September 30, 2008

Acid Oceans Also Noisier

The acidification of seawater due to absorption of atmospheric CO2 is also enabling sound waves to travel farther. That's bad news for marine life, including whales and dolphins, who rely on sound for hunting and communication and who are already stressed by noisy ship traffic and military sonar.

A team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute predicts that underwater sounds will travel up to 70 percent farther in some areas in 2050 than they do today. Whales could be heavily impacted. Military sonar already disrupt whale behavior more than 300 miles away. Dolphins and fish that use sound to locate prey, to avoid predators, and to defend their territories, will also be affected.

Think of it as our world suddenly getting way, way brighter, blindingly bright, with no sunglasses anywhere. The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, used IPCC projections that ocean pH will drop by 0.3 units by 2050—four times faster than the the past 250 years. The researchers also conducted field and lab experiments testing sound conductivity while estimating increases in ocean temperature and reductions in oxygen content, conditions also affecting underwater acoustics.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Election Day Is Deadly

American presidential elections change the world. They also have a direct effect on public health. Fifty-five percent of the American population is mobilized to vote. Most rely on motor vehicles to get to a polling place. The result: an 18 percent increase in fatal motor vehicle crashes on presidential election day.

According to new research forthcoming in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the increased risk also extends to pedestrians. It persists across ages, sexes, regions, polling hours, and whether a Democrat or Republican is elected. Believe it or not, election day risks exceed those of Super Bowl Sunday and New Years Eve. Explanations: speed, distance, distraction, emotions, unfamiliar pathways to polls, and the potential mobilization of unfit drivers. (What about unfit candidates? Fear of them drives me faster to the polls.)

The investigators looked at all US presidential election days in the past 32 years, starting with Jimmy Carter. They also examined the Tuesday immediately before and immediately after election days as controls. The average presidential election leads to ~24 deaths from motor vehicle crashes. . . Talk about the ultimate sacrifice. All the more reason to make sure your candidate is really worth it.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 29, 2008

Financial Risk-Taking Tied to Testosterone

No kidding. A new study finds that higher levels of testosterone correlate with financial risk-taking behavior. A Harvard study assessed men's testosterone levels before participation in an investment game, and found those whose testosterone levels were more than one standard deviation above the mean invested 12 percent more than the average man in a risky investment.

A previous study had already proved that men are generally more likely than women to take investment risks. Another demonstrated that male stock market traders experienced greater profits on days their testosterone was above its median level. The Harvard study, forthcoming in Evolution and Human Behavior, was the first study to directly examine, and find a relationship between, testosterone and financial risk-taking.

So, should the Congressional bail-out include estrogen replacement therapy for financially foolish CEOs?

For those interested in the details of the study…

Saliva samples were taken from 98 males aged 18 to 23, before participation in the investment game. The researchers also assessed facial masculinity, associated with testosterone levels at puberty. All players were given $250, and asked to choose an amount between $0 and $250 to invest. The participants kept the money that was not invested. A coin toss determined the investment's outcome, and if the participant lost the coin toss, the money allocated to the investment was lost. However, if the coin toss was won, the participant would receive two and a half times the amount of their investment. At the end of the study, one person was selected by lottery to receive the cash amount of their investment, which created a monetary incentive for the participants. Men whose testosterone levels were more than one standard deviation above the mean invested 12 percent more than the average man into the risky investment. Men with a facial masculinity score of one standard deviation higher than the mean invested 6 percent more than the average man.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 26, 2008

GAO Slams Carbon Offsets

The GAO is soon to publish a report faulting the credibility of the carbon offset market. It suggests that Congress think carefully before letting companies use offsets to comply with climate change legislation. Everyone has known that offsets can be sketchy for a long time, but my article in the July/August issue of Mother Jones was the first to explore how leading offset companies have partnered with oil companies and anti-regulatory lobbying firms in an effort to carve out a huge new market for themselves through climate legislation. These are the same guys to whom well-intentioned enviros have paid millions to offset car trips and airline flights. The financial meltdown has been bad enough. Let's hope it won't take a polar meltdown for Congress to realize that a laissez-faire carbon market won't save us.

Arctic Speed-Melt Record

Although 2008 did not set a record for minimum sea ice it did set a record for speed melting. Arctic sea ice declined at a rate of 32,700 square miles a day in August. That's about the size of Maine. Every day. And that's compared to 24,400 square miles a day lost in August 2007—the record holder for minimum sea ice.

