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February 28, 2008
Missing Link Never Lost
At least not since 1861, when the first Archaeopteryx fossil bridging birds and dinosaurs was discovered. Creationists have got it wrong (again), according to a new piece in New Scientist. Archaeopteryx rose from German limestones only 2 years after Darwin published The Origin of Species, wherein he predicted that so-called missing-links would be found. And they were. And they are, writes Donald Prothero:
In the 1870s the iconic sequence of fossil horses was documented. By the time of Darwin's death in 1882 there were numerous fossils and fossil sequences showing evolutionary change, especially among invertebrates. Evidence of evolution in the fossil record has vastly increased since then. Yet the idea still persists that the fossil record is too patchy to provide good evidence of evolution. One reason for this is the influence of creationism. Foremost among their tactics is to distort or ignore the evidence for evolution; a favourite lie is "there are no transitional fossils".
In fact transitions are everywhere: the emergence of vertebrates from echinoderms (sea urchins, starfish & kin); the "fishibian" sequence (pdf) whereby fish crawled ashore; the transition from synapsids to mammals; plus sequences showing how giraffes got their long necks, seals returned to the sea; and the hippolike transition that returned manatees and their kin back to the ocean… The list is growing, deepening, and, well, evolving.
Meanwhile, Jeff Hecht at Short Sharp Science reports that Answers in Genesis, the organization behind the notorious Creation Museum, complete with Adam and even mannequins, has published the Answers Research Journal for—pardon the oxymorons—peer-reviewed creationist science research.
Finally, the news that the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Texas, which claims that Noah took dinos on his ark, is being forced to sell its prehistoric mastodon skull to save the museum from extinction… Chock one up for Chuck. Darwin, that is.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 27, 2008
NYs Black Cabs Go Green
Good news for New Yorkers. And Earthers. New York City set new fuel emissions standards for the city's 10,000 black taxis Wednesday. Town car owners must switch to hybrid tech within 5 years. The move, reports Reuters, is part of Mayor Bloomberg's grand plan to decrease the city's carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Yellow cabs in New York are already under a 2012 deadline for going green. Black town cars serve mostly corporate clients and make 2 percent of the city's transport-related emissions. Hybrids will cut that in half.
Not to mention sweeten the urban air.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Biodiesel Burps... Wrong Mix
What if the biodiesel you're buying doesn't have as much biodiesel as advertised? Or a whole lot more? Well, according to a new analysis of more than 20 distributors and small U.S. retailers, blends sold as 20% biodiesel contained as little as 10% or as much as 74% biodiesel. The study by Christopher Reddy at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues is published in Environmental Science & Technology.
The problems are manifold (pun, sadly, intended): from a shaken public confidence to tax credits given in excess of what sellers deserve. Plus, blends containing more than 20% biodiesel can damage hoses and gaskets in cars manufactured before 1993, and can also freeze in cold temperatures. This could plug fuel filters or freeze fuel solid in the tank. The blending problem is most apparent with smaller mom-and-pop retailers mixing it themselves. From ES&T:
The biodiesel industry is trying to rein in the problem, says Amber Pearson, a spokesperson for the National Biodiesel Board, by working with ASTM on standards that will include biodiesel blends. States will then have to adjust their own regulations to include blend verification.
Growing pains, let's hope.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 26, 2008
China Sacks Plastic Bags
The dragon is changing its color. China launched a surprise crackdown on plastic bags in January. Now production of ultra-thin bags is outlawed and supermarkets and shops are forbidden from handing out free carrier bags starting June 1. Reuters reports via the Xinhua news agency that the country's largest plastic bag maker—Suiping Huaqiang Plastic Co, which employed 20,000 workers—has closed following a state-led environmental campaign discouraging plastics. Before the ban, China used 3 billion plastic bags a day and refined 37 million barrels of crude oil yearly for packaging.
Compare with America's 380 billion plastic bags a year. That's right: 1 billion-plus "disposable" bags a day. Of which only 1 percent get recycled. The rest go into landfill. Or to kill wildlife.
