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July 31, 2008
Solar Nirvana
Science is publishing an MIT paper (in press) outlining a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal boutique energy source into the mainstream.
The breakthrough revolves around storing energy when the sun isn't shining—an expensive pitfall until now.
The new method uses the sun's energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Like photosynthesis.
Later the two can be recombined inside a fuel cell to create carbon-free electricity. Like running a fuel cell backwards.
The good part is the system would work day or night. The other good part is it requires nothing but abundant, nontoxic natural materials.
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said senior author Daniel Nocera. "Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
For those who want to know how it works…
A new catalyst produces oxygen gas from water. Another catalyst produces hydrogen gas. The new catalyst is a combination of cobalt metal, phosphate, and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity (from photovoltaic cell, wind turbine, or other source) runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst like platinum (which can produce hydrogen gas from water) the system duplicates the water-splitting reaction of photosynthesis.
Also good: the catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and is easy to set up. "That's why I know this is going to work," says Nocera. "It's so easy to implement."
Well, by George, implement away!
BTW, this study has interesting hybrid parentage between government and philanthropy. May they couple more often.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
July 30, 2008
Fires Burn Budgets Badly
A couple of interesting articles on the fire season blazing in the West. The LA Times reports how fire commanders are pressured to order aircraft into action on major fires even when they won't do any good.
Why? Because they make good television. CNN drops, they call them.
And because citizens and politicians have come to expect the sight of aircraft dumping water and fire retardant means "their " fire is getting the attention it deserves.
It's not that aircraft aren't useful. They can help a lot. But aircraft don't put out fires, say firefighters. And their use is escalating the cost of fighting wildfires. Last year the Forest Service spent $296 million—up from $171 million in 2004.
The Sacramento Bee reports the Forest Service has already spent $900 million this year, nearly 75 percent of its fire-suppression budget. And this on a season that hasn't reached peak yet.
These days nearly half the Forest Service's budget is spent fighting wildfires or trying to prevent them. In 1991, it took only 13 percent. So far this year's fires have cost $210 million more than at the same point last year.
The Bee article alludes to the fact that climate change is driving a longer, more expensive, and more extensive, fire season.
Which is just one of the reasons why our big global warming experiment is going to be such a budget burner.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
July 29, 2008
Doctors Prescribe… Nothing
The patient is ill. It's contagious. It's sweeping the globe. And the doctors prescribe… two pills of ignorance and a shot of whining.
How's this? Well, a new survey reports that most health department directors believe their jurisdictions will face serious public health problems from climate change in the next 20 years. Yet few have done anything to detect, prevent, or adapt to the threats.
This, even though the majority of these directors believe that heat waves, heat-related illnesses, reduced air quality, reduced water quality, and reduced water quantity are likely to become common or severe problems in a warming climate.
Several factors contribute to the slackerism. Most survey respondents felt hamstrung by a lack of knowledge about climate change. Most felt little help was available from state and federal slackers. Most felt they needed more funding, staff, and training.
In other words, most are hoping someone else will take care of it.
"The reason why so many Americans view climate change as a threat to other species rather than as a threat to people may be in part because health professionals have been largely silent on the issue," says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication. "By using the opportunities available to them, public health and health care professionals can educate people on the threats of climate change to their health and wellbeing."
That would require the docs to get off the antidepressants and get, well, seriously worried.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
July 28, 2008
Perfect Storm Stores CO2 Perfectly
Hurricanes may be getting bigger and more frequent as a result of climate change. But they may also be counterbalancing their destruction by sequestering millions of tons of carbon in the deep ocean.
A new study finds that a single typhoon in Taiwan buried as much carbon as all the other rains in that country in a year.
Of the 61 million tons of sediment carried out to sea by the Choshui River during Typhoon Mindulle in 2004, some 500,000 tons consisted of particles of carbon, weathered from Taiwan's mountains.
