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What causes hurricanes, thunderstorms, and severe weather? How are weather forecasts made? Are weather and climate changing? What type of research is being done currently in the atmospheric sciences? Learn the answers to these and other weather or climate questions AND earn NW credit from a course in ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES:
ATM S 101: Weather (5) NW SLN 10593
MTWTh 10:30-11:20 – Th or F Quiz times vary; KNE 220
General overview of weather, climate, and atmospheric phenomena (clouds, hurricanes, global weather patterns, etc.) Prerequisites: None. Open to all undergraduates Prof. Jerome Patoux, [email protected]
ATM S 111: Global Warming (5) NW SLN 10603
TTh 10:30-12:20 – Th or F Quiz times vary; KNE 210
Scientists predict severe environmental consequences from global warming unless the energy basis of the world’s economy is rapidly and dramatically transformed. This course will examine the scientific basis of those predictions and the role of science in developing policy responses. Prerequisites: None. Open to all undergraduates
Prof. Cecilia Bitz, [email protected]
ATM S 211: Climate Change (5) NW SLN 10612
MTWTh 10:30-11:20 – F Quiz times vary
Intro to the science of climate change and its causes. Suitable for non-science majors. Students with interests in environmental science and/or policy, the life sciences and engineering are encouraged to enroll. Prerequisites: None. Open to all undergraduates. Prof. David Battisti, [email protected]
ATM S 212: Air Pollution (5) NW SLN 19741
MTWThF 10:30-11:20; ATG 310C
Intro to air pollution on local, regional, and global scales. We will focus on the sources, transformation, and dispersion of pollutants responsible for urban smog, acid rain, climate change and the stratospheric ozone hole. We will examine the health and environmental effects of air pollutants, as well as current (or potential) technological solutions and international policy regulations. Prerequisites: None. Open to all undergraduates.
Becky Alexander, [email protected]
Please join us:
Date: Wednesday, December 7th
Time: 4:00pm – 6:00pm
Location: Fishery Sciences Building (FSH) room 107 http://washington.edu/maps/FSH
ESS is offering a new course–being taught at ESS 490 A for winter quarter:
Introduction to Geological GIS with Dr. Steven Walters (No pre-reqs)
PLEASE NOTE: This course will be offered as ESS 420 in future quarters.
There is plenty of space in some of our 100-level ESS courses!
ESS 100 Dinosaurs (2) NW
Biology, behavior, ecology, evolution, and extinction of dinosaurs, and a history of their exploration. With dinosaurs as focal point, course also introduces the student to how hypotheses in geological and paleobiological science are formulated and tested.
ESS 101 Introduction to Geological Sciences (5) NW
After taking this course students will never look at the Earth the same! Students will learn about how the Earth evolved from primordial dust to form the compositionally zoned planet upon which life now exists. Students will learn about the unifying concept of plate tectonics, which will provide them with a framework to understand the why and where of earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain belts, ocean basins and rock types in their surrounding world. Students will become amateur geologists and drive their friends and families crazy with their new-found knowledge. Students will also learn about time and its importance to the geologic record. Students will learn that geologists pay more for their dates than Hollywood’s most elite stars! This course will provide students with important information about geologic hazards, which will perhaps one day save lives or personal property. If students love the outdoors, this course will give them many opportunities to visit spectacular geologic sites around Washington state through the ESS 101 optional weekend field trip program. PLUS: check out an awesome video about ESS 101! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkO5qzuizM8&feature=youtu.be
ESS 102 Space and Space Travel (5) NW
Explores powering the sun, making of space weather conditions, observations from space and from Earth, Earth’ s space environment, radiation belts and hazards, plasma storms and auroras, electron beams, spacecraft requirements, tooling up for manned exploration
ESS 103 Minerals and Gems (3) NW
Introduction to the nature of minerals: composition, structure, physical properties, and origins, with emphasis on gem minerals. Focuses on topicsof particular interest in gemology, such as mechanisms of color, history and lore of gems, and uses of gems. Hands-on laboratories using about one hundred representative gems and minerals.
ESS 104 Prehistoric Life (3) NW
Fossils and how they are preserved. What fossils tell us about past life and environments. How the history of life unfolded and what caused the great events in biological evolution. Open to non-science majors, but also lays a foundation for higher-level geobiology courses.
Anyone who enjoyed ESS 101 with Dr. Terry Swanson can take his course this winter:
ESS 315 Environmental Earth Science (5) NW
Analysis of geologic constraints upon human activity and the environmental consequences of such activity. Topics include hillslope processes, fluvial and groundwater processes, earthquake and volcanic hazards, and environmental aspects of deforestation and atmospheric pollution. (Pre-req: ESS 101)
The Environmental Health Research Experience Program (EHREP) is a funded nine week, summer experience for undergraduates with interest in an interdisciplinary field that uses the tools of science to solve human health problems related to the environment. EHREP provides students with hands on experience in laboratories of leading researchers, introduces them to key environmental and occupational health issues while offering research exposure that will help them become competitive for graduate school. Students will work full-time under the supervision of a faculty mentor and will receive a stipend of $5,200.
The program is meant for students underrepresented in the sciences. The deadline for student applications is February 15, 2012.
Program website: http://www.ehrep.washington.edu
EH REP is made possible by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Environmental and occupational health is the study of human health in the environment. The field concerns itself with maintaining a safe supply of food and drinking water; discovering the mechanisms of environmentally related diseases; treating and disposing of solid and toxic wastes; reducing air, water, food, and noise pollution; and controlling workplace hazards.
ATTENTION Ocean Enthusiasts!
Are you interested in helping to engage and inspire the next generation of ocean scientists? Become an Orca Bowl Volunteer!
Please join us for Orca Bowl Orientation on Wednesday, November 30th – 5:30-7:00pm. Where: Marine Sciences Building (MSB) Room 123, University of Washington, Seattle Campus. Prizes will be available!
This orientation aims to provide new volunteers (or those interested in learning more about the competition) with introductory information about the Orca Bowl and an overview of different roles volunteers play during the competition. Come and learn more about how you can get involved and why volunteers like you are key to Orca Bowl’s success!
If you decide to continue with us as a volunteer, this session will count as one of your 2 required trainings for the competition. An interactive campus map can be found at http://www.washington.edu/maps/. Metered street parking is available along Boat Street.
Snacks will be provided. Please RSVP to [email protected] so we know how much food to bring.
Mark your calendars, the Orca Bowl competition is Saturday, March 3, 2012 and will be held at the University of Washington – Seattle Campus.
If you have volunteered for Orca Bowl in the past, please a) let us know you are interested in volunteering again and b) mark your calendar and RSVP for the volunteer practice dates listed at the end of this message (we ask that you attend at least 2 prior to the competition). You do not need to attend the orientation session.
Orca Bowl is March 3, 2012
What is the Orca Bowl, you ask?
Orca Bowl is one of 25 regional components of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB). Its Washington’s regional ocean sciences bowl competition for high school students.
When and where is the Orca Bowl in 2012?
Saturday, March 3, 2012 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. at the University of Washington campus, Seattle
Orca Bowl is fun – and it can’t happen without its volunteers – that means YOU!
Your contribution enables high school students from the across the state to demonstrate their knowledge, meet ocean scientists and professionals (you!) and enjoy the activities surrounding the regional competition at the UW.
What do volunteers do?
You may sign up as a competition official or as a general volunteer. General volunteers assist with logistics up to and on the day of the competition. For information on the roles of competition officials, go to: http://www.nosb.org/volunteers/. All volunteers must attend at least TWO training dates (see dates below) and be available on the day of the competition March 3, 2012. New volunteers should attend one Orientation Session and at least one Training Session.
How do I learn more about Orca Bowl?
Check out our website at http://www.wsg.washington.edu/education/events/orca/get_involved.html or contact Maile Sullivan at [email protected].
How Do I Sign Up?
Just reply to [email protected]. Tell us which volunteer role you’d like, or wait and learn more at the kick off and the first training session before you pick your role. We’ll do our best to accommodate your preference. Scheduled training dates are listed below.
We hope you will join us as a volunteer this year!
Training Session, Wed. January 11 from 5:30-7:30 Location TBD
Training Session, Tues. January 24 from 5:30-7:30 Location TBD
Training Session, Thurs. February 2 from 5:30-7:30 Location TBD
Training Session, Wed. February 15 from 5:30-7:30 Location TBD
Question Review Sessions, required for moderators and science judges: TBD in February 2012.
If you have a few minutes, check out the latest Atmospheric Science Outreach video featuring a cameo by our chair, Dale Durran… This is the third in the series, all are available on the Outreach YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/UWAtmosOutreach).
FISH 497 A: Scientific Writing and Communication will provide students with experience reading, writing, and presenting scientific papers. It is designed for undergraduate students early in their careers, and will focus on both the principles and mechanics of scientific communication.
Student learning goals
Read scientific papers in a critical and efficient manner.
Formulate and refine scientific hypotheses.
Write and edit scientific papers, including use of text, tables, figures, and references.
Present scientific information verbally.
Understand ethical issues regarding scientific communication, including acquisition of data, acknowledgement of assistance, and referencing of work done by others.
General method of instruction
Class will involve extensive interactions between the instructor and students, and among the students, including small writing assignments, oral presentations, web searches, extensive use of computers, and peer editing.
Udergraduate standing and a desire to improve communication skills.
Class assignments and grading
Numerous small assignments including writing, editing, web searches, and presentations. Participation and improvement will be emphasized because students may differ in background, command of English, and other attributes related to writing ability. A paper in scientific format and an oral presentation will be major components of the grade.
Interested in environmental education?
Thinking about what to do during Spring Break?
Want to work with amazing young people across the state of Washington?
Apply for Pipeline Project’s 2012 Environmental Alternative Spring Break (EASB) program!
The Pipeline Project is sending two teams of five students to two Washington state schools (Quileute Tribal School, La Push & Brewster Elementary School, Brewster) during UW’s spring break from March 18th-March 23rd to work on an environmental education project. UW students will facilitate environmental science lessons with elementary and middle school students and learn about the local ecology and environmental issues of the region. This project is a part of the larger Pipeline Alternative Spring Break Projects that facilitate literacy/arts projects across the state of Washington.
Environmental ASB members will enroll in a 2-credit EDUC 401 preparation seminar during Winter quarter 2011 (Thursdays from 4:30-5:50 pm) to plan, design and practice an inquiry-based, hands-on environmental science curriculum to be taught during spring break. Students will also explore issues of rural and tribal education in addition to the field of environmental education. In addition, students will tutor in a local environmental education program or classroom during the winter quarter for 2 – 2.5 hours/week.
Interested? Apply now! Applications due on Monday, November 14th at 5:00 pm. Please visit our website for application instructions and materials:
Here is a list of all environmentally related courses of interest appropriate for freshmen and non-majors for Winter Quarter 2012:
- ATM S 101 – Weather (NW)
- ATM S 111 – Global Warming (NW)
- ATM S 211 – Climate Change (NW)
- ATM S 212 – Air Pollution (NW)
- ATM S 220 – Exploring the Atmospheric Sciences Seminar
- CEP 200 – Introduction to Community & Environmental Planning (I&S)
- ENV H 580 – Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Seminar
- ENVIR 100 – Introduction to Environmental Studies (I&S/NW)
- ESRM 100 – Introduction to Environmental Science – online (I&S/NW)
- ESRM 190 – Sustaining Our Environment (I&S/NW)
- ESRM 429 – Water Center Seminar
- ESRM 455 – Wildlife Seminar
- ESS 100 – Dinosaurs (NW)
- ESS 101 – Introduction to Geological Sciences (NW)
- ESS 102 – Space and Space Travel (NW)
- ESS 103 – Minerals and Gems (NW)
- ESS 104 – Prehistoric Life (NW)
- ESS 106 – Living with Volcanoes (I&S/NW)
- FISH 101 – Water And Society (I&S/NW)
- OCEAN 102 – The Changing Oceans (I&S/NW)
- OCEAN 121 – Deep Sea Exploration (NW)
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What happens to the land and water affects us all.
“We are suffering from drought terribly at this place. Half a crop of wheat, and tobacco, and two-thirds a crop of corn are the most we can expect.” — Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, August 31, 1815
For a week now the skies have been overcast, threatening rain. Plump, gray clouds heavy with moisture loom overhead. Instinctively, we reach for our umbrellas before we go outdoors. It seems inconceivable that the heavens will not open and release a torrential downpour. And yet the heavens do not. There is not even a sprinkle. The clouds move on sluggishly to taunt others, and blue skies return.
As we drive through rural Monroe County, Illinois, the air buzzing with the hum of locusts, we pass rows of sweet corn withering on the stalk. Since the spring, the St. Louis area has experienced two brief periods of precipitation, one lasted a few hours, the other a few minutes. Mr. Kruze, a family farmer from nearby Columbia, Illinois, from whom we buy heirloom tomatoes and freestone peaches at the Soulard Farmer’s Market (est. 1779), has not seen a drop. The Kruzes farm some of the best cropland in the valley, the rich, black bottomland beneath the Mississippi River bluffs. From his fields, situated farther west than downtown St. Louis, you can see on a clear day the Gateway Arch to the north.
The Kruzes have been watering their fields daily with Columbia city water, which they purchase by the gallon. Some crops require more care than others. “I’ve got a soaker hose on the tomatoes 24 hours a day,” Mr. Kruze says. Each day the drought drags on his profit margin shrinks. Others are finding creative ways to address the lack of rainfall. Mr. Kruze’s sister, who owns the farm next door, has an old well with water high in nitrates. The water is undrinkable, but it can be salvaged to water root crops like carrots and potatoes.
Those of us with a weak connection to the soil and watersheds scarcely notice the drought, save those suburbanites who have had to run the sprinklers continually to keep their lawns fresh and green (in some subdivisions, a brown lawn can result in a steep fine for homeowners) and have noticed an extra zero on the water bill. Those who work with the land or on the water, however, have felt it profoundly. Soon we will all feel it at the checkout line of our local grocery store. We may think we have lost our connection to farming, but we are deluding ourselves. “Eating is an agricultural act,” the poet Wendell Berry reminds us.
THE DROUGHT HAS slowed commerce on the nearby Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers as barge operators have had to reduce cargo loads. Every one inch loss of water decreases the carrying capacity of a barge by 17 tons, according to the American Waterways Operators. Some barges have stopped running altogether. Some end up on sandbars stalling river traffic. This too increases costs to farmers.
All of this will mean higher prices for us urban-dwellers. Such things used to be common knowledge, back when we were only one or two generations removed from the land. What happens to the land and water affects us all. This summer we are having to relearn this.
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
H/T to National Review Online
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Boffins BREAK BREAD's genetic code: Miracle of the loaves
Climate change? Population growth? Maybe science can help
A crack team of international boffins have done a "shotgun sequencing" of the wheat genome that will help increase wheat yields and thereby feed the world.
Wheat is one of the big three globally important foods, along with rice and maize, and it accounts for 20 per cent of the calories consumed by the entire human race.
Improving existing crop yields and resistance to disease is the best way of feeding a growing world population, given the lack of land to plant to wheat.
The bread wheat genome is incredibly complex, having descended from three ancient grass species, it has around five times the amount of DNA found in a human genome. A lot of the genome consists of repeated sequences, but it has so far been difficult for scientists to figure out which bits are repeats and which are unique.
Instead of decoding the entire genome, the researchers concentrated on one of the ancient ancestors of wheat and used that, along with comparisons to a range of other grasses like barley, to to help figure out which sequences which were repeats.
The ancient parent species Aegilops tauschii was decoded by a US team led by Jan Dvorak at the University of California Davis and Richard McCombie at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, along with boffins from the USDA, Kansas State University and North Dakota State University.
That team passed the sequence onto British boffins from the Universities of Liverpool and Bristol, the John Innes Centre and the European Bioinformatics Institute.
"The raw data of the wheat genome is like having tens of billions of scrabble letters; you know which letters are present, and their quantities, but they need to be assembled on the board in the right sequence before you can spell out their order into genes," Professor Neil Hall of the University of Liverpool said.
"We've identified about 96,000 genes and placed them in an approximate order. This has made a strong foundation for both further refinement of the genome and for identifying useful genetic variation in genes that scientists and breeders can use for crop improvement."
Even though the full sequence hasn't been mapped yet, what the boffins have done so far will help to develop new varieties of wheat.
"This research enables breeders and researchers to generate huge numbers of genetic markers to identify regions of the wheat genome carrying useful traits. This is one of the key practical uses of the genome resources we created," Professor Mike Bevan of Liverpool said.
"With markers, breeders can track the genetic makeup of plants when new varieties are being bred. Plants lacking the desired traits can be eliminated more efficiently, and those with desired characteristic identified more quickly, speeding up the production of new varieties from a far wider range of wheat varieties, including wild relatives that have many useful traits such as disease and stress tolerance."
The study, which also had help from the Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology in Munich, was published in Nature. ®
Re: Colour me unimpressed
I am the 99%.
Now make me a sandwich.
"that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."
Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver's Travels
That's genetic engineering, and we all know genetic engineered crops make you into a slave of the NWO! And they give you cancers and stop you from opening your ar*ehole chakra! And your aura will be very sad and might leave you!
(I am, of course, doing a rather ham-fisted attempt at joking, but there are plenty of nutters that will use the exact same arguments with a straight face.)
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Cutting down CO2 emissions could help increase the amount of power generated by renewable cheap energy sources, a new report says.
According to a study by Greenpeace, the world could produce 95 per cent of the electricity it needs from sustainable sources within 40 years by reducing greenhouse emissions from the energy and transport sectors by 80 per cent.
The Energy [R]evolution report estimates that the transition to a low carbon economy will require total investments of $18 trillion (£12.4 trillion) by 2030 and eco policies such as energy efficiency standards, feed-in tariffs and smart grids.
Moreover, 12 million jobs could be created in the energy sector by 2030, with 8.5 million in the renewables sector alone.
Sven Teske, Greenpeace International's senior energy expert, said: "The 2010 Energy Revolution report outlines pathways towards a 100 per cent renewable energy supply for the world.
"It demonstrates that there is no technological barrier to achieving this vision and reaping its many benefits in terms of the environment and jobs."
If you want to find out more about your energy options and how you could save up to £378 in minutes, click here.
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Guest Author - Tracey-Kay Caldwell
Overworked? Stressed out? Is it killing you? Well some scientists are beginning to think that might be what is killing our commercial bee colonies. We are working them to death. Commercial beekeepers have been experiencing colony collapse; the bees are abandoning their hives and dropping dead. Scientist have been scrambling to figure out why the colonies are collapsing before financial and economic disaster strike.
Honeybees are not indigenous to North America. Our native plants will survive without bees and the pollination they bring. But so many crops grown in the United States, things we think of as everyday foods, like almonds, grapes, plums, cucumbers, cantaloupe, asparagus, apples, cherries, tomatoes and zucchini depend on bees for pollination. It used to be that a farmer or orchard grower would invite a beekeeper to keep his hives on his land in an agreement that benefited both. The bee’s work would operate on a natural schedule, working with the seasons, and hibernating in the winters.
But big agribusiness doesn’t work that way. The bees must accommodate their schedule. Rather than living on the land and doing their work naturally, they, and their hives are trucked in for the two week pollination season, and then trucked to another part of the country to do the same work. In the course of a year a hive can be trucked from California to North Dakota and then to Florida. All this traveling doesn’t allow for much of a winter hibernation, as the almond pollination season begins mid February.
When hives occur naturally in the wild, an square mile will support three or four hives. The bees enjoy a diverse diet of pollen and nectar from a variety of plants the diversity of this diet provides a rich mix of protein, fats, minerals, vitamins and micronutrients. But life is very different for a bee living in a commercial, agribusiness hive. The hives are crammed close to together in rows that are just a few feet apart. Because there is not enough forage to support that many bees, the bees are fed high-fructose corn syrup. Add to that the dearth of pollen last year because of drought and temperature changes, and the bees may be suffering from malnutrition. This would may them more susceptible to the concentration of viruses and diseases that occur when living creatures are housed in high-density conditions.
Commercial bee keeping operations make most of their money from pollination and not honey. Many even kill off their hives at the end of the season so as to not have maintenance cost in non productive periods. Food activists have been warning us that agribusiness’s way of growing food is dangerous to our health, it appears now it may also be dangerous to the health of bees.
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The Chemists in the Library Working Group has compiled these electronic and print resources for further exploration of the theme of National Chemistry Week: Earth's Atmosphere and Beyond!. The resources have been classified by grade level and annotated.
- Composition of Earth's Atmosphere
- What the atmosphere is made of, how it came to be that way, and how it could change in the future.
- The forces behind weather and how to forecast it. Also a special section on storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes.
- Ozone Hole
- The history of the ozone hole and how ozone depletion affects us.
- Global Warming and Climate Change
- How scientists measure global warming, what may be causing it, and its impact.
- Extraterrestrial Atmospheres -- Mars
- All about the planet next door and the Mars Rover missions.
- The History of Flight
- The Wright Brothers, how airplanes have changed over the years, and the principles behind flight.
- A - Z
- Alphabetical list of selected resources as PDF files. More items are included on the web site.
- Reference Shelf
- Sources of basic reference information.
- How to Find More in Your Library
- Find other interesting books by searching your library's catalog or by browsing certain call numbers in your library's stacks.
- How to Find More on the Web
- Find other interesting web sites using search engines and subject directories.
Copyright © 2003 American Chemical Society
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Altitude or height is defined based on the context in which it is used (aviation, geometry, geographical survey, sport, and more). As a general definition, altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The reference datum also often varies according to the context. Although the term altitude is commonly used to mean the height above sea level of a location, in geography the term elevation is often preferred for this usage.
Vertical distance measurements in the "down" direction are commonly referred to as depth.
Altitude in aviation and in spaceflight
In aviation, the term altitude can have several meanings, and is always qualified by either explicitly adding a modifier (e.g. "true altitude"), or implicitly through the context of the communication. Parties exchanging altitude information must be clear which definition is being used.
Aviation altitude is measured using either Mean Sea Level (MSL) or local ground level (Above Ground Level, or AGL) as the reference datum.
Pressure altitude divided by 100 feet (30m) as the flight level, and is used above the transition altitude (18,000 feet (5,500 m) in the US, but may be as low as 3,000 feet (910 m) in other jurisdictions); so when the altimeter reads 18,000 ft on the standard pressure setting the aircraft is said to be at "Flight level 180". When flying at a Flight Level, the altimeter is always set to standard pressure (29.92 inHg / 1013.25 mbar).
On the flight deck, the definitive instrument for measuring altitude is the pressure altimeter, which is an aneroid barometer with a front face indicating distance (feet or metres) instead of atmospheric pressure.
There are several types of aviation altitude:
- Indicated altitude is the reading on the altimeter when the altimeter is set to the local barometric pressure at Mean Sea Level.
- Absolute altitude is the height of the aircraft above the terrain over which it is flying. Also referred to feet/metres above ground level (AGL).
- True altitude is the actual elevation above mean sea level. It is Indicated Altitude corrected for non-standard temperature and pressure. In UK aviation radiotelephony usage, the vertical distance of a level, a point or an object considered as a point, measured from mean sea level; this is referred to over the radio as altitude.(see QNH)
- Height is the elevation above a ground reference point, commonly the terrain elevation. In UK aviation radiotelephony usage, the vertical distance of a level, a point or an object considered as a point, measured from a specified datum; this is referred to over the radio as height, where the specified datum is the airfield elevation (see QFE)
- Pressure altitude is the elevation above a standard datum air-pressure plane (typically, 1013.25 millibars or 29.92" Hg). Pressure altitude and indicated altitude are the same when the altimeter is set to 29.92" Hg or 1013.25 millibars.
- Density altitude is the altitude corrected for non-ISA International Standard Atmosphere atmospheric conditions. Aircraft performance depends on density altitude, which is affected by barometric pressure, humidity and temperature. On a very hot day, density altitude at an airport (especially one at a high elevation) may be so high as to preclude takeoff, particularly for helicopters or a heavily loaded aircraft.
These types of altitude can be explained more simply as various ways of measuring the altitude:
- Indicated altitude – the altimeter reading
- Absolute altitude – altitude in terms of the distance above the ground directly below
- True altitude – altitude in terms of elevation above sea level
- Height – altitude in terms of the distance above a certain point
- Pressure altitude – the air pressure in terms of altitude in the International Standard Atmosphere
- Density altitude – the density of the air in terms of altitude in the International Standard Atmosphere
- Troposphere — surface to 8,000 metres (5.0 mi) at the poles – 18,000 metres (11 mi) at the equator, ending at the Tropopause.
- Stratosphere — Troposphere to 50 kilometres (31 mi)
- Mesosphere — Stratosphere to 85 kilometres (53 mi)
- Thermosphere — Mesosphere to 675 kilometres (419 mi)
- Exosphere — Thermosphere to 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi)
High altitude and low air pressure
Regions on the Earth's surface (or in its atmosphere) that are high above mean sea level are referred to as high altitude. High altitude is sometimes defined to begin at 2,400 metres (8,000 ft) above sea level.
At high altitude, atmospheric pressure is lower than that at sea level. This is due to two competing physical effects: gravity, which causes the air to be as close as possible to the ground; and the heat content of the air, which causes the molecules to bounce off each other and expand.
Because of the lower pressure, the air expands as it rises, which causes it to cool. Thus, high altitude air is cold, which causes a characteristic alpine climate. This climate dramatically affects the ecology at high altitude.
Relation between temperature and altitude in Earth's atmosphere
The environmental lapse rate (ELR), is the rate of decrease of temperature with altitude in the stationary atmosphere at a given time and location. As an average, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) defines an international standard atmosphere (ISA) with a temperature lapse rate of 6.49 K(°C)/1,000 m (3.56 °F or 1.98 K(°C)/1,000 Ft) from sea level to 11 kilometres (36,000 ft). From 11 to 20 kilometres (36,000 to 66,000 ft), the constant temperature is −56.5 °C (−69.7 °F), which is the lowest assumed temperature in the ISA. The standard atmosphere contains no moisture. Unlike the idealized ISA, the temperature of the actual atmosphere does not always fall at a uniform rate with height. For example, there can be an inversion layer in which the temperature increases with height.
Effects of high altitude on humans
Medicine recognizes that altitudes above 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) start to affect humans, and extreme altitudes above 5,500–6,000 metres (18,000–20,000 ft) cannot be permanently tolerated by humans. As the altitude increases, atmospheric pressure decreases, which affects humans by reducing the partial pressure of oxygen. The lack of oxygen above 2,400 metres (8,000 ft) can cause serious illnesses such as altitude sickness, high altitude pulmonary edema, and high altitude cerebral edema. The higher the altitude, the more likely are serious effects. The human body can adapt to high altitude by breathing faster, having a higher heart rate, and adjusting its blood chemistry. It can take days or weeks to adapt to high altitude. However, above 8,000 metres (26,000 ft), (in the "death zone"), the human body cannot adapt and will eventually die.
There is a significantly lower overall mortality rate for permanent residents at higher altitudes. Additionally, there is a dose response relationship between increasing elevation and decreasing obesity prevalence in the United States. However, people living at higher elevations have a statistically significant higher rate of suicide. The cause for the increased suicide risk is unknown so far.
For athletes, high altitude produces two contradictory effects on performance. For explosive events (sprints up to 400 metres, long jump, triple jump) the reduction in atmospheric pressure signifies less atmospheric resistance, which generally results in improved athletic performance. For endurance events (races of 5,000 metres or more) the predominant effect is the reduction in oxygen which generally reduces the athlete's performance at high altitude. Sports organisations acknowledge the effects of altitude on performance: the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF), for example, have ruled that performances achieved at an altitude greater than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) will not be approved for record purposes.
Athletes also can take advantage of altitude acclimatization to increase their performance. The same changes that help the body cope with high altitude increase performance back at sea level. These changes are the basis of altitude training which forms an integral part of the training of athletes in a number of endurance sports including track and field, distance running, triathlon, cycling and swimming.
Effect of altitude on animals
Decreased oxygen availability and decreased temperature make life at high altitude challenging. Despite these environmental conditions, many species have been successfully adapted at high altitudes. Animals have developed physiological adaptations to enhance oxygen uptake and delivery to tissues which can be used to sustain metabolism. The strategies used by animals to adapt to high altitude depend on their morphology and phylogeny.
Fish at high altitudes may also have a lower metabolic rate, as has been shown in highland westslope cutthroat trout compared to introduced lowland rainbow trout in the Oldman River basin. There is also a general trend of smaller body sizes and lower species richness at high altitudes observed in aquatic invertebrates, likely due to lower oxygen partial pressures. These factors may decrease productivity in high altitude habitats, meaning there will be less energy available for consumption, growth, and activity, which provides an advantage to fish with lower metabolic demands.
The naked carp from Lake Qinghai, like other members of the carp family, can use gill remodelling to increase oxygen uptake in hypoxia. The response of naked carp to cold and low-oxygen conditions seem to be at least partly mediated by hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1). It is unclear whether this is a common characteristic in other high altitude dwelling fish or if gill remodelling and HIF-1 use for cold adaptation are limited to carp.
Rodents living at high altitude include deer mice, guinea pigs and rats. As small mammals they face the challenge of maintaining body heat in cold temperatures, due to their large volume to surface area ratio. As oxygen is used as a source of metabolic heat production, the hypobaric hypoxia at high altitudes is problematic.
There are a number of mechanisms that help them survive these harsh conditions including altered genetics of the hemoglobin gene in guinea pigs and deer mice. Deer mice use a high percentage of fats as metabolic fuel at high altitude to retain carbohydrates for small burst of energy. To convert fats to energy in the form of ATP, more oxygen is required than to convert the same amount of carbohydrates. The reason they use fats is believed to be because they have it in large stores, but also means that they must eat more or they will begin to lose weight.
Other physiological changes that occur in rodents at high altitude include increased breathing rate and altered morphology of the lungs and heart allowing more efficient gas exchange and delivery. Lungs of high altitude mice are larger, with more capillaries, and hearts of mice and rats at high altitude have a heavier right ventricle, which pumps blood to the lungs.
Birds have been especially successful at living at high altitudes. In general, birds have physiological features that are advantageous for high-altitude flight. The respiratory system of birds moves oxygen across the pulmonary surface during both inhalation and exhalation, making it more efficient than that of mammals. In addition, the air circulates in one direction through the parabronchioles in the lungs. Parabronchioles are oriented perpendicular to the pulmonary arteries, forming a cross-current gas exchanger. This arrangement allows for more oxygen to be extracted compared to mammalian concurrent gas exchange; as oxygen diffuses down its concentration gradient and the air gradually becomes more deoxygenated, the pulmonary arteries are still able to extract oxygen. Birds also have a high capacity for oxygen delivery to the tissues because they have larger hearts and cardiac stroke volume (mL / min) compared to mammals of similar body size. Additionally, they have an increased vascularization in flight muscle due to increased branching of capillaries and small muscle fibres (which increases surface-area-to-volume ratio). These two features facilitate oxygen diffusion from the blood to muscle, allowing flight to be sustained during environmental hypoxia. Bird's hearts and brains, which are very sensitive to arterial hypoxia, are more vascularized compared to mammals. The bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) is an iconic high flyer that surmounts the Himalayas during migration, and serves as a model system for derived physiological adaptations for high-altitude flight.
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- Downloadable ETOPO2 Raw Data Database (2 minute grid)
- Downloadable ETOPO5 Raw Data Database (5 minute grid)
- Find the altitude of any place
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Although March 8th marks the 101st anniversary of International Women's Day (first celebrated in the US in 1911), women and men are far from equals in 2012.
Only 16 percent of Fortune 500 board chairs are women, and the U.S. ranks 17th in the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report.
Still, in other parts of the globe, women are much worse off: Did you know that every minute one woman dies from often-preventable complications due to pregnancy and childbirth? Or that an estimated 50 million+ girls worldwide aren't in school? In many countries, rape is used against women and girls as a weapon of war, and sex trafficking and human slavery remain a very real problem. Poverty and hunger disproportionately affect females, and 70 percent of the world's poorest people are women.
Statistics may stun us, but there's so much we can do to impact change. Below are ten simple actions you can take right now to learn more about the inequality debate and improve the lives of women and girls everywhere.
- Join or host a potluck dinner. Dining for Women is a giving circle that supports women's programs year-round, and during the month of March, the organization is focusing on the Women's Earth Alliance. The Alliance implements water-related strategies to improve health, self-reliance and resilience to climate change. Find a dinner here.
- Sign a pledge. Help Every Mother Counts reduce needless maternal deaths by signing the MAMA pledge. Part of the Motherhood Around the Globe exhibit at the International Museum of Women, the Pledge will be given to policy makers and presented at the 2012 UN General Assembly. Sign the pledge here.
- Watch a movie on your laptop. On Wednesday, March 7 at 7:30 PM (EST) the humanitarian organization CARE presents a special live stream of the award-winning film, "Pray the Devil Back to Hell." The film tells the story of the brave Liberian women who took on a harsh regime and won peace for their country. Watch the movie here.
- Organize a bridge walk. On March 8, help Women for Women International assist women survivors of war in rebuilding their lives. From the Brooklyn Bridge to your neighborhood cul-de-sac, Join Women on the Bridge events are marches that unite women and men around the world in taking a stand for peace and women's equality. Find a local event here.
- Play an online trivia game. Help a mother feed her family. For each correct answer on Freerice.com, the World Food Programme will donate 10 grains of rice to help end hunger. Over 91 billion grains have been donated so far. Choose from dozens of categories including humanities, geography, math and more. Play the game here.
- Read a book. Learn about the courageous journey of anti-slavery activist Somaly Mam. In the vein of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" and Ishmael Beah's "A Long Way Gone," Mam's "The Road of Lost Innocence" is a story of triumph over years of sexual slavery and puts a face and a voice to a human rights disaster of global proportions. Click here to read an excerpt.
- Volunteer at a local women's shelter. The National Network to End Domestic Violence supports the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) and connects local domestic violence service providers and provides valuable resources for information about services, programs, legislation and policies that support survivors of domestic violence. Learn more here.
- Write a letter. Amnesty International's campaign "Demand Dignity" wants to end the injustice that perpetuates the cycle of poverty and disproportionately affects the livelihood of women and girls. Add your voice to those in poverty and help their rights count. Find out how here.
- Give yourself a history lesson. March is National Women's History Month. Read about women who broke rules and barriers and paved the way for future generations -- from suffragettes to artists to factory workers to the women in the military. And lend your signature to the campaign for a permanent home for the National Women's History Museum. Learn more here.
- Exercise your right. Many women have died for the right to vote. In this U.S. election year, it's important for every voice to be heard and every vote to count. Register here.
This March 8, I'm standing in solidarity with Annie Lennox and EQUALS to step up the call for an equal world. For more information and ways you can get involved, click here.
Follow Kristi York Wooten on Twitter:
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Pronunciation: (blak), [key]
—adj., -er, -est,
—n., v., adv.
1. lacking hue and brightness; absorbing light without reflecting any of the rays composing it.
2. characterized by absence of light; enveloped in darkness: a black night.
3. (sometimes cap.)
a. pertaining or belonging to any of the various populations characterized by dark skin pigmentation, specifically the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, Oceania, and Australia.
4. soiled or stained with dirt: That shirt was black within an hour.
5. gloomy; pessimistic; dismal: a black outlook.
6. deliberately; harmful; inexcusable: a black lie.
7. boding ill; sullen or hostile; threatening: black words; black looks.
8. (of coffee or tea) without milk or cream.
9. without any moral quality or goodness; evil; wicked: His black heart has concocted yet another black deed.
10. indicating censure, disgrace, or liability to punishment: a black mark on one's record.
11. marked by disaster or misfortune: black areas of drought; Black Friday.
12. wearing black or dark clothing or armor: the black prince.
13. based on the grotesque, morbid, or unpleasant aspects of life: black comedy; black humor.
14. (of a check mark, flag, etc.) done or written in black to indicate, as on a list, that which is undesirable, sub-standard, potentially dangerous, etc.: Pilots put a black flag next to the ten most dangerous airports.
15. illegal or underground: The black economy pays no taxes.
16. showing a profit; not showing any losses: the first black quarter in two years.
17. deliberately false or intentionally misleading: black propaganda.
18. Brit.boycotted, as certain goods or products by a trade union.
19. (of steel) in the form in which it comes from the rolling mill or forge; unfinished.
20. black or white, completely either one way or another, without any intermediate state.
1. the color at one extreme end of the scale of grays, opposite to white, absorbing all light incident upon it. Cf. white (def. 20).
2. (sometimes cap.)
a. a member of any of various dark-skinned peoples, esp. those of Africa, Oceania, and Australia.
3. black clothing, esp. as a sign of mourning: He wore black at the funeral.
4. Chess, Checkers.the dark-colored men or pieces or squares.
5. black pigment: lamp black.
6. Slang.See black beauty.
7. a horse or other animal that is entirely black.
8. black and white,
a. print or writing: I want that agreement in black and white.
b. a monochromatic picture done with black and white only.
c. a chocolate soda containing vanilla ice cream.
9. in the black, operating at a profit or being out of debt (opposed to in the red): New production methods put the company in the black.
1. to make black; put black on; blacken.
2. Brit.to boycott or ban.
3. to polish (shoes, boots, etc.) with blacking.
1. to become black; take on a black color; blacken.
2. black out,
a. to lose consciousness: He blacked out at the sight of blood.
b. to erase, obliterate, or suppress: News reports were blacked out.
c. to forget everything relating to a particular event, person, etc.: When it came to his war experiences he blacked out completely.
d. Theat.to extinguish all of the stage lights.
e. to make or become inoperable: to black out the radio broadcasts from the U.S.
f. Mil.to obscure by concealing all light in defense against air raids.
g. Radio and Television.to impose a broadcast blackout on (an area).
h. to withdraw or cancel (a special fare, sale, discount, etc.) for a designated period: The special air fare discount will be blacked out by the airlines over the holiday weekend.
(of coffee or tea) served without milk or cream.
Pronunciation: (blak), [key]
1. Hugo Lafayette, 1886–1971, U.S. political official: associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1937–71.
2. Joseph, 1728–99, Scottish physician and chemist.
3. Shirley Temple. See Temple, Shirley.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
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5.1 To make sustainable development a reality, it must be built into policies and decisions. This Strategy sets a broad framework to help that happen. But we also need specific measures to drive change, both at home and abroad.
5.2 The Government is putting sustainable development at the heart of every Government Department's work:
5.3 Following a commitment in the 1997 Labour Party Manifesto, the House of Commons established an Environmental Audit Committee to consider how policies and programmes of Government Departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development. The Government particularly welcomes the Committee's emerging practice of returning to topics to assess progress, and to identify where weaknesses still exist.
5.4 In future, whenever the Government creates a public body, it will consider whether to include sustainable development in its remit. It is reviewing the scope for including sustainable development as an objective of existing Departments and public bodies.
5.5 There are already appraisal systems which look separately at the economic, environmental, health, transport, regulatory and equal opportunities aspects of policies. The Government has strengthened mechanisms for environmental appraisal, including new policy guidance for Government Departments.1 It is committed to a better understanding of the impacts of policies on different groups in society, particularly women, ethnic minorities, and the disabled and ensuring that findings are taken into account in policy making.2
Road Proposals - new approach to appraisal
The Government has developed a new approach to the appraisal of road scheme proposals. Schemes, and other projects, are assessed against criteria of environmental impact; safety; economy; accessibility (to public transport services, for example); and integration with land use and other transport proposals and polices. This approach allows options for solving transport problems to be compared and decisions taken in the light of environmental, social and economic impacts. The new approach has been developed in consultation with English Nature, English Heritage, the Environment Agency and the former Countryside Commission (now Countryside Agency). Development is continuing so that it can be applied to other modes of transport.
5.6 For sustainable development to be achieved, economic, social and environmental impacts need to be considered together when policies are being devised or reviewed. The Modernising GovernmentWhite Paper commits the Government to produce and deliver an integrated system of impact assessment and appraisal tools in support of sustainable development, covering impacts on business, the environment, health and the needs of particular groups in society.3
The Women's Unit
In the past, women's views were often under-represented in policy making. The Minister for Women and the Women's Unit in the Cabinet Office now help to promote women's interests, and to communicate their concerns and insights. Many sustainable development issues are of particular concern to women - such as availability and safety of public transport, accessibility of facilities to parents with young children, and environmental health.
Taxes, regulation and other policy instruments
5.7 The Government will explore the scope for using economic instruments, such as taxes and charges, to deliver more sustainable development. Such measures can promote change, innovation and efficiency, and higher environmental standards. They are a way to put the 'polluter pays' principle into practice, although care is needed to consider the impact on competitiveness and the social consequences: for example, ensuring that the price of essential goods like fuel or water does not lead to hardship for the least well-off.
5.8 Over time, the Government will aim to reform the tax system in ways which deliver a more dynamic economy and a cleaner environment: shifting taxes from 'goods' like employment, towards 'bads' such as pollution. It will consider carefully how revenues from taxes are used, although there are no firm rules.4 The 1999 Budget included the biggest ever package of tax reforms to protect the environment.
Economic instruments for sustainable development
The Government has taken several measures to secure more sustainable development through economic instruments, including:
5.9 Subsidies, including tax relief, also have a role in some circumstances: for example, the 1999 Budget increased funding for the Government's rural transport fund to £120 million for the next two years, to extend the range of public transport services in rural communities. But care is needed not to subsidise changes which would have happened anyway. The Government will aim to avoid 'perverse subsidies' which, in promoting one objective, work against sustainable development overall. Future reporting on the strategy will include measures taken on environmental taxes and subsidies.
5.10 Where new regulation is used, it will conform to the Government's principles of better regulation, so that it is targeted at the problem in hand; clear and simple to understand; applied consistently, proportionate to the problem and the circumstances of individual businesses, voluntary groups and others; and enforced effectively and constructively by a body accountable for its conduct.5 Those regulated need flexibility to find reliable, cost-effective ways to comply.
5.11 The Government will continue to consider the scope for voluntary agreements with industry. It has, for example, asked the aggregates industry to deliver an improved package of voluntary measures which address the significant environmental costs of aggregate extraction. If the industry is unable to deliver, then an aggregates tax will be imposed.
5.12 Which instrument is appropriate has to be determined on a case by case basis, taking account of economic, social and environmental consequences. The Government, for example, has decided not to proceed with a national tax or charges on water pollution since research has shown that this may not be the most effective way of securing targeted improvements in water quality. Often the best solution will be to mix instruments.
5.13 Where the aim of policy instruments is to limit pollution, it may sometimes be necessary for those producing the pollution to incur higher expenditure on abatement equipment. In the long term, however, the aim should be to move to cleaner processes, rather than adding on clean-up equipment. The new set of sustainable development indicators includes an indicator of expenditure on pollution abatement. Increases in such expenditure are not, in themselves, a sign of sustainable development. But such an indicator, if taken in context with other indicators, can help to show up unsustainable trends: for example, if abatement expenditure and pollution both continued to rise.
Mixing instruments for better outcomes
Information and involvement
5.14 Improved awareness of sustainable development can be a powerful tool for change. In March 1998, the Government launched Are you doing your bit?, a campaign in England which focuses on specific issues related to sustainable development and shows people how they can influence their local and global environment. Early themes covered climate change and energy efficiency, transport and air quality. In 1999, it will extend to packaging, waste and water conservation, and links between transport and health. The Government will work with public bodies, voluntary organisations, business and trade unions to reinforce the campaign's messages.
5.15 In 1998, the Government set up the Sustainable Development Education Panel, whose remit covers schools, further and higher education bodies, and education in work, recreation and the home. The Panel's first Annual Report sets goals for the next ten years, and makes recommendations to a wide range of stakeholders.6 The Government will respond to the Report later in 1999. The Panel has made recommendations on sustainable development education to the National Curriculum review, setting out what children should know about sustainable development by the ages of 7, 11, 14 and 16. Consultation on the revised National Curriculum will take place later in 1999, before its formal introduction in 2000.
The Children's Parliament on the Environment
The Government launched this competition for 10-11 year old schoolchildren in 1998 as an opportunity for schools to develop children's understanding of sustainable development and the democratic process. Children from 3,500 schools registered to take part in the competition which involved essay writing and debating competitions. Six winners from each region will take part in the Children's Parliament in May. The children will be able to question Government Ministers and present their action plan to the Prime Minister.
5.16 Many responses to Opportunities for changewanted the media, in particular television, to give sustainable development a higher profile. The Government will aim to help: for example, through information on the headline indicators and awareness raising through Are you doing your bit?.
5.17 The Government will continue to consult widely on policies related to sustainable development. It will consider the potential of methods highlighted in the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's 1998 report on Setting Environmental Standards:7 for example, consensus conferences and citizens juries. It has set up the People's Panel, which consists of 5,000 people selected at random from across the country, to seek views on how to improve public services.
5.18 The Government's proposed Freedom of Information Act will mean new rights to information, including improved rights to environmental information.8 To provide better information on industrial processes and the substances they release to the environment, the Government is developing, through the Environment Agency, a new pollution inventory to replace the current Chemical Release Inventory.
Research and advice
5.19 Research, analysis and innovation are fundamental for long term change. Much takes place in the private sector; and the Government will continue to encourage this through schemes to support research and development and the spread of best practice and networking. More generally, the Comprehensive Spending Review9 delivered an additional £1.4 billion over three years in funding for science.
5.20 The Government has made sustainable development an underpinning theme of its Foresight programme.10 Foresight aims to promote wealth creation and better quality of life by looking at future needs, opportunities and threats, and how developments in science could help the UK to meet these challenges.
5.21 The next stage of Foresight will consider the ageing population, manufacturing changes in the next twenty years, and crime prevention, as well as important sectors: the built environment and transport; chemicals; defence and aerospace; energy and the natural environment; financial services; the food chain and industrial crops; healthcare; information, communications and media; materials; and retail and consumer services.
Preparing for an ageing population
The increasing age of the population will affect many aspects of sustainable development. The Foresight programme will be looking at issues such as healthcare provision, transport, and retail, consumer and financial services specifically from the perspective of the needs of an ageing population.
5.22 An increasing amount of Government support through the Research Councils has sustainable development as a theme. Physical and biological sciences, engineering, economics and social sciences are all relevant. For example:
5.23 The Government aims to improve the public's understanding of science and to secure public confidence in how the Government uses the best available scientific advice in decision making. Implementation of the Chief Scientific Adviser's guidelines on the use of scientific advice in policy making is an important part of this work.11 These guidelines expand on the key considerations for using scientific knowledge outlined in chapter 4.
5.24 The 1994 strategy created the British Government Panel on Sustainable Development and the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development. The Panel advises on major strategic issues for sustainable development. The Round Table consists of people drawn from a variety of organisations and interests and seeks to build consensus about ways of achieving sustainable development.
5.25 To help take forward this Strategy and to provide a focal point for considering sustainable development in this country, the Government proposes to establish, from the beginning of 2000, a new Sustainable Development Commission. This will subsume the Panel and the Round Table. The Commission's main responsibility will be to monitor progress on sustainable development, and to build consensus on action to be taken by all sectors to accelerate its achievement. The Government will be discussing further with the Panel, the Round Table and other interested groups the precise remit and working methods for the Commission.
5.26 The Government will continue to look to the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment and the Trades Union and Sustainable Development Advisory Committee to provide strategic advice on issues which are of major concern to business and to employees. It will support those bodies in generating leadership on sustainable development issues and their application in all aspects of business practice and in the workplace.
5.27 The Government will continue to work with the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution to identify priority areas for its advice.
Key actions and commitments
Green housekeeping in Government
Women in public appointments and in senior positions
Prices of key resources (e.g. fuel, water)
Real changes in the cost of transport
Enforcement of regulations (to be developed)
Public understanding and awareness
Individual action for sustainable development
Awareness in schools (to be developed)
Expenditure on pollution abatement
The Government is not responsible for the contents or reliability of the linked web sites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. Listing should not be taken as endorsement of any kind. We cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and we have no control over the availability of the linked pages.
Updated: 07 March 2005
|© Crown copyright 2005 | Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Directgov|
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Disease-Carrying Ticks in for TroubleBy
It's unclear how this El Niño winter will affect 1998 tick
populations. But chemist Patricia Allen of USDA's
Agricultural Research Service is ready
and waiting nonetheless.
Since early 1997, she's been exposing black-legged deer ticks to spores of
naturally occurring fungi at ARS'
Parasite Biology and
Epidemiology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. Of the half- dozen fungi
she has tested under controlled lab conditions, Metarhizium anisopliae
proved the most lethal to the ticks, especially against juvenile forms.
Now she's hoping to show that the fungus will also kill ticks under natural
conditions. Of special interest is the impact on tick eggs and emerging larvae.
To that end, she'll begin a first round of outdoor tests in late April on
small-scale plots at Beltsville. She'll spray a commercial preparation of M.
anisopliae developed by Ecoscience Corp. of East Brunswick, New Jersey.
Allen's research is part of a project to explore the potential and safety of
using beneficial fungi and nematodes as non-chemical tick controls. Her approach
targets black-legged deer ticks because the pests spread the bacterium
responsible for Lyme disease in humans. In 1996, the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta, Ga., received more than 16,000 reports of Lyme disease.