Go green dragon.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 25, 2008
The West Gets 500% Dustier
The west wasn't always so dusty. It got a whole more so in the past 200 years, 500 percent more so—thanks to American expansion, complete with trains, ranches, and livestock. Sediment records from dust blown into alpine lakes in southwest Colorado's San Juan Mountains over millennia indicate the sharp rise in dust deposits beginning in the middle of the last century. "From about 1860 to 1900, the dust deposition rates shot up so high that we initially thought there was a mistake in our data," said geologist Jason Neff of the University of Colorado Boulder. "But the evidence clearly shows the western U.S. had its own Dust Bowl beginning in the 1800s when the railroads went in and cattle and sheep were introduced into the rangelands. There were an estimated 40 million head of livestock on the western rangeland during the turn of the century, causing a massive and systematic degradation of the ecosystems." The 1934 Taylor Grazing Act imposed restrictions on western grazing lands, and the deposits show a coinciding decrease in dust that continues to this day.
Another reason to bring back the bison.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 22, 2008
Business 101: Get Green
Great piece in the Christian Science Monitor on a worldwide greening business climate. Notably, clean technology investments are on the rise because going green is turning out to be good for the bottom line. Businesses are surveying CO2 footprints, purchasing greenhouse-gas credits, and hinging executive bonuses on environmental targets. Meanwhile, Florida now requires investment managers of state money to report on the potential effects of climate risk as part of their semiannual reviews. Influential California state employee and teacher pension funds, collectively managing $420 billion, are devising strategies tied to climate change and potentially pulling capital from ungreen businesses. From the CSM:
A new study by international consulting firm McKinsey finds that half the necessary cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions can be achieved at a net profit. The study shows that investment in energy efficiency of about $170 billion annually worldwide would yield a profit of about 17 percent, or $29 billion. The Financial Times reports: "Diana Farrell, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, said: 'It shows just how much deadweight loss there is in the economy in energy use.' She said the most inefficient sector was heavy industry in China, with the second residential housing in the US, where homes are large, poorly insulated.
Meanwhile Michael Specter in the New Yorker writes that "Possessing an excessive carbon footprint is rapidly becoming the modern equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter." He reports on Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco supermarkets, Britain’s largest retailer:
"I am not a scientist," [Leahy] said. "But I listen when the scientists say that, if we fail to mitigate climate change, the environmental, social, and economic consequences will be stark and severe… I am determined that Tesco should be a leader in helping to create a low-carbon economy. In saying this, I do not underestimate the task. It is to take an economy where human comfort, activity, and growth are inextricably linked with emitting carbon and to transform it into one which can only thrive without depending on carbon. This is a monumental challenge." … Tesco sells nearly a quarter of the groceries bought in the United Kingdom, it possesses a growing share of the markets in Asia and Europe, and late last year the chain opened its first stores in America…. [Leahy] announced that Tesco would cut its energy use in half by 2010, drastically limit the number of products it transports by air, and place airplane symbols on the packaging of those which it does. More important, in an effort to help consumers understand the environmental impact of the choices they make every day, he told the forum that Tesco would develop a system of carbon labels and put them on each of its seventy thousand products.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
McCain: Environmental Truant?
The League of Conservation Voters recently released its 2007 environmental scorecard—Sen. John McCain's score: 0. This has to be a disappointment for the Republican front-runner who received the LCV's green endorsement in 2004, and who posts a (slightly) better lifetime score of 24. (This is out of 100; in comparison Senators Clinton and Obama scored 73 and 67, respectively.) But it appears that his embarrassing low score is a result of his absence at every key environmental vote of the year, including the votes to repeal tax breaks for big oil. Likely you remember the media buzz over McCain's other missed votes.
So his voting record begs the question: how green is McCain? Well, as the environmental online magazine Grist notes, he has been outspoken on global warming and the need to decrease carbon emissions. He also seems to oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, although he has missed important votes on this as well. On the other hand, he passionately promotes coal and nuclear power, and endorses heavy subsidies for both. Meanwhile, Opensecrets.org places McCain third on the list of top Senate recipients of Oil and Gas industry contributions, ranking just under Sen. Clinton. Oh, and he joins only six other Senators from 2007 with a score of 0 from the LCV. The Sierra Club gives a concise rundown:
McCain was the only member of Congress to skip every single crucial environmental vote scored by the organization, posting a score lower than Members of Congress who were out for much of the year due to serious illnesses—and even lower than some who died during the term.
