae eats carbon — a lot of it. So algae-growing facilities could, theoretically, do double duty, as the source of a renewable biofuel and as an elegant answer to the question of where to sequester the carbon emitted by fossil-fuel plants. "We're looking at a product that spares land and water, and has an excellent energy-to-CO2 ratio," says Jason Pyle, CEO of San Diego-based company Sapphire Energy, one of the best funded start-ups in the biofuel field.
Nobody is more bullish on algae than Algenol's Woods, who founded the company in 2006 but has been pondering algae's potential since he came up with the basic idea behind Algenol's technology as an undergraduate in 1984. Most algae firms harvest the organisms and squeeze them to extract oil that's then processed into a fuel, but Algenol's strains essentially sweat oil in a gaseous form that can be condensed into a liquid. Woods says his system can yield 6,000 gallons (22,700 L) of ethanol per acre annually, compared to 370 gallons (1,400 L) per acre for corn ethanol. At his Florida test facility, Woods kneels and taps on one of his holding tanks. Clear droplets cling to the inside of the lid. "This is it," he says. "That's what we've learned here — this really does work."
Woods will soon get a chance to test his idea on a massive scale. With a group of partners that includes a scion of the Corona beer family, Algenol is poised to break ground on a commercial-scale facility in the Sonoran desert of northern Mexico. The plant's seaside location enables the company to use seawater to grow the algae, and a nearby coal plant could provide concentrated CO2 to turbocharge production. But not everyone is convinced that either algae or Algenol is ready for prime time. "I would say the hype is well ahead of the reality," says John Benemann, an expert in algae biofuels, who notes that no commercial method yet exists to capture CO2 from power plants and deliver it to algae facilities.
Of course, the hype exceeds the reality in nearly every facet of advanced biofuels, as it does throughout the world of alternative energy. The good news is that the technology to produce truly sustainable biofuels is advancing quickly. The bad news is that for now the business more closely resembles a science-fair project than Big Oil. Fixing that will require smart government policies — like favoring fuels based on their carbon footprint, not where they come from or who grows them. Says NRDC's Greene: "Biofuels might be the worst thing we can do — except for nothing."
3. Well, first off I'd like to say that I hope this is a relevant article... because it's not really along the lines of the other articles discussed on this blog. This article talks about biodiversity being discovered in semi-arid rivers in South Eastern Spain. Some possitive news among the several negative ones we've discussed. I can't really say my prior thoughts about this, because honestly I never thought about this. They say that this discovery disproves the "myth that arid systems do not contain any organisms of interest" or at least not important enough "to call for them to be protected because of their ecological value." When I think arid, I think desert, and well we all know wildlife can survive in deserts.. so I never really thought about this "myth." Anyhow, the reason for this myth is because these semi arid streams have "low flow volume and little vegetation." However, the discovery proves that there is a lot of animal and plant diversity, and in fact "Spanish scientists who have studied how they function at a global scale have found them to contain a greater number of species than those in wetter areas." They say the study is focused on the algal communities. The algae form the foundations of the ecosystem and apparently more than 200 species of these microorganisms were discovered, some possibly new. Here's where I saw the connection to Mikah's post: "The research team believes that these species of algae "deserve to be studied and included within conservation strategies", since they can adapt themselves to extreme conditions such as very high temperatures and high levels of evaporation and water salinity." In other words, perhaps this new algae can also help with the biofuel situation? The article continues to talk about being careful not to destroy ecosystems that may have life yet undiscovered because the destruction of one species creates a chain reaction that can destroy life on a larger scale. In addition to that, "we will never know whether they (the new species) are useful." ---------------------------------------------------------
Biodiversity Found In Unexpected Regions: More Than 200 Plant Species Found In Semi-arid Rivers In South Eastern Spain ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2009) — The prevailing belief to date has been that the streams of south eastern Spain contained nothing of interest. However, a research project by the University of Murcia has shown that these ecosystems, which are unique in Europe, are home to great plant and animal biodiversity. This has enabled the research team to explode the myth that arid systems do not contain any organisms of interest, and to call for them to be protected because of their ecological value.
In general, semi-arid streams have low flow volume and little vegetation, and can seem to have minimal ecological value or interest. However, the reality is very different. Spanish scientists who have studied how they function at a global scale have found them to contain a greater number of species than those in wetter areas.
"We encountered a very high level of biodiversity, much higher than what we expected at the outset, and we realised that these systems function as refuges for biodiversity. In fact they contain a large variety of environments at micro-environment level", Marina Aboal, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Murcia, tells SINC.
The study is focused on the study of algal communities, and particularly of diatomeae (a class of microscopic, unicellular algae), since these organisms form the foundations of the entire ecosystem.
The biologists discovered more than 200 species of micro algae (which cannot be seen with the naked eye), some of which may be new to Science.
This finding is important because of the exceptional nature of this habitat in Europe. The south east of Spain, one of the most arid regions on the continent, is one of the few areas in Europe where semi-arid streams can commonly be found. These shelter "an extremely significant number of species, many of which are characteristic of these environments", says Aboal.
A unique ecological richness
The research team believes that these species of algae "deserve to be studied and included within conservation strategies", since they can adapt themselves to extreme conditions such as very high temperatures and high levels of evaporation and water salinity.
Failure to protect these ecosystems, which has been the situation to date, will mean "species will become extinct before we can even find and study them, or find out if they have any uses for us", says the botanist.
The experts stress that, since these are "humble and little known" ecosystems, information about the species that inhabit them is being lost. "The loss of species completely changes the way in which the river functions, and can cause chain reactions that lead to mini ecological catastrophe, with the loss of an ecosystem," warns Aboal.
Aside from being of ecological interest as the first link in the trophic chain, micro algae could also have "interesting" biotechnological applications. The expert says that if these are not protected and studied "we will never know whether they are useful". This is the great drama of extinction, with species disappearing before they can even be discovered.
The functioning of the entire system rests upon algae. These photosynthesising organisms are the primary producers, and form the foodstuff underpinning the entire ecological system in aquatic ecosystems. From an environmental point of view, they help to control the environmental quality of aquatic systems, and are essential for assessing their ecological status, or health. ------------------ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090313150250.htm
3. This article asserts that it is not possible for us, with the technology we presently have, to lower carbon emission enough to stop damaging the atmosphere. A lot of people and politics in the world are struggling to find ways to lower carbon emission: green technology, more environment-friendly behavior, but this woman says that even if we all do our best, it will not be enough. She says that our technology is unable of achieving really efficient ways of producing energy, so as not to waste it and make the best of green energy sources. This point of view can be frightening and quite depressing. This means that we can never stop damaging the planet, and all effort is vain. However, as the problem seems to be the lack of sufficient technology, I think we never know that new technologies won’t be created to remedy that. That would mean that we need to push for more research in this field, because as said in the article, discovering a new technology is not enough, the process of putting it into use and expanding it is also needed and would take time. Thus, it should began soon. So in my opinion we should keep trying to get the best of the technology we actually have, in the hope of discovering new ones who could make our efforts more valuable and effective, and not just get depressed at the facts (which was my first reaction while reading the article). When reading this, I also thought it was quite ironic, as developing technology is one factor which got us to damage the atmosphere, and we are now relying on it to reverse the process.
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We Can’t Get There From Here Political will and a price on CO2 won't be enough to bring about low-carbon energy sources.
By all means, swap out your regular light bulbs for compact fluorescents, take the bus, weatherize your home and install solar panels on your roof. Oh, heck, go crazy: tell your senators to give the nuclear industry everything it wants so it starts building reactors again. But while you're doing all that to reduce the world's energy use and cut emissions of greenhouse gases, keep this in mind: even if we scale up existing technologies to mind-bending levels, such as finishing one nuclear plant every other day for the next 40 years, we'll still fall short of how much low-carbon energy will be needed to keep atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide below what scientists now recognize as the point of no return. As the world gets closer to a consensus that we need to slash CO2 emissions, a debate is raging over whether we can achieve the required cuts by scaling up existing technologies or whether we need "transformational" scientific breakthroughs. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the causes, magnitude and impacts of global warming, said in 2007 that "currently available" technologies and those on the cusp of commercialization can bring enough zero-carbon energy online to avoid catastrophic climate change. And I regularly get reports from renewable-energy and environmental groups arguing that off-the-shelf technologies, fully deployed, can get us there. In the opposite corner is the Department of Energy, which in December concluded that we need breakthroughs in physics and chemistry that are "beyond our present reach" to, for instance, triple the efficiency of solar panels; DOE secretary Steven Chu has said we need Nobel caliber breakthroughs. That is also the view of energy chemist Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology. "It's not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them," he says. "My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020—but you can always shave 20 percent off" through, say, efficiency and conservation. By focusing on easy, near-term cuts, we may miss the boat on what's needed by 2050, when CO2 emissions will have to be 80 percent below today's to keep atmospheric levels no higher than 450 parts per million. (We're now at 386 ppm, compared with 280 before the Industrial Revolution.) That's 80 percent less emissions from much greater use of energy Lewis's numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That's a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we'll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we'd have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you'll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it's impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don't know how to do—for when the wind doesn't blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we'd need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. "It would take an army," he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still. Hence the need for Nobel-caliber discoveries. Lewis's research is on artificial photosynthesis, in which a material (to be determined, thus the research) absorbs sunlight and water and produces hydrogen for fuel but zero CO2. "If we could figure out how to make and deploy such a system, the capacity would be essentially infinite," he says. Another need is for transmission lines that don't leak 80 percent of what they carry, says physicist David Pines of the University of California, Davis. "The technology is not remotely there," he says. "We're going to have to discover yet another family of superconductors [which do not lose current] that are easily made into wires" and that work at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, a coolant. Prospects stink for discovering what we need to discover, especially when you consider that to get the right energy mix in 2050, given how long it takes to capitalize and deploy new technologies, we need breakthroughs soon, not in 2049. Yet despite the pressing need, DOE spent a pitiful $2 billion to $3 billion on nondefense, basic energy R&D last year, less than one fifth what we spent in the 1970s and 1980s. A new report from the Brookings Institution calls for $20 billion to $30 billion a year and—to improve the odds of success—revamping the nation's energy labs, which today are "too far removed from the marketplace to produce the kind of transformational research we need for new energy technologies," says Brookings's Mark Muro. The clock is ticking.
3. Despite the fact that I was in America in December, I learned about the massive spill in Tennessee in depth while reading the article today. In December 22, there was a huge coal ash spill near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant. According to the article, billion gallons of ash sludge containing toxic materials were exposed to ponds, two rivers, forty homes, and roads. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to promote reuse of coal ashes in beneficial ways such as using it in portland cement for concrete. One spokesman for Gypsum said, “It’s a terrific environmental win-win for everybody involved,” “You're cleaning the air and then avoiding a landfill, and using it as a useful input for a useful product.” I agreed with his statement; however, it is also true that we are creating far more coal ash than we could utilize it.
----------------------------- Despite the destruction it caused in a massive spill near a Tennessee power plant in December, coal ash has found many uses that benefit industry and even the environment. A billion gallons of ash sludge, laced with toxic materials, spilled from a holding pond and fouled 300 acres and two rivers near the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant on December 22. Forty homes were affected, roads were ruined, and residents were left wondering whether their water would ever be safe to drink. There are about 300 storage ponds similar to the one that collapsed. To reduce the need to store coal waste products, the Environmental Protection Agency promotes their beneficial reuse. " 'Waste' is such a bad term," said Chett Boxley, a chemist at Ceramatec, a research company in Salt Lake City, Utah. "It's really not waste at all. It's a material waiting to be made into a great product." Coal supplies more than half of the electricity consumed by Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Just over 1 billion tons of coal were burned for electric power in the United States in 2007, government statistics show. About 43 percent of the 131 million tons of coal combustion products -- including fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag --generated in 2007 found beneficial uses, according to the American Coal Ash Association, based in Aurora, Colorado. However, some environmentalists are skeptical about that claim. "I'd look at those figures really, really carefully," said Lisa Evans, lead attorney for environmental group Earthjustice's coal project. "I'm not so sure that all of those uses are beneficial." Improperly handled ash can leach arsenic, lead, chromium, selenium and other toxic materials into ground and drinking water, she cautioned. announcing its intention to develop new regulations to prevent future accidents. The letter gave utilities 10 days to respond to questions about their storage ponds. In 2007, more than 80 percent of coal-plant boiler slag was utilized, mostly for sandblasting or as the grit on roofing shingles. Forty percent of bottom ash became a gravel substitute, fill for embankments or ice control agent, according to the coal ash group. "Use of coal ash as structural fill is a very, very dangerous use of ash," said Evans, who recently visited the Tennessee spill site. "If you're talking about putting ash in quarries to fill a void, that's a very dangerous use of coal ash." About 44 percent of fly ash found uses, mostly as a substitute for some of the portland cement in concrete, a use the EPA especially encourages because any heavy metals in the ash are trapped forever. (Concrete is composed of sand, gravel and portland cement to hold it all together.) "That's key," Evans said. "You want to make sure the harmful constituents don't leach out into land, air or water, and concrete seems to fit that bill." Fly ash makes concrete stronger and less porous, as well as generally less expensive, said Colin Lobo, engineering vice president of the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, the concrete industry's largest trade group. Production of portland cement releases large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, so reducing its use helps the environment, chemist Boxley said. "Not only does the concrete become greener in that sense, but it performs better," he said. Prominent projects where fly ash has replaced significant amounts of portland cement include the new I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Ronald Reagan Government Office Building, home to the EPA in Washington; and Freedom Tower, the complex being built on the former site of the World Trade Center in New York. California's Department of Transportation is so sold on fly ash's benefits that it requires contractors to replace 15 percent to 35 percent of the portland cement in road concrete with the ash, said Vijay Jain, Caltrans' head of engineering. Another useful coal combustion product is gypsum. The process that smokestack "scrubbers" use to reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions creates high-quality synthetic gypsum, said Robert E. Williams, spokesman for U.S. Gypsum Co., maker of Sheetrock brand wallboard. Scrubbers at electric utility PPL Corp.'s Montour plant near Washingtonville, Pennsylvania, generate 500,000 tons of gypsum annually, plant manager Michael Munroe said. PPL pipes every bit of it to a new U.S. Gypsum plant right across the road, supplying it with all the gypsum it needs to make 955 million square feet of wallboard a year, said Scott Shaffer, manager of the gypsum plant. "It's a terrific environmental win-win for everybody involved," Williams said. "You're cleaning the air and then avoiding a landfill, and using it as a useful input for a useful product." The PPL plant also markets all of its ash for beneficial reuse, spokesman George Lewis said. We Energies, a utility in Wisconsin, goes PPL one better on that score: "We're pretty much at the point where we're selling it all and, depending upon the marketplace, actually going into the landfills where we had previously landfilled ash and using that," We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said. Still, "the volume of coal ash we're creating is far greater than we could ever put into asphalt and drywall and concrete blocks; the volume is staggering," said Mary Anne Hitt, the deputy director of the Sierra Club's Move Beyond Coal Campaign. The TVA continues to clean up the mess in Tennessee while the energy industry keeps trying to develop ways to prevent a repeat. "I don't think there's any conflict between wanting the waste disposed of safely and the promotion of true beneficial reuse," Earthjustice's Evans said. "This was a tragedy, but it gives us now an opportunity to solve a problem."
3. Is it an important issue to argue the polar bears under 'threatened' or 'endangered' speacies? Antually I don't think so. Threatened or endangered.. whatever it is, the important thing is that the speicies is slowly disappearing and we human should be responsible and do something for the situation. The basic problem is of course global warming. So we should try to do something for it. (i think it is what I always write however don't know what to do....) And then I think people must lessen or prohibit to travel north pole. From a commonsense ,I think, there must be regulation to protect the north/ south pole. But it will not be enough when it is true that polar bears are in danger. When human go somewhere it is actually natural that those enviornment will be harmed although it is very little. Also it was intersting that inuit think that polar bears are not an endangered aminal becasue we take it for granted. Then what is true?