The 2008 results were surprising, says NASA, because last winter had near-normal ice cover. "We saw a lot of cooling in the Arctic that we believe was associated with La Niña," says Joey Comiso of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "Sea ice in Canada had recovered and even expanded in the Bering Sea and Baffin Bay. Overall, sea ice recovered to almost average levels. That was a good sign that this year might not be as bad as last year."

But alas the sprint in August—the fastest-ever melt—undid the gains of the winter. Here's what it looked like:

"Based on what we've learned over the last 30 years, we know that the perennial ice cover is now in trouble," Comiso says. "You need more than just one winter of cooling for the ice to recover to the average extent observed since the measurements began. But the trend is going the other way. A warming Arctic causes the surface water to get warmer, which delays the onset of freeze up in the winter and leads to a shorter period of ice growth. Without the chance to thicken, sea ice becomes thinner and more vulnerable to continued melt."

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 25, 2008

Cement Plant Powered by Huggies

Here's an idea that gives new meaning to waste management: to help produce energy, the Devil's Slide Cement plant in Morgan, Utah burns surplus diapers.

By mixing leftover Huggies with traditional sources, the company cuts coal consumption by 30 percent and prevents the disposables from clogging landfills. Only catch? Unused nappies only, please.

—Nikki Gloudeman

September 24, 2008

China's September Surprise: Tainted Formula Sickens 53,000 Infants

The Chinese government managed to keep its latest disaster under wraps last month when Beijing was all the world's stage: it's top formula-brand, and 21 others, have been tainted with melamine, the industrial chemical that led to more than 100 recalls of Chinese-made pet food here in the US and has been blamed for thousands of pet deaths.

What started out as a notification that one company was affected ballooned to 22 and now the government is admitting that the tainted milk has led to the deaths of at least four infants and has sickened another 53,000. Unlike seafood (and everything else), the US doesn't allow dairy imports from China, so no formula in the US is at risk, though the FDA has stepped up testing of candies and other desserts made of dairy products in China.

Cases started cropping up several months ago but the government was slow to respond and even slower to notify the public of the potential that the formula they were using was unsafe. Children are showing signs of incontinence, vomiting, and kidney trouble. Melamine is used to artificially boost protein content, a move seen as a way to cut corners in a Chinese production market where suppliers are forbidden from boosting prices.

Investigators are suggesting that the government knew about the tainted formula as far back as March, and a bad-news ban leading up to the Olympics put the health of thousands of children at risk.

If These Are the Tainted Chinese Imports the FDA Is Catching, What Are They Missing?

Recently released records for the month of August confirm that the FDA is still intercepting shipments of tainted seafood coming in from China. The first item on the rejection list? Frozen Breaded Shrimp, refused entry for containing "veterinary drug residues." But no Refusal Actions list is complete without the tainted Eel we've reported on previously. Sure enough, only nine items down—past the Prawn Crackers withheld for "unknown coloring" and the Unidentified White Powder lacking any directions whatsoever—there it is, the persistent Eel, Frozen, Vacuum-Packed, Prepared, Cooked, and complete with "unsafe additives."

Highlights of August's records include Frozen Cod Portions, Cod Blocks, Cod Fillets, Sole Fillets, Mahi Mahi Fillets, and Canned Chunk Tuna that were withheld for being "filthy, putrid, or decomposed," while the Frozen Squid Salad contained "a poisonous and deleterious substance." And that's just the seafood. It begs the question—if this is what the FDA is catching, what are they missing?

William Hubbard, a retired senior Food and Drug Administration official who served under seven presidents, told Mother Jones that as of this spring there were only about 300 inspectors to spot-check more than 13 million annual shipments. Given this, it's pretty certain that some of this tainted seafood is making its way onto your dinner plate.

Want more information? Here's where to find it.

In the current issue of Mother Jones, writer Joshua Kurlantzick details the failure of U.S. safety and regulatory agencies to protect the American public from tainted imports. In "The Chinavore's Dilemma," Kurlantzick writes:

FDA documents scrutinized by Mother Jones show that officials have long known dangerous products were entering the country. They knew it because some portion of the tainted, counterfeit, or mislabeled shipments were being intercepted and tallied in monthly lists that get passed around the agency. While the same products appear on the lists month after month, agency officials seldom warn the public until after Americans are hurt or killed.