Yikes.
—Jesse Finfrock
February 21, 2008
Killing Others Makes Us Sicker
Oops. More of those unforeseen consequences. Including the first scientific evidence that deadly emerging diseases have risen steeply across the world. Why? Because of human expansion into shrinking pockets of biodiversity and resulting contacts with wildlife (think poor countries). Plus, the bonus factor (think rich countries), new diseases arising from overuse of antibiotics, centralized food processing, and other technologies, nursing other outbreaks, like multidrug-resistant pathogen strains. The study appears in the Feb. 21 issue of the scientific journal Nature.
In the new study, researchers from four institutions analyzed 335 emerging diseases from 1940 to 2004, then converted the results into maps correlated with human population density, population changes, latitude, rainfall and wildlife biodiversity. Disease emergences have quadrupled in 50 years. Sixty percent travelled from animals to humans, most from wild creatures. Hot spots on the map span sub-Saharan Africa, India, and China, with smaller spots in Europe, North America, and South America. Translated: everywhere.
Still waiting for human intelligence to overrule human appetite.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Less Golf, More Water?
Number one on the New York Times' most-e-mailed list today is a story about the mass exodus from American golf courses. No one knows exactly why corporate America is abandoning its erstwhile favorite sport. Not enough time? Too lazy?
Whatever the reason for the shift, there's at least one good thing about it. Golf courses are notoriously thirsty, and developers have a nasty habit of putting them in the darnedest (driest) places. If our newfound apathy about golf translates into fewer courses built over the long haul, [insert corny golf metaphor—a la "that's a hole in one for the environment"— here].
Then again:
To help keep the Great Rock Golf Club afloat, owners erected their large climate-controlled tent near the 18th green last summer. It sat next to the restaurant, Blackwell’s, already operating there.
The next question: How far into the depths of unsustainability will golf-course owners sink to win back customers?
February 19, 2008
Nature Does Anti-Terrorism Better
Living things can show us how to keep society safe. So says biologist Raphael Sagarin of Duke University in a fascinating interview with New Scientist. "You can look at virtually any question about security through a biological lens," says Sagarin, "from how to develop weapons systems to how to organise government departments. One clear lesson is that the species or systems that have been around the longest, adapted to many different environments and captured the most resources have a structure of fairly limited central control, with a lot of autonomy. You can see this… in the immune system, for example, or in colonial organisms such as ants and corals."
"In stark contrast, says Sagarin, is the US response to 9/11, "which was to create this enormous Department of Homeland Security. You can see the results: individual organisations do not get enough autonomy and cannot make decisions in a timely manner. They cannot respond and adapt without having to go up through many layers of command. It's more to do with keeping power and maintaining committee memberships, jobs and budgets than security."
Furthermore, he says, "organisms inherently understand that there is risk in life. The idea that we can eliminate these risks would be selected against quickly in the natural world since any organism that tried to do so would not have enough resources left for reproduction, or feeding itself."
Sounds vaguely familiar.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Who's Really Paying for Cheap Shrimp?
Not you and me. That farmed tiger shrimp costs five times what we're paying. So who's getting charged the difference? Local poor people and the local environment. This according to Daniel A. Bergquist of Uppsala University. Despite what many international aid organizations claim (and fund), Bergquist says his studies in Sri Lanka and the Philippines prove that a major portion of the local population is excluded from aquaculture and continue to be as poor as ever. "The winners are the local elites," he says. What’s more, aquaculture often entails cutting mangrove forests for shrimp and fish ponds, creating environmental problems that eventually impact aquaculture.
By using methods that factor in all costs, Bergquist was able to show, for instance, that the price of tiger shrimp would need to be more than five times higher than it is today for the environment and the local population to receive fair compensation for their input. "Aquaculture is a clear example of how the colonization of the southern hemisphere is still going on, finding new avenues via globalization and international trade," says Bergquist.