With this winter's wet, mild weather, Allen and ARS colleague John Carroll
report little trouble collecting enough ticks for their studies at the
Beltsville lab. Carroll, an entomologist, coordinates Maryland's participation
in the ARS-led Northeast Regional Tick Control Project. This multi-state project
uses special feeding bins to lure deer into being coated with a chemical called
amitraz. The chemical kills adult ticks feeding on the deer without harming the
A more detailed story on the scientists' work appears in the March issue of
Agricultural Research, on the World Wide Web at:
Scientific contact: Pat Allen,
Parasite Biology and
Epidemiology Laboratory, Beltsville, Md., Phone (301) 504-8772, fax (301)
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- One of the tallest soft wood trees is the General Sherman, a giant redwood sequoia of California. General Sherman is about 275 ft or 84 m high with a girth of 25 ft or 8 m.
- The 236 ft or 72 m high Ada Tree of Australia has a 50 ft or 15.4 m girth and a root system that takes up more than an acre.
- The world's tallest tree is a coast redwood in California, measuring more than 360 ft or 110 m.
- The world's oldest trees are 4,600 year old Bristlecone pines in the USA.
Trees and the Environment
- Trees renew our air supply by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.
- The amount of oxygen produced by an acre of trees per year equals the amount consumed by 18 people annually. One tree produces nearly 260 pounds of oxygen each year.
- One acre of trees removes up to 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide each year.
- Shade trees can make buildings up to 20 degrees cooler in the summer.
- Trees lower air temperature by evaporating water in their leaves.
- Tree roots stabilize soil and prevent erosion.
- Trees improve water quality by slowing and filtering rain water, as well as protecting aquifers and watersheds.
- The cottonwood tree seed is the seed that stays in flight the longest. The tiny seed is surrounded by ultra-light, white fluff hairs that can carry it on the air for several days.
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In a report from the World Bank, Africa’s economic development was outlined as a “golden opportunity for a green future”.
At the 4th Africa Carbon Forum (ACF) “The vast potential represented by African countries in the fight against climate change cannot be underestimated,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“The Africa Carbon Forum is where potential projects and developers and funders can meet, exchange ideas, and – it is hoped – take the concrete steps toward greening Africa’s future.”
The ACF held a conference where policymakers, project developers, and private investors discussed climate-smart agriculture, public and private partnerships and funding for projects. However, it is clear that Africa holds more promise than just the inception of carbon emission reduction and carbon finance.
The attraction of Africa is its rich wealth of natural resources. This continent contains enormous deposits of diamonds, cobalt, copper, uranium, magnesium and tin. Over $1 billion in gold is mined each year.
The UK’s Department of International Development, along with researchers from the British Geological Survey and the University of London found underground aquifers of clean and untouched water in Africa that are 100 times the amount found on the surface of the continent.
An $11 million dollar project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Coca-Cola Corporation are employing 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan smallholders to produce fruit for Minute Maid, a subsidiary for Coca-Cola.
The UN has announced plans to allow corporations and foreign governments to land grab in African nations like Ethiopia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone.
Africa has “voluntarily” signed agreements with multi-national corporations and foreign investors, allowing them to control agricultural land. The nation’s leaders believe that giving access to their resources will benefit their people; however this is just another manipulative ploy to coercively acquire control over land, food production and securitization.
The document entitled “The UN Global Compact and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises” outlines through “voluntary” means how the UN will implement their international guidelines with respect to corporate conduct, standards and abilities.
The UK, multi-national corporations, some African countries and other G-8 nations will be joined together as the New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security (NAFNS).
The CEOs of 40 US privately owned corporations have pledged $3.5 billion in food and nutritional assistance alongside the government.
The New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security will be established to carry out collaborative efforts with private investors and corporations, under the oversight of Obama. The initiative will implement model farms and training centers.
Yet, it is not just the securitization of agriculture, natural resources and water that is attracting corporations, the UN and Obama to Africa.
Africa is to be transitioned into a technological hub, focusing on technology research. Under the promise of employment opportunities and improving educational institutions, the actual agenda is the diversification of strategies with foreign partners that will facilitate manufacturing industrialization and technological development through the corporate takeover of Africa.
Under careful control, the UN has planned to create an Africa that will become not only the food center of the world, but also the single processor of the world’s communications.
The ICT Sector Unit, a department of the World Bank, has plans to turn Africa into a centralized internet epicenter where the flow of information and communications are under UN governance.
The ICT is a specialized department controlling “policy and regulatory matters, in eGovernment, information technology, innovation and the enabling environment. This Unit promotes access to information and communication technologies in developing countries.”
They will provide governments and private organizations with the directives and capital to infiltrate Africa through corporatism. The creation of infrastructure and eGovernment projects will be handled solely through the ICT.
The funding will come from donors, international organizations and non-government organizations (NGOs). Telecommunications think-tanks with regional telecommunication associations will work with private sector “experts” and the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to construct a technological industry that will yield not only profit, but power.
The ITU is the UN’s information and communication technologies agency. They “allocate global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, develop the technical standards that ensure networks and technologies seamlessly interconnect, and strive to improve access to ICTs to underserved communities worldwide.”
By whatever means necessary, their goal is to facilitate the flow of communication; which is completely under their dominion.
One initiative already in progress is the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project; a $2 billion investment that is meant to be the biggest research instillation in the world.
The enormous computing power this installation is capable of will “take the current global daily Internet traffic and multiply it by two, and you start to approach the stupendous scales of data the Square Kilometre Array will churn out daily — about an exabyte per day. This vastly outpaces the state of the art in computing,” notes Ton Engbersen of IBM Research in Zurich. “The area you would need for PCs is larger than the SKA.”
Billions are being poured into the development of this project by foreign investors. On April 4th, the SKA Organization held a two-day meeting in The Netherlands, concluding with a press statement that they want to take an “inclusive approach” to the location of the project.
That location has become the continent of Africa.
The project would be a joint venture between the governments of South Africa and other participating nations, but the majority of costs would come from the privately funded SKA Organization.
The SKA project is part of the ICT’s plan to create a broadband universal portal that will be the access point by which online resources and information are disbursed throughout the world.
The ITU will be in conference at the end of this year, with major telecommunication and information corporations to devise a treaty that will regulate important aspects of the Internet, as well as create jurisdiction over telecoms and ICT industries. This international treaty will effectively control all communication as we know it.
• Internet • Cell phones • Emails • Faxes • Satellites • Governmental intelligence networks • All other digital communications
The treaty will give the UN unilateral governance over the Internet, as well as telecommunication issues such as accounting rates and termination charges for next-generation networks, data privacy, cyber security, international mobile roaming, and equipment specifications.
Africa is going to be the centralized network of global controls that force all other nations and countries to become dependent upon the UN.
This is how the UN ultimately plans to achieve global governance.
You can help support this information by voting on Reddit HERE.
Susanne Posel is the Chief Editor of Occupy Corporatism. Our alternative news site is dedicated to reporting the news as it actually happens; not as it is spun by the corporately funded mainstream media. You can find us on our Facebook page.
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Poor farmers are most vulnerable to climate change
“We used to harvest hundreds of maize sacks, but due to rain scarcity we plant much and end up harvesting almost nothing,” says Dickson Mnyukwa from Chibelela village in Tanzania’s Dodoma district. He supports a family of eight on crops watered only by what falls from the sky. In recent years, he has seen his crops fail repeatedly.
Agriculture is crucial throughout Tanzania and Malawi – for employment, export revenue and food security. As in other parts of Africa, droughts are becoming more frequent and more severe. Both countries depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture, leaving them highly vulnerable to climate extremes and variation.
Even as they face increasingly unreliable growing seasons, farmers in both countries lack access to modern farming methods. They have limited financial means and poor infrastructure. And their success – or lack of it – has nationwide implications for income and food security. Poor communities are particularly vulnerable.
Adapting to uncertainty demands innovation
With climate change, and unchanged farming methods, crop yields are likely to fall. The Institute of Resource Assessment at Tanzania’s University of Dar es Salaam is leading participatory action research to test innovative farming methods to protect rural livelihoods and strengthen agricultural systems. Using trial plots, farmers are testing approaches to the range of possible conditions they may face from season to season. But farmers alone cannot achieve these innovations. Their options depend also on government policies, guidance from agricultural extension services, and the products and pricing of private-sector distributors of seeds, tools and fertilizers.
Decision makers in Tanzania and Malawi recognize that climate change threatens their economies and people, but they are far removed from farmers’ daily lives. The idea of this project is to link farmers and service providers in shared learning. The research helps farmers to use reliable information, and provides training and tools to give them options. The aim is to see stakeholders learn together and then to scale up successful strategies. “This study intends to promote two-way communication, involving all partners and supporting their information and other needs,” says project leader, Amos Majule.
Integrating knowledge and experience at different levels
The research draws on the experience and coping strategies of farming families. It also builds on existing initiatives, including National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) in both countries, which emphasize agriculture and farmers’ livelihood strategies in relation to climate change.
The Nazareti Women’s Group in Chibelela village is among those involved in establishing a farmers’ field school to test modern techniques in water, soil and crop management. “We are participating in the research as local partners,” says Keziya Magawa, Chair of the group. “We discuss with other researchers how we can make agricultural practices more flexible to climate change.” The villagers are noticing changes in Tanzania: “In the past, the rains lasted from November through April, but this year, we experienced only drops of water in February. We planted, but we do not know if we will harvest anything,” says Magawa.
Learning from practical experience
Growing conditions vary widely within Tanzania and Malawi, and this project is working in eight villages in each country, reflecting the range of regional conditions. In the learning plots, farmers, researchers and suppliers test innovations proposed and mutually agreed through participatory planning. In central Tanzania, for example, stakeholders opted to test a range of tillage equipment – from power tillers to ox-drawn ploughs and hoes – and different fertilizers and seed varieties, including drought-tolerant varieties of sorghum and maize.
In Malawi, activities have focused on crop diversification, with crops including improved forms of maize, sweet potato and sorghum. In Mphampha village, rain-fed agriculture proved almost impossible due to a prolonged dry spell during the growing season, so irrigation was added, and may have saved an otherwise lost food supply.
Benedict Mwaluko, an agricultural extension officer in Tanzania’s Dodoma region, credits local farmers for their contributions to informing policies on adaptation: “We hope this research will result in policy change and the adaptation of agricultural systems, since farmers are already responding by providing their lands for field experiments”.
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7 Habits of Green Conscious S’poreans
Our letter was published in Today on 1 May 2012.
Earth Day was celebrated here and around the world on April 22 with events to remind us to do our part for the environment. After Earth Day, are we continuing our environmental efforts?
There are seven habits commonly found in people who are green conscious. We could learn these habits and take individual actions so that Earth Day becomes a daily event.
One, respect and renew our bond with nature and its biodiversity. Nature has much to teach us on how to live with the rest of life on Earth. Without this respect and bond, there will be no desire to protect nature. Start exploring nature areas such as Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Chek Jawa and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, and join the guided walks.
Two, read up on local and global environmental issues, from various channels such as websites, books, newspapers and non-government organisations. What are the current trends and problems? What needs to be done?
Three, reduce our environmental impact in energy, water and waste. Embrace sufficiency in our consumption and practise the 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) in our daily lives.
Reduce by not creating wastage or minimising waste in the beginning. Reuse by using the waste several times or for another purpose. Recycle by sending the waste to be processed as a resource.
Four, spread the green message to family, friends, classmates or colleagues. Share our knowledge with them and post about environmental problems and solutions on social media.
Influence our organisation, be it a school, company or social group, to be more environmentally friendly.
Five, participate in government initiatives such as the National Environment Agency’s National Recycling Programme and the National Parks Board’s Community In Bloom programme. Support local NGOs and join their activities or volunteer.
Six, participate constructively as active citizens in the formulation of government policies on the environment. This could be through government dialogues or feedback channels and through the media.
We can advocate green causes we feel strongly about and try to persuade the Government in rethinking its policies and decisions.
Seven, choose to be a responsible consumer. Buy only what we need and always think twice before buying. Choose more eco-friendly products with less impact and made by sustainable businesses.
Buy ethical products and support businesses that take care of their employees’ well-being.
We can all commit to adopting these habits and to do our part for our only home. Let us celebrate Earth Day daily.
By Eugene Tay Tse Chuan
The writer is an environmental consultant.
- The 7 Habits of Green Conscious Singaporeans
- Mentorship Programme – The 7 Habits of Green Conscious Singaporeans
- Waste is not Waste Provides Online Waste Exchange for Businesses and Organisations in Singapore and Malaysia
- How to Use Freecycle@Work to Promote the Reuse of Unwanted Items in Your Company
- What On Earth Are You Doing?
- Our SG Conversation for the Green Community @ Singapore Polytechnic
- Thoughts on the NCCS Public Perception Survey on Climate Change in Singapore
- Our SG Conversation for the Green Community
- Suggestions For Sustainable Singapore
- New Campaign to Reduce Food Waste in Singapore
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Skip to Main Content
The aim of this research is to develop a set of technologies and standards for the interoperability of an energy-efficient robotic village. Furthermore, the approach for achieving that will be done in the form of a living lab. So the research presented here will be to proof and to tune different technological standards and technologies considered “green”, in a large experimental context of a Robotic Village. The research topics associated with it will be related with the increase of the energy efficiency in different daily areas and how they will contribute to the objectives of 2020 agenda from the UE, of reducing human impact on climate change. One of those research areas is the Smart Way, where technological challenges of the EV, the automation in road infrastructure building and the interoperability of road management and transportation systems will be gathered in order to boost a progressive variation of current transportation model. Concretely, the studies and developments necessary to achieve an increase in energy density and service life, reduced recharge times and price decrease will be carried out.
Date of Conference: 4-8 March 2012
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Beaches turning to mud and changes in wildlife are among the signs of a warming climate recorded by an Inuit community in Canada.
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
They say increasingly unpredictable weather is significantly altering the way they live.
They are having to get used to unfamiliar birds and fish arriving from further south.
Some believe the warming could be the start of a process that may prove unstoppable.
The Inuit live in Sachs Harbour, a tiny community on Banks Island, which lies north of Canada's North West Territory, lapped by the Beaufort Sea.
Coping with the unknown
They reveal their forebodings in Sila Alangotok - Voices From The Tundra, a film made by Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) in its Earth Report Series for BBC World.
Click here to watch BBC World's report on Sachs Harbour.
One resident, Rosemarie Kuptana, is on the board of the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
She tells TVE: "What's scary is that there's uncertainty because we don't know when to travel on the ice, and our food sources are getting further and further away.
Musk oxen are replacing vanishing caribou
"We can't read the weather like we used to. It's changing our way of life. We live in a very extreme and harsh climate now.
"We've always had extreme weather conditions, whether it's 24-hour sunlight, or whether we've got blizzards with no visibility in the winter. What is more extreme now is that there's no predictability."
The earlier springs and later autumns make it harder for the people of Sachs Harbour to predict when they can hunt and trap.
There are novel species, as John Lucas explains: "Springtime comes around, and you start seeing different kinds of birds, barn owls, that sort of thing.
"We've never seen them up here before. We're getting different kinds of geese, ducks, mallard, pintails that we never used to see around here."
No way: Mud covers a beach
There are now salmon to be caught - another sign of warming weather, the Inuit believe.
But it is what is happening to the land itself that many of them find most disturbing.
Most of Banks Island is covered by permafrost, which is now melting. John Keogak tells TVE: "I'd say about '87 we started noticing these mudslides. Before, it used to be a little sloughing from the snow left on the side of the banks.
"But now it's the permafrost that's coming down, and the ground being disturbed, and more of the permafrost being exposed to the sun and the heat and the wind.
"Now there's more rain and the sun is shining all the time... Once this starts I don't know what's going to stop it... I think the bigger it gets the faster it will go.
Arctic char: Salmon are moving in
"It just started off small. Down here we used to be able to walk along the beach - now it's all mud."
Another resident recalls how, when he worked at the local airport, he reported a thunderstorm.
Warning the world
He was told: "You guys can't get thunderstorms. It's too cold." This year, in contrast with the recent trend, has turned out surprisingly cold.
Rosemarie Kuptana asks: "How can we prepare ourselves for such unpredictability? What will happen to us if we can no longer rely on our instincts and traditional wisdom?
"I believe the Arctic is a very important ecosystem to the health of the rest of the planet.
"I guess what we can do is just try and educate people and say: 'Hey, watch out, this is what's happening to us.'"
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The Global Climate Change Game
- James Copestake and Tom Ellum
- University of Bath
- Published September 2010
The Global Climate Change Game highlights key challenges facing international climate change negotiations, the original inspiration for its development being the Copenhagen Summit. It combines standard public good and trust games, and gives them an ultimatum twist. It can also be played intuitively, and so is accessible to students with limited economics: initial piloting was conducted as part of an intermediate undergraduate development economics course, and on a final year course in development finance. The game is a fun way to illustrate the incentive for countries to free-ride but goes beyond a simple prisoner’s dilemma by allowing for multiple rounds and the effects of uncertainty, not least arising from rushed negotiation processes.
The game is straight-forward to run, requiring only a computer and projector with which to display a relatively simple Excel spreadsheet. It can be squeezed into a one hour teaching slot, though this allows limited time for debriefing and discussion of learning outcomes. Alternatively it can be combined with a lecture on related concepts and issues; for example, as part of a session introducing the concept of global public goods. Appendix 2 suggests a range of supporting materials.
Students are divided into eight groups, and each is allocated a country. The difference between Annex 1 (high-income) and Annex 2 (low-income) countries should be explained. Although the game can be played with a minimum of eight students, it is preferable that students work in groups of 3-4 to allow internal group discussion. With more students additional countries could be added, but this will prolong the process of negotiating each round.
Each country is instructed to maximize its net benefit over the period of the game, subject to the additional constraint of avoiding global catastrophe. They do this by deciding how much money to contribute to a global ‘green spending’, which generates a public good benefit. This may be through actual contributions to a global fund or de facto contributions by controlling activities that generate greenhouse gases, therefore limiting economic growth. To start the game off, countries are informed that a total public good benefit of 80 over the five rounds is estimated to be sufficient to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change. Green spend is more effective in Annex 2 countries, with a spend to public good benefit ratio of 0.5, whereas for Annex 1 countries it is 0.2. This opens up the possibility (introduced in the second or third round) of Pareto efficient gains through green transfers between countries. However, such transfers are subject to uncertainty over whether recipients will use them to add to their green spend.
Ensure that you have:
- Separated students into eight groups and allocated countries to each;
- distributed slips of paper to each group, with which to make bids in each round;
- projected the Global Climate Change Game Excel spreadsheet onto a screen at the front of the class.
The game can now be started with the following briefing: -
The objective of the game is for you to maximise your countries’ net benefit, subject to avoiding catastrophic climate change. You can help to avoid the latter by contributing to global green spending (GGS). To avoid global climate catastrophe contributions to GGS are needed to generate a public good benefit of 80 over five 5 rounds of negotiations. You can think of this as being the collective action necessary to avoid average global temperature rises of 2oC by 2050, for example. To state the goal in another way, your aim is to maximize your national benefit, but subject to a sustainability constraint on the state of the world after five rounds. The change in your private benefit in each round will equal the overall public good benefit less the amount you contribute as a country to GGS. However, the ratio of green spend to public good benefit varies as follows: green spend of 1 unit by Annex 1 countries increases the public good benefit by 0.2, whereas 1 unit of green spend by Annex 2 countries raises it by 0.5. You will have time to debate with others in your group what your contribution in each round to GGS will be, and I may also give you an opportunity to discuss this with other countries. As facilitator of the negotiations I have the right to set the timetable for finalising your bids and also the order in which countries must reveal these.
Running the Game
After briefing the groups as above, allow three minutes discussion before collecting in the first round of contributions. In no particular order, type these into the Global Climate Change game spreadsheet, ensuring a minus sign is used. Highlight to the students the overall public good benefit, as well as the net benefit for individual countries. Repeat the process for a second round.
The expected outcome is that second round bids will reveal more selfish behaviour, and that prospects of meeting the target look bad (see Intermediate Example). Even if this is not obvious from the data, the important thing is to ensure everyone realises the danger of this “prisoner’s dilemma” outcome and the logic behind it.
Green transfers (or “carbonaid”) can now be introduced with the following briefing:
‘You now have the option of transferring funds to other countries. There is no limit on the amount that can be transferred or to whom, nor is the recipient country required to use the transfer on green spend. Annex 1 countries must specify how much and to whom they will make green transfers to, even if it is zero and to no-one.’
With this additional information, allow the groups three minutes discussion time before asking for third round contributions and transfers, collecting and typing up these for Annex 1 countries first. At this point switch to collecting bids verbally. As facilitator this gives you the scope to try to influence the outcome by strategically varying the order in which you collect these bids.
The final two rounds are now played in similar fashion, allowing extended discussion – as time allows – before the final round. The game leader may wish to introduce additional information at this point (e.g. a revised higher target due to new scientific data). One reason for doing this is to ensure that that the prospect of hitting the target is uncertain until the final round.
Adaptations to the game
This game itself started out as an improvisation from the generic public good game and can itself be adapted in numerous ways. Simple adaptations might include:
- Adjusting time for countries to deliberate and the mechanism for declaring their decisions in each round. One reason for doing this is to attempt to steer outcomes by giving the lead to countries that have been more or less generous in earlier rounds, or whose earlier bids were not serious. Another option is to deliberately shorten time in order to force countries to make mistakes.
- Allowing green transfers from the start, for students who are already familiar with the standard public good result.
- Making green transfers compulsory for Annex 1 countries, or facilitating negotiations of rules to govern transfers, raising questions about how/whether they are enforceable.
- Extending the timeframe as an alternative to adjusting the public good benefit target.
- Limiting the amount of funds. Countries can be given a fixed amount of funds which can be used on green spend or green transfer to reflect differences in their wealth and national income. See Appendix 1.
An effective debrief is integral to the success of the game as a learning experience and can be separated into three sections.
Reflection on the game itself
Some questions to ask include:
- With the benefit of hindsight would you have behaved differently?
- Which other countries performed well or badly, and why?
- Were green transfers used by recipient countries in addition to their own green spend or in place of it?
- To what extent did being a low- or high-income country inform decisions?
- How did collusion between groups help or hinder achieving the objective?
- To what extent was trust developed or eroded between countries over successive rounds?
- What contributed to Pareto efficient green transfers happening or not happening?
- Was the final outcome what you expected?
- How could the facilitator have helped to ensure a better outcome?
Relating the game to historical events
This can include discussion of what happened at the Copenhagen summit, or even Kyoto before that, and prospects for the next round of face-to-face meetings at Cancun. It may be useful here to circulate some additional material (see Appendix 2). There is also the issue of how countries contribute to climate change mitigation, including the role of cap-and-trade carbon markets. These have an opportunity cost in terms of a growth counter-factual, but they also have important within-country distributional effects. One problem to highlight is the way technical discussion of climate mitigation instruments (particularly carbon trading) have concealed to wider audiences the political issue of how to agree on a fair distribution of initial ‘rights’ to pollute. One issue here is the relevance to the game of the idea that some countries have carbon debts, where the latter can be defined as a historic contribution to filling the global carbon envelope that is much higher per person per year than that of other countries.
A further line of discussion is the relevance of the game to financing of other global public goods, including international research, disease control, peace-keeping and poverty reduction.
Relating the game to theoretical issues
Finally, relate the game to economic concepts and issues that arise with global public goods and climate change in particular. These include the definition and typology of global public goods (see Handout). Additional issues concern the principal-agent problem arising from green transfers: how can input additionality be guaranteed to result in outcome additionality?
The game illustrates problems associated with the financing of public goods, especially the importance of trust, providing students with insight and experience from which they can base their discussion. The range of topics include the prisoner’s dilemma, principle-agent problems, additionality outcomes with transfers of any kind, political and ethical aspects of climate change and public good provision (see Tata Energy Research Institute – 2009); and ultimatum elements.
The game not only allows students to develop their understanding of climate change negotiations but also their skills in team working, negotiation and cooperation.
These materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
- Student handout, "Global Public Goods and Development Finance"
- Initial spreadsheet
- Intermediate example spreadsheet
Appendix 1. Specifying total country incomes or budgets
Starting incomes can be introduced into the game to add additional realism, by making mitigation for countries in Annex 1 a small proportion of their total budgets but a substantial amount of Annex 2 countries’ ones. Alternatively, they can be used to influence outcomes, by being set at a level where Annex 1 countries have to make green transfers to reach the target, or where achievement of the target is trivial.
To reflect reality Annex 1 countries should be given a starting income vastly in excess of the 100 each it would take them to meet the target through green spend alone. This reflects the small percentage of their annual GDP necessary to mitigate climate change. On the other hand, Annex 2 countries should receive only slightly more than the 40 each it would take for these countries to meet the target alone. Introducing starting incomes in this way highlights the distributional effects on individual welfare of different allocations of the burden of meeting the target between Annex 1 and 2 countries.
By limiting the starting incomes of both Annex 1 and Annex 2 countries a situation can be created by which the target can only be met through cooperation, therefore game leaders should introduce green transfers earlier in the game. Alternatively, and if time allows, this could be done by leaving students to deduce the necessity of green transfer to meet the target on their own. A suitable starting income would be 40 for Annex 1 countries and 20 for Annex 2 countries. This requires collective green transfers from Annex 1 to Annex 2 countries to be at least 14 to reach the target. Of course, starting incomes can be revised to make cooperation more or less important and game leaders should be prepared to introduce new income if the target starts to become unachievable due to selfishness early on.
Appendix 2. Supplementary materials
Newspaper articles: e.g. "Copenhagen closes with weak deal that poor threaten to reject", The Guardian, 19 December 2009; or "Costing the Earth: who would pay more to tackle climate change?" The Economist, 7th December 2009.
DFID (2009) Eliminating world poverty: building our common future. Ch.3. Sustaining our common future, Ch.6. Acting together through the international system.
Heimans, J (2008) Multi-actor global funds: new tools to address urgent global problems, in Development Finance in the global economy: the road ahead edited by T Addison and G Mavrotas, UNU-Wider, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hulme, M (2010) Why we disagree about climate change. Cambridge University Press.
Kanbur, R & T Sandler (1999) The future of development assistance: common pools and international public goods. Overseas Development Council Policy Essay 25. Chs.4-5.
Kaul, I et al. (2003) Providing global public goods. UNDP/Oxford University Press.
Kaul, I et al. (2006) The new public finance. UNDP/Oxford University Press.
Tata Energy Research Institute (2009) The right to sustainable development: an ethical approach to climate change and ODI (2010) Climate financing and development: friends or foes?
World Bank (2010) Development and Climate Change. The World Development Report. Chapter 6. Generating the funding needed for mitigation and adaptation.
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PITTSBURGH—Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have leveraged the latest browser technology to create GigaPan Time Machine, a system that enables viewers to explore gigapixel-scale, high-resolution videos and image sequences by panning or zooming in and out of the images while simultaneously moving back and forth through time.
Viewers, for instance, can use the system to focus in on the details of a booth within a panorama of a carnival midway, but also reverse time to see how the booth was constructed. Or they can watch a group of plants sprout, grow and flower, shifting perspective to watch some plants move wildly as they grow while others get eaten by caterpillars. Or, they can view a computer simulation of the early universe, watching as gravity works across 600 million light-years to condense matter into filaments and finally into stars that can be seen by zooming in for a close up.
"With GigaPan Time Machine, you can simultaneously explore space and time at extremely high resolutions," said Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor of robotics and head of the CREATE Lab. "Science has always been about narrowing your point of view — selecting a particular experiment or observation that you think might provide insight. But this system enables what we call exhaustive science, capturing huge amounts of data that can then be explored in amazing ways."
The system is an extension of the GigaPan technology developed by the CREATE Lab and NASA, which can capture a mosaic of hundreds or thousands of digital pictures and stitch those frames into a panorama that be interactively explored via computer. To extend GigaPan into the time dimension, image mosaics are repeatedly captured at set intervals, and then stitched across both space and time to create a video in which each frame can be hundreds of millions, or even billions of pixels.
An enabling technology for time-lapse GigaPans is a feature of the HTML5 language that has been incorporated into such browsers as Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari. HTML5, the latest revision of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) standard that is at the core of the Internet, makes browsers capable of presenting video content without use of plug-ins such as Adobe Flash or Quicktime.
Using HTML5, CREATE Lab computer scientists Randy Sargent, Chris Bartley and Paul Dille developed algorithms and software architecture that make it possible to shift seamlessly from one video portion to another as viewers zoom in and out of Time Machine imagery. To keep bandwidth manageable, the GigaPan site streams only those video fragments that pertain to the segment and/or time frame being viewed.
"We were crashing the browsers early on," Sargent recalled. "We're really pushing the browser technology to the limits."
Guidelines on how individuals can capture time-lapse images using GigaPan cameras are included on the site created for hosting the new imagery's large data files, http://timemachine.gigapan.org. Sargent explained the CREATE Lab is eager to work with people who want to capture Time Machine imagery with GigaPan, or use the visualization technology for other applications.
Once a Time Machine GigaPan has been created, viewers can annotate and save their explorations of it in the form of video "Time Warps."
Though the time-lapse mode is an extension of the original GigaPan concept, scientists already are applying the visualization techniques to other types of Big Data. Carnegie Mellon's Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology, for instance, has used it to visualize a simulation of the early universe performed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center by Tiziana Di Matteo, associate professor of physics.
"Simulations are a huge bunch of numbers, ugly numbers," Di Matteo said. "Visualizing even a portion of a simulation requires a huge amount of computing itself." Visualization of these large data sets is crucial to the science, however. "Discoveries often come from just looking at it," she explained.
Rupert Croft, associate professor of physics, said cosmological simulations are so massive that only a segment can be visualized at a time using usual techniques. Yet whatever is happening within that segment is being affected by forces elsewhere in the simulation that cannot be readily accessed. By converting the entire simulation into a time-lapse GigaPan, however, Croft and his Ph.D. student, Yu Feng, were able to create an image that provided both the big picture of what was happening in the early universe and the ability to look in detail at any region of interest.
Using a conventional GigaPan camera, Janet Steven, an assistant professor of biology at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, has created time-lapse imagery of rapid-growing brassicas, known as Wisconsin Fast Plants. "This is such an incredible tool for plant biology," she said. "It gives you the advantage of observing individual plants, groups of plants and parts of plants, all at once."
Steven, who has received GigaPan training through the Fine Outreach for Science program, said time-lapse photography has long been used in biology, but the GigaPan technology makes it possible to observe a number of plants in detail without having separate cameras for each plant. Even as one plant is studied in detail, it's possible to also see what neighboring plants are doing and how that might affect the subject plant, she added.
Steven said creating time-lapse GigaPans of entire landscapes could be a powerful tool for studying seasonal change in plants and ecosystems, an area of increasing interest for understanding climate change. Time-lapse GigaPan imagery of biological experiments also could be an educational tool, allowing students to make independent observations and develop their own hypotheses.
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Moisture Control in Green Building
Understanding Water in a Green Home
A green home is:
Water is not only the most important factor affecting a home's durability, it is also the most important factor affecting the home's maintenance costs and sustainability.
Jim Sargent, chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy as the Builder of the Year for his energy-efficient homes, tells his green building classes, "Homes last longer in dry areas. Moisture is the enemy. In fact, the biggest enemy your house has is moisture. If a builder has a problem with the house, 99% of the time it is going to be water or water vapor related. If a builder needs to be an expert on anything, it is water control."
Homes get wet during construction, during renovation or with age. The problem, though, is not that homes get wet but the solutions for moisture control. Homes need a good drying system in place and it is important that they are dried as quickly as possible.
The concept of drying and the design of homes to dry is part of moisture control. Moisture and its movement must be controlled from the beginning of the build job to the end of the home's life.
There are several sources of moisture in the home. The most important to control are below.
Sargent says, "Controlling rain is the single most important factor in the design and construction of durable buildings and in the control of mold."
Building physicist Joe Lstiburek takes it one step further and declares, "If you can't control rain and ground water, it is senseless to go further in building a structure."
Sargent continues, "Homes must be designed with rain control for the location's climate in mind. For example, we get an average of 39 inches of rain a year in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. However, it does not come one inch here and one inch there. We get most of the rain in short periods of time in the spring and the fall. Homes should be designed like we get 120 inches of rain a year instead of 39 inches."
Other sources of water that need to be kept under control are:
These sources might have different significance in different climates (such as snow in Dallas or snow in Minneapolis). The moisture sources and their climate significance must be considered when choosing materials for the construction of a home.
Climate significance must also be addressed when allocating resources for moisture control. For example, Minneapolis needs resources allocated for snow and ice damming control; North Central Texas does not.
Moisture moves by a number of means: capillary flow, vapor flow, air convection, and gravity flow. Each of these mechanisms is driven by different forces and moves at vastly different rates through different materials. This also determines the choice of building materials for home construction.
Often walls get wet during the home's construction from rain or other precipitation. Even if they don't get wet then, they will get wet later from other means--often from both the outside and the inside of the wall. Consequently, all walls should be designed to dry, preferably from both sides but definitely from at least one side.
Dealing with moisture is a very complicated subject for a builder to understand, much less for the general public to understand. And it is often even more complicated in a renovation of an older home.Choosing a builder who understands water and pays attention to water details is as important as choosing a builder who understands energy-efficiency.
There are two other aspects of water that must be considered in a green home.
1. Water conservation.
you need an energy consult
Copyright © 2007-2011 Dallas-Fort Worth Green Building and Renewable Energy. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission which is not universally given. Please contact DFW Green Building and Renewable Energy for permission in writing before using these copyrighted materials.
Note: The opinions expressed herein are exclusively those of the writers or other participants and do not necessarily reflect the position of CyberParent,LLC. They are not intended to take the place of advice of a health, legal, or other professional whose expertise you might need to seek. This website explains green building and green remodeling for a climate zone comparable to North Central Texas or Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, It is important to hire a green builder and an energy consultant who are experts in energy-efficient building in your climate zone and who use the most up-to-date green building information.
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MTI Micro Fuel Cells' new Mobion technology solves a key hurdle in the manufacturing of fuel cells for notebook PCs and handheld devices, according to its creators.
"[COLOR=#1951B9]Fuel cells produce power when a mixture of methanol and water enters the cell and reacts with oxygen to produce energy, carbon dioxide, and more water. Much of the early work in fuel-cell technology has used a series of pumps and valves to return the excess water produced in the reaction back to the methanol reservoir, where the two liquids mix and are returned to the fuel cell.[/COLOR]"
MTI claims the Mobion fuel cells will extend a device's operating life by 2.5 times as many hours as provided by a standard lithium ion battery.
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Labels & Packaging
Copenhagen Climate Change and the Printer
Is this a threat or an opportunity?
Paul Machin reports on the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference for GDW.
The Copenhagen Climate Change conference was an historic event at which all nations on earth came together (in excess of 110 heads of national governments attended) to discuss one topic.
Prior to the conference there was much hype encouraged by the political leaders of the need to meet the challenge facing the world? All the parties spoke of the need for greater urgency in our efforts to confront climate change. That, however, appeared to be the only point upon which there was any real consensus. The conference finished with more questions unanswered than ever before. The need for a legally binding agreement to counteract climate change was deferred for later, possibly at the Mexico conference later this year in 2010.
Why did the Copenhagen Climate Change conference not achieve its objective? The less developed nations were unwilling to forgo growth. Many believed that changing from processes such as coal fired energy generation would involve significant capital expenditure that was not available. They considered that utilising technologies to reduce greenhouse gases would increase costs and thereby lose markets. When you have very little it is not surprising that there is considerable reluctance to relinquish that which you have got.
Perhaps due to the recession there was little support among the leading developed nations to provide significant financial support to the poorer nations. The message from Copenhagen was that it is the poorer nations who are most vulnerable and that they are the ones who bear the greatest burden from the consequences of the actions of the richer industrialised nations. These poorer nations considered that the richer nations should bear a moral responsibility for their historic emissions. The richer nations do not have the right to tell the developing world "Do as I say, not as I did". They are the ones who must make the greatest reductions in green house gas emissions and they need to collectively meet the cost of addressing climate change damage.
That the combination of political will, economic direction and public pressure was not sufficient to overcome the concerns that many countries have over the potential loss of their sovereignty should they be subject to international law in the form of a legally binding climate change treaty. Many will co-operate, but not under the threat of legal sanction. There was no agreed verification process on carbon emissions to check compliance. The verification process was strongly opposed by China. No new target was set; it remains to reduce greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020.
What were positive points from the conference? The conference redefined the debate between countries in terms of awareness of climate science and support for action. There is no longer any question that climate change is central to the political thinking of every country on the planet. This applies to the smallest nations concerned that their country will disappear beneath the ocean or the large industrial nations being aware of the adverse impact their lifestyle is having on the environment.
Public awareness has also massively increased. The vast campaigns run around the world in the run-up to Copenhagen by governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), business and the media coverage of the issue and the summit itself have made addressing climate change widely understood. There were individuals with strong beliefs for or against climate change discussing the topic as never before.
The other very important change is that green growth is now the prevailing economic model of our time. The idea that addressing climate change is bad for business was buried at Copenhagen. Countries from both developed and developing worlds have announced low-carbon economic plans and are moving forward.
While there was much speculation on the positive and negative ramifications on the commitment of the political leaders attending the conference, there was no such reluctance from the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a speech that was not widely reported he said: "History tells us that movements begin with people, not governments, and when they become powerful enough, governments respond," He quoted as his examples the American civil rights movement that changed that country’s approach to their colour problem, the women’s suffrage movement in the UK and the American Independence that was started by people power. Many visitors to Copenhagen and world-wide television viewers witnessed the vast numbers of climate change protesters from many nations around the world raising the temperature of the debate.
What has not changed? The Kyoto protocol is still in place and will be so for a few more years to come. Kyoto is legally binding, it is accepted, the standards and architecture are recognised and it is economically viable. Unfortunately not every nation signed it. Significantly the USA did not sign the Kyoto protocol and, without the participation of the USA, Kyoto will have very little impact on the world-wide problem.
The current accepted target is a reduction of 20% of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. However, the world’s leaders have declared the aim of restricting global temperature increase to +2 degrees above pre industrial levels.
Within the EU there are controls on the environment issues such as the Integrated Prevention and Pollution Control, the Solvent Emissions, the Hazardous Waste, the Waste and Waste Packaging Directives. Many printers are subject to many of these restrictions including the implementation of the EU’s environmental Best Available Techniques (BREF) standards.
Printers will still have to compete in this market and to do so must embrace the changes that the political and economic factors associated with climate change have brought about especially after the Copenhagen conference.
What must printers do to meet the climate change challenge? The very first challenge that must be faced is to change the opinion within the organisation that climate change is a threat to the future of the company. It is an opportunity for growth. Green growth is seen by the politicians as sustainability and therefore it will meet the aspirations of the populace. Thus there is a strong probability that legislative measures will be utilised to secure a favourable response especially if it is not seen as a direct tax on voters. Governments will be looking to increase pressures on commercial enterprises.
Companies will be actively looking at reducing their environmental tax burden such as the climate change levy. One means of reducing this taxation burden is through purchasing products from printers that will reduce this levy. This is achieved by buying products that have a low carbon footprint. To produce low carbon footprint products requires a positive approach by printers towards environmental issues such as waste control, emissions to air and water, energy management and careful selection in the use of chemicals.
Is there help available for printers to meet the challenge? There are a number of trade associations throughout the world that offer assistance on environmental issues. Typically FESPA offers its members free access to their Planet Friendly Guide. Other NGOs such as Envirowise in the United Kingdom provide guidance on good environmental practices. There is a plethora of consultants who will be able to assist; however, it would be wise to check their accreditation prior to appointment.
Are there benefits from being environmentally aware? There are major financial savings to be made that are vital during this period of limited business growth and profitability. A good environmental image is seen as being beneficial to customers, regulatory authorities, employees both present and future as well as neighbours. Employee involvement in improving the company’s environmental image raises the level of job satisfaction as employees see it as a means of protecting the environment for their children and grandchildren.
How can these be achieved? A necessary prerequisite of any attempt to change the company’s approach to the environment is the 100% commitment of the Chief Executive Officer or owner of the company. Without this undertaking the company will fail to achieve the desired result.
This new company ethos will require employee training and that will stimulate their involvement. This involvement is a vital element in generating a reduction in the level of waste, the conservation of energy as well as an understanding the benefits of reducing emissions from the factory. For example simply by reducing the heating by 10 C in winter and increasing the temperature of the air conditioning in by 10 C in the summer can save 5 – 10% of the company’s energy costs. Employees with this knowledge are more likely to promote such a saving as an environmental benefit as well as a financial saving.
There are many other financial savings of this nature that can be obtained by following environmental best practice that will automatically lead to a reduction in the company’s carbon footprint. This will in turn provide a positive selling point especially to the larger international customers who are looking to limit their climate change levy or similar environmental tax.
Tackling climate change in a positive manner can give an opportunity to improve the company’s environmental image as well as their profitability and thus should not be seen as being a threat.
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This archive of companion sites to NOVA broadcasts is no longer being updated. To see new content, go to NOVA's beta site.
The Big Energy Gamble
Can California's ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gases actually succeed?
Darwin's Darkest Hour
A two-hour drama on the crisis that forced Darwin to publish his theory of evolution.
Seven doctors, 21 years... Saving lives is only part of the story.
An acclaimed photographer teams up with scientists to document the runaway melting of arctic glaciers.
Hubble's Amazing Rescue
The unlikely story of how the world's most beloved telescope was saved.
The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies
Follow the 2,000-mile migration of monarchs to a sanctuary in the highlands of Mexico.
Meet the monitors, the largest, fiercest and craftiest lizards on Earth.
Megabeasts' Sudden Death
Scientists propose a radical new idea of what killed off mammoths and other large animals at the end of the Ice Age.
Oliver Sacks explores how the power of music can make the brain come alive.
June 30, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Visit a factory that grows diamonds, learn how experts identified the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks, hear amazing results from pitch-correction software, and meet a computer scientist who wants to harness the brainpower of 500 million people.
July 7, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Join astronomers hunting for Earth-like planets, see how computers distinguish authentic art from forgeries, meet a spider biologist who studies sexual cannibalism, and learn about genes that may be involved in causing autism.
July 14, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Watch how an "exercise pill" turns couch-potato mice into athletes, explore a controversial new theory of what killed the dinosaurs, meet the first Latino-American astronaut, and find out why the beautiful northern lights signal a threat to our electronic society.
July 21, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Discover why picky eaters may have a genetic excuse, learn about a new strategy for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, see just how intelligent marine mammals can be, and meet a biomedical engineer who has figured out a way to make tiny livers in her lab.
July 28, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Follow a NASA satellite looking for water on the moon, see what ancient salt deposits reveal about life 250 million years ago, learn how bird brains are remarkably similar to our own, and meet a climatologist who digs for clues to climate change in the world's highest glaciers
August 18, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Explore the controversies behind genetic testing and genome sequencing, learn about algae fuel, follow an expedition to the Arctic Ocean seafloor, and meet a woman engineer designing prosthetic limbs controlled by human thought.
August 25, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Get an astronaut's view of the Hubble repair mission, find out why cowbirds are called "gangster birds," meet a Mexican immigrant farmworker-turned-brain surgeon, and learn how neuroscientists are finding ways to erase memories.
September 1, 2009 (NOVA scienceNOW)
Learn about a massive earthquake potential in the U.S. Midwest, meet a South Korean geophysicist with unique talents, and more.
Why do huge swarms of rats overrun a bamboo forest in India once every half-century?
The Spy Factory
Examine the high-tech eavesdropping carried out by the National Security Agency and the pitfalls of surveillance in an age of terrorism.
What Are Dreams?
Psychologists and brain scientists have new answers to an age-old question.
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An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown -- residents of Japan's northeast coast suffered through three intertwined disasters after a massive 9.0 magnitude temblor struck off the coast on March 11, 2011.
TOKYO — Like the persistent tapping of a desperate SOS message, the updates keep coming. Day after day, the operators of the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have been detailing their struggles to contain leaks of radioactive water.
The leaks, power outages and other glitches have raised fears that the plant — devastated by a tsunami in March 2011 — could even start to break apart during a cleanup process expected to take years.
The situation has also attracted the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sent a team of experts to review the decommissioning effort last month. They warned Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to clean up the site. A full report is expected to be released later this month.
Journalists have been given a rare glimpse inside Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled in the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the country two years ago. NBC News' Arata Yamamoto reports.
The discovery of a greenling fish near a water intake for the power station in February that contained some 7,400 times the recommended safe limit of radioactive cesium only served to heighten concern.
There was also some reassuring news in February, when a report by the World Health Organization said Fukushima had caused “no discernible increase in health risks” outside Japan and “no observable increases in cancer above natural variation” in most of the country.
But for the most affected areas, the report said the lifetime risks of various cancers were expected to increase. For example, baby boys were predicted to have up to a 7 percent greater chance of getting leukemia in their lifetime and for baby girls the lifetime risk of breast cancer could be up to 6 percent higher than normal.
Independent nuclear expert John Large — who has given evidence on the Fukushima disaster to the U.K. parliament and written reports about it for Greenpeace — said there would be hundreds of tons of “intensely radioactive” material in the plant.
He said normally robots could be sent in to remove the fuel relatively easily, but this was difficult because of the damage caused by the tsunami.
Large said the plant was close to the water table, so it was difficult to stop water getting in and out.
“Until you can stop that transfer, you will not contain the radioactivity. That will go on for years and years until they contain it,” he said. "The structures of containment start breaking down. Engineered structures don’t last long when they are put in adverse conditions."
Larged added: "It may have some marked effect on the health of future generations in Japan. What it will create is a Fukushima generation — like in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - where girls particularly will have difficulty marrying because of the stigma of being brought up in a radiation area."
Leaks into the sea would not only affect the marine environment, Large said, as tiny radioactive particles would be washed up on the beach, dried in the sun and then blown over the surrounding countryside by the wind.
View side-by-side the progress that Japan has made since the tsunami and earthquake in March 2011.
Japanese activists are also worried by the ongoing leaks from the plant.
The Associated Press reported that "runoff ... and a steady inflow of groundwater seeping into the basement of their damaged buildings produce about 400 tons of contaminated water daily at the plant." According to the plant's operator, 280,000 tons of contaminated water has been stored in tanks there.
Hisayo Takada, energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan, complained no real progress had been made.
“It’s still a very fragile situation and measures implemented by the government and [power company] TEPCO are only temporary solutions,” she said. "The issue with the contaminated water is very serious and we're very concerned. And we're very angry because it’s been two years and they've been saying that everything's safe."
Greenpeace has been testing food sold in supermarkets, and to date has not found “radiation levels higher than government guidelines,” Takada said.
But she said the “land and sea will never return to the way it was before the accident.”
One man who knows this all too well is cattle farmer Masami Yoshizawa. He lives in the Namie area, which was once inside a 12-mile, mandatory evacuation zone but is now among the places where people have been allowed to return.
He tends his herd of 350 cows as “a living symbol of protest.”
Nearly a year after a tsunami and 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel travels to the evacuation zone surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The plant suffered a triple meltdown in the wake of the earthquake, turning the neighborhoods in the 12 mile radius of the plant into ghost towns. Engel journeyed near the mangled plant which remains very much a hotspot. Radiation levels were so high, the NBC News team on the ground had to wear face masks and full body suits. Even as NBC News drove half a mile from the reactor, radiation monitors were screaming in alarm.
“As long as they're alive, I will keep them to show to the world -- these cows that have been exposed to radiation, cows that are no longer marketable, and that I’m being told to have slaughtered,” said Yoshizawa, 59.
“For us farmers, it’s impossible for us to return to work in Namie. Our community will disappear. It’s going to become like Chernobyl … Only the elderly who say they don't care about the radiation will return. Children will never return,” he said.
The nuclear industry in the U.S. argues its safety standards are higher than at Fukushima.
Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said it was “incredibly unlikely” that a similar accident could happen in the U.S.
Significant safety improvements were made in the U.S. after Fukushima, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the last major nuclear incident in America at Three Mile Island in 1979, he said.
“Our layers of defense extend beyond what the Japanese had in place,” he said. “We’re now well into our fifth or sixth layer of back-up defenses to ensure there would not be – regardless of the cause – a serious accident that would jeopardize public safety.”
A survey for the institute in February found that 68 percent of Americans supported nuclear energy.
“[Support] did drop for about six to eight months after the Fukushima accident … it hasn’t quite reached the pre-Fukushima historic highs, but we have rebounded to a considerable extent,” Kerekes said.
Part of this support comes from those who see nuclear energy as key in the fight against climate change.
Kerekes pointed to a report by climatologist James Hansen — until recently head of NASA’s Goddard Institute — that said nuclear power had stopped the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and saved 1.8 million deaths related to air pollution.
“Every technology has pros and cons. We feel when you look at the benefits of nuclear energy, it’s very effective, round-the-clock electric supply,” Kerekes said.
“As we look to help try to drive our economy and provide jobs that people need, there’s a strong role for nuclear energy going forward. We believe that’s widely recognized on a bipartisan basis.”
It remains to be seen whether this support will be eroded by the drip, drip of leaks from Fukushima.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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What is a heart-lung machine?
