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October 30, 2007
All I Want for Christmas is a Biodiesel Hummer. No, Really.
Think there are no real inventors anymore? That would be news to Johnathan Goodwin, proud creator of the world's most fuel-efficient Hummer.
By combining biodiesel and hybrid technology and reconfiguring engines, Goodwin can double the fuel efficiency of a number of giant American cars and nearly eliminate their emissions, using almost nothing but stock GM parts (OK, and the occasional jet engine). He's currently working on the Governator's 1987 Wagoneer, and is slated to overhaul Neil Young's 1960 Lincoln Continental.
As for the country's decaying car capital, Goodwin has little sympathy, pointing out that "Detroit could do all this stuff overnight if it wanted to."
—Casey Miner
October 29, 2007
From Gmail to Global Warming Skeptics (With a Single Click)
Upon logging into my Gmail account this morning, what should I find in the "sponsored link" spot above my inbox but the following message:
"Global warming is not a crisis! Gore won't debate."
Intrigued, I clicked on the link and found myself at the website of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank whose mission is "to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems."
The site is full of all sorts of treats, including a video clip from Hannity & Colmes in which a Heartland Institute senior fellow (pricelessly named James Taylor) trots out all the usual flimsy climate-change-is-a-hoax arguments. Also featured on the site is the Global Warming Test. The first question: "Global warming is a real phenomenon: Earth's temperature is increasing." True or false? (False, obviously. "Don't panic when you hear global alarmists warning the Earth may have warmed almost 1 degree in the last 200 years," the answer reads. "Although this still hasn't yet been proven, it is in fact exactly what should be happening if everything is normal.")
According to SourceWatch, the Heartland Institute has ties to the tobacco industry. The group has also received contributions from ExxonMobil (MoJo included them in our list of think tanks in bed with ExxonMobil in 2005).
As a longtime Gmail user, I'm used to weird ads. (Just today, in fact, an e-mail from a friend about a Halloween costume was accompanied by an ad for a company that makes diapers and clothes for pet birds.) But Global Warming Heartland is not funny-weird, it's irritating-weird. I'm left wondering how exactly the Google ad process works—and what keywords in my e-mail could possibly have invited the Heartland Institute to perch above my inbox.
WTF? ExxonMobil Funds Research—By An Astrophysicist—On Polar Bears And Climate Change
The House Committee on Science and Technology is examining ExxonMobil's motives for funding research by an astrophysicist into the impact of climate change on the polar bear population of western Hudson Bay in Canada. New Scientist reports that if polar bears are listed under the Endangered Species Act, steps to protect their habitat could directly hurt ExxonMobil's economic interests:
The researchers, including Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published their findings as a "viewpoint", which is not peer-reviewed. They conclude that the polar bears are not threatened by climate change (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2007.03.002). "It's hard to see this article as rigorous, sound science," [subcommittee chair Brad] Miller says. "The public has a right to know why ExxonMobil is funding a scientist whose writing is outside his area of expertise." . . . ExxonMobil denied its funding was motivated by political interests.
Really.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Has Oil Peaked Already?
According to the German Energy Watch Group, world oil production peaked in 2006, far earlier than expected. The nonprofit's scientists, working independently of government and industry, analyzed oil production figures and predicted it would fall by 7 percent a year, dropping to half of current levels by 2030. The report also predicts falls in gas, coal and uranium production, and warns that supply shortages could cause meltdowns in human society.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
California Fires Batter Endangered Species
So what happens to species already on the brink when fires, fueled by our changing climate, visit like never before? Nature reports that the San Diego Zoo suffered damage to one of its California condor breeding facilities—though the birds, thankfully, were safely evacuated ahead of the flames. The zoo also lost a planned habitat for endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs—a habitat designated after the frogs’ original home was burned in the huge wildfires of 2003. The frogs may now have to be moved to another zoo altogether.
At Camp Pendleton, one of only two known habitats of the endangered Pacific pocket mouse was burned. No one knows yet whether the mice survived.
Sadly, these are just the kind of stressors that healthy populations can survive but which wipe out those species already reeling from the blows of over(human)population, habitat loss, pollution, illegal wildlife trade, and border fences.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
October 26, 2007
News Flash: Icebergs Still Exist
These days, everyone seems to want a piece of the Arctic. (Diamond prospectors, bone hunters, and global warming tourists are just a few northward bound parties.) After all, who knows what treasures lurk under those hunks of melting ice?
But if you're planning on skipping up to the Arctic and expecting smooth sailing, think again. Today, the International Ice Charting Working Group issued a report on the state of the Arctic sea ice. In the report is a reminder that global warming hasn't quite done away with icebergs yet:
The Arctic is already experiencing an increase in shipping, primarily for oil and gas development and tourism, and we can expect to see further increases as diminishing ice extent makes Arctic marine transportation more viable...The IICWG cautions that sea ice and icebergs will continue to present significant hazards to navigation for the foreseeable future. The Arctic will still have a winter ice cover that will linger into summer for varying lengths of time depending on a range of conditions.