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The governments from five Arctic countries — including Canada — agreed on Thursday after a three-day summit in Norway that climate change has had a negative impact on polar bears and their habitat, calling it the most important long-term threat facing the giant carnivores.
But how that international agreement will translate into policy within our own borders is very much up in the air.
Nearly a year after the United States moved to list the polar bear as a threatened species, Canada is continuing to wrestle with whether to list the carnivore as a "species of special concern" — a status one below "threatened" and two below "endangered" under Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA).
And the interested parties on both sides of the debate haven't budged from their positions: environmental groups and biologists insist the polar bear is in danger of disappearing as sea ice in the Arctic is lost, while Inuit groups insist polar bear populations are as healthy as ever.
Ottawa estimates there are 15,500 polar bears in Canada, about 60 per cent of the world's population. Native groups say that is double the number of 50 years ago — proof, they say, that the polar bear is not in danger.
Populations are up, Inuit say "Inuit are seeing more bears because there are more bears," Nunavut Tungavik director of wildlife Gabriel Nirlungayuq told the CBC's Rebecca Zandbergen.
But environmentalists argue that while some polar groups have stable populations, others in regions like western Hudson Bay or Baffin Island are threatened by a combination of shifting sea ice and over-hunting.
"The Baffin Bay population cannot sustain harvest at the current level because of the past decade of over-harvesting," said Peter Ewins, director of species conservation at World Wildlife Fund Canada.
"The facts really speak for themselves and managers should really pay attention to that and not cave into local demands to increased harvests," Ewins said.
Inuit hunter Joshua Kango looks out on the Arctic horizon at sunrise in search of a polar bear on Frobisher Bay near Tonglait, Nunavut in this 2003 photo. Inuit leaders contend polar bear populations are healthy and do not need special protection. (Kevin Frayer/Canadian Press) The government first listed the mammals as a species of concern in 1991, a status it kept in subsequent assessments in 1999 and 2002.
But in 2004, Ottawa turned down the recommendation of an arms-length scientific advisory group — the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada — to continue to list it as a species of special concern, sending the matter back to the committee over what it said was a lack of traditional aboriginal knowledge in the assessment.
The committee again recommended it be listed as a species of concern in April 2008 and gave the recommendation to then-environment minister John Baird. But current Environment Minister Jim Prentice is still considering the recommendation.
International scientific groups have also contributed to the debate. In 2006 the 40 members of the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union — now called the International Union for Conservation of Nature — decided, unanimously, to list the polar bear as vulnerable.
As Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta researcher and head of the group told the CBC's Eve Savory a year ago, "If there is no ice, there are no bears."
Scientists report sea ice receding Some polar bear subpopulations rely on continuous sea ice to migrate north in the summer, and as scientists have reported, that sea ice is disappearing.
University of Manitoba climate researcher David Barber, who led the $40-million Circumpolar Flaw Lead study, reported year-after-year declines in sea ice, with the 2007 retreat the largest on record, allowing clear navigation of the Northwest Passage for the first time in human memory. In 2008 the sea ice bounced back, but Barber said last month that ice was mostly first-year ice likely to melt this summer.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report on endangered areas also listed the Arctic ecosystem as particularly vulnerable, with rises in temperatures well above the anticipated 1.8 to four degree Celsius global rise expected over the next century.
A mother polar bear and her two cubs walk along the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Man., in 2007. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press) Thursday's agreement between Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States was an update of the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which at the time was primarily concerned with protecting polar bears from hunting, and outlawed the practice for all but indigenous people.
The new agreement, reached after a three-day summit in the Norwegian town of Tromsoe, outlined the shift in focus to include climate change as a priority for future conservation efforts.
"The parties agreed that long-term conservation of polar bears depends upon successful mitigation of climate change," the countries said in a joint statement. "[The] impacts of climate change and the continued and increasing loss and fragmentation of sea ice … constitute the most important threat to polar bear conservation."
Environmentalists were hopeful the agreement would spur each of the countries to pursue more aggressive strategies for battling climate change. The agreement, however, falls short of making a direct appeal for action to the United Nations climate conference, scheduled to take place in Copenhagen in December 2009, where countries will plan to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The next meeting of the five countries on the status of polar bears will take place in Canada in 2011, followed by one in Russia in 2013.
1. Dakyung Lee 2. Intersections: agriculture and climate 3. This article caught my interest because it clearly demonstrated the connections between agriculture and climate change, and the extent of impact one can have on the other. As producers and consumers of plants and animals, we tend to have a lot of interest in our agriculture. However, the environmental impacts caused by our agricultural production system usually is the last thing in the back our minds. Perhaps this is because the intersection between agriculture and climate change is a subject that is not commonly discussed, which also implies that it is likely that people have very little knowledge about this environmental, agricultural and social connection.
While this article focuses specifically on one region, Australia, it made me wonder about the possibilities of other intersections between agriculture and climate change. It made me question what kinds of agricultural production systems are out there around the world, and the different environmental problems that these different systems can cause in the long-run.
As the content of this article reveals, Australia uses fossil fuels to produce their agriculture. Because of their excessive fossil fuel usage, many are concerned with the negative consequences that can result from the continous usage. Similarly, excessive cultivation and overusage of synthetic fertilizers and chemicals, which we are probably more familiar with or hear more frequently, can create devastating results to the environment. It was interesting to visualize how actual forest fires or problems concerning global warming are aroused by the existing agricultural production.
It seems very problematic and unfair that we, as consumers and producers, hope to benefit from the agriculture without looking at the bigger picture and thinking about the possible harm that the current production systems can have on the environment, and on the direct lives of people. It seems that we take full advantage of the environment, without the extent to which it can threaten the environmental conditions.
Throughout this article, it is clear that all the activities that we do are intertwined with the environment as one problem can lead to the next problem. Therefore, if we cut back just a little on our agricultural needs and find more ecologically sustainable farming systems, we can avoid facing problems that are undesirable . ---------------------------------- Agriculture and climate change
Nick Soudakoff 21 March 2009
Australian agriculture both contributes to climate change and is adversely affected by it. Any campaign in to force urgent government action on climate change has to include a demand for the radical transformation of rural land use and farming systems to be ecologically sustainable.
There are a number of ways agriculture contributes to climate change. Australian agriculture is fossil fuel intensive — both in terms of agricultural production, and in the transport used to take produce from the farm to the point of consumption in cities.
Even if 100% renewable energy was used to power farm production systems and land transport, agriculture would still make a significant contribution to global warming unless other actions are also taken.
Soil carbon
The loss of soil carbon is a historic, and continuing, contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels. For every tonne of soil carbon lost, 3.67 tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
Soil carbon is destroyed through excessive cultivation or overgrazing, anaerobic (airless) conditions like compaction and water-logging, and the use of synthetic fertilisers and chemicals — particularly herbicides.
What is common to all these practices? They disrupt the carbon cycle in the soil so that carbon is consumed faster than it is replenished.
Methane is emitted by farm animals such as cows, sheep and goats as a by-product of their digestive system, which involves anaerobic fermentation. Methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
Worldwide, there has been a doubling of nitrogen in the “soil nitrogen cycle” over the last 100 years, leading to increased nitrous oxide emissions.
This is the result of using synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, the increased growing of legumes (which fix nitrogen from the air into the soil) and the burning of fossil fuels. Nitrous oxide captures 296 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
Other particular problems include the burning of savannas, burning stubble (the remainder of grain stalks after harvest), nitrous oxide emissions from manure management and methane emissions from rice production.
Extreme weather events
Climate change also impacts on Australian agriculture by magnifying existing problems.
Increased incidences of extreme weather events, like cyclones in the far north and heatwaves in the south (leading to catastrophic bushfires), all disrupt farming operations and food supply, as well as leaving a legacy of land degradation.
Furthermore, water cycles are disrupted. Ground water resources are being used faster than they are recharging. Deforestation has disrupted rainfall patterns. Hotter conditions mean an increased need for water at a time when rainfall is decreasing and becoming erratic.
Biodiversity loss on farms, through mono-cropping and the decline of native habitats, further reduces resilience to extreme weather conditions.
Increased droughts can lead to a loss of ground cover and hence a further loss of soil carbon.
Salinity and erosion issues lead back to problems with soil hydrology being disturbed by the absence of deep rooted perennial plants and soil carbon loss.
As crop varieties and livestock breeds are lost, and farmers rely on growing a small number of market-leading varieties of crops, we hamper our ability to adapt to our new environment.
Are livestock the main problem?
In 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation released a report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow — Environmental Issues and Options. The report linked the world’s livestock to major problems including deforestation resulting from the pressure for grazing land, high greenhouse emissions, land degradation through overgrazing and the high burden on water and land resources among others.
Animals are a necessary component of all ecosystems, but if there are too many in a particular environment they will be highly destructive. What would be the appropriate number of livestock for sustainable agriculture?
The answer will always be found farm by farm or district by district. Also, what is appropriate one season may not be the same the next, given drought or good rain.
Totally eliminating livestock from farming, however, would make Australian agriculture less sustainable rather than more.
Composted manures are an invaluable source for biological enhancement and soil fertility. Along with properly processed human waste (bio-solids), its application can help break farming’s dependence on synthetic nitrogen inputs.
Furthermore, well managed grazing land is one of the most effective ways to sequester carbon in the soil.
Livestock can add to the biodiversity of farms that predominately grow crops, as does diversifying crops, developing wildlife corridors and repairing creek areas.
Livestock operations fit very well with agro-forestry (as opposed to monoculture tree plantations). Sustainable pastures can contain a plethora of species without the need for input-intensive cultivation.
Growing topsoil
To reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, it will be necessary to reverse the loss of soil carbon caused by capitalist farming methods.
Building up soil carbon levels involves increasing soil biological activity, increasing the return to the soil of organic residues and maintaining ground cover with actively growing plants.
Plants sequester carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Plant residues that are digested by the soil are eventually transformed into more stable carbon compounds such as humic acids.
An interesting technology that can play a part in drawing carbon back into the soil is biochar, a type of charcoal created by heating organic matter in an oxygen-poor environment.
Biochar is a far more stable form of carbon than the organic matter from which it is made. It can last in the soil for hundreds of years.
For farms with degraded soils, biochar can increase water holding capacity, nutrient retention, increase biological activity, and improve soil structure.
Rebuilding carbon levels in the soil does not depend on undeveloped, speculative technologies — it is a current practice used by most organic and bio-dynamic farmers.
One exciting development for Australian agriculture is the Natural Sequence Farming system developed by agriculturalist Peter Andrews. Andrews’ system seeks to restore the soil hydrology by returning carbon to the soil and reversing the damage to creek and river systems so that water is stored in the landscape rather than drained away.
For example, leaky weirs are constructed in deeply incised creeks and planted out with reeds, slowing the water down and allowing the creek to support a higher water table in the landscape.
There are many other aspects to Andrews’ system. He has written two books, Back from the Brink and Beyond the Brink that are essential reading for those interested in sustainable agriculture.
Pasture cropping
Another important farming system, pasture cropping, was developed in NSW in 1992 by Colin Seis.
With this technique, winter cereal crops are sown directly into native pasture and harvested before the pastures growth phase starts.
The crop yield is slightly less than crops sown in worked-up ground but there is no tillage, no bare ground and the grazing value of the pasture is maintained.
Pasture re-sown into stubble often takes a season to establish, so in a mixed-farming system pasture cropping is more productive over all. Unlike traditional agriculture, it is a system that can increase soil carbon levels.
There have been farms growing food sustainably in Australia for decades. The challenge is to introduce sustainable farming, not just on a farm-by-farm basis, but across the whole sector.
Financial pressures on many working farmers are such that there isn’t enough capital available without going further into debt to undertake new infrastructure programs, or to retool equipment for minimum tillage.
Furthermore, there is often a financial imperative to crop fence-post to fence-post, or carry extra stock, to squeeze out an few extra dollars per acre.
Market barriers
Can market forces encourage farmers to undertake sustainable farming practices? The evidence for this is highly dubious.
The introduction of water trading, for example, has resulted in the cost of water rising through local government buying water for urban users, and companies and individual farmers speculating on the water price.
The real efficiency gains in water-use, however, come through direct investment in infrastructure such as the conversion from open channels to pipes, switching from flood irrigation to overhead spray, or better still, underground drip irrigation.
Offering a regular income stream for environmental management services would allow some financial certainty for farmers.
Increased funding for research into new techniques and technologies that will improve ecological sustainability are also essential.
In particular, the federal government has to fund the rapid development of biochar production facilities around the country rather than leave it to the private sector to implement it only where it is profitable.
Governments need to massively expand their budgets for farm reforestation and not just link that funding to native tree planting. State investment in redeveloping urban waste systems is needed so that organic matter, including bio-solids, is returned to farm land.
3. Well, I deeply sense that numerous envrionmental crashes and complicated problems pervade in this modern society. Not being a kind of optimisitc, happyhappy girl myself, I cannot genuinely believe that the world has been heading to a better direction. But I DO believe there are some responsible and righteous people who want to bring a positive change to the world and that is the reason I am introducing this article.
As Professor Whitaker said in the lecture, we can find various solutions under way. This article says there is a grassroot environmental organization in Venezuela providing education to children, from 4th to 6th grade, and confering with a local mayor about practical solutions for trash problems.
I think education shold be the very frist step of haralding CHANGE to the society, because without a basic knowledge and necessity to courage, any active campaign or message will be for nought. In terms of reclaiming the road towarod the environmentally responsible society,education matters a lot ; especially, teaching kids about certain problems can boost the whole society's enlightenment because kids will tell their parents what they have learned at shcool, and impressed paretns are likely to show the kids exemplary behaviors.
So, this kind of local action can be the key to alleviate environmental problems in that it is each individual who should recognize the duty he or she has been entitled since a birth, and education can call on each person's action!
-------------------------------------------- Vicente Emilio Sojo Bolivarian School is tucked into the labyrinth of streets and corridors of La Vega, a Caracas barrio of more than 100,000 residents on the southern end of the Venezuelan capital. Through the classroom windows, block homes stacked one on another stretch across the countryside. An improvised garbage dump sits just outside the school, where a small, evidently ignored sign reads “Don’t throw trash here.” The colorful environmental mural painted by students only a few years ago is faded and riddled with the slop of garbage that overflows from the dumpster and covers the ground, emitting a foul stench. On the other side of the wall, you can hear the sound of children playing in the courtyard during recess.
This scene is an unfortunate reality in many poor barrios across Venezuela, a reality that a grassroots group called Geografía Viva (Live Geography) is doing its best to alleviate, teaching a subtly radical form of environmental education to hundreds of Venezuelan children.
Take the Trash Out
Geografía Viva was founded by a group of progressive geography students 20 years ago with the goal of bringing one’s surroundings, or “geography,” to life. The founders advocated encouraging residents to actively participate in the solutions to the environmental problems in their communities.
Various early programs gave way to organizing for children’s rights, which within 10 years had consolidated into the project that would become the heart of the organization: Participando por un Ambiente Sano (Participating for a Clean Environment), or PAS.
PAS would bridge environmental and citizen education through interactive programs for fourth- to sixth-graders in poor communities across Venezuela. Promoters visited each school once a week, taught respect for the environment, and had students carry out investigations to discern the most pressing environmental problems facing their community.