That's 95 percent as much carbon as the river transports during normal rains in a year. It also equates to more than 400 tons of carbon per square mile washed away during the storm.
The good news is that once the carbon gets buried in the ocean it eventually becomes sedimentary rock and doesn't return to the atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years.
So, the work of tropical storms isn't enough to cancel out the warming gases we're putting into the atmosphere. But it's a pretty good response from a stressed planet.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
China Exports 33% Of CO2 Footprint
One-third of China's carbon footprint comes from producing goods for export. That's up from an estimate of 25 percent only 10 months ago.
Now a new paper in Energy Policy say China's export emissions equaled 1.7 billion tons of CO2 in 2005. That's 6% of total global emissions. The same as Germany, France, and the UK combined.
Many of the industries producing these emissions make electronics for the rich world. Which gets sticky when you realize that international policy penalizes the producer country, not the consumer. China, understandably, thinks that's wrong, reports New Scientist:
"In some measure, it makes sense if people buy goods and become liable for the emissions generated when the goods are produced," says Benito Müller of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, UK. "They will certainly be more choosy about what they buy."
Even Chinese consumers.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
July 25, 2008
More Cell-Phone Wariness From Docs
The Baltimore Sun reports that another group of doctors has voiced its concerns about cell phones. They're the latest to do so; last year, a different group published the Bioinitiative Report, a roundup of some of the studies that suggest a link between cell-phone radiation and brain cancer.
This new group includes some bigwigs—most notably Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Herberman told the Sun, "Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later."
This, in a nutshell, is the precautionary principle, which is an important piece of this whole debate—but it's not really anything we haven't heard before. And we probably won't hear anything new until more science is in. Unfortunately, this could take quite a while. So the question remains: Should we follow Herberman's advice and use our mobiles sparingly till we know more?
Full disclosure: After researching "This is Your Brain on Cell Phones," I bought a headset. Just in case.
July 24, 2008
Cow Poo Power Redux
California's already trying it. The people of India have been burning gobar for millennia. Now a new study finds that converting cow poo into a biogas could generate 3 percent of North America's electricity annually. Better yet, it would decrease greenhouse gases.
Here's why. If livestock manure is left to decompose naturally it emits two badass gases: nitrous oxide and methane. Nitrous oxide is 310 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane is 21 times more potent.
The researcher examined two hypothetical scenarios. The first: business-as-usual, burning coal and letting manure decompose. The second: anaerobically-digesting manure (think compost) to create biogas and burning it to offset coal.
The results? The hundreds of millions of livestock inhabiting the US could produce 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Enough to power millions of homes and offices.
So could we call the first poo generating station the George W. Bush Shite House?
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
Carbon Offsets: Laughing off Climate Change?
From the Wall Street Journal, here's the Kyoto Treaty's latest carbon offset scandal:
Rhodia SA manufactures hundreds of tons a day of adipic acid, an ingredient in nylon, at its factory [in Korea]. But the real money is in what it doesn't make. The payday, which could amount to more than $1 billion over seven years, comes from destroying nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, an unwanted byproduct and potent greenhouse gas. It's Rhodia's single most profitable business world-wide. Last year, destroying nitrous oxide here and at a similar plant in Brazil generated €189 million ($300.5 million) in sales of pollution "credits." . . .The [French-owned] Rhodia factory is slated to bring in more money, under the U.N.-administered program, than all the clean-air projects currently registered on the continent of Africa.
This story should lay to rest any doubts that carbon offsets must be treated with the utmost skepticism by lawmakers. It reprises a similar debacle I reported here, involving refrigerant manufactures who were "paid" under Kyoto to create more greenhouse gases so that they could destroy them and call it a carbon offset. The Rhodia case is all the more troubling because the culprit is a French company that should be running green anyway and because Kyoto's regulators were supposed to have learned how to prevent this by now. In short, buyer beware as the United States shops for its own legislative solution to climate change.