Let's hope it stays that way.
3rd-Gen Prius To Be Half-Size, Price
Okay, Toyota's got my attention. But will this 3rd-generation Prius be enough of an improvement over my gas-only, LEV Civic to make the switch environmentally compelling? Toyota announced today it'll slash the price and size of its hybrid system by around half for the next Prius model, plus use a nickel-metal hydride battery instead of higher-energy lithium-ion, Planet Ark reports. But what about the all-important MPGs?
No release date yet. Maybe late 2008.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
WTF? New England Rescinds Protections For Sea Turtles
Come on, New England. This is a wicked bad idea—rescinding protections for threatened and endangered sea turtles caught in scallop dredges. Yesterday, the New England Fishery Management Council removed seasonal restrictions on scallop dredging in an area off New Jersey. These restrictions were designed to keep loggerhead and other turtles from being entangled, crushed and drowned in industrial-sized scallop dredges. The Council also rejected a proposed seasonal closure to fishermen of an area east of the Delmarva peninsula, reports the Environmental News Network:
The Council opted to rely on untested scallop dredge modifications called “chain mats” as its sole precaution against turtle bycatch. These grids of chain prevent turtles from entering the chain bag at the rear of a dredge but are unlikely to prevent turtles from being injured by scallop dredges used by fishermen to scour the seafloor. “Turtle chains do not protect turtles from being mangled by scallop dredges. The chain mats may have simply turned scallop dredges into giant turtle bludgeons,” said David Allison of Oceana.
Wondering just how badly sea turtles are doing? Browse the IUCN Red List for loggerheads and leatherbacks.
Okay. Strike northeast scallops off my sustainable eat list.
Oh, and if you're interested in the strange bedfellows that be fishers and fisheries councils, read MoJo's The Catch
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
October 25, 2007
Greenhouse Gas Sensors Tap California Air
Sutro Tower in San Francisco now hosts the first of California's regional greenhouse-gas detectors. Nature reports that another sensor is in place atop Richland Tower near Sacramento, part of the California Greenhouse Gas Emissions Project, a collaboration between state and federal agencies and universities. The sensors are the first of 10 that will take measurements twice daily. The project, born at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, hopes to establish whether California is reaching its goal of reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases—at present, running about 550 million tons a year—by cutting state emissions. The data will also be used to improve estimates of GHG emissions at the national scale in support of the North American Carbon Program.
The gears are grinding. Slowly. Let's hope momentum develops faster than disaster.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
French Clay Kills Superbugs
This is how they did it in the olden days. Slap on the clay. Watch wounds heal. Some animals still do (foxes that dig themselves into clay banks to heal wounds and/or broken limbs). Anyway, new research out of Arizona State University, reported by the Geological Society of America finds that one kind of French clay kills several kinds of disease-causing bacteria. Including Mycobacterium ulcerans, a germ related to leprosy and tuberculosis, which causes the flesh-eating disease Buruli ulcer. Currently, advanced cases of Buruli ulcer can only be cured by surgical excision or amputation. In lab tests, the French clay also killed bacteria responsible for many human illnesses, including: Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), penicillin-resistant S. aureus (PRSA), and pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli). In other words, the really bad stuff we've bred through egregious overuse of antibiotics.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
October 24, 2007
Is Climate Change Fueling Huge California Fires?
If not, they're a not-so-sneak preview. In fact, the catastrophic SoCal fires are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years. They may be a prelude to many more such events in the future, as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged droughts, says Ronald Neilson, a bioclimatologist at Oregon State University and with the USDA Forest Service, and a contributor to publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize:
"This is exactly what we’ve been projecting to happen, both in short-term fire forecasts for this year and the longer term patterns that can be linked to global climate change. You can’t look at one event such as this and say with certainty that it was caused by a changing climate. But things just like this are consistent with what the latest modeling shows, and may be another piece of evidence that climate change is a reality, one with serious effects. In the future, catastrophic fires such as those going on now in California may simply be a normal part of the landscape."
Fire forecast models developed by Neilson’s research group at OSU and the Forest Service rely on several global climate models. When combined, they accurately predicted both the Southern California fires that are happening and the drought hitting Georgia and Florida, causing crippling water shortages. In studies released five years ago, Neilson and other OSU researchers predicted that the American West could become both warmer and wetter in the coming century, conditions that would lead to repeated, catastrophic fires larger than any in recent history.
Got a fire tent?