The students in almost every school found trash to be the number one environmental problem. In response, PAS called on local governments to solve the trash problem through better cleanup and disposal. Students and promoters met with the local mayors’ offices, the Ministry of Environment, and even spoke before the Venezuelan National Assembly. Geografía Viva Director Isabel Villarte says that although the experience was “great public speaking practice,” it didn’t make any headway in solving the trash problem.
So three years ago, PAS organizers decided to take a different, more action-oriented approach. They launched a recycling and composting education program to deal with the trash problem directly by reusing organic material instead of throwing it out. While still fairly young, the program appears to be a success.
Getting Children Motivated
“Is the composting working? Definitely,” says Carmen Ramirez, a sixth-grade teacher at Vicente Emilio who has been collaborating with the project since its inception 10 years ago. The plants that line her classroom windowsill are potted in the soil that her class created last year by composting their organic waste. Ramirez explains that since they began composting, one of the two dumpsters outside Vicente Emilio has been removed. But the students aren’t just composting the waste from their classroom and lunchroom. Teachers have encouraged them to bring in organic waste from home and from the local casa de alimentación (soup kitchen).
“How many of you composted at home over the summer holiday?” asks Yelitza Uzcategui, Geografía Viva’s afternoon Caracas promoter. Just over half of Ramirez’s 30 students raise their hands.
Uzcategui holds up a plastic to-go container into which she places a bread roll, some orange peels, and leftover coffee grinds. “We’re going to be studying these items over the upcoming weeks to see how they change,” she says, placing the container in the corner of the room, “Certain organic materials are really good for breaking things down.”
This type of hands-on education with the students is what Ramirez says makes Geografía Viva stand out from most of the other organizations working in the communities. “The promoters interact with the students,” she says. “They get involved and they get the children motivated.”
The interaction isn’t limited to the classroom. Many of the schools also have outside compost pits where the students work building the compost piles, turning them, and eventually using the new soil. The finished abono (fertilizer) is often delivered to neighboring schools working in collaboration with Venezuela’s reforestation program, Misión Arbol (Tree Mission).
“It is really neat making the organic fertilizer and working in the PAS project, because we can decrease the trash and take more care of the environment,” says Geonelsis Briceño, one of five student “Environmental Animators” chosen to represent their class in the PAS project because of their enthusiasm for composting. The animators participate in extra activities and are expected to educate the rest of the community about the environment.
But the PAS project doesn’t end there. Organizers produce a quarterly environmental newsletter, I‘ñamo; they are setting up a video library to lend environmental videos to their members; and in La Vega, they produce a community-based, environmentally focused, children-run radio show. Elsewhere, PAS has supported efforts for local school-based environmental newspapers, carried out recycling workshops, and recently sent five student animators to the South American Youth Conference on Climate Change, held in Ecuador in October 2007.
Sí, Se Puede
With its international connections and programs run free-of-charge to 1,500 fourth- to sixth-grade students in 20 schools across four Venezuelan cities, one might imagine Geografía Viva to have a budget of millions and a staff of dozens. It doesn’t. There are only 12 employees in all four cities combined – Caracas, Barcelona, Merida, and San José de Guaribe – and half of them are promoters who must visit each classroom once a week.
The Caracas head office, where more than half of the employees are based, is squeezed into a small two-room space on the bottom floor of a downtown apartment block. The organization’s limited foundation funding runs out next year, and without resources from the Venezuelan government, Geografía Viva is getting a little nervous. But Villarte is confident that they will get by, as they always have.
While the students are enthusiastic, Villarte admits not all of them will stick with composting once they have moved on to higher grades. But the students aren’t the only ones who are getting involved. They are also influencing their entire community. Nearly all of the PAS promoters first learned about composting from their children who brought the idea home.
Outside of Vicente Emilio, there is still trash in the streets. But it has been noticeably reduced by the students, teachers, promoters, parents, and community members who have decided to participate in the recuperation of their community and its waste problem, an improvement built on the governing principles of Geografía Viva’s PAS program – that education occurs through hands-on participation.
In a country like Venezuela, where it is common to see residents toss trash out the window without thinking twice, this type of change can be very difficult. But it is not impossible.
“Sí, se puede (Yes, you can),” says Uzcategui to one of her classes, which is quickly learning that much of what they once thought was garbage, isn’t. “Do you want to feed the rats, or feed the plants?” she asks. For the students enrolled in the program, that’s a no-brainer. Z
Michael Fox is a freelance journalist and translator in South America. He is a correspondent with Free Speech Radio News, and has written for The Nation, Yes!, and Venezuelanalysis.
Venezuela’s Geografía Viva improves quality of life through composting education in elementary schools
1. Yoon Hyesung 2. Title : Alternative energy quest endangering birds - Steep drops in bird populations attributed to energy production, report says 3. When I first saw the title of this article, I was really curious about details. So far, I've been thinking that alternative energy is surely helpful to the world. So I haven't thought about the negative effect of developing alternative energy.
We need renewable energy as an alternative proposal of the environmental pollution. People believe that renewable energy can help to keep the environment from being more destroyed. However, I got to know that it can be harmful for birds to establish renewable energy zones... If we don't care a lot about this, this can be a real big problem. Although this article was written about the U.S, but I think Korea may face this problem, too. Considering both negative and positive effect, the government should solve the matter. I wonder which choice the Obama administration will choose. ----------------------- WASHINGTON - As the Obama administration pursues more homegrown energy sources, a new government report faults energy production of all types — wind, ethanol and mountaintop coal mining — for contributing to steep drops in bird populations.
The first-of-its-kind government report chronicles a four-decade decline in many of the country's bird populations and provides many reasons for it, from suburban sprawl to the spread of exotic species to global warming.
In almost every case, energy production is also playing a role.
"Energy development has significant negative effects on birds in North America," the report concludes.
Birds can collide with wind turbines and oil and gas wells, and studies have shown that some species, such as Prairie-chickens and sage grouse, will avoid nesting near the structures.
Ponds created during the extraction of coalbed methane gas breed mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, leading to more bird deaths. Transmission lines, roads to access energy fields and mountaintop removal to harvest coal can destroy and fragment birds' living spaces.
'Environmental eyes open' Environmentalists and scientists say the report should signal to the Obama administration to act cautiously as it seeks to expand renewable energy production and the electricity grid on public lands and tries to harness wind energy along the nation's coastlines.
The report also shows that conservation efforts can work. Birds that reside in wetlands and the nation's waterfowl have rebounded over the past 40 years, a period marked by increased protections for wetlands.
"We need to go into these energies with our environmental eyes open," said John Fitzpatrick, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped draft the report along with non-profit advocacy groups. "We need to attend to any form of energy development, not just oil and gas."
Many of the bird groups with the most rapid declines in the last 40 years inhabit areas with the greatest potential for energy development.
Among the energy-bird conflicts cited by the report:
More than half of the monitored bird species that live on prairies have experienced population losses. These birds, such as the Lesser Prairie Chicken, are threatened by farmers converting grasslands into corn fields to meet demand for biofuels. In the Arctic, where two-thirds of all shorebirds are species of concern, melting ice brought about by climate change could open up more areas to oil and gas production. Studies show that trash near drilling rigs attracts gulls that prey on other species. Mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia clears patches of forest contributing to the decline of birds like the Cerulean warbler that breeds and forests in treetops.
The U.S. State of Birds report, released by the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday, was requested in October 2007 by President George W. Bush.
Salazar, who wants to establish renewable energy zones and is drawing up rules for offshore wind energy production, said Thursday the report should "be a call to action, but it is action in our reach."
Long-term tracking The report uses data from three long-running bird censuses to establish trends over time. It shows that birds in Hawaii are more in danger of becoming extinct than anywhere else in the United States. In the last 40 years, populations of birds living on prairies, deserts and at sea have declined between 30 and 40 percent.
While its findings are similar to earlier studies, it is the first to be issued by the government and the agency in charge of managing energy production on public lands and protecting the nation's wildlife.
The report did not indicate whether one form of energy production is more detrimental than the other. -----------
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29778816/
1. Shim Kyuhee 2. Oill Spills 3. I believe that oil spills are one of the most deadly environmental disasters caused by mankind. Their effects are catastrophic for marine animals, not to mention a direct threat to the livelihoods for locals who are dependent on the ecosystem of the ocean. Even if the guilty party sends relief teams to clean the oil and pay damages for the accident, it will be long before the region will be able to gain full recovery. To be exact, it will take approximately 100 years. I witnessed the direct effects of a major oil spill accident two years ago, when an oil ship from Samsung heavy industry had an accident on the coast of Tae-an county, located South of the Korean peninsula. New reports showed the dead remains of birds and animals covered in black oil from the spill. Residents in Tae-an, who were either fishermen or dependent on local tourism, were facing economical problems. The event was a shock to the entire Korean community, and that year many Koreans traveled to the Tae-an coast to aid relief efforts. Despite the nationwide effort to recover the Tae-an coast, the effects of the oil spill will remain for many years. Even the effects of the Exxon oil spill, which occurred twenty years ago, are still lingering in the Prince William Sound. It made me angry that oil companies got away with destroying our planet, in their reckless pursuit of profit. Like the article says, if the companies did not have the ability to clean up after their mistakes, they shouldn’t be hauling barrels of oil across the ocean. In fact, it seemed that in light of the punitive damages oil companies were liable to pay after such accidents, it would be cheaper and more reasonable for them to focus on developing better technology to clean up future oil spill accidents. But this is not the case. We saw that companies like Exxon and Samsung were less apologetic and more intent on appealing the court and reducing their fine. Personally, I think that even 5 billion dollars, which Exxon was initially fined by the court, doesn’t cover the extent of damage on the environment due to the oil spill. The only way we can prevent future catastrophes would be to impose regulations on these companies, as the article mentions, so that they cannot travel vulnerable parts of the ocean. But furthermore I believe that the international society should give a heavier punishment to companies who are inconsiderate of our environment, 4.---------------------------------------- Problems persist two decades after Exxon Valdez oil spill San Francisco - On March 24, 1989, a massive tanker captained by a man who had allegedly been drinking, sailed outside regular Alaskan shipping lanes and hit a reef, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. The Exxon Valdez, at the time one of the most advanced tankers in the world, split, spilling approximately 40 million litres of crude oil into the delicate and pristine Arctic environment of the remote Prince William Sound. The oil dispersed over an area of 28,000 square kilometres and covered approximately 2,000 kilometres of rugged coastline. It killed an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 birds, fish and sea mammals. Twenty years later, another horrific accident is waiting to happen, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned on Friday, even as the damage from Exxon Valdez continues to blight the region. In a graphic illustration of the lingering effects of that disaster, the environmental group sent oil-crusted rocks to ministers, officials and media in the Arctic countries still wrangling over arrangements to govern a renewed resource rush to the region. The rocks accompanied a report entitled, Lessons Not Learned, which recommends a moratorium on new offshore oil development in the Arctic "until technologies improve to a point where an adequate oil- spill clean-up operation can be performed." WWF also recommended that the most vulnerable and important areas of the Arctic be deemed permanently off-limits to oil development because oil spills would be next to impossible to clean up or would cause irreparable long-term damage. "Governments and industry in the region remain unprepared to deal with another such disaster," WWF warned. At the same time global warming is melting more of the ice, which increases access and exploration, making another accident more likely. "While there has been little improvement in technologies to respond to oil-spill disasters in the last 20 years, the Arctic itself has changed considerably and is much more vulnerable today," said Neil Hamilton, leader of WWF's Arctic Programme. "Sea ice is disappearing and open water seasons are lasting longer, creating a frenzy to stake claims on the Arctic's rich resources - especially oil and gas development. We need a 'timeout' until protective measures exist for this fragile, special place." Bill Chameides, dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, agrees with the WWF that despite one of the largest cleanup efforts in history much of the damage has proved irreversible. Though many beaches and coves in the area look the same, the deeper picture tells a very different story. Digging even a little uncovers a gooey mix of oil and sand. "People may assume that because the spill happened 20 years ago, the effects are long gone. But they persist - and may continue for years to come," said Chameides, who estimates that it could take as much as 100 more years for all the oil to dissipate. Oil giant Exxon spent about 2 billion dollars on the clean up operation. It was originally ordered to pay 5 billion dollars in punitive damages. But in a successful series of court appeals culminating in a Supreme Court decision last year, that amount has now been reduced to just over 507 million dollars - a tremendous blow to the fishermen and local communities who suffered from the calamity. "Their way of life was devastated," says local resident Sharon Bushell, the author of a book called, The Spill, Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster. She interviewed residents about how they remember the disaster and chronicles the lost lives of the fishermen, innkeepers and mechanics. "There was death everywhere, dead birds, dead otters, dead deer. A vast amount of oil covered the water," said one woman. "It was a terrible scene, one to rival anyone's idea of hell." (dpa) 5. -------------------------------------------- http://topnews.us/content/24493-problems-persist-two-decades-after-exxon-valdez-oil-spill#ixzz0APeXdkFv
1. Selina Li Qiaowei 2. Paint it white 3. This is a very interesting article, and the simplest way to solve global warming as I ever heard before. It is a very good trend that scientists are trying to find way which everyone may put into little afford to change the urgent issue of the world’s climate. To turn the whole world white, it sounds very ridiculous for me when I first saw it, but after I finish reading the article, I am just want to take action on it too. I feel funny at the first because I am thinking that human is really brilliant, no matter how worse is a situation, they can always find out various solutions to solve it. Anyway, I have to also say that this is very ironic, so what is the color after white? All this solutions to decrease the temperature are passive. The most effective way is still for us to reduce the produce of CO2. It is very sad to hear the professor said that nowadays, most of water resource is using on power station in the developed countries, such as nuclear power station. Why we are using our most precious resource on the development of the most unnecessary and harmful issue around the world. It is a very big shame on the development of society. To launch the campaign such as ‘paint the world white’. I think it is a very practicable way to always remain people the problem of global warming and also this is a simple way that everybody could do to save the world. This could bring people confidence to change the situation of the world. Experiment show that with white roof people enjoy a cooler environment during the summer time, it provides chance for people to switch off the air-conditional. Problem such as urban heat island effect could also release down its pressure. I remember that last year, there is a campaign in Japan which the prime minister of Japan leads to wear simple cloth instead of suits to office during the working days. They want officer worker to reduce the use of air conditionals by wearing less-tight cloth during the office hours. I guess to paint the office buildings white may be a better policy that Japan could take since I believe in a formal society like Japan, suits must be wear in certain situations. There are some figures in this article which surprised me as well. Only to increase the amount of sunlight bounced off our planet by 0.03%, it could cancel out the warming caused by 44 billion tones of carbon dioxide pollution that produced! It seems to me that we only to take a small step to make this world a better place for living. The thing is that we have to find ways to balance the causes and results. On another hand, the schemes of geo-engineering give me a shock. They are giving suggestions like to place a giant mirror above the clouds and to produce millions of fake plastic trees to suck carbons. It sounds like a joke. If giving us a choice, it is sure that everyone is going to choose to paint their house white but not to live in a plastic city. As we all know that plastic itself is a very hard to dispose material. I leant many facts and knowledge in this article, for instance, growing acidification of the oceans, caused as extra CO2 dissolves. Why the ocean becomes more acidic? From the acid rain and the pollution send by factories to streams and rivers. I leant a new term called albedo which is the percentage of light reflected by a surface. Researchers in Japan also admitted that people like the idea that to paint the road in white as they feel cooler and more comfortable to walk on it. There are more benefits to consider with the white option, in a very realistic way, it helps the US government to save up to 1 billion from the electricity bill. The idea of to paint the city white dose not work for state like US, also less sunny area such as UK according to the article, as long as there are many air-conditionals, than it is a suitable plan for your city to try out. Finally, I have two questions want to ask, what kind of paint we are going to use to carry on this campaign, so far as I know there are toxic elements inside paint material which may cause health problem, is that a factor that we have to consider? Secondly, is there a possibility that the paint may rise up anther type of pollution?