A heart-lung machine—also called a cardiopulmonary bypass machine—is a device that takes over the function of the body’s heart and lungs during open heart or traditional surgery. The machine circulates the essential oxygen-rich blood to the brain and other vital organs during open-heart surgery, allowing the cardiac surgery team to operate on a heart that is blood-free and still. When the surgery is complete, the heart is restarted and the heart-lung machine is disconnected.
The heart-lung machine intercepts the blood at the right atrium (upper heart chamber) before it passes into the heart. Using a pump, the machine delivers the blood to a reservoir, which adds oxygen to the blood. The pump then sends the oxygen-rich blood to the aorta and through the rest of the body.
The machine, which is operated by a trained and certified specialist called a perfusion technologist, also removes carbon dioxide and other waste products from the blood and delivers anesthesia and medications into the recirculated blood. Also, in some cases, it cools the blood. Cool blood lowers the body’s temperature, which helps to further protect the brain and other vital organs during surgery.
If you or someone close to you is experiencing a potential heart problem, call 911 in case of an emergency. For more information, please contact us at 541-222-7218 or 888-240-6484.
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May 10, 2012 Forests in the Amazon Basin are expected to be less vulnerable to wildfires this year, according to the first forecast from a new fire severity model developed by university and NASA researchers.
Fire season across most of the Amazon rain forest typically begins in May, peaks in September and ends in January. The new model, which forecasts the fire season's severity from three to nine months in advance, calls for an average or below-average fire season this year within 10 regions spanning three countries: Bolivia, Brazil and Peru.
"Tests of the model suggested that predictions should be possible before fire activity begins in earnest," said Doug Morton, a co-investigator on the project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the first year to stand behind the model and make an experimental forecast, taking a step from the scientific arena to share this information with forest managers, policy makers, and the public alike."
The model was first described last year in the journal Science. Comparing nine years of fire data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite, with a record of sea surface temperatures from NOAA, scientists established a connection between sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and fire activity in South America.
"There will be fires in the Amazon Basin, but our model predictions suggest that they won't be as likely in 2012 as in some previous years," said Jim Randerson of the University of California, Irvine, and principal investigator on the research project.
Specifically, sea surface temperatures in the Central Pacific and North Atlantic are currently cooler than normal. Cool sea surface temperatures change patterns of atmospheric circulation and increase rainfall across the southern Amazon in the months leading up to the fire season.
"We believe the precipitation pattern during the end of the wet season is very important because this is when soils are replenished with water," said Yang Chen of UC Irvine. "If sea surface temperatures are higher, there is reduced precipitation across most of the region, leaving soils with less water to start the dry season."
Without sufficient water to be transported from the soil to the atmosphere by trees, humidity decreases and vegetation is more likely to burn. Such was the case in 2010, when above-average sea surface temperatures and drought led to a severe fire season. In 2011, conditions shifted and cooler sea surface temperatures and sufficient rainfall resulted in fewer fires, similar to the forecast for 2012.
Building on previous research, the researchers said there is potential to adapt and apply the model to other locations where large-scale climate conditions are a good indicator of the impending fire season, such as Indonesia and the United States.
Amazon forests, however, are particularly relevant because of their high biodiversity and vulnerability to fires. Amazon forests also store large amounts of carbon, and deforestation and wildfires release that carbon back to the atmosphere. Predictions of fire season severity may aid initiatives -- such as the United Nation's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program -- to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from fires in tropical forests.
"The hope is that our experimental fire forecasting information will be useful to a broad range of communities to better understand the science, how these forests burn, and what predisposes forests to burning in some years and not others," Morton said. "We now have the capability to make predictions, and the interest to share this information with groups who can factor it into their preparation for high fire seasons and management of the associated risks to forests and human health."
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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EPA Names Partners with Most On-Site Power
Walmart tops the US Environmental Protection Agency’s list of organizations within its Green Power Partnership generating the most on-site renewable electricity. Walmart is head and shoulders above other partners, generating nearly 175 million kWh of electricity annually, while the second-place spot is taken by BMW, generating about 71 million kWh annually.
EPA’s Green Power Partnership works with more than 1,400 organizations to voluntarily purchase green power. Overall, EPA’s Green Power Partners are using more than 24 billion kWh of green power annually.
Of the top five Partners with on-site renewable power, Coca-Cola Refreshments comes in at number 3, generating about 47 million kWh each year; followed by the US Air Force (37 million kWh) and Kohl’s Department Stores (36 million kWh).
Usage amounts reflect US operations only and are sourced from US-based green power resources. the usage figures are based on annualized Partner contract amounts (kilowatt-hours), not calendar year totals.
Organizations can meet EPA Partnership requirements using any combination of three different product options: (1) Renewable Energy Certificates, (2) On-site generation, and (3) Utility green power products.
- 2013 Insider Knowledge
- The Logistics, Carbon, and Business Data Book: Fall 2012 Sustainability Trends
- Environmental Leader Technology Reviews
- Guide to Energy, Carbon and Environmental Software
- ISO 50001: Frequently Asked Questions
- The Growing Trend of Sustainability Scorecards
- Your Guide to Total Energy and Sustainability Management
- How to Reduce Cost by Increasing Accountability for Energy Efficiency
- The Business Case for Corporate Sustainability Tools - January 2013
- 9 Ways to Reduce Energy Costs
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The EPA has welcomed publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Renewable Energy sources and Climate Change mitigation (SRREN). The report shows that global potential for renewable energy is substantially higher than both current and projected future global energy demand. This is the case globally and in most regions of the world.
Currently less than 3 per cent of the globally available renewable energy is being used. This means that more than 97 per cent is untapped. Realising this resource would be a major step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from energy. The report projects that 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewable sources by 2050 if enabling policies are put in place.
Commenting on the report Dr Mary Kelly, EPA director general, says: “This is a timely report given the choices we need to make on energy investment, here in Ireland, in Europe and internationally. It shows the potential of renewable energy technologies to provide energy solutions which also have wider economic, social and environmental benefits, including their potential to cut air pollution and improve public health, and increase energy security.”
The six renewable energy technologies reviewed are: bioenergy, direct solar energy, geothermal energy, hydropower, ocean and wind energy.
The report states that the cost of most renewable energy technologies has declined. Some renewable energy technologies are already economically competitive. Technical advancements are expected to further reduce costs. Increasing the share of renewables requires additional short-term and long-term integration efforts. There is a need for advanced technologies to optimize the infrastructure capacity for renewable an area in which Ireland has active research.
The IPCC report notes that enabling policies and measures are required to ensure rapid deployment of many renewable sources. Research is also required to overcome technical barriers. The deployment of renewable energy will benefit from testing centres for demonstration projects.
Two experts from Ireland were lead authors for this IPCC report – Professor Tony Lewis of the Hydraulics & Maritime Research Centre, University College Cork and Professor Mark O’Malley of University College Dublin.
Renewable Energy in Ireland
Ireland is committed to the deployment of renewable energy and aims to reach the European Commission target of 20 per cent of its total energy mix by 2020. Ireland is also implementing its National Renewable Energy Action Plan which all Member States were required to submit in 2010. This plan sets out how we intend to reach EU wide renewable energy targets.
Currently, the majority of Ireland’s renewable energy is generated using onshore wind with a small contribution from offshore. Bioenergy is a growing area through the establishment of bioenergy crops such as miscanthus and rapeseed oils as well as traditional forestry biomass. In the agricultural sector, technologies such as biomethane generation from grass and anaerobic digestion of farm and food wastes have the potential to play a key part in mitigating emissions from this sector. There are proposals in place for a state of the art research test bed in Belmullet for wave energy test site in Belmullet. Irish companies such as WaveBob and Ocean Hydro have already gained international attention for the potential of their technology.
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The biblical record of God’s prophet Elijah is filled with many unusual and at times miraculous events. Thus in the first encounter that the reader has with God’s prophet, he is startled by the prophet’s ominous pronouncement: “As certainly as the LORD God of Israel lives (whom I serve), there will be no dew or rain in the years ahead unless I give the command.” Anyone who lives in areas where heaven sent water is in scarce supply would instantly recognize the seriousness of such a declaration. This was especially true of the Bible lands for they are “prone to drought and aridity” and “the world of the Old Testament is an agrarian world in which people are aware of their dependence on weather.”1 Therefore, “No rain, no life. It was just that simple in OT times in the Promised Land.”2
In what follows we shall note the particular significance and emphases of dew and rain as presented in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) with a view to some of their applications to the believer’s life. We shall examine them in the order in which Elijah stated them.
As mentioned above, water, including dew, was critical to life in the biblical world. Dew, however, was normally in rather good supply. As Cogan remarks, “Dewfall is known year round; it is particularly abundant on the coastal plain and helps sustain summer planting.”3 Dew was seen as part of God’s creation. Among the dialogues with Job, where the Lord is portrayed as the creator of the earth and that the element forces of nature are under his control (Job 28:25-26; 36:37; cf. Ps. 147:16-18) God poses the question to Job, “ Who has fathered the drops of the dew?” (Job 38:28). In context the clear answer to the rhetorical question is: God Himself and Job understands it quite well (cf. Job 40: 1-5). The purpose of the dew, like the other manifestations mentioned in Job 28:28-30, is “to impress Job with God’s superb control of all such things.”4 So it is the Solomon wisely pointed out:
By wisdom the Lord laid the foundation of the earth;
he established the heavens by understanding.
By his knowledge the primordial sea was broken open,
and the clouds drip down dew (Prov. 3:19-20).
It is God, therefore, who ultimately controls the dew and provides it for his people in accordance with his blessings to them (Deut. 33:26-28). Accordingly, when fathers as leaders in ancient Israel invoked God’s blessings upon their sons or people, they would sometimes call for God’s blessings by using the imagery of the dew so necessary for good crops and a productive life. Thus when Isaac mistakenly blessed Jacob thinking that it was Esau, he prayed, “May God give you the dew of the sky and riches of the earth” (Gen. 27:28). Likewise, Moses blessed the tribe of Joseph saying, “May the Lord bless his land with a harvest produced by the sky, by the dew, and the depths crouching beneath with a harvest produced by the daylight and the moonlight” (Deut. 33:13). The dew, therefore, at times symbolized the blessing of God.
By way of contrast, God’s withholding of the dew could be a sign of his disfavor and punishment. In the case of 1 Kings 17:1 Elijah’s announcement of the withholding of the dew likewise declared God’s punishment of unfaithful Israel. Israel had gone after Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility and rain. Baal’s supposed power over rain appears in the Ugaritic story of Aqhat. There Aqhat’s father Danel laments his son’s passing by pronouncing a curse, which involved the activity of Baal:
For seven years let Baal fail,
eight, the Rider on the Clouds;
no dew, no showers,
no surging of the two seas,
no benefit of Baal’s voice.5
Understandably then, Elijah’s pronouncement provides a notice of distinct disfavor of and challenge to the authority of Baal and his state sponsorship by Ahab and Jezebel. The challenge would reach a climax in the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, where Elijah boldly declared, “How long are you going to be paralyzed by indecision? If the LORD is the true God, then follow him, but if Baal is follow him!” (1 Kings 18:21). Soon afterwards, in accordance with Elijah’s sacrifice and prayer, the Lord sent the needed rain (1 Kings 18:41-46).6
Of special interest is the fact that in blessing his healed and restored people God likens himself to refreshing dew (Hos. 14:5). Indeed, “The dew becomes symbolic here of a life-giving vitality that provides the source of renewed life and strength for Israel—God himself.”7 Similarly, Isaiah records the Lord’s assurance that in the future God’s people in Israel will live again,“ like plants drenched with the morning dew, and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits” (Isa. 26:19). Herein is found one of the key Old Testament texts suggesting the believer’s bodily resurrection. As Oswalt observes, “God’s dew will rest upon the dead as he will force earth to give them up to life in his presence forever.”8 Smith concurs, saying that much more than national Israel is involved here: “These are not promises of national restoration, but a commitment to bring someone who was considered dead back to life.”9
The psalmist reminds the Lord’s anointed that because of God’s presence, he will have willing followers who themselves will experience God-given refreshment, hence success in the day of battle (Ps. 110:1-3). As Delitzsch points out, “The host of young men is likened to the dew both on account of its vigorousness and its multitude, which are like the freshness of the mountain dew.”10 It has been suggested further that because Jesus cites Psalm 110:1 as having prophetic application to himself as David’s heir, hence the divine Messiah (Matt. 21:41-46), this verse may also contain a veiled hint of that great future triumph of Christ at his return to subdue the nations, accompanied by the heavenly hosts (Rev. 19:11-16). It is perhaps not without merit to suggest also that even in this life God’s people who willingly follow the Lord in their daily struggles can lead victorious lives, and in so doing they will prove to be a godly example to those with whom they come in contact (cf. 2 Cor. 2:14-17). Such certainly is in accordance with the well-known hymn, Lead on O King Eternal:
Lead on O King Eternal, we follow not with fears!
For gladness breaks like morning wher-e’er Thy face appears;
Thy cross is lifter o-er us, we journey in its light;
The crown awaits the conquest—lead on O God of Might.11
Dew can at times also be a picture of refreshment. Thus the author of Psalm 133 declares that true brotherhood is reflected in living in harmonious unity. Where such is the case, it is not only a pleasant experience, but testifies to a rich spiritual relationship, which is akin to both priestly service and a source of refreshment ( v.1).12 It is also a source of spiritual refreshment like unto the refreshing, vitalizing morning dew: “It is like the dew of Hermon, which flows down upon the hills of Zion” (v.3a). As Allen observes, the dew is “a simile with positive overtones of divinely sent refreshment.”13 Furthermore, the spiritual unity and harmony among believers finds such favor in God’s sight that it evokes the blessing of a conscious living enjoyment of his presence both in this life and the next: “Indeed that is where the Lord has decreed a blessing will be available—eternal life” ( v.3b).14 Dew, therefore, at times appears in the Scriptures to symbolize the benefits of a committed spiritual life in God’s presence, which provides sustenance, renewal, refreshment, vitality, and true success. It reminds believers of the high value of their life in the presence and power of God, for his glory and their good.
Unfortunately, the dew could also be used in contexts symbolizing unfaithfulness and inconsistent conduct before the Lord, which brings God’s punishment. For example, Hosea laments Israel’s inconsistent faithfulness to God: saying of his people “Your faithfulness is as fleeting as the morning mist; it disappears as quickly as dawn’s dew” (Hos. 6:5). “As these appear briefly only to vanish with the rising sun, so God’s people have shown brief flashes of spiritual progress and then have shortly afterwards resorted to their own selfish ways. Even worse now, they attempt to blend the worship of Yahweh with respect for foreign deities.”15 Indeed, Israel’s lack of faithfulness will occasion God’s certain soon coming punishment: “There is a saying about them, ‘those who sacrifice to the calf idol are café kissers! Therefore, they will disappear like the morning mist, like early morning dew that evaporates” (Hos. 13:2b-3). Like dew as well as mist, chaff, and smoke that can vanish all too quickly, Israel’s continued infidelity would not long endure. Indeed, the Northern Kingdom could soon disappear and be no more (cf. Hos. 13:9-16). The only hope for God’s people lay in a genuine repentance, which is reflected in a consistent faithful living in the presence of God (cf. Hos. 6:1-3; 14:1-3). As noted previously, if such should occur, it would bring God’s healing and Israel’s godly remnant will experience his renewed blessing: “I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily” (Hos. 14:5). The lesson of Israel’s experience ought not to be lost by today’s believers as well (cf. 1 Pet. 2:4-12).
Thus in addition to the natural physical benefits of dew, the Scriptures testify to the fact that dew owes its existence to earth’s Creator. Dew is in the final analysis a divine blessing, which provides a source of refreshment, renewal, and vitality to the land—a blessing, however, that can be withheld as a source of correction where sin and disregard of God’s standards are involved.
Among the many Hebrew words used to depict rain, by far the two most common are mâ?âr and gešem. The former is the more frequent and most commonly considered to be the more general term, but where a distinction is to be observed, the latter is taken to refer to heavier occasions of rain. A third frequently occurring word, zerem, is viewed as being used of violent weather such as cloudbursts or electrical storms, which at times were accompanied by hailstones.16 Futato concludes concerning these terms, however, “The modern reader can discern no difference between mâ?âr or gešem.”17 Our study will particularly feature the Old Testament teaching concerning the two most frequent terms for rain.
The underlying Hebrew roots behind these two nouns at times also appear in verbal form. In a great many cases these words for rain simply refer to literal rain. Such is obviously so in the previously mentioned declaration of Elijah (1 Kings 17:1, 7, 14; 18:1, 41).18 The Scriptures abundantly attest to the fact that it is God who created the rain (e.g., Deut. 11:11-14; Job 5:10). Thus in the original creation account it is recorded that, “no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth” (Gen. 2:5). Moreover, it is God who sends the rain (Isa. 55:10; cf. Matt. 5:45) and certainly is not as a result of mankind’s idolatry (Jer. 14:22). The God sent rain was a sign of the Lord’s blessing (Ps. 147:8; Isa. 30:23; Ezek. 34:26), including the seasonal rains of fall and spring (Joel 2:23). Joel’s reference to the rains and the seasonal rains is set in a context of God’s renewal of a repentant covenant people who have come again into renewed fellowship with the Lord (cf. Hos. 6:1-3). “Not only will he give renewed fellowship (v. 23a) and renewed rain (v. 23b) but also renewed provision (vv. 24-25). Their threshing floors will be filled with grain, their collecting vats will overflow with fresh wine and oil, and God will thoroughly restore to them the years the devastating plague had caused them to lose (cf. 1:4, 10, 17; 2:19).19 Indeed, the blessing of rain was distinctly related to covenant faithfulness: “If you walk in my statutes and are sure to obey my commandments, I will give you your rains in their times so that the land will give its yield and the trees of the field will produce their fruit” (Lev. 26:3-4; cf. Deut. 11:14; 28:12; Jer. 5:23-24). Thus as noted already, God’s withholding of rain was a sign of his disfavor for covenant infidelity and/or rampant sin (cf. Deut. 11:17; 2 Chr. 6:26-27; 7:13-14; Jer. 3:3; Zech. 14:17). In an ironic twist, however, heavy rain, especially accompanied by hailstones and/or violent wind, could signify God’s punishment (e.g., Gen. 7:11-12; Exod. 9:22-23; Ps. 105:32; Ezek. 13:11-13; cf. Ezek. 38:22).20
Occasionally both māṭār and gešem are brought together in juxtaposition for special emphasis. Thus Elihu remarks concerning God, “God thunders with his voice in marvelous ways, does great things beyond our understanding. For to the snow he says, ‘Fall to the earth,’ and to the torrential rains, ‘Pour down’” (Job 37:5-6). Amos combines the noun gešem with a form of the verb māṭār to mark God’s attempt to bring his people back to covenant faithfulness: “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. I gave rain to one city, but not to another. One field would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up” (Amos 4:7). In one case not only these two prominent words for rain but also another word for rain, that is, a thunderstorm (ḥāzȋz) appears with them (Zech 10:1). The three words, therefore, admonish God’s people to “pray to the Lord, realizing that all blessings come from him.”21 Thus all forms of rain are the result of God’s blessing upon this faithful people.
Even in figurative uses rain may be used in both a positive and a negative sense. In the former case, beneficial rain is compared to sound advice (Job 29:21-23) or the actions of a godly king: “He will descend like rain on the mown grass, like showers that drench the earth. During his days the godly will flourish, peace will prevail as long as the moon remains in the sky” (Ps. 72:6-7). Rain at an inappropriate time, however, is likened to giving honor to an undeserving fool: “Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honor is not fit for a fool” (Prov. 26:1).
The mention of snow is also of interest. Although snow is used here in a negative sense, most often it appears in a positive way. Thus David prays for the Lord’s cleansing, saying, “Sprinkle me with water and I will be pure; wash me and I will be whiter than snow” (Ps. 51:7). Such can be the situation with people and even nations that confess their sins and commit themselves to the Lord’s standards of righteousness (Isa. 1:17-19). Of special interest is Daniel’s vision in which he sees God the Father seated on his throne clothed in attire “white as snow” (Dan. 7:9), thus symbolizing “the absolute moral purity of the divine judge.”22 In like manner the risen Christ appears to John having head and hair “white as snow” (Rev. 1:14). “For John, the same functions of ruler and judge ascribed to ‘Ancient of Days’ in Daniel’s vision relate to Jesus. In Eastern countries, white hair commands respect and indicates the wisdom of years. This part of the vision may have shown John something of the deity and wisdom of Christ (cf. Col. 2:3).”23 Doubtless the snow likewise spoke of Christ’s absolute holiness and moral purity.24
Dew and Rain
It will be recalled that our opening citation of I Kings 17:1 featured both the dew and the rain, which were to be withheld because of the sins of Ahab and Israel—especially in their worship of the Canaanite storm god Baal. Elijah’s announcement that both would cease until he, as God’s messenger would give the word for their renewal, was thus a pronouncement of judgment. Of a similar negative nature is David’s curse upon the mountains of Gilboa as being the scene of the death of Saul and Jonathan: “O mountains of Gilboa, may there be no dew or rain on you, nor fields of grain offerings! For it was there that the shield of warriors was defiled, the shield of Saul lies neglected without oil” (2 Sam. 1:21).
Dew and rain also appear together figuratively.25 The prophet Micah tells of a distant future for God’s blessed people in which they will serve as channels of blessing to the other nations. Thus Barker observes, “Israel will be a blessing to the other nations and people groups of the world, as her covenant Lord intended originally. Just as dew and showers do not depend on humankind to perform their refreshing influence, so Israel will trust in her Lord. The Lord himself will make his people just such a blessing (cf. Ps. 72:6, 16-19).”26 In a more general setting Moses demonstrates that godly teaching is like the refreshing and revitalizing effects of dew and rain (Deut. 32:1-3):
Listen, O heavens, and I will speak;
hear, O earth the words of my mouth.
My teaching will drop like the rain,
as rain drops upon the grass,
and showers upon new growth.
For I will proclaim the name of the LORD;
you must acknowledge the greatness of our God. 27
In an ironic twist dew and rain appear in close proximity to one another in our previously noted case of Hosea’s admonition to his fellow countrymen, whether in Israel or Judah (Hos. 6:3-4). Having encouraged the people to “return to the LORD” (Hos. 6:1), should they do so God will prove himself faithful to his covenant people: “He will come to our rescue as certainly as the appearance of the dawn, as certainly as the winter rain comes, as certainly as the spring rain that waters the land” (Hos. 6:3). Nevertheless, despite Hosea’s urging, it was unlikely that they would heed his challenge to them. Therefore, he records God’s lament over his covenant people: “What am I going to do with you, O Ephraim? What am I going to do with you, O Judah? For your faithfulness is as fleeting as the morning mist; it disappears as quickly as dawn’s dew” (Hos. 6:4). Indeed, certain judgment laid ahead (Hos. 6:5-6). The prophet’s heart surely must have mirrored the heart of God, for although the very symbols of the people’s renewal, revitalization, and refreshment were proclaimed to them, he realized that they will fail to respond.
The texts and imagery associated with dew and rain stand as another visible reminder that God is in control of all things, including the physical world (cf. Ps. 104:1-9). Not only is God the Creator of all things, but he is their controller and the consummator of the flow of history (cf. Job 38:1-11; Isa. 40:1-23, 28). More specifically, the New Testament records that such was accomplished through Christ Jesus (John 1:1-3; Col. 1:15-20). Thus even the common, mundane things of life, which mankind so often takes for granted, are the result of God’s goodness to man (Ps. 104:10-25; 107:9; 145:9; James 1:17).
Nevertheless, the above texts serve as a reminder that God’s goodness is not to be taken lightly. Even as Israel learned, those who are members of his earthly family are to respond in faithfulness to him and his high moral standards. Otherwise God’s favor can be turned into needed chastisement and correction (2 Kings 17:1-23; Isa. 26:1-6). Believers, therefore, should resolve to maintain a whole soul faith that is committed to the Lord (cf. Ps. 37:3-5; Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 2:20; 3:11). Those who so live demonstrate their true relationship to God and have the sure hope of an eternal reward (2 Tim. 4:8; Rev. 2:10).
Even before that grand future time, much as the dew and the rain can symbolize refreshment and renewal, so also consciously living in God’s presence and in accordance with his word provides an abiding sense of refreshment and spiritual vitality (see, e.g., Josh. 1:8-9; Ps. 23; 27:11-14; 63:1; 119:25-32, 49-50, 140, 144; cf. John 15:7; Eph. 5:25-26; 1 Pet. 2:1-3). Surely it is the better part of wisdom to follow the psalmist’s teaching that those who pursue Worldly acclaim and pleasures or who live a selfish or evil lifestyle are ultimately destined for a disastrous end (Ps. 73:3-22, 27). What really matters is a life lived in the conscious presence of the Lord (Ps. 73:23-26): “But as for me, God’s presence is all I need” (Ps. 73:28). Indeed, the believer can know the rich experience of a truly successful and satisfying life. It is one that exudes the abiding spiritual vitality of Christ’s preeminence and leading in his life (Col. 1:27).
To that end that apostle whom Jesus loved (John 19:26) admonished all believers: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world (the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions) is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away with all its desires, but the person who does the will of God remains forever” (1 John 2:15-17). Let us, therefore, as did Paul not be satisfied with anything less than a living experience with Christ (Phil. 3:8-11) and the power of God’s word (Phil. 2:16; Col. 3:16-17; 1 Pet. 2:1-3; 3:14-18). When such is the case, it proves to be even more refreshing and revitalizing then the heaven sent dew and rain.28 For then the believer has at his disposal the full force of what Jesus promised to the Samaritan woman—a far superior water source: “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14).
The hymn writer expresses this so well. Anne Ross Cousin wrote:
O Christ he is the fountain, the deep, sweet well of love;
the streams on earth I’ve tasted more deep I’ll drink above.
There to an ocean fullness His mercy doth expand,
and glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.”29
1 “Rain,” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, eds., Leland Rykken, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman III (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1998), 694.
2 Mark D. Futato, “gšm,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 1: 900.
3 Mordecai Cogan, I Kings, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 425.
4 Francis L. Andersen, Job, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove: InterVarsity: 1978), 278.
5 Michael David Coogan, ed., Stories from Ancient Canaan (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 41.
6 As a sidelight, the Lord’s victory over the Canaanite god Baal vindicated his prophet Elijah, for, “Elijah was shown to be the true prophet, while Baal’s prophets were put to death.” See further, Richard D. Patterson in “1 Samuel-2 Kings,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, eds. Tremper Longman III, and David E. Garland, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 3:769. James points out that God’s answer to Elijah’s prayer stands as an example of the power of the pure prayer of faith (James 5:17-18).
7 Richard D. Patterson, Hosea (Richardson, TX: Biblical Studies Press, 2009), 139.
8 John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapter 1-39, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 488.
9 Gary B. Smith, Isaiah 1-39, The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2007), 454.
10 Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 3:191.
11 E. W. Shurtleff, “Lead On, O King Eternal.”
12 See the helpful comments on Psalm 133 by Konrad Schaefer, Psalms, Berit Olam, ed. David W. Cotter (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 315-16.
13 Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-150, Word Biblical Commentary, ed. John D. W. Watts (Waco: Word, 1983), 215.
14 See further the helpful comments of Willem A. VanGemren, Psalms, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, eds.
Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 5:937. On a human level a king’s favor is also likened to “dew on the grass” (Prov. 19:12).
15 Patterson, Hosea, 65.
16 See, for example, H-J Zobel, “mâ?âr; geðem; zerem,” in Theological Dictionary of The Old Testament, eds G Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringren, and Heinz Jose Fabry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 8:250-52. Such a conclusion for zerem is warranted by the fact that both noun and verbal forms of the underlying Hebrew root are uniformly accompanied by other terms expressing the seriousness of the situation.
17 Futato , “gešem,” 901.
18 Except where a particular emphasis is to be noted, the distinctive nature of the Hebrew words will not be discussed. It should be noted that the two more commonly occurring Hebrew roots both occur in the Elijah account.
19 Richard D. Patterson, “Joel,” in Daniel-Malachi, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, eds. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 8:334.
20 God could also cast hailstones against the enemies of God’s people as part of his arsenal as the Divine Warrior (e.g., Josh. 10:10-11; Ps. 18:12). For the motif of the Divine Warrior, see Tremper Longman III and Daniel G. Reid, God Is a Warrior (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).
21 George L. Klein, Zechariah, The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2008), 287.
22 Stephen R. Miller, Daniel, The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 204.
23 Alan F. Johnson, “ Revelation,” in Hebrews-Revelation, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, eds. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 13:605.
24 It is interesting to note that the angel of the Lord, which appeared at the tomb of the risen Christ, is described as having clothes that were “white as snow” (Matt. 28:2).
25 Dew or rain often is attested in literary works. One striking example of both being used together occurs in the English devotional poet George Herbert’s classic work entitled “The Temple” in the portion called The Church,
in the section designated The Flower:
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.
These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide’
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide,
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
26 Barker, “Micah,” 103-04.
27 For added emphasis Moses includes two additional words for rain to underscore the positive and beneficial effects of godly instruction.
28 For further scriptural teaching with regard to various forms of water, see Richard D. Patterson, “The Scriptural Use of an Archetype: Water,” Biblical Studies Press, 2009.
29 Anne Ross Cousin, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.”
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From Cairo and Benghazi to Madison, Albany and Washington, it’s hard to keep up with all that is going on at this unique moment in history. Here in the United States, politics is being driven by a new anti-investment, pro-pollution majority in the House of Representatives and statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere. Negotiations between the House, Senate and White House on the new federal budget will reach a critical juncture in the next 14 days.
The House of Representatives, on February 19, passed a spending bill by a vote of 235-189 that not only cuts dramatically from investments in clean energy, but blocks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from addressing dangerous carbon pollution and cuts the agency’s budget in ways that will cripple critical programs to protect public health. Amendments were passed which prevent the EPA from carrying out its mission to protect the air we breathe. According to a summary from the US Climate Action Network, these include:
Amendment #165 sponsored by Rep. Carter (R-TX), would prevent the EPA from enforcing new standards to cut air pollution from cement plants. The amendment passed 250-177. As a consequence, the EPA would not be able to protect the public from mercury – 16,000 pounds a year of it – and other toxic emissions in the air we breathe, potentially leading to 1,500 heart attacks, 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma and 2,500 premature deaths every year.
Amendment #466 offered by Rep. Poe (R-TX), passed 249-177. It would prevent the EPA from setting any limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, or perfluorocarbons.
Amendment #84 offered by Rep. Pompeo (R-KS), passed 239-185. It would shut down the EPA greenhouse gas registry. This amendment would prevent EPA from collecting basic data from large emitters on how much carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants are being released into the air.
It’s really quite clear. What are being described as “job killing regulations” are really measures that protect public health and open the door to job creating investments that will allow the United States to compete in the clean energy future. More than ever, it’s time to stand up to the fossil fuel industry – especially the oil and coal interests – that are trying to keep us mired in the past.
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The case study indicates that the long-distance cable logging system can be considered to be the most suitable option for commercial timber harvesting based on sustainable forest management in steep mountainous terrain of Bhutan.
First introduced by several Swiss and FAO supported projects, there has been a tradition of long-distance cable logging in Bhutan for about 25 years. Consequently, there is a number of cable cranes and the skill for operating and rigging such cable systems. These skills are readily available through either FDC directly or a number of contractors who have purchased the necessary equipment following FSD's and FDC's programmes of privatizing timber harvesting.
The following cable crane systems can be distinguished:
Traditionally, long-distance cable cranes are used only in their gravity version in Bhutan with an open-end mainline and the winch on top. For gravity operation a minimum gradient of about 20 percent for the skyline is required to allow downhill movement of the carriage. Since the mainline cable is spooled on the drum of the winch, the operating distance of the system is determined by the capacity of the winch drum which can hold about 1 700 m of cable in the case of the Gantner single drum sledge winch used at the study sites.
Using the same type of single drum sledge winch, the all-terrain system uses an “endless mainline” where the mainline is simply slung around a parabolic disk which is clamped to the winch drum. The mainline taken through the carriage is fixed with its ends to either side of a tender running a certain distance behind the carriage. In this way, the mainline which is guided by pulleys at the side of the corridor becomes a circumferential cable which moves the carriage and the tender into one or the other direction, depending into which direction the winch drum is turned (Roetzer, 1996).
Photo 25. Single drum sledge winch used at the Korila site for long-distance cable logging in gravity operation with an open-end mainline and the winch on top
In the all-terrain version, the winch can be set up at any place along the corridor and the logging operation becomes less dependent on terrain conditions. Harvesting can be extended to areas otherwise inaccessible for commercial timber harvest because of winch transport difficulties caused by irregular terrain and rivers.
The use of long-distance cable cranes in the all-terrain version is considered a prospective option for Bhutan contributing to the economic viability of forest management projects in FMUs with difficult terrain conditions for cable logging.
The main silvicultural technique applied in Bhutan's mountain forests is traditional strip-wise clear-felling for timber extraction by gravity cable cranes and subsequent replanting with indigenous species of commercial interest. After the cable way has been located by the forest engineer and support, anchor and end-mast trees have been marked in the field, about 30 m of forest on each side of the cable way are clear-felled. This way, the cleared forest area per crane set-up varies between 3.5 to 8.0 ha depending on corridor length (700–1 300 m).
To facilitate high productivity in timber extraction and to avoid damage to natural regeneration, trees should be felled in such a way that they point to the cable in a fishbone pattern. Felling and bucking is normally done by contracted crews using chain saws.
Since, in general, the felling crew is not involved in logging operations, the chainsaw operators are often not aware of the requirements of the subsequent timber extraction process for facilitation of smooth and efficient logging operations. Therefore, close supervision of the felling crew by local staff should ensure that:
directional felling is applied according to the recommendations of the responsible planning engineer;
bigger branches are cut if large tree crowns are expected to cause problems for the extraction crew;
bucking is in line with the regional grading rules to reduce wood waste.
Due to the heavy weight of trees when harvesting in primary, often over-mature forest, the assortment method is applied where trees are cut into length at the felling site. This also facilitates fully suspended loads during transport by the carriage.
Set-up of the gravity cable crane
After felling has been completed at the operation site, the long-distance cable crane will be set-up. As mentioned earlier, the cable winch has to be placed at the highest point of the corridor where logging operation always starts. The winch mounted on a sledge pulls itself up to the place of set-up with its mainline. In very difficult terrain the winch might be dismantled and pulled up by animals. While the winch operator is working to position and to ready the winch, the other crew members will set-up the skyline.
The skyline has to be mounted at a sufficient height to ensure that the load is always fully suspended when transported along the skyline. This avoids the load hitting the ground which causes additional tension to the skyline and creates soil disturbances perpendicular to the contour lines often associated with erosion.
Since the set-up of the cable crane could not be observed by work and time studies at the Korila nor at the Helela logging site, no hourly-based performance can be stated. However, the set-up and take-down times performed by the six members of the cable crew varied between ten days for the Korila logging site and seven days for the Helela logging site according to the information provided by the respective cable crew leader.
The extraction process by means of long-distance cable crane in gravity operation, as found at the Korila and Helela logging sites is described in detail below.
Photo 26. Due to the heavy weight of trees the assortment method was applied to ensure that the load was fully suspended during transport by the carriage
The cable crew normally consists of six members, the supervisor, the winch operator, three labourers at the felling site and one labourer at the landing. The supervisor normally is also trained to operate the winch. The whole logging operation is radio-controlled. One radio stays with the winch operator, another with the labourers at the felling site and one with the labourer at the landing site. All crew members can follow at anytime the ongoing extraction process.
When the empty carriage arrives at the felling site, the winch operator is told by radio where to stop the carriage and to release the hook. One labourer pulls the line out to the logs where a choker has been set. Depending on the size of the logs, up to four logs were transported in a single work cycle.
After the logs have been attached and all labourers have left the area of danger, the winch operator is told to pull in the line. Adjustment of chokers which might be required for extraction is carried out after the mainline has not only been stopped but also released. Obstacles such as tree crowns, stumps, etc., where logs have been tangled during lateral inhaul are cause for adjustment.
Photo 27. At the Helela site the forest road served as landing area
Working with two sets of choker cables improves logging productivity. The labourers at the felling site prepare the next load by setting the chokers while the previous load is transported to the landing.
At the Korila study site the logging operation was controlled by giving hand signs as the radio was out of order the day when the time and work studies were carried out. This was only possible since the corridor and the landing were within sight of the winch operator due to favourable terrain conditions. Otherwise the operation would have had to be stopped immediately after break down of the radio communication for safety reasons.
The following general observations were made either at the Korila or Helela logging site which are not in line with appropriate harvesting practices:
lack of safety equipment such as the use of helmets, gloves and boots for the labourers at the felling site and landing, and appropriate ear protection gear for the winch operator;
obstacles such as large tree crowns had not been cut and sometimes caused serious problems during the extraction process where the supports were at risk of failure due to increased tension;
supports had not been established so that heavier logs hit the ground due to deflection of the skyline, even though using the assortment method.
As at the felling site, the winch operator is told via radio the best position to stop the carriage. The labourer at the landing site unhooks the chokers and attaches the choker cables used in the previous work cycle to the hook. While the empty carriage moves to the felling site, the chokers are removed from the logs and log data recorded.
At the Korila logging site the landing was located on the uphill side of the mid-slope road. Since the logging site had almost been finished when the studies were carried out, only data on uphill logging with long-distances for transport along the skyline could been gathered. In contrast, at the Helela site only downhill logging occurred since the forest road which was used as landing area, crossed the skyline at the bottom of the clear-felled corridor.
The disadvantages of using a minor road as log landing area where the log pile cannot be bypassed are obvious. The road is blocked when timely log hauling cannot be assured. If the cable unit cannot be transported to the next corridor then operation on the nearby corridor is delayed. High non-operating times of the cable unit not only jeopardize the economic viability of a logging job but might also effect the loggers as they often depend on the income from logging to earn a living.
Photo 28. Log loading carried out manually becomes a time-consuming process when logs cannot be rolled horizontally onto the dump truck
The subsequent log hauling is carried out by means of dump trucks without any special equipment or adaptation for log loading or hauling purposes. The loading is carried out manually by up to six labourers. When logs cannot be rolled horizontally onto the dump truck (Photo 28), as at the Korila logging site, this becomes a time-consuming process. Even if the log pile does not obstruct vehicle passage, unnecessary storage time of logs must be avoided due to climate conditions and danger of deterioration in most areas of Bhutan.
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Degraded coastal wetlands contribute to climate change
11 April 2011 | News story
Drainage and degradation of coastal wetlands emit significant amounts of carbon dioxide directly to the atmosphere and lead to decreased carbon sequestration, a new report has found.
The report, written in partnership with the World Bank, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and wetland specialists ESA PWA, calls for coastal wetlands to be protected and incentives for avoiding their degradation and improving their restoration to be included into carbon emission reduction strategies and in climate negotiations.
“For the first time we are getting a sense that greenhouse gas losses from drained and degraded coastal wetlands may be globally significant and that drained organic-rich soils continuously release carbon for decades,” says Stephen Crooks, Climate Change Services Director at ESA PWA - the consulting firm which looked at 15 coastal deltas worldwide for the report. “Emissions will increase with ongoing wetland losses.”
The report highlights the current rates of degradation and loss of coastal wetlands which are up to four times those of tropical forests. Destruction of about 20% of the world's mangroves, an area of 35,000 square kilometres in the last 25 years or four times the New York City metropolitan area, has led to the release of centuries of accumulated carbon. This has also disturbed natural protection against storm surges and other weather events.
“We must work with nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also restore the ability of nature to take carbon out of circulation,” says Carl Gustaf Lundin, Director of the IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme. ”CO2 emissions from lost or degraded coastal wetlands are sufficiently large to warrant amendment of national and international climate change policy frameworks to promote restoration.“
Of the 15 coastal deltas studied for the report, seven were found to have released more than 500 million tons of CO2 each since the wetlands were drained, mostly in the past 100 years. By comparison, Mexico’s carbon dioxide emissions for 2007 were just over 470 million tonnes.
Mangroves, tidal marshes and sea-grass meadows remove carbon from the atmosphere and lock it into the soil, where it can stay for millennia. Unlike terrestrial forests, these marine ecosystems are continuously building carbon pools, storing huge amounts of “blue carbon” in the sediment below them. When these systems are degraded due to drainage or conversion for agriculture and aquaculture, they emit large and continuous amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.
“Protecting these coastal ecosystems and the blue carbon they store can be a win-win for communities,”
says Marea Hatziolos, Senior Coastal and Marine Specialist at the World Bank. “Shoreline protection and increased fisheries productivity are among the co-benefits provided by healthy coastal wetlands—contributing to community resilience while sequestering CO2. If wetlands conservation can be linked to carbon markets, communities have a way to pay for conservation which will generate local and global benefits.”
Managing coastal ecosystems for the range of services they provide can complement existing approaches to nature-based solutions to reduce the effects of climate change, according to the report. Such investments have the potential to link to REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, including conservation and sustainable management of forests) and other carbon financing mechanisms, provided that protocols on accounting, verification and reporting of net carbon uptake can be agreed.
For more information , please contact:
Borjana Pervan, IUCN Media Relations Officer, t +41 798574072, e [email protected]
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Treta Yuga 1
8000 BC to 5000 BC
Duration of Treta Yuga 1 was 3000 years. If we follow the ratio 1:1:1:1 instead of the ratio 4:3:2:1, its duration can as well be 1000 years. In this case Treta Yuga 1 would become the period from 4000 BC to 5000 BC. If we take the average of the ratios, then the duration of this Yuga becomes 2000 years. Then Treta Yuga 1 would become the period from 4500 BC to 6500 BC. Below are some of the events occurred in this Yuga.
Marutta is mentioned as an Ikshwaku king probably a northern branch of Ikshwakus whose territories lied close to Himalayas to the north of [Ayodhya. The lineage of Marutta is mentioned at Mbh.14.4 as follows:- Manu > Prasandhi > Kshupa > Ikswaku > Vinsa > Vivinsa > Khaninetra > Suvarcha > Karandhama > Avikshit (had an Angira priest)> Marutta. Karandhama is mentioned as born at the beginning of Treta Yuga. He was a very powerful king. After Kurukshetra war, the Pandava king Yudhisthira enriched the empty treasury by mining the ruins of Marutta's kingdom in the Himalays. He obtained from there gold and other costly metals.
Saraswati Dry Up
First Phase of Dry Up: 5500 BC to 5000 BC
Shift of Population
Mbh.3.85:- It hath been said that in the Satya-Yuga (Krita-Yuga) all the tirthas were sacred; in the Treta, Pushkara alone was such; in Dwapara, Kurukshetra; and in the Kali-yuga, the Ganga alone is sacred.
All tirthas (sacred waters) indicate the whole of the southern Saraswati river system and the wet climate in this region (which now has turned to the Thar_Desert in Rajastan). During the end of Treta Yuga1 (5000 BC), the wetness of this region shrunk to a small area surrounding the Pushkara (Pushkar) lake. During Dwapara Yuga (5000 BC to 3000 BC) people lived in Saraswati river basin completely migrated to Kurukshetra in Hariyana where Saraswati and one of its tributary Dhrisadwati still flowed. During Kali Yuga, even this northern remnant of Saraswati in Kurkukshetra region (Hariyana) dried up. Dhrisadwati too dried up. Thus in Kali Yuga people depended solely on Ganga river. Thus the migration of people from Saraswati to Ganga became fully complete in Kali Yuga1 (3000 BC to 2000 BC).
Desert mentioned in Ramayana
Passages like the above one in Mahabharata indicate that the dry up of Saraswati occurred during Treta Yuga itself, probably towards the end of Treta Yuga. This would make the drying up of Saraswati to occur in 5500 BC to 5000 BC. Thus Rama who lived during this period too might have witnessed it. Interestingly in Ramayana there is a passage where Rama is mentioned as forming the wet region named Puskara, (by creating a fresh water source there) in the midst of a desert (Maru-kantara) that lied to the north of Lavana-sagara the salt-ocean (identified to be Sea). Thus this is referring to the dry region that lied to the east of Saraswati river as it merged with Arabian sea.
Vishwamitra's life in Desert
Vishwamitra was a contemporary of Parasurama and Dasarathi Rama. The following passage mentions about a terrible drought that occurred during the life of Viswamitra. Mbh.12.206:-
Towards the end of Treta and the beginning of Dwapara, a frightful drought occurred, extending over twelve years. Then there was no rain. The planet Vrihaspati (Jupiter) was retrograde and Moon was at its southernmost point. Not even could a dew-drop be seen, what need then be said of clouds gathering together? The rivers all shrank into narrow streamlets. Everywhere lakes and wells and springs disappeared.
Water having become scarce, the places set up by charity for its distribution became desolate The Brahmanas abstained from sacrifices and recitation of the Vedas. They no longer uttered Vashats and performed other propitiatory rites. Agriculture and keep of cattle were given up. Markets and shops were abandoned. Stakes for tethering sacrificial animals disappeared. People no longer collected diverse kinds of articles for sacrifices. All festivals and amusements perished. Everywhere heaps of bones were visible and every place resounded with the shrill cries and yells of fierce creatures The cities and towns of the earth became empty of inhabitants.
Villages and hamlets were burnt down. Some afflicted by robbers, some by weapons, and some by bad kings, and in fear of one another, began to fly away. Temples and places of worship became desolate. They that were aged were forcibly turned out of their houses. Kine and goats and sheep and buffaloes fought for food and perished in large numbers. The Brahmanas began to die on all sides. Herbs and plants were dried up. The earth became shorn of all her beauty and exceedingly awful like the trees in a crematorium. In that period of terror, when righteousness was nowhere, men in hunger lost their senses and began to eat one another.
These passages clearly indicate a drought like situation. The 12 year period mentioned in this passage could be one of the peek periods of drought. The geography closely matches with the dried up Saraswati river basin in Rajasthan. However some passages which mention about stakes for tethering sacrificial animals, markets, shops and temples and places of worship seems to be later addition probably occurred later in the (250 BC) Treta-Dwapara junction of Chatur Yuga-2 which will be discussed in next article. There was a global level drought situation in peaking at 257 BC and spanning around 12 years.
These could as well be the sacrificial stakes, markets, shops, temples and places of worship of tribes who flourished on the Saraswati valley, the remnants of which we now see as the archeological sites in this region. A Saraswata king too is mentioned at Mbh.3.129.
Sage Saraswata in Desert
At Mbh.9.49 too we finds mention of this twelve year drought. During this period too the Vedic tradition was disrupted. Sage Saraswata is here mentioned as reviving the Vedic tradition by teaching Vedas to Brahmanas who had lost the knowledge of Vedas due to constant migrations from the drought affected areas. Saraswatas were an ancient tribe who lived on the banks of Saraswati since Krita Yuga. They had kings and sages among them. Sage Angira who was the founder of the Angira clan of Sages too is mentioned as belonging to the Saraswata tribe at Mbh.3.83.
Subsequent phases of Saraswati dry up
It seems that the drying up of Saraswati was due to multiple factors including drought phases lasting for twelve or more years as well as due to neotectonism in north west India that lead to the rise of Aravali mountains disrupting the Saraswati river system in the south. Tectonic activity also caused rise of Delhi-Haridwar ridge that cut rivers that fed Dhrisadwati and Saraswati. Subsequently Saraswati drifted it course to west. Yamuna that fed Saraswati moved to east and joined Ganga. Satadru which also fed Saraswati drifted and completely joined with Sindhu. Thus the Saraswati river started drying. The time period for this dry up is variably kept between 5000 BC to 3000 BC. It is possible that the initial dry up occurred during 5500 BC to 5000 BC period. After that the river might have flowed with water for some time and dried up again. This cycle might have repeated many times, starting towards the end of Treta Yuga. This continued in the whole of Dwapara Yuga (5000 BC to 3000 BC) and the river disappeared completely by the start of Kali Yuga (3000 BC).
Search for Ganga
During the period when Saraswati started drying up (5500 BC), Saraswati region was ruled by an Ikshwaku king named Sagara mentioned as son of Jadu. Many of Sagara's sons established kingdoms all around Saraswati river basin, especially in the southern course of Saraswati. Due to the drying up of Saraswati and the prolonged drought, their kingdoms perished. Destruction of Sagara's sons is attributed to the anger of a sage nemed Kapila, a Saraswata sage belonging to the Vedic traditions that existed on the banks of Saraswati. This myth was created probably because people did not like these rulers. The people of these kingdoms might have attributed the reason for drought and the subsequent decline of the kingdoms upon these sons of Sagara. Sagara indeed had a son named Asamanjas who was rejected by people. Asamanjas used to drawn children of citizen in Sarayu river. This Sarayu was a tributary of Saraswati or a portion of Saraswati river itself.
Asamanjas had a son named Ansuman. Sagara installed Ansuman in throne as his successor. Ansuman had a son named Dilipa. His territories probably lied around the northern course of Saraswati (in Hariyana). He searched for a mighty river to re-established the impoverished Ikswaku kingdom of Saraswati valley and finally found river Ganga as suitable for future settlements. Dilipa could not however establish his kingdom in Ganga river valley. It was his son Bhagiratha who finally established the Ikshwaku kingdom on the banks of Ganga and its tributaries. This is the historical fact hidden in the myth of Bhagiratha's search for Ganga. This is how the Ikshwakus migrated from the Saraswati river basin as it turned into a desert and established themselves at Ganga river basin on the banks of Ganga and its tributaries. The city of Ayodhya was then established on the banks of one of the tributaries of Ganga. The Ikshwaku's renamed this river as Sarayu, in memory of Saraswati or the ancient Sarayu.