Oh, and northern California might not get off so easy. IDEA forecasts of particulate suggest the smoke could blow ashore in San Francisco in the next 48 hours.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
The Greenest (Richest) Colleges
The Sustainable Endowments Institute released its 2008 College Sustainability Report Card this week. Download the full report (including a list of the 200 colleges included and their overall green grades) here.
The grades themselves are not especially interesting—with a few exceptions, giant endowment=giant sustainability program. While no one got an A, Harvard and Dartmouth received an A-, and Yale got a B+. Yawn.
But the report does offer a few more newsworthy nuggets. It's interesting to note, for example, that more than one in three schools included in the list have full-time staff dedicated to sustainability, and three in five schools have green building projects.
Only the 200 best endowed colleges in the U.S. and Canada are included in the report card. This is a shame, since schools outside that elite 200 are making green strides, too, and often, they're doing it on a shoestring. This requires some ingenuity. Grist's list includes both the usual Ivy League suspects and some scrappier institutions, too.
October 23, 2007
Weird Weather Watch: Southern California Fires
By now, you've probably heard that there's a really big wildfire in the San Diego area, and it's being fueled by the Santa Ana winds. It's the worst fire in four years—which is saying something in Southern California. Fire season is especially bad this year due to the erratic weather that's the hallmark of climate change: First, record rainfall produces lots of brush; then, a record drought turned it into so much kindling. Add the Santa Ana winds, and you've got a conflagration. 170,000 acres, to be exact.
Almost 300,000 people have been asked to evacuate, and about 10,000 of them spent the night in Qualcomm stadium (formerly San Diego Stadium). Seems that as climate change progresses, more and more of us are going to be camping out in behemoth football stadiums. Their corporate sponsors are probably stoked.
October 22, 2007
Just Say No, Ewan McGregor
Jeff Stark's short, Desserts, starring Ewan McGregor. Warning: kinda graphic, not for the squeamish or sweet-toothed. Warning for ADD viewers: slow paced, until . . . well, you'll see.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Scared Yet? Atmospheric CO2 Levels Growing—Correction, Exploding—Faster Than Imagined
Just in case anyone out there is deluded into thinking we're actually making progress on this issue because it's in the occasional headline, or, now and again, mentioned by a jaw-wagging politician. Here's the latest: Atmospheric carbon dioxide growth has increased 35 percent faster than expected since 2000.
The findings by the British Antarctic Survey and others, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels drove up atmospheric CO2 by 17 percent since 2000. At the same time, the declining efficiency of natural land and ocean sinks drove it up another 18 percent.
The research shows that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global economy have stalled since 2000, after improving for 30 years, due to population growth and the growing global wealth. The decline in global sink efficiency, according to author Dr Corinne Le Qéré, "suggests that stabilization of atmospheric CO2 is even more difficult to achieve than previously thought. We found that nearly half of the decline in the efficiency of the ocean CO2 sink is due to the intensification of the winds in the Southern Ocean".
Hold onto your hats, peeps.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
California Fires From Space
Here a couple of different perspectives on the wildfires in SoCal. One via Space.com from the International Space Station:
These from NASA's MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center, taken three hours and 15 minutes apart, 21 Oct, show how the Santa Ana winds fanned embers into firestorms:
Wondering where else is burning just now on our warming planet? Interested in the link between mega-fires and climate change? Take a look at the last 10 days. Yellow areas mark fire clusters:
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Factory Conditions Sicken Chinese Workers
The fact that lead-laced toys put kids at risk is bad enough, but Chinese factories also cause big problems for another population—workers.
A few of the ways factory employees risk their lives to produce goods bound for the U.S., according to the Salt Lake Tribune's series on the hazards of manufacturing plants in China:
*Making Char-Broil grills and gas stoves: Experts estimate 4.4 million Chinese workers have silicosis, a fatal lung disease caused by inhaling metal particles.
*Assembling furniture and household accessories: Millions of workers have lost limbs and fingers while using outdated factory equipment.
*Painting furniture: workers who inhale solvents like benzene, toluene and xylene suffer from a range of health problems (one interviewed for the article had myelodisplastic anemia, a precursor to leukemia).
*Making batteries: inhaling cadmium dust, a carcinogen, can cause "severe bone pain, kidney failure and death."
The conditions that cause these health problems (old equipment, loose regulations, lack of protective gear) will most likely take a long time to improve, but the Tribune points out that it might speed things up if American consumers think twice about that new Char-Broil grill.
October 19, 2007
China's CO2 Output Fueled By Us
I've wondered about this for a while, as it becomes all too easy to blame China and do nothing ourselves. Now we learn that one quarter of China's greenhouse gas emissions are produced making goods exported to the West. The report by the UK's Tyndall Centre worked with 2004 data, the latest available. The percentage may well be higher now. The authors concluded: "The extent of 'exported carbon' from China should lead to some rethinking by government negotiators as they work towards a new climate change agreement."
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
October 17, 2007
Wildfires Emit Mercury
Forest fires and other blazes in the US release about 30 percent as much mercury as the nation's industrial sources. Initial estimates from the National Center for Atmospheric Research find that fires in Alaska, California, Oregon, Louisiana, and Florida emit particularly large quantities of the toxic metal, and the Southeast emits more than any other region. The mercury released by forest fires originally comes from industrial and natural sources.
The researchers estimate that fires in the continental US and Alaska release about 44 metric tons of mercury into the atmosphere yearly. They caution their estimates are preliminary and subject to a 50 percent or greater margin of error. A next step will be to examine how much mercury is deposited on nearby downwind areas, compared to how much travels around the hemisphere. Most mercury from fire is gaseous, traveling thousands of miles before coming down in rain or snow. About 15 percent is associated with airborne particles, like soot, some of which may fall to Earth near the fire. "We would like to determine the risk of mercury exposure for residents who live downwind of large-scale fires," says author Hans Friedli.
Even more disturbing in light of the fact that the number and extent of wildfires are forecast to increase—and in fact already are—another pesky byproduct of global warming.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Lights Out San Francisco
Sydney led the way last March. San Francisco is going dark this Saturday night, October 20, from 8-9pm, to send a message on global warming:
Lights Out San Francisco is a citywide energy conservation event on Oct. 20, 2007. On this night, we invite the entire city of San Francisco to install one compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) and turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour.
Word has it that both bridges and the Transamerica Pyramid are on board, and many restaurants will offer candlelight dining. There's also a great party going on in Dolores Park. Drop by. . .
But why just one CFL? And why wait for your city to catch on? Join in from afar.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Republican Candidates Lukewarm On Global Warming
Interesting piece in today's New York Times on global warming as the new litmus test for Republican presidential wannabes:
While many conservative commentators and editorialists have mocked concerns about climate change, a different reality is emerging among Republican presidential contenders. It is a near-unanimous recognition among the leaders of the threat posed by global warming. Within that camp, however, sharp divisions are developing. Senator John McCain of Arizona is calling for capping gas emissions linked to warming and higher fuel economy standards. Others, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, are refraining from advocating such limits and are instead emphasizing a push toward clean coal and other alternative energy sources. All agree that nuclear power should be greatly expanded.
Reason enough to deny them the job, IMO.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Acid Oceans Increasing Rapidly
We've known for a while that ocean acidification is a bad bad thing. Now new research into corals using boron isotopes indicates the world-ocean has become about one third of a pH unit more acid over the past fifty years, reports the Australian Research Council. The acidity is caused by a CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, which then dissolves into the oceans—a development likely to be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons, who just happen to comprise more than a third of the planet’s marine life.
Apparently this acidification is now taking place over decades, rather than centuries, as originally predicted, and is happening even faster in the cooler waters of the Southern Ocean than in the tropics. Corals and plankton with chalky skeletons rely on sea water saturated with calcium carbonate to form their skeletons. As acidity intensifies, it becomes harder to form their skeletons. According to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland: "Analysis of coral cores shows a steady drop in calcification over the last 20 years. . . When CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans." Atmospheric CO2 is presently 385 ppm, up from 305 in 1960. "It isn’t just the coral reefs which are affected—a large part of the plankton in the Southern Ocean, the coccolithophorids, are also affected. These drive ocean productivity and are the base of the food web which supports krill, whales, tuna and our fisheries. They also play a vital role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which could break down."
More alarmingly, recent experiments along Australia's Great Barrier Reef show that red calcareous algae—the glue that binds reefs together in turbulent waters—actually begin to dissolve at higher CO2 levels. "The risk is that this may begin to erode the Great Barrier Reef at a grand scale," says Hoegh-Guldberg.
So exactly where are our leaders, those slackers? What the hell is more important to attend to than this?
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
October 16, 2007
Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Breed Deadly Disease
Hundreds of troops wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan have been infected with a deadly bacterium in their bloodstream, cerebrospinal fluid, bones, and lungs. Civilians have also been infected after stays in military hospitals, reports the Los Angeles Times. Since 2003 at least 27 people in military hospitals have died after infection by Acinetobacter baumannii, an increasingly drug-resistant bacterium. The military claims it hasn't tabulated how many have been infected overall. The outbreak has spread to at least six American military hospitals, including the hospital ship Comfort, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and the Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The rise in infections has been dramatic, comprising 2 percent of admissions at the specialized burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas in 2001 and 2002, 6 percent in 2003, and 12 percent in 2005. Other military hospitals have reported similar levels.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.