For example, starting in February 2006, FDA inspectors routinely caught shipments of eels and other Chinese seafood tainted by pesticides, illegal drugs, bacterial infections, and malachite green, a carcinogenic dye. But agency officials didn't sound a significant public alert until 16 months later, in June 2007.

Read the rest of our investigative report here.

—Jesse Finfrock

September 23, 2008

Asheville, NC is Out of Gas

The city of Asheville, North Carolina and surrounding towns are so short on gas that residents must wait over an hour to fill their tanks, reports the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Many gas stations have closed altogether. Those which remain open have police stationed at the pumps to prevent fights from breaking out—one driver threatened another with a baseball bat. Asheville officials have canceled all nighttime events, and the county is asking that nonessential employees work from home or switch to a four-day week.

The gas crunch began after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike swept through the Gulf Coast, shutting down the oil refineries that supply western North Carolina. Because of its relatively remote location high in the Blue Ridge mountains, county officials estimate that shortages in the Asheville area will continue at least through the end of the month.

Storm recovery efforts, for obvious reasons, usually focus on the places that suffer the worst damage. But as this year's floods and hurricanes have shown us, infrastructure damage in one part of the country can have serious effects on the others. While Asheville's situation is extraordinary, it's likely to become more common as the frequency of severe storms increases.

So whose responsibility is it to deal with this problem? Several people told the Citizen-Times that they think the federal government should step in get the city moving again, perhaps by tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the long term, a coherent federal disaster protocol might help us to set our priorities (though I'm not holding my breath). Any Asheville readers out there? Let us know how things are going in the comments.

UPDATE: My sister Abby lives in Black Mountain and sent these pictures from this afternoon. She writes, "The line started on US-70 and proceeded around three blocks until we finally landed at the gas station. More than half of the cars in the lines weren't even on, and there was a cop at the end and beginning of every block."

Top photo used under a Creative Commons license from Sheryl Breuker.

September 22, 2008

New Study Puts The "Perma" Back In Permafrost

It's not perfect, but it's something: A new study from researchers at the University of Alberta says that Arctic permafrost may be less vulnerable to global warming than previously thought.

The study, which will be published tomorrow in the journal Science, found that a permafrost ice wedge in Canada's Yukon Territory is more than 700,000 years old, meaning that it withstood two previous cycles of intense warming. Lead researcher Duane Froese said that the findings mean we're further from a widespread thawing—and the catastrophic release of carbon and other gases that would accompany it—than earlier predictions have suggested.

Great, right? Not so fast, says Froese. While deep, ancient frost like the chunk he studied may be safe, the top layers of permafrost, formed much more recently, remain in serious danger. And it's those layers that could cause the most damage.

Still, it's heartening to know that at least some parts of the Earth are more resilient than we think they are. Of course, 700,000 years ago, no one was trying to see how far they could push that resilience.

September 19, 2008

Science Predicts The Election

This has been kicking around for a while but the flips of late are interesting. An astrophysicist whose ranking system influences which college football teams get into the top four bowls each year is taking aim at predicting presidential races. Wes Colley at the University of Alabama Huntsville and J. Richard Gott III at Princeton came up with a way to gauge which candidates are ahead in each state.

Their system is simple: Take the margins of victory for each candidate in each poll, line them up in order from smallest to largest, then use the median as the candidate's score for that state. The winner in that computation is also the candidate winning the majority of the polls in that state. Their paper will appear in next month's Mathematical and Computer Modeling.

Colley and Gott first tested the system in the 2004 and correctly predicted the winner between Kerry and Bush in 49 of the 50 states. They also predicted the electoral votes each candidate received. They missed only Hawaii. Well, Hawaii shouldn't be tough to call this year. Follow the horse race at their Electoral Scoreboard, including daily tracking scores.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Happy National PARK(ing) Day!

If you drove through San Francisco today and pulled up to a parking spot covered with shrubbery, don't be alarmed: the spot was likely claimed for 2008 National PARK(ing) Day, a global one-day event that transforms metered parking spots into temporary public parks.

Down the street from MoJo, greeters at a busy intersection directed lunchtime walkers to the eco-friendly benches parked in one such spot, themed "Permeability." Part public service announcement, part mini-flash mob, the annotated parking spot map by the McCall Design Group directed visitors to the water-saving landscape solutions present on this patch of asphalt, including composted bark mulch, native plants, tufted hairgrass, and water-filtering aqua-stone.

National PARK(ing) Day was started in 2005 by the Rebar Group, an interdisciplinary coalition of San Francisco artists, designers and activists. Since then, cities such as Portland, Seattle, and Tuscon have followed suit.

According to Nikki Wisser, an associate with McCall Design Group, their permeable spot hasn't drawn any irritated bystanders.

"I'm just glad I'm not driving today," said one man with a chuckle as he walked past.

Photo by Jin Zhu.

September 18, 2008

French Pique-Nique Update

Flash: The French are dropping plans for a picnic tax (per earlier blog). It's elitist. Apparently the rich don't pique-nique and the pollution of the non-rich isn't important.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Vote Your Fears

People who react strongly to bumps in the night, spiders, or the sight of a victims are more likely to support more defense spending, more government resources for fighting terrorism, and tighter immigration controls. This according to a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln published in the current issue of Science.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and tested 46 people who identified themselves as having strong political opinions. The subjects were shown threatening visual images—pictures of a spider on a person's eyeball, a dazed person with a bloody face, an open wound with maggots in it. The subjects' skin was monitored for electrical conductivity—an indicator of emotion, arousal, and attention. As a separate physiological measure, the subjects were surprised by a sudden, jarring noise, while measurements were taken of their blink reflex.

Those with the strongest eye or skin reactions to unexpected noises or threatening pictures tended to endorse political positions emphasizing protecting society over preserving individual privacy. These people were found to be more willing to sacrifice their privacy in return for what they perceived as government protection. Conversely, the subjects who reacted less strongly were more likely to favor policies that protect privacy and encourage gun control. . . It's all in the biology. Even for disbelievers of biology.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 16, 2008

Beam It Down, Scotty

Want solar without all the hassle of clouds and night? Beam it down from space. John Mankins of Space Power Association ran the first technical test on this old idea and announced the new results last week, reports Nature.

For less than $1 million and only 4 months of prep, Mankins transmitted microwaves from Maui to the neighboring island of Hawaii—proving that energy can be transmitted all the way through the atmosphere.

Here's the deal: Even on a sunny day, the atmosphere absorbs and scatters half the Sun's rays. Panels in orbit could collect it all, daytime, nighttime, and every time in between. Beam the energy via microwaves to the surface. The microwaves will pass unhindered through our 60-mile-thick atmosphere. Presto. 100-proof solar fuel.

So many solutions. But so many Galvestonians standing dumbfast as the storm approaches. Can we get moving? Please?

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Can't Afford Solar? Paint It White

Your roof, that is. A new study calculates that installing white roofs in the world's cities could offset 1.5 years of manmade carbon emissions, reports AAAS.

Light-colored roofs cool the planet in two ways. They reflect radiation back into space. And they keep your house cooler so you use less air conditioning.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the state of California estimated the global number of roofs and asphalt surfaces in cities and conservatively estimated they comprise 1 percent of Earth's surface. They then found that using light-colored concrete, or applying white glazes to buildings, could increase the reflectivity of urban surfaces by 10 percent, effectively negating 44 gigatons of CO2. In comparison, halting deforestation of tropical forests would eliminate about 7 gigatons of emissions.

Total global annual emissions from fossil fuels are currently running at about 28 gigatons.

The new snow: paint.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 15, 2008

French Pique-nique Tax

It's about time. The French, those pique-nique-aholics, are about to tax non-recyclable throwaway plates and cutlery. The tax would apply to non-recyclable cardboard but not plastic tableware. (Pourquoi pas?) It's part of a wider move to encourage people to use more eco-friendly products. Including (maybe) consumer electronics.

Reuters reports that France has already introduced the bonus-malus system for cars—taxing the most heavily polluting vehicles while giving tax breaks to greener ones. Le Figaro reports on a possible list of new taxable items: fridges, washing machines, televisions, batteries, and wooden furniture.

Sacré bleu. You mean while we've been dissing them with freedom fries and whatnot they've been trying to address some of the real terrors on planet Earth? FYI, I've been carrying two sets of plastic cutlery in my messenger bag for a couple of years now. Picnic-ready (toujours, n'est pas?) and trying to minimize my own trail of waste.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Oh Snap! Whitehouse on Offshore Drilling

There's been a lot of hemming and hawing about offshore drilling lately, but none so succinct and pithy as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-RI) neat little dressing down of the idea, caught on YouTube:

September 12, 2008

Dam Aliens

Freshwater ecosystems are losing even more species than terrestrial or marine environments. Why? Because of dams. More than 80,000 major dams and 2.5 million smaller reservoirs have altered natural hydrology across the U.S. The result: nearly 1,000 introduced species disrupting native aquatic systems.