So why are these glaring cases of profiteering being glossed over in Washington? As I note in our July/August issue, the biggest carbon offset companies have partnered with some of the world's biggest polluters in an attempt to sculpt the details of a U.S. climate bill. (Lieberman-Warner would have allowed companies to meet up to 30 percent of their emission reductions with offsets). Hardly anybody is talking about this. The offset lobby still enjoys the kind of positive PR that its industrial partners can only dream of. It's a joke, but they're the ones who'll laugh to the bank.
July 23, 2008
Eat Less, Save The World
Yup, it's that simple. Nineteen percent of total energy used in the US is tied to producing and distributing food. Too much food. Three times more than we actually need.
Cornell researchers suggest we eat less. The average American consumes 3,747 calories a day. That's 1200-1500 calories more than recommended. It's the reason we're fat and unhealthy, while our planet is lean and unhealthy.
The problem is that American diets are larded in animals and in junk food. Both use more energy to produce than healthful staples like potatoes, rice, fruits, and veggies.
By eating less junk and less meat, the average American would have a massive impact on fuel consumption and his/her health.
The authors suggest moving towards more traditional, organic farming methods for meat and dairy. They suggest crop farmers reduce pesticides and use more manure, cover crops, and crop rotations for better energy efficiency.
Changing the way we process, package and distribute food would help too. Although apparently the single most dramatic improvement in energy use would come from you and me consuming less processed foods. On average, American food travels 1,500 miles before it gets eaten.
Try the Modern Commandments: 1) Buy local. 2) Support organic and sustainable farms. (Stop whinging about the price, you're going to buy and eat less.) 3) Eat mindfully and savor every nourishing bite.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
July 22, 2008
Horse Virus Spreading to Humans
Heads-up on new developments on a new disease. Australia's biggest outbreak yet of the highly virulent Hendra virus is underway. The disease is transmitted from fruit bats to horses and from horses to humans.
It was identified in 1994—the last year there was a major outbreak. One human trainer and 14 horses died then, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. A second infected person recovered.
Now changes in symptoms in Queensland horses are suggesting a new strain. Perhaps one capable of human-to-human transmission.
New Scientist reports that two veterinary workers became infected roughly four weeks ago and remain hospitalized. Fifty more people who may have had contact with horses will undergo a second set of tests.
So far this year at least seven horses are infected. Five have died. Thirty-six more will be tested for a second time tomorrow.
The classic symptom of Hendra virus in a horse is severely labored breathing, frothy nasal discharge and swollen muzzle. The animals often die within days.
But this year's horses are suffering from neurological symptoms, including paralysis and loss of balance.
Human symptoms include a severe flu-like illness, headache, high fever, and drowsiness, which can progress to pneumonia, convulsions, or coma.
The Hendra virus has not been identified outside of Australia. Every outbreak since the first has been successfully contained to only one horse. Between 1994 and now, one other person was infected and survived. Though, confusingly, the US Centers for Disease Control reports that two out of three human infections prior to this year were fatal.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
July 21, 2008
Bad Air Killing Eastern US
Thinks it's just China? Well, every major ecosystem type in the eastern US is being degraded by air pollution. That's right: Adirondack forests, Shenandoah streams, Appalachian wetlands, and the Chesapeake Bay, to name a few.
A new report [pdf] is the first to analyze the combined effects of four air pollutants across a broad range of habitat types.
Most studies focus on one pollutant. And why not? Things always look so much better that way.
But the sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and ground-level ozone that are released into the air from smokestacks, tailpipes, and agricultural operations fall back to Earth sooner or later. Ooops.
And because the eastern U.S. is downwind from gynormous pollution sources, it receives the highest levels of deposited air pollution anywhere in North America.
That's bad news for wildlife, forests, soil, water, and, guess what?, economies.
The report by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and The Nature Conservancy suggests we revise air pollution regulations. US regs currently target only airborne emissions and their effect on human health. But we need to measure how and where the nasty stuff lands and regulate that too.
All the fish that are no longer inhabiting the fishless lakes of the Adirondacks might suggest that American waters look every bit as bad as China's skies.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
Beijing Spectators Risk Heart Attacks
Researchers at Northwestern University warn that pollution in Beijing is so extreme that it could trigger cardiac arrest and strokes in spectators and athletes.
Advice from the docs:
Stay indoors during traffic rush-hour periods. "Indoor air pollution levels are always much lower than outdoor, so staying inside will limit your exposure," Budinger said. He cautioned that Beijing's definition of mild pollution would be a pollution alert day in the U.S.
So that's all good advice for the millions who will be descending upon Beijing for a few weeks, but what about the people who actually live there?
Oh yeah, them: The 750,000 Chinese people that die prematurely from pollution every year—and that the Chinese government doesn't want you to know about. Are they just supposed to stay inside all day every day?
For a good overview of some of the emergency measures Beijing officials have taken to prepare for the Olympics, go here. Hope they keep it up after the party ends. For everyone's sake.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
July 18, 2008
Commemorating Bush's Sh*t
My favorite news of the day. And one reason my heart will always be in San Francisco.
A measure has qualified for San Francisco's November ballot renaming the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
In recognitionof the crap Bush left behind in Iraq. And everywhere.
A quagmire named for the Begetter-of-all-Quagmires.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
The Blue Marble Gets a Moon
And we get to see it in orbit around the Earth. Thanks to NASA's Epoxi spacecraft, en route to Comet Hartley 2 in 2010. The film was shot from 31 million miles away. An alien's p.o.v.
Such a pretty world. Why don't we take better care of it?
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
How Long Will You Live? Depends Where You Live
The American Human Development Project’s new report measures the well being of US citizens based on education, health, and income. Unsurprisingly, being an American is much better for some than others.
Of the ten states with the highest median earnings, six are in the Northeast while the rest are just south of there. A whopping 46% of Texas’ 29th District (East Houston) never graduated from high school, compared to a drop out rate of only 5% in California’s 30th District, which includes Beverly Hills and Malibu.
How well off are you? Test yourself here. Want more? Watch this.
The report may be telling us what some of us already know about our abysmal health care system—that we spend more per person than any other nation only to die younger than basically all of Western Europe—but when the life expectancy of residents in Kentucky’s Fifth District is 73 years (same as our national average was in 1978), hard numbers are still sobering.
—Brittney Andres
July 17, 2008
LEDs Just Got Brighter
Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are four times more efficient than incandescent lights and greener than compact fluorescent bulbs (think: mercury). They also last up to 15 years before burning out.
So why aren't they everywhere?
Because they're expensive—created on a pricey layer of sapphire.
Until now. Purdue University researchers report a novel technique using cheap metal-coated silicon wafers to make LEDs.
Cheaper is better. Widespread LED use could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent.
That could help us heed Al Gore's call to produce all global-warming-free electricity by 2018.
The LED findings appear this month in Applied Physics Letters, journal of the American Institute of Physics.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
LA's Lean, Green, Dating Machines
Leave it to LA to find a way to combine efficiency, sex, and eco-street cred. In the city of instant gratification, there's now an easy way to determine if that cute guy at the gym will build a LEED-rated home with you: green speed dating!
Jenean Smith, founder of the Green Speed Dating website, came up with the idea while brainstorming ways to raise money to install solar panels at a rural school in Nicaragua. "One day—I have no idea why—I said, you know what the world really needs? Green speed dating!" She set up an event in Santa Monica, where for $20 participants could spend three minutes on green mini-dates. Eco-conscious Angelenos couldn't get enough. "There's all these green singles' sites that don't have enough people on them, and there's regular speed-dating where you don't know who you're going to meet," says Smith. "People liked that this was a green event for a good cause."
And how did the LA speed-daters evaluate their potential partners' green-ness? By asking what they drove, of course! One lucky guy narrowly escaped having to admit he owned an SUV; another found his bicyling habit made him a little too green for most dates. NPR caught some of the oh-so-awkward car convos; listen yourself here.
Okay, okay, so only in LA would cars be the focus of a green dating event. (To each his own: Portland, OR offers bicycle speed dating.) But the cause is indeed worthy, and word of the site is spreading fast. California readers take note: This could be your summer of green love.
July 16, 2008
African-Americans Genetically Prone to HIV, AIDS
New research shows that Africans and African-Americans bear a gene variant that helps protect them from malaria, but also makes them more vulnerable to HIV infection. The variant increases susceptability to HIV by 40 percent, says the San Francisco Chronicle.
The genetic trait is found in 90 percent of Africans and 60 percent of African-Americans. Thus far, it has protected against malaria by disabling a protein that some strains of malaria use to enter red blood cells. However, that same protein that's disabled in Africans to prevent malaria can actually protect against HIV by soaking up virus cells before they can invade white blood cells. With this sponge-like protein disabled, Africans lose a key pre-infection barrier.
This finding helps explain, in part, the high HIV infection rates among Sub-Saharan Africans and Americans of African descent. On the flipside, there is a genetic variant among people of Northern European heritage that actually makes them immune to HIV infection. Scientists think the mutation was passed down by ancestors who survived the Black Plague. In one test, a man's blood was exposed to 3,000 times the amount of HIV needed to infect a cell, but infection still didn't occur. The HIV virus simply had no gateway of entry.
Both the European and African genetic traits are currently being studied to see if they can shed light on a cure to HIV.
July 15, 2008
The Cutest Rehab
This video is funny and sweet. It restores my faith in human beings. Even Amy Winehouse would love it. Maybe.
Produced by Bluevoice, it shows a bunch of volunteers from Orca, a Peruvian nonprofit, as they rescue and rehabilitate sea lion and fur seal pups orphaned by fishing nets and disease.
Part of the rehab involves the volunteers releasing their inner sea lions. You know, barking, socializing, and climbing all over each other, just like pinnipeds do.
The heroic part: these volunteers work in the seriously cold waters of the Peru Current. They have no money for wetsuits and tough it out for hours in soggy jeans.
Bluevoice is trying to raise the money to test tissue samples and figure out why all the seal mothers are dying.
(First seen on my secret addiction, the antidote to bad news, CuteOverload.)
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
Dead Zone Overkill
Last year it reached 7,903 square miles. The earlier record was 8,481 square miles in 2002.
Notice a trend?
Notice the Bizarre-New-Age-of-Abysmal-Record-Everythings we've entered?
For those of you who've been asleep during the Bush-van-Winkle years, here's the primer. A dead zone forms when fertilizers wash from farms via rivers to fertilize the sea.
There are other reasons too. Including whatever nutrients you add to your lawn. Don't even get me started on golf courses.
So this year's climate-change-induced record floods on the Mississippi River do a lot more damage than to Midwestern croplands.
That's because the ocean doesn't like a lot of fertilizer. It makes too many plants grow. Those plants die and feed too many decomposers who use up all the oxygen in the water. Everything suffocates.
Dead zone. Coming soon to a seashore near you.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
Ouch: Climate Change Means More Kidney Stones
Some squirm-inducing news from the global warming front: Climate change means more kidney stones. Rising temperatures mean people sweat more, which means they get dehydrated, which means salt crystals form in their kidneys, which means—insert your favorite big object-tiny opening image here. Researchers say that the region known as the "Kidney Stone Belt" (who knew?), which is basically the Bible Belt, is expanding northward into the Rust Belt and Grain Belt. By 2095, they predict, 70% of Americans will be living in a high-risk zone for kidney stones. Ouch. Fortunately, preventing kidney stones is easy—drinking plenty of water helps. So stay cool, drink up, and maybe this too shall pass.
Photo of kidney stone from stock.xchng user heyrc