------------------------------------------------- 4. Paint it white David Adam
March 10, 2009 Global warming may seem like an overwhelmingly complex problem to tackle. But one scientist thinks the answer is brilliantly simple: a lot of white paint. David Adam reports. “Akbari says his plan is more workable than other geo-engineering ideas. The science is simple. Sunlight reflected from a surface does not contribute to the greenhouse effect, which drives global warming.” October 11, 2006 Hashem Akbari has a vision of a shiny, happy world. He sees polished roads and cities that gleam in the sunlight. Rooftops are bright and pavements light. Akbari wants to turn our cities into a giant mirror and he needs your help. And paint, lots of it. Akbari is no architect and his grand plan is no conceptual art project. Based at the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, Akbari is a scientist who has come up with a new way to fight global warming. It could be the easiest solution you've never heard of. His big idea is based on principles as old as the whitewashed villages that scatter the hills of southern Europe and North Africa. Turn enough of the world's black urban landscape white, he says, and it would reflect enough sunlight to delay global warming, and grant us some precious breathing space in the global struggle to control carbon emissions. Akbari is poised to launch a campaign to paint the world white. He wants dozens of the world's largest cities to unite in an effort to replace the dark-coloured materials used to cover roads and roofs with something a little more reflective. It sounds simple, but the effect could be dramatic. Study after study has shown that buildings with white roofs stay cooler during the summer. The change reduces the way heat accumulates in built-up areas -- known as the urban heat island effect -- and allows people who live and work inside to switch off power-hungry air-conditioning units. Aware of the benefit, California has forced warehouses and other commercial premises with flat roofs to make them white since 2005, and, if such an effort could be extended, the results could make a big difference. Together, roads and roofs are reckoned to cover more than half the available surfaces in urban areas, which have spread over some 2.4% of the earth's land area. A mass movement to change their colour, Akbari calculates, would increase the amount of sunlight bounced off our planet by 0.03%. And, he says, that would cool the earth enough to cancel out the warming caused by 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution. If you think that sounds like a lot, then you're right. It would wipe out the expected rise in global emissions over the next decade. It won't solve the problem of climate change, Akbari says, but could be a simple and effective weapon to delay its impact -- just so long as people start doing it in earnest. "Roofs are going to have to be changed one by one, and to make that effort at a very local level, we need to have an organization in place to make it happen," he says. Groups in several cities in the United States, including Houston, Chicago and Salt Lake City, are on board with his plan, and he is talking to others. The idea is a form of geo-engineering, a broad term used to cover all schemes that tackle the symptoms of climate change -- namely catastrophic temperature rise, without addressing the root cause, our spiraling greenhouse-gas emissions. And if altering all of the world's roofs and roads sounds extreme, and then take a look at some ideas from the other end of the geo-engineering scale: giant mirrors in space, shiny balloons to float above the clouds and millions of fake plastic trees to suck carbon from the air. An increasing number of climate scientists argue that the world has little choice but to investigate such drastic options. Carbon emissions since 2000 have risen faster than anyone thought possible, mainly driven by the coal-fuelled boom in China, and a global temperature rise of 2º to 3° Celsius seems inevitable. Last September, a special edition of a Royal Society journal, dedicated to geo-engineering said the geo-engineering schemes "may be risky, but the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing". Akbari says his plan is more workable than other geo-engineering ideas. The science is simple. Sunlight reflected from a surface does not contribute to the greenhouse effect, which drives global warming. That problem comes when dark surfaces soak up sunlight and send it back up as thermal energy, at just the right wavelength to rebound off CO2 in the sky. The problem with shiny cities, according to Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, is more simple science. "It won't tackle global warming because carbon emissions are still rising," he says. Like all geo-engineering schemes, it will need to be kept up indefinitely, Anderson says, and does not address the growing acidification of the oceans, caused as extra CO2 dissolves. The cooling effect and energy savings in cities would be welcome though, he adds. Akbari says his idea is not intended to replace efforts to cut carbon emissions, but to work alongside them. "We can give the atmosphere time to breathe," he says. "I just don't see a downside to this idea. It benefits everybody and you don't have to have hard negotiations to make it happen." Dark roofs reflect about 10% to 20% of sunlight, while white surfaces tend to send back at least half. In technical terms, the percentage of light reflected by a surface is called its albedo -- so a perfectly reflective surface has an albedo of 1. Coloured paints have an albedo of 0.1 to 0.3, and white paints an albedo of 0.5 to 0.9. Asphalt road surfaces have albedos as low as 0.05, so they absorb up to 95% of the sun's energy. Concrete has an albedo of up to 0.3, tar and gravel just 0.1. Akbari's mission is to get individuals, local authorities, builders and communities to think about albedo alongside cost, colour and design when it comes to repairs, maintenance and new construction. "This is not just a question of painting things white,” he says. “Roofs and roads are routinely repaired and replaced and, when it comes to householders changing their roofs, we want them to look at reflective options. That's the time to target people." He says an "aggressive" programme could convert all cities within 10 to 20 years. It is fairly easy to persuade, or require, the owners of buildings to select white materials for flat roofs, because the colour is only noticed by passing air travellers. But sloping roofs, found on most houses, are a different issue because they are visible from the ground. As pretty as snow-coated Alpine villages may look, skiers wear powerful sunglasses for a reason. Streets of white-roofed houses would dazzle in the sun. The same is true of road surfaces -- too light a colour and too much light reflects as glare into the eyes of motorists. No problem, Akbari says: reflective materials need not be white. Light colours such as grey are good, too. And there are other ways to increase the albedo of materials. Pigments that bounce back infrared light can raise the reflectivity of dark surfaces by 40% without any obvious change in colour. They are not as effective as white, which bounces back visible wavelengths of light too, but they are much better than conventional materials. The Public Works Research Institute in Japan has experimented with paints with such pigments applied to conventional asphalt surfaces. They made a road that reflects 86% of infrared light, which helps keep the surface cool, yet reflects just 23% of visible light, to keep down glare. The researchers were nervous that the extra infrared bouncing off the shiny road could cook pedestrians, but volunteers recruited in summertime to "stand on the paint-coated pavement and conventional pavement" said they actually preferred the painted version. This could be because the coated road kept their feet cool, the researchers said. There are other benefits, too. Computer simulations of Los Angeles show that resurfacing about two-thirds of roads and rooftops with reflective surfaces, as well as planting more trees, could cool the city by 2º to 3º Celsius. That would reduce the city’s smog as much as a total ban on cars and trucks, and cooler roofs also could save a fortune in electricity bills. On hot days in North America, up to 40% of all electricity can be consumed by air-conditioners, and each temperature degree by a city such as Los Angeles warms is reckoned to see the air-con turned up enough to need another 500 megawatts of power -- the output of a decent sized nuclear power station. Akbari estimates that widespread use of cooler rooftops could slash US$1 billion from electricity bills in the United States alone. That may be very well for places such as California, with its 300 days of sunshine a year, but what about gloomy northern Europe and the United Kingdom, with a measly 100 sunny days? The effect would not be as great, admits Surabi Menon, who works with Akbari at Lawrence Berkeley, but she says anywhere that needs air-conditioning, or has cities warmer than the outer rural areas, would benefit. Akbari says his estimates of the global cooling potential of reflective cities are based on a global average, so the cloudier places will be made up for by the sunnier spots. "It's absolutely worth doing in the UK," he says. And, he adds, he might just have found a way to pay for it. Each 10 square metres of urban surface changed from dark to white, he says, has the same cooling effect as preventing the release of a tonne of carbon dioxide. So why not include such resurfacing in carbon-offset schemes? Just as money from green consumers and firms anxious about their carbon footprint is used to fund projects that plant trees, fit green light bulbs and develop renewable energy, in exchange for carbon credits, so it could pay people across the world to paint, coat and resurface. At today's carbon prices, changing the colour of an average roof could net the householder more than US$200, and Akbari's global scheme could together generate more than US$700 million. "We want to target 30 to 40 cities initially, but within a few years we hope it will mushroom around the world," he says. Go on, paint your town white.
3. One of the things I forgot while I was away from China was the fact that any body of water there is disgusting, no matter where it is in China. Having just returned from Shanghai yesterday, I am thrilled to have read this article, which states that China is spending about four and half billion dollars on a 12 year project to clean up the major bodies of water in China.
The project, known as the "Special Water Project," will "focus on the treatment of whole river basins instead of the conventional approach of end-pipe treatment." This is obviously more costly and time consuming, but it is what the water in China needs.
I was at The Bund in Shanghai, which overlooks the Huangpu River, and I was struck by how utterly disgusting the river was. The amount of trash in the river was astonishing. What is odd is that Shanghai has eco-friendly projects, such as the 2010 World Expo island, yet it has taken China as a whole to initiate a massive water treatment project.
An important note in the article is that one scientist states that the economy will be stunned if China tries to treat the pollution after it has happened, instead of controlling it at its source. I agree with what he said, but I think that in order do initiate anything that drastic, China has to start on a basic scale, and for any problem as great of a magnitude as this, it has to be treated before it can be stopped.
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4. A project to improve water quality in China has been launched by the government, which says it is the largest expenditure on environmental protection since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
The project, which has an estimated budget of more than 30 billion Chinese yuan (around 4.4 billion US dollars) over 12 years, aims to counter the deteriorating water quality affecting millions of Chinese people and their livelihoods.
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The Water Pollution Control and Management Project — known as 'Water Special Project' — will focus on the treatment of whole river basins instead of the conventional approach of end-pipe treatment, according to Meng Wei, chief engineer of the project and director of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences.
By taking this approach the treatment of the highly polluted Lake Tai, for example, the third largest freshwater lake in China, will benefit not just Shanghai but also the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Coordinated by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development , the aim of the project is to guarantee safe drinking water and improve the overall water environment, Meng said.
The safety of drinking water has become a great concern in China. Some 64 per cent of the water reaching urban areas is categorised as suitable only for industrial or agricultural purposes and half of cities have suffered groundwater pollution to some degree, according to Liu Yanhua, vice minister of science and technology, at the launch of the project last month (19 February).
In the summer of 2007 an outbreak of algae around Taihu Lake left more than one million people in the city of Wuxi — in the economically-advanced Jiangsu Province — without access to drinking water for two days.
And when a drought reached its peak in early February it was affecting 10.7 million hectares of farmland in at least 12 provinces in northern China. (See China's water deficit 'will create food shortage')
A number of demonstration projects will be carried out at major rivers across China, such as Haihe, Huaihe, Liaohe and Songhuajiang, as well as Lake Tai and the Three Gorges.
But Qin Boqiang, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, said the government should focus on controlling the sources of pollution instead of treating it after it happens.
"We cannot develop economy at the expense of the environment," he told SciDev.Net
The water programme is one of the 16 key projects listed in the National Mid-Term and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006—2020) issued by the State Council in 2006, which provides guidelines for China's science and technology development for the next 15 years.
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
1. Mikah Lee
ReplyDelete2. Biofuels- ready or not?
3. Right, so we're hearing more and more about biofuels these days- but will they ever be effectively used? I find myself agreeing with this statement from the article I chose: "...for now the business [of biofuels] more closely resembles a science-fair project than Big Oil." Basically it's as if scientists all over the world are going on fun scientific field trips to find the next energy source for us to deplete. They're playing with all kinds of different things, from corn to algae, and most are convinced that they have found the ultimate solution. Of course, that doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to abandon all our previous environmentally unfriendly energy sources, even if we did actually find some sort of magical power that allowed us to harvest energy with no lasting consequences whatsoever.
The problem is that the current 'energy industry' is controlled by the rich and powerful- what do they care about the environment? (And in the slim chance that they do, they obviously don't care enough). It isn't going to be easy to shift our entire way of life from one energy source to another, simply because all of our machinery may not be compatible with these new biofuels (and because the rich oil companies wouldn't want their way of making money to simply stop existing).
Furthermore, the corn-ethanol industry (which apparently "grew fat" at first) "crashed" last year- scientists had found out that using corn as a fuel would only lead to even more problems than we have today (namely food-price inflation and even higher levels of green-house gas emissions than gasoline). Gee, you'd think they would have found out about that before we wasted our time on this industry.
Here's (one of) the next potentially perfect biofuel we're looking at now- algae (or as the article refers to it: "pond scum"). It sounds like a brilliant idea- algae can be grown virtually anywhere warm and sunny, and it doesn't need our precious fresh water to grow in. Also, algae eats carbon- how wonderful! All of this sounds almost too good to be true! (I'm just waiting for them to find some sort of crucial drawback to this energy source.) Of course there is some criticism directed towards this new potential branch of energy, but it seems as though NOT using this may just be the worst thing we can do.
Again, gov't policies play a huge role in this whole biofuel industry. It is because good policies are yet to be made that biofuels only seem like a science project at the moment. The best (and inevitable) step the gov't must take is to make policies "favoring fuels based on their carbon footprint, not where they come from or who grows them". THIS is the main obstacle right now- we have the options, but we're being held back by our own rules and regulations. When will we see biofuels in action?
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Paul Woods didn't blindfold me as we drove through the overgrown plantations outside West Palm Beach, Fla., but he looked as if he was considering it. Woods is the brash 46-year-old CEO of biofuels start-up Algenol — and he takes his company's secrecy seriously. Aside from officials from the U.S. Department of Energy, I was the first outsider ever to visit Algenol's modest testing facility. We turned off a country road opposite a llama ranch, and stopped at an unmarked circle of trailers in the middle of a clearing in the palm trees. There, sitting on a section of concrete half the size of a basketball court, was what Woods has been hiding from the world: several rows of long white tubs fitted with plastic windows that let in sunlight, each filled with a liquid the dark green of moss. The mixture was water and algae — microscopic plantlike organisms that feed off sunlight and carbon dioxide. With the proprietary algae happily multiplying, Woods explained that he and his partners intend to produce a biofuel greener and cheaper than oil or corn-fed ethanol: "We want to do 20 billion gallons eventually, and we will compete on price. We're a year away from sales."
This sort of audacious prediction used to be commonplace in the biofuel industry, but 2008 was not kind to those who want to replace petroleum with plants as delegates gathering at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 19 are sure to discuss. The U.S. corn-ethanol industry, which had grown fat on government subsidies, crashed last year. Perhaps worse, a series of influential studies argued that, far from being a green alternative, corn ethanol drives food-price inflation and produces higher levels of greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline, because biofuel subsidies encourage forest-clearing. "If anything, traditional biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel are moving us in the wrong direction," says Nathanael Greene, an analyst at the U.S.'s Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
But it would be a mistake to abandon the biofuel option now. The fact is that cars, trucks and planes contribute 13% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions — the rates are far higher in developed countries — and there are no immediate solutions capable of breaking the planet's dependence upon jet aircraft and internal-combustion engines for transportation. Even promising technologies like electric vehicles remain years away from reaching critical mass, and would require vast changes to transportation infrastructure in the form of recharging stations and cleaner electricity. "The bottom line is that it is simply premature to rule out any option," says John DeCicco, senior fellow for automotive strategies at the U.S.'s Environmental Defense Fund. "The problem is too big." Fortunately, firms in the U.S. and Europe are exploring alternatives to food-crop biofuels, using everything from switchgrass to algae. Each technology has drawbacks, and none is fully ready, but in a warming world of finite oil supplies, we have little choice but to pursue them.