The study published in the September Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment concludes that dam construction and biological invasions are closely linked, reports Environmental Science & Technology.

A University of Colorado Boulder team analyzed conditions in 4200 natural lakes and 1081 impoundments in Wisconsin and Michigan. They looked at five widespread nuisance species: Eurasian water milfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum), zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), spiny water flea (Bythotrephes longimanus), rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax), and rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus).

Species were 2.4 to 7.8 times more likely to occur in dammed water bodies than in natural lakes. Reservoirs were significantly more prone to hosting multiple non-natives. Boaters and fishers are the unwitting coyotes smuggling in the aliens. Zebra mussels attach to boat bottoms. Milfoil plants clings to boat trailers. Smelt and crayfish used to be used as bait, though that's now illegal.

Of course the troubles with dams don't end there. Some large dammed areas become major greenhouse gas emitters (though in all fairness hydroelectric plants are way cleaner than coal). Many dams disrupt fish breeding cycles. Many large dams submerge unique ecosystems and/or human cultures and artifacts. Some superlarge dams and their lakes may stress load earthquake faults.

Just to make things even weirder, there are now plans to log a Ghanaian forest submerged by the Akosombo Dam that created Lake Volta nearly 50 years ago. Old-growth, rot-resistant hardwood trees like ebony, wawa, and odum are still in excellent shape underwater, reports ENN. The project is led by a privately owned Canadian company, CSR Developments. They aim to harvest 1500 million cubic feet of timber worth about $4 billion. They estimated there are 12 million acres of salvageable submerged tropical timber in hydroelectric reservoirs.

Ideally the underwater harvet would help slow deforestation on land and curb emissions of greenhouse gases linked to burning of forests.

Stay tuned.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 10, 2008

It's the Coal, Stupid

Burning fossil fuels accounts for 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric CO2 in industrial times. Now NASA researchers Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen show that CO2 can be kept below harmful levels as long as emissions from coal are phased out within the next few decades. In other words, we can burn all the oil and gas that's left on Earth and still avoid really dangerous climate change.

Previous research shows the super dangerous level of global warming will occur if CO2 in the atmosphere exceeds a concentration of 450 parts per million. It's currently at about 385 ppm, up from a pre-industrial 280 ppm.

The research revolved around five emissions scenarios spanning the years 1850-2100. Each reflects a different estimate for peak of fossil fuel production—an important yet unknown variable. On one end was the "business-as-usual" scenario. The other scenarios included reducing emissions from coal. First by developed countries starting in 2013. Then by developing countries a decade later. Finally leading to a global phase out by 2050. The last three scenarios consider different dates for peak oil.

The bottom line is clear. . .

Even if we calculate unconstrained emissions from conventional oil and gas, there is simply not enough of these fuels left to take CO2 above 450 parts per million. On the other hand, coal and unconventional fuels like methane hydrates and tar sands contain much more fossil carbon than conventional oil and gas and should be pahsed out or never started up in the first place.

"Because coal is much more plentiful than oil and gas, reducing coal emissions is absolutely essential to avoid 'dangerous' climate change brought about by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration exceeding 450 parts per million," Kharecha said. "The most important mitigation strategy we recommend—a phase-out of carbon dioxide emissions from coal within the next few decades—is feasible using current or near-term technologies."

Cut the coal, save the world. Clean coal? Don't be an oxymoron.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

September 9, 2008

Another "Incident" at French Nuclear Plant

A security incident has occurred at a French nuclear site already under scrutiny due to other scares this summer. Reuters reports that two fuel units became snagged in a reactor at Tricastin in southern France on Monday morning when site workers were removing them for maintenance. The reactor building was evacuated. The incident was still being dealt with on Monday evening.

The incident is the latest of several that have highlighted safety concerns in France's nuclear industry, the biggest in Europe, accounting for 80 percent of French power generation. In July, 8,000 gallons of liquid containing nonenriched uranium was accidentally poured onto the ground and into a river at Tricastin, prompting safety checks at all of France's 19 nuclear sites. Weeks later, around 100 staff at the site were contaminated with a low dose of radiation.

An apt reminder that nukes are one of the deadlier solutions to our energy troubles.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.