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Recent News:
from CNN: Nepalese farmers go organic with human waste Jeevan Maharjan has a different approach to human waste -- he considers it as wealth. Rather than flush it down the toilet, the 47-year-old Nepalese farmer collects it to spray on his crops. "It's three times better than chemical fertilizers," he said .... The urine and feces are stored in separate airtight compartments of the toilet, he said, for later use on the land. The urine is kept for about two weeks before it is used, while the feces, which is turned into manure, is used every six months.
from PNAS, via RedOrbit: New CO2 Removal Technique Produces Green Fuel, Offsets Ocean Acidification A new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide has been demonstrated by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The new technique also generates carbon-negative hydrogen and produces alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification. At laboratory scale, the team demonstrated a system that uses the acidity normally produced in saline water electrolysis to accelerate silicate mineral dissolution. The system simultaneously produces hydrogen fuel and other gases. The electrolyte solution that results shows a significant elevation in hydroxide concentration that in turn proved strongly absorptive and retentive of atmospheric CO2. The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of PNAS. The carbonate and bicarbonate produced in the process could be used to mitigate ongoing ocean acidification, the researchers suggest, much like how an Alka Seltzer neutralizes excess acid in the stomach.
from PLOS, via PlanetEarth: Coccoliths thrive despite ocean acidification An international team studied the effect of ocean acidification on plankton in the North Sea over the past forty years, to see what impact future changes may have.... Foraminifera and coccoliths, which are small shelled plankton and algae, appear to be surviving remarkably well in the more acidic conditions. But numbers of pteropods and bivalves - such as mussels, clams and oysters - are falling. 'Ecologically, some species are soaring, whilst others are crashing out of the system,' says Professor Jason Hall-Spencer, of Plymouth University, who co-authored the paper.... 'The aragonite skeleton of pteropods dissolves more easily in corrosive waters than the low-magnesium calcite that typifies many clams and other molluscs,' explains Hall-Spencer. 'But now we think that it's not as simple as that. It depends partly on how stressed organisms are by other factors, such as lack of food. It also depends on their shape and their ability to protect their skeletons.'
from US Pirg: New Report: Reduction in Driving Likely to Continue As the average number of miles driven by Americans heads into its eighth year of decline, a new report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund finds that the slowdown in driving is likely to continue. Baby Boomers are moving out of the phase in their life when they do the most commuting, while driving-averse Millennials move into that phase. These demographic changes and other factors will likely keep driving down for decades... The Millennial generation is leading the change in transportation trends. 16 to 34-year-olds drove a whopping 23 percent fewer miles on average in 2009 than in 2001" the greatest decline in driving of any age group.
from InsideClimate News: A Rare Bipartisan Clean Energy Bill Is Ready for Passage ...Legislation is moving through both houses to tweak the tax code to let clean energy developers form a master limited partnership, or MLP, a type of publicly traded company structure not subject to corporate taxes. For three decades, coal, oil and gas companies have used MLPs to raise hundreds of billions of dollars for pipelines, refineries and other projects. The financing vehicle is credited with helping sustain the nation's current drilling boom....No one expects much opposition to the Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act, the companion bills introduced last month. Co-sponsors include conservative Republicans and legislators from oil and gas states. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's main trade group, is among its backers.
from Mongabay: Malaysia may loan Indonesia rhinos to save species from extinction Conservationists and officials meeting last month at a rhino crisis summit in Singapore agreed to a radical plan to loan Sumatran rhinos between nations if it means saving the critically endangered species from extinction. The proposal, which could still be thwarted by red tape and political opposition, could lead Malaysia to send some of its Sumatran rhinos to semi-captive breeding facilities in Indonesia. "I will bring to my government for approval whatever I and other Sumatran rhino experts feel are the best recommendations for specific actions. If that involves a recommendation to loan rhinos between nations, so be it. This is our very last chance to save the species, and we must get it right this time," said Laurentius Ambu, Sabah Wildlife Department, in a statement issued after the conclusion of the conference.
from University of Washington: Grocery Delivery Service Is Greener Than Driving to the Store At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep. University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.
from PhysOrg: EU set to ban pesticides blamed for decline of bees The EU appears set to impose a two-year ban on the use of insecticides blamed for a sharp and worrying decline in bee populations, an EU source said Thursday.... Under EU procedure, if Monday's vote is the same, the Commission has the authority to proceed on its own with the ban. "The most likely outcome will be the same as last time ... and in that case, the Commission will decide to put the ban into operation," the source said. The Commission wants the insecticides banned for use on four major crops--maize (corn), rape seed, sunflowers and cotton--in a bid to protect the bee population.... Experts have isolated three compounds causing concern--clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, known as neonicotinoids--which are present in insecticides produced by pharmaceutical giants Bayer of Germany and Switzerland's Syngenta.