Applying the Science
Corn and sugarcane were the first crops to be turned into biofuels because it's easy to ferment the sugars in the plants' starches into ethanol. But there's more to plants than just edible starches and sugars. Take cellulose, the tough, abundant organic molecule that composes the cell walls of all plants. Nature provides enzymes — in the stomach of a cow that chews grass, or in a termite that eats through wood — that turn cellulose into sugar. But on an industrial scale, converting cellulose to a usable form to make fuel "is currently too expensive," according to Lee Lynd, an environmental engineer at Dartmouth College in the U.S. and co-founder of Mascoma, a biofuels start-up that's experimenting with cellulosic technologies.
Progress in the field is slow. Now, however, several American companies are vying to become the first to market cellulosic ethanol, aided in part by a new U.S. tax credit worth $1.01 per gallon for makers of such biofuels. That state aid will help defray high initial costs, and make cellulosic more competitive with oil. At Mascoma, Lynd is focused on finding and using bacteria that can digest cellulose and spit out ethanol in a single step — he calls it consolidated bioprocessing. It could reduce production costs so dramatically, he believes Mascoma will eventually be able to churn out ethanol more cheaply than gas, even without government subsidies. Big players are interested (Mascoma recently signed a deal to develop cellulosic fuel for General Motors), and the company plans a commercial facility in Michigan.
Others are also forging ahead. Verenium, a two-year-old firm based in Cambridge, Mass., has almost completed a demonstration plant in Louisiana — the first on American soil — that will produce 1.4 million gallons (5.3 million L) of cellulosic ethanol a year, chiefly from sugarcane residue. Verenium hopes that a recently formed partnership with energy giant BP can speed up the process. "You can do something in a lab and it will be perfect," says Verenium's CEO, Carlos Riva. "But what happens in the real world is quite different. You have to learn by doing."
Few companies have more experience in the practical work of breaking down cellulose than Denmark's Novozymes, the world's leading maker of industrial enzymes. Novozymes has traditionally manufactured enzymes for bio-industrial purposes like waste-water cleanup, but for the past several years the company has moved into biofuels — an initiative that is now the fastest-growing slice of its business. Novozymes employs enzyme hunters who scour the world to find the best bugs to digest cellulose. (It's messy work — compost piles are among the best places to search.) But why settle for what nature gives you when you can use the tools of biotechnology to build a better enzyme in the lab? At its research facility in Davis, Calif., Novozyme scientists are tweaking the genetic structures of selected enzymes to improve their ability to break down cellulose, a process called directed evolution. "Cellulose has evolved to resist degradation," says Lars Hansen, president of Novozymes North America. "But biotech is rising to that evolutionary challenge."
The Hope for Biotech
Even more promising, biotech may be able to manufacture a better biofuel. One of the disadvantages of ethanol is that standard automobile engines need to be retrofitted to burn it. What's more, ethanol is too corrosive to be transported through the pipelines that carry petroleum to market. But Amyris, based in Emeryville, Ca., is using genetic engineering to produce yeasts that can yield custom-designed, renewable fuels that have all the advantages of hydrocarbons — like ease of transport and high energy density — without the environmental drawbacks. "We want something that can drop into the existing infrastructure tomorrow," says Neil Renninger, Amyris' co-founder. The company opened a new pilot plant in November capable of producing 2.4 million gallons (9 million L) of renewable diesel a year, and aims to manufacture 200 million gallons (900 million L) of fuel commercially by 2011.
There's just one problem: Amyris' designer fuels still depend on a food crop (right now it's sugarcane) as a feedstock. Although sugarcane is a much more efficient source of fuel than corn, it's still a food crop, and it's hard to see how Amyris could truly scale up its technology without impacting food supplies. But there could be a cheap, abundant alternative, one that has none of the inherent drawbacks of agricultural feedstocks: pond scum. Unlike even cellulosic ethanol, which requires farmland of some sort, garden-variety algae can be grown anywhere warm and sunny, and it can thrive in saline water rather than precious fresh water. Not only that, algae eats carbon — a lot of it. So algae-growing facilities could, theoretically, do double duty, as the source of a renewable biofuel and as an elegant answer to the question of where to sequester the carbon emitted by fossil-fuel plants. "We're looking at a product that spares land and water, and has an excellent energy-to-CO2 ratio," says Jason Pyle, CEO of San Diego-based company Sapphire Energy, one of the best funded start-ups in the biofuel field.
Nobody is more bullish on algae than Algenol's Woods, who founded the company in 2006 but has been pondering algae's potential since he came up with the basic idea behind Algenol's technology as an undergraduate in 1984. Most algae firms harvest the organisms and squeeze them to extract oil that's then processed into a fuel, but Algenol's strains essentially sweat oil in a gaseous form that can be condensed into a liquid. Woods says his system can yield 6,000 gallons (22,700 L) of ethanol per acre annually, compared to 370 gallons (1,400 L) per acre for corn ethanol. At his Florida test facility, Woods kneels and taps on one of his holding tanks. Clear droplets cling to the inside of the lid. "This is it," he says. "That's what we've learned here — this really does work."
Woods will soon get a chance to test his idea on a massive scale. With a group of partners that includes a scion of the Corona beer family, Algenol is poised to break ground on a commercial-scale facility in the Sonoran desert of northern Mexico. The plant's seaside location enables the company to use seawater to grow the algae, and a nearby coal plant could provide concentrated CO2 to turbocharge production. But not everyone is convinced that either algae or Algenol is ready for prime time. "I would say the hype is well ahead of the reality," says John Benemann, an expert in algae biofuels, who notes that no commercial method yet exists to capture CO2 from power plants and deliver it to algae facilities.
Of course, the hype exceeds the reality in nearly every facet of advanced biofuels, as it does throughout the world of alternative energy. The good news is that the technology to produce truly sustainable biofuels is advancing quickly. The bad news is that for now the business more closely resembles a science-fair project than Big Oil. Fixing that will require smart government policies — like favoring fuels based on their carbon footprint, not where they come from or who grows them. Says NRDC's Greene: "Biofuels might be the worst thing we can do — except for nothing."
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http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872110_1872133_1872143,00.html
1. Grace Huh
ReplyDelete2. New Life Discovered?
3. Well, first off I'd like to say that I hope this is a relevant article... because it's not really along the lines of the other articles discussed on this blog.
This article talks about biodiversity being discovered in semi-arid rivers in South Eastern Spain. Some possitive news among the several negative ones we've discussed. I can't really say my prior thoughts about this, because honestly I never thought about this. They say that this discovery disproves the "myth that arid systems do not contain any organisms of interest" or at least not important enough "to call for them to be protected because of their ecological value." When I think arid, I think desert, and well we all know wildlife can survive in deserts.. so I never really thought about this "myth." Anyhow, the reason for this myth is because these semi arid streams have "low flow volume and little vegetation." However, the discovery proves that there is a lot of animal and plant diversity, and in fact "Spanish scientists who have studied how they function at a global scale have found them to contain a greater number of species than those in wetter areas."
They say the study is focused on the algal communities. The algae form the foundations of the ecosystem and apparently more than 200 species of these microorganisms were discovered, some possibly new. Here's where I saw the connection to Mikah's post:
"The research team believes that these species of algae "deserve to be studied and included within conservation strategies", since they can adapt themselves to extreme conditions such as very high temperatures and high levels of evaporation and water salinity."
In other words, perhaps this new algae can also help with the biofuel situation?
The article continues to talk about being careful not to destroy ecosystems that may have life yet undiscovered because the destruction of one species creates a chain reaction that can destroy life on a larger scale. In addition to that, "we will never know whether they (the new species) are useful."
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Biodiversity Found In Unexpected Regions: More Than 200 Plant Species Found In Semi-arid Rivers In South Eastern Spain
ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2009) — The prevailing belief to date has been that the streams of south eastern Spain contained nothing of interest. However, a research project by the University of Murcia has shown that these ecosystems, which are unique in Europe, are home to great plant and animal biodiversity. This has enabled the research team to explode the myth that arid systems do not contain any organisms of interest, and to call for them to be protected because of their ecological value.
In general, semi-arid streams have low flow volume and little vegetation, and can seem to have minimal ecological value or interest. However, the reality is very different. Spanish scientists who have studied how they function at a global scale have found them to contain a greater number of species than those in wetter areas.
"We encountered a very high level of biodiversity, much higher than what we expected at the outset, and we realised that these systems function as refuges for biodiversity. In fact they contain a large variety of environments at micro-environment level", Marina Aboal, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Murcia, tells SINC.
The study is focused on the study of algal communities, and particularly of diatomeae (a class of microscopic, unicellular algae), since these organisms form the foundations of the entire ecosystem.
The biologists discovered more than 200 species of micro algae (which cannot be seen with the naked eye), some of which may be new to Science.
This finding is important because of the exceptional nature of this habitat in Europe. The south east of Spain, one of the most arid regions on the continent, is one of the few areas in Europe where semi-arid streams can commonly be found. These shelter "an extremely significant number of species, many of which are characteristic of these environments", says Aboal.
A unique ecological richness
The research team believes that these species of algae "deserve to be studied and included within conservation strategies", since they can adapt themselves to extreme conditions such as very high temperatures and high levels of evaporation and water salinity.
Failure to protect these ecosystems, which has been the situation to date, will mean "species will become extinct before we can even find and study them, or find out if they have any uses for us", says the botanist.
The experts stress that, since these are "humble and little known" ecosystems, information about the species that inhabit them is being lost. "The loss of species completely changes the way in which the river functions, and can cause chain reactions that lead to mini ecological catastrophe, with the loss of an ecosystem," warns Aboal.
Aside from being of ecological interest as the first link in the trophic chain, micro algae could also have "interesting" biotechnological applications. The expert says that if these are not protected and studied "we will never know whether they are useful". This is the great drama of extinction, with species disappearing before they can even be discovered.
The functioning of the entire system rests upon algae. These photosynthesising organisms are the primary producers, and form the foodstuff underpinning the entire ecological system in aquatic ecosystems. From an environmental point of view, they help to control the environmental quality of aquatic systems, and are essential for assessing their ecological status, or health.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090313150250.htm
1. Claire Cambier
ReplyDelete2. Point of non-return ?
3. This article asserts that it is not possible for us, with the technology we presently have, to lower carbon emission enough to stop damaging the atmosphere.
A lot of people and politics in the world are struggling to find ways to lower carbon emission: green technology, more environment-friendly behavior, but this woman says that even if we all do our best, it will not be enough. She says that our technology is unable of achieving really efficient ways of producing energy, so as not to waste it and make the best of green energy sources.
This point of view can be frightening and quite depressing. This means that we can never stop damaging the planet, and all effort is vain. However, as the problem seems to be the lack of sufficient technology, I think we never know that new technologies won’t be created to remedy that. That would mean that we need to push for more research in this field, because as said in the article, discovering a new technology is not enough, the process of putting it into use and expanding it is also needed and would take time. Thus, it should began soon. So in my opinion we should keep trying to get the best of the technology we actually have, in the hope of discovering new ones who could make our efforts more valuable and effective, and not just get depressed at the facts (which was my first reaction while reading the article).
When reading this, I also thought it was quite ironic, as developing technology is one factor which got us to damage the atmosphere, and we are now relying on it to reverse the process.
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We Can’t Get There From Here
Political will and a price on CO2 won't be enough to bring about low-carbon energy sources.
By all means, swap out your regular light bulbs for compact fluorescents, take the bus, weatherize your home and install solar panels on your roof. Oh, heck, go crazy: tell your senators to give the nuclear industry everything it wants so it starts building reactors again. But while you're doing all that to reduce the world's energy use and cut emissions of greenhouse gases, keep this in mind: even if we scale up existing technologies to mind-bending levels, such as finishing one nuclear plant every other day for the next 40 years, we'll still fall short of how much low-carbon energy will be needed to keep atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide below what scientists now recognize as the point of no return.
As the world gets closer to a consensus that we need to slash CO2 emissions, a debate is raging over whether we can achieve the required cuts by scaling up existing technologies or whether we need "transformational" scientific breakthroughs. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the causes, magnitude and impacts of global warming, said in 2007 that "currently available" technologies and those on the cusp of commercialization can bring enough zero-carbon energy online to avoid catastrophic climate change. And I regularly get reports from renewable-energy and environmental groups arguing that off-the-shelf technologies, fully deployed, can get us there. In the opposite corner is the Department of Energy, which in December concluded that we need breakthroughs in physics and chemistry that are "beyond our present reach" to, for instance, triple the efficiency of solar panels; DOE secretary Steven Chu has said we need Nobel caliber breakthroughs.
That is also the view of energy chemist Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology. "It's not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them," he says. "My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020—but you can always shave 20 percent off" through, say, efficiency and conservation. By focusing on easy, near-term cuts, we may miss the boat on what's needed by 2050, when CO2 emissions will have to be 80 percent below today's to keep atmospheric levels no higher than 450 parts per million. (We're now at 386 ppm, compared with 280 before the Industrial Revolution.) That's 80 percent less emissions from much greater use of energy
Lewis's numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That's a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we'll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we'd have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you'll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it's impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don't know how to do—for when the wind doesn't blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we'd need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. "It would take an army," he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still.
Hence the need for Nobel-caliber discoveries. Lewis's research is on artificial photosynthesis, in which a material (to be determined, thus the research) absorbs sunlight and water and produces hydrogen for fuel but zero CO2. "If we could figure out how to make and deploy such a system, the capacity would be essentially infinite," he says. Another need is for transmission lines that don't leak 80 percent of what they carry, says physicist David Pines of the University of California, Davis. "The technology is not remotely there," he says. "We're going to have to discover yet another family of superconductors [which do not lose current] that are easily made into wires" and that work at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, a coolant.
Prospects stink for discovering what we need to discover, especially when you consider that to get the right energy mix in 2050, given how long it takes to capitalize and deploy new technologies, we need breakthroughs soon, not in 2049. Yet despite the pressing need, DOE spent a pitiful $2 billion to $3 billion on nondefense, basic energy R&D last year, less than one fifth what we spent in the 1970s and 1980s. A new report from the Brookings Institution calls for $20 billion to $30 billion a year and—to improve the odds of success—revamping the nation's energy labs, which today are "too far removed from the marketplace to produce the kind of transformational research we need for new energy technologies," says Brookings's Mark Muro. The clock is ticking.
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/189293
1. Sohyun Park
ReplyDelete2. Turning toxic coal ash into bridges, buildings
3. Despite the fact that I was in America in December, I learned about the massive spill in Tennessee in depth while reading the article today. In December 22, there was a huge coal ash spill near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant. According to the article, billion gallons of ash sludge containing toxic materials were exposed to ponds, two rivers, forty homes, and roads. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to promote reuse of coal ashes in beneficial ways such as using it in portland cement for concrete. One spokesman for Gypsum said, “It’s a terrific environmental win-win for everybody involved,” “You're cleaning the air and then avoiding a landfill, and using it as a useful input for a useful product.” I agreed with his statement; however, it is also true that we are creating far more coal ash than we could utilize it.
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Despite the destruction it caused in a massive spill near a Tennessee power plant in December, coal ash has found many uses that benefit industry and even the environment.
A billion gallons of ash sludge, laced with toxic materials, spilled from a holding pond and fouled 300 acres and two rivers near the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant on December 22.
Forty homes were affected, roads were ruined, and residents were left wondering whether their water would ever be safe to drink.
There are about 300 storage ponds similar to the one that collapsed. To reduce the need to store coal waste products, the Environmental Protection Agency promotes their beneficial reuse.
" 'Waste' is such a bad term," said Chett Boxley, a chemist at Ceramatec, a research company in Salt Lake City, Utah. "It's really not waste at all. It's a material waiting to be made into a great product."
Coal supplies more than half of the electricity consumed by Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Just over 1 billion tons of coal were burned for electric power in the United States in 2007, government statistics show.
About 43 percent of the 131 million tons of coal combustion products -- including fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag --generated in 2007 found beneficial uses, according to the American Coal Ash Association, based in Aurora, Colorado.
However, some environmentalists are skeptical about that claim.
"I'd look at those figures really, really carefully," said Lisa Evans, lead attorney for environmental group Earthjustice's coal project. "I'm not so sure that all of those uses are beneficial."
Improperly handled ash can leach arsenic, lead, chromium, selenium and other toxic materials into ground and drinking water, she cautioned.
announcing its intention to develop new regulations to prevent future accidents. The letter gave utilities 10 days to respond to questions about their storage ponds.
In 2007, more than 80 percent of coal-plant boiler slag was utilized, mostly for sandblasting or as the grit on roofing shingles. Forty percent of bottom ash became a gravel substitute, fill for embankments or ice control agent, according to the coal ash group.
"Use of coal ash as structural fill is a very, very dangerous use of ash," said Evans, who recently visited the Tennessee spill site. "If you're talking about putting ash in quarries to fill a void, that's a very dangerous use of coal ash."
About 44 percent of fly ash found uses, mostly as a substitute for some of the portland cement in concrete, a use the EPA especially encourages because any heavy metals in the ash are trapped forever. (Concrete is composed of sand, gravel and portland cement to hold it all together.)
"That's key," Evans said. "You want to make sure the harmful constituents don't leach out into land, air or water, and concrete seems to fit that bill."
Fly ash makes concrete stronger and less porous, as well as generally less expensive, said Colin Lobo, engineering vice president of the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, the concrete industry's largest trade group.
Production of portland cement releases large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, so reducing its use helps the environment, chemist Boxley said.
"Not only does the concrete become greener in that sense, but it performs better," he said.
Prominent projects where fly ash has replaced significant amounts of portland cement include the new I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Ronald Reagan Government Office Building, home to the EPA in Washington; and Freedom Tower, the complex being built on the former site of the World Trade Center in New York.
California's Department of Transportation is so sold on fly ash's benefits that it requires contractors to replace 15 percent to 35 percent of the portland cement in road concrete with the ash, said Vijay Jain, Caltrans' head of engineering.
Another useful coal combustion product is gypsum.
The process that smokestack "scrubbers" use to reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions creates high-quality synthetic gypsum, said Robert E. Williams, spokesman for U.S. Gypsum Co., maker of Sheetrock brand wallboard.
Scrubbers at electric utility PPL Corp.'s Montour plant near Washingtonville, Pennsylvania, generate 500,000 tons of gypsum annually, plant manager Michael Munroe said.
PPL pipes every bit of it to a new U.S. Gypsum plant right across the road, supplying it with all the gypsum it needs to make 955 million square feet of wallboard a year, said Scott Shaffer, manager of the gypsum plant.
"It's a terrific environmental win-win for everybody involved," Williams said. "You're cleaning the air and then avoiding a landfill, and using it as a useful input for a useful product."
The PPL plant also markets all of its ash for beneficial reuse, spokesman George Lewis said.
We Energies, a utility in Wisconsin, goes PPL one better on that score:
"We're pretty much at the point where we're selling it all and, depending upon the marketplace, actually going into the landfills where we had previously landfilled ash and using that," We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said.
Still, "the volume of coal ash we're creating is far greater than we could ever put into asphalt and drywall and concrete blocks; the volume is staggering," said Mary Anne Hitt, the deputy director of the Sierra Club's Move Beyond Coal Campaign.
The TVA continues to clean up the mess in Tennessee while the energy industry keeps trying to develop ways to prevent a repeat.
"I don't think there's any conflict between wanting the waste disposed of safely and the promotion of true beneficial reuse," Earthjustice's Evans said. "This was a tragedy, but it gives us now an opportunity to solve a problem."
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http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/20/recycled.coal.uses/index.html
1.Lee Soo-Bin
ReplyDelete2. Polar bear status remains a contentious issue
3. Is it an important issue to argue the polar bears under 'threatened' or 'endangered' speacies? Antually I don't think so. Threatened
or endangered.. whatever it is, the important thing is that the speicies is slowly disappearing and we human should be responsible and do something for the situation.
The basic problem is of course global warming. So we should try to do something for it. (i think it is what I always write however don't know what to do....) And then I think people must lessen or prohibit to travel north pole.
From a commonsense ,I think, there must be regulation to protect the north/ south pole. But it will not be enough when it is true that polar bears are in danger. When human go somewhere it is actually natural that those enviornment will be harmed although it is very little.
Also it was intersting that inuit think that polar bears are not an endangered aminal
becasue we take it for granted. Then what is true?
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The governments from five Arctic countries — including Canada — agreed on Thursday after a three-day summit in Norway that climate change has had a negative impact on polar bears and their habitat, calling it the most important long-term threat facing the giant carnivores.
But how that international agreement will translate into policy within our own borders is very much up in the air.
Nearly a year after the United States moved to list the polar bear as a threatened species, Canada is continuing to wrestle with whether to list the carnivore as a "species of special concern" — a status one below "threatened" and two below "endangered" under Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA).
And the interested parties on both sides of the debate haven't budged from their positions: environmental groups and biologists insist the polar bear is in danger of disappearing as sea ice in the Arctic is lost, while Inuit groups insist polar bear populations are as healthy as ever.
Ottawa estimates there are 15,500 polar bears in Canada, about 60 per cent of the world's population. Native groups say that is double the number of 50 years ago — proof, they say, that the polar bear is not in danger.
Populations are up, Inuit say
"Inuit are seeing more bears because there are more bears," Nunavut Tungavik director of wildlife Gabriel Nirlungayuq told the CBC's Rebecca Zandbergen.
But environmentalists argue that while some polar groups have stable populations, others in regions like western Hudson Bay or Baffin Island are threatened by a combination of shifting sea ice and over-hunting.
"The Baffin Bay population cannot sustain harvest at the current level because of the past decade of over-harvesting," said Peter Ewins, director of species conservation at World Wildlife Fund Canada.
"The facts really speak for themselves and managers should really pay attention to that and not cave into local demands to increased harvests," Ewins said.
Inuit hunter Joshua Kango looks out on the Arctic horizon at sunrise in search of a polar bear on Frobisher Bay near Tonglait, Nunavut in this 2003 photo. Inuit leaders contend polar bear populations are healthy and do not need special protection. (Kevin Frayer/Canadian Press)
The government first listed the mammals as a species of concern in 1991, a status it kept in subsequent assessments in 1999 and 2002.
But in 2004, Ottawa turned down the recommendation of an arms-length scientific advisory group — the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada — to continue to list it as a species of special concern, sending the matter back to the committee over what it said was a lack of traditional aboriginal knowledge in the assessment.
The committee again recommended it be listed as a species of concern in April 2008 and gave the recommendation to then-environment minister John Baird. But current Environment Minister Jim Prentice is still considering the recommendation.
International scientific groups have also contributed to the debate. In 2006 the 40 members of the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union — now called the International Union for Conservation of Nature — decided, unanimously, to list the polar bear as vulnerable.
As Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta researcher and head of the group told the CBC's Eve Savory a year ago, "If there is no ice, there are no bears."
Scientists report sea ice receding
Some polar bear subpopulations rely on continuous sea ice to migrate north in the summer, and as scientists have reported, that sea ice is disappearing.
University of Manitoba climate researcher David Barber, who led the $40-million Circumpolar Flaw Lead study, reported year-after-year declines in sea ice, with the 2007 retreat the largest on record, allowing clear navigation of the Northwest Passage for the first time in human memory. In 2008 the sea ice bounced back, but Barber said last month that ice was mostly first-year ice likely to melt this summer.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report on endangered areas also listed the Arctic ecosystem as particularly vulnerable, with rises in temperatures well above the anticipated 1.8 to four degree Celsius global rise expected over the next century.
A mother polar bear and her two cubs walk along the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Man., in 2007. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)
Thursday's agreement between Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States was an update of the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which at the time was primarily concerned with protecting polar bears from hunting, and outlawed the practice for all but indigenous people.
The new agreement, reached after a three-day summit in the Norwegian town of Tromsoe, outlined the shift in focus to include climate change as a priority for future conservation efforts.
"The parties agreed that long-term conservation of polar bears depends upon successful mitigation of climate change," the countries said in a joint statement. "[The] impacts of climate change and the continued and increasing loss and fragmentation of sea ice … constitute the most important threat to polar bear conservation."
Environmentalists were hopeful the agreement would spur each of the countries to pursue more aggressive strategies for battling climate change. The agreement, however, falls short of making a direct appeal for action to the United Nations climate conference, scheduled to take place in Copenhagen in December 2009, where countries will plan to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The next meeting of the five countries on the status of polar bears will take place in Canada in 2011, followed by one in Russia in 2013.
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http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/03/20/polar-bear-protection.html
1. Dakyung Lee
ReplyDelete2. Intersections: agriculture and climate
3.
This article caught my interest because it clearly demonstrated the connections between agriculture and climate change, and the extent of impact one can have on the other. As producers and consumers of plants and animals, we tend to have a lot of interest in our agriculture. However, the environmental impacts caused by our agricultural production system usually is the last thing in the back our minds. Perhaps this is because the intersection between agriculture and climate change is a subject that is not commonly discussed, which also implies that it is likely that people have very little knowledge about this environmental, agricultural and social connection.
While this article focuses specifically on one region, Australia, it made me wonder about the possibilities of other intersections between agriculture and climate change. It made me question what kinds of agricultural production systems are out there around the world, and the different environmental problems that these different systems can cause in the long-run.
As the content of this article reveals, Australia uses fossil fuels to produce their agriculture. Because of their excessive fossil fuel usage, many are concerned with the negative consequences that can result from the continous usage. Similarly, excessive cultivation and overusage of synthetic fertilizers and chemicals, which we are probably more familiar with or hear more frequently, can create devastating results to the environment. It was interesting to visualize how actual forest fires or problems concerning global warming are aroused by the existing agricultural production.
It seems very problematic and unfair that we, as consumers and producers, hope to benefit from the agriculture without looking at the bigger picture and thinking about the possible harm that the current production systems can have on the environment, and on the direct lives of people. It seems that we take full advantage of the environment, without the extent to which it can threaten the environmental conditions.
Throughout this article, it is clear that all the activities that we do are intertwined with the environment as one problem can lead to the next problem. Therefore, if we cut back just a little on our agricultural needs and find more ecologically sustainable farming systems, we can avoid facing problems that are undesirable .
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Agriculture and climate change
Nick Soudakoff
21 March 2009
Australian agriculture both contributes to climate change and is adversely affected by it. Any campaign in to force urgent government action on climate change has to include a demand for the radical transformation of rural land use and farming systems to be ecologically sustainable.
There are a number of ways agriculture contributes to climate change. Australian agriculture is fossil fuel intensive — both in terms of agricultural production, and in the transport used to take produce from the farm to the point of consumption in cities.
Even if 100% renewable energy was used to power farm production systems and land transport, agriculture would still make a significant contribution to global warming unless other actions are also taken.
Soil carbon
The loss of soil carbon is a historic, and continuing, contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels. For every tonne of soil carbon lost, 3.67 tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
Soil carbon is destroyed through excessive cultivation or overgrazing, anaerobic (airless) conditions like compaction and water-logging, and the use of synthetic fertilisers and chemicals — particularly herbicides.
What is common to all these practices? They disrupt the carbon cycle in the soil so that carbon is consumed faster than it is replenished.
Methane is emitted by farm animals such as cows, sheep and goats as a by-product of their digestive system, which involves anaerobic fermentation. Methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
Worldwide, there has been a doubling of nitrogen in the “soil nitrogen cycle” over the last 100 years, leading to increased nitrous oxide emissions.
This is the result of using synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, the increased growing of legumes (which fix nitrogen from the air into the soil) and the burning of fossil fuels. Nitrous oxide captures 296 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
Other particular problems include the burning of savannas, burning stubble (the remainder of grain stalks after harvest), nitrous oxide emissions from manure management and methane emissions from rice production.
Extreme weather events
Climate change also impacts on Australian agriculture by magnifying existing problems.
Increased incidences of extreme weather events, like cyclones in the far north and heatwaves in the south (leading to catastrophic bushfires), all disrupt farming operations and food supply, as well as leaving a legacy of land degradation.
Furthermore, water cycles are disrupted. Ground water resources are being used faster than they are recharging. Deforestation has disrupted rainfall patterns. Hotter conditions mean an increased need for water at a time when rainfall is decreasing and becoming erratic.
Biodiversity loss on farms, through mono-cropping and the decline of native habitats, further reduces resilience to extreme weather conditions.
Increased droughts can lead to a loss of ground cover and hence a further loss of soil carbon.
Salinity and erosion issues lead back to problems with soil hydrology being disturbed by the absence of deep rooted perennial plants and soil carbon loss.
As crop varieties and livestock breeds are lost, and farmers rely on growing a small number of market-leading varieties of crops, we hamper our ability to adapt to our new environment.
Are livestock the main problem?
In 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation released a report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow — Environmental Issues and Options. The report linked the world’s livestock to major problems including deforestation resulting from the pressure for grazing land, high greenhouse emissions, land degradation through overgrazing and the high burden on water and land resources among others.
Animals are a necessary component of all ecosystems, but if there are too many in a particular environment they will be highly destructive. What would be the appropriate number of livestock for sustainable agriculture?
The answer will always be found farm by farm or district by district. Also, what is appropriate one season may not be the same the next, given drought or good rain.
Totally eliminating livestock from farming, however, would make Australian agriculture less sustainable rather than more.
Composted manures are an invaluable source for biological enhancement and soil fertility. Along with properly processed human waste (bio-solids), its application can help break farming’s dependence on synthetic nitrogen inputs.
Furthermore, well managed grazing land is one of the most effective ways to sequester carbon in the soil.
Livestock can add to the biodiversity of farms that predominately grow crops, as does diversifying crops, developing wildlife corridors and repairing creek areas.
Livestock operations fit very well with agro-forestry (as opposed to monoculture tree plantations). Sustainable pastures can contain a plethora of species without the need for input-intensive cultivation.
Growing topsoil
To reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, it will be necessary to reverse the loss of soil carbon caused by capitalist farming methods.
Building up soil carbon levels involves increasing soil biological activity, increasing the return to the soil of organic residues and maintaining ground cover with actively growing plants.
Plants sequester carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Plant residues that are digested by the soil are eventually transformed into more stable carbon compounds such as humic acids.
An interesting technology that can play a part in drawing carbon back into the soil is biochar, a type of charcoal created by heating organic matter in an oxygen-poor environment.
Biochar is a far more stable form of carbon than the organic matter from which it is made. It can last in the soil for hundreds of years.
For farms with degraded soils, biochar can increase water holding capacity, nutrient retention, increase biological activity, and improve soil structure.
Rebuilding carbon levels in the soil does not depend on undeveloped, speculative technologies — it is a current practice used by most organic and bio-dynamic farmers.
One exciting development for Australian agriculture is the Natural Sequence Farming system developed by agriculturalist Peter Andrews. Andrews’ system seeks to restore the soil hydrology by returning carbon to the soil and reversing the damage to creek and river systems so that water is stored in the landscape rather than drained away.
For example, leaky weirs are constructed in deeply incised creeks and planted out with reeds, slowing the water down and allowing the creek to support a higher water table in the landscape.
There are many other aspects to Andrews’ system. He has written two books, Back from the Brink and Beyond the Brink that are essential reading for those interested in sustainable agriculture.
Pasture cropping
Another important farming system, pasture cropping, was developed in NSW in 1992 by Colin Seis.
With this technique, winter cereal crops are sown directly into native pasture and harvested before the pastures growth phase starts.