Born : approximately in 5200 BC
The following references places the life time of Parasurama (the Rama with the weapon named Parasu) towards the end of Treta Yuga:- Mbh.1.2:- In the interval between the Treta and Dwapara Yugas, Rama the son of Jamadagni great among all who have borne arms, urged by impatience of wrongs, repeatedly smote the noble race of Kshatriyas. Mbh.12.339:- In the Treta age I shall take birth as Rama in the race of Bhrigu, and exterminate the Kshatriyas who will become proud of their strength and possessions.
Military and Ascetic nature of Parasurama
Parasurama's lineage is traced to Richika believed to be the same as the Rishika tribe who at some period in history lived to the north of [[Kashmir. Arjuna in his northern military campaign encountered Rishikas along with the Lohas (Leh). Tracing his lineage further we get that his ancestry is traced to the ancient sage named Bhrigu. Hence Parasurama is also called a Bhargava. Rishikas seems to be a branch of Bhargavas, who were militarily active though they were also a tribe of sages. Arjuna's battle with them attests their military prowess. During the time of Parasu-Rama's father Jamadagni or even before him they migrated to the Gangatic plains and finally settled in Haihaya kingdom ruled by a king named Kartavirya Arjuna. This king appears in the lineage of Yadava kings but whether he really was a Yadava is questionable. During this period there were widespread violence between Kshatriya rulers like Kartavirya Arjuna and tribes like the Bhargavas who were considered as Brahmanas. Jamadagni was a victim of this Kshatriya violence. Parasurama revenged the wrongs of the Kshatriyas committed upon his father by annihilating many Kshatriya rulers. He was well versed in archery and other weaponry. However the major weapon he used was battle-axe (Parasu) which gave him the name Parasu-Rama. He got it probably from the Rishikas (mythologically from Lord Siva, whose abode Kailasa too is in north, close to the kingdom of the Rishikas). There was also another tribe named Parasikas. It is not clear if they too used the weapon Parasu (battle-axe).
Parasurama was probably assisted by a Bhargava army that consisted of Rishikas and Parasikas with an infantry division that predominantly used battle-axes (Parasu) as the main weapon. Such an army will be formidable to the conventional army of the Kshatriyas who used bows and arrows as their main weapon and used chariots as their main vehicle for achieving velocity and quick movements in battles. It would be much like the Phalanx formation of the Greek armies. This might have given victory to Parasurama against many Kshatriya armies. Legends in Mahabharata and other texts indicates that Parasurama won twenty-one wars against Kshatriyas. There is a possibility that these twenty-one wars were spread in generation starting from Bargava Aurva a predecessor of Parasurama and yet another hero who revolted against the oppressive deeds of Kshatriya rulers.
As an end result, Parasurama became a much dreaded person among the royal houses of Kshatriyas. Parasurama, the son of Jamadagni (aka the first Parasurama) was a contemporary of Aja the Ikshwaku king at Ayodhya. He also challenged Dasarathi-Rama (of Ramayana fame) who was the grandson of Aja and son of Dasaratha. But then he was old and weak and could not impress Dasarathi-Rama. After the encounter with Rama of Ayodhya, Parasurama choose to retire from military life and became an ascetic like his forefathers.
Like I mentioned earlier many Parasuramas fused into one. It is impossible for the same Parasurama who gave up weapons and became an ascetic (after encountering Dasarathi-Rama), towards the end of Treta Yuga to reappear again towards the end of Dwapara Yuga and teach military science to Bhishma and Karna, the two great warriors of Kurukshetra war (of Mahabharata fame) and to engage in a dual fight Bhishma in his prime youth. These were two different Parasurama's in the lineage of the first Parasurama. The impact of the first Parasurama was so great that anybody in his (Bhargava) lineage, wielding a battle-axe would be termed as a Parasurama (or as a Bhargavarama). In course of time they all became son of Jamadagni and thus their histories fused together to look like the history of a single Parasurama who lived like an immortal!
Born: approximately in 5100 BC
Mbh.12.339:- Towards the close of Treta and the beginning of Dwapara, I shall take birth as Rama, the son of Dasaratha in Ikswhaku's royal line.
Rama leaves Ayodhya
The above mentioned narration clearly indicate that Rama, the son of Dasaratha, was born towards the end of Treta Yuga. He was probably a youth when Parasurama was in his old ages. He was also known as Raghava Rama due to his forefather Raghu who was a famous king. From the epic Ramayana (Rama's travels), we comes to know that Rama traveled far and wide due to various reasons. Leaving Ayodhya (Ayodhya in Faisabad, Uttar Pradesh) he followed the southern route formerly traversed by sage Agastya. His first settlement was Chitrakuta (Chitrakut), a hilly terrain in the boarder of Uttar_Pradesh and Madhya_Pradesh. Then he traveled further south, crossed Vindhya mountains and entered into peninsular India.
Rama's southern journey
Here he lived at Panchavati, which was then mostly covered by forests and was called Dandakaranya, the forests of Dandaka. Remnant of the name Dandakaranya forest is now seen in Dantewada, the southern most district of Chattisgad. Panchavati is popularly identified with Nasik in Maharashtra. Another strong candidate is Bhadrachalam in Andhra_Pradesh. This location is probable if we consider that Rama, deprived of his right to throne by his step-mother Kaikeyi, went to live in his mother's kingdom viz. Dakshina Kosala. This kingdom lied to the north of Bhadrachalam in Chattisgad and western parts of Orissa. While living in Panchavati Rama encountered Rakshasa rulers like Khara, who reigned at Janasthana in this region under Ravana the emperor of the Rakshasas. Ravana had his capital at Lanka (Srilanka). The whole of the eastern coastal region of southern-India as well as the Godavari river basin was under his direct or indirect rule. Rama's wife Sita was abducted by Ravana. Rama, in search of his wife met kings of the Vanara tribe like Sugriva and Vanara leaders like Hanuman in their kingdom named Kishkindha (identified to be the regions around the Tungabhadra dam and Hampi in Karnataka). With the help of Vanara army Rama marched to Pandya kingdom (southern Tamilnadu and finally reached Lanka (Srilanka). After defeating Ravana and regaining Sita, Rama returned to Ayodhya.
- http://historicalrama.org/ - Historical Rama
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Wind Energy Systems
Other than the solar energy, wind energy is also one of the widely used alternative renewable energy in the modern era. Many countries are focusing on harvesting wind energy to help fulfill the electricity demand from the countries, as it is one of the easiest systems to incorporate into the alternative energy system other than solar energy. As a result, almost everyone will be able to install their own personal wind energy system in the backyard to help being more energy conservative and saving a lot of money in the energy bills.
Indeed a small wind energy system can be installed in your house to help fulfilling your electrical energy need. The wind energy system works by collecting the wind energy from the wind turbine. In which the wind turbine will connect to an energy collector that will collect the electrical energy and transfer into a common electrical voltage to use in your electrical appliances. As a resulted, it will minimize your electrical bills dramatically. Furthermore, the excess electricity produced from the wind turbine in your backyard will be transfer back to the utility company that is powering your house and sold back to the company.
Anyways, depending on your neighborhood, you might need to consider different sort of wind energy system; either a standalone system or a grid connected system. For a standalone wind energy system, you might only want to consider if you live in a place with an average wind speeds of about 9 miles per hour annually, and there is no grid connection in your region or only be able to get it from an expensive extension for running the power line. Whereas if you live in the region with wind speed that is about 10 miles per hour annually, and that your electricity cost is way above the ceiling in your region. Then you might want to consider going for a grid connected wind energy system.
Wind energy system is the best option for those who are interest to be energy independence rather than dependence from the utilities company, which will eventually lower your cost in energy gills. Furthermore, the wind energy system is also best for those who wish to reduce the impact on environment from using electricity. Similar to all of the renewable energy, producing wind electrical energy require no emission. As a result, wind energy system has no negative impact to our environment and making the earth a better place to live.
North American Palladium
The North American Palladium is a mining company whose home office is in Toronto Canada. This company is involved in the exploration of not only Palladium but also, other metals such as, gold, nickel, copper, and platitinum. The company formed in 1968 and was known as...
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1 World Solar are experienced professional PV installers accredited under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS). This means the PV system we install will benefit from the Feed in Tariff, for every kWh of electricity generated.
We supply and install a large range of PV panels for householders, commercial and farmers. Using our extensive design experience we can identify which PV panel and inverter best fits your requirements. We have mounting systems and inverters to suit all situations, including roof mounted, roof integrated, flat roof, wall mount and ground mount.
Each product offers a balance of economic and environmental benefits, from reducing electricity bills to lowering the impact on the environment. The innovative technology and the flexible design mean that our systems can be retrofitted onto existing roofs, or incorporated as part of the building envelope at construction stage.
What is PV?
Photovoltaic (PV for short) literally means turning ‘photons’ of light into ‘volts’ of electricity. PV panels contain semi-conductors such as silicon, which convert solar radiation into electricity. The electricity produced can be used to run appliances and lighting and can also be fed into the national grid.
The majority of the systems we install consist of simply mounting the panels onto an existing roof. They are mounted on an aluminium frame and then wired into an inverter which converts the electricity from DC into AC, at 230volts AC, compatible with the domestic electricity supply. This electricity supply feeds the house first of all, and then any surplus electricity is exported to the National Grid, not wasted.
Apart from the obvious financial and environmental benefits, there are many other benefits to installing a PV system in your home including:
- No maintenance as there are no moving parts to go wrong, the panels are self-cleaning and generally last in excess of the usual 25 year guarantee.
- Systems are noiseless and 100% emission-free.
- Planning is generally not an issue, as they are classed as a ‘permitted development’ in most locations.
- Solar PV systems do not need direct sunlight to produce electricity, and in fact operate more efficiently at lower temperatures.
- Having your own power source means protection against rising energy prices.
- Adds value to your property when you come to sell it.
Once installed on your roof the system immediately begins generating electricity, which flows into your electrical system to power your lights and appliances. Your property remains connected to the national grid, and when you are generating more electricity than you are using the excess flows into the grid. When your system is not generating enough electricity at night, you draw from the grid as normal.
Apart from the attractive PV modules on your roof, and the drop in your electricity bill, you will not notice any difference. Most people enjoy monitoring what their solar electric systems produce and often start using a less electricity because of their new awareness.
- A south facing roof can have panels mounted onto the roof to maximise the energy capture or panels can be mounted in your garden using mounting structures that enable the panels to be angled and orientated in the most optimal direction.
- A solar photovoltaic system can be mounted onto most types of property to help power your home and reduce your use of carbon based fuels.
- In a new build or renovation application the roof material itself can comprise of solar tiles offering the best possible appearance.
Feed In Tariff
Our installations qualify for the Feed-In Tariff scheme, a government-backed renewable electricity incentive whereby payments are made to energy users who generate their own electricity from renewable energy sources, such as solar power. The scheme guarantees a minimum payment for all electricity generated by the installation and a separate payment for the electricity exported to grid. These payments are in addition to the bill savings made by using the electricity generated on-site.
Once you have a PV installed you should experience a monthly reduction in your electricity bill in addition to the income from your Feed-In Tariff.
CLICK HERE FOR FREE BUDGET QUOTE
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Fact: Over the last 25 years, rainfall in the western Australia city of Perth fell 20%.
The flow of water into Perth’s reservoirs fell 75%.
And Perth--a beautiful city, with much of the casual, creative attitude of San Francisco--became the developed-world city that came closest to simply running out of water.
In places that are experiencing climate change, there’s no debate about whether it’s “real” or not, like the debate we seem to enjoy having here in the U.S.
Where climate change is happening every day, its consequences are obvious, devastating--and often costly.
Perth had to scramble to both reduce water use and to find a solution to its sudden water shortage. Perth residents have, in the last five years, cut their per-person water use by 20%, saving an amount of water equivalent to that usually churned out by a large, expensive desalination plant. Perth has still had to construct a large, expensive desalination plant--the first of a half-dozen either finished or under construction across Australia. That nation has struggled to adapt to an era when (recent flooding notwithstanding) water disappeared from the places people had been collecting it for a century.
Perth’s desal plant now supplies about 20% of the city’s water, and officials consider it the city’s “climate independent” source of water. It is supplied with electricity using a wind farm, so the solution to climate-caused water scarcity didn’t make that scarcity even worse.
Why should we care about climate change in Perth?
Yesterday, the U.S. Interior Department released a report predicting that climate change could cut stream and river flows in the Western U.S. by 8 to 20%, in river basins that supply water to almost one in 10 Americans.
Those western states--Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona--are already parched after a decade of lower flows than we’ve come to expect. At the same time, they are located in some of the fastest growing regions in the U.S.
Modestly reduced rainfall often translates into dramatically reduced flows to humans, because dry ground absorbs water much more quickly, and because rain often ends up falling in places where we haven’t set up reservoirs.
The Interior report also predicts a temperature increase in the Western U.S. of five to seven degrees and reduced April 1 snow pack levels throughout the region. The April 1 snow pack is a standard way to gauge seasonal river flows.
The results could be devastating for water supplies from Denver down to Tucson and Las Vegas--it could change the water culture of those communities, and also their budget priorities.
That’s why we should pay attention to the lessons of Perth. It took water professionals and elected officials years to realize that water availability was changing. Once the problem really sank in, it was a crisis, and leaders had to scramble--water became a hot political issue, and smart decisions got hard to make. (One candidate for state premier suggested building a canal to supply water to Perth that would have been the equivalent of supplying water to Las Vegas by building a canal from Niagara Falls.)
In just the last five years, relative to population, Australians have had to spend the equivalent of half of President Obama’s stimulus program, just on water and water systems. The cost of the desalination plants alone comes to $14 billion--$646 for every man, woman and child of Australia, just on desal plants.
We have plenty of warning about what’s happening to water sources in the U.S., plenty of time to make good decisions that don't require crisis-level spending.
There will be no satisfaction in looking back from 2051 and seeing that the Interior Department’s 2011 report was correct.
Adapted from The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, to be published in April by Free Press / Simon & Schuster. © 2011, Charles Fishman.
Read the feature from Fast Company's April issue.
Read more from The Big Thirst on FastCompany.com.
[Image: Flickr user Ellen van den Berg]
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By Nina Chestney
LONDON (Reuters) - There will be an unexpected sight high in the skies over the British county of Norfolk next month: a huge balloon attached to the ground by a giant hosepipe.
It isn't obvious, but it is the first small step in an experiment which aims to re-create the cooling effect of erupting volcanoes on the earth's atmosphere.
Scientists and engineers from the universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford are behind the three-year 1.6 million pound
($2.5 million) project called Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE).
The scheme will assess the feasibility of so-called solar radiation management (SRM) by mimicking volcanoes when they erupt. Eruptions can both warm and cool the Earth's climate, depending on how sunlight interacts with volcanic material.
SRM works on the assumption that some eruptions expel particles into the upper atmosphere, bouncing some of the sun's energy back into space and thereby cooling the earth.
"In 1991, a large eruption at Mount Pinatubo injected around 18 million tonnes of SO2 (sulphur oxide) to a 30-km altitude," project leader Matt Watson told reporters.
"That had the effect of cooling the global climate by around half a degree over two years."
KILOMETRES OF HOSEPIPE
Next month's experiment, to be held at a disused airfield in Sculthorpe in north Norfolk, will pump water through a 1-km hosepipe into an air balloon to test the engineering design and the effects of wind.
If there are no hiccups, the team aims to do more 1-km tests next year. It will also work on calculating and designing a potential full-scale balloon project, which would pump sulphates and aerosol particles instead of water.
That would require a 20-km pipe strong enough to pump sulphates to a balloon the size of Wembley football stadium -- at twice the height of a commercial aircraft flight.
However, the size of the balloon and strength of the pipe required are serious engineering challenges.
"Even manufacturing a hose 1 km in length is a challenge, but we are talking about a hose stronger than any built before," said Chris Walton, SPICE project trials advisor.
Some countries are exploring geo-engineering solutions as a way to control climate change by cutting the amount of sunlight hitting the earth or by capturing greenhouse gases.
Potential schemes include using artificial trees to soak up carbon dioxide, using mirrors in space to cut the amount of sunlight reaching the earth or capturing CO2 from power stations and burying it under ground.
Supporters say such solutions could be a relatively fast way to control the climate if there was an abrupt change, such as the sudden loss of Arctic ice.
Detractors say the impact of mimicking or manipulating nature on a large scale is not yet fully known and such projects might deflect resources and attention from proven technologies.
Most of these solutions are still far from being established at large scale.
"With strong government support and in an emergency situation...the fastest we could deploy this system is two decades," Watson told Reuters, adding that a minimum 10 to 20 balloons globally would be needed to reduce atmospheric temperature by 2 degrees.
(Editing by William Hardy)
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Ernest Friedrich Schumacher’s essay “Buddhist Economics” was first published in 1966 in the book ASIA: A HANDBOOK. In 1973 it was included in Schumacher’s book SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: ECONOMICS AS IF PEOPLE MATTERED. This 47 year old essay jewel contains much wisdom for how we need to refocus our economy if we want to have a healthy and prosperous world. What follows are some of the core concepts from the essay.
We need to admit that our current economic system based on unlimited exponential growth on a finite planet has reached the end of its useful life, and that it continued use is causing serious problems for our State and our Planet.
We need to revise our view of work to see that its true value comes from the following three functions:
1. allowing people to utilize and develop all their skills and talents;
2. enable them to overcome ego-centeredness by joining together with other people in a common task;
3. and to bring forth the goods and services needed for our communities to thrive.
We need to realize that using local resources to satisfy local needs is to most efficient way to a sustainable future.
We need to adopt an environmental ethic where we no longer view our “natural resources” as simply means to create more goods and services - and instead start to embrace the reality that we are completely dependent on and part of the ecosystems that sustain us.
We need to significantly reduce our energy consumption, phase out the use of non-renewable energy sources and transition to the use of renewable energy sources.
These five ideas will go a long way in guiding us to a sustainable future.
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In many ways, this book reads like “The Guinness Book of World Records,” delivering factual tidbits so weird and so delightfully jarring that they’re almost unseemly. On November 2, 2007, we learn, a hailstorm walloped Bogota, Colombia, with 59 inches of ice and freezing water. In Yakutsk, Siberia, women in reindeer coats often wait outside for the bus when the temperature is -49 Fahrenheit.
There’s a deeper story, though, in the lavishly illustrated encyclopedia: the earth is a lovely place, offering up more beauty and natural surprises than a layperson could possibly fathom. Who knew about “ball lightning,” which manifests as a ball of light that rolls on the ground and climbs trees? Or “sastrugi,” which are irregular wind-carved furrows and ridges in snow?
Fry and her coauthors maintain a tone of pleasantly restrained wonder, and they have organized their book quite logically, into six sections that start with the basics (“What is weather?”), then look at nature’s furies (thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes) and the origins of climate science, before assailing us with the inevitable dark punch line: all the splendors you’ve seen heretofore—such as the sastrugi-rippled snows of Kilimanjaro—are in peril. To quote: “The marked increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has no precedent in approximately the last 1 million years,” and the change “may rival or even exceed the meteor impact K-T extinction event, which brought the age of the dinosaurs to the end... In the aftermath of the 2006 East African drought, one Kenyan farmer’s herd plummeted from 85 cows to five.” The pictures sound the same disquieting note. Here, for instance, is an emaciated Ethiopian infant, his ribs bulging thanks to a drought and a famine.
In conclusion, the encyclopedia provides a glimpse into humankind’s brave and varied fight against climate change. In 15 hopeful pages, we learn about recycling and reforestation and the virtues of Portland’s MAX train. Encouraging stuff, certainly, but it’s a detour from all the science before it. And, it is not really necessary. The science in this book, so clearly enunciated and so lyrically terse, sounds its own haunting call to action.
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Our country has been experiencing a number of different energy developments over the past couple decades. Natural gas, wind & solar energy, and hydraulic fracturing are just a few of the innovations that are becoming a part of our everyday lives. But one other novelty is slowly stealing the spotlight.
Microgrids are a modern technology that represent a small-scale integrated energy system. A microgrid is responsible for electricity generation and energy storage, and can be used either in conjunction with the utility’s existing power grid or as an entirely separate entity. A few major benefits resulting from the use of a microgrid include lower demand on transmission infrastructure, fewer line losses, and the ability to rely on local power sources.
Microgrids may still face a few barriers in certain areas, such as cost and integration, but they are slowly becoming more widespread. In a recent report from Pike Research, five major markets taking advantage of this innovation consist of campus, military, remote, community, and commercial & industrial sectors.
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) has become one of the most recent administrations to express interest in the use of microgrids. Looking to improve energy security, the DOD is attempting to produce over 600 megawatts of energy by 2018.
In addition to limiting the amount of fossil fuels used to generate electricity, senior research analyst Peter Asmus describes additional benefits, “They can also be used to help integrate renewable energy resources (such as wind and solar) at the local distribution and grid level. Simultaneously, microgrids enable military bases – both stationary and forward operating bases – to sustain operations, no matter what is happening on the larger utility grid or in the theater of war.”
The California Energy Commission is also taking part in microgrid development. It recently approved $1.6 million in funding for the University of California in San Diego to advance their microgrid improvements. Generating more than 90% of its own energy, the university has already reported over $800,000 per month in energy savings!
The Windham Hospital and The William W. Backus Hospital, both located in Eastern Connecticut, are requesting $1.5 million from the Microgrid Grant and Loan program to begin production on their campuses. Representatives from both hospitals explain the main benefit of a microgrid to be the guaranteed power that will be available to keep all medical equipment running effectively and continuously.
Whether it be a military base, a university campus, or a local hospital, microgrids are becoming a popular development that can provide immense benefits for any site that chooses to take advantage. Increased reliability, significant savings on monthly energy bills, local electricity generation, and a reduction in carbon footprint are all important aspects to consider. Are you interested in the development of microgrids? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Energy Curtailment Specialists, Inc.
Sarah can be found on LinkedIn and Google+.
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Search for lost amphibians
11 August 2010 | News story
Teams of scientists around the world have launched an unprecedented search in the hope of rediscovering 100 species of "lost" amphibians – animals considered potentially extinct but that may be holding on in a few remote places – Conservation International and the IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group announced today.
This search, which is taking place in 14 countries on five continents, is the first ever coordinated effort to find such a large number of "lost" creatures and comes as global amphibian populations are suffering a shocking decline – with more than 30 per cent of all species threatened with extinction.
Many of the amphibians that the teams of scientists are looking for have not been seen in several decades, and establishing whether populations have survived or not is vital for scientists looking to understand the recent amphibian extinction crisis. Amphibians also provide many important services to humans such as controlling insects that spread disease and damage crops and helping to maintain healthy freshwater systems – the chemicals in amphibian skins have also been important in helping to create new drugs with the potential to save lives, including a painkiller 200 times more potent than morphine.
"Amphibians are particularly sensitive to changes in the environment, so they are often an indicator of damage that is being done to ecosystems," explains Conservation International's Dr Robin Moore, who has organized the search for IUCN's Amphibian Specialist Group.
"But this role as the global 'canary in a coal-mine' means that the rapid and profound change to the global environment that has taken place over the last fifty years or so – in particular climate change and habitat loss – has had a devastating impact on these incredible creatures. We've arranged this search for 'lost' species that we believe may have managed to hang on so that we can get some definite answers - and hopefully learn about what has allowed some tiny populations of certain species to survive when the rest of their species has been lost."
The problems amphibians face from habitat loss have been massively exacerbated by a pathogenic fungus, which causes chytridiomycosis, a disease that has wiped-out entire populations of amphibians and in some cases whole species.
Dr Moore and his team have drawn up a list of the "top 10" species of the 100 being searched for that he believes would be particularly exciting to find. He said: "While it's very challenging to rate the importance of one species against another we have created this top 10 list because we feel that these particular animals have a particular scientific or aesthetic value."
The top 10:
Golden toad, Incilius periglenes, Costa Rica. Last seen 1989. Perhaps the most famous of the lost Amphibians. Went from abundant to extinct in a little over a year in the late 1980s.
Gastric brooding frog, Australia. 2 species – Rheobatrachus vitellinus and R. silus, last seen 1985. (Had unique mode of reproduction: females swallowed eggs and raised tadpoles in the stomach. Gave birth to froglets through the mouth.)
Mesopotamia Beaked Toad, Rhinella rostrata. Colombia. Last seen 1914. Fascinating frog with a distinctive pyramid-shaped head.
Jackson's climbing salamander, Bolitoglossa jacksoni, Guatemala. Last seen in 1975. Stunning black and yellow salamander – One of only two known specimens is believed to have been stolen from a Californian laboratory in the mid 1970s.
African Painted Frog, Callixalus pictus. Democratic Republic of Congo/Rwanda. Last seen 1950. Very little is known about this animal which is never thought to have been photographed.
Rio Pescado Stubfoot Toad, Atelopus balios, Ecuador. Last seen in April 1995. May well have been wiped-out by chytridiomycosis.
Turkestanian salamander, Hynobius turkestanicus. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. Last seen 1909. Known from only two specimens collected in 1909 somewhere "between Pamir and Samarkand"
Scarlet frog, Atelopus sorianoi, Venezuela. Last seen 1990. Known from a single stream in an isolated cloud forest.
Hula painted frog, Discoglossus nigriventer, Israel. Last seen 1955. A single adult collected in 1955 represents the last confirmed record of the species. Efforts to drain marshlands in Syria to eradicate malaria may have been responsible for the disappearance of this species.
Sambas Stream Toad, Ansonia latidisca. Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia): Last seen 1950s. Increased sedimentation in streams after logging may have contributed to the decline.
Dr Claude Gascon, co-chair of the IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group and Executive Vice President of Conservation International said: "This is something that has never been done before, and is hugely significant, not only because of the threats that amphibians face and our need to understand what has been happening to them better, but also because it represents an incredible opportunity for the world's amphibian scientists to rediscover long-lost species.
"The search for these lost animals may well yield vital information in our attempts to stop the amphibian extinction crisis, and information that helps humanity to better understand the impact that we are having on the planet."
To follow the search for the lost amphibians visit: www.conservation.org/lostfrogs
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In Focus: Carbon Capture Technology
Coal is bountiful, cheap, and accounts for about 50% of our current electricity generation. Worldwide, coal is the dominant source of power and is projected to increase even further as petroleum prices skyrocket.
However, coal is dirty. Along with ash, it is also carbon rich and has an incredibly high ratio of CO2 output per kWh of electricity generated. This is because the hydrocarbon ratio in coal is very low (about 1C to 1H), meaning more C per bond broken, and consequentially more CO2.
In an age where concern over greenhouse gasses seems to run counter to free market ideology, what can be done to make coal energy, more appealing?
The answer lies with carbon capture technology.
Carbon capture, and carbon scrubbing, is the technology that goes into cleaning, filtering, and storing the excess CO2 generated by coal fired power plants.
Already, there are examples of carbon capture that we did not even build. Every plant and algae species are effectively a terrestrial carbon capture machine. They take CO2 from the air and turn it into stored, organic carbon.
However, with an increase in airborne CO2 ,clearly more than simply trees and algae are necessary to rectify out CO2 imbalance.
One method of carbon capture is to inject effluent CO2 into underground caverns. According to a USGS study, closer to 40% of the coal fired power plants within the U.S. lie directly above of potential geological CO2 storage caverns. This could provide successful areas where we can inject CO2 underground rather than allow it to enter the atmosphere. This makes ‘dirty coal’ into ‘economical coal’ and a far more attractive option than it is today.
Other Carbon Capture technology seeks to pump CO2 into existing geological cavities formed from dried oil wells. Yet other tech seeks to crystallize the CO2 and use the resulting mineral as building material.
As it stands now, CO2 sequestration technology is not yet commercially viable. Due to the large amount of energy required to pump the gas underground, there is constant research going into how to better perform CO2 sequestration technology.
This research falls into precombustion and postcombustion categories.
Precombustion alters the fuel source before it is ignited. Often times, this is a gasification process (see gasification article).
Postcombustion is dealing with the CO2 after the fuel source has been ignited. These methods include passing carbon through membrane filters, allowing the CO2 to be biologically metabolized, using the CO2 in fertilizer aspects, using CO2 as an enzyme for catalysis processes or adding CO2 to landfills for accelerate the carbon cycle.
Existing CO2 sequestration projects include:
Archer Daniels Midland (IL)
Leucadia Energy, LLC (NY)
The cutting edge of carbon sequestration technology includes using the CO2 for anything from biofuel to concrete production. These include large industrial projects such as Phycal, LLC.
For more on carbon sequestration:
EnergyGridIQ (EIQ) is a powerful and comprehensive location-based database of energy projects and thousands of energy incentives offered by federal, state and private sources. EIQ also provides an alert service for new RFPs and opportunities, and targeted local advertising. In addition to geocoded incentive data, EIQ offers extensive additional geocoded datasets including weather, market prices, and client data such as energy consumption. The overlaid datasets on EIQ’s unique map interface provide a powerful tool to manage energy decisions. EIQ founders and current team include energy industry and deregulated market veterans, data scientists, technology and mobile experts and literally NASA rocket engineers.
Search 26k+ Solar Articles
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Math and Science Academy
Imagine your future. Do you see yourself . . .
• working with a team of researchers in a lab or in the field?
• programming and testing the latest video game?
• writing code for the world’s leading software companies?
• proving and disproving cutting-edge theorems in mathematics?
• identifying and cataloguing new species of plants or animals?
• helping architects design structurally sound buildings and bridges?
• researching and designing new drugs to help cure cancer and other maladies?
• using statistics to predict the future of financial markets?
• working with animals as a veterinarian or veterinary assistant?
• teaching math or science to a group of eager students?
• becoming an environmental engineer to study the effects of global warming?
• working in the renewable energy sector as a Wind Farm Project Developer?
• studying ocean currents as a marine biologist?
• being part of a research and development team on the newest hybrid vehicle?
We live in a world defined by math and science. Your phone, your television, your computer and even the cars in which you ride around, all are the products of years of scientific and mathematical research. Without dedicated mathematicians and scientists we would live in a world far different than the one in which we live. We would not have doctors to care for the sick (human or otherwise). We would not have chemists to discover cures for illness. We would not have the internet bringing information to our fingertips. We would be stuck in the Iron Age – if we were lucky.
Have you ever heard a scientific discovery announced and been excited? Whether it is the discovery of a new species of animal, the first picture of a pulsar, or the testing of a new medicine you could be a part of that in the future. Have you ever looked forward to a new video game or the release of a new search engine? You could be on the development side some day. Has the discovery of a new prime number or a new way of encoding data ever intrigued you? Your name could be on the next major breakthrough.
Science and math drive humanity forward as we progress to the future. You could be a part of that future!
The WHS Math and Science Academy will prepare students for 21st Century careers through the development of problem solving techniques using both inductive and deductive logic, as well as, developing abstract and critical thinking and communication skills.
Career exploration available in this academy:
• Computer Programming
• Physical Science
• Biological Science
• Actuarial Science
Math and Science Academy Requirements:
• Math and Science: 3.0 credits
• Psychology as a Science I 0.5 credits
• Computer Programming 0.5 credits
• Math and Science Capstone 1 credits
Total Credits upon completion of Academy 5 credits
To view the WHS Program of Studies - Click Here
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How A Mosquito Works : Automated Mosquito Misting Systems : Homeland Defense Corp. : Valdosta GA
Facts: The Mechanics of a Mosquito
You're out in your backyard during the summer enjoying your family and grilling your dinner. Oh!! You never heard or felt it coming. You look down see a painful, swelling mosquito bite. Later, you feel another one bite you. Do these insects carry disease? What can you do to protect yourself?
Mosquitoes are insects that have been around millions of years. And it seems that, during this time, mosquitoes have been polishing their skills so that they are now experts at finding people to bite. A mosquito has a group of sensors designed to track their prey, including:
Chemical sensors - mosquitoes can sense carbon dioxide and lactic acid up to 100 feet (36 meters) away. Birds and mammals gives off these gases as part of breathing. Certain chemicals in sweat also can attract mosquitoes (people who don't sweat much don't get nearly as many mosquito bites).
Visual sensors - if you are wearing clothing that contrasts with the background, and especially if you move while wearing that clothing, mosquitoes can see you and zero in on you. It's a good bet that anything moving is "alive", and therefore full of blood, so this is a good strategy.
Heat sensors - Mosquitoes can detect heat, so they can find warm-blooded mammals and birds very easily once they get close enough.
The word "mosquito" is Spanish for "little fly," and its use dates back to about 1583 in North America (Europeans referred to mosquitoes as "gnats"). Mosquitoes belong to the order Diptera, true flies. Although mosquitoes are like flies in that they have two wings, they are quite unlike flies because their wings have scales, their legs are long and the females have a long mouth part for piercing skin (proboscis).
One of the only ways to stop mosquitoes from finding you is to confuse their chemical receptors with something like pyrethrum.
Adult mosquitoes have three basic body parts:
Head - This is where all the sensors are, along with the biting apparatus the proboscis (only females have the proboscis, for biting). The head has two compound eyes, antennae to sense chemicals and a mouth part called the palpus.
Thorax - This segment is where the two wings and six legs attach. It contains the flight muscles, compound heart, some nerve cell ganglia and trachioles.
Abdomen - This segment contains the excretory and digestive organs.
So you have a sensor package, a motor package and a fuel processing package -- a perfect design!
There are over 2,700 species of mosquitoes in the world, and there are 13 mosquito genera (plural for "genus") that live in the United States. Of these genera, most mosquitoes belong to three:
Aedes - These are sometimes called "floodwater" mosquitoes because flooding is important for their eggs to hatch. Aedes mosquitoes have abdomens with pointed tips. They include such species as the yellow-fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) and the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus). They are strong fliers, capable of travelling great distances (up to 75 miles/121 km) from their breeding sites. They persistently bite mammals (especially humans), mainly at dawn and in the early evening. Their bites are painful.
Anopheles - These tend to breed in bodies of permanent fresh water. Anopheles mosquitoes also have abdomens with pointed tips. They include several species, such as the common malaria mosquito (Anopheles quadrimaculatus), that can spread malaria to humans.
Culex - These tend to breed in quiet, standing water. Culex mosquitoes have abdomens with blunt tips. They include several species such as the northern house mosquito (Culex pipiens). They are weak fliers and tend to live for only a few weeks during the summer months. They persistently bite (preferring birds over humans) and attack at dawn or after dusk. Their bite is painful.
Some mosquitoes, such as the cattail mosquito (Coquilettidia perturbans), are becoming more prevalent pests as humans invade their habitats.
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Solar Energy Today and Tomorrow – Shaped by History, Powered by Innovation
Solar energy has been around for a long, long time – since approximately 3,500,000,000 BC, in fact, when cyanobacteria harnessed solar energy for life. Little did those simple organisms know that they were onto something that one day would become a viable power source that could increase the quality of human life by sustaining our environment and decreasing our energy costs.
Without a doubt, solar energy has come a long way – and though it’s been around for millenniums, the most notable technological, political and economic breakthroughs in shaping solar as we know it started in the late 1970s. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights in the evolution of solar – and you can read the full history of solar by checking out our interactive solar energy timeline.
1978 – Power from the President
President Jimmy Carter signed the National Energy Act which established “feed-in tariffs” that mandated utility companies to buy back power generated by renewable sources. That gave private citizens using solar power generation systems the option to generate profit by selling excess power back to power companies.
1979 – The White House goes Solar
President Jimmy Carter gets solar panels installed on the roof of the White House during the Arab oil embargo. And thus, arguably the most important piece of real estate in America was partially powered by solar energy. In 1986, President Reagan had the 32 panels removed, and they were relocated for further use.
1980 – Powering up in California and Massachusetts
ARCO constructed what was the largest PV manufacturing plant in California – and went on to produce more than one megawatt of PV products in 1980.
Solar Designs Associates designed and built the “Carlisle House” in Carlisle, MA. Commissioned by MIT, the roof’s solar array was capable of producing 7.5 kilowatts and made it zero percent reliant on fossil fuels. The 3,200 square foot house produced a surplus of energy, which was sold to utility companies.
1980 — 1985 – Solar goes solo
Engineers began to look beyond centralized PV power stations for solar energy to the idea that individual buildings could become their own power production facility. Swiss engineer Marcus Real advanced that idea and sold over 300 residential solar systems in Zurich. That development changed the business of solar with a new focus on consumers who wished to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on centralized power.
1990 — 1999 – Efficiency on the upswing
Tremendous advances occurred in this decade. Efficiency of solar cells increased dramatically. In 1992, the University of South Florida produced a thin-film photovoltaic cell system that operated at 15.9% efficiency. And in 1999, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory further improved the efficiency to 18.8%. Also in that year, Spectrolab, Inc. developed a multi-junction photovoltaic cell with 32.2% efficiency – a vast improvement over where things started at the start of the decade.
May 2002 – A powerful and profitable solar-focused collaboration
The collaboration of Energy Northwest, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Bonneville Power Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, and Newport Northwest LLC developed the 38.7 kilowatt White Bluffs Solar Station in Richland, WA. The 6,000 square foot facility uses multi-junction photovoltaic cells and began selling its power to Bonneville Power Administration for $0.04 per kilowatt-hour. In addition, the facility started selling “green tags (similar to carbon credits which can be used to compensate for other, less eco-friendly projects).
July 31, 2008 – Storage issue meets promising solution
MIT researchers deliver powerful news to help alleviate the issue of solar power storage. They announced that storage concerns could soon be dealt with by utilizing fuel cell technology to split hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water, and then recombine them for later use. That capability brought an element of further versatility to solar energy and addressed the primary issue faced by solar technology – its availability at night. Inspired by plant photosynthesis, the researchers developed a process to enable storing energy in a clean, affordable way.
2010 – Solar soars
2010 brought the installation of more than 50,000 systems. That was nearly twice as many systems as in 2009. The impact: a cumulative capacity of 2.15 gigawatts! Approximately 262 MW of the production units installed were connected to residential systems.
In July of 2010, the Solar Impulse project, headquartered in Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, achieved a sustained 24 hour flight with is fully solar airplane.
2012 – Around the world and in the toilet (in a good way)
On May 4, 2012, the Tûranor PlanetSolar, a fully solar-powered catamaran, completed a 584 day circumnavigation of the planet. The boat used 38,000 solar cells to charge a bank of lithium-ion batteries that could hold enough power to propel the boat for three days with no sunlight.
Alta Devices researchers developed a “LED type” solar cell in April that emits light as it produces – reaching 28.3% efficiency (the highest for any single-junction cell). And on May 31, Sharp achieved an impressive efficiency of 43.5% with their compound cell and concentrator system. August 20, IBM and associates reached an efficiency of 11.1% with their affordable to produce copper, zinc, and tin-based cells. Two days later, South China University of Technology hit 9.31% efficiency with polymer-based organic photovoltaic cells (OPV).
And rounding out the 2012 advancements, on August 14, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the winners of their “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge.” A team from the California Institute of Technology took first place for developing a toilet that uses solar power to render all waste into hydrogen gas, water, and organic fertilizer. The new, inexpensive variety of toilets is intended for locations without access to modern sanitation facilities or clean water.
The Future of Solar…
As history always does, we can expect that it will repeat itself by continued interest and innovation in solar power. The increased momentum that the advances in solar energy have gained over time is a promising sign that it will become a more broadly installed technology in homes. As scientific diligence and practical applications yield better returns on homeowners’ investments, we’ll surely see the solar energy movement expand. Cost savings, more control over our energy, and the promise of a cleaner, quieter way to power our lives…the benefits of solar energy will steadily be realized by more and more households. It’s just a matter of time.
Article by Jim Noden, founder of Bright Eye Solar LLC, a solar installation company located in Lancaster, PA. He is passionate about what the future of solar has in store.
|Tags: efficiency energy costs Feed In Tariff power stations solar energy||[ Permalink ]|
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If there are myths behind recyclable containers and the markets available for them, they were cleared up for an audience of solid waste and recycling professionals last week. Speaking at the annual Iowa Recycling & Solid Waste Management Conference in Dubuque Oct. 5 were presenters Jim Birmingham, recycling coordinator for the Carton Council based in Milwaukee, Wis., and Susan V. Collins, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute in Culver City, Calif.
Birmingham's objective was to hail a recyclable product new in the industry: cartons. These include gabled cartons like milk cartons, which must be refrigerated, and aseptic cartons like those that contain chicken broth, meant to be stacked and stored in a cabinet and refrigerated after opening. He said both types of packaging once contained wax, making them poor candidates for recycling. Today, wax has been replaced by polyethylene, which does not interfere with recycling. The aseptic carton additionally includes many layers of aluminum to block out light - the principle cause of spoilage.
Carton recycling is widely practiced in Europe, Birmingham said, but in North America there are only nine paper mills that accept the product. The Carton Council, formed by four carton manufacturers - Elopak, Evergreen Packaging, SIG Combibloc and Tetra Pak - is committed to increasing carton recycling in the U.S. By promoting both recycling technology and local collection programs, the Carton Council intends to limit the amount of cartons that end up in a landfill. Since 2009, the Carton Council has pushed to expand carton recycling access and end markets through "innovative collaborations with facilities, communities, service providers and paper mills." As a result, cartons are being recycled by more than 35 million households in 40 states.
The Carton Council works closely with communities, recycling facilities and service providers to add cartons to their programs by providing financial resources and technical assistance. Their first step was to work with paper mills, negotiating with them a financial strategy to encourage acceptance of cartons without incurring financial harm if the market should change. Once that piece was in place, the Council began encouraging Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) to consider what they would need to add carton recycling to their facility, be it optical scanners for sorting, a reconfigured or extended sorting line, or other technical assistance. According to Birmingham, cartons can be processed as part of a dual- or single-stream facility. The other players in the recycling process can be involved, too, Birmingham said. Haulers can let MRFs know that they will accept cartons for recycling, and brokers can be willing to assist in the creation of this new supply chain.
Birmingham said it is important for all consumers to have access to carton recycling. Right now cartons represent only 1 to 1.5 percent of trash going into landfills, but that number is expected to grow. Products such as bottled water, bottled sports drinks, and even bottled wine are beginning to move into carton packaging. He'd like to avert waste by educating consumers that the end product for recycled cartons includes bath tissue, plastic lumber, and even flower pots. To date, more than 30 million households in 28 states have access to recycling programs that accept cartons such as milk cartons, juice boxes, and other liquid packaging including soups, broths and soy milks.
Handling cartons as a distinct commodity represents a potential revenue stream for municipalities, Birmingham said. But carton recycling is not available in many areas, even though in some places consumers already put cartons into their curbside recycling. Birmingham said consumers are not told that the mills are allowed a five percent throw-out allowance. That means those cartons will ultimately wind up in a landfill, after yet another trip in a truck.
As a way to encourage carton recycling, the Council works with school districts. Kids go through a lot of cartons at meal times, and starting an education program in the schools paired with actual recycling practice is a way to involve children in sustainable practices, he said.
Susan V. Collins of the Container Recycling Institute also dispelled myths about the specific environmental benefit of recycling. She said the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released when a product is manufactured and used should be the measure that counts when calculating landfill diversion, not the tonnage of the waste. Collins said 37 percent of greenhouse gases are generated during production of goods and seven percent during the use of those products. She also said that tonnage is a dated way of assessing landfill use. Ultimately, things don't contaminate soil or cause environmental harm because they weigh a lot. "Landfills don't fill up by weight, but by volume," she said.
Take polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic beverage containers as an illustration. In the three years between 2002 and 2005, sales of bottled water in the U.S. nearly doubled, from 15 billion units sold to 29.8 billion. Those beverage containers are six percent of waste in landfills by weight, but 17 to 20 percent when measured by greenhouse gases, she said.
Collins said producing a PET beverage container requires raw materials extraction, the manufacture of chemicals, the manufacture of the bottle itself, the creation of the contents, its transportation to store, refrigeration in the store and in the consumers home, and so forth. This chain of events, she said, has a "huge environmental impact in the front end." But if consumers used a 100 percent recycled bottle, they would put 60 to 70 percent less greenhouse gas into the atmosphere for the creation of that bottle than if it were made from virgin resources.
The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) is a non-profit organization with a mission to make North America a global model for the collection and quality recycling of packaging materials. They envision a world where no material is wasted, and the environment is protected. They work to create collaboration between companies and people to create a strong, sustainable domestic economy.
That economic focus means considering the complexity of different sorts of source materials and understanding that they aren't all recycled at the same rate or for the same cost. Collins said there are 22 different material types upon which scrap value is set, ranging from sorted office paper to more obscure items like plastic laminate. "Packing is highly complex," she continued, citing items such as dog food bags that have a strip of paper across the top and a pull string for opening, or the small dental floss packets that include at least two types of plastic resin along with a tiny aluminum device for cutting the floss.
"Recycling rates differ depending on the type of item, and the cost of what it takes per ton to recycle and reuse materials varies widely." Collins also said the financial waste of PET water bottles going into landfills adds up to $2.5 billion essentially going into landfills every year. If recycled, that material could be used in items like strapping, or plumbing. And during a recent world-wide cotton crop failure, Collins said, many clothing manufacturers were using recycled PET as a substitute product.
A world-wide focus means noticing that in Europe, recycling rates are much higher than in the U.S., and consumers have the opportunity to drink from refillable bottle that are returned to the manufacturer, sterilized, filled, fitted with a new cap and label, and distributed to consumers. But in the U.S. annually, Collins said, 215 billion drink containers are sold, of which 141 billion are wasted. Americans consume 721 bottles and cans of drinks per person every year, for an average of two per day, per person. While beverage sales increased, recycling rates decreased from 41 to 34 percent, Collins said. She explained the gap pointing out most of these beverages are being consumed at work or on the road, not at home where people are near their convenient recycling containers.
"If we were to recycle those 141 billion wasted containers, we'd save enough energy to power 3.5 million homes for a year. We would also reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as if 3.3 million cars were removed from the road," she said.
CRI is a strong supporter of deposit laws affecting bottles and cans. Processors also advocate for this method because it results in higher quality materials with fewer contaminants. Processors say that for every 100 tons of material they buy, they may use only about 73 tons, throwing the rest out, transporting it in another truck to another landfill. Economically this is difficult and unsustainable. Collins and the CRI champion bottle deposits also because they encourage consumers to recycle. "If a 10-cent deposit were placed on all beverages (excluding dairy) throughout the United States, an 80 to 90 percent recycling rate could be achieved across the board."
The Iowa Recycling & Solid Waste Management Conference is hosted annually by the Iowa Recycling Association and the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations.
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The Green Energy Act was created to expand Ontario's production of renewable energy, encourage energy conservation and promote the creation of clean-energy green jobs.
The act aims to expand Ontario's renewable energy production and create clean-energy jobs by:
- creating a feed-in-tariff program that guarantees rates for energy generated from renewable sources - such as solar photovoltaic, biogas, biomass, landfill gas, on-shore and off-shore wind and water power; minimum levels of Ontario labour and materials are required to qualify for the program
- establishing the right to connect to the electricity grid for all renewable energy projects - including small-scale energy generators, such as homes and schools - that meet technical, economic and regulatory requirements
- establishing a "one-stop" streamlined approvals process for small-scale renewable energy projects that meet regulatory requirements
- implementing a "smart" power grid to support the development of new renewable energy projects, and to prepare Ontario for new technologies such as electric cars.
The act promotes conservation in Ontario through:
- creating new energy-efficient standards for Ontario's building code and for household appliances
- providing financial assistance for small-scale renewable energy projects
- working with local utilities to help them reach conservation targets
- ensuring conservation measures protect low-income Ontarians.
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PSE Success Story:
Scientists Develop Green Method to Produce Propylene Oxide
Propylene oxide is commonly used in the manufacturing of plastics and propylene glycols for
paints, household detergents and automotive brake fluids.
The current production of propylene oxide
creates a significant amount of by-products
that are harmful to the environment, including
chlorinated or peroxycarboxylic waste, or use
expensive reagents, such as hydrogen peroxide.
Manufacturers have tried using large silver
particles to produce propylene oxide from
propylene, but this method suffers from
a low selectivity or low conversion to
propylene oxide—creating a large amount
of carbon dioxide.
Argonne researchers discovered that
nanoscale clusters of silver, consisting of
both three-atom clusters as well as larger
nanostructures of 3.5 nanometers in size
made of three-atom clusters, are highly active
and selective catalysts for the production
of propylene oxide. They then modeled the
underlying mechanism behind why these
ultrasmall nanoparticles of silver were so
effective in creating propylene oxide. The
researchers discovered that the open shell
electronic structure of the silver catalysts was the
impetus behind the nanoclusters’ selectivity.
Calculated relaxed structure and spin densities
of a Ag33 cluster. The optimized “nanohill”
geometries are very disordered and suggest that
the 2x4nm agglomerated nanoparticles might
have core-shell structures. The high-spin states
show significant spin density on some surface
atoms, which are expected to be more active for
propylene epoxidation as on the silver trimers.