from Stanford, via EurekAlert: New battery design could help solar and wind power the grid ... Currently the electrical grid cannot tolerate large and sudden power fluctuations caused by wide swings in sunlight and wind. As solar and wind's combined contributions to an electrical grid approach 20 percent, energy storage systems must be available to smooth out the peaks and valleys of this "intermittent" power - storing excess energy and discharging when input drops.... When discharging, the molecules, called lithium polysulfides, absorb lithium ions; when charging, they lose them back into the liquid. The entire molecular stream is dissolved in an organic solvent, which doesn't have the corrosion issues of water-based flow batteries.... "In initial lab tests, the new battery also retained excellent energy-storage performance through more than 2,000 charges and discharges, equivalent to more than 5.5 years of daily cycles," Cui said.... A utility version of the new battery would be scaled up to store many megawatt-hours of energy.
from Washington Post: Why aren't younger Americans driving anymore? Ever since the recession hit in late 2007, Americans have been driving less and less. Was that because of the horrible economy? To some extent, perhaps. But it's striking that Americans are still cutting back on driving even though the economy is growing again.... another huge part of the story is that young Americans are driving much, much less. Between 2001 and 2009, the average yearly number of miles driven by 16- to 34-year-olds dropped a staggering 23 percent. The Frontier Group has the most comprehensive look yet of why younger Americans are opting out of driving. Public transportation use is up 40 percent per capita in this age group since 2001. Bicycling is up 24 percent overall in that time period. And this is true even for young Americans who are financially well off.
from Midwest Energy News: How wind energy helped Iowa attract Facebook's new data center After 18 months of courtship and competition, Iowa officials announced Tuesday that Facebook has selected a Des Moines suburb as the site for its next data center. The social media giant plans to break ground this summer in Altoona, Iowa, on a $300 million data center that could be the first of three facilities there. Much of the news coverage has focused on the $18 million in tax credits awarded by the state, but Facebook had another reason to "like” Iowa: wind power.... As part of a December 2011 truce with Greenpeace, Facebook adopted a policy that gives preference to building data center in places with access to clean and renewable energy.
from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Galaxy Goes Green in Burning Stellar Fuel Astronomers have spotted the "greenest" of galaxies, one that converts fuel into stars with almost 100-percent efficiency. The findings come from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps. "This galaxy is remarkably efficient," said Jim Geach of McGill University in Canada, lead author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It's converting its gas supply into new stars at the maximum rate thought possible."
from Science Now: Could Wood Feed the World? The main ingredient of wood, cellulose, is one of the most abundant organic compounds on Earth and a dream source of renewable fuel. Now, bioengineers suggest that it could feed the hungry as well. In a new study, researchers have found a way to turn cellulose into starch, the most common carbohydrate in the human diet.... For instance, every ton of harvested cereals is often accompanied by 2 to 3 tons of cellulose-rich scrap, most of which goes to waste.... Though the process works, it's expensive. Zhang estimates that, given the current price tag of the enzymes that his team used, it would cost about $1 million to turn 200 kilograms of crude cellulose into 20 kilograms of starch, about enough to feed one person's carbohydrate needs for 80 days. Still, after 5 to 10 years of further research, Zhang says companies could do the same thing for just $0.50 per person per day. "We do not see big obstacles to the commercialization of this process."
from UCSB, via PhysOrg: Effect of ocean acidification may not be so dire "The story years ago was that ocean acidification was going to be bad, really bad for calcifiers," said Iglesias-Rodriguez, whose team discovered that one species of the tiny single celled marine coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, actually had bigger shells in high carbon dioxide seawater conditions. While the team acknowledges that calcification tends to decline with acidification, "we now know that there are variable responses in sea corals, in sea urchins, in all shelled organisms that we find in the sea."... "The E. huxleyi increased the amount of calcite they had because they kept calcifying but slowed down division rates,"slower growth could become problematic. If other species grow faster, E. huxleyi could be outnumbered in some areas.
from AFP-RelaxNews: Smog-eating pavement on greenest street in America The big rigs rattling past smokestacks sure don't make this Chicago roadway look like the greenest street in America. But their tires roll over smog-eating pavement, the streetlights run on solar and wind power, the sidewalks were made with recycled concrete, and shrub-filled "bioswales" keep storm water out of overtaxed sewers.
from American Chemical Society (ACS): Engineering Algae to Make the 'Wonder Material' Nanocellulose for Biofuels and More Genes from the family of bacteria that produce vinegar, Kombucha tea and nata de coco have become stars in a project -- which scientists today said has reached an advanced stage -- that would turn algae into solar-powered factories for producing the "wonder material" nanocellulose. Their report on advances in getting those genes to produce fully functional nanocellulose was part of the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, being held here this week.
from George Mason University, via CleanTechnica: Majority Of Republicans Feel America Should Address Climate Change So it was a bit of a surprise the other day when a recent survey conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents found that a majority of respondents -- 62 percent -- said they felt America should be taking steps to address climate change.... In fact, more than three out of four survey respondents said that the United States should be using more renewable energy sources, and that those renewable sources should be implemented immediately. "Over the past few years, our surveys have shown that a growing number of Republicans want to see Congress do more to address climate change," said Mason professor Edward Maibach, director of 4C. "In this survey, we asked a broader set of questions to see if we could better understand how Republicans, and Independents who have a tendency to vote Republican, think about America's energy and climate change situation."
from HSBC, via GoFossilFree: Oil & Carbon Futures Revisited The IEA(s World Energy Outlook (2012 edition) estimated that in order to have a 50 percent chance of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees C, only a third of current fossil fuel reserves can be burned before 2050. The balance could be regarded as "unburnable."... In a low-carbon world, defined as limiting future CO2 emissions until 2050 to 1,440Gt, oil demand would fall post 2010. Gas demand would continue to grow but at a slower rate than currently. This means some potential oil and gas developments would no longer be needed. ... Price risk a material threat: Although not directly related to 'unburnable' carbon, a greater risk to the [oil] sector would be if lower demand led to lower oil and gas prices. In that case, the potential value at risk could rise to 40-60 percent of market cap. Low costs are the key: Because of its long-term nature, we doubt the market is pricing in the risk of a loss of value from this issue.
from Indiana Living Green: Doctor/farmer/medicine man: Kevin Logan moves from pharm to farm ....growing numbers of patients have discovered Logan's mind-body-spirit approach to wellness--one that focuses less on treating symptoms and more on identifying their root cause. One of the biggest root causes of health problems is diet. "In cases of chronic illness, incorporating dietary changes into patients' lives really makes a world of difference in how they feel. I talk about food all day long with my patients, the things they should be eating, the things they should be avoiding. I see things that you wouldn't even expect would be food-related.”
from MIT Technology Review: A Stealthy De-Extinction Startup ... Ark, he says, hopes to help revive some extinct species, including a Spanish mountain goat. But the company's real aim is to combine cutting-edge cell biology and genome engineering in order to breed livestock and maybe even create DNA-altered pets that live much longer than usual. "Imagine a dog that lives 20 years," he says.... Ark's key technology is going to be induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. To make iPS cells, researchers take an ordinary skin cell and, by modifying it or adding certain chemicals, turn it into a potent stem cell that's able to grow into any other tissue of the body, including eggs and sperm.... What's more, with iPS cells, it's at least theoretically possible to make eggs from a man's skin cell, or sperm from a woman. In other words, the technology could one day let two men, or two women, have children that share both their genes. I'm pretty sure no one on Noah's Ark thought of that.
from Climate Central: New Process May Make Renewable Energy Reliable at Last Solar energy is virtually limitless, generates no planet-warming greenhouse gases -- and is useless between sunset and sunrise. Wind energy is also plentiful and emits no carbon, and it can be harvested day or night, but not when the air is calm. A discovery announced in Thursday's issue of Science may offer a way around these daunting problems, however. Chemists at the University of Calgary, in Canada, have found an efficient way to turn electricity from wind and solar energy into hydrogen, which itself can be used as a fuel, emitting nothing more harmful than water vapor, when the wind stops blowing or the Sun is below the horizon. "Essentially, we're using hydrogen as a storage mechanism for electricity," said co-author Curtis Berlinguette in an interview.
from Huffington Post: Climate Worst-Case Scenario May Backfire In Activists' Campaign: Study Climate activists' strategy of barraging people with information about the consequences of climate change could end up hurting the cause, according to a benchmark study released Thursday.... When scientists told respondents about both the uncertainty on sea level rise and the potential for extreme weather, fewer survey respondents (51 percent) registered concern than when the storm information was presented alongside a simple high tail prediction of sea level rise (62 percent). One reason for that, Krosnick suggested, could be that people are "overwhelmed" by information and "psycho defenses kick in."
from Guardian: Peru declares environmental state of emergency in its rainforest Peru has declared an environmental state of emergency in a remote part of its northern Amazon rainforest, home for decades to one of the country's biggest oil fields, currently operated by the Argentinian company Pluspetrol. Achuar and Kichwa indigenous people living in the Pastaza river basin near Peru's border with Ecuador have complained for decades about the pollution, while successive governments have failed to deal with it. Officials indicate that for years the state lacked the required environmental quality standards.... In declaring the state of emergency, Peru's environment ministry said tests in February and March found high levels of barium, lead, chrome and petroleum-related compounds at different points in the Pastaza valley. Pluspetrol, the biggest oil and natural gas producer in Peru, has operated the oil fields since 2001. It took over from Occidental Petroleum, which began drilling in 1971, and, according to the government, had not cleaned up contamination either.
from University of Georgia: Discovery May Allow Scientists to Make Fuel from Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere ...researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to the creation of biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air that is responsible for trapping the sun's rays and raising global temperatures... The process is made possible by a unique microorganism called Pyrococcus furiosus, or "rushing fireball," which thrives by feeding on carbohydrates in the super-heated ocean waters near geothermal vents. By manipulating the organism's genetic material, Adams and his colleagues created a kind of P. furiosus that is capable of feeding at much lower temperatures on carbon dioxide.
from Midwest Energy News: In Iowa, another view on how to solve wind's variability A groundbreaking renewable energy study is on the agenda this week at an annual gathering of the wind power industry in Iowa. The analysis, which was published in the Journal of Power Sources, challenges the common notion that wind and solar power need to be paired with fossil fuel or nuclear generators, so utilities can meet electricity demand when it's not windy or sunny. The paper instead proposes building out a "seemingly excessive” amount of wind and solar generation capacity -- two to three times the grid's actual peak load. By spreading that generation across a wide enough geographic area, Rust Belt utilities could get virtually all of their electricity from renewables in 2030, at a cost comparable to today's prices, it says.
from London Guardian: Greenland government falls as voters send warning to mining companies The race for resources in the frozen wastes of the Arctic has brought down its first national government, leaving foreign oil and mining companies shivering about the future. Voters in Greenland feared that ministers were surrendering their country's interests to China and foreign multinationals and called an end this week to the government of prime minister Kuupik Kleist.
from Stanford News: Stanford researcher maps out an alternative energy future for New York New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will soon decide whether to approve hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the state. To date, no alternative to expanded gas drilling has been proposed. But a new study finds that it is technically and economically feasible to convert New York's all-purpose energy infrastructure to one powered by wind, water and sunlight (WWS). The plan, scheduled for publication in the journal Energy Policy, shows the way to a sustainable, inexpensive and reliable energy supply that creates local jobs and saves the state billions of dollars in pollution-related costs.
from Fast Company: The Weather Channel Is Changing The Climate Change Conversation Climate change will be a political conversation for a long time to come. So how does an organization that reports on the weather insert itself into the debate without getting political? Just take a look at the Weather Company, the parent company of the Weather Channel and Weather Underground. "We insert climate into every weather story," says David Kenny, CEO of the Weather Company. "We're scientific journalists. We start with science and try to tell scientifically based stories. It's not a political point of view."
from Guardian: Real market forces now drive action on climate change Fifteen years after the Kyoto protocol was signed and just months after being extended, a true global carbon trading marketplace may finally be within the world's grasp. It is as though a line of dominos has suddenly appeared, awaiting the slightest push to set off a chain reaction. When the dominos begin to fall, the world will suddenly have a powerful and effective tool to reduce carbon emissions, one of the most environmentally destructive aspects of modern human activity.... Oil is losing its place as a preferred fuel. The discovery of vast reserves of natural gas in the US is sparking a shift in the power generation industry. As more power plants convert from coal and oil to cleaner burning gas, emissions trading is losing its downside. With affordable alternatives in the wings, the reluctance among regulators and governments to impose emissions limits is easing. A signal moment in the cap and trade debate has arrived in the US. In winning a supreme court decision as to its right to impose emissions standards, the current administration has the power - and many think the inclination - to flip a major domino by setting standards for existing power plants (so far it has limited itself to new facilities). Such a move would make Kyoto ratification much less important.
from Reuters, via Yahoo: Canadian and U.S. natives vow to block oil pipelines An alliance of Canadian and U.S. aboriginal groups vowed on Wednesday to block three multibillion-dollar oil pipelines that are planned to transport oil from the Alberta tar sands, saying they are prepared to take physical action to stop them. The Canadian government, faced with falling revenues due to pipeline bottlenecks and a glut that has cut the price for Alberta oil, say the projects are a national priority and will help diversify exports away from the U.S. market.... "Indigenous people are coming together with many, many allies across the United States and Canada, and we will not allow these pipelines to cross our territories," said Phil Lane Jr, a hereditary chief from the Ihanktonwan Dakota in the state of South Dakota. "Along with every single legal thing that can be done, there is direct action going on now to plan how to physically stop the pipelines," he told a news conference in Ottawa.
from NPR: Where The Bank Really Keeps Your Money Cyprus has about as many residents as the Bronx. All Cypriot banks combined are smaller than the 30th-largest U.S. bank. So why is the country's financial system front-page news today? The answer, in large part, comes down to two words: Deposit insurance. Deposit insurance is one of those boring-sounding finance terms that's central to the way the world works today. Everybody is freaking out over Cyprus because the country just called into question the sanctity of deposit insurance. Deposit insurance was invented because of a frightening fact: Even the most boring, safe, neighborhood bank is in a crazy, risky business. A bank takes money people put in checking and savings accounts -- money those people are allowed to withdraw at any time -- and lends it out to people who don't have to pay it back for 30 years.... In Cyprus, deposit insurance covers accounts up to 100,000 euros. At least, it was supposed to. But this weekend, the country broke the fundamental promise of deposit insurance.....
from New York Times: Solar Trade Group Reports Surge in U.S. Installations Partly driven by an oversupply of cheaper panels from China, the domestic solar market had its best year in 2012, with the growth in installations outpacing that of the global market, according to an annual report to be released Thursday. The report, from the Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry's main trade group, and GTM Research, a renewable energy consulting firm, found that the amount of new solar electric capacity increased last year by 76 percent from 2011, raising the United States' market share of the world's installations above 10 percent, up from roughly 5 to 7 percent in the last seven years.
from New York Times: Major Grocer to Label Foods With Gene-Modified Content Whole Foods Market, the grocery chain, on Friday became the first retailer in the United States to require labeling of all genetically modified foods sold in its stores, a move that some experts said could radically alter the food industry. A. C. Gallo, president of Whole Foods, said the new labeling requirement, to be in place within five years, came in response to consumer demand.
from Bloomberg News: Nuclear Industry Withers in U.S. as Wind Pummels Prices A glut of government-subsidized wind power may help accomplish a goal some environmentalists have sought for decades: kill off U.S. nuclear power plants while reducing reliance on electricity from burning coal. That's the assessment of executives and utility experts after the U.S. wind-energy industry went on a $25 billion growth binge in 2012, racing to qualify for a federal tax credit that was set to expire at year's end. The surge added a record 13,124 megawatts of wind turbines to the nation's power grid, up 28 percent from 2011. The new wind farms increased financial pressure on traditional generators such as Dominion Resources (D) Inc. and Exelon Corp. in their operating regions. That's because wind energy undercut power prices already driven to 10-year-lows by an abundance of natural gas.
from New York Times: Cabinet Picks Could Take On Climate Policy President Obama on Monday named two people to his cabinet who will be charged with making good on his threat to use the powers of the executive branch to tackle climate change and energy policy if Congress does not act quickly... The appointments, which require Senate confirmation, send an unmistakable signal that the president intends to mount a multifaceted campaign in his second term to tackle climate change by using all the executive branch tools at his disposal. But even with Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Moniz in place, Mr. Obama would have to confront major hurdles in trying to refashion the American way of producing and consuming energy, the same hurdles that stymied climate and energy policy in his first term. Among the first of those is a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which the administration appears inclined to approve over the vociferous objections of environmental advocates.
from Politico: Sierra Club goes bolder in climate fight After 121 years of lobbying, letter-writing campaigns and law-abiding protests, the Sierra Club is retooling itself for the flash-mob age -- and showing an increasingly aggressive edge. That edge was on display last week, when the Sierra Club's two top leaders and 46 other climate activists zip-tied themselves to the White House gates to protest the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. The organization called it the first time it had suspended its decades-long policy against club-sanctioned civil disobedience.
from Rolling Stone: The Case for Fossil-Fuel Divestment It's obvious how this should end. You've got the richest industry on earth, fossil fuel, up against some college kids, some professors, a few environmentalists, a few brave scientists. And it's worse than that. The college students want their universities to divest from fossil fuel -- to sell off their stock in Exxon and Shell and the rest in an effort to combat global warming. But those universities, and their boards, have deep ties to the one percent: combined, their endowments are worth $400 billion, and at Harvard, say, the five folks who run the portfolio make as much money as the entire faculty combined... But here's my bet: the kids are going to win, and when they do, it's going to matter. In fact, with Washington blocked, campuses are suddenly a front line in the climate fight -- a place to stand up to a status quo that is wrecking the planet.
from E&E Publishing: Texas developer cancels power plant, blames Obama climate push Developers quietly ended their push last week to open a new Texas coal-fired power plant... President Obama's renewed attention on climate change and low natural gas prices persuaded White Stallion to call off the 1,200-megawatt project.
from Smithsonian Magazine: Minnesota's Moose Are Missing, And No One Really Knows Why More than half of Minnesota's moose population has disappeared in the past two years, says the Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources, a striking drop that only adds to a long trend of the species' decline in the region. According to the DNR, a survey conducted last month suggests that there are just 2,760 moose left in the state, a drop from the 4,230 estimated moose of 2012. And over the past seven years, Minnesota's moose population has shrunk nearly 70 percent. The natural resources department doesn't really know what is causing the population to plummet, says NBC News, but they've put a freeze on moose hunting until they can figure out what's going on.
from PhysOrg: Research says biodiversity helps protect nature against human impacts Their research, published today as the cover story in Nature, suggests farmers and resource managers should not rely on seemingly stable but vulnerable single-crop monocultures. Instead they should encourage more kinds of plants in fields and woods as a buffer against sudden ecosystem disturbance. Based on a 10-year study, their paper also lends scientific weight to esthetic and moral arguments for maintaining species biodiversity.... McCann, who studies food webs and ecosystem stability, said many ecosystems are at a "tipping point," including grasslands that may easily become either woodlands or deserts. "They're a really productive ecosystem that produces year in and year out and seems stable and then suddenly a major perturbation happens, and all of that biodiversity that was lost earlier is important now," said McCann.
from EcoWatch: BREAKING: Oklahoma Resident Locks Herself to Equipment to Protest Tar Sands Pipeline Early this morning, Norman, Oklahoma resident Elizabeth Leja locked her neck to equipment used in constructing the Keystone XL pipeline. Citing concerns for Oklahoma's waterways and their importance for the health of future generations, her actions have halted construction at the site on Highway 62, just North of the North Canadian River, for the day. The Gulf Coast Project is the Southern segment of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a $7 billion project by multinational TransCanada.... The tar sands mining project in Northern Alberta is the largest industrial project in the history of humankind, which when fully realized will have destroyed pristine boreal forest and left a toxic wasteland the size of New York State.
from CNN: Historic cod fishing cuts threaten centuries-old industry in New England ... An advisory council voted Wednesday to slash cod catch rates by 77 percent in the Gulf of Maine, a region roughly the size of Indiana that extends from Cape Cod up through Nova Scotia. That move, analysts predict, is expected to decimate fishing communities across the region and have a domino effect on seafood processors, wholesalers, distributors and retailers who all make a living off the water. "The impact will be severe," said John Bullard, the regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who voted in favor of the cuts. "It wasn't easy, but it was necessary."
from Columbus Dispatch: OSU to save $1 million a year by buying wind power Ohio State University expects to save nearly $1 million on its energy bill this year with the help of more than 100 spinning wind turbines in northwestern Ohio. Ohio State signed a 20-year agreement in October to buy 50 megawatts of energy annually from Blue Creek Wind Farm, Ohio's largest commercial wind farm, which has 152 turbines in Van Wert and Paulding counties.
from ClimateWire: Ontario Phases Out Coal-Fired Power By the end of the year, Ontario will become the first jurisdiction in North America to shut down almost its entire coal fleet. Yesterday, the province announced that its last two large coal units will close before 2014, making more than 99 percent of the province's electricity generated from non-coal sources. It is a major shift for Ontario, which fired 25 percent of its grid from coal a decade ago.
from NUVO: Hestia displays CO2 emissions at street level A team of researchers led by Kevin Gurney, a professor and researcher at Arizona State University, has recently developed a model that can predict carbon emissions on the street level. This model, named "Hestia" after the Greek goddess of the hearth, may prove essential in curbing and perhaps slowing the effects of global warming. One of the model's first publicized runs utilized Indianapolis, providing the city with tangible emissions data while positioning Indianapolis as a strong representative for carbon emissions modeling nationally. Currently, the model tracks carbon emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, the compound most responsible for global warming.
from Inter Press Service: Bicycles No Longer Mere Recreation in Argentine Capital A programme launched in Buenos Aires three years ago to encourage the use of bicycles has already brought results: the use of this environment-friendly means of transport has increased fivefold in the Argentine capital.
from China Daily: Beijing continues to scrap polluting cars The capital's initiative to rid the city of polluting vehicles has taken 458,000 old cars off the road, and the government is providing more benefits to local motorists to encourage them to scrap aging vehicles. "The campaign has not only boosted the local car market to some extent, which had been stagnant, but has also substantially improved the capital's air quality," Li Kunsheng, director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau's department of motor vehicles, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
from E&E Publishing: The mother behind kids' long-shot legal crusade For Julia Olson, it all started with "An Inconvenient Truth." The then-thirtysomething environmental lawyer watched Al Gore's climate change documentary while eight months pregnant with her second child. By her own admission, she "cried through the whole film" and spent several sleepless nights plotting a way to increase public awareness of climate change. Her initial idea was to plan public marches on Washington, D.C., but she ending up launching a national legal campaign aimed at forcing government action on climate change. Enlisting children as plaintiffs, she advanced the novel legal theory that the atmosphere is a "public trust" under common law and that the states and federal government have a duty to preserve it.
from ThinkProgress: AGU Scientist Asks, 'Is Earth F**ked?' Surprising Answer: Resistance is NOT Futile! In sum, the dynamics of the global coupled human-environmental system within the dominant culture precludes management for stable, sustainable pathways and promotes instability.... Active resistance by concerned groups of citizens, analogous to the anti-slavery and civil rights movements of the past, is one of the features of the planetary system that plays an important role in his model. If you think that we should take a much longer view when making decisions about the health of the "coupled human-environmental system" -- that is to say, if you're interested in averting the scenario in which the Earth is f**ked -- then, Werner's model implied, resistance is the best and probably only hope. Every other element -- environmental regulation, even science -- is too embedded in the dominant economic system.
from University of Delaware and Delaware Technical Community College: Wind and Solar Power Paired With Storage Could Power Grid 99.9 Percent of the Time Renewable energy could fully power a large electric grid 99.9 percent of the time by 2030 at costs comparable to today's electricity expenses, according to new research by the University of Delaware and Delaware Technical Community College. A well-designed combination of wind power, solar power and storage in batteries and fuel cells would nearly always exceed electricity demands while keeping costs low, the scientists found.
from Sacramento Bee: Food processing plant to put wind turbine to work A 55-meter wind turbine soon will be generating half of the power needed to operate Superior Farms' Dixon food processing plant, the company announced. The 1-megawatt turbine is expected to go online around the first of the year. Company officials said it speaks to their green credentials. "We are committed at every facet of our business to sustainability," said Ed Jenks, CEO for Superior Farms.
from New York Times: To Stop Climate Change, Students Aim at College Portfolios ... In recent weeks, college students on dozens of campuses have demanded that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. The students see it as a tactic that could force climate change, barely discussed in the presidential campaign, back onto the national political agenda. ... Students who have signed on see it as a conscious imitation of the successful effort in the 1980s to pressure colleges and other institutions to divest themselves of the stocks of companies doing business in South Africa under apartheid.
from Battle Creek Enquirer: Catching waste energy with common materials Researchers at Michigan State University are working on a new low-cost approach to recapturing the heat energy that is lost in car exhaust and many other industrial processes, in search of a way to improve efficiency and decrease waste. The team is using a material based on very common naturally occurring minerals called tetrahedrites to make thermoelectric materials that have the ability to convert heat into electricity.
from New York Times: Solar Industry Borrows a Page, and a Party, From Tupperware ... Environmentalists, government officials and sales representatives have been trying to get Americans to go solar for decades, with limited success. Despite the long push, solar power still represents less than 1 percent of electricity generated in the United States. Home solar panel setups, which typically run $25,000 or more, are considered by many consumers to be the province of the rich or idealistic. So now solar companies are adhering to a path blazed by Tupperware decades ago, figuring that the best sales people are often enthusiastic customers willing to share their experiences with friends and neighbors -- and perhaps earn a referral fee on any sales that result.
from Live Science: US Birth Rate Hits New Low The rate of babies born in the United States hit a record low in 2011, a new analysis shows. Researchers say the drastic drop in the birth rate among immigrants has greatly contributed to the overall decrease. Based on preliminary data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Pew Research Center calculated that the overall birth rate -- the annual number of births per 1,000 women between 15 to 44 -- was 63.2 last year. That's the lowest since such reliable record collection began in 1920 and close to half the birth rate in 1957, amid the Baby Boom years.
from Reuters: Judge orders tobacco companies to admit deception Major tobacco companies that spent decades denying they lied to the U.S. public about the dangers of cigarettes must spend their own money on a public advertising campaign saying they did lie, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
from CNN: Hydrogen fuel-cell cars look to overtake electric autos As electric cars try to forge more than just a niche in the market, the auto industry is already looking to another form of clean technology that could overtake today's battery-powered vehicles. Commitments by automobile manufactures to develop hydrogen fuel-cell cars have surged in recent months. Toyota, Hyundai, Daimler and Honda announced plans to build vehicles that run on the most abundant element in the universe and emit only water vapor as a byproduct.
from PhysOrg: Scientists pioneer method to predict environmental collapse The researchers have applied a mathematical model to a real world situation, the environmental collapse of a lake in China, to help prove a theory which suggests an ecosystem 'flickers', or fluctuates dramatically between healthy and unhealthy states, shortly before its eventual collapse. Head of Geography at Southampton, Professor John Dearing explains: "We wanted to prove that this 'flickering' occurs just ahead of a dramatic change in a system - be it a social, ecological or climatic one - and that this method could potentially be used to predict future critical changes in other impacted systems in the world around us."
from Sydney Morning Herald: Little fish in a big pond save power - and the planet EVEN as a kid taking a dip in a friend's swimming pool, Derek Spielman would think about how it would be much better if it was full of turtles. Now his own backyard swimming pool is one of 50 on Sydney's north shore that have been turned into ponds, saving thousands of dollars on power and water bills. There are no turtles, but Dr Spielman's pool at his home in Gordon is swarming with native fish, such as empire and spotted gudgeons and Pacific blue eye. It's noisy with a chorus of frogs and full of water lilies and other aquatic plants, attracting native birds, dragonflies and bees....
from The Telegraph: 'Old bangers' and classic cars to be banned from Paris Under proposals presented to the city council on Monday, Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoa intends to outlaw by September 2014 the use of cars and utility vehicles more than 17 years old and lorries or buses more than 18 years old... Philippe Goujon, head of the Right-wing opposition UMP federation in the Paris council criticised the move as "anti-social, anti-surbuban and anti-motorist."
from American Technion Society : New Way to Split Water Molecules Into Hydrogen and Oxygen: Breakthrough for Solar Energy Conversion and Storage? Using the power of the sun and ultrathin films of iron oxide (commonly known as rust), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers have found a novel way to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough, published this week in Nature Materials, could lead to less expensive, more efficient ways to store solar energy in the form of hydrogen-based fuels. This could be a major step forward in the development of viable replacements for fossil fuels....these cells could store solar energy for on demand use, 24 hours per day. This is in strong contrast to conventional photovoltaic cells, which provide power only when the sun is shining (and not at night or when it is cloudy).
from The Telegraph: 'Super-Earth' with life-supporting climate discovered A ''super-Earth'' that could have a life-supporting climate has been discovered in a multi-world solar system 42 light years from the Sun. The planet, which is several times more massive than the Earth, lies just the right distance from its star to allow the existence of liquid surface water. It orbits well within the star's ''habitable'' or ''Goldilocks'' zone - the region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life. The new world is one of six, all with masses a few times that of the Earth, believed to circle the dwarf star HD 40307 in the constellation Pictor.
from Los Angeles Times: California's first auction of greenhouse-gas credits nears After six years of preparation, California is poised to become the first state to combat global warming by capping greenhouse gas emissions and making major polluters pay to release more of these gases into the atmosphere. It's part of a landmark law approved in 2006 that seeks to cut the state's production of carbon dioxide, methane and related gases to 1990 levels -- about 17 percent lower than current amounts -- by 2020. Starting next week, big polluters will be required to buy pollution credits if they plan to emit greenhouse gases above their allotted levels.
from The Daily Climate: Bill McKibben's campus crusade for climate Bill McKibben is lanky, soft-spoken, scholarly and engaging. He may also be the closest thing the U.S. environmental movement has to a leader. And he's in show business now. Still soft-spoken, but very, very angry. On a crisp night earlier this month, a mostly-Gen Next crowd filled the University of Vermont's Allen Chapel to see the dress rehearsal of the coast-to-coast road show that McKibben hopes will ignite a campus movement. "Do the Math" will visit 20 cities starting Nov. 7. It mixes McKibben's grim analysis with a little inspiration and hope, with a goal of inspiring America's youth to righteous anger, and to lead where the grown-ups have utterly failed.
from LJWorld: 14-year-old Lecompton girl sues Brownback administration over CO2 emissions Topeka -- A 14-year-old northeast Kansas girl has sued Gov. Sam Brownback's administration in hopes of forcing it to impose limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Samantha Farb of Lecompton filed the lawsuit Thursday through her parents in Shawnee County District Court. It's part of campaign launched last year by environmentalists to file such lawsuits in all 50 states. The effort is led by a nonprofit Oregon group called Our Children's Trust.
from Reuters: U.S. wind industry adding record number of turbines ...The U.S. wind industry in August for the first time surpassed 50,000 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity - enough to power 13 million homes, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said in a report issued on Thursday ... But the federal production tax credit for renewable energy is due to expire at the year-end. The group said the credit, which has been continuously in place since 2005, helps create more than $15 billion a year in investment in U.S. wind farms.
from National Wildlife Federation: Fact Check: Department of Energy --Still Helping Create Winners Nationwide Let's just be clear, as we head into the next round of Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, the Department of Energy's investments in clean energy have been extremely successful. A recent fact-checking analysis found that DOE's projects had a 98 percent success rate. That means about 14,700+ successes out of 15,000+ projects.
from Wall Street Journal: The Future of Agriculture May Be Up Want to see where your food might come from in the future? Look up. The seeds of an agricultural revolution are taking root in cities around the world -- a movement that boosters say will change the way that urbanites get their produce and solve some of the world's biggest environmental problems along the way. It's called vertical farming, and it's based on one simple principle: Instead of trucking food from farms into cities, grow it as close to home as possible -- in urban greenhouses that stretch upward instead of sprawling outward.
from Midwest Energy News: Indiana coal controversy prompts push for more transparency in utility planning For the first time in 17 years, Indiana's public utility commission is rewriting the state's rule governing how utilities develop long-term plans to meet electricity demand. The new rule could force the state's five investor-owned utilities to face more public scrutiny in developing their plans, and perhaps move more quickly than they might otherwise toward reducing carbon emissions. But the utilities are pushing back, saying that since they have the most skin in the game, they should have the most say over their plans.
from TakePart: Climate Change Whiplash: 71 percent of Americans Now Link Extreme Weather to Global Warming It appears that this summer's record-breaking heatwave has lit a fire under our collective climate change views. "Nearly three-quarters of Americans say global warming influences U.S. weather and made this year's record-hot summer worse,” Reuters reported this morning. In a new survey conducted by Yale and George Mason universities, results showed 74 percent of Americans believe that global warming is affecting weather, which is five percentage points higher than it was as recently as March 2012... Other surveys have in fact observed a bit of a see-sawing in American's opinion on the subject of climate change. In a July report, Business Week said, "Following a winter of record snowfall in 2010, the public's acceptance of climate change fell to a low of 52 percent, according to the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which was published by the Brookings Institution in Washington. After this year's mild winter, support jumped to 65 percent, the same as that found by the UT Energy Poll in March.”
from WorldWatch Institute: Continued Growth in Renewable Energy Investments Emerging from the global economic recession, investments in renewable energy technologies continued their steady rise in 2011. Total new investments in renewable power and fuels (excluding large hydropower and solar hot water) jumped 17 percent"reaching $257 billion, up from $220 billion in 2010. In a year marked by falling costs for renewable energy technologies, net investment in renewable power capacity was $40 billion greater than investment in fossil fuel capacity. (Through the first half of 2012, however, total investment fell behind the impressive pace set the previous year, attracting slightly under $108 billion compared with nearly $125 billion in the first half of 2011.)
from The Daily Climate: Churches deliver a jolt of energy to Michigan renewables measure DETROIT -- A renewable energy initiative on Michigan's ballot is finding support in an unlikely place -- churches. "As a pastor, I look at the call in the first book of Genesis, to care for the Earth, and to the gospels' call to love thy neighbor," said the Rev. Terry Gallagher, a pastor at Sacred Conversation in Trenton, Mich. "If we don't change energy paths, we're dooming the future of the Earth." The Renewable Energy Amendment would mandate that Michigan get 25 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2025. The proposal was filed by Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs, a coalition of state businesses, labor organizations and health care advocates. The amendment has drawn national attention because it would make Michigan the first state to have a renewable energy standard in its constitution. Now some churches in the state have lent their support.
from Reuters: More US coal plants to retire due to green rules: study More U.S. coal-fired power plants could retire due to environmental regulations and weaker-than-expected electric demand, costing the industry up to $144 billion, economists at consultancy Brattle Group said. In a new study, Brattle's economists forecast 59,000 to 77,000 megawatts (MW) of coal plant capacity would likely retire over the next five years. That was about 25,000 MW more than the firm had estimated in 2010, Brattle said in a release. There is about 317,000 MW of coal-fired capacity now in the United States.
from Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Wind propels more than energy in S.D. Wind energy projects have provided a significant economic boost to counties in wind-rich states such as South Dakota, according to a new federal study. Researchers at the USDA Economic Research Service, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory examined economic data from 1,009 counties in 12 states with high wind-resource potential -- Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. Controlling for other factors, their analysis found that each megawatt of installed wind power led to an additional $11,000 in personal income and 0.5 jobs per county during the time period studied. Well, there's more stories than this -- but that was 75 of them! You may want to try the PANICloud for more specific topics! |
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