The crop yield is slightly less than crops sown in worked-up ground but there is no tillage, no bare ground and the grazing value of the pasture is maintained.
Pasture re-sown into stubble often takes a season to establish, so in a mixed-farming system pasture cropping is more productive over all. Unlike traditional agriculture, it is a system that can increase soil carbon levels.
There have been farms growing food sustainably in Australia for decades. The challenge is to introduce sustainable farming, not just on a farm-by-farm basis, but across the whole sector.
Financial pressures on many working farmers are such that there isn’t enough capital available without going further into debt to undertake new infrastructure programs, or to retool equipment for minimum tillage.
Furthermore, there is often a financial imperative to crop fence-post to fence-post, or carry extra stock, to squeeze out an few extra dollars per acre.
Market barriers
Can market forces encourage farmers to undertake sustainable farming practices? The evidence for this is highly dubious.
The introduction of water trading, for example, has resulted in the cost of water rising through local government buying water for urban users, and companies and individual farmers speculating on the water price.
The real efficiency gains in water-use, however, come through direct investment in infrastructure such as the conversion from open channels to pipes, switching from flood irrigation to overhead spray, or better still, underground drip irrigation.
Offering a regular income stream for environmental management services would allow some financial certainty for farmers.
Increased funding for research into new techniques and technologies that will improve ecological sustainability are also essential.
In particular, the federal government has to fund the rapid development of biochar production facilities around the country rather than leave it to the private sector to implement it only where it is profitable.
Governments need to massively expand their budgets for farm reforestation and not just link that funding to native tree planting. State investment in redeveloping urban waste systems is needed so that organic matter, including bio-solids, is returned to farm land.
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http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/788/40567
1. Yoo GaEun
ReplyDelete2. Trash Collectors
3. Well, I deeply sense that numerous envrionmental crashes and complicated problems pervade in this modern society. Not being a kind of optimisitc, happyhappy girl myself, I cannot genuinely believe that the world has been heading to a better direction.
But I DO believe there are some responsible and righteous people who want to bring a positive change to the world and that is the reason I am introducing this article.
As Professor Whitaker said in the lecture, we can find various solutions under way. This article says there is a grassroot environmental organization in Venezuela providing education to children, from 4th to 6th grade, and confering with a local mayor about practical solutions for trash problems.
I think education shold be the very frist step of haralding CHANGE to the society, because without a basic knowledge and necessity to courage, any active campaign or message will be for nought. In terms of reclaiming the road towarod the environmentally responsible society,education matters a lot ; especially, teaching kids about certain problems can boost the whole society's enlightenment because kids will tell their parents what they have learned at shcool, and impressed paretns are likely to show the kids exemplary behaviors.
So, this kind of local action can be the key to alleviate environmental problems in that it is each individual who should recognize the duty he or she has been entitled since a birth, and education can call on each person's action!
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Vicente Emilio Sojo Bolivarian School is tucked into the labyrinth of streets and corridors of La Vega, a Caracas barrio of more than 100,000 residents on the southern end of the Venezuelan capital. Through the classroom windows, block homes stacked one on another stretch across the countryside. An improvised garbage dump sits just outside the school, where a small, evidently ignored sign reads “Don’t throw trash here.” The colorful environmental mural painted by students only a few years ago is faded and riddled with the slop of garbage that overflows from the dumpster and covers the ground, emitting a foul stench. On the other side of the wall, you can hear the sound of children playing in the courtyard during recess.
This scene is an unfortunate reality in many poor barrios across Venezuela, a reality that a grassroots group called Geografía Viva (Live Geography) is doing its best to alleviate, teaching a subtly radical form of environmental education to hundreds of Venezuelan children.
Take the Trash Out
Geografía Viva was founded by a group of progressive geography students 20 years ago with the goal of bringing one’s surroundings, or “geography,” to life. The founders advocated encouraging residents to actively participate in the solutions to the environmental problems in their communities.
Various early programs gave way to organizing for children’s rights, which within 10 years had consolidated into the project that would become the heart of the organization: Participando por un Ambiente Sano (Participating for a Clean Environment), or PAS.
PAS would bridge environmental and citizen education through interactive programs for fourth- to sixth-graders in poor communities across Venezuela. Promoters visited each school once a week, taught respect for the environment, and had students carry out investigations to discern the most pressing environmental problems facing their community.
The students in almost every school found trash to be the number one environmental problem. In response, PAS called on local governments to solve the trash problem through better cleanup and disposal. Students and promoters met with the local mayors’ offices, the Ministry of Environment, and even spoke before the Venezuelan National Assembly. Geografía Viva Director Isabel Villarte says that although the experience was “great public speaking practice,” it didn’t make any headway in solving the trash problem.
So three years ago, PAS organizers decided to take a different, more action-oriented approach. They launched a recycling and composting education program to deal with the trash problem directly by reusing organic material instead of throwing it out. While still fairly young, the program appears to be a success.
Getting Children Motivated
“Is the composting working? Definitely,” says Carmen Ramirez, a sixth-grade teacher at Vicente Emilio who has been collaborating with the project since its inception 10 years ago. The plants that line her classroom windowsill are potted in the soil that her class created last year by composting their organic waste. Ramirez explains that since they began composting, one of the two dumpsters outside Vicente Emilio has been removed. But the students aren’t just composting the waste from their classroom and lunchroom. Teachers have encouraged them to bring in organic waste from home and from the local casa de alimentación (soup kitchen).
“How many of you composted at home over the summer holiday?” asks Yelitza Uzcategui, Geografía Viva’s afternoon Caracas promoter. Just over half of Ramirez’s 30 students raise their hands.
Uzcategui holds up a plastic to-go container into which she places a bread roll, some orange peels, and leftover coffee grinds. “We’re going to be studying these items over the upcoming weeks to see how they change,” she says, placing the container in the corner of the room, “Certain organic materials are really good for breaking things down.”
This type of hands-on education with the students is what Ramirez says makes Geografía Viva stand out from most of the other organizations working in the communities. “The promoters interact with the students,” she says. “They get involved and they get the children motivated.”
The interaction isn’t limited to the classroom. Many of the schools also have outside compost pits where the students work building the compost piles, turning them, and eventually using the new soil. The finished abono (fertilizer) is often delivered to neighboring schools working in collaboration with Venezuela’s reforestation program, Misión Arbol (Tree Mission).
“It is really neat making the organic fertilizer and working in the PAS project, because we can decrease the trash and take more care of the environment,” says Geonelsis Briceño, one of five student “Environmental Animators” chosen to represent their class in the PAS project because of their enthusiasm for composting. The animators participate in extra activities and are expected to educate the rest of the community about the environment.
But the PAS project doesn’t end there. Organizers produce a quarterly environmental newsletter, I‘ñamo; they are setting up a video library to lend environmental videos to their members; and in La Vega, they produce a community-based, environmentally focused, children-run radio show. Elsewhere, PAS has supported efforts for local school-based environmental newspapers, carried out recycling workshops, and recently sent five student animators to the South American Youth Conference on Climate Change, held in Ecuador in October 2007.
Sí, Se Puede
With its international connections and programs run free-of-charge to 1,500 fourth- to sixth-grade students in 20 schools across four Venezuelan cities, one might imagine Geografía Viva to have a budget of millions and a staff of dozens. It doesn’t. There are only 12 employees in all four cities combined – Caracas, Barcelona, Merida, and San José de Guaribe – and half of them are promoters who must visit each classroom once a week.
The Caracas head office, where more than half of the employees are based, is squeezed into a small two-room space on the bottom floor of a downtown apartment block. The organization’s limited foundation funding runs out next year, and without resources from the Venezuelan government, Geografía Viva is getting a little nervous. But Villarte is confident that they will get by, as they always have.
While the students are enthusiastic, Villarte admits not all of them will stick with composting once they have moved on to higher grades. But the students aren’t the only ones who are getting involved. They are also influencing their entire community. Nearly all of the PAS promoters first learned about composting from their children who brought the idea home.
Outside of Vicente Emilio, there is still trash in the streets. But it has been noticeably reduced by the students, teachers, promoters, parents, and community members who have decided to participate in the recuperation of their community and its waste problem, an improvement built on the governing principles of Geografía Viva’s PAS program – that education occurs through hands-on participation.
In a country like Venezuela, where it is common to see residents toss trash out the window without thinking twice, this type of change can be very difficult. But it is not impossible.
“Sí, se puede (Yes, you can),” says Uzcategui to one of her classes, which is quickly learning that much of what they once thought was garbage, isn’t. “Do you want to feed the rats, or feed the plants?” she asks. For the students enrolled in the program, that’s a no-brainer. Z
Michael Fox is a freelance journalist and translator in South America. He is a correspondent with Free Speech Radio News, and has written for The Nation, Yes!, and Venezuelanalysis.
Venezuela’s Geografía Viva
improves quality of life through composting education in elementary schools
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http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/trash_collectors/
1. Yoon Hyesung
ReplyDelete2. Title : Alternative energy quest endangering birds - Steep drops in bird populations
attributed to energy production, report says
3.
When I first saw the title of this article, I was really curious about details. So far, I've been thinking that alternative energy is surely helpful to the world. So I haven't thought about the negative effect of developing alternative energy.
We need renewable energy as an alternative proposal of the environmental pollution. People believe that renewable energy can help to keep the environment from being more destroyed. However, I got to know that it can be harmful for birds to establish renewable energy zones... If we don't care a lot about this, this can be a real big problem. Although this article was written about the U.S, but I think Korea may face this problem, too. Considering both negative and positive effect, the government should solve the matter. I wonder which choice the Obama administration will choose.
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WASHINGTON - As the Obama administration pursues more homegrown energy sources, a new government report faults energy production of all types — wind, ethanol and mountaintop coal mining — for contributing to steep drops in bird populations.
The first-of-its-kind government report chronicles a four-decade decline in many of the country's bird populations and provides many reasons for it, from suburban sprawl to the spread of exotic species to global warming.
In almost every case, energy production is also playing a role.
"Energy development has significant negative effects on birds in North America," the report concludes.
Birds can collide with wind turbines and oil and gas wells, and studies have shown that some species, such as Prairie-chickens and sage grouse, will avoid nesting near the structures.
Ponds created during the extraction of coalbed methane gas breed mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, leading to more bird deaths. Transmission lines, roads to access energy fields and mountaintop removal to harvest coal can destroy and fragment birds' living spaces.
'Environmental eyes open'
Environmentalists and scientists say the report should signal to the Obama administration to act cautiously as it seeks to expand renewable energy production and the electricity grid on public lands and tries to harness wind energy along the nation's coastlines.
The report also shows that conservation efforts can work. Birds that reside in wetlands and the nation's waterfowl have rebounded over the past 40 years, a period marked by increased protections for wetlands.
"We need to go into these energies with our environmental eyes open," said John Fitzpatrick, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped draft the report along with non-profit advocacy groups. "We need to attend to any form of energy development, not just oil and gas."
Many of the bird groups with the most rapid declines in the last 40 years inhabit areas with the greatest potential for energy development.
Among the energy-bird conflicts cited by the report:
More than half of the monitored bird species that live on prairies have experienced population losses. These birds, such as the Lesser Prairie Chicken, are threatened by farmers converting grasslands into corn fields to meet demand for biofuels.
In the Arctic, where two-thirds of all shorebirds are species of concern, melting ice brought about by climate change could open up more areas to oil and gas production. Studies show that trash near drilling rigs attracts gulls that prey on other species.
Mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia clears patches of forest contributing to the decline of birds like the Cerulean warbler that breeds and forests in treetops.
The U.S. State of Birds report, released by the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday, was requested in October 2007 by President George W. Bush.
Salazar, who wants to establish renewable energy zones and is drawing up rules for offshore wind energy production, said Thursday the report should "be a call to action, but it is action in our reach."
Long-term tracking
The report uses data from three long-running bird censuses to establish trends over time. It shows that birds in Hawaii are more in danger of becoming extinct than anywhere else in the United States. In the last 40 years, populations of birds living on prairies, deserts and at sea have declined between 30 and 40 percent.
While its findings are similar to earlier studies, it is the first to be issued by the government and the agency in charge of managing energy production on public lands and protecting the nation's wildlife.
The report did not indicate whether one form of energy production is more detrimental than the other.
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Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29778816/
1. Shim Kyuhee
ReplyDelete2. Oill Spills
3. I believe that oil spills are one of the most deadly environmental disasters caused by mankind. Their effects are catastrophic for marine animals, not to mention a direct threat to the livelihoods for locals who are dependent on the ecosystem of the ocean. Even if the guilty party sends relief teams to clean the oil and pay damages for the accident, it will be long before the region will be able to gain full recovery. To be exact, it will take approximately 100 years.
I witnessed the direct effects of a major oil spill accident two years ago, when an oil ship from Samsung heavy industry had an accident on the coast of Tae-an county, located South of the Korean peninsula. New reports showed the dead remains of birds and animals covered in black oil from the spill. Residents in Tae-an, who were either fishermen or dependent on local tourism, were facing economical problems. The event was a shock to the entire Korean community, and that year many Koreans traveled to the Tae-an coast to aid relief efforts.
Despite the nationwide effort to recover the Tae-an coast, the effects of the oil spill will remain for many years. Even the effects of the Exxon oil spill, which occurred twenty years ago, are still lingering in the Prince William Sound. It made me angry that oil companies got away with destroying our planet, in their reckless pursuit of profit. Like the article says, if the companies did not have the ability to clean up after their mistakes, they shouldn’t be hauling barrels of oil across the ocean.
In fact, it seemed that in light of the punitive damages oil companies were liable to pay after such accidents, it would be cheaper and more reasonable for them to focus on developing better technology to clean up future oil spill accidents. But this is not the case. We saw that companies like Exxon and Samsung were less apologetic and more intent on appealing the court and reducing their fine. Personally, I think that even 5 billion dollars, which Exxon was initially fined by the court, doesn’t cover the extent of damage on the environment due to the oil spill. The only way we can prevent future catastrophes would be to impose regulations on these companies, as the article mentions, so that they cannot travel vulnerable parts of the ocean. But furthermore I believe that the international society should give a heavier punishment to companies who are inconsiderate of our environment,
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Problems persist two decades after Exxon Valdez oil spill
San Francisco - On March 24, 1989, a massive tanker captained by a man who had allegedly been drinking, sailed outside regular Alaskan shipping lanes and hit a reef, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.
The Exxon Valdez, at the time one of the most advanced tankers in the world, split, spilling approximately 40 million litres of crude oil into the delicate and pristine Arctic environment of the remote Prince William Sound.
The oil dispersed over an area of 28,000 square kilometres and covered approximately 2,000 kilometres of rugged coastline. It killed an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 birds, fish and sea mammals.
Twenty years later, another horrific accident is waiting to happen, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned on Friday, even as the damage from Exxon Valdez continues to blight the region.
In a graphic illustration of the lingering effects of that disaster, the environmental group sent oil-crusted rocks to ministers, officials and media in the Arctic countries still wrangling over arrangements to govern a renewed resource rush to the region.
The rocks accompanied a report entitled, Lessons Not Learned, which recommends a moratorium on new offshore oil development in the Arctic "until technologies improve to a point where an adequate oil- spill clean-up operation can be performed."
WWF also recommended that the most vulnerable and important areas of the Arctic be deemed permanently off-limits to oil development because oil spills would be next to impossible to clean up or would cause irreparable long-term damage.
"Governments and industry in the region remain unprepared to deal with another such disaster," WWF warned. At the same time global warming is melting more of the ice, which increases access and exploration, making another accident more likely.
"While there has been little improvement in technologies to respond to oil-spill disasters in the last 20 years, the Arctic itself has changed considerably and is much more vulnerable today," said Neil Hamilton, leader of WWF's Arctic Programme.
"Sea ice is disappearing and open water seasons are lasting longer, creating a frenzy to stake claims on the Arctic's rich resources - especially oil and gas development. We need a 'timeout' until protective measures exist for this fragile, special place."
Bill Chameides, dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, agrees with the WWF that despite one of the largest cleanup efforts in history much of the damage has proved irreversible.
Though many beaches and coves in the area look the same, the deeper picture tells a very different story. Digging even a little uncovers a gooey mix of oil and sand.
"People may assume that because the spill happened 20 years ago, the effects are long gone. But they persist - and may continue for years to come," said Chameides, who estimates that it could take as much as 100 more years for all the oil to dissipate.
Oil giant Exxon spent about 2 billion dollars on the clean up operation.
It was originally ordered to pay 5 billion dollars in punitive damages. But in a successful series of court appeals culminating in a Supreme Court decision last year, that amount has now been reduced to just over 507 million dollars - a tremendous blow to the fishermen and local communities who suffered from the calamity.
"Their way of life was devastated," says local resident Sharon Bushell, the author of a book called, The Spill, Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster. She interviewed residents about how they remember the disaster and chronicles the lost lives of the fishermen, innkeepers and mechanics.
"There was death everywhere, dead birds, dead otters, dead deer. A vast amount of oil covered the water," said one woman. "It was a terrible scene, one to rival anyone's idea of hell." (dpa)
5. --------------------------------------------
http://topnews.us/content/24493-problems-persist-two-decades-after-exxon-valdez-oil-spill#ixzz0APeXdkFv
1. Selina Li Qiaowei
ReplyDelete2. Paint it white
3. This is a very interesting article, and the simplest way to solve global warming as I ever heard before. It is a very good trend that scientists are trying to find way which everyone may put into little afford to change the urgent issue of the world’s climate. To turn the whole world white, it sounds very ridiculous for me when I first saw it, but after I finish reading the article, I am just want to take action on it too. I feel funny at the first because I am thinking that human is really brilliant, no matter how worse is a situation, they can always find out various solutions to solve it. Anyway, I have to also say that this is very ironic, so what is the color after white? All this solutions to decrease the temperature are passive. The most effective way is still for us to reduce the produce of CO2. It is very sad to hear the professor said that nowadays, most of water resource is using on power station in the developed countries, such as nuclear power station. Why we are using our most precious resource on the development of the most unnecessary and harmful issue around the world. It is a very big shame on the development of society.
To launch the campaign such as ‘paint the world white’. I think it is a very practicable way to always remain people the problem of global warming and also this is a simple way that everybody could do to save the world. This could bring people confidence to change the situation of the world. Experiment show that with white roof people enjoy a cooler environment during the summer time, it provides chance for people to switch off the air-conditional. Problem such as urban heat island effect could also release down its pressure. I remember that last year, there is a campaign in Japan which the prime minister of Japan leads to wear simple cloth instead of suits to office during the working days. They want officer worker to reduce the use of air conditionals by wearing less-tight cloth during the office hours. I guess to paint the office buildings white may be a better policy that Japan could take since I believe in a formal society like Japan, suits must be wear in certain situations.
There are some figures in this article which surprised me as well. Only to increase the amount of sunlight bounced off our planet by 0.03%, it could cancel out the warming caused by 44 billion tones of carbon dioxide pollution that produced! It seems to me that we only to take a small step to make this world a better place for living. The thing is that we have to find ways to balance the causes and results. On another hand, the schemes of geo-engineering give me a shock. They are giving suggestions like to place a giant mirror above the clouds and to produce millions of fake plastic trees to suck carbons. It sounds like a joke. If giving us a choice, it is sure that everyone is going to choose to paint their house white but not to live in a plastic city. As we all know that plastic itself is a very hard to dispose material.
I leant many facts and knowledge in this article, for instance, growing acidification of the oceans, caused as extra CO2 dissolves. Why the ocean becomes more acidic? From the acid rain and the pollution send by factories to streams and rivers. I leant a new term called albedo which is the percentage of light reflected by a surface. Researchers in Japan also admitted that people like the idea that to paint the road in white as they feel cooler and more comfortable to walk on it. There are more benefits to consider with the white option, in a very realistic way, it helps the US government to save up to 1 billion from the electricity bill. The idea of to paint the city white dose not work for state like US, also less sunny area such as UK according to the article, as long as there are many air-conditionals, than it is a suitable plan for your city to try out. Finally, I have two questions want to ask, what kind of paint we are going to use to carry on this campaign, so far as I know there are toxic elements inside paint material which may cause health problem, is that a factor that we have to consider? Secondly, is there a possibility that the paint may rise up anther type of pollution?
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4. Paint it white
David Adam
March 10, 2009
Global warming may seem like an overwhelmingly complex problem to tackle. But one scientist thinks the answer is brilliantly simple: a lot of white paint. David Adam reports.
“Akbari says his plan is more workable than other geo-engineering ideas. The science is simple. Sunlight reflected from a surface does not contribute to the greenhouse effect, which drives global warming.”
October 11, 2006
Hashem Akbari has a vision of a shiny, happy world. He sees polished roads and cities that gleam in the sunlight. Rooftops are bright and pavements light. Akbari wants to turn our cities into a giant mirror and he needs your help. And paint, lots of it.
Akbari is no architect and his grand plan is no conceptual art project. Based at the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, Akbari is a scientist who has come up with a new way to fight global warming. It could be the easiest solution you've never heard of.
His big idea is based on principles as old as the whitewashed villages that scatter the hills of southern Europe and North Africa. Turn enough of the world's black urban landscape white, he says, and it would reflect enough sunlight to delay global warming, and grant us some precious breathing space in the global struggle to control carbon emissions.
Akbari is poised to launch a campaign to paint the world white. He wants dozens of the world's largest cities to unite in an effort to replace the dark-coloured materials used to cover roads and roofs with something a little more reflective.
It sounds simple, but the effect could be dramatic. Study after study has shown that buildings with white roofs stay cooler during the summer. The change reduces the way heat accumulates in built-up areas -- known as the urban heat island effect -- and allows people who live and work inside to switch off power-hungry air-conditioning units.
Aware of the benefit, California has forced warehouses and other commercial premises with flat roofs to make them white since 2005, and, if such an effort could be extended, the results could make a big difference.
Together, roads and roofs are reckoned to cover more than half the available surfaces in urban areas, which have spread over some 2.4% of the earth's land area. A mass movement to change their colour, Akbari calculates, would increase the amount of sunlight bounced off our planet by 0.03%. And, he says, that would cool the earth enough to cancel out the warming caused by 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution.
If you think that sounds like a lot, then you're right. It would wipe out the expected rise in global emissions over the next decade. It won't solve the problem of climate change, Akbari says, but could be a simple and effective weapon to delay its impact -- just so long as people start doing it in earnest. "Roofs are going to have to be changed one by one, and to make that effort at a very local level, we need to have an organization in place to make it happen," he says. Groups in several cities in the United States, including Houston, Chicago and Salt Lake City, are on board with his plan, and he is talking to others.
The idea is a form of geo-engineering, a broad term used to cover all schemes that tackle the symptoms of climate change -- namely catastrophic temperature rise, without addressing the root cause, our spiraling greenhouse-gas emissions. And if altering all of the world's roofs and roads sounds extreme, and then take a look at some ideas from the other end of the geo-engineering scale: giant mirrors in space, shiny balloons to float above the clouds and millions of fake plastic trees to suck carbon from the air.
An increasing number of climate scientists argue that the world has little choice but to investigate such drastic options. Carbon emissions since 2000 have risen faster than anyone thought possible, mainly driven by the coal-fuelled boom in China, and a global temperature rise of 2º to 3° Celsius seems inevitable. Last September, a special edition of a Royal Society journal, dedicated to geo-engineering said the geo-engineering schemes "may be risky, but the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing".
Akbari says his plan is more workable than other geo-engineering ideas. The science is simple. Sunlight reflected from a surface does not contribute to the greenhouse effect, which drives global warming. That problem comes when dark surfaces soak up sunlight and send it back up as thermal energy, at just the right wavelength to rebound off CO2 in the sky.
The problem with shiny cities, according to Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, is more simple science. "It won't tackle global warming because carbon emissions are still rising," he says. Like all geo-engineering schemes, it will need to be kept up indefinitely, Anderson says, and does not address the growing acidification of the oceans, caused as extra CO2 dissolves. The cooling effect and energy savings in cities would be welcome though, he adds.
Akbari says his idea is not intended to replace efforts to cut carbon emissions, but to work alongside them. "We can give the atmosphere time to breathe," he says. "I just don't see a downside to this idea. It benefits everybody and you don't have to have hard negotiations to make it happen."
Dark roofs reflect about 10% to 20% of sunlight, while white surfaces tend to send back at least half. In technical terms, the percentage of light reflected by a surface is called its albedo -- so a perfectly reflective surface has an albedo of 1. Coloured paints have an albedo of 0.1 to 0.3, and white paints an albedo of 0.5 to 0.9. Asphalt road surfaces have albedos as low as 0.05, so they absorb up to 95% of the sun's energy. Concrete has an albedo of up to 0.3, tar and gravel just 0.1. Akbari's mission is to get individuals, local authorities, builders and communities to think about albedo alongside cost, colour and design when it comes to repairs, maintenance and new construction.
"This is not just a question of painting things white,” he says. “Roofs and roads are routinely repaired and replaced and, when it comes to householders changing their roofs, we want them to look at reflective options. That's the time to target people." He says an "aggressive" programme could convert all cities within 10 to 20 years.
It is fairly easy to persuade, or require, the owners of buildings to select white materials for flat roofs, because the colour is only noticed by passing air travellers. But sloping roofs, found on most houses, are a different issue because they are visible from the ground. As pretty as snow-coated Alpine villages may look, skiers wear powerful sunglasses for a reason. Streets of white-roofed houses would dazzle in the sun. The same is true of road surfaces -- too light a colour and too much light reflects as glare into the eyes of motorists.
No problem, Akbari says: reflective materials need not be white. Light colours such as grey are good, too. And there are other ways to increase the albedo of materials. Pigments that bounce back infrared light can raise the reflectivity of dark surfaces by 40% without any obvious change in colour. They are not as effective as white, which bounces back visible wavelengths of light too, but they are much better than conventional materials.
The Public Works Research Institute in Japan has experimented with paints with such pigments applied to conventional asphalt surfaces. They made a road that reflects 86% of infrared light, which helps keep the surface cool, yet reflects just 23% of visible light, to keep down glare. The researchers were nervous that the extra infrared bouncing off the shiny road could cook pedestrians, but volunteers recruited in summertime to "stand on the paint-coated pavement and conventional pavement" said they actually preferred the painted version. This could be because the coated road kept their feet cool, the researchers said.
There are other benefits, too. Computer simulations of Los Angeles show that resurfacing about two-thirds of roads and rooftops with reflective surfaces, as well as planting more trees, could cool the city by 2º to 3º Celsius. That would reduce the city’s smog as much as a total ban on cars and trucks, and cooler roofs also could save a fortune in electricity bills. On hot days in North America, up to 40% of all electricity can be consumed by air-conditioners, and each temperature degree by a city such as Los Angeles warms is reckoned to see the air-con turned up enough to need another 500 megawatts of power -- the output of a decent sized nuclear power station. Akbari estimates that widespread use of cooler rooftops could slash US$1 billion from electricity bills in the United States alone.
That may be very well for places such as California, with its 300 days of sunshine a year, but what about gloomy northern Europe and the United Kingdom, with a measly 100 sunny days? The effect would not be as great, admits Surabi Menon, who works with Akbari at Lawrence Berkeley, but she says anywhere that needs air-conditioning, or has cities warmer than the outer rural areas, would benefit. Akbari says his estimates of the global cooling potential of reflective cities are based on a global average, so the cloudier places will be made up for by the sunnier spots. "It's absolutely worth doing in the UK," he says. And, he adds, he might just have found a way to pay for it.
Each 10 square metres of urban surface changed from dark to white, he says, has the same cooling effect as preventing the release of a tonne of carbon dioxide. So why not include such resurfacing in carbon-offset schemes? Just as money from green consumers and firms anxious about their carbon footprint is used to fund projects that plant trees, fit green light bulbs and develop renewable energy, in exchange for carbon credits, so it could pay people across the world to paint, coat and resurface.
At today's carbon prices, changing the colour of an average roof could net the householder more than US$200, and Akbari's global scheme could together generate more than US$700 million. "We want to target 30 to 40 cities initially, but within a few years we hope it will mushroom around the world," he says. Go on, paint your town white.
www.guardian.co.uk
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5.http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2824-Paint-it-white
1. Daniel Cheng
ReplyDelete2. China Launches Vast Water Clean-Up
3. One of the things I forgot while I was away from China was the fact that any body of water there is disgusting, no matter where it is in China. Having just returned from Shanghai yesterday, I am thrilled to have read this article, which states that China is spending about four and half billion dollars on a 12 year project to clean up the major bodies of water in China.
The project, known as the "Special Water Project," will "focus on the treatment of whole river basins instead of the conventional approach of end-pipe treatment." This is obviously more costly and time consuming, but it is what the water in China needs.
I was at The Bund in Shanghai, which overlooks the Huangpu River, and I was struck by how utterly disgusting the river was. The amount of trash in the river was astonishing. What is odd is that Shanghai has eco-friendly projects, such as the 2010 World Expo island, yet it has taken China as a whole to initiate a massive water treatment project.
An important note in the article is that one scientist states that the economy will be stunned if China tries to treat the pollution after it has happened, instead of controlling it at its source. I agree with what he said, but I think that in order do initiate anything that drastic, China has to start on a basic scale, and for any problem as great of a magnitude as this, it has to be treated before it can be stopped.
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4. A project to improve water quality in China has been launched by the government, which says it is the largest expenditure on environmental protection since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
The project, which has an estimated budget of more than 30 billion Chinese yuan (around 4.4 billion US dollars) over 12 years, aims to counter the deteriorating water quality affecting millions of Chinese people and their livelihoods.
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The Water Pollution Control and Management Project — known as 'Water Special Project' — will focus on the treatment of whole river basins instead of the conventional approach of end-pipe treatment, according to Meng Wei, chief engineer of the project and director of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences.
By taking this approach the treatment of the highly polluted Lake Tai, for example, the third largest freshwater lake in China, will benefit not just Shanghai but also the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Coordinated by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development , the aim of the project is to guarantee safe drinking water and improve the overall water environment, Meng said.
The safety of drinking water has become a great concern in China. Some 64 per cent of the water reaching urban areas is categorised as suitable only for industrial or agricultural purposes and half of cities have suffered groundwater pollution to some degree, according to Liu Yanhua, vice minister of science and technology, at the launch of the project last month (19 February).
In the summer of 2007 an outbreak of algae around Taihu Lake left more than one million people in the city of Wuxi — in the economically-advanced Jiangsu Province — without access to drinking water for two days.
And when a drought reached its peak in early February it was affecting 10.7 million hectares of farmland in at least 12 provinces in northern China. (See China's water deficit 'will create food shortage')
A number of demonstration projects will be carried out at major rivers across China, such as Haihe, Huaihe, Liaohe and Songhuajiang, as well as Lake Tai and the Three Gorges.
But Qin Boqiang, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, said the government should focus on controlling the sources of pollution instead of treating it after it happens.
"We cannot develop economy at the expense of the environment," he told SciDev.Net
The water programme is one of the 16 key projects listed in the National Mid-Term and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006—2020) issued by the State Council in 2006, which provides guidelines for China's science and technology development for the next 15 years.
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5. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/39464