So maybe the good folks at Blue Ocean Institute will add tiger shrimp to their excellent sustainable seafood texting service, and keep a few more of us from eating it until the price gets real.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 18, 2008
Whippets No Laughing Matter
It's called the forgotten greenhouse gas. You know, nitrous oxide (N2O), the magic behind whipped cream. You might not know it's 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide and represents 9% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Its longevity in the atmosphere provides a potentially more damaging legacy than CO2, reports the University of East Anglia. Currently, agriculture and wastewater treatment industries account for 80% of global emissions (from bacteria that make N2O from nitrogen-rich fertilizers, and from bacteria in wastewater treatment). Now the Nitrous Oxide Focus Group is convening to examine sources and sinks of N2O in the environment, its role in climate change, and to develop techniques to mitigate its effect.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 15, 2008
The Great Tech Challenges Ahead
There's four of them, sort of. At least according to the National Academy of Engineering, which convened an international group of tech thinkers to identify the grand challenges facing us in the 21st century. The report was released at today's AAAS annual meeting in Boston. Robert Socolow, mechanical and aerospace engineer at Princeton, reports the list was too subjective to assemble in order. Instead they identified four broad categories of challenges:
(1). environmental wholeness: the need for humans to take care of our earthly home and to be good stewards of the environmental quality that we depend upon (2). our own wellness: the medical side of human life (3). vulnerability: recognition of the fact that we live on a planet that experiences earthquakes and tsunamis, and that we are a species that causes trouble for itself. (4). the joy of living: after you’ve got health and environmental soundness and you feel protected against the bad side of both human nature and Mother Nature, there is still something else to aspire to: self-knowledge and enlightenment.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 14, 2008
Good News on the Border Fence?
Maybe. The AP reports that 28 miles of virtual border fence was approved by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff yesterday. The virtual fence will include 98-foot unmanned towers equipped with radar, sensor devices and cameras capable of distinguishing people from cattle at a distance of about 10 miles. (MoJo reported on the controversy over this fence from an environmental perspective in Gone. Think: endangered wildlife can't cross a real fence either).
Kim Vacariu, of The Wildlands Project, tells me that if the virtual fence "becomes reliably functional, it would indicate that the recommendations generated through our Border Ecological Workshops, action requests to Congress, and other efforts are beginning to reach the officials who are making security infrastructure decisions—that they are seeing the importance of protecting borderland ecology from the effects of wall-building. However, it's important to note that construction of [the virtual fence] requires road-building and associated other infrastructure that continues to degrade borderlands ecology. So we need to wait and see just how this system will work. If it does, we're taking a step in the right direction."
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
World’s Largest Sea Sanctuary Created in Pacific
Couldn't come at a better time. Conservation International reports the tiny Pacific Island nation of Kiribati (pronounced: Kiribas) just established the world's largest marine protected area—a California-sized ocean wilderness of pristine coral reefs and rich fish populations threatened by over-fishing and climate change. The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) conserves one of the Earth's last intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems, consisting of eight coral atolls and two submerged reef systems in a nearly uninhabited region of abundant marine and bird life. The 410,500-square-kilometer (158,453-square-mile) protected area also includes underwater mountains and other deep-sea habitat… Agree this is excellent news? Thank them.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
More Than 40% of World Ocean "Heavily Impacted" by Humans
A new study in Science reports more than 40% of the world ocean is heavily impacted by human activities. Scientists from UCSB and NOAA combined 17 data sets of different human activities, examining overfishing, fertilizer run-off, commercial shipping, and pollution, and analyzed the effects on marine ecosystems, including coral reefs, seagrass beds, continental shelves, and the deep ocean. The team also examined climate change by three measures: sea surface temperatures, UV radiation, and ocean acidification. These were found to be among the most important factors in global impact.
"This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans," said lead author Ben Halpern, at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UCSB. "Our results show that… the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me." The most heavily affected waters include large areas of the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean Sea, the east coast of North America, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bering Sea, and several regions in the western Pacific. The least affected areas are largely near the poles. "Unfortunately, as polar ice sheets disappear with warming global climate and human activities spread into these areas, there is a great risk of rapid degradation of these relatively pristine ecosystems," said Carrie Kappel, a principal investigator on the project at NCEAS.
The researchers note there's still time to preserve the more pristine areas. And we can all do our part. Know what you eat. Know what you buy. Buy less. Eat less.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
February 13, 2008
Text Your Way to Sustainable Seafood
These days it’s tricky enough navigating the terrain of seafood for health concerns, much less moral ones. Plenty of organizations have compiled comprehensive lists of good and not-so-good fish to eat, depending on whether the fish are imperiled, how they’re caught, their overall health, and other factors.
But let’s say you’re out at a restaurant and there’s fish on the menu (for example, the buttermilk fried calamari that was on the menu when I was dining out last weekend) but you forgot your geeky pocket-sized sustainable fish reference guide. Feel caught in a moral quagmire? Simply get out your cell phone and text “fish” and the name of the fish to 30644. You’ll get a text informing you about the fish’s sustainability.
I tried the service and within seconds got a text back telling me:
squid; (GREEN) few environmental concerns; squid grow quickly making them resistant to fishing pressure
So I forged ahead, and the squid didn’t disappoint.
If your choice isn’t “green,” the text will provide you with alternatives. This nifty service is offered by the Blue Ocean Institute.
—Joyce Tang
February 12, 2008
Scary New CO2 Numbers on Shipping, Plus a Hopeful Breeze
More bad news on the real costs of all the cheap goods that come our way from all over the world via the high seas. A leaked UN report says pollution from shipping is nearly three times higher than previously thought, and that annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of CO2. The report warns that shipping emissions are destined to become one of the largest single sources of manmade CO2 after cars, housing, agriculture, and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, under heavy pressure to clean up its act, emits only half as much CO2, reports the Guardian:
The figure is highly embarrassing for the four governments, including Britain, that paid for the report. Governments and the EU have consistently played down the climate impact of shipping, saying it is less than 2% of global emissions and failing to include shipping emissions in their national estimates for CO2 emissions. Previous attempts by the industry to calculate levels of carbon emissions were largely based on the quantity of low grade fuel bought by shipowners. The latest UN figures are considered more accurate because they are based on the known engine size of the world's ships, as well as the time they spend at sea and the amount of low grade fuel sold to shipowners. The UN report also reveals that other pollutants from shipping are rising even faster than CO2 emissions. Sulphur and soot emissions, which give rise to lung cancers, acid rain and respiratory problems are expected to rise more than 30% over the next 12 years.
Here's a partial solution, at least, as reported by the BBC. The world's first commercial cargo ship partially powered by a giant kite just sailed from Germany to Venezuela. The MS Beluga Skysails—seen in the photo above—carries a computer-controlled kite, measuring 160sq m (1,722sq ft), designed to cut fuel consumption by as much as 20%.
So, how about we accept cheap goods from abroad only if they come in under sail?
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
All About Light
The latest addition to SEED's excellent Cribsheet series: Light. On one page, everything you wanted to know or remember about the electromagnetic spectrum, wave-particle duality, how light interacts with matter, how we use light to study the size, age, and composition of the universe, how light can help provide clean energy, faster computers, and efficient space travel. Check out other Cribsheets on everything from hybrid cars to nuclear power to extinction to genetics, to name a few.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
Sea Level Rise Twice As High as Current Projections
New research on Greenland glaciers suggests that sea level rise will be twice as high the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate of 18 to 58 cm (0.6 to 1.9 ft) by 2100. The study, published in the Journal of Glaciology (pdf), combines important data long missing from the ice sheet models. Researchers from the University at Buffalo, Ohio State University, the University of Kansas, and NASA, combined field mapping, remote sensing, satellite imaging, and digital enhancement techniques to glean "hidden" data from historic aerial photographs, some 60 years old.
The resulting two-dimensional pictures are of limited value. But the researchers digitized them, removed the boundaries between them, and turned several pictures into a single 'mosaic' producing one data set viewable in three-dimensions. "By reprocessing old data contained in these old photographs and records, we have been able to construct a long-term record of the behavior of the [Jakobshavn Isbrae] glacier," says lead author, Beata Csatho. "This was the first time that the data from the '40s could be reused in a coherent way."
Other glacier views and data here and here.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.