Argonne scientists identified a new means of
producing propylene oxide that is both more
environmentally friendly and less expensive than current production methods. The new class of
silver-based catalysts can produce the chemical with few by-products at low temperatures.
The findings resulted from a highly collaborative team that involved five Argonne divisions and
collaborators from the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Propylene oxide is a building block in the creation of several other industrially relevant
chemicals, but the current methods of creating it are not efficient,” said Larry Curtiss,
Argonne materials chemist. “The work opens a new chapter in the field of silver as a
catalyst for propene epoxidation.”
- Scientists Develop Green Method to Produce Propylene Oxide (742 kB pdf)
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The Timeline Of The Middle Ages By Nelly
Created by nellys on Sep 17, 2008
Last updated: 11/16/09 at 04:02 PM
Middle Ages Timeline has no followers yet. Be the first one to follow.
In Wittenberg Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Catholic Church. Martin Luther was concerned about certain practices in the Catholic Church such as the selling of indulgences to free the soul from torture. Martin Luther wrote them because he wanted to correct what he saw in the churchs mistakes.
The Sistine Chapel was located in the Vatican City, in Rome. It took a bit over 4 years to paint. It is and was one of Romes most popular chapels maily because of its interior design.
John Calvin was born in the 16th century. He was born in Nyon, Switzerland, he studied at the University of Paris where he studied theology. He started Calvinsm which was an approach to the Christian life which drawed attention to the rule of God over all things.
Columbus departed on his first voyage from the port of Palos in southern Spain, on August 3, in command of three ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
Copernicus studying the night sky was how astronomy was invented. If he hadnt started those studies then right now people wouldnt know how to read the night sky.
Raphael was born on April 6th in Urbino, Italy.
The workshop was located in Florence, Italy. It was the centre of the intellectual currents in Florence. It was where he tought himslef and learnt the things that made him a very smart man. Like he learnt humanities, engineering and how to paint there.
The inventor of the Printing Press was Johannes Gutenberg. The Printing Press was a machine that transfers lettering or images by contact with various forms of inked surface onto paper or similar material fed into it in various ways The device is used for printing many copies of a text on paper.
Gutenberg was born in the 15 century in Mainz, Germany.
The Plague began because these fleas which had a disease clinged onto rats in the Roman Empire and then the ras carried the disease. Since back then rats were common to see on the streets people were in close contact with them so the fleas went onto them and people got the disease. This time during the Empire was called the "Black Death".
The Crusades ended because the Pope lost the support of the Lords, who had the power of the wars. Their wars were not successfull in the long run and so it ended with a Peace Declaration.
The Crusades were battles that were fought to defend religion.
That rule that the Pope can be judged by no one was apart of the Canon Law and since the Pope was the Bishop of the First See there was no one that had the authority to judge him. Therefore no one had the legal right to determine whether or not the Pope had been excluded himself from the Church.
William The Conqueror was crowned and during his reign he faught in the Battle of Hastings, he saw change in the English Laws and also he made changes to English vocabulary.
William The Conqueror led the Norman side and King Harold II ruled the English side. It took place on the 14th of October. The Battle began when King Edward III died and left no heir in charge, so the council eventually decided that and adult in the council was going to be crowned. Two adults werent happy, Harald Hardrada of Scandinavia and William The Conqueror of Normady so they joined forces,planned and attacked a battle against England to change the King. England was out numbered and weakened by Willliam.
The Church split into two when Pope Leo IX and Patriach Michael I they were excluded from the church. There were 5 leaders of the church and one of them was the Pope and he tried to control all the other Metropolitans and they didnt accept so the churchs split up.
Charlemagne did amazing things for his empire. He helped them survive through many wars. That is why when he died his empire was very sad. Everyone loved him but the relationship between him and his daughters was awful. He did not want them to marry so they had many affaires with different men. And then one of the daughters had a child even though she wasnt married so when their father died they were banished from the court by their brother.
Charlemagne led his empire through countless amount of wars during his reign. He launched a 30-year campaign that conquered and Christianized the unreligious Saxons in the north.
The Fall Of Rome happened because the Romans had trade decline, there was less loyalty to their leaders and also the wealthy and emperors were not following the rules of the taxes. The nature also brought the plague and drought to the Roman Empire.
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The Mississippi river is drying up and some shipping companies are worried that the drought of 1988 may be repeated, a time when the river dried up so much that barge traffic came to a standstill. In 1988 the shipping industry lost $1 billion, a number that would be far higher in 2012 and could be reached in as little as three days.
Almost all of the rivers 2,500 miles are experiencing some type of low water level. Just outside of Memphis the river is 13 feet below normal depth while the National Weather Service says Vicksburg, Mississippi is 20 feet below normal levels. Overall the Mississippi is 13 feet below normal averages for this time of year.
The drying up river is forcing barge, tugboat and towboat operators to navigate narrower and more shallow spots in the river, slowing their speeds as they pass dangerously close to one another. In some parts of the Mississippi the river is so narrow that one-way traffic is being utilized.
Because of the shallow water levels shippers have been forced to load less cargo which has left them with lower profit margins over fears that they would run into the rivers floor with heavier freight.
Industry analysts predict that closing down the Mississippi will cause losses up to $300 million per day and then grow exponentially over subsequent shutdown days. An idle tugboat alone costs nearly $10,000 to operate daily.
Closing the Mississippi will affect people all over the country, barges, tugboats and towboats ship petroleum, grain, fertilizer, sand, gravel, steel and other items that will raise in price if their means of transportation are severed for much of the United States.
According to Time, “About 60% of the country’s grain exports and one-fifth of its coal is transported along the nation’s inland waterway system.”
The National Weather Service continues to monitor conditions all along the Mississippi’s 2,500 miles of waterway.
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Somewhere between 4 and 5.5 million people in the UK live in fuel poverty – defined broadly as a situation where a household spends more than 10% of its income on fuel costs. Will existing fuel poverty policies reduce this number and, if not, what are the alternatives?
Two new reports prepared by the IPPR and NEA for JRF call into question the effectiveness of existing fuel poverty and raise concerns over the impact of environmental policies on low income households. The research suggests the Government is failing to take advantage of key opportunities to help fuel poor households by making their homes more energy efficient. Of course there are suggestions that the fuel poverty measure I referred to earlier needs to be changed, but Professor John Hills' interim report confirms that the problem is significant, whatever the definition.
Although governments may lack the power to influence global energy markets and are inhibited from interfering in the domestic market of the 'Big 6' energy companies, more can be done. A real difference to fuel poverty can be made by improving the energy efficiency of the homes of the fuel poor.
The average family household fuel bill per year is around £1,300. This figure rises to over £2,000 for families in poorly insulated homes who want to achieve the same level of warmth. Unfortunately, while good insulation can have a massive impact on the cost of heating homes, many people on low incomes who have to choose between 'heating or eating' may see the prospect of installing costly upfront insulation as unrealistic.
Worse still, with the ending of the Warm Front programme next year there will be no state-funded, grant-aided energy efficiency programmes. All energy efficiency initiatives will be funded through energy bills.
Ironically, this additional cost (and the numerous other climate change-related levies geared towards promoting low carbon energy production) will have a regressive impact that penalises low income households.
Even the proposed new Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is not going to be a dedicated fuel poverty programme. Amazingly, ECO funding will actually be diverted to better off households living in 'hard to treat' properties that are too costly to be funded through the Green Deal.
What alternative policies are available?
The IPPR and NEA reports call for:
This really does seem like a no brainer – the pensioners most in need of help with their bill should also be given help to reduce their bills.
There is no doubt that reducing or eliminating fuel poverty would significantly reduce the 27,000 'excess winter deaths' in the UK. This figure is far higher than other countries with colder climates and is a stark indicator of the lack of support afforded to the most vulnerable in our society. So, while the Hills Review team continue to grapple with the definition of fuel poverty, once again there is an urgent need to help low income families reduce their fuel bills this winter.
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Depletion of oil reserves and the associated effects on climate change have prompted a re-examination of the use of plant biomass as a sustainable source of organic carbon for the large-scale production of chemicals and materials. While initial emphasis has been placed on biofuel production from edible plant sugars, the drive to reduce the competition between crop usage for food and non-food applications has prompted massive research efforts to access the less digestible saccharides in cell walls (lignocellulosics). This in turn has prompted an examination of the use of other plant-derived metabolites for the production of chemicals spanning the high-value speciality sectors through to platform intermediates required for bulk production. The associated science of biorefining, whereby all plant biomass can be used efficiently to derive such chemicals, is now rapidly developing around the world. However, it is clear that the heterogeneity and distribution of organic carbon between valuable products and waste streams are suboptimal. As an alternative, we now propose the use of synthetic biology approaches to 're-construct' plant feedstocks for optimal processing of biomass for non-food applications. Promising themes identified include re-engineering polysaccharides, deriving artificial organelles, and the reprogramming of plant signalling and secondary metabolism.
PMID: 21464074 [PubMed - in process]
Plants: biofactories for a sustainable future?
Philos Transact A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2011 May 13;369(1942):1826-39
Authors: Jenkins T, Bovi A, Edwards R
(Via pubmed: "synthetic biology".)
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Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)
A Weekly News Update on Pesticides, Health and Alternatives
See PANUPS archive for complete information.
- 'Superweeds' jam the pesticide treadmill
- Philippines Dept. of Health: No aerial spraying on banana plantations
- Endocrine disruptors disrupt common wisdom
- GM crops kill lady bugs; science suppressed
The introduction of genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant crops has created a dire situation in the U.S. south – as weeds become more herbicide-resistant, farmers trying to maintain their 10,000-acre-plus “megafarms” are forced to apply increasing amounts of weedkiller. According to Tom Philpott and others, this pesticide treadmill is beginning to break down. Nine strains of amaranth (a.k.a. pigweed) have been labeled as noxious weeds in the U.S. One variety in particular, Palmer amaranth, has become resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup. Amaranth and other so-called "superweeds" have thrown a wrench in the machine of industrial agriculture. Pigweed is sturdy enough to “stop a combine in its tracks” and reduce yields by up to 68%, which is forcing many farmers to abandon chemical weedkillers in favor of mechanical cultivators and hand weeding. The situation is so bad in Macon County, Georgia, that 10,000 acres of farmland were deserted. The qualities that make amaranth a particularly pesky weed are the reasons it has been cultivated as a food source by Indigenous peoples in the Americas since 3400 BC: it is prolific (producing up to 10,000 seeds at a time), drought resistant, reaches maturity quickly, and has an extended period of germination. It is also exceptionally nutritious; containing 30% more protein than other cereal grains and, like quinoa (a pseudocereal), it is a complete protein. The Aztecs used it as a food staple but when the Spanish priests discovered that they were also using it in religious ceremonies, they banned the sale, consumption, and cultivation of amaranth. The plant has outlasted the Spanish, bested Roundup and is being reintroduced in many places throughout Mesoamerica as an inexpensive, healthy, localized solution to hunger problems.
In response to its current superweed crisis, Monsanto blames farmers for the overuse of glyphosate, and recommends mixing glyphosate with older herbicides like 2-4,D -- one of the active ingredients in Agent Orange. They are right about the overuse part -- in the ten years after "Roundup Ready" crops were introduced, glyphosate use went from 7.9 million pounds per year to 119 million pounds per year. And as for mixing glyphosate and 2-4D? Monsanto appears to have anticipated the superweed dilemma, as they patented that combination in 2001.
On November 8, The Philippines Department of Health issued a statement urging a halt to aerial pesticide spraying on banana plantations, saying that the banana industry must prove aerial application safe before returning to the practice. According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the recommendation is "based on the precautionary principle espoused by the Rio Declaration, of which the Philippines is a signatory.” The statement is based on a 2006 department study that links aerial spraying with diseases of people living in and around the banana plantations. According to the Inquirer, the department recognized that "the fungicides mancozeb and chlorothalonil which are sprayed aerially 'caused acute health effects and chronic effects to workers and communities living near plantations.'" The 2006 study recommendations include: (1) Establishing a health surveillance system to detect health effects of chronic pesticide exposure in communities adjacent to plantations; (2) Requiring industry, with governmental oversight, to monitor pesticide residues in the environment of adjacent communities, remediating where necessary; (3) Creating and strengthening guidelines for protecting communities from pesticide contamination; and (4) Considering a shift to organic farming techniques.
"This is a significant victory," said Dr. Romeo Quijano of Pesticide Action Network Philippines. "But the campaign continues since the Supreme Court has not yet decided on the issue and the companies continue their aerial spraying." As PAN North America members know, Dr. Quijano and Ilana Ilang Quijano, his daughter, have been targeted by banana plantation owners with threats and in libel suits for documenting and publicizing the continuing exposure of plantation residents to pesticide poisoning. According to Medha Chandra, PAN North America Campaigner, "It is critical that we develop and implement policies that prevent chemical trespass via pesticide drift. Sensitive sites -- such as schools, homes and playgrounds -- must be our first priority for protection. Long-term, a transition to agroecological pest management is the best solution to protect health, food and livelihoods of farm and rural communities around the world."
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are substances in the environment that interfere with hormone (endocrine) systems to cause developmental, reproductive, immunological and neurological disorders including cancer, obesity, diabetes and a host of other illnesses. U.S. regulatory, and traditional toxicological and medical science have been slow to recognize the environmental health hazards posed by EDCs in part because this class of chemicals operates at such low levels and with such complex causal mechanisms that reductive and mathematically linear risk models proceeding from the assumption that "the dose makes the poison" have been ill-suited to comprehend the messy realities of multiple chemical exposures and time-dependent dose response.
Increasingly, toxicologists and now -- surprisingly -- the American Medical Association, are poised to take up the public health paradigm challenge posed by EDCs. In the latest issue of Environmental Health Perspectives Linda Birnbaum, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, presents a summary of recent research that together refutes the commonly held notion that the dose makes the poison. Birnbaum explains how a growing number of studies show that many environmental toxicants can have significant consequences, including dysfunction and disease, at very low-level exposures. Many of these low-dose studies (including with the pesticides hexachlorobenzene and atrazine) demonstrate that “the timing of exposure is critical to the outcome and that exposures during early life stages (fetal, infant, and pubertal) are particularly important. This recognition of critical windows of vulnerability not only demonstrates the developmental basis of disease but also that the timing, as well as the dose, makes the poison.” In addition, the effects of environmental toxins on the human hormone system, for example, are frequently non-linear such that “high doses may not be appropriate to predict the safety of low doses when hormonally active or modulating compounds are studied.” Birnbaum describes this body of research as responsible for disruptive "paradigm shifts in our understanding of the relationship between environmental toxicants and disease."
A recent article in Nature Biotechnology (PDF) reveals data, formerly suppressed by the biotechnology industry, that demonstrate a transgenic variety of corn is fatal to ladybugs. In 2001, at the request of seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred International, university scientists conducted research on a new variety of transgenic corn containing the binary toxin Cry34Ab1/Cry35Ab1. The scientists found that nearly 100% of ladybugs fed on the corn could not survive past the eighth day of their life cycle. Pioneer prohibited the scientists from publicizing their data and, when applying for regulatory approval for a corn variety containing the same toxin, submitted different data that made no mention of potential harm to ladybugs. Scientists are often barred from publicizing data that is unwelcome to biotechnology companies, particularly when the corporations themselves commissioned the research. Based on claims of business confidentiality and strict contracts with researchers, companies are able to keep unwelcome data under wraps and scientists’ hands tied. Companies routinely deny scientists’ research requests and suppress research by threatening legal action, a practice one scientist describes as “chilling.” In February 2009, 26 corn-pest specialists anonymously submitted a statement to U.S. EPA decrying industry’s prohibitive restrictions on independent research. "The risks of genetically modified crops are coming to light in spite of industry’s attempts to strangle the science," observes Kathryn Gilje, executive director of Pesticide Action Network North America. Ireland recently banned GM crops in favor of developing agriculture that emphasizes proven agroecological solutions.
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Most Recent Trends
Visit the Worldwatch Institute Bookstore to download and purchase more of Worldwatch's award-winning research.
Carbon Capture and Storage Experiences Limited Growth in 2011
Funding for large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects remained relatively unchanged in 2011, with total funding from governments reaching $23.5 billion.1 (See Figure 1.) Overall, the number of active and planned large-scale CCS projects declined in 2011, although the total operating storage capacity increased.
In March 2012 the Global CCS Institute identified 75 large-scale fully integrated CCS projects in 17 countries at various stages of development—4 projects fewer than at the end of 2010.2 Only 8 of these plants are operational, the same number as in 2009 and 2010.3 (See Figure 2.) These 8 projects store a combined total of 23.18 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year (Mtpa), about as much as emitted annually by 4.5 million passenger vehicles in the United States.4 Operating storage capacity has more than doubled since late 2010.5
At the end of 2011, the United States remained the largest funder of large-scale CCS projects ($7.4 billion), having allocated $6.1 billion to projects and with an additional $1.3 billion set aside for future projects.6 The European Union has announced the next largest amount of funding ($5.6 billion), although Canada has actually allocated more money to date ($2.9 billion).7 In March 2011 the United Kingdom decided to no longer pursue a CCS Electricity Levy; instead, general taxes will be used to fund that nation’s CCS projects.8
For full access to the complete trend and its associated charts, log in to Vital Signs or:Subscribe to all vital signs trends
Annual subscribers to Vital Signs Online have full access to all our trends and charts.
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Editor: Jane Villa-Lobos
CONSERVATION COMMUNITY MOURNS DEATH OF FIELD BIOLOGISTS
On August 3, two of the world's top field biologists, Theodore A. Parker III and Alwyn Gentry, were tragically killed in an airplane crash in Ecuador. Both scientists were founders of Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), and their deaths mark a major loss to the international conservation community. They were on a RAP reconnaissance trip, making an aerial survey of the coastal area of Ecuador when the small plane crashed into a mountain. Two others died in the crash, including Eduardo Aspiazu, president of the Guayaquil Chapter of the Nature Foundation. There were three survivors, including Mr. Parker's fiancee, Jacqueline Goerck.
Mr. Parker, a senior scientist for Conservation International, was widely regarded as the world's leading field ornithologist. He was known for his unique ability to identify nearly 4,000 bird species by their calls alone, and was an expert on all Neotropical biodiversity.
Dr. Gentry, senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was equally revered for his botanical knowledge of South America. His knowledge of woody tropical species was unsurpassed, and he had collected tens of thousands of herbarium specimens during his lifetime.
Parker and Gentry are considered irreplacable by the conservation community. "Ted and Al carried two-thirds of the unpublished knowledge of Neotropical biodiversity in their heads," said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International. "Both men were conservation pioneers," reflected Peter Seligmann, Conservation International's chief executive officer and chairman of the board. "Together, they were an unmatchable reservoir of knowledge. Their deaths are an enormous setback for the world's wild places."
The RAP, started four years ago to inventory the biodiversity of previously unmapped areas in the tropics, was the perfect platform for Parker and Gentry's talents. RAPs blend traditional field techniques with the latest technology to survey a region's system of plants and animals. The scientists involved then make recommendations to land-use officials on how to protect them. Much of the program's attention in recent years has centered on tropical "hotspots" that are being threatened by encroachment or destruction. The two men often worked together on such missions.
WORLD RED LIST OF THREATENED PLANTS
In early 1994 the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) will publish the first global list of threatened plants. This is a culmination of 15 years of data gathering and analysis, and attempts to incorporate all Red Data Books and Red Data Lists as well as other published and unpublished information on threatened plants. Information on approximately 70,000 taxa is maintained in BG-BASE, a PC-based RDBMS application. This 1000+ page book will comprise around 36,000 taxa (ca. 15% of known vascular plants) that are threatened at either the country or world level and will include the scientific name, Red Data Book category at the world level, inclusion on CITES Appendix, distribution by country and Red Data Book category within each country. Data sources for nomenclature, distribution, and conservation information will also be included. Due to space constraints, synonymy, life form, common names, and presence in cultivation will be excluded.
In the late stages of this project, WCMC is attempting to fill the obvious gaps and would appreciate hearing from anyone who would be willing to help supply new or update existing information. There are, of course, many errors, inconsistencies, and gaps - inevitable in a data set of this size - but WCMC is attempting to correct as many as possible before going to press. If anyone is willing to supply either geographically or taxonomically based information in a very short time frame, or if there are any questions about this project, please contact Kerry Walter by e-mail ([email protected]) or call 44 22 327 7314. Please state the region(s)/taxonomic group(s) for which you would be willing to provide data, and how quickly you could review or supply information.
ALL TAXA BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY WORKSHOP
In April 1993, 57 specialists convened for a three day workshop at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to discuss the concept and mechanics of an All Taxa Biological Inventory (ATBI). Participants had backgrounds in managing biotic surveys or information, and represented more-or-less the full range of terrestrial and freshwater taxa. For logistic reasons, the marine environment was excluded from discussion, although several representatives were present to provide cross linkage to similar processes underway among marine scientists. Most participants came from the United States, but Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Norway, England, and Australia were also represented. The workshop was organized by Dan Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs with funding from NSF.
An ATBI would be made a single large site, 50,000-100,000 hectares, including diverse habitats and would involve a complete inventory of all taxa to the maximum extent possible. The site would be subject to long term preservation, but would include disturbed habitats. Collections will be made within a grid system via sampling strategies that allow maximum information retrieval in the future. Modern information management, including global interactive access via Internet, is crucial.
An ATBI must be a cooperative, synergistic effort, with all involved working closely together. Training of systematists, as well as land managers and others, will be built in. The inventory will include passing the species collected "through the filter of what we know" to add biological and phylogenetic information to the knowledge base. The overall lack of trained systematists and collection and research facilities for microbes and many invertebrates creates a need for a major infusion of effort into these fields. It is expected that people will emerge to meet the challenge.
A single ATBI would cost $50-$150 million. After two years of planning and gearing up, the inventory would take about five years. An ATBI site might include 100,000 to 150,000 species, yielding a unit cost of around $1,000 per species. After the inventory has been completed, it would continue to be used for monitoring, research, education and training. An ATBI would thus be an ongoing process. The products of an ATBI will include: complete inventory of a site, a step toward world taxonomic inventory, benchmarks and a "known universe" for research in ecological and environmental change; a platform for ecological studies; detailed knowledge of patterns in biodiversity of all taxa on a landscape scale; paper and electronic manuals of the biota that will be useful far beyond the local site; public exposure for the importance of systematics and conservation; and standards, protocols, and methodologies for sampling and monitoring.
During the conference, initial concern over the size and scale involved with establishing an ATBI disappeared as participants saw the power in the concept and the potential for international partnerships to develop needed resources. After the creation of the first ATBI site, it is expected that others will be started in countries all over the world. In order to be successful, an ATBI must be fully collaborative. The plan must be developed and managed by local constituents in cooperation with scientists and the various user communities.
This workshop focused on ascertaining the technical and scientific issues of feasibility to carry out an ATBI. Further workshops must focus on user needs and local involvement, including such areas as biodiversity prospecting, ecotourism, education, and science-based industries. An initial site must be identified, accompanied by a local and national commitment to support an ATBI. Funding must be solicited internationally. After the site and funds are located, the scientific and management team can coordinate detailed planning and action. For more information, see the article in Science vol. 260 (30 April 1993), or contact Scott Miller at Bishop Museum, Box 19,000-A, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817 or e-mail [email protected].
PEOPLE AND PLANTS INITIATIVE
The People and Plants Initiative is a joint operation by WWF International, UNESCO and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to contribute to the sustainable and equitable use of plant resources. The initiative seeks to support ethnobotanists from developing countries who work with local communities to study and record the use of plant resources, resolve conflicts between the conservation and over-exploitation of plant resources, promote sustainable methods of harvesting non-cultivated plants, and ensure that local communities benefit from the conservation and use of plant resources. The People and Plants Initiative provides the local ethnobotanist and the people with whom they work with training workshops on field methods for inventorying plant resources and assessing methods for the sustainable harvesting of plants, advice on specific conservation projects, scientific literature, training manuals and technical information, and the opportunity to interact with ethnobotanists working in other regions.
A series of five handbooks on plant conservation is being prepared to provide technical guidance on methods in ethnobotany and sustainable use of plant resources. Current People and Plants Initiative activities include projects in Malaysia, the Caribbean, Madagascar, Bolivia, Mexico, Uganda, Brazil, Cameroon, and a few international projects.
The need for this initiative is urgent for numerous reasons: 1) the sustainable and equitable use of plant resources for the benefit of local people is essential for biodiversity conservation in rural communities; 2) over-harvesting of non- cultivated plants often results from habitat loss, human population increase and trade in plant products; 3) local resource users often have a profound knowledge of plants and their management. This knowledge, much of which is unrecorded, is being lost with the transformation of ecosystems and local cultures; 4) identifying conflicts between harvesting and conservation of plant resources is the first step towards achieving sustainable plant use; 5) ethnobotanists can work on practical conservation issues with local communities; and 6) more of these key professionals are needed in developing countries. For more information contact the Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB, United Kingdom; WWF-International, Biodiversity Unit-Conservation Policy Division, Avenue du Mont Blanc, 1196 Gland, Switzerland; or UNESCO, Man and the Biosphere Programme, Division of Ecological Sciences, 7, Place de Fontenoy - 75352 Paris, CEDEX 07 Sp - France.
BIODIVERSITY MONITORING COURSE
The Second International Biodiversity Measuring and Monitoring Course will be directed by the Smithsonian Man and the Biosphere Program (SI/MAB) and is tentatively scheduled for May 2 - June 3, 1994 at the Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center, Front Royal, Virginia. This unique professional course will teach participants how to establish procedures for measuring and monitoring biodiversity, how to design sampling programs and analyze data in each field, how to develop the monitoring protocol, and how to implement the management strategies necessary for an area. Previously, 19 participants from 14 countries throughout the world interacted for five weeks with close to 60 outstanding instructors and speakers in the recently completed first course.
Course participants will work intensively with highly qualified researchers and instructors; learn methodology used by experts working in temperate and tropical ecosystems; learn about measuring biodiversity and develop a biodiversity monitoring program for a selected site; and qualify for future biodiversity and research programs in tropical rainforest Smithsonian research sites. Twenty participants will be accepted worldwide; the course will be in English, although most instructors are bilingual (English/Spanish). Instructors are well-known specialists from the Smithsonian Institution and other organizations.
Applications are being accepted from graduate students, senior undergraduates and professionals in the biological or environmental sciences. Total cost is $3200 (not including airfare). This covers food and lodging, local transportation, books and materials, and use of field and laboratory equipment. A limited number of fellowships will be available. Application deadline is December 12, 1993.
For further information and application forms, please write, call, or fax: Dr. Francisco Dallmeier, Director, Smithsonian/MAB, Biodiversity Program, Smithsonian Institution, 1100 Jefferson Drive, S.W., Suite 3123, Washington, DC 20560. Tel: (202) 357- 4693, Fax: (202) 786-2557.
The World Wildlife Fund International has published Ethics, Ethnobiological Research, and Biodiversity. This document, intended for policy makers in government, research institutes, botanical gardens, herbaria, universities, and industry outlines some of the dilemmas facing ethnobotanists, anthropologists, and phytochemists in developing new natural products from biological materials.
The bulk of the world's biological and cultural diversity occurs in developing countries rich in potential new natural products. However much of the technology and expertise required to develop new industrial products from biological materials is centered in the industrialized countries of the temperate zone. For researchers, industrial companies, corporations, and governments involved with recording indigenous knowledge and identifying potentially valuable biological resources, this raises ethical, legal, and political issues. Ethics, Ethnobiological Research, and Biodiversity discusses these issues and provides a recommended code of practice. The specific objectives of the paper are: 1)to present the background to the ethical and conservation issues that arise in the development of new natural products and to outline the need to create equitable partnerships and recognize the value of indigenous knowledge which will lead to the payment of fair compensation to source regions; 2)to facilitate international cooperation in the collection, conservation, use, and development of new natural products; 3)to ensure that any collecting for export and use outside of a country has the full approval of the competent authorities, and is carried out with the cooperation of the host country and representatives of the local communities involved; also to ensure that these collections comply with conservation and quarantine regulations in the countries of origin and destination; and 4)to outline the general principles that will facilitate development of national regulations by governments or agreements between organizations. For more information, contact WWF International, Avenue du Mont-Blanc, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland. Tel: 41 (22) 364 91 11, Fax: 41 (22) 364 53 58; or contact the WWF affiliate in your country.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (Bronx Zoo) seeks a talented environmental educator for full time position in its nationally prominent education department. Candidate must have graduate course work in environmental science, conservation biology, or science education with a strong background in ecology and over 4 years teaching in supervisory experience in environmental education. Knowledge of current conservation issues, creativity, strong public presentation and writing skills are required. Experience handling small live animals and ability to play a guitar are desirable. Competitive salary. Benefits include three weeks vacation, on-site parking, health and retirement plans. Send resume with salary requirements to: Annette Berkovits, Director of Education, The Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York 10460. Fax: (718) 733-4460.
October 25-28. The First International Workshop on the
Conservation of the Pampas Deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus)
will meet in Rocha, Uruguay. Due to the critical situation of
this species, the workshop aims to bring together experts to
exchange ideas and experiences in the conservation of endangered
species. For more information, contact Lic. Susana Gonzales,
Division Citogenetica U.A., Instituto de Investigaciones
Biologicas Clemente Estable, Av. Italia 3310, C.P. 11600,
Montevideo, Uruguay. Tel: 471616, Fax: 475548.
October 25-November 26. Plant Conservation Techniques Course, sponsored by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will review the options open to the plant conservationist by assessing the techniques available - from protected area management to botanic gardens, seed banking and cryopreservation. The course aims to enhance the student's awareness of the issues and methods used in plant conservation, enable the student to explore how issues and methods are related to each other, encourage students to think of their own, more specialized, studies and experiences in a broader context encompassing social, ecological and evolutionary factors, and to develop problem solving skills and applied practical skills of value in conservation. For more information, contact Education and Marketing Department, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB, United Kingdom. Tel: 44 81 332 5623 or 332 5626, Fax: 44 81 332 5610.
Alcorn, J. 1993. Indigenous peoples and conservation.
Conservation Biology 7(2): 424-426.
Anon. 1993. 1993 is watershed year for biodiversity conservation in Indonesia. Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Update 5(1): 4, 7.
Anon. 1993. Ally in the rainforest works to protect one of El Salvador's last untouched refuges. The Canopy Spring: 6. (Fundacion Ecologica Salvadorean's efforts to save Bosque El Imposible)
Anon. 1993. Calakmul: beauty & biodiversity. Kambul 3(2): 3-4. (Yucatan, Mexico)
Anon. 1993. Exotic trade threatens rare Indonesia parrot. Focus 15(4): 5. (Red-and-blue lory)
Anon. 1993. Historic management agreement reached with Baltimore Gas & Electric Company. The Nature Conservancy of Maryland 17(2): 3. (Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, home to several endangered beetles)
Anon. 1993. Illegal fur trade threatens species in India and Nepal. Focus 15(3): 1, 6.
Anon. 1993. Interior Department action may halt trade of tiger bone and rhino horn. Focus 15(4): 1, 4.
Anon. 1992. New hope for endangered Mauritian tree. Species 19: 7. (Dombeya mauritiana)
Anon. 1993. New management plan may hold the key to the panda's future. Focus 15(3): 5.
Anon. 1993. Norway resumes whaling. Focus 15(4): 6.
Anon. 1993. Proposed Chilean national biodiveristy plan released. Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Update 5(1): 2.
Anon. 1993. WWF and Hoopa Valley tribe form conservation partnership. Focus 15(3): 1, 7. (Hoopa Valley Reservation in northern California, an area of high biological diversity)
Anon. 1993. WWF special report: protecting species of special concern. Focus 15(3): 4-5.
Barnes, J. 1993. Driving roads through land rights: the Colombian Plan Pacifico. The Ecologist 23(4): 135-140.
Behler, J. and Klemens, M. 1993. Turtle troubles. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 13. (250 species of the world's tortoises and freshwater turtles are in danger)
Behra, O. 1993. The export of reptiles and amphibians from Madagascar. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 115-116.
Bowker, M. 1993. In the shadow of the volcano. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 38-43. (Restoration, Mount St. Helens, Washington)
Brautigam, A. and Humphreys, T. 1992. The status of North Moluccan parrots: a summary of the findings of the IUCN field assessment. Species 19: 26-28.
Bronaugh, W. 1993. Farming the flying flowers. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 54-63. (Butterfly conservation, Costa Rica)
Chambers, F. (Ed.) 1993. Climate Change and Human Impact on the Landscape. Chapman & Hall, England. 303 pp.
Chepesiuk, R. 1993. The greening of America. Wildlife Conservation 96(4): 54-59. (Audubon Co-operative Sanctuary Program)
Corry, S. 1993. The rainforest harvest: who reaps the benefit? The Ecologist 23(4): 148-153.
Cowan, P. 1993. Wildlife management and conservation. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 20(1): 1-12.
Crump, A. 1993. Dictionary of Environment and Development. People, Places, Ideas and Organizations. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 272 pp.
Daniel, J. 1993. A chance to do it right: the national parks of Alaska. Wilderness 56(201): 11-25, 30-33.
Dold, C. 1993. The great white whales. Wildlife Conservation 96(4): 44-53. (toxic pollution and other threats)
East, R. 1992. Conservation status of antelopes in Asia and the Middle East, Part 1. Species 19: 23-25.
Ecological Society of America. 1993. Program and abstracts of the 78th Annual ESA meeting, "Ecological Global Sustainability". Bull. Ecological Soc. of America (Suppl.) 74(2): 1-520.
Ehrlich, P. 1993. Is the extinction crisis real? Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 66-67.
Ertter, B. 1993. What is snow-wreath doing in California? Fremontia 22(3): 4-7.
Giannecchini, J. 1993. Ecotourism: new partners, new relationships. Conservation Biology 7(2): 429-432.
Greenwood, J. 1993. The ecology and conservation management of geese. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8(9): 307-308.
Haugen, C., Durst, P. and Freed, E. 1993. Directory of Selected Tropical Forestry Journals and Newsletters. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington, DC. 127 pp.
Hunter, M. and Yonzon, P. 1993. Altitudinal distributions of birds, mammals, people, forests, and parks in Nepal. Conservation Biology 7(2): 420-423.
Johnson, A., Ford, W. and Hale, P. 1993. The effects of clearcutting on herbaceous understories are still not fully known. Conservation Biology 7(2): 433-435.
Keeler-Wolf, T. 1993. Conserving California's rare plant communities. Fremontia 22(3): 14-22.
Kennedy, M. 1992. Australasian marsupials and monotremes. An action plan for their conservation. Species 19: 38-40.
Kohl, J. 1993. No reserve is an island. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 74-75, 82. (La Selva, Costa Rica)
Kunin, W. and Gaston, K. 1993. The biology of rarity: patterns, causes, and consequences. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8(8): 298-301.
Lansky, M. 1993. Beyond the Beauty Strip: Saving What's Left of Our Forest. Tilbury House, Gardiner, Maine. 454 pp.
Lieberman, S. 1993. 1992 CITES amendments strengthen protection for wildlife and plants. End. Species Tech. Bull. 18(1): 7-9.
Losos, E. 1993. The future of the US endangered species act. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8(9): 332-336.
Lyra, P. 1993. The tragedy of the Amazon - and the promise of Paragominas. Focus 15(4): 3. (WWF's project to develop alternative methods for selectively logging trees in Paragominas state, Brazil)
Mace, G., Collar, N., Cooke, J., Gaston, K., Ginsberg, J., Williams, N., Maunder, M. and Milner-Gulland, E. 1992. The development of new criteria for listing species on the IUCN Red List. Species 19: 16-22.
McKibben, B. 1993. The Adirondacks. Nature Conservancy 74(2): 24-28.
McNeely, J. 1993. Biodiversity action plan for Vietnam. Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Update 5(1): 3.
McNeely, J. 1993. The real price of pollution. Zoogoer 22(3): 18-22.
Meadows, R. 1993. Farming on the fly. Zoogoer 22(3): 6-11.
Meadows, R. 1993. Watching out for gray whales. Zoogoer 22(3): 12-17.
Mulliken, T. and Nash, S. 1993. The recent trade in Philippine corals. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 97-105.
Nabhan, G. and Fleming, T. 1992. The conservation of mutualisms. Species 19: 32-34. (Succulents and their pollinators)
Nash, S. 1993. Concern about trade in red-and-blue lories. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 93-96.
Nobbe, G. 1993. No panhandlers, please. Wildlife Cons. 96(5): 12. (Reintroduction of black bears to Tennessee and Kentucky Cumberland Plateau)
Parker, T., Holst, B., Emmons, L. and Myer, J. 1993. A Biological Assessment of the Columbia River Forest Reserve, Toledo District, Belize. Conservation International, Washington, DC. 81 pp.
Polisar, J. 1993. River turtle protected. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 6. (Central American river turtle, Belize)
Reading, R., Myronuik, P., Backhouse, G. and Clark, T. 1992. Eastern barred bandicoot reintroductions in Victoria, Australia. Species 19: 29-31.
Reid, W., Laird, S., Meyer, C., Gamez. R., Sittenfeld, A., Janzen, D., Gollin, M. and Juma, C. 1993. Biodiversity Prospecting: Using Genetic Resources for Sustainable Development. World Resources Institute, Washington, DC. 341 pp.
Ricciuti, E. 1993. Rhinos at risk. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 22-31.
Richter, A., Humphrey, S., Cope, J. and Brack, V. 1993. Modified cave entrances: thermal effect on body mass and resulting decline of endangered Indiana bats Myotis sodalis. Conservation Biology 7(2): 407-415.
Sawkins, M. and McGough, H. 1993. The genus Trillium in trade. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 117-121.
Schneider, K. 1993. Loggers listen to what Michigan forests say. The New York Times (National) July 25: 20.
Schreiber, M., Powell, R., Parmerlee, J., Lathrop, A. and Smith, D. 1993. Natural history of a small population of Leiocephalus schreibersii (Sauria: Tropiduridae) from altered habitat in the Dominican Republic. Florida Scientist 56(2): 82-90.
Seidensticker, J. and McDougal, C. 1993. Tiger predatory behaviour, ecology and conservation. Sym. zool. Soc. Lond. 65: 105-125.
Shankland, A. 1993. Brazil's BR-364: a road to nowhere? The Ecologist 23(4): 141-147.
Sheeline, L. 1993. Pacific fruit bats in trade. Are CITES controls working? Traffic USA 12(1): 1-4.
Shevock, J. 1993. How rare is the Shasta snow-wreath? Fremontia 22(3): 7-10.
Simons, M. 1993. Mining is ravaging the Indian Ocean's coral reefs. The New York Times (International) August 8: 3.
Skinner, M. and Erterr, B. 1993. Whither rare plants in The Jepson Manual? Fremontia 22(3): 23-27.
Stewart, M., Austin, D. and Bourne, G. 1993. Habitat structure and the dispersion of gopher tortoises on a nature preserve. Florida Scientist 56(2): 70-81.
Stolzenburg, W. 1993. Magic mesas. Venezuela's tepuys. Nature Conservancy 43(4): 10-15.
Taylor, D. 1993. A new discovery in California. Fremontia 22(3): 3-4. (Shasta snow-wreath: a new genus in California)
Tennesen, M. 1993. The governor, the secretary, and the tiny bird. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 7. (California protects gnatcatcher)
Toro, T. 1993. A cold war legacy. Wildlife Conservation 96(4): 66-71. (Former East German military bases are now reserves for birds and other wildlife)
Tudge, C. 1993. A pachyderm paradox. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 8-9. (Asian elephant numerous, but threatened by poaching)
Vaughan, R. and Mudd, N. 1993. Protecting Alabama wildlands. Wild Earth 3(2): 64-68.
Yoon, C. 1993. Rain forests seen as shaped by the human hand. The New York Times (Science Times) July 27: C1, C10.
[ TOP ]
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EU lowers greenhouse gas emissions
Under the 1997 UN pact for combating climate change, known as the Kyoto Protocol, the EU is committed to cutting its
emissions 8 % from 1990 levels by 2012. So far emissions are down 2.9 %.
"We do have quite a long way to go," EU spokeswoman Ewa Hedlund conceded.
But EU officials are hoping for a boost after an emissions trading arrangement begins in January, under which European companies that emit less carbon dioxide than allowed can sell unused allotments to those who overshoot the target. That profit motive is expected to drive efforts and technology to bring "substantial cuts" in carbon dioxide emissions, which make up 80 % of the EU's greenhouse gases.
"This should lead to an acceleration of progress toward the Kyoto target," Hedlund said.
The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it would be harmful to its economy. Though the EEA
didn't detail the precise cause and effect relationship, its survey did show a link between the economy and
emissions. Emissions that bumped up in 2000 and 2001 reversed course when economic growth across Europe fell
precipitously and the biggest economy, Germany's, was mired in a recession that began late in 2001.
The slowdown in manufacturing, particularly the British and Italian steel industry, contributed to the decline, according to the EEA.
"There's still a pretty close correlation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions," EEA spokesman Tony Carritt said. "The great challenge is to break that link by finding more efficient means of production."
The EEA said data was too preliminary to determine exactly how much of the 2002 decline was due to the slower
economy. Other factors cited include the warmer weather in many countries that year, which reduced the need to heat
homes, as well as the adoption of specific emissions-cutting measures, such as the continuing shift from coal to
clean-burning natural gas.
Earlier Europe's leading business lobby, UNICE, called on the EU to reconsider its position on Kyoto, arguing that European companies were being placed at a competitive disadvantage for little benefit.
Without US and Russian participation, global emissions would drop by no more than 1 % by 2012, UNICE president
Juergen Strube said.
"Unilateral implementation of the Kyoto Protocol leads to a dead end, both environmentally and economically," he said.
Russian ratification is required for the treaty to take effect, but Moscow has been dragging its feet despite EU pressure. In a speech, European Commission President Romano Prodi blamed "a lack of political will and the divisions between the industrialized countries" for Kyoto's shortcomings. He said all countries -- including developing countries exempted from Kyoto's targets -- had to cooperate to solve the problem of climate change.
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Europe, it seems, may be more vulnerable to climate change than some people think.
According to a report issued Monday by the European Environment Agency, the World Health Organization and the European Commission, Europe has warmed more than the global average. The report also includes new projections that suggest European seas are set to rise more than previous estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
(The executive summary of the report is available as a PDF here.)
But perhaps more significant than the climate science is the prescription for action in the report.
European Union policy makers for the past decade have emphasized the need to implement a regulatory regime to put a global cap on emissions and to enable wealthy countries to finance ways of cutting carbon in the developing world. The report says working toward a new global climate deal remains important. But interestingly, it also says the priority should be advancing technological solutions, creating incentives for populations across the globe to preserve their forests, and making the most vulnerable populations more resilient to heat waves and flooding.
In particular, the report highlights the need to review how to manage irrigation and whether rivers will be able to help keep nuclear power plants cool in the future. It also urges Europe to do more to protect people from insect-borne diseases and flooding rivers.
“What is now needed is a massive scale-up in renewable energy technology development and transfer, investment in energy and resource efficiency, adaptation actions and efforts to reduce deforestation, increase the resilience of ecosystems and reduce effects on human health,” the report says.
Increasingly, there is a strong conviction among many energy experts that cap-and-trade systems will be insufficient to meet the task of delivering cleaner energy to a human population and to economies that are set to swell in coming decades. They say a big, direct push on technology using huge government subsidies may be necessary.
This question of how to foster new energy technologies quickly and efficiently also was highlighted in our Energy Challenge series.
Of course, it is possible that nations will agree to expand the global cap-and-trade systems foreseen under the Kyoto climate treaty. Negotiations are set to begin in earnest this December on a new accord, which United Officials want in place by 2012.
Then again, there’s no guarantee that cap-and-trade systems will work, or that the most polluting nations — China and the United States, at the moment — will adopt such systems.
Even if polluting countries do adopt them, many things stand in the way of their being effective. One hazard is that the price of carbon could suddenly plummet — as it did in the European system in 2006 because of a glut of credits on the markets — prompting a swift return to burning more fossil fuels.
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What is Xi3?
Xi3® is an exciting, new, patented computer architecture pioneered by Salt Lake City, Utah based Xi3 Corporation. The concept and goal of Xi3 Corporation was to re-imagine the traditional computer to a completely new, universal, energy efficient, cost-effective modular computer design. This new design works with existing industry components and software, allowing easy adoption into the all industries. The Xi3 computer architecture is a universal hardware platform, designed for any solution, from ARM- or X86- based, low-power embedded systems, to home and desktop computers, to affordable servers and supercomputers. Many other exciting Xi3 products are currently under development and will be released in the years to come.
What is the meaning of the name Xi3?
X = Variable- One of the great benefits of the Xi3 approach to computer architecture is its ability to easily configure a computer to meet any specific requirement. In this way, Xi3 technology breaks the mold by separating the traditional motherboard into three distinct boards. Xi3 variability begins with the fact that it replaces the traditional computer motherboard with three miniaturized and interconnected boards. This tri-board approach allows Xi3 and its partners to easily meet a vast array of computing needs by defining and creating miniaturized boards with varied I/O or processing capabilities, all within the same modular Xi3 computer architecture.
I = Information- The world is moving information faster than ever before. The fastest way to move information is through Information Technology. One of the biggest problems facing the Information Technology industry today is the variety and sources of information that need access to processing power. The Xi3 design allows IT engineers and developers the ability to focus their efforts on their specific requirements. The result is faster development times at a reduced cost.
3 = Cubed- Since the invention of the computer, traditional computer designs have been stuck in a 2-Dimensional world. Xi3's forward-thinking computer architecture uses the power of geometry to unlock a smaller, more compact design than traditional computer systems. After much research and development, the cube was determined to be the most effective design for a universal computing platform.
Using this patented approach, Xi3 provides the building blocks for the future of custom computer development and design, enabling people and companies to do more with technology for less.
There is a better way! Welcome to the Xi3 Revolution!
Xi3 NewsMarch 09, 2013:
GEEK: Geek @ SXSW: Xi3, Modular Computing & the PISTON Gaming System Liveblog
March 08, 2013:
NEWS RELEASE: With Demand Growing, Xi3 Corporation Opens Pre-Orders for its PISTON Console (PC)
March 04, 2013:
NEWS RELEASE: Xi3 Corporation to Showcase Modular Computers and Servers at HIMSS13
February 15, 2013:
The Guardian: The future of gaming: key contenders
February 06, 2013:
Develop: The other next generation of consoles
Xi3 EventsOctober 18, 2012:
CETPA 2012: Xi3 to Exhibit at Annual California Educational Technology Professionals Association Conference
October 17, 2012:
RETECH 2012: Xi3 to Exhibit at Leading Renewable Energy Conference
October 12, 2012:
D&H Headquarters: Xi3 Featured During Sales Floor Day
June 21, 2012:
EVENTS: Xi3 to Exhibit at the D&H Mid-Atlantic Summer Technology Show 2012
March 27, 2012:
Xi3 presenting at the Design West 2012 show March 27 - 29
Xi3 AccoladesQUOTE: In a revelation that will perhaps steal the entire (CES 2013) show -- via Gameranx
QUOTE: Xi3 products seem destined to change the way many people look at their systems -- via The Washington Times
QUOTE: The Xi3 Modular Computer has "some impressive stats for something so tiny" -- via the Los Angeles Times
QUOTE: "The Xi3 Modular Computer is one cool-looking desktop in a cube" -- via Engadget
QUOTE: "Hats off to Xi3 . . . for making a better Mac than Apple" via The Desk of DV Dude
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Fearing that this drought could reduce lake levels lower than ever before, the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority, the wholesale supplier of water to Austin and other Central Texas cities, plans to meet next week to discuss reducing or ending its water sales to downriver farmers next year.
"These are unprecedented conditions," said the agency's general manager, Becky Motal, in a statement Wednesday. She added, "If the dry weather continues, we will reach levels that we have not reached before in previous droughts."
Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan, the two major reservoirs, are currently 40 percent full. The LCRA says new projections show that by Jan. 1, the amount of water in the lakes could drop close to the levels they were at during the worst drought in Texas history, in the 1950s.
Currently the lakes contain 812,000 acre-feet of water, but the LCRA fears the amount of water could drop as low as 640,000 acre-feet by Jan. 1. The lowest the lakes have ever been was 621,000 acre-feet, in September 1952.
By way of context, Austin used 164,000 acre-feet in 2009. (Austin recently moved to once-a-week watering restrictions aimed at cutting usage.)
Federal scientists announced last week that La Nia, an intermittent Pacific Ocean phenomenon that has been blamed for the current drought, is back and will strengthen. That means Texas' drought -- already the most intense single-year drought on record in the state -- is likely to continue for months. This summer's intense heat and high evaporation rates have compounded the problem.
Rice farmers a few hundred miles down the Colorado River in Matagorda, Wharton and Colorado counties rely on LCRA water to grow crops. Ronald Gertson, a representative for the farmers, said he had been aware this could happen. Nonetheless, he said, "it will be a shock to quite a number of [farmers], I think, when it finally sinks in that there might potentially not be any water available from the LCRA for rice production."
Gertson added: "[Farmers will] hopefully be able to get enough revenue from crop insurance claims to survive the year and hope for a better water year the following year. But I do fear a little bit that this will lead to some extra pressure on groundwater."
The LCRA is currently releasing water from the Highland Lakes for the farmers' second rice crop and will continue to do so until mid-October. Recently levels in the Highland Lakes have been falling at a rate of about 4,000 acre-feet per day. If that continued, the lakes would be drained in a little over six months. However, that rate of decline is largely due to the rice crops, so the lake levels should cease falling so quickly after mid-October.
The board will meet on Sept. 21, following a related committee meeting the previous day.
The board may also take up a new plan -- months or years in the making -- for managing the LCRA's water that would automatically cut farmers off in January if lake levels drop below certain levels.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://www.texastribune.org/texas-environmental-news/water-supply/central-texas-agency-plans-drought-worse-1950s/.
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Our Global Hazards Atlas provides a map showing recent earthquakes and a "ShakeMap" that models estimated ground motion and shaking intensity following significant earthquakes. You can also use the Global Hazards Atlas to review significant historical earthquakes, tectonic plate boundaries, and more.
- Ground shaking and ground displacement
- Landslides and debris falls
- Fire from broken gas or power lines
- Flooding from ruptured dams or levees
- Tsunami (generated by undersea earthquakes)
- Have a disaster supply kit ready in case of evacuation, including a radio and batteries.
- Prepare a family communication plan.
- Know how to turn off water and gas supplies to your home.
Inspect your home for potential earthquake hazards; secure top-heavy furniture to the wall and place heaviest objects on bottom shelves.
What to Do During an Earthquake
- If you are inside, seek shelter under a sturdy desk or table and hold on. Stay away from windows and glass fixtures. Remain inside until the shaking stops.
- Do not use elevators.
- If you are outside, stay away from power lines and objects that can fall, such as streetlights, buildings, and trees.
- If you are in a vehicle, pull off the road but do not stop on or under bridges, overpasses, or tunnels.
For more Information
Can Earthquakes Be Predicted?
- Data for International Response
- Solutions Across Borders (DMRS)
- Information Support for Japan
- Protecting Papahānaumokuākea
- Statewide Hurricane Preparedness
- Preparing for Hazards in the Pacific
- Information Support for Haiti
- Reducing Flood Risk in Hawaii
- DisasterAWARE in Thailand (NDWC)
- Vietnam Decision Support System
- Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
- Situational Awareness in the Philippines
- Modeling Volcanic Gases
- Risk Assessment in the Philippines
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By making small changes at home, you can greatly reduce your effect on global warming and help bring us to energy independence.
2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide a year can be saved simply by recycling half of the wast generated by each household.
Use Energy-Efficent Lightbulbs
The new compact flourescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, use 60% - 75% less energy than regular incandescent bulbs. By replacing just three frequently used incandescent bulbs with CFLs, you can save about 300 pounds of carbon and $60 per year. CFL bulbs last longer than incandescent bulbs, are available in a variety of colors, and some are specially designed to work with dimmers. LED lightbulbs save even more energy and are increasingly available for use around the home.
Reduce "Vampire Energy"
Turn off any devices like televisions, DVD players, stereos, and computers when they are not in use - it can save thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
Televisions, DVD players, sterios, computers, and many other devices use "vampire energy" - using electricity even when they are turned off. By unplugging electronics from the wall when you aren't using them you use even less carbon dioxide and save even more money. Consider plugging electronics into a power strip with a switch that you can turn off when you don't need them.
Check Your Tires Monthly
Properly inflated tires can improve your gas mileage by more than 3%. Check them every month.
Choose Energy Efficient Appliances
When making purchases of new appliances, look for the EPA's Energy Star label to help you find the most efficent models. If every household in the United States replaced their existing appliances with the most efficient models availible we'd eliminate 175 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
By buying minimally packaged goods and reusable products, you reduce the amount of garbage you throw away and the carbon dioxide it takes to transport the goods to your doorstep.
Buy From Your Local Farmer
Buying groceries from local farms will support local business and reduces the carbon dioxide used to transport and store food.
Time Your Showers
Taking shorter showers when possible will save water, but also saves the energy used to heat the water. If you are a homeowner, look into a tankless water heater or low-flow showerheads and toilets.
Weatherize Your Home
Properly weatherizing your home helps keep things cool in the summer and warm in the winter - and saves money in the process. Caulking and weather-stripping your house can save 1,700 pounds of carbon dioxide and $274 per year.
Energy Efficiency Check
Your utility service may offer free home energy inspections to help you find places in your home that are poorly insulated or inefficient. An inspection can lead to a savings of up to 30% off of your energy bill and 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Print This Page
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Researchers make a distinction between project, sector, and economywide analyses. Project level analysis considers a stand-alone investment assumed to have insignificant secondary impacts on markets. Methods used for this level include CBA, CEA, and life-cycle analysis. Sector level analysis examines sectoral policies in a partial-equilibrium context in which all other variables are assumed to be exogenous. Economy-wide analysis explores how policies affect all sectors and markets, using various macroeconomic and general equilibrium models. A trade-off exists between the level of detail in the assessment and complexity of the system considered. This section presents some of the key assumptions made in cost analysis.
A combination of different modelling approaches is required for an effective
assessment of climate change mitigation options. For example, detailed project
assessment has been combined with a more general analysis of sectoral impacts,
and macroeconomic carbon tax studies have been combined with the sectoral modelling
of larger technology investment programmes.
The baseline case, which by definition gives the emissions of GHGs in the absence
of the climate change interventions being considered, is critical to the assessment
of the costs of climate change mitigation. This is because the definition of
the baseline scenario determines the potential for future GHG emissions reduction,
as well as the costs of implementing these reduction policies. The baseline
scenario also has a number of important implicit assumptions about future economic
policies at the macroeconomic and sectoral levels, including sectoral structure,
resource intensity, prices, and thereby technology choice.
No regrets options are by definition actions to reduce GHG emissions that have negative net costs. Net costs are negative because these options generate direct or indirect benefits, such as those resulting from reductions in market failures, double dividends through revenue recycling and ancillary benefits, large enough to offset the costs of implementing the options. The no regrets issue reflects specific assumptions about the working and the efficiency of the economy, especially the existence and stability of a social welfare function, based on a social cost concept:
The existence of a no regrets potential implies that market and institutions do not behave perfectly, because of market imperfections such as lack of information, distorted price signals, lack of competition, and/or institutional failures related to inadequate regulation, inadequate delineation of property rights, distortion-inducing fiscal systems, and limited financial markets. Reduction of market imperfections suggests it is possible to identify and implement policies that can correct these market and institutional failures without incurring costs larger than the benefits gained.
The potential for a double dividend arising from climate mitigation policies was extensively studied during the 1990s. In addition to the primary aim of improving the environment (the first dividend), such policies, if conducted through revenue-raising instruments such as carbon taxes or auctioned emission permits, yield a second dividend, which can be set against the gross costs of these policies. All domestic GHG policies have an indirect economic cost from the interactions of the policy instruments with the fiscal system, but in the case of revenue-raising policies this cost is partly offset (or more than offset) if, for example, the revenue is used to reduce existing distortionary taxes. Whether these revenue-raising policies can reduce distortions in practice depends on whether revenues can be recycled to tax reduction.
Ancillary Benefits and Costs (Ancillary Impacts)
The definition of ancillary impacts is given above. As noted there, these can be positive as well as negative. It is important to recognize that gross and net mitigation costs cannot be established as a simple summation of positive and negative impacts, because the latter are interlinked in a very complex way. Climate change mitigation costs (gross and well as net costs) are only valid in relation to a comprehensive specific scenario and policy assumption structure.
The existence of no regrets potentials is a necessary, but not a sufficient,
condition for the potential implementation of these options. The actual implementation
also requires the development of a policy strategy that is complex as comprehensive
enough to address these market and institutional failures and barriers.
For a wide variety of options, the costs of mitigation depend on what regulatory
framework is adopted by national governments to reduce GHGs. In general, the
more flexibility the framework allows, the lower the costs of achieving a given
reduction. More flexibility and more trading partners can reduce costs. The
opposite is expected with inflexible rules and few trading partners. Flexibility
can be measured as the ability to reduce carbon emissions at the lowest cost,
either domestically or internationally.
Climate change mitigation policies implemented at a national level will, in most cases, have implications for short-term economic and social development, local environmental quality, and intra-generational equity. Mitigation cost assessments that follow this line can address these impacts on the basis of a decision-making framework that includes a number of side-impacts to the GHG emissions reduction policy objective. The goal of such an assessment is to inform decision makers about how different policy objectives can be met efficiently, given priorities of equity and other policy constraints (natural resources, environmental objectives). A number of international studies have applied such a broad decision-making framework to the assessment of development implications of CDM projects.
There are a number of key linkages between mitigation costing issues and broader development impacts of the policies, including macroeconomic impacts, employment creation, inflation, the marginal costs of public funds, capital availability, spillovers, and trade.
Other reports in this collection
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STATEWIDE - A hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone, the generic term for a low pressure system that generally forms in the tropics. A typical cyclone is accompanied by thunderstorms, and in the Northern Hemisphere, a counterclockwise circulation of winds near the earth's surface.
All Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal areas are subject to hurricanes or tropical storms. Parts of the Southwest United States and the Pacific Coast experience heavy rains and floods each year from hurricanes spawned off Mexico. The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June to November, with the peak season from mid-August to late October.
Hurricanes can cause catastrophic damage to coastlines and several hundred miles inland. Winds can exceed 155 miles per hour. Hurricanes and tropical storms can also spawn tornadoes and microbursts, create storm surges along the coast, and cause extensive damage from heavy rainfall.
Hurricanes are classified into five categories based on their wind speed, central pressure, and damage potential (see chart). Category Three and higher hurricanes are considered major hurricanes, though Categories One and Two are still extremely dangerous and warrant your full attention.
|Scale Number |
|Sustained Winds |
|Damage ||Storm Surge|
|1 ||74-95 ||Minimal: Unanchored mobile homes, |
vegetation and signs.
|2 ||96-110 ||Moderate: All mobile homes, roofs, |
small crafts, flooding.
|3 ||111-130 ||Extensive: Small buildings, low-lying |
roads cut off.
|4 ||131-155 ||Extreme: Roofs destroyed, trees |
down, roads cut off, mobile homes
destroyed. Beach homes flooded.
|5 ||More than 155 ||Catastrophic: Most buildings |
destroyed. Vegetation destroyed.
Major roads cut off. Homes flooded.
|Greater than 18 feet|
Hurricanes can produce widespread torrential rains. Floods are the deadly and destructive result. Slow moving storms and tropical storms moving into mountainous regions tend to produce especially heavy rain. Excessive rain can trigger landslides or mud slides, especially in mountainous regions. Flash flooding can occur due to intense rainfall. Flooding on rivers and streams may persist for several days or more after the storm.
Between 1970 and 1999, more people lost their lives from freshwater inland flooding associated with land falling tropical cyclones than from any other weather hazard related to tropical cyclones.
Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
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- Life & Style
- Cars and Bikes
- Your Opinion
- Stories and Poems
Let me introduce you to my innovative scientific project “SPARKS”. sparks is a portable oven cum roaster which do not consume electricity(power) for warming the food items and thus provide anytime oven facility to its owner.
Before I start explaining the concept, let us first try to understand the basics of oven. Oven is a device which restricts the escaping of heat and directs it towards a substance in order to raise its temperature. Usually an oven works on electricity. Now a days we have microwave ovens which using the microwaves, raise the temperature of water/liquid bubble inside the uncooked food items and thus help in baking/roasting/cooking of food. An oven comprises of a chamber where heating is done.
Few years back, a guy had invented a portable ready to use hot coffee can. In this can he had used the basic principles of chemical reaction between Cao & H2O to heat the coffee. What actually happen in this coffee can is that…when we press a button embedded over the can, a certain quantity of Cao & H2O combines chemically in order to raise the temperature inside the can up to 60c. As a result the coffee get heated up and we conserve it.
My oven is base on this very same chemical reaction that can be used to raise the temperature inside the cooking chamber in order to warm up the food item.
In every exothermic reaction certain amount of heat is produced, which if properly used may raise the temperature of the things in surrounding as high as 250c in case of very common chemicals and in 1000s c in case of heavy metals/chemicals.
Spark will comprise of a metallic non-corrosive near vacuum rectangular frame
This can be imagined to be something like a cubical flask. Just like a tea/coffee flask prevents the escape of heat for long, similarly the chamber of sparks will be designed to keep the heat produced inside the reaction chamber for as long as possible. Remember this is the outer chamber.
Surrounded by the chemical or reaction chamber, is the heating chamber of cooking chamber. The wall of the cooking chamber is made of the substance that get heated very soon i.e. good conductor of heat. This is for the reason that as soon as the chemical reaction occurs in the reaction chamber the raise in temperature inside the reaction chamber should directly heat the cooking chamber in minimum time period. The cooking chamber is suspended in between the chemical chamber through proper support and tightens. We can imagine this arrangement similar to the microwave/ordinary oven which has on out insulating frame/cover and a conducting frame inside.
At the top of this oven there will be two small tanks one filled with Cao and other with H2O there will be a network of pipe lines and regulators insuring the proper release of these chemicals inside the reaction chamber. There will be a gas/CO2 outlet and waste outlet to ensure proper and continuous reaction inside the reaction chamber.
The following reactions will take place inside the reaction chamber namely:
CaO + H2O > Ca(OH)2 + H2O + CO2 ^
Ca(OH)2 + H2O + CO2 > CaCo3 ^
When the reaction is complete, the temperature inside the reaction chamber will rise rapidly leading to rise in temperature inside the cooking chamber. After the work the waste outlet will let open to allow to waste to move out. The gas regulator will ensure that excess amount of the CO2 must get released to avoid any accident/leakage.
This is just a brief idea about my project. The amount of chemicals used and rise in temperature depends upon the size of the oven and other condition which is needed to be worked out. Moreover I am not claiming that my innovative idea may prove very useful to the society, I am just try to convince the crowd that we have some other alternatives as well.
I hope you liked my project. Your suggestions are most welcome!
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Polar bear skin is black and the fur is not white at all. Each individual hair is a clear hollow tube called guard hair and looks white because of reflected light. The bear’s thin undercoat is not hollow. Like the guard hair it is colorless. This optical illusion provides good hunting camouflage in the snow and pack ice.
Polar bears fur is oily making it water repellent. This keeps the hairs from being matted down and makes it easy for bears to shake any water and ice free after swimming. Fur even grows on the bottom of their paws. This helps to protect against cold icy surfaces and creates good traction on ice. In addition, the soles of their feet have small bumps and cavities that create suction for added grip.
The polar bear has a subcutaneous fat layer much like blubber. This fat layer helps the bear retain body heat and its low density allows the bear to float in the water while swimming. Summer months are spent hunting food to build up that layer of fat to sustain the long Arctic winter nights. When a polar bear is at rest its internal temperature is a toasty 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
Another interesting adaptation is that polar bears have slightly webbed toes which help them swim. Polar bears have been observed swimming 100 miles at a stretch. Climate change is forcing the polar bear to swim farther and use more energy to hunt prey. As with Antarctica, the summer sea ice is breaking up earlier in spring and freezing later in the fall. Arctic ice has decreased by more than a half million square miles over the past 25 years.
If you like this blog post please let us know by clicking the like button, and pass it on to your friends.
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Weird as it seems, this summer’s scary news stories about drought and global water crisis took a load off my shoulders – and allowed me to come clean with a dirty secret I’ve kept from neighbours and friends for almost 20 years.
It goes back to an article I wrote during the early 1990s about composting toilet manufacturer Abby Rockefeller, who taught me that water could be put to higher uses than moving human sewage – black water, it’s sometimes called – through pipes to be flung into the nearest river or lake. Rockefeller was equally passionate about the ‘grey water’ from sinks and bathtubs. Her idea was to separate out grey water to irrigate gardens, from black water that could be converted to fertilizer, thereby keeping both out of the sewage pipes and lakes. As with regular garbage, resources only get wasted as garbage when they’re commingled – whence Rockefeller’s slogan that ‘waste is a verb, not a noun’.
Ever since that interview, I’ve been sneaking down early in the morning or late at night to pour rinse water from cleaning cans and pots on my three-by-four-metre front garden. ‘It’s a scientific experiment,’ I’d explain whenever neighbours caught me in the act.
Actually, my 20-year experiment shows that a wild garden with two bushes and one fast-growing oak can thrive on the combination of rain and grey water, with no need for a garden hose. The water is poured directly over plant roots, so there’s no loss to evaporation. And the film of cleaning liquid and food particles – harmful as sewage because they feed algae in lakes and consume oxygen that fish need – break down as nutrients in the soil. Plus, avoiding water from the hose is appreciated by plants, which like their water soft and free of municipal chlorine and fluoride.
To get back to this season’s water crisis, it’s the rich opportunities for reuse and recycling – not the scarcity – that should focus municipal debate about water. Actually, conserving or cutting back on water use is only a drop in the bucket of the water cycle-based strategy that’s needed.
Most cities have plenty of water to go around, when the water goes through a full water cycle. Indeed, including plant watering as part of the water cycle is one reason why agriculture in cities is such a natural, and why, in some cases, city gardens are better than rural farms for growing water-intensive crops such as fruits and vegetables. After all, the reason cities have so much waste is that they have no valuable place to put their under-appreciated resources.
Beyond conservation are a series of opportunities to wring benefits from the priority uses of household and workplace water, and then return them to the water cycle in as good shape as possible.
A case study of bio-mimicry
To expand on my little experiment, we could start by capturing rain water on the roof and using it for dishwater – a nice trick because rain water is soft and needs less soap. Once used as dishwater, the grey water could be piped to the garden, where the piping hot water would not only fertilize plants but carry the heat from the dishwater to warm the soil and add some season extension to the garden in early spring and late fall – thereby creating a hospitable environment for a wide range of fruits and vegetables valued in a multicultural city. Some of the water that formerly would have been used for the dishwashing machine or garden hose could be diverted to aquaculture – small neighbourhood fisheries for tilapia and other species that tolerate still waters – which supplies lean protein for humans and nutrient-rich water for yet more garden plants. Filtered clean by plants and soil, that water would fall to the water table and then be returned to the water cycle.
Urban agriculture and aquaculture help the water cycle work the same way they do in nature. It’s a case study of bio-mimicry.
Cities have many other ways to use water, and the heat or cool it carries at different stages, resourcefully. Toronto, for example, keeps many of its downtown office towers cool with ‘deepwater cooling’, cold water from deep in Lake Ontario piped through office buildings to keep them cool, thereby providing a low-cost form of solar air-conditioning.
Alternatively, green roofs, as mandated for large buildings in Toronto, capture rain water, keeping it out of the sewers and saving it for plants that evaporate the water on hot summer days, thereby cooling the city, again thanks to low-cost solar power. A lot better than letting rain fall aimlessly into sewers, usually ending up as swill, full of the flotsam and jetsam of city streets, which is often dumped untreated in lakes and rivers.
Sometimes green infrastructure comes as cheap as a law protecting near-city green belts, rich with swamp and other all-natural soil and earth filters and regulators of water. Economists Sara Wilson and Michelle Molnar, reporting on Toronto’s green belt for the David Suzuki Foundation last May, estimated that regional marshes and forests save typical households over $380 a year in residential water treatment bills.
Problem or opportunity?
In all likelihood, advancing global warming will bring drought more often to areas that have seldom faced it over the last few thousand years. Such droughts will more frequently afflict dryland areas that have long served as ‘breadbaskets’ of the world, at the very moment in history when expanding human populations most require the staple crops that they have produced. Anxiety about this has led many, such as Inter Press Service food analyst Stephen Leahy, to worry about what will happen to a world that requires the equivalent irrigation of 20 Nile or 100 Colorado Rivers a year.
I do not want to minimize the need to conserve water. At the same time, it’s still possible, especially in cities, to see the problem of water shortage as a series of opportunities disguised as a problem, as the old saying goes.
The real problem is more of our own making than that of the climate. We have governments that treat water and food in separate ministries and departments, though neither can exist without the other. Food cannot grow without water. Likewise, the water cycle cannot exist without plants and animals that use both its liquid asset and the heat or cool it carries.
Cities offer the most visible opportunities for bringing those two essential resources – the food cycle and the water cycle – together for their own mutual benefit and ours. That is the context in which reuse and recycling of water will thrive.
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Genetic engineering: The world’s greatest scam?
Uploaded by GreenpeaceVideo on Sep 11, 2009
(French version — http://www.greenpeace.org/ogm)
Genetic engineering is a threat to food security, especially in a changing climate. The introduction of genetically manipulated organisms by choice or by accident grossly undermines sustainable agriculture and in so doing, severely limits the choice of food we can eat.
Once GE plants are released into the environment, they are out of control. If anything goes wrong – they are impossible to recall.
GE contamination threatens biodiversity respected as the global heritage of humankind, and one of our world’s fundamental keys to survival.
by Staff Writers
Davis CA (SPX)
A new study from the University of California, Davis, provides a deeper understanding of the complex global impacts of deforestation on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Climate Change, reports that the volume of greenhouse gas released when a forest is cleared depends on how the trees will be used and in which part of the world the trees are grown.
When trees are felled to create solid wood products, such as lumber for housing, that wood retains much of its carbon for decades, the researchers found. In contrast, when wood is used for bioenergy or turned into pulp for paper, nearly all of its carbon is released into the atmosphere. Carbon is a major contributor to greenhouse gases.
“We found that 30 years after a forest clearing, between 0 percent and 62 percent of carbon from that forest might remain in storage,” said lead author J. Mason Earles, a doctoral student with the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. “Previous models generally assumed that it was all released immediately.”
The researchers analyzed how 169 countries use harvested forests. They learned that the temperate forests found in the United States, Canada and parts of Europe are cleared primarily for use in solid wood products, while the tropical forests of the Southern hemisphere are more often cleared for use in energy and paper production.
“Carbon stored in forests outside Europe, the USA and Canada, for example, in tropical climates such as Brazil and Indonesia, will be almost entirely lost shortly after clearance,” the study states.
The study’s findings have potential implications for biofuel incentives based on greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, if the United States decides to incentivize corn-based ethanol, less profitable crops, such as soybeans, may shift to other countries. And those countries might clear more forests to make way for the new crops. Where those countries are located and how the wood from those forests is used would affect how much carbon would be released into the atmosphere.
Earles said the study provides new information that could help inform climate models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international body for the assessment of climate change.
“This is just one of the pieces that fit into this land-use issue,” said Earles. Land use is a driving factor of climate change. “We hope it will give climate models some concrete data on emissions factors they can use.”
In addition to Earles, the study, “Timing of carbon emissions from global forest clearance,” was co-authored by Sonia Yeh, a research scientist with the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, and Kenneth E. Skog of the USDA Forest Service.
The study was funded by the California Air Resources Board and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
by Staff Writers
Seattle WA (SPX)
The percentage of mammal species unable to keep pace with climate change in the Americas range from zero and low (blue) to a high of nearly 40 percent (light orange). Credit: U of Washington.
A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere’s mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won’t move swiftly enough to outpace climate change. For the past decade scientists have outlined new areas suitable for mammals likely to be displaced as climate change first makes their current habitat inhospitable, then unlivable.
For the first time a new study considers whether mammals will actually be able to move to those new areas before they are overrun by climate change.
Carrie Schloss, University of Washington research analyst in environmental and forest sciences, is lead author of the paper out online the week of May 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We underestimate the vulnerability of mammals to climate change when we look at projections of areas with suitable climate but we don’t also include the ability of mammals to move, or disperse, to the new areas,” Schloss said.
Indeed, more than half of the species scientists have in the past projected could expand their ranges in the face of climate change will, instead, see their ranges contract because the animals won’t be able to expand into new areas fast enough, said co-author Josh Lawler, UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.
In particular, many of the hemisphere’s species of primates – including tamarins, spider monkeys, marmosets and howler monkeys, some of which are already considered threatened or endangered – will be hard-pressed to outpace climate change, as are the group of species that includes shrews and moles. Winners of the climate change race are likely to come from carnivores like coyotes and wolves, the group that includes deer and caribou, and one that includes armadillos and anteaters.
The analysis looked at 493 mammals in the Western Hemisphere ranging from a moose that weighs 1,800 pounds to a shrew that weighs less than a dime. Only climate change was considered and not other factors that cause animals to disperse, such as competition from other species.
To determine how quickly species must move to new ranges to outpace climate change, UW researchers used previous work by Lawler that reveals areas with climates needed by each species, along with how fast climate change might occur based on 10 global climate models and a mid-high greenhouse gas emission scenario developed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The UW researchers coupled how swiftly a species is able to disperse across the landscape with how often its members make such a move. In this case, the scientists assumed animals dispersed once a generation.
It’s understandable, for example, that a mouse might not get too far because of its size. But if there are many generations born each a year, then that mouse is on the move regularly compared to a mammal that stays several years with its parents in one place before being old enough to reproduce and strike out for new territory.
Western Hemisphere primates, for example, take several years before they are sexually mature. That contributes to their low-dispersal rate and is one reason they look especially vulnerable to climate change, Schloss said. Another reason is that the territory with suitable climate is expected to shrink and so to reach the new areas animals in the tropics must generally go farther than in mountainous regions, where animals can more quickly move to a different elevation and a climate that suits them.
Those factors mean that nearly all the hemisphere’s primates will experience severe reductions in their ranges, Schloss said, on average about 75 percent. At the same time species with high dispersal rates that face slower-paced climate change are expected to expand their ranges.
“Our figures are a fairly conservative – even optimistic – view of what could happen because our approach assumes that animals always go in the direction needed to avoid climate change and at the maximum rate possible for them,” Lawler said.
The researchers were also conservative, he said, in taking into account human-made obstacles such as cities and crop lands that animals encounter. For the overall analysis they used a previously developed formula of “average human influence” that highlights regions where animals are likely to encounter intense human development. It doesn’t take into account transit time if animals must go completely around human-dominated landscapes.
“I think it’s important to point out that in the past when climates have changed – between glacial and interglacial periods when species ranges contracted and expanded – the landscape wasn’t covered with agricultural fields, four-lane highways and parking lots, so species could move much more freely across the landscape,” Lawler said.
“Conservation planners could help some species keep pace with climate change by focusing on connectivity – on linking together areas that could serve as pathways to new territories, particularly where animals will encounter human-land development,” Schloss said.
“For species unable to keep pace, reducing non-climate-related stressors could help make populations more resilient, but ultimately reducing emissions, and therefore reducing the pace of climate change, may be the only certain method to make sure species are able to keep pace with climate change.”
The third co-author of the paper is Tristan Nunez, now at University of California, Berkeley. Both Schloss and Nunez worked with Lawler while earning their master’s degrees. Lawler did this work with support from the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences using, in part, models he previously developed with funding from the Nature Conservancy and the Cedar Tree Foundation.
by Staff Writers
San Francisco CA (SPX)
Groupers are among the highest priced market reef species (estimated to be a multi-billion dollar per year industry), are highly regarded for the quality of their flesh, and are often among the first reef fishes to be overexploited.
Groupers, a family of fishes often found in coral reefs and prized for their quality of flesh, are facing critical threats to their survival. As part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, a team of scientists has spent the past ten years assessing the status of 163 grouper species worldwide.
They report that 20 species (12%) are at risk of extinction if current overfishing trends continue, and an additional 22 species (13%) are Near Threatened. These findings were published online on April 28 in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
“Fish are one of the last animal resources commercially harvested from the wild by humans, and groupers are among the most desirable fishes,” said Dr. Luiz Rocha, Curator of Ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences, and one of the paper’s authors.
“Unfortunately, the false perception that marine resources are infinite is still common in our society, and in order to preserve groupers and other marine resources we need to reverse this old mentality.”
The team estimates that at least 90,000,000 groupers were captured in 2009. This represents more than 275,000 metric tonnes of fish, an increase of 25% from 1999, and 1600% greater than 1950 figures. The Caribbean Sea, coastal Brazil, and Southeast Asia are home to a disproportionately high number of the 20 Threatened grouper species. (A species is considered “Threatened” if it is Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable under IUCN criteria.)
Groupers are among the highest priced market reef species (estimated to be a multi-billion dollar per year industry), are highly regarded for the quality of their flesh, and are often among the first reef fishes to be overexploited. Their disappearance from coral reefs could upset the ecological balance of these threatened ecosystems, since they are ubiquitous predators and may play a large role in controlling the abundance of animals farther down the food chain.
Unfortunately, groupers take many years (typically 5-10) to become sexually mature, making them vulnerable for a relatively long time before they can reproduce and replenish their populations.
In addition, fisheries have exploited their natural behavior of gathering in great numbers during the breeding season. The scientists also conclude that grouper farming (mariculture) has not mitigated overfishing in the wild.
Although the prognosis is poor for the restoration and successful conservation of Threatened grouper species, the authors do recommend some courses of action, including optimizing the size and location of Marine Protected Areas, minimum size limits for individual fish, quotas on the amount of catch, limits on the number of fishers, and seasonal protection during the breeding season.
However, the scientists stress that “community awareness and acceptance, and effective enforcement are paramount” for successful implementation, as well as “action at the consumer end of the supply chain by empowering customers to make better seafood choices.”
These findings are posted online here.
The launch of a cut-rate unlimited $39-a-month mobile plan offered by upstart Voyager Mobile was marred Tuesday by what the company claims is “a malicious network attack to its primary website.”
The launch of a cut-rate unlimited $39-a-month mobile plan offered by upstart Voyager Mobile was marred Tuesday by what the company claims is “a malicious network attack to its primary website.” The company now says it’s postponing the launch of its budget plan until an unspecified date.
The company had generated buzz for its low prices. Voyager Mobile had planned to offer a contract-free $19 per month that included unlimited calls and texts. A second plan included a $39 plan that included unlimited calls, text and 3G/4G data. Voyager Mobile had planned to piggyback its service on Sprint’s network and operate as a mobile virtual network operator (MNVO).
Voyager Mobile would also resell some of the most popular Android smartphones on Sprint such as the Motorola Photon 4G, Samsung Galaxy Epic 4G Touch, and some yet-unnamed Windows Phone 7 devices, USB dongles and mobile hotspots. The company was meant to unveil its website on Tuesday at 6AM ET.
Voyager Posted a note to its website: “Due to the network outage, Voyager Mobile is postponing its launch to a time and date in the very near future. Our goal of low cost wireless service for all will not be undermined and we strive to continue the voyage for a better wireless world.”
Voyager declined to comment when asked about the alleged attack. It’s also unclear why any group or individual would target this company.
By Karen Haslam, macworld.co.uk
From 16 May it will not be possible to ship iPads, iPhones or laptops overseas from the US using the United States Postal Service (USPS).
USPS believes that lithium batteries – which feature in devices including the iPad, iPhone, MacBooks, and other smartphones, laptops, and tablets – pose too great of a risk to be shipped overseas. An amendment to the company’s documentation states: “lithium batteries are not permitted in international mail.”
The USPS will still allow these products to be shipped within the US. UPS and FedEx will continue to ship such items overseas, however.
The revised Mailings of Lithium Batteries document states: “Primary lithium metal or lithium alloy (nonrechargeable) cells and batteries or secondary lithium-ion cells and batteries (rechargeable) are prohibited when mailed internationally or to and from an APO, FPO, or DPO location”.
USPS will lift the restriction in January 2013, however. The document explains: “On 1 January 2013, customers will be able to mail specific quantities of lithium batteries internationally (including to and from an APO, FPO, or DPO location) when the batteries are properly installed in the personal electronic devices they are intended to operate.”
The January 2013 modification is due to changes in international standards that USPS is aware of following discussion with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU). “International standards have recently been the subject of discussion by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU),” states USPS in its documentation.
Apple is reported to have opposed stricter regulations restricting lithium-battery shipments by air.
The reason for regulations regarding the transportation of lithium-batteries by air is that they can spontaneously combust. The UN rules, which will become effective on 1 January 2013, state that pilots must be notified when lithium batteries are on a flight, shipments should be labelled as hazardous materials, and employees should have training in handling such cargo.
There have been several plane crashes directly attributed to exploding lithium batteries in the last few years, according to reports.
Facebook lays claim to more than 900 million members across the globe and may have a massive initial public offering in the coming days, but a new poll says users have trust issues with the social networking site. More than half of those surveyed, 59 percent, said they had little to no trust that Facebook would keep their information private, according to an AP-CNBC poll. The study also found that 54 percent of the survey’s 1,004 respondents would not “feel safe at all” purchasing goods and services through the world’s largest social network.
Despite Facebook’s privacy challenges, however, the social network keeps on growing, and users continue to share their most personal information with a company they reportedly don’t trust. Facebook in July 2010 claimed 500 million users and in the less than two years since the social network has nearly doubled its user base. And despite Facebook’s privacy woes, it is still one of the most popular sites for sharing photos with an average of more than 300 million images uploaded daily for the three months ending March 31, according to the company.
Despite Facebook’s privacy trust problems, the finding that Facebook is not trusted when it comes to online purchases is a little surprising. To purchase items on Facebook you need to buy Facebook credits, which are only available through Facebook itself. Users can then use these credits to buy virtual items in popular games such as Zynga’s Farmville, rent movies, and, perhaps coming soon, self-promote your own posts.
Facebook does have to contend with malicious software stealing user credentials and clickjacking scams, but the company is also pretty active when it comes to security (sometimes too much so). Facebook has also offered secure SSL encryption since 2011. Some users may be wary about Facebook now, but I wonder if that will change as more services start using Facebook credits.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs got directly involved in an alleged conspiracy to fix e-book prices after a publisher balked at participating in the scheme, according to a court document filed by 31 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
The document, an amended complaint to an antitrust lawsuit by the states and others against Penguin, Macmillan and Apple, was filed in a New York federal district court. A similar lawsuit against the publishers and Apple has been filed by the Department of Justice.
According to the complaint, when one of the conspiring publishers dragged its feet on entering the e-book pricing deal with Apple, Jobs was enlisted to sell high-ranking officials in the publisher’s parent company on the wisdom of the proposed pricing scheme.
“As I see it,” Jobs wrote, the publisher had the following choices:
1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.
2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70% of $9.99. They have shareholders too.
3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started, there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.
“Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives. Do You?” he wrote.
Within three days of the letter, the amended complaint noted, the foot-dragging conspiring publisher and its co-conspirators agreed on an “agency” e-book pricing scheme and signed an agency deal with Apple.
In their complaint, the states and others allege that Apple joined publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in a price-fixing conspiracy and facilitated their scheme to increase e-book prices.
Apple facilitated the alleged conspiracy, the states argue, by bringing the publishers into agreement with one another on how to go about increasing e-book prices.
The publishers’ plan was carried out in two steps, the complaint explained. First, the existing wholesale model for selling books — where retailers decided the price consumers paid for e-books — would be replaced with an agency model in which the publishers controlled the price consumers paid for an e-book. Second, retail e-book prices would be increased.
As a result of the alleged conspiracy, Apple and the publishers “agreed to eliminate e-book retail price competition between Apple and Amazon and other outlets.
Rather than hinder competition, Apple claims its deal with the publishers fostered competition. “The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry,” it said in a statement issued after the Justice Department filed its lawsuit against the company.
“Just as we have allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore,” it added.
However, there’s evidence that the deal Apple cut with the publishers to sell e-books wasn’t as common as the high-tech firm would like the public to believe.
That agreement contains something called a “most-favored nation” clause. Typically, those clauses are included in contracts to protect a buyer from wholesale price fluctuations.
Apple’s most-favored nation clause was different, according to the Justice Department. “[I]nstead of [a clause] designed to protect Apple’s ability to compete, this [clause] was designed to protect Apple from having to compete on price at all, while still maintaining Apple’s 30 percent margin,” the Justice Department said in its complaint against Apple and the publishers.
LightSquared, the startup that planned a nationwide wholesale mobile network only to be shot down by regulators because of GPS interference concerns, is declaring bankruptcy.
The move came after lengthy negotiations with lenders and does not shut down the company’s only commercial operation, a satellite-based mobile service. The bankruptcy is expected to give Philip Falcone, the hedge-fund chief who built LightSquared out of two satellite acquisitions, several months of control over how the company addresses its troubles.
LightSquared wanted to run an LTE mobile broadband network using frequencies next to those used by GPS, which historically had been reserved for satellite service. Part of the promise of LightSquared was the prospect of a wholesale-only provider of LTE capacity to both large and small mobile operators, potentially making the high-speed mobile business in the U.S. more competitive.
However, in February, the FCC said it would kill LightSquared’s planned network because it would interfere with GPS receivers. As a result, LightSquared’s main asset, its spectrum, has little value unless the company can reach another deal with the agency that would give it other spectrum to work with.
Documents detailing the bankruptcy are expected to be released later Monday.
Survival / Sustainability
Three Things Every Newbie Survivalist Should Have
by M.D. Creekmore
It’s a question I hear a lot from new preppers: “what should I buy first and where do I start?”
And while there are a lot of different answers depending on individual situations and needs, usually my recommendation to those starting out, is to start a food storage program, buy a good water filter and a dual purpose firearm for foraging and protection.
Food Storage Program
Let’s face it most people aren’t familiar with basic foods such as hard red wheat, whole corn, soybeans etc, nor are they conversant with their preparation. So I suggest, beginning survivors start out with foods they are familiar with.
Most canned foods off the grocers shelf have a shelf life of three to five years, make a list of everything your family eats for a week, then buy 10 cases of every non-perishable item on the list.
Even though canned foods have a limited shelf life you’re going to rotate so you’ll always have a fresh supply.
Say you start out with ten cases of chili. Mark each case from 1 to 10. You start with case number 1, when you finish eating it, buy another case and mark it as case number 11. Start on case number 2, when done buy another case and mark it as case number 12 and so on.
Panel solar cookers are the first solar cookers that are truly affordable to the world’s neediest. In 1994, a volunteer group of engineers and solar cooks associated with Solar Cookers International developed and produced the CooKit, based on a design by French scientist Roger Bernard. Elegant and deceptively simple looking, it is an affordable, effective and convenient solar cooker. With a few hours of sunshine, the CooKitmakes tasty meals for 5-6 people at gentle temperatures, cooking food and preserving nutrients without burning or drying out. Larger families use two or more cookers.
The CooKit is made of cardboard and foil shaped to reflect maximum sunlight onto a black cooking pot that converts sunlight into thermal (heat) energy. A heat-resistant bag (or similar tranparent cover) surrounds the pot, acting like a greenhouse by allowing sunlight to hit the pot and preventing heat from escaping. It weighs half a kilogram and folds to the size of a big book for easy transport.
CooKits are now produced independently in 25 countries from a wide variety of materials at a cost of $3 – $7 US. Note that you can either build your own CooKit using the plans below or you can order a pre-built Cookit from Solar Cookers International. Your purchase helps support SCI’s work around the world.
CooKits complement other cooking methods needed at night and on cloudy days. Coming about twenty years after the first efforts to replace open fires with improved cooking stoves, the CooKit uses no fuel at all. The CooKit is both user-friendly and environmentally friendly. Families can save scarce, expensive fuel for when they cannot solar cook and when economically capable, add other, higher cost cooking improvements such as modern biomass, smoke hoods, biogas, or liquefied petroleum gas. A single CooKit of normal dimensions (see below) is not able to cook a pot of food large enough to feed a large family. To cook larger amounts of food a box-style cooker may be a better choice.
Solar Cooker Diagram (English)
Solar Oven detailed instruction PDF (English)
Occupy organic vegetable gardens – Rebirth of the Victory garden
By JB Bardot,
(NaturalNews) During World Wars I and II, private citizens were encouraged to plant Victory gardens in an effort to support the war effort and take the strain off the food industry, providing more food for citizens living at home. Little gardens popped up all over the country and they were called Victory gardens because people envisioned a victorious end to strife, sadness and hardship. Victory gardens in the U.S. produced a staggering 40% of the food supply. The Victory garden campaign resulted…
OSLO — In May 2011, Manal al-Sharif did something revolutionary: She drove a car.
In most societies this would be far from noteworthy, but in Saudi Arabia, where women are prohibited from getting behind the wheel, it was an act of extraordinary courage. The protest, which she put on YouTube, landed al-Sharif in jail for nine days. It also made her an international figure. In the last year, she has been named one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine and one of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people of 2012.”
And last week, the 32-year old Saudi was one of three people awarded the first annual Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent at the Oslo Freedom Forum.
To attend the conference in Norway, al-Sharif says she was pressured out of her job at the Saudi oil company Aramco. Considering she is a working-class single mother, it couldn’t have been an easy decision to continue her human rights fight in the face of such economic pressures. But, as al-Sharif told The Daily Caller, “if you stand up for your beliefs, there is a price to pay.”
“They pressured me a lot and it was like too much to take,” she said, explaining that while she was not explicitly fired, she was increasingly marginalized at the company for her activism, leading to her exit after coming into conflict again with her bosses over attending the conference.
After first stating that she didn’t “want to talk about” the pressure she has suffered under since her Rosa Parks-like act of defiance, she conceded that the Saudi government does “pressure you a lot, whether directly or indirectly.”
“So they can cause a lot of trouble,” she went on. “They scandalize you, they smear you … they spread all these rumors about you … But it’s up to you how to deal with that pressure. The more pressure it is, the more attacks I get, the more impact I know that I’m making.”
A recent move by the Supreme Court stop commercial production of genetically-modified Bt eggplant in the Philippines was welcomed by a group of environmentalists and concerned individuals
- By Gilbert P. Felongco, Correspondent
Manila: A recent move by the Supreme Court stop commercial production of genetically-modified Bt eggplant in the Philippines was welcomed by a group of environmentalists and concerned individuals.Greanpeace said the Supreme Court decision to grant a Writ of Kalikasan in favour of stopping Bt eggplant field trials in the country while further studies are being conducted is a step forward in the fight against so-called “Frankenstein” food that harm not only the human body but the environment as well.
“Many independent scientific studies provide clear evidence that GMOs such as Bt eggplant, as well as Bt corn, can negatively impact the liver, kidneys or blood when ingested”
“Greenpeace believes the granting of the Writ of Kalikasan to be a recognition of the threats that GMOs pose to human health and the environment. We welcome this as a positive development: GMOs and GMO field trials clearly violate every Filipino’s constitutional right to a balanced and healthful ecology, and their invasion into our fields and our diets must be stopped,” said Daniel Ocampo, Sustainable Agriculture Campaigner, Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
The Writ of Kalikasan (Nature) is a legal remedy designed for the protection of one’s constitutional right to a healthy environment.
In the same breath, Greenpeace called for greater scrutiny of the country’s GMO approval system as it welcomed the Supreme Court decision to stop field trials of the genetically-modified organism (GMO) Bt eggplant in the Philippines.“The Supreme Court has given hope to Filipinos as its decision now puts into the spotlight the country’s flawed GMO approval system which has never rejected any GMO application, allowing dangerous GMO crops to be eaten and planted by Filipinos. This is an outrage and such a regulatory system which clearly disregards public good must be scrapped,” he added.
According to Greenpeace, there are serious uncertainties regarding the safety and long-term impacts of GMOs.
“Many independent scientific studies provide clear evidence that GMOs such as Bt eggplant, as well as Bt corn, can negatively impact the liver, kidneys or blood when ingested,” the group said.
Last April 26, petitioners led by Leo Avila of Davao City Agriculturist Office, Atty. Maria Paz Luna, former Senator Orlando Mercado and Greenpeace Southeast Asia Executive Director Von Hernandez filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to issue a Writ of Kalikasan against GMO field trials.
The petition seeks to immediately stop the field trials of Bt eggplant. It also puts into question the flawed government regulatory process for approving GMOs and ensuring the safety of GMOs first on health and environmental grounds before they are released into the open.
Despite the scientific doubt that surrounds GMO food crops, the Philippines has never rejected any GMO application, approving, since 2002, a total of 67 GMOs for importation, consumption and propagation.
While other countries are taking the precautionary approach to GMOs, Greenpeace said the Philippine Department of Agriculture has done exactly the opposite.
Munich, Germany (UPI)
The anti-austerity revolt of European voters continued Sunday when electors in a key German province gave Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats just 28 percent of the vote, the party’s lowest perentage since 1948.
This is a grim time to be in office in Europe. Voters have turned out governments in Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain, France and Greece. And while Merkel remains in office at the national level and remains personally popular, her own coalition with Bavaria’s Christian Social party is fraying badly.
How much of Sunday’s vote was against the austerity that Merkel is forcing upon Europe and how much a reaction against the way Germany continues reluctantly to bail out the bankrupt European partners is an open question. Either way, it means voters are losing trust in Merkel’s economic stewardship, even though Germany has recovered more strongly from the crisis than any other European economy.
Sunday’s vote also reflected the ongoing crisis of the traditional two-party system, with smaller German parties continuing to take votes from the big two — Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the moderate-left Social Democrats. The Greens got 12 percent, the centrist Free Democrats recovered to 8 percent and the bizarre new Pirate Party, committed to Internet freedom and votes for teenagers, repeated its earlier success in Berlin.
All this took place as Greece slid further down the slope toward what the markets are calling “Grexit,” a Greek exit from the euro, which many fear would trigger Europe’s biggest crisis since World War II. After their chaotic elections and inability to form a coalition government, it isn’t easy to see how Greece musters the political will to make the budget cuts and suffer the economic pain required to remain inside the euro.
But if Greece goes, it is also not easy to see how to prevent the contagion spreading to Portugal, Spain and even Italy as depositors take their euros from their own national banks and deposit them in safer German banks, rather than see savings eroded by devaluation.
The dirty secret here is that on close examination Germany’s economic situation, despite its strong manufacturing sector and massive export trade, isn’t nearly as strong as it looks.
Germany’s Market Economy Foundation reports that in addition to the official national debt of roughly $2.6 trillion, there are $5.9 trillion in future benefit promises to retirees, the sick and people requiring nursing care. These are commitments that aren’t documented in official budgets nor has any provision been made to finance them. When these commitments are included, Germany’s real debt isn’t the “official” 80 percent of gross domestic product but 276 percent.
Moreover, the disguised way in which Germany has continued to bail out the weaker Europeans is becoming a serious public issue. This is done through the “Target2″ system of the European Central Bank, where the debits and credits of the various eurozone members are held.
There has been a sharp jump in the Bundesbank’s Target2 claims within the European Central Bank’s internal payment network from $706 billion in February to $795 billion in March. Bundesbank claims have risen six-fold since 2008. Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann is demanding collateral from weaker states for Target2 transfers.
These German credits, equivalent to $800 billion, are balanced by debts of Greek, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian central banks of almost $850 billion. So long as the German central bank doesn’t demand its money, it is in effect bankrolling the other European partners. And since this is done between central banks, there has been no parliamentary authorization for this hidden bailout.
“The euro-system is near explosion,” said Professor Hans-Werner Sinn, head of Germany’s IFO Institute, addressing Austria’s Economics Academy on April 19. “This enormous international credit should have been subjected to the parliaments of Europe.”
He may well be right. But the voters seem intent on throwing the parliaments of Europe into disarray or into coalitions that are either unworkable or impotent to take the decisive action required.
This might not be so alarming, were it not that even bigger political challenges lie in wait for Europe. Its social contract and generous welfare state is becoming steadily less sustainable as the society ages. More and more people are qualifying for pensions and expensive elderly healthcare while fewer and fewer young people are coming into the labor market and when they do there are few jobs for them.
If things look grim for Europe’s incumbent politician now, they will soon look even worse as they are forced to push through new laws raising the retirement age, curbing pension and welfare payments and raising taxes.
Democracy in the 21st century at TerraDaily.com
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SODDY-DAISY - Just minutes from downtown Chattanooga is the North Chickamauga Creek Gorge State Natural Area, a 7,093-acre tract bisected by a 10-mile-long gorge with vertical sandstone walls and swimming holes that draw crowds in the summer.
Terri Ballinger is a seasonal naturalist with the Cumberland Trail State Park, and on a recent afternoon she and handful of volunteers paid a visit to North Chickamauga Creek to collect seeds. The state natural area is known for its rich assemblage of plants and, before long, the team was finding mid-summer seed producers such as Indian pink, sharpwing monkey flower, whorled coreopsis and False Solomon's Seal.
"We're focusing on the keystone species, the building blocks of a healthy forest," Ballinger said.
Last September the Cumberland Trail State Park embarked on a monumental effort to transform a pine plantation along the Cumberland Trail into a diverse upland forest typical of the Cumberland Plateau.
All the plant material used to rehabilitate the site will come from seeds collected locally at sites such as the North Chickamauga Creek Gorge State Natural Area and other nearby state-owned lands.
Funding for the project is provided by the Friends of the Cumberland Trail, with much of the manpower provided by groups such as the Master Gardeners of Hamilton County.
In addition to re-vegetating the pine site, seeds from the project are contributing to the Seeds of Success program established in 2001 by the Bureau of Land Management in partnership with the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew Millennium Seed Bank. With these programs, seeds from all over the world are being preserved in cold storage so that native plants can be restored to areas hit by catastrophic events such as wildfires, or as an insurance against the threat of extinction resulting from climate change.
Tennessee State Parks currently is the only agency that's banking seeds from plants endemic to the Southeastern forest. Seeds collected along the Cumberland Trail are being stored in refrigerated containers at the Bend Seed Extractory, a U.S. Forest Service facility in Bend, Ore.
So far, volunteers have completed about 170 miles of the Cumberland Trail. When completed, the footpath will stretch 300 miles from Cumberland Gap National Historical Park to Chattanooga following the east side of the Cumberland Plateau. The trail is open to the public in discontinuous segments that tie into public lands such as state parks and wildlife management areas.
The Re-seeding the Cumberlands pilot project is taking place at a 500-acre site called Barker Camp that's part of 3,000 acres that Bowater Inc. sold to the state several years ago. The site so far has undergone some prescribed burning to prepare it for the seeding and planting process. Compared to the thick summer canopy of the nearby deciduous forest, the acreage that was in pine production looks like a wasteland.
Ballinger said nursery stock from commercial greenhouses would have a hard time surviving in such harsh conditions.
"The first step is to get rid of the invasives," Ballinger said. "The soil has been acidified by the pines. Restoring the native vegetation will help improve the pH."
During the course of the project, the Cumberland Trail State Park will experiment with taking cuttings from different hardwood tree species and growing them out as a faster means than growing them from seed. And most importantly, all seeds and plant material will be collected locally to maintain the genetic integrity of the future forest.
Beginning this fall and winter, workers will sow the site with wildflowers and warm-season grasses. Wildlife will be drawn to the new fields, and after about 10 years, small shrubs should appear. When shrubs and trees greater than 4 inches in diameter form more than half of the canopy, the habitat's classification will shift from old field to early woodland.
Fifty years from now, the woods of Barker Camp will be indistinguishable from the oak-hickory forest interspersed with pines that surrounds much of the Cumberland Trail.
One of the volunteers helping collect seeds that day at the North Chickamauga Creek Gorge State Natural Area was Sally Wencel, board member of the Friends of the Cumberland Trail and one of the re-seeding project's most ardent supporters.
"You can't create instantly what it took nature a hundred years to produce," Wencel said. "I realize I won't be around to see the final result of all this, but it's exciting to be a part of it."
Morgan Simmons may be reached at 865-342-6321.
|
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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The Danish government has abandoned its tax on fat and and its plans for a sugar tax. A spokesperson for the tax ministry is quoted thus: “The suggestions to tax foods for public health reasons are misguided at best and may be counter-productive at worst. Not only do such taxes not work, especially when they choose the wrong food to tax, they can become expensive liabilities for the businesses forced to become tax collectors on the governments behalf”. Shortly we will have our annual budget here in Ireland and notwithstanding the volte-face of our Danish colleagues, the likelihood is that we will face such a tax soon. In general, the predicted weight changes associated with projected taxes on sugar sweetened beverages are grossly overestimated.
A recent consensus statement of the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) and the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) has examined the topic: “Energy balance and its components: Implications for body weight regulation”. One of the areas covered by this paper is the popular and widely held belief that to lose 1lb of body weight, you need to reduce caloric intake by 3,500 kcal. This figure assumes that a loss of 1lb of body weight is made up entirely of adipose tissue which is 86% fat and the fat has 9 kcal per gram. This 3,500 kcal figure is widely used in predicting the benefit of weight loss from a sugar sweetened beverage tax. It has many flaws.
Firstly, a 1lb weight loss will not be 100% fat but will also involve the loss of some lean tissue (muscle and protein elements of adipose tissue and its metabolism). Whereas fat has an energy value of 9 kcal/g, lean tissue has a value of 4 kcal/g. The exact ratio of the loss of lean and fat in weight reduction depends largely on the level of fat in the body at the outset. The higher the intake level of fat, the higher the proportion of fat lost. However, as a person sheds fat, the ratio of fat to lean changes in favour of the latter, so subsequent weight loss will have a lower ratio of fat to lean. The blanket use of the 3,500kcal value ignores this.
The second criticism of this rule is that it ignores time. If you shed 3,500kcal per week every week, that would differ from a deficit of 3,500 kcal per month every month. The former leads to a daily deficit of 500 kcal while the latter is just 117 kcal. Even the most non-expert dieter knows that such differences in daily energy deficits will lead to radically different rates of weight loss. Thirdly, the 3,500 kcal rule assumes complete linearity – in other words the rule equally applies, pound after pound of weight loss. We saw above that progressive weight loss will progressively increase the % of that weight loss as lean tissue but more importantly, the 3,500kcal rule ignores a major adaptation in energy expenditure. Basically, our basal metabolic rate (BMR) falls as we restrict our caloric intake. Since BMR accounts for 88% of energy expenditure in most sedentary persons, that means that a fall in BMR represents a significant adaptive response through increased efficiency of energy use making weight loss progressively more difficult.
Researchers at the US National Institute of Health have developed a very detailed mathematical model which predicts weight loss based on a wide variety of inputs. The model has been validated against a number of highly controlled weight loss programmes. Together with researchers based at the USDA and the economics departments of the universities of Florida and Minnesota, they have examined the likely weight loss that would accrue from a tax of 20% (about 0.5 cents per ounce) on sugar sweetened beverages in the US. They concluded that the nutritional input would be a reduction of energy intake of 34-47 kcal per day for adults. Using the 3,500 kcal rule, an average weight loss of 1.60kg would be predicted for year 1 rising to 8kg in year 5 and to 16kg in year 10. However, when the dynamic mathematical model is used, the corresponding figures for years 1, 5 and 10 are, respectively, 0.97, 1.78 and 1.84 kg loss. The % of US citizens that are over-weight is predicted to fall from existing levels of 66.9% over-weight to 51.5% over-weight in 5 years time using the 3,500 kcal rate but using the dynamic mathematical model, the 5-year figure for the over-weight population in the US would be just 62.3%. Clearly, the continued use of the 3,500 kcal rule in predicting weight loss should cease and the recommendations of the consensus statement of the ASN and ILSI should apply: “Every permanent 10 kcal change in energy intake per day will lead to an eventual weight change of 1lb when the body reaches a new steady state. It will take nearly a year to achieve 50% and about 3 years to achieve 95%”.
My back of envelope calculations based on the National Adult Nutrition Survey is that extrapolating from the US model (footnote 4), a tax on sugar sweetened beverages might lead to a weight loss of 0.6 lb at the end of year 1. That of course is subject to an error estimate such that it might be higher but equally, it might be lower. Many of the advocates of fat taxes might argue that they will take that “thank you very much” as a start and then move to the next food. But you cannot continue to add tax to the cost of food.
|
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://gibneyonfood.blogspot.com/2012/11/sugar-taxes-and-weight-loss-predictions.html
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Heat stress during work
Because the global warming of the climate and an aging population who in some countries has to work longer (retirement age to 67 years), the control of heat stress becomes increasingly important.
Heat stress is dependent on environmental factors. But is also strongly influenced by the degree of effort during the work, clothing and personal factors.
Heat stress has negative short-term mental effects: a decrease in vigilance and poorer performance. Under the influence of heat stress more unsafe actions take place and the risk of accidents increases. In working situations, such effects may endanger worker’s own health or that of others.
At core temperatures between 38°C and 39°C the performance of physical tasks slowly decrease, but healthy workers occasionally can tolerate temperatures to around 39°C without problems. However, when the temperature rises above this level, then the health risks rapidly increases. It is unknown what the effect on workers is who are exposed on a daily basis to this temperature stress: whether the internal temperature will decrease less (by acclimatization) or more (due to excessive stress). If the skin temperature raises above 36 ° C , the physical performance will be limited because the heat transfer from the body core to the skin will become difficult.
Exposure to heat generating sources occurs in many companies and industries.
Employees who by the nature of their work are wearing insulating clothing may also be faced with heat stress (eg. cold store employees, asbestos workers).
Exposure to heat caused by high ambient temperatures will mainly affect employees who work outdoors and in buildings and vehicles where there is a poor climate conditioning.
In the Netherlands no legal limits for heat stress exist. Its enforcement is a set of reference values for ambient heat used, described in ISO 7243:1989.
Arbo Unie (ECTS) has a unique partnership with the Department of Physiology (Physiomics, Prof. Dr. Maria T.E. Hopman and Dr. Thijs M.H. Eijsvogels) of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, for measurements in the human body temperatures. Based on the test findings, occupational hygienists and occupational physicians can give advise on control measures e.g. adjusting the work and rest regime, cooling procedure for furrnaces, protective clothing, drinking advice, advice on medical restrictions, age, pregnancy, drug use etc.
To measure the effects of heat stress for workers the following methods and instruments are available.
The core body temperature is measured using an ingestible temperature pill (CorTemp System; HQ inc., USA). This pill contains a built-in temperature-sensitive quartz crystal and telemetry transmitter, so the actual core temperature can be sent to an external recorder (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Schematic representation of the operation of the temperaturepill (20 mm long and 10 mm wide). The equipment in the pill measures the temperature in the gut. The temperature signal is then transmitted via a telemetric transmitter via radio waves to a remote receiver.
To measure the skin temperature on the left hand, neck, right shoulder and right shin an iButton (iButton, Maxim Integrated Products, USA) is placed. The skin temperature is then measured every 20 seconds and from the four locations the average skin temperature is calculated using the ISO 9886 standard.
A heart rate belt (Polar Electro Oy, Kempele, Finland) is used to monitor heart rate during the operation. By the estimated maximum heart rate (220 - age) and resting heart rate, the heart rate reserve during the work can be calculated (heart rate reserve = (heart rate during activities – resting heart rate) / (maximum heart rate – resting heart rate)). This variable reflects the exercise intensity during work.
In order to map the pattern of activities during work an activity monitor (SenseWear Armband Pro 3, BodyMedia, Pittsburgh, USA) is placed at the right upper arm. With this bracelet, which uses preprogrammed algorithms and previously entered data one can reliably determine the metabolic equivalents (METs). This is a measure of the intensity of the work.
To evaluate the changes in moisture balance employees are asked immediately before and after work to weigh themselves. When entering or leaving the room the weight is recorded. Changes in body weight are thereby largely identical to changes in moisture loss.
With PIMEX (PIMEX stands for Picture Mix Exposure) may be the effect of practice and workplace conditions on exposure to heat stress and physical exercise in a video screen display. An ideal communication tool and instructional tool.
For more information please contact Fred van Kolck, +316-525 01624, [email protected]
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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Comments: Overall, this species does not seem to be highly threatened at present, but there are definitely challenges to the persistence of some populations.
Wholesale destruction of wetlands by draining for agriculture and housing developments is a significant threat (Cusick pers. comm., Evans pers. comm., Smith pers. comm.). Populations have likely been destroyed through the years due to these activities. Due to the rapid urbanization of the Virginia coastal region, populations may be destroyed through habitat destruction, water quality degradation, and boat-wake disturbances (Ludwig pers. comm.).
Dredging of stream and rivers, coupled with the drainage of upland wetlands, has quickened the run-off of spring melt-waters and rainfall. Excessive run-off over a shortened period of time has likely had detrimental effects on historic C. decomposita populations by increasing the height of flood waters and affecting new habitats. Apparently, the species is not able to survive in areas where water levels fluctuate significantly throughout the year (Bryson per. comm.); it is only found in old oxbow swamps away from the current flooding regime, sinkhole ponds and other wetlands of this sort. Natural upland cover and wetlands within the watersheds should be restored and/or protected.
Conversion of natural ponds to stock watering holes through the deepening and removal of native vegetation is also a significant threat to the species (Smith pers. comm.). Other natural ponds may experience degradation due to grazing during periods of prolonged drought.
Logging of habitat has also apparently been a threat to C. decomposita. Evans (pers. comm.) stated that populations in western Kentucky have undoubtedly been destroyed in the past due to drainage and clearing of the extensive wetlands in that part of the state.
The log sedge is apparently only found in areas that are not subjected to herbicide use (Bryson pers. comm.). In areas adjacent to rice fields, herbicide (2-4-D or 2-4-5-T) use has eliminated the species (Bryson pers. comm.).
Road grading of populations located on roadbanks within swamps is a threat to such populations in Illinois (Schwegman pers. comm.). Shifting ice sometimes takes out dead snags and the plants associated with them (Schwegman pers. comm.).
In at least Arkansas, water hyacinth is becoming a serious issue; at least two Arkansas sites are impacted.
No one has provided updates yet.
|
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://eol.org/data_objects/18624398
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The most common and most important greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Black carbon is also a potent warmer, although not a greenhouse gas.
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
This greenhouse gas is present in relatively low concentrations in the atmosphere; prior to the Industrial Revolution, it made up about 0.03 percent of the atmosphere. Despite its low levels, CO2 makes up about 30 percent of the greenhouse gases naturally found in the atmosphere and it is the major driver of climate change.
There are currently approximately 3 trillion metric tons of CO2 in the atmosphere; this is 37 percent higher than the level prior to the Industrial Revolution. In the late 1800s, levels of carbon dioxide were 280 parts per million (ppm). Current concentrations are around 380 ppm. Scientists warn that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere goes above 450 ppm, the Earth's climate could spiral out of control.
Natural sources of carbon dioxide include rotting plant and animal matter, forest fires and volcanoes. The major human sources of CO2 are from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and from deforestation. Scientists attribute the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to these human sources.
Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas. Over 100 years, a ton of methane would heat the globe 23 times more than 1 ton of carbon dioxide would. The atmosphere has a methane concentration of 1,774 parts per billion (ppb). This is a 59 percent increase from the methane concentration prior to the Industrial Revolution.
There is, however, around 220 times less methane than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so overall carbon dioxide has a far greater effect in the atmosphere.
Methane is created by the decay of organic matter. Large amounts come from landfills, cattle and the rest of the livestock sector (chicken and pigs) in general.
Methane hydrates, a frozen combination of methane and water, are found in vast quantities on the sea floor. It is possible that continued climate change could release these frozen stores of methane and cause a sudden, very large addition of methane to the atmosphere. This would massively magnify the greenhouse effect, causing global warming to reach unprecedented levels.
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)
Nitrous oxide has a global warming effect roughly 300 times that of carbon dioxide over 100 years. However, like methane, nitrous oxide exists in much lower concentrations than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide concentrations in the atmosphere are currently 319 ppb, 18 percent higher than what they were prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Nitrous oxide is emitted by bacteria in soil. Agriculture and the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, along with the handling of animal waste, increase the production of nitrous oxides. Industries, such as the nylon industry, and the burning of fossil fuels in internal combustion engines also release nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.
Black carbon (BC)
Black carbon, or soot, is not an actual greenhouse gas, as it is a solid, and warms the atmosphere differently to a gas. However, it has a significant warming effect on the atmosphere.
Black carbon is made up of microscopic particles that result from the incomplete burning of organic matter, especially fossil fuels. Black carbon warms both in the atmosphere and when deposited on lighter surfaces, like snow and ice.
Black carbon may be responsible for as much as 25 percent of observed global warming. The overall contribution of black carbon to global warming may be substantial, perhaps second only to that of carbon dioxide.
Because it can accelerate the melting of snow and ice, black carbon may play a particularly important role in Arctic climate change. Black carbon may be responsible for over 30 percent of Arctic warming. Because the Arctic has warmed at around twice the rate of the rest of the world over the last 100 years, controlling and reducing black carbon emissions is particularly important.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://oceana.org/en/our-work/climate-energy/climate-change/learn-act/greenhouse-gases
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A country in Eastern Asia.
a communist nation that covers a vast territory in eastern Asia; the most populous country in the world
a developing country and one must be prepared to adapt to local conditions and circumstances which may be significantly different from those to which one is accustomed
an ancient country with a history of over five thousand years of civilization
a totalitarian regime that has and is grabbing lands from many countries
a vast country with countless attractions for the traveller
a vast country with thirty provinces
a country that borders Russia on the southeast.
a term commonly used to describe ceramic wares, named after the country of origin.
One of six major Paleozoic continents; composed of all of southeast Asia, including China, Indochina, part of Thailand, and the Malay Peninsula.
An international organization established in 1964 by 77 developing countries; membership has now increased to 133 countries. The group acts as a major negotiating bloc on some issues including climate change.
China was the third single released from the Tori Amos LP, Little Earthquakes, in January 1992 in the United Kingdom, as a CD single, cassette single, and 7" and 12" vinyl single. It was also released in smaller quantities in other countries, with varying track listings and artwork.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.metaglossary.com/meanings/303547/
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Anemia Due to Bone Marrow Failure (or Toxicity) in Dogs
Aplastic Anemia in Dogs
Bone marrow plays a pivotal role in the origination and constant replenishment of important cells like red blood cells (RBCs), granulocytes (or white blood cells [WBCs]), and platelets. Once these cells reach the point of maturation they are released from the marrow into the blood stream. In some mammals, it is estimated that as many as three million red blood cells per second are released into the blood circulation, demonstrating the extensive amount of work done by the bone marrow in keeping the numbers of these cells within normal ranges in the body.
Aplastic anemia in dogs is a diseased condition resulting from the bone marrow's inability to replenish blood cells. Where aplastic refers to the dysfunction of an organ, and anemia refers to a lack of red blood cells. Aplastic anemia is a life-threatening condition resulting when normal bone marrow is replaced by adipose (fat) tissue, thus preventing it from releasing the required number of WBCs, RBCs, and platelets and resulting in an overall decrease in the total number of these cells in the blood. RBCs have several vital functions in the body, including carriage of oxygen and removal of waste carbon dioxide. WBCs are essential for fighting infections and foreign particles, whereas platelets are required for clotting the blood and preventing hemorrhage. All symptoms seen in aplastic anemia directly relate to the functions of these cells. In most cases of aplastic anemia, all three types of cells are affected. If left untreated, this condition can lead to death in severely affected dogs.
Symptoms and Types
All three types of cells affected in this disease have different roles to play in normal body functions, therefore, the symptoms will vary depending on the type of cells mostly affected and the severity of the problem. Following are some of the symptoms related to aplastic anemia.
There are a variety of causes for aplastic anemia, including infections, toxins, drugs, and chemicals which may cause aplastic anemia in dogs. Following are some major causes of aplastic anemia in dogs:
Drugs and chemicals
You will need to give a thorough history of your dog's health and onset of symptoms. Your veterinarian will perform a physical examination with full laboratory testing, including complete blood tests, biochemical profiles, and urinalysis. The results of these tests will provide valuable information for the preliminary diagnosis. The count of various cells will be determined; counts that are far below the normal ranges are considered a positive result.
Your veterinarian will also evaluate your dog for the presence of any infectious diseases, but the most valuable test in the diagnosis of aplastic anemia is bone marrow sampling. In this test a small sample of bone marrow will be collected through aspiration or biopsy. The microscopic studies will reveal the important information related to the architecture of the bone marrow and any developmental problems of the various cells in the bone marrow.
Your veterinarian will start treating your dog immediately after a confirmatory diagnosis has been made. Your dog may need to be hospitalized for few days to be monitored and treated. With aplastic anemia, there are number of problems to deal with and supportive therapy will be initiated to provide the required nutrition and energy that your dog is lacking. If required, whole blood transfusions may be recommended for severely anemic patients. As this problem is mediated mostly through the immune system, the primary treatment involves suppressing the immune system with drugs like cyclosporine A. Cyclosporine and other related agents suppress the bone marrow’s over-response. Drugs supporting the bone marrow functions are also recommended for these patients. Antibiotics are given to treat ongoing infections as well as for the prevention of further infections.
Living and Management
During hospitalization, your veterinarian will monitor your dog's status daily. Blood tests will be repeated to determine the current status of the problem. In some dogs, bone marrow sampling may need to be repeated in order to see if the bone marrow is responding normally or not. Unfortunately, with aplastic anemia few patients survive despite extensive care and treatment. Young dogs have a better chance of survival, but even if initial recovery is attained, it may take several weeks to months for a complete recovery.
The term for black feces that has blood in it
A special type of tissue that exudes mucus
An in-depth examination of the properties of urine; used to determine the presence or absence of illness
Extreme loss of blood
A bloody nose
A condition of the blood in which normal red blood cell counts or hemoglobin are lacking.
The process of removing tissue to examine it, usually for medical reasons.
Refers to the quality of being fat or full of fat.
Blood in the urine
Anemia, Regenerative in Dogs
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<urn:uuid:51d925b8-a628-4242-a0c8-d3d68b9dae48>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/cardiovascular/c_dg_anemia_aplastic?page=show
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
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| 0.924347
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The sustainability crisis has provoked an unexpected and dramatic response from academia. Until now, higher education institutions have tended to focus on sustainability within their own borders. This has predominantly been via sustainability education, research and designing green or carbon neutral campuses.
Yet borders between society and academia are dissolving. Many high-profile universities across the world are reaching out past campus boundaries to form ambitious partnerships with industry, government and civil society organisations. In this role of ‘co-creation’, a university attempts to materialise sustainable development by working with society, to create society. That is, it collaborates with diverse social actors to trigger and then drive the sustainable transformation of a specific region, city or community.
To cite but a few examples of many, the University of Strathclyde is partnering with Glasgow City to make the region “one of Europe’s most sustainable cities within 10 years”. Another is how Novatlantis — the sustainability initiative of the Swiss federal institutes of technology and research — is teaming up with public and private partners to utilise the cities of Basel, Zurich and Geneva as test beds for innovative sustainability experiments.
Across the Atlantic, Cornell University and Oberlin College are engaged in separate but ambitious alliances to revive and transform the stagnating economies of two former industrial boom towns into exportable models of green, post-fossil fuel prosperity.
A rocky history
The university, as an institution, should know a thing or two about sustainability. After all, it boasts more than 1,000 years of history, having endured wars, revolutions and dramatic transitions at the core of Western society. Today it stands at the pinnacle of its evolution as a highly complex, dynamic institution at the heart of the knowledge economy. The cutting edge knowledge originating from this institution — now operating across national borders and linking vast areas of science, industry, government and civil society — is responsible for everything from Gatorade to Google, and from superconductors to stem cell research.
Despite this, the university has not often sought to spur great social transformations. Instead, it has typically been a conservative, monastery-like institution, aloof to the problems of the world and committed to maintaining ideals of the past. As argued by Mark Taylor of Columbia University, the university of today still stubbornly clings to an out-dated ‘separation of labour’ model, in which incompatible, separate academic disciplines, inhibit a holistic response to the problems of the world. Competition between departments reigns at the price of cooperation and cross-disciplinary research.
Further, as an institution striving for universal truth, irrespective of time and place, the university has harboured a nonchalance towards place-based problem solving and research attempting to provide concrete solutions to local community issues.
Co-creation: a new trend in academia?
To label the academic function of co-creation as completely new is not entirely accurate. After all, historical examples of universities collaborating with external partners to tackle real-world problems and utilise the local environs as a ‘living laboratory’ can be traced back to the land-grant institutions established since 1862 in the United States. More recently, a similar role to co-creation may be observed in university-city efforts, such as those by the University of Pennsylvania, to address neighbourhood deterioration and economic decay. Yet none of these prior functions seem to capture the ambition, scale and objectives of the cross-sector partnerships for advancing urban sustainability collated into Table 1 below.
Table 1. Various cross-sector collaborations for sustainability transitions
In assuming this unprecedented role of sustainability fomenter, the university is deviating from the dominant model of an ‘entrepreneurial university’ where the notion of contributing to society has become synonymous with contributing to the economy via technology transfer and commercialisation of research results. Instead, it is adopting a grander and far more concrete function — that of responding to the sustainability crisis and driving the transition to more resilient and environmentally sustainable towns and cities.
The 2000 Watt Society
Novatlantis and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) are the veterans of co-creation for fostering sustainable urban transformation. Guided by the vision of a 2000 Watt Society, a blue-print for a low-carbon Switzerland conceived by ETH in 1998, numerous public-private alliances have been formed in the fields of mobility, construction and urban planning.
After an initial focus on the Basel-Stadt region, the Novatlantis-triggered race to de-carbonisation has spread to Geneva and Zurich. These three cities are now all competing to showcase and diffuse the various elements required to accelerate the sustainable transformation of urban Switzerland.
Ten years of co-creation is at last bearing fruit. Basel has established itself as a centre of innovation in the field of individual, sustainable mobility. Since 2002, the
Experience Space Mobility project has engaged automobile manufacturers, transport operators and key stakeholders to develop and demonstrate solutions for the short-term (natural gas), mid-term (biogas) and long-term (hydrogen fuel cells). A recent outcome here are trials of
hydrogen powered municipal street sweepers.
The “hy.muve” (which stands for “hydrogen-driven municipal vehicle”) will keep Basel’s streets clean in more ways than one. Photo © Empa – Materials and Science Technology.
To promote sustainable construction, Novatlantis organises and supervises large-scale urban development projects that are required to integrate MINERGIE energy performance standards and adhere to principles outlined for the 2000 Watt Society. Again in Basel, projects of interest include the recently completed Gundeldinger Feld, where a former industrial site was converted into a fashionable commercial and cultural district, and the ongoing re-development of Erlenmatt, a former railway freight yard, into a mixed-use district containing commercial and residential buildings, shopping facilities, restaurants, schools and parklands.
Rust to sustainability: The Oberlin Project
Another collaboration worth watching is the Oberlin Project, unfolding in the tiny ‘rust town’ of Oberlin, Ohio. Scattered across the northwestern states of the US, many towns such as Oberlin have lost their former economic glory and are struggling for survival with the decline of localised, heavy industries.
Against this backdrop, Oberlin College and David Orr (one of the forefathers of the academic sustainability movement) are leading an ambitious partnership with the municipality, private enterprises, investors and local citizens to leap from ‘rust’ and despair to a model of post-fossil fuel prosperity, resiliency and sustainability.
The project aims to make the City of Oberlin and its college carbon positive (i.e., not only carbon neutral, but actually absorb more carbon than it emits) and a self-generator of resources by 2050. Conceived as a “full-spectrum sustainability” response to the looming dual crises of climate change and peak oil, the project is cutting emissions through radical improvements in energy efficiency, converting the city’s entire energy supply to renewables (bio-gas and solar), transforming run-down city blocks to green building zones for the arts and sustainable business, and creating a 20,000 acre forestry and agriculture belt for food, timber and carbon-sequestration.
Resiliency will be boosted by kick-starting local consumption and a green economy, and directing sustainable farm produce to local restaurants and hotels in the city. Residents and students will be engaged in this real-world sustainability experiment via educational alliances between the local schools and colleges, and lastly, a national network will be set up to export this transformational model to other regions. To achieve this, initial design and construction estimates have been put at US$140 million, with US$55 million just for the first phase — colossal figures for lean times in a small rust town.
Even still, things are moving fast. The project has been nominated as one of 16 cities for the Clinton Foundation’s Climate Positive Development Program, and is attracting the interest of various military, national security experts and think-tanks such as the New America Foundation.
Oberlin College’s focus for 2012 is on the construction of a 13-acre ‘Green Arts Block’ featuring platinum level
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings such an auditorium, theatre, student housing, hotel, restaurants and a business district. As for other project areas and the ultimate objective of becoming a prosperous, self-sufficient and carbon positive town, this will occur in a decentralised fashion over many long years, and possibly even decades.
The power of partnerships
The chronic ailments of modernity are ‘wicked’, or ‘messy’, to borrow sustainability jargon. The unsustainability of our energy, transport, agricultural and economic systems all have their roots in multiple areas of the complex social, economic, technological, political and cultural fabric surrounding us. In forming partnerships such as those above, universities are now recognising that the only viable pathway to sustainability is one simultaneously addressing all these causes and mobilising all the required institutions, knowledge and resources into one comprehensive framework. That is where the true significance of co-creation for sustainability lies.
This is precisely why innovation-driven, cross-sector partnerships for sustainability transitions are also a topic of high relevance to the related cross-cutting work at the United Nations University, such as the Sustainable Urban Futures initiative of the Institute for Advanced Studies. With an interactive network of academic institutions, local and national government partners and international organizations, UNU aims to serve as a platform for global and local dialogue and creative new sustainability ideas, while also contributing to capacity development efforts, particularly in developing countries.
However, if more universities and faculty are to be encouraged to engage in alliances for urban sustainability transitions, several barriers need to be overcome. These include difficulties accessing funding, faculty time restraints, internal communication challenges amongst vast networks of partners and stakeholders, as well as institutional resistance from within academia. The reality is that most universities are yet to provide genuine incentives for the promotion of inter and multi-disciplinary collaboration and place-based action research for advancing urban sustainability.
Yet the alliances formed by the Novatlantis 2000 Watt Society and Oberlin Project are demonstrating that these barriers are not insurmountable. With scores of other university-driven collaborations for sustainable urban transformations simultaneously unfolding across the globe, and many long years required for their completion, it appears that the emergence of the academic function of co-creation for sustainability has only just begun.
Being a new development also means that there are very few, if any, successfully completed past examples from which to learn. Although it will be exciting to keep an eye on the progress made by the ambitious collaborations presented in this article, it remains to be seen whether they can actually realise their ultimate objectives.
Nevertheless, our prediction is a hopeful one — that the university’s role of co-creation will continue to evolve and eventually become a key component of the urban shift to sustainability across the globe.
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Into the Sea with Giants
So why would you want an up-close encounter with a 60-ton bowhead whale?
ECOLOGIST KERRY FINLEY skillfully maneuvers our two-person kayak in the 6-foot swells of icy Baffin Bay. "If you are going to swim with these bowhead whales, then you better go now," he yells against the wind.
Apprehensively, I peer out through my partially fogged mask. There in front of me is a flurry of tails, pectoral fins and sea spray.
"There are five or six of them in active sex play," Finley shouts.
"Sex what?" I holler back.
"Sex play. The young males jockey for position to rub themselves against the adult female." An ear-piercing shriek punctuates Finley´s commentary. "You can tell this is active by how vocal they are," he screams.
Suddenly, a 20-foot-wide tail flicks out of the sea and hangs high above the water, dwarfing our fragile kayak. The little boat is a mere 18 feet long. By contrast, an adult bowhead can reach 60 feet in length and weigh up to 100 tons. Along with the fin whale, it is second in size to the blue whale, the largest animal on Earth.
Finley, an independent biologist, is an old hand at bowhead research. He has been observing the eastern Arctic population of these animals since 1983. His study group, at Isabella Bay in the Canadian territory now known as Nunavut, can number up to 90 whales at any one time, by far the largest concentration left in the species´ North Atlantic range. In all, there are about 700 animals remaining here in the North Atlantic, a far cry from the 7,000 left in the North Pacific.
A second group of North Atlantic bowheads appears along the ice edge on the northwest side of Baffin Island near Igloolik. Susan Cosens from Canada´s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, along with investigator Brad Parker, has been studying these whales for the past six years.
All three researchers have had close encounters with the whales. For me as a wildlife photographer, such interactions are newer and more unexpected. As part of Finley´s project, I have been invited to shoot photo identifications, including pictures from the whale´s vantage pointin the sea. I really am about to swim with these giants.
Like all whales, bowheads are sensitive creatures and getting into the water with one must be done with cautionfrom the whale´s standpoint, not just the diver´s. The idea is not to displace these huge beasts from their feeding or resting areas. In fact, swimming with any marine mammal can be hazardous to the animal, and harassing one is illegal in many jurisdictions (it is outlawed throughout the United States, for instance). I am swimming under the guidance of Finley, who has permits and permission from the local Inuit to conduct research on these whales. He has decided that capturing underwater photo-ID images warrants a slight disturbance, but we always allow ourselves just one approach per whale.
In my excitement, I can barely focus on what I do know about these huge animals:
The whale gets its common name from its looks; its huge curved skull, approximately one-third of its body length, results in a bow-shaped mouth.
Its primary food source is the copepod, a rice-sized marine crustacean. The copepod is one of the world´s richest organisms; a dried gram contains up to 8 calories. One bowhead can consume up to 50,000 copepods a minute. The whales use baleens, consisting of 700 bony plates attached to each side of the upper jaw, to sieve out the copepods and other small planktonic organisms.
Copepod populations fluctuate with weather and ice cover, in turn making the whale highly dependent and vulnerable to climate change. Finley´s research has shown that copepod productivity and bowhead feeding correlate with global climatic oscillations, such as that caused by El Niño.
Bowheads are endangered. A hundred years ago, roughly 30,000 remained, but even then their numbers had diminished rapidly due to commercial whaling starting in the late 1700s. The populations left in the North Atlantic are in much more dire straits than those of the North Pacific.
Limited hunting still continues. As part of the Inuit´s comprehensive land claim settlement, native peoples have harvested two whales from the eastern population since 1995. They have the right to harvest one whale every two years.
Try as I might to wrap my brain around some of these facts, fear overcomes intellect as I watch the giant bodies swirl nearby. Only with encouragement from Finley do I fumble for my underwater camera housing and slip quietly into the chilly, 29-degree Fahrenheit water. My own dry suit seems hopelessly inadequate compared to the 2-foot-thick blubber that insulates my leviathan friends.
Hesitantly, I swim toward the swirl pools and spray created from the excited whales. Arriving within 30 feet of a bowhead´s blowhole, I put my head underwater, only to observe three massive tails undulating like giant fans. Common sense and feelings of self-preservation might call for a hasty retreat, but Finley´s words gave me the confidence to hold firm: "They are gentle giants and know that you are there," he had told me. "Trust them."
Shrills, squeaks and groans made by the excited bowheads reverberate through my body. A deafening bop, bop, bop, bop explodes from a whale´s blowhole on the surface. If I didn´t know better I would mistake them for sounds of aggression, but Finley has described this earlier as "flutter blows," in which males demonstrate bravado.
As I try to maneuver around the massive tails, the female cruises by within 4 feet of my right side, our eyes meeting momentarily. A young male in hot pursuit shadows her on my left. A third, followed by a fourth, glides beneath me within inches of my fins. As I bob helplessly on the surface, I realize four 60-ton whales have boxed me in. Their heads fade into the cloudy waterwhich only means their massive tails are still to come.
When the closest tail is about to hit me, I tuck my legs into my chest and clench my snorkel in my teeth. I try to stay in a tight ball, but the turbulence spins me around. When I drop my legs to gain balance, a tail gently rubs against the back of them. The contact must surprise the whale as much as it does me: It freezes in mid-motion then sinks out of sight.
As I climb back into the kayak, Finley smiles knowingly. "Now you know why I have been coming here for 15 years," he says.
Canadian Paul Nicklen has been exploring the Arctic for the majority of his 31 years, having first moved with his family to a small Inuit community on Baffin Island when he was three.
He was trained as a marine biologist and began photographing professionally in 1994. Nicklen now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon.
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Even though we are having some mild weather, I’m sure most of us are feeding hay or if you are not, soon will be. Most nitrate toxicity issues occur when producers are feeding hay. So this week, I thought we would have a refresher on the particulars of nitrate poisoning of livestock.
Nitrate poisoning is caused when an animal consumes a feed source that is high in nitrates. In the animal’s stomach that nitrate is converted to nitrite. The nitrite is easily absorbed into the blood stream where it converts blood hemoglobin to methemoglobin, which cannot carry oxygen. The result is that the animal dies from a lack of oxygen. Symptoms of nitrate toxicity included labored breathing, muscle tremors, and a staggering gait after which the animal collapses, gasps for breath, and dies quickly. The membranes of the mouth are bluish from a lack of oxygen and the blood is chocolate-brown but turns brighter red when exposed to air.
What factors can cause nitrate accumulation? Basically, drought, reduced sunlight, excessive soil nitrogen, and young plants cause it. Drought and reduced sunlight cause nitrate accumulation due to the fact that the plant is not growing and utilizing the nitrogen it has absorbed. Manly plants, such as sorghums, will take up excess levels of nitrogen if it is present. This is particularly true of young, immature plants.
The levels of nitrate to worry about vary according to the form of the forage. Research in Europe has shown that nitrate levels as high as 2%, or 20,000 parts per million (ppm), cause no serious problems while the forage is fresh. Once a forage is dried down the potentially harmful nitrate levels change. Levels of 0% - 0.25%, 0 - 2,500ppm, are generally considered safe for all classes of livestock. Levels of 0.26% to 0.5% should be used with caution and should be limited to one-half of the total ration of pregnant cattle and young animals. They should also not be fed with liquid feed or other non-protein nitrogen supplements. These levels can cause early term abortions and reduced breeding performance. If the levels from 0.6% - 1.5%, the forage should comprise no more than one-quarter of the ration. At these levels, we would also expect mid to late term abortions, weak calves, reduced milk yield, and decreased growth. Levels over 1.5% would give acute toxicity and death. This forage should only be used in a total mixed ration where the forage is limited to 15% of the total ration. These levels apply to cattle and goats. Those of you feeding horses will want to keep the nitrate level at or below 0.5% of the total dry matter diet. The “rule of thumb” is to select forage that has no more than 0.65% nitrate ion on a dry matter basis.
There are ways to manage around nitrate situations. First, no matter what the source, do not over-apply nitrogen. Apply at agronomic rates. Second, be aware that certain crops under adverse weather conditions are more susceptible to nitrate accumulation. Plan grazing and mowing schedules accordingly if at all possible. You may also consider planting forages with a relative lower risk of nitrate accumulation. Third, have your forage source analyzed for nitrate content. This is a free service from the NCDA&CS. You can then feed based on a known level of nitrate. It is also advisable to check the water source for nitrate levels. Cattle will adapt to higher levels of nitrate over time. Once acclimated, slightly higher levels can be fed safely.
You may have heard of producers losing animals to nitrate poisoning from hay that was “pumped on” or “had litter put on it”. While it is possible, the use of these fertilizer sources does not automatically result in high nitrate levels. If used properly, these sources are no more likely to cause high levels than commercial sources. Additionally, if used in excess or at the wrong time, commercial sources are just as likely to cause a nitrate problem. Just remember to have the forage tested. Even at recommended rates, any nitrogen containing fertilizer can cause a nitrate situation.
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The summer Arctic ice cap is the smallest ever measured. If current trends continue, Arctic summers will be nearly ice-free within 30 years.
The northern Pacific loggerhead sea turtle is declared endangered.
Fishing regulations have reduced accidental sea turtle deaths in U.S. coastal waters by 90 percent since 1990.
Siemens, Europe's largest engineering firm and the builder of all Germany's nuclear plants,
abandons the nuclear energy business.
The 7 billionth human is born. Out of all the humans who have ever lived, 1 in 15 is alive today.
A federal appeals court reinstates the Roadless Rule, securing protections for 50 million acres of remote federal land.
California and Toronto ban the import, possession, and sale of shark fins.
The South Florida rainbow snake and the Florida fairy shrimp are extinct.
Eighteen endangered Bengal tigers, along with 30 other exotic animals, are shot and killed after their suicidal owner releases them from a private animal farm in Ohio.
More U.S. corn is now used for ethanol than for consumption by humans or animals.
California approves a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; it will go into effect in 2012.
Demolition begins on Washington State's Elwha Dam, which for 101 years has prevented the passage of salmon up the Elwha River.
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Redistributed as a Service of the National Library for the Environment*
Conservation Reserve Payments
Marie B. Morris
May 1, 2000
The Conservation Reserve Program became law in the Food Security Act of 1985, P.L.99-198,§ 1231,etseq.,(codifiedml6U.S.C. §3831,etseq.). The current version of the program extends through calendar year 2002. It permits the Secretary of Agriculture to enroll up to 36.4 million acres in a conservation reserve program to assist farmers to conserve and improve the soil and water resources of their lands. The program is implemented by entering into 10 to 15 year contracts with farmers. Under the contract, the farmers agree to follow an approved conservation plan for converting lands normally devoted to agricultural production to a less intensive use. In exchange the Department of Agriculture (USDA) shares the cost of carrying out the conservation plan, provides technical assistance, and pays "an annual rental payment" for converting highly credible cropland to a less intensive use. The rental payments can be in cash or commodities. According to the facts presented in Wuebker v. Commissioner, 205 F.3d 897 (6* Cir. 2000), the USDA pays farmers approximately $1.8 billion each year under the CRP.
The tax treatment of CRP payments has been a bone of contention between the IRS and farmers. There is no disagreement that the payments should be included in income, but the IRS takes the position that if individuals are engaged in the trade or business of farming, the CRP payments are farm income which they must report on Schedule F. If the individuals are simply landlords, they report the CRP payments as farm-related income on Form 4835. This form is designed for land owners who rent their farms and who do not materially participate in the operation of the farm. Since the self-employment tax rate is currently 15.3%, farmers would like to follow the Tax Court opinion in Wuebker v. Commissioner, 110 T.C. 31 (1998), reversed205 F.3d 897 (6* Cir. 2000), which viewed the CRP payments as rental income, which is excluded from the definition of self- employment income under IRC § 1402(a)(l).
When the exception was originally enacted, it was intended to provide social security self- employment coverage to share-farmers and to landowners participating in the production so that they would have some sort of guaranteed retirement income when they were too old or too disabled to continue farming. Because a large number of farmers would have been excluded from the social security provisions if they could not count their crop-share income as self-employment income, the exception language was added to the Code in 1956. The Senate Report associated with the Social Security Amendments of 1956, S. Rep. No. 2133, 84th Cong., 2d Sess, as reprinted in Vol. 3 1956 U.S. Code, Cong. & Admin. News at 3877, 3883-3884, indicates that the bill would remove any doubt as to whether a share-farmer was an employee or a self-employed person and that it would extend coverage to landowner/farmers who had income from working and who were at risk for the types of income loss against which the social security program was designed to protect.
According to Rev. Rul. 60-32, 1960-1 C.B. 23, which discussed payments made to farmers under an earlier acreage reserve program,
Without analysis, Rev. Rul. 60-32 concludes,
Rev. Rul. 60-32 did not address whether CRP payments should be considered rental income. According to the IRS, farm income (and farm income substitutes, such as CRP payments) are treated as farm self employment income if the recipient of the payments is a farmer, i.e., the recipient is in the trade or business of farming and "materially participates." If the recipient is a retired farmer, or if the recipient is strictly a landlord, the payments are not "self-employment income." The IRS analysis is that since the CRP payments are received in the trade or business of farming they are automatically farm/self- employment income. Use of the "materially participates" language is somewhat confusing since it derives from the arrangement exception to the rental income rule.
Wuebker v. Commissioner
Wuebker v. Commissioner, 110 T.C. 31 (1998), was the first case to explicitly find that CRP payments were rental income, and, thus, not subject to self-employment tax. In Wuebker, the Special Trial Judge rejected the existing precedents and determined that CRP payments were rental income which did not come within the "arrangement" exception and, therefore, the farmer did not have to pay self-employment taxes on CRP payments. The Special Trial Judge rejected Rev. Rul. 60-32 as unpersuasive and rejected Ray v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1996-436, as precedent because the Ray court did not address whether the CRP payments qualified under the rental exclusion provisions of section 1402(a)(l).
The other cases dealing with this issue have not directly addressed the rental income exclusion from self-employment taxes applies to CRP payments. While Ray did not explicitly address the issue of whether the CRP payments were rental income, the Ray court did note that the taxpayers had reported the payments as rental income. The court said that taxability of the payments was not in question, the only question was whether they were self-employment income. In Ray the court followed Revenue Ruling 60-32 and found that the CRP payments were self-employment income because of the "nexus" of the payments and the trade or business from which they are derived. Dugan v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1994-578, set forth the IRC § 1402(a)(l) analysis when the income was derived from a sharecropping rental arrangement, but the court did not apply the analysis to the CRP payments since there was a net loss on the CRP payment land, meaning no self-employment taxes would be due. In Hasbrouck v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1998- 249, which was a suit for attorneys' fees and costs and did not involve self-employment taxes, the facts showed the IRS and the taxpayers switched their usual sides. The IRS maintained that the CRP payments were not properly reported on Schedule F, but should have been treated as farm rental income, because the IRS did not believe the taxpayers were in the trade or business of farming. The taxpayers claimed the CRP payments were farm income because they wanted to deduct certain business expenses. Before the case went to trial, the IRS conceded the issue based on Ray.
The Tax Court decision in Wuebker is the only case in a line of precedent dating back to 1960 to have found the payments excludible from self-employment income taxes. The Tax Court was reversed in a 2-1 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on March 3,2000. Wuebker v. Commissioner, 205 F.3d 897. The Sixth Circuit's analysis was that the Wuebkers were in the trade or business of farming and that the CRP payments should be viewed as "derived" from the farming business. The Sixth Circuit did not attach as much significance to the fact that the CRP payments were termed rental payments by the statute as the Tax Court opinion did. Using the argument that substance should prevail over form, the Sixth Circuit rejected the idea that the payments were "rent" because the Department of Agriculture was not paying to use or occupy the property. The court acknowledged that the USDA was restricting the uses that the farmer could make of the land, but the court did not believe that such restrictions constituted "use" by the USDA. This analysis, along with prior precedents, convinced the majority that the Tax Court's decision should be reversed. The dissenting judge believed that the wide-ranging limitations on the use of the land did constitute "use" by the USDA.
Since the Sixth Circuit reversed the Tax Court in Wuebker, several bills have been introduced in the 106* Congress to overturn the Wuebker decision: H.R. 4064, S. 2344, H.R. 4212, and S.2422, §4. The House bills are identical. All the bills would amend the definition of net earnings from self-employment in IRC § 1402(a) to exclude amounts received as payments under the CRP program from such earnings. The House bills would add a new paragraph to the list of exclusions; the Senate bills would amend the existing paragraph dealing with rentals from real estate. The House bills would also amend a similar definition in section 2 II (a) of the Social Security Act. All the bills would apply to CRP payments received before, on, or after the date of enactment. The bills do not indicate whether the IRS would be required to refund self-employment taxes paid by farmers on CRP payments prior to the date of enactment, but presumably IRC § 6511 would authorize the IRS to pay refunds claimed within three years of the time a return was filed.
|National Council for Science and the Environment
1725 K Street, Suite 212 - Washington, DC 20006
202-530-5810 - [email protected]
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Different Kinds of Reactions
Examples of phase diagrams and reactions in jpg, pdf and animated-pdf format are available.
A 5 page summary (Acrobat (PDF) 158kB Aug1 07) of this information is available, which can be used as a class handout.
Reactions among solid and fluid phases can be categorized in several different ways, based on what the reaction does, how the reaction progresses, or based on the nature of phases involved.
Categorization based on reaction effect
- Net-transfer reactions involve chemical components being "transferred" from one phase or set of phases to others (new phases are produced as old ones disappear). An example is:
anorthite = grossular + kyanite + quartz
Net-transfer reactions may be terminal reactions or tie-line flip reactions (discussed below).
- Exchange reactions involve chemical components being exchanged between phases, so compositions change, but modes remain the same (no phases disappear and no new phases are produced). An example is:
Fe (in garnet) + Mg (in biotite) = Mg (in garnet) + Fe (in biotite)
Categorization based on reaction progress
- Discontinuous reactions are those that occur at a particular temperature (for a particular pressure). For these, a curve (or line) can be drawn on a pressure-temperature (P-T) diagram. (See the kyanite=sillimanite reaction on the phase diagram shown below.) On either side of the curve, a different set of phases is stable. In a discontinuous reaction, products and reactants can only co-exist stably precisely at the equilibrium reaction conditions (on the reaction line in P-T space). Discontinuous reactions are always net-transfer reactions.
- Continuous reactions involve phases that may vary in composition. Such reactions are more common than discontinuous reactions because compositional variation, of either fluid or solid phases, is typical for geological materials. Continuous reactions occur over a range of conditions, so the products and reactants coexist stably over a range of conditions (but the compositions of the phases changes systematically as conditions change). Continuous reactions may be net-transfer reactions or exchange reactions.
Categorization based on phases involved
Kyanite inclusions (three tabular grains showing good cleavage and brown-pink interference colors) in andalusite (dark gray interference color, poorly developed cleavage) in a kyanite-andalusite-sillimanite (+ staurolite) quartz vein. This rock was "caught in the act" as kyanite reacted to form andalusite. The photo is from Donna Whitney. This sample is from Hamadan, Iran, and is discussed by Sepahi et al. (2004, J. Metam. Geology 22, 119-134).
Phase diagram for the Al2SiO5 polymorphs. The arrows show that kyanite will react to form sillimanite with increasing temperature or with decreasing pressure. Although not labeled, the pink triangular field at the bottom is the stability field for andalusite. This figure is from Donna Whitney.
- Solid-solid net transfer reactions (often just called solid-solid reactions) occur among solid phases of differing composition. These phases may include elements found in fluids (H, C), but those elements are conserved in the solid phases so that no fluid phases (H2O, CO2) are involved as reactants or products. Solid-solid net transfer reactions can be continuous or discontinuous, and they may be terminal, or tie-line flip reactions (discussed below).
- Polymorphic reactions are a special type of solid-solid reaction that involves phases of identical composition. Classic examples are the reactions among the aluminum silicates (kyanite-sillimanite-andalusite; see the photomicrograph and phase diagram shown at right), the conversion of graphite to diamond at high pressure, and calcium carbonate (calcite-aragonite) equilibria.
- P-T diagram showing the (dehydration) reaction of brucite to periclase + H2O. Figure from D. Perkins.Devolatilization reactions are net-transfer reactions that involve the liberation of a volatile phase (H2O for dehydration reactions or CO2 for decarbonation reactions). Examples of a dehydration and a decarbonation reaction are:
muscovite + quartz = K-feldspar + sillimanite + H2O, (dehydration)
calcite + quartz = wollastonite + CO2 (decarbonation)
Because the entropy of a fluid is generally greater than the entropy of solid phases, fluids appear on the high-temperature side of most such reactions. If the fluid composition is fixed (stays constant), then devolatilization reactions are discontinuous, but if the fluid composition can vary as a result of the liberation of H2O or CO2, then the reactions will be continuous.
Curvature: The curves for dehydration or decarbonation reactions on a P-T diagram will have shallow slopes at low pressure because the volume of a fluid phase is much larger than that of solid phases. However, the compressibility of a fluid leads to a rapid decrease in volume as pressure rises, so the slopes steepen with rising pressure, leading to substantial curvature. Some (rare) reactions curve around and gain a negative slope at high pressure.
Sensitivity to fluid composition: The P-T position of a decarbonation or dehydration reaction changes if fluid composition changes. For a dehydration reaction such as:
muscovite + quartz = K-feldspar + sillimanite + H2O,
if the rock contains an H2O-rich fluid, the right-hand side of the reaction will be stable over a smaller range of conditions than if the rock contains an H2O-poor fluid (either because the fluid is diluted with CO2, or the rock is ''dried out'' and not fluid saturated).
Mixed-volatile reactions involve the liberation and/or consumption of more than one volatile phase, typically H2O and CO2. An example is:
tremolite + calcite + quartz = diopside + H2O + CO2
Mixed volatile reactions have the same general shape as dehydration and decarbonation reactions on P-T diagrams. (However, they are generally plotted on T-X diagrams instead of P-T diagrams. Click here for more discussion of different types of phase diagrams.)
- Terminal reactions involve the creation of a new phase from two or three other phases, or (in the other direction) the decomposition of one phase into two or three others. They may be solid-solid reactions or they may involve a fluid phase. An example of a terminal reaction is:
chloritoid = staurolite + garnet + chlorite
At lower temperature (583°), chloritoid is stable for compositions that fall within the red, green and yellow 3-phase fields.
At higher temperature (584°), staurolite, garnet and chlorite are stable together and chloritoid is gone. So, the reaction takes place between 583° and 584° at 1 GPa.
AFM diagram projected from quartz, muscovite. Click for animated GIF showing loss of chloritoid. QuickTime version ( 67kB Apr2 07)
- Tie line flip reactions involve two phases becoming stable together that were previously unstable together, and vice versa. As with terminal reactions, they may be solid-solid reactions or may involve a fluid phase. An example of a tie-line flip reaction is:
chlorite + garnet = biotite + staurolite
AFM diagram projected from quartz, muscovite. Click for animated GIF showing tie-line flip. QuickTime version (Quicktime Video 261kB Aug8 07)
- Ion-exchange reactions (generally just called "exchange reactions") involve two phases that both share a solid solution exchange such as Na↔K or Fe+2↔Mg such as garnet, (Fe,Mg)3Al2(SiO4)3 and biotite, K(Fe,Mg)3(Si3Al)O10(OH)2 (both formulas are simplified). Reactions of this type are all continuous, and differ from the others kinds of reactions discussed above in that there is no real product or a reactant. Instead, across the complete range of conditions over which the two minerals are stable, both are changing in composition. Curves for these reactions are straight on a P-T diagram (but can only be plotted for specific compositions) and very steep (because there is essentially no change in volume associated with the reaction.
For Fe+2 and Mg exchange between garnet and biotite, the reaction can be written:
almandine-in-garnet + phlogopite-in-biotite ↔ pyrope-in-garnet + annite-in-biotite, or:
Fe3Al2(SiO4)3 + KMg3(Si3Al)O10(OH)2↔Mg3Al2(SiO4)3 + KFe3(Si3Al)O10(OH)2.
Most solid-solid reactions plot on a P-T diagram as essentially straight lines. This is because the ΔS and ΔV of reaction do not change much with varying pressure or temperature. To the extent that ΔS and ΔV do change with P and T, they change about the same amount for both the reactants and the products. (See the page on the Clapeyron Equation) for more discussion.
P-T projection with the position of the Grt-in reaction (curved line between the yellow and blue fields) shown in the FeO-MgO-A2O3 ternary animation.
FeO-MgO-Al2O3 diagram projected from quartz. Note that this is not the normal AFM diagram. Click for animated GIF showing variation in modes with temperature. QuickTime version ( 103kB Apr2 07)Many solid-solid reactions are continuous because they involve phases whose compositions are changing as their modes change. This occurs because the phases contain appreciable solid solution. Specific reactions are difficult to express, but schematically, one would be:
kyanite + orthopyroxene1 = orthopyroxene2 + garnet
This reaction is shown on the P-T diagram (left) and in the Al2O3-FeO-MgO diagram (right). The P-T diagram is a projection -- garnet and orthopyroxene compositions change along the reaction curve.
- Metamorphic Mineral Assemblages (more info)
- Metamorphic Reactions, Isograds, and Reaction Mechanisms (more info)
- QuickTime version ( 67kB Apr2 07) of Cld-out terminal reaction animation - Dave Hirsch, Western Washington University
- QuickTime version (Quicktime Video 261kB Aug8 07) of Grt+Chl=St+Bt tie line flip reaction animation - Dave Hirsch, Western Washington University
- QuickTime version ( 70kB Apr2 07) of continuous dehydration reaction animation - Dave Hirsch, Western Washington University
- QuickTime version ( 103kB Apr2 07) of continuous solid-solid net transfer reaction animation - Dave Hirsch, Western Washington University
Problem Sets / Lab Activities
- Lab Activity: Calculating a Simple Phase Diagram: Diamond=Graphite - Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota
- Introduction to Mineral Equilibria - Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota
- Mass Balance and Mineral Reactions - Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota
- Thermodynamic Calculation of Mineral Reactions I Lab (Microsoft Word 54kB Mar29 07) - This one week Excel-based exercise, provided by Dave Pattison at the University of Calgary, includes problems sets including the calculation of thermodynamic equilibria involving pure phases.
PDF version (Acrobat (PDF) 1.1MB Mar29 07)
Excel Key (Excel 51kB Mar29 07)
- Thermodynamic Calculation of Mineral Reactions II Lab (Microsoft Word 48kB Mar29 07) - This Excel-based one week exercise, provided by Dave Pattison at the University of Calgary, includes problems sets involving equilibrium constants, activities and calculation of thermodynamic equilibria involving impure phases, and 'conventional' thermobarometry using the GTB program.
- Metapelites Lab (Acrobat (PDF) 160kB Mar29 07) - This one week exercise, provided by Dave Pattison at the University of Calgary, includes problems sets involving petrogenetic grids, AFM diagrams, bulk compositions, mineral assemblages and isograds, as well as the use of program Gibbs.
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Nothing comes as a surprise anymore--at least not in the world of biofuels. When not back-pedaling from yet another controversy, the industry appears to be in a perpetual state of discovery.
Not too long ago, shrimp casings were being touted as the next biofuel source. Now it's rutabagas--or turnips, if you prefer. Not as flashy as shrimp, mind you. But, according to researchers at Michigan State University (MSU), their potential is impressive.
This question usually gets asked when the root vegetable finds its way onto a dinner plate, followed by a wrinkle of the nose. But this is precisely professor Christopher Benning's point. Rutabagas are not being consumed at a high rate in North America, which makes them perfect for biofuel consideration--hopefully avoiding any food vs. fuel controversy.
What's more, rutabagas appear to have a genetic structure that, with some modification, could allow for them to store and produce more oil than other similar plants that store oil in their seeds. "If we could make it (oil) in the green tissues, like the leaves, stems or even underground tissues like storage roots, then we think we can make a lot more," Benning says.
Benning and his fellow researchers at Michigan State in East Lansing have inserted a gene into rutabagas to try to get them to accumulate oil instead of starch throughout the plant.
"It took about a year to grow the first generation of genetically modified rutabaga in a university greenhouse," Benning explains. "The scientists will analyze seedlings from subsequent generations to see how oil production has been affected. Even if all works as expected, it could take 15 years before rutabaga biofuel becomes a reality."
Good News or Bad News?
Difficult to say. Nothing has been said about nitrogen oxide or carbon dioxide emissions during rutabaga growth cycles. We all know the controversy surrounding that. And while the concept of producing biofuels from a crop not heavily relied on for food seems good on the surface, it still begs the question.
Even if rutabagas aren't widely grown in the U.S. for people to eat, they could still potentially edge out other food crops. For example, if a large amount of land is dedicated for growing biofuel rutabagas, the crops are replacing ones formerly used for food (potentially). Yet another hot topic in the biofuels debate.
But this is all early speculation. MSU's research is in early stages. As Benning puts it, "It's not going to happen tomorrow, but the problem won't go away tomorrow."
Any opinion contained in this article is solely that of the writers, and does not necessarily shape or reflect the editorial opinions of Energy Boom. Energy Boom content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be advice regarding the investment merits of, or a recommendation regarding the purchase or sale of, any security identified on, or linked through, this site.
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By now most well-informed people are aware that global oil production may soon reach its all-time peak, and that the consequences will likely be severe.
Already many important oil-producing nations (such as the United States, Indonesia, and Iran) and some whole regions (such as the North Sea) are past their production maximums. With nearly every passing year another country reaches a production plateau or begins its terminal decline.
Meanwhile global rates of oil discovery have been falling since the early 1960s, as has been confirmed by ExxonMobil. All of the 100 or so supergiant fields that are collectively responsible for about half of current world production were discovered in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s. No fields of comparable size have been found since then; instead, exploration during recent years has turned up only much smaller fields that deplete relatively quickly. The result is that today only one new barrel of oil is being discovered for every four that are extracted and used.
World leaders are hampered in their ability to assess the situation by a lack of consistent data. Proven petroleum reserve figures look reassuring: the world has roughly a trillion barrels yet to produce, perhaps more; indeed, official reserves figures have never been higher. However, circumstantial evidence suggests that some of the largest producing nations have inflated their reserves figures for political reasons. Meanwhile oil companies routinely (and legitimately) report reserve growth for fields discovered decades ago. In addition, reserves figures are often muddied by the inclusion of non-conventional petroleum resources, such oil sands - which do need to be taken into account, but in a separate category, as their rates of extraction are limited by factors different from those that constrain the production of conventional crude. As a consequence of all of these practices, oil reserves data tend to give an impression of expansion and plenty, while discovery and depletion data do the opposite.
This apparent conflict in the data invites dispute among experts as to when the global oil peak is likely to occur. Some analysts say that the world is virtually at its peak of production now; others contend that the event can be delayed for two decades or more through enhanced investment in exploration, the adoption of new extraction technologies, and the substitution of non-conventional petroleum sources (oil sands, natural gas condensates, and heavy oil) for conventional crude.
However, there is little or no disagreement that a series of production peaks is now within sight - first, for conventional non-OPEC oil; then for conventional oil globally; and finally for all global conventional and non-conventional petroleum sources combined.
Moreover, even though there may be dispute as to the timing of these events, it is becoming widely acknowledged that the world peak in all combined petroleum sources will have significant global economic consequences. Mitigation efforts will require many years of work and trillions of dollars in investment. Even if optimistic forecasts of the timing of the global production peak turn out to be accurate, the world is facing an historic change that is unprecedented in scope and depth of impact.
Due to systemic dependence on oil for transportation, agriculture, and the production of plastics and chemicals, every sector of every society will be affected. Efforts will be needed to create alternative sources of energy, to reduce demand for oil through heightened energy efficiency, and to redesign entire systems (including cities) to operate with less petroleum.
These efforts will be challenging enough in the context of a stable economic environment. However, if prices for oil become extremely volatile, mitigation programs could be undermined. While high but stable prices would encourage conservation and investment in alternatives, prices that repeatedly skyrocket and then plummet could devastate entire economies and discourage long-term investment. Actual shortages of oil - of which price shocks would be only a symptom - would be even more devastating. The worst impacts would be suffered by those nations, and those aspects of national economies, that could not obtain oil at any price affordable to them. Supply interruptions would likely occur with greater frequency and for increasing lengths of time as global oil production gradually waned.
Efforts to plan a long-term energy transition would be frustrated, in both importing and exporting countries. Meanwhile the perception among importers that exporting nations were profiteering would foment animosities and an escalating likelihood of international conflict.
In short, the global peak in oil production is likely to lead to economic chaos and extreme geopolitical tensions, raising the spectres of war, revolution, terrorism, and even famine, unless nations adopt some method of cooperatively reducing their reliance on oil.
A Plan for Global Powerdown
The Oil Depletion Protocol provides a way forward (the text appears at the end of this article). It was drafted by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil; however, the source of the document is of little importance - only its substance is of interest. While it is merely a suggested outline and will require fleshing out and detailed negotiation, the Protocol is inherently simple. As will be clear from the Discussion below, it would be unnecessary for all nations to ratify the Protocol in order for it to have a beneficial effect; if even one nation adopts it, that nation will be benefited. However, if a substantial number of nations sign on this will create a platform for international economic stability and cooperation.
The Protocol will be presented at several important international conferences attended by world leaders in late 2005. Efforts will also be made to publicize and communicate it to the general public. It is hoped that a few courageous politicians in each country will understand its importance and bring it before their governing bodies for consideration and adoption.
How Would It Work?
The idea of the Protocol is inherently straightforward: oil importing nations would agree to reduce their imports by an agreed-upon yearly percentage (the World Oil Depletion Rate), while exporting countries would agree to reduce their rate of exports by their national Depletion Rate.
The concept of the Depletion Rate is perhaps the most challenging technical aspect of the Protocol, yet even it is easy to grasp given a little thought. Clearly, each country has a finite endowment of oil from nature; thus, when the first barrel has been extracted, there is accordingly one less left for the future. What is left for the future consists of two elements: first, how much remains in known oilfields, termed Remaining Reserves; and second, how much remains to be found in the future (termed Yet-to-Find). How much is Yet-to-Find may be reasonably estimated by extrapolating the discovery trend of the past. The Depletion Rate equals the total yet-to-produce divided by the yearly amount currently being extracted.
Let us explore a few examples:
Norway is a country that reports exceptionally accurate reserve estimates. The total produced to-date is 18.5 billion barrels (Gb), and 11.3 Gb remain in known fields, with about 2 left to find, giving a rounded total of 32 Gb. It follows that 13.5 Gb are left to produce. In 2004, 1.07 Gb were extracted, giving a Depletion Rate of 7.4 percent (1.07/13.5). This is a comparatively high rate, typical of an offshore environment.
In the case of the US (considering only the lower 48 states and excluding deepwater), the corresponding numbers are: produced to-date, 173 Gb; Remaining Reserves, 24 Gb; Yet-to-Find, 2 Gb - meaning that there are 27 Gb left. Annual production in 2004 was 1.3 Gb, giving a Depletion Rate of 4.6 percent (1.3/27).
For the world as a whole, 944 Gb have been produced; 772 remain in known fields; and an estimated 134 Gb is Yet-to-Find, meaning that 906 Gb are left. Production of conventional oil in 2004 was 24 Gb, so the Depletion Rate is 2.59 percent (24/906).
These estimates exclude non-conventional oil - oil shales, bitumen (oil sands), extra-heavy oil, heavy oil, deepwater oil, polar oil, and liquids from gasfield plants. Most oil produced to date has been of the conventional variety, which will dominate all supply far into the future, so it makes sense to concentrate on this category.
It must be stressed that current Reserves estimates in the public domain are grossly unreliable, and one of the purposes of the Protocol is to secure better information. The assessed Depletion Rate for each country, and eventually for the World as whole, is subject to revision when better information becomes available, but the resulting correction of the Depletion Rate will not be large, probably causing it to vary by less than one percent.
The Depletion Protocol would require importers to reduce their imports by the World Depletion Rate (i.e., 2.5 percent) each year in order to put demand into balance with world supply. As stated earlier, exporters would reduce their production according to their national Depletion Rate. Thus Norway would reduce its production by 7.4 percent each year (that country's production is already declining at an even higher rate).
The imposition on the producing countries represents no great burden, since few can now increase their rate of production in any case, and many are experiencing declining production for purely geological reasons, as is the case with Norway and the US. Agreeing to produce less oil would not inhibit exploration because new finds would lower the national Depletion Rate, and thus permit a higher rate of export than would otherwise be the case. The main thrust of the Protocol would be to require importers to cut imports, but the inclusion of producers in the provisions would stimulate greater cooperation between the two factions. Any indigenous production in a country that was a net importer would not be likely to provide that country with an unfair advantage, as production within most importing countries is already declining at a rate higher than the World Depletion Rate.
How importers dealt internally with the import restriction would be up to them (though strategies both to obtain supplies of alternative fuels and to reduce demand for oil would doubtless be required). Some might wish to introduce an energy allowance as a form of tradable ration (as will be discussed in more detail below).
Questions and Possible Objections
The Protocol may at first look like merely a good idea with no real chance of implementation. However, closer inspection suggests that its implementation will benefit nearly all important global stakeholders and that objections likely to be raised to it are easily countered.
What if forecasts of a near-term peak in global oil production are wrong? Won't there be a cost to preparing for the oil peak too early? In practical terms, won't this mean voluntarily choking off economic growth?
Because so much is at stake, it is important that these vital questions be addressed not just by partisan participants in the debate over the timing of the oil-production peak (the so-called "oil optimists" and the "oil pessimists"); some independent assessment is required of the costs of preparing too soon versus the costs of preparing too late.
Fortunately, such an assessment has already been undertaken - "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management," a Report prepared by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for the US Department of Energy, released in February 2005, and authored principally by Robert L. Hirsch (hereinafter referred to as "the SAIC Report").
The SAIC Report concludes that substantial mitigation of the economic, social, and political impacts of Peak Oil can come only from efforts both to increase energy supplies from alternative sources and to reduce demand for oil. With regard to the claim that efficiency measures will be enough to forestall dire impacts, Hirsch et al. note that, "While greater end-use efficiency is essential, increased efficiency alone will be neither sufficient nor timely enough to solve the problem. Production of large amounts of substitute liquid fuels will be required." Further, "Mitigation will require a minimum of a decade of intense, expensive effort, because the scale of liquid fuels mitigation is inherently extremely large." Hirsch, et al., also point out that "The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past 'energy crisis' experience will provide relatively little guidance."
The SAIC Report agrees that mitigation efforts undertaken too soon would exact a cost on society. However, it concludes that, "If peaking is imminent, failure to initiate timely mitigation could be extremely damaging. Prudent risk management requires the planning and implementation of mitigation well before peaking. Early mitigation will almost certainly be less expensive than delayed mitigation."
What if the pessimists are right and the world is at its peak of oil production now? In that case, is it too late to implement the Depletion Protocol?
If the world reaches the peak of production within the next two years there will be too little time to undertake major mitigation efforts prior to the event, and therefore there are likely to be severe economic, social, and political impacts, as outlined in the SAIC Report.
However, in that case the need for the Protocol should quickly and widely become apparent. While all nations will suffer from higher prices and shortages, only a cooperative system of national and international quotas will avert the even more extreme economic and geopolitical crises that would otherwise ensue.
Why can't the market take care of the problem? Won't high prices stimulate more exploration and the development of alternatives? Wouldn't interference with market mechanisms be harmful?
The SAIC Report's authors dismiss the claim that the market will solve any shortage problems arising from global oil production peak, with higher oil prices stimulating investments in alternative energy sources, more efficient cars, and so on. Price signals warn only of immediate scarcity. However, the mitigation efforts needed in order to prepare for the global oil production peak and thus to head off shortages and price spikes must be undertaken many years in advance of the event. Hirsch, et al., maintain that, "Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic. The experiences of the 1970s and 1980s offer important guides as to government actions that are desirable and those that are undesirable, but the process will not be easy."
Historically, oil production has often been managed by governments or by cartels. In petroleum's early days, free-market boom-and-bust cycles bankrupted many players (including the "father" of the oil industry, Edwin Drake). Soon John D. Rockefeller brought a certain order to the situation through the creation of the Standard Oil Trust (in doing so he squeezed out many competitors and personally profited to an extraordinary degree). This regime came to an end in 1911, when the US Government broke up Standard Oil after prosecution for violation of anti-trust laws. Starting in the 1930s, with the US in position to control global oil prices, the Texas Railroad Commission capped production levels in order to stabilize the market. After US oil production peaked in 1971 and that nation lost its ability to control global prices, petroleum's center of gravity shifted to the Middle East, and OPEC began mandating production quotas for its members in order to keep prices within a desirable band.
While the management of oil prices globally thus has precedents, the situation in the future will be fundamentally different than heretofore, in that previously the problem was too much oil and collapsing prices that offered little incentive for exploration. The situation the world will soon face is that of insufficient supply leading to extreme price shocks, price volatility, and acute shortages. Thus a new kind of management scheme will be required.
How will adoption of the Protocol affect importers and exporters differently?
Importers: No one doubts that industrial nations will find it difficult to sustain economic growth while using less oil on a yearly basis. Thus the voluntary adoption of the Protocol by importers would seem disadvantageous - a "tough sell."
However, it must be recognized that a decline in the availability of oil is inevitable in any case; only the timing of the onset of decline is uncertain. Without a structured agreement in place to limit imports, nations will be inclined to put off preparations for the energy transition until prices soar, at which time such a transition will become far more difficult because of the ensuing chaotic economic conditions. With the Protocol in place, importers will be able to count on stable prices and can then more easily undertake the difficult but necessary process of planning for a future with less oil.
Poor importing countries may object that by using less petroleum they will have to forego conventional economic development. However, further development that is based on the use of petroleum will merely create structural dependency on a depleting resource. Without the Protocol, these nations will be financially bled by high and volatile prices. With the Protocol in place and with prices stabilized, these nations will be able to afford to import the oil they absolutely need; meanwhile they will have every incentive to develop their economies in a way that is not petroleum-dependent.
Exporters: Economies that are based primarily on income from the extraction and export of natural resources often tend to give rise to governments that are more responsive to the interests of powerful foreign resource buyers than they are to the needs of their own citizens. Thus it is in the interest of resource-exporting countries to develop indigenous industries in order to diversify their economies.
Countries that depend primarily on income from oil exports will need to wean themselves from this dependence eventually in any case, as their oilfields are depleted; the Protocol provides them a means of making the transition in a way that will allow for long-term planning.
Without the Protocol, smaller exporting nations will likely be at the mercy of militarily powerful importers. The Protocol will provide a means of minimizing external political interference in these nations' affairs. As a result, much international tension and conflict, including the threat of terrorism, can be minimized - which will be a help also to the wealthy importers.
How will the oil companies be affected?
Without the Protocol, the oil companies may enjoy record revenues - for a time. But they will be demonized for profiting from the misery of the rest of society; meanwhile, they will be hampered in their operations by the destabilization of national economies resulting from wildly gyrating oil prices. As noted earlier, the Standard Oil Trust, the Texas Railroad Commission, and OPEC all provided production-rationing mechanisms that brought order out of what would otherwise have been chaotic situations. The oil companies (sometimes reluctantly) accepted these mechanisms, recognizing that a stable economic environment was more important to them in the long run than the opportunity to make momentary windfall profits.
With the Protocol, the oil companies will remain profitable, they will have the incentive to undertake further exploration, and they will be able to plan for decades ahead. They will also be motivated to become more generalized energy companies (rather than remaining merely oil companies) and thus to invest in the development of alternative energy sources.
There is already evidence that the oil companies are concerned about a public backlash as gasoline prices soar: ChevronTexaco has initiated an expensive public-relations campaign titled "Will You Join Us?", featuring a web site (www.willyoujoinus.com) and expensive newspaper ads informing readers that "the era of easy oil is over" and asking for public discussion on the issue. The Oil Depletion Protocol will provide more long-term security for the petroleum industry than any PR campaign ever could, and at no cost.
Won't both importers and exporters be tempted to cheat? How would the Protocol be enforced?
The Protocol will require a system for monitoring production, exports, and imports - which cannot be hidden to a large degree in any case. Enforcement will require the establishment of a Secretariat for adjudication of disputes and claims, and a system of economic penalties to be negotiated by the agreeing nations.
How can nations adjust internally to having less oil?
Withdrawal from oil dependency will be an immense challenge that will require cooperation and compromise on everyone's part. Efforts will be needed both to create supplies of alternative fuels and to reduce the demand for oil.
The latter task will be much easier if systems are designed to make it in individuals' interest not only to reduce their own oil dependency but also to persuade others to reduce theirs. One such system for creating collective motivation and cooperation consists of Domestic Tradable Quotas, or DTQs.
DTQs can be used to ration all hydrocarbon energy sources (in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) or specific fuels such as oil. For the sake of discussion, let us assume the use of DTQs for petroleum only, as a way of implementing the Depletion Protocol within nations.
First, a national Petroleum Budget would be drawn up, based on the nation's indigenous production and oil imports as mandated by the Oil Depletion Protocol. A segment of the Petroleum Budget would then be issued as an unconditional entitlement to all adults and divided equally among them; the remainder would be auctioned to industry, commercial users, and government. The units could then be bought and sold, so that users unable to cope with their ration could increase it, while others who kept their fuel consumption low could sell and trade their Petro-units on the national market. All transactions would be carried out electronically, using technologies and systems already in place for direct debit systems and credit cards.
When consumers (citizens, businesses, or the government) made purchases of fuel, they would surrender their quota to the energy retailer, accessing their quota account by (for instance) using their Petro-card or direct debit. The retailer would then surrender the carbon units when buying energy from the wholesaler. Finally, the primary energy provider would surrender units back to the National Register when the company pumped or imported the oil. This closes the loop.
All purchases of petroleum would be made with Petro-units, whether the oil were used as fuel or as feedstock for plastics or chemicals. So long as the petroleum remained fuel, Petro-units would have to be passed back up the line, starting with the end user. However, if the petroleum were incorporated as feedstock into the manufacturing of a product (e.g., plastics), the manufacturer would simply add the cost of the Petro-units into the cost of the product. Thus, in the case of feedstocks, the manufacturer of goods would be the presumed end user.
Purchasers not having any Petro-units to offer at point of sale - foreign visitors, people who had forgotten their card or cashed-in all their quota as soon as they received it - would buy a quota at point of purchase, then immediately surrender it in exchange for fuel, but would pay a cost penalty for this (i.e., the bid-and-offer spread quoted by the market).
DTQs place everyone in the same boat: households, industry, and government would have to work together, facing the same Petroleum Budget, and trading on the same market for Petro-units. Everyone would have a stake in the system. All would have the sense that their own efforts at conservation were not being wasted by the energy profligacy of others, and that the system was fair.
Moreover, DTQs are guaranteed to be effective, because the only fuel that could be purchased would be fuel within the Budget. The Budget would set a long time-horizon so that people would have the motivation and information they needed to take action in the present to achieve drastic reductions in oil use over a 20-year timeframe.
What if only a few nations sign on? Won't the Protocol be ineffectual if a few large exporters or importers refuse to do so?
At first it might seem that those nations not adopting the Protocol would achieve an advantage. However, any temporary benefit would be purchased at the expense of later economic calamity. As discussed in the SAIC Report, nations that embark on the energy transition sooner will be much better off than those procrastinating.
What about natural gas and coal - should there be similar protocols for these? Might countries simply burn more coal to make up for having less oil?
The Oil Depletion Protocol will not preclude other agreements aimed at reducing fossil fuel usage in order to avoid impacts to the global climate, but it will be more ambitious in its reduction trajectory than the Kyoto Protocol or the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. If nations' experience with the Oil Depletion Protocol is positive, this will provide motivation for the forging of similar agreements covering these other fossil fuels.
How can the process of adopting the Oil Depletion Protocol begin?
A program to win implementation of the Protocol must focus on educating both the general public and top-level decision-makers.
Adoption of the Protocol will require that a few policy makers champion it and bring it before their national parliament or congress. If even one country adopts the Protocol, this will help to open a global discussion.
At the same time, it is important that citizens understand the issues and what is at stake, as pressure on elected officials from below will help focus the latter's attention on the matter.
In the near future, a program will be underway to obtain endorsements of the Protocol from prominent organizations and individuals. This article is part of a preliminary effort to inform the public of both the Peak Oil issue and the Oil Depletion Protocol. Please help by copying this article and sending it to family, friends, colleagues, the media, and elected officials. This may be our last, best opportunity to avert resource wars, terrorism, and economic collapse as we enter the second half of the Age of Oil.
WHEREAS the passage of history has recorded an increasing pace of change, such that the demand for energy has grown rapidly in parallel with the world population over the past two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution;
WHEREAS the energy supply required by the population has come mainly from coal and petroleum, having been formed but rarely in the geological past, such resources being inevitably subject to depletion;
WHEREAS oil provides ninety percent of transport fuel, essential to trade, and plays a critical role in agriculture, needed to feed the expanding population;
WHEREAS oil is unevenly distributed on the Planet for well-understood geological reasons, with much being concentrated in five countries, bordering the Persian Gulf;
WHEREAS all the major productive provinces of the World have been identified with the help of advanced technology and growing geological knowledge, it being now evident that discovery reached a peak in the 1960s, despite technological progress, and a diligent search;
WHEREAS the past peak of discovery inevitably leads to a corresponding peak in production during the first decade of the 21st Century, assuming no radical decline in demand;
WHEREAS the onset of the decline of this critical resource affects all aspects of modern life, such having grave political and geopolitical implications;
WHEREAS it is expedient to plan an orderly transition to the new World environment of reduced energy supply, making early provisions to avoid the waste of energy, stimulate the entry of substitute energies, and extend the life of the remaining oil;
WHEREAS it is desirable to meet the challenges so arising in a co-operative and equitable manner, such to address related climate change concerns, economic and financial stability and the threats of conflicts for access to critical resources.
NOW IT IS PROPOSED THAT
(Note: the Oil Depletion Protocol has elsewhere been published as "The Rimini Protocol" and "The Uppsala Protocol." All of these documents are essentially identical.)
On Oil Depletion:
On Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs):
On the SAIC Report:
Richard Heinberg is the author of Powerdown - Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. He is a journalist, educator, editor, and lecturer, and a Core Faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches courses on "Energy and Society" and "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community."
If you wish to republish any of these essays [from MuseLetter} or post them on a web site, please contact [email protected] for permission.
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The Exosuit Swimmable Atmospheric Diving Suit lets divers go down to 1,000 ft while breathing regular air at atmospheric pressure for up to 3 days.
Nuytco Research Ltd. (604) 980-6262, nuytco.com
Apart from space, deep water is perhaps one of the most hazardous environments human beings work in. And just like space exploration, working there requires special equipment, extensive training, and careful preparation.
One way to protect divers from high pressures at great depths is to put them in atmospheric diving suits (ADS) that function like person-shaped submarines.
Nuytco Research Ltd., North Vancouver, B.C., is on the cutting edge of ADS development with its Exosuit Swimmable ADS, due for beta testing later this year.
Dr. R. T. “Phil” Nuytten, the company’s founder and chief researcher, has been involved in deep-water diving since the 1960s. In 1987, for example, he developed the “Newtsuit,” an ADS which permits dives of 8 hr down to 1,000 ft.
In the past 20 years, Nuytten has been improving the Newtsuit and putting those innovations toward the Exosuit. The new product is more flexible, capable of longer dives, and applicable to more industries.
Like all ADS, the suit’s rigid structure withstands immense water pressure. More importantly, it lets occupants breathe air with the same pressure and content as the air at the water’s surface.
Saturation dives, in which divers acclimate to underwater environments, change the way gases dissolve in the divers’ blood. Higher pressures below the surface force breathing gases into solution with the blood and body tissues. That’s why deep divers need to surface slowly. As they ascend and pressure around them drops, dissolved gas comes out of solution. If the ascent is slow enough, reformed gas bubbles leave through the lungs. But ascending too fast traps these bubbles in body tissues, causing itching, joint pain, neurologic effects, shortness of breath, and even death.
According to Nuytten, a conventional saturation diver would need to undergo “a slow, finely controlled decompression lasting 8 to 10 days” after he had acclimated to pressures equivalent to 1,000 ft below the surface. Atmospheric dives, like those in Nuytten’s Exosuit, only require 3 to 5-min recovery independent of dive depth and duration.
In the Exosuit, divers are surrounded by air, 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, at atmospheric pressure; they don’t need mouthpieces or oral-nasal masks to breathe.
“Oxygen is fed in to match the exact amount metabolized by the diver. Nitrogen acts merely as a diluent,” Nuytten says. Since the atmosphere inside the suit is at 1 atm, divers aren’t susceptible to the bends or nitrogen narcosis. (The latter is impaired perception and judgment a diver can experience as nitrogen or other gases become more soluble in fatty tissue.)
A soda-lime chemical absorbent scrubber removes exhaled carbon dioxide from inside the suit. The scrubber and oxygen circulator are battery powered, but carbon-dioxide removal can be done by passive scrubbing if the battery fails.
To be classified as an A1 submersible, the lifesupport systems have to last at least 72 hr. Nuytco has timed the Exosuit’s duration at over 85 hr.
The suit keeps pressure from getting to its occupant with a combination of rigidity and flexibility. The Exosuit is covered in an A356-T6 aluminium alloy skin cast to an average thickness of 0.375 in. Thicker ribs support high-stress areas of the suit. The suit is cast into molds that can also accommodate titanium alloys that withstand greater working depths.
The standard Exosuit is rated to 1,000 ft or 445 psi. Its crush depth is over 2,000 ft (890 psi). Nuytco intends to test each suit to 623 psi, equivalent to 1,400 ft. This lets the suit be certified as an A1 Submersible.
The core of the suit encases the diver’s torso and head. Rotary jointed arms and legs permit easy movement. The joints are machined from 6061-T aluminium stock and use silicon nitride bearings and PTFE seals. On some models, specially designed seals preserve joint integrity when pressure switches from being greater outside the suit to being greater inside or back the other way.
Joints let divers move the suit’s limbs simply by moving their own limbs. Although the suit’s arms and legs are heavy in air — the suit weighs 260 lb on land — in the water, the force required to move them is similar to that an astronaut needs to operate in a space suit. The confined volume of air, combined with a foam flotation coating, makes the limbs neu- trally buoyant in water. “It’s the syntactic foam which gives the limbs a distinctive scalloped look,” Nuytten says.
Limb mobility lets divers propel themselves by walking or swimming using the suit’s swim-fin boots. Nuytten is working on a thruster pack that would allow the diver to “fly” through the water.
The arms are just as functional. Instead of ending in gloves like space suits, the Exosuit’s uses an artificial hand Nuytco calls the Prehensor. The Prehensor has three fingers that mimic human hand movements, letting users retain 90 to 95% of their usual dexterity. Previous manipulators had two jaws that worked like pliers when divers squeezed handles inside the suit.
Although the Prehensor is still in prototype testing, the finished version will replicate the motions of the diver’s hand inside the suit, including the thumb position, angle and rotation, which make stable grips possible. The final version may also provide proportional sensory feedback that will let users sense and control pressure put on gripped items.
According to Nuytco, the Prehensor lets users perform tasks that require coordination and dexterity such as starting a nut on a bolt thread and tightening it. This capability has attracted the attention of NASA, as well as the Canadian Space Agency, as a possible alternative to conventional spacesuit gloves.
In addition to protecting divers for up to three days, the Exosuit is also less costly to operate. Divers working at saturation depths often let themselves acclimate to higher underwater pressures. To save time, they will continue living at that pressure, either below the surface or in pressurized quarters on a support vessel, until their underwater job is complete.
“Saturation divers require a support crew of 12 to 18,” says Nuytten. “Saturation living chambers and the diving bell that transports saturated workers between living chambers and worksite eat up 1,000 to 1,500 sq ft of critical deck space. With gas storage, the full system can weigh upwards of 100 tons and cost $4 to 6 million.”
Saturation diving also requires special breathing-gas mixtures, like oxy-helium. Helium as a diluent does not impair divers the way nitrogen does. According to Nuytten, oxy-helium for a 1000-ft dive costs about $125,000.
In contrast, the Exosuit needs only a four-person crew. All its components weigh less than 1 ton and take up only 150 sq ft of deck space. Gas for the diver costs about $35/dive, and the suit itself costs less than $250,000.
Better diver safety and lower cost makes the Exosuit attractive for a variety of applications. And Nuytco is making different versions of the suit for different uses.
“The basic suit will be totally autonomous,” Nuytten says. The diver will move by walking or swimming with flippers, and he will have life support for three full days.”
A commercial version is more bare-bones. The diver would be tethered to the surface with lines to supply air and take away carbon dioxide. This simplifies the design and lets Nuytco beef up the suit for industrial applications. Supplying air and exhausting gas to the surface while keeping the suit at 1 atm does present challenges, but Nuytten says his company has a proprietary method of handling the pressure differentials.
A third version is specifically designed to let submarine crews escape disabled vessels. When a sub loses power, it also loses the ability to keep its internal atmosphere at surface conditions, and occupants can start to go into saturation. In that case, crewmembers could wear suits inside the sub to keep their tissues from getting saturated with atmospheric gases while they repair the sub or wait for rescue.
“Alternatively, they could allow themselves to gas-saturate. Then as they ascended, the suit could maintain the pressure they had experienced on the sea floor. Once on the surface, the suit could serve as a personal decompression chamber for each crewmember,” Nuytten says.
The submarine-escape version has joints that tolerate both external and internal pressure. According to Nuytten, no previous or current atmospheric suits are able to do that. The joints give crewmembers enough flexibility to climb up into a stricken sub’s escape lock, operate valves, and perform other tasks.
At the moment, the Exosuit is a prototype; Nuytten hopes beta testing will begin later this year. Nuytco has completed patterns for the torso and limbs and made test castings. It has also tested individual subsystems, like swim-testing the rigid lower torso and flexible legs.
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Issue: Heavy debt burdens in the poorest countries continue to draw precious government resources away from critical needs. Many poor countries in Africa are currently confronted with drought and a severe food crisis, which is compounded by a high incidence of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. Heavy debt burdens impede the ability of governments to respond to these crises and other development needs of their people.
Many poor countries have begun to see their debts reduced through the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, which was adopted in 1996 and expanded in 1999 in response to successful advocacy by the global Jubilee 2000 movement, in which the Catholic Church throughout played a major role.
However, as implementation of the HIPC program proceeds, a substantial disparity in the amount of debt relief being received by HIPC countries has become evident. This is because the amount of debt relief under HIPC is determined by a country's export earnings rather than its budgetary resources. Thus, while countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia are receiving relief sufficient to free up substantial resources, most HIPC countries, such as Zambia and Malawi, are receiving much less.
USCCB Proposal for Deeper Debt Relief:
In order to address disparities and to assure deep debt relief to all HIPC countries, the USCCB developed a proposal calling for all HIPC-eligible countries to receive debt relief sufficient to reduce their annual debt payments during 2003-2005 to no more than 10% of government revenues, or in the case of countries suffering a public health crisis, to no more than 5% of government revenues.
Under this proposal, 19 of the 26 countries which have so far qualified for HIPC debt relief would receive new debt reduction, and 16 of these 19 would be eligible for the 5% ceiling. The U.S. budgetary cost of the HIPC amendment for fiscal year 2003 is estimated to be between $50 and $100 million.
Legislative Action 2002:
In July 2002 this debt relief provision was approved by the Senate (H.R. 2069) as part of a global health bill addressing HIV/AIDS and other health crises in poor countries. A bipartisan debt relief bill incorporating the USCCB proposal had been introduced in the House (H.R. 4524) in April 2002, but intensive advocacy to include the major elements of this bill in the House version of the global health bill were not successful, and the session ended without new debt relief legislation. Given the success in the Senate and the evidence of substantial bipartisan support in the House, efforts to provide deeper debt relief for poor countries are being resumed in the current session of Congress.
- To immediately introduce and support bills and/or amendments that would limit debt payments of HIPC countries to no more than 10% of government revenues, and, for countries suffering public health crises, to no more than 5% of government revenues.
USCCB Position: The U.S. Catholic bishops urge Congress to introduce legislation to assure deep debt relief for all HIPC countries, especially those suffering public health crises.
- the USCCB calls for debt relief sufficient to reduce annual debt payments to no more than 10% of government revenues, and, for countries suffering public health crises, to no more than 5% of government revenues.
See the April 2002 letter sent to Senator Santorum on the Debt Relief and Enhancement Act 2002 at: www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/debtleg02.shtml.
For More Information:
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Systemic inflammatory response syndrome
|Systemic inflammatory response syndrome|
|Classification and external resources|
Systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) is an inflammatory state affecting the whole body, frequently a response of the immune system to infection, but not necessarily so. It is related to sepsis, a condition in which individuals both meet criteria for SIRS and have a known or highly suspected infection.
SIRS is a serious condition related to systemic inflammation, organ dysfunction, and organ failure. It is a subset of cytokine storm, in which there is abnormal regulation of various cytokines. SIRS is also closely related to sepsis, in which patients satisfy criteria for SIRS and have a suspected or proven infection.
|Temperature||<36 °C (96.8 °F) or >38 °C (100.4 °F)|
|Respiratory rate||>20/min or PaCO2<32 mmHg (4.3 kPa)|
|WBC||<4x109/L (<4000/mm³), >12x109/L (>12,000/mm³), or 10% bands|
SIRS was first described by Dr. William R. Nelson, of the University of Toronto, in a presentation to the Nordic Micro Circulation meeting in Geilo, Norway in February 1983. There was intent to encourage a definition which dealt with the multiple (rather than a single) etiologies associated with organ dysfunction and failure following a hypotensive shock episode. The active pathways leading to such pathophysiology may include fibrin deposition, platelet aggregation, coagulopathies and leukocyte liposomal release. The implication of such a definition suggests that recognition of the activation of one such pathway is often indicative of that additional pathophysiologic processes are also active and that these pathways are synergistically destructive. The clinical condition may lead to renal failure, respiratory distress syndrome, central nervous system dysfunction and possible gastrointestinal bleeding.
Criteria for SIRS were established in 1992 as part of the American College of Chest Physicians/Society of Critical Care Medicine Consensus Conference. The conference concluded that the manifestations of SIRS include, but are not limited to:
- Body temperature less than 36°C(96.8°F) or greater than 38°C(100.4°F)
- Heart rate greater than 90 beats per minute
- Tachypnea (high respiratory rate), with greater than 20 breaths per minute; or, an arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide less than 4.3 kPa (32 mmHg)
- leukocytes less than 4000 cells/mm³ (4 x 109 cells/L) or greater than 12,000 cells/mm³ (12 x 109 cells/L); or the presence of greater than 10% immature neutrophils (band forms)
The International Pediatric Sepsis Consensus has proposed some changes to adapt these criteria to the pediatric population.
Fever and leukocytosis are features of the acute-phase reaction, while tachycardia is often the initial sign of hemodynamic compromise. Tachypnea may be related to the increased metabolic stress due to infection and inflammation, but may also be an ominous sign of inadequate perfusion resulting in the onset of anaerobic cellular metabolism.
In children, the SIRS criteria are modified in the following fashion:
- Heart rate is greater than 2 standard deviations above normal for age in the absence of stimuli such as pain and drug administration, or unexplained persistent elevation for greater than 30 minutes to 4 hours. In infants, also includes Heart rate less than 10th percentile for age in the absence of vagal stimuli, beta-blockers, or congenital heart disease or unexplained persistent depression for greater than 30 minutes.
- Body temperature obtained orally, rectally, from Foley catheter probe, or from central venous catheter probe less than 36 °C or greater than 38.5 °C. Temperature must be abnormal to qualify as SIRS in pediatric patients.
- Respiratory rate greater than 2 standard deviations above normal for age or the requirement for mechanical ventilation not related to neuromuscular disease or the administration of anesthesia.
- White blood cell count elevated or depressed for age not related to chemotherapy, or greater than 10% bands plus other immature forms.
Note that SIRS criteria are non-specific, and must be interpreted carefully within the clinical context. These criteria exist primarily for the purpose of more objectively classifying critically ill patients so that future clinical studies may be more rigorous and more easily reproducible.
As an alternative, when two or more of the systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria are met without evidence of infection, patients may be diagnosed simply with "SIRS." Patients with SIRS and acute organ dysfunction may be termed "severe SIRS."
The causes of SIRS are broadly classified as infectious or noninfectious. As above, when SIRS is due to an infection, it is considered sepsis. Noninfectious causes of SIRS include trauma, burns, pancreatitis, ischemia, and hemorrhage.
- Complications of surgery
- Adrenal insufficiency
- Pulmonary embolism
- Complicated aortic aneurysm
- Cardiac tamponade
- Drug overdose
- Polypropylene Mesh Surgical Implant
Generally, the treatment for SIRS is directed towards the underlying problem or inciting cause (i.e. adequate fluid replacement for hypovolemia, IVF/NPO for pancreatitis, epinephrine/steroids/diphenhydramine for anaphylaxis). Selenium, glutamine, and eicosapentaenoic acid have shown effectiveness in improving symptoms in clinical trials. Other antioxidants such as vitamin E may be helpful as well.
In cases caused by an implanted mesh, removal (explantation) of the polypropylene surgical mesh implant may be indicated.
- Parsons, Melissa, Cytokine Storm in the Pediatric Oncology Patient (section "Differential Diagnoses and Workup", Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, 27(5) Aug/Sep 2010, 253–258.
- "American College of Chest Physicians/Society of Critical Care Medicine Consensus Conference: definitions for sepsis and organ failure and guidelines for the use of innovative therapies in sepsis". Crit. Care Med. 20 (6): 864–74. 1992. doi:10.1097/00003246-199206000-00025. PMID 1597042.
- Rippe, James M.; Irwin, Richard S.; Cerra, Frank B (1999). Irwin and Rippe's intensive care medicine. Philadelphia: Lippincott-Raven. ISBN 0-7817-1425-7.
- Marino, Paul L. (1998). The ICU book. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 0-683-05565-8.
- Sharma S, Steven M. Septic Shock. eMedicine.com, URL: http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic2101.htm Accessed on Nov 20, 2005.
- Tsiotou AG, Sakorafas GH, Anagnostopoulos G, Bramis J (March 2005). "Septic shock; current pathogenetic concepts from a clinical perspective". Medical Science Monitor : International Medical Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research 11 (3): RA76–85. PMID 15735579.
- Brahm Goldstein et al., International pediatric sepsis consensus, Pediatr Crit Care Med 2005 Vol. 6, No. 1
- Goldstein B, Giroir B, Randolph A (2005). "International pediatric sepsis consensus conference: definitions for sepsis and organ dysfunction in pediatrics". Pediatr Crit Care Med 6 (1): 2–8. doi:10.1097/01.PCC.0000149131.72248.E6. PMID 15636651.
- Levy MM, Fink MP, Marshall JC, Abraham E, Angus D, Cook D, Cohen J, Opal SM, Vincent JL, Ramsay G (Apr 2003). "2001 SCCM/ESICM/ACCP/ATS/SIS International Sepsis Definitions Conference". Crit Care Med 31 (4): 1250–1256. doi:10.1097/01.CCM.0000050454.01978.3B. PMID 12682500.
- "Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome Treatment & Management". Mescape.
- Berger MM, Chioléro RL (September 2007). "Antioxidant supplementation in sepsis and systemic inflammatory response syndrome". Critical Care Medicine 35 (9 Suppl): S584–90. doi:10.1097/01.CCM.0000279189.81529.C4. PMID 17713413.
- Rinaldi, S; Landucci, F, De Gaudio, AR (2009 Sep). "Antioxidant therapy in critically septic patients.". Current drug targets 10 (9): 872–80. doi:10.2174/138945009789108774. PMID 19799541.
- Bulger EM, Maier RV (February 2003). "An argument for Vitamin E supplementation in the management of systemic inflammatory response syndrome". Shock 19 (2): 99–103. doi:10.1097/00024382-200302000-00001. PMID 12578114.
- "Emergency abdominal wall reconstruction with polypropylene mesh: short-term benefits versus long-term complications".
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Measuring True Impacts
By Edwin Piñero, Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer
Veolia Water North America
If one were to ask what societies’ most precious resource is, oil may be what comes to mind. Clearly, energy production and mobility would be severely curtailed due to fuel shortages. And, of course, the socio-political ramifications of uneven distribution of world energy resources are clear. Finally, climate implications of fossil fuel use have been in the global dialogue forefront for some years now. But, actually, the far more valuable resource is water – specifically freshwater.
Seventy percent of the planet is covered by water, but only 0.7 percent of this global resource is freshwater. And, it is very unevenly distributed across the planet. Unlike oil, for which there are multiple energy options, freshwater has no substitute. And, unlike oil, water needs cannot be sustainably addressed by transporting it from water-rich areas to water-poor, high-demand areas. Within the next three decades, projected population and economic growth levels will, locally, push to the limit the stress on this finite resource. In turn, freshwater availability could become the world’s main growth limitation factor. In reality, future growth of any kind will rely mainly on freshwater availability.
For example, water has probably raised more political, economic and national security issues around the world than any other single factor. Just look back in history to see how communities and entire cultures have begun on the shores of some water body. Water is integral to daily life, agriculture and industry. Do not be fooled into thinking this is an abstract topic only affecting isolated parts of the world; there have been issues right here at home. Consider how demand for water, coupled with a 2008 non-historic drought in the Southeastern United States, sparked fighting words between public officials, as well as a legal attempt to relocate a state line to secure more water resources. Concerned that water supplies would be exhausted within three months, Atlanta banned lawn watering, car washing and filling of swimming pools for a period of time. Lack of water has stopped commercial or industrial projects not just in California, but in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Idaho, Arizona and Montana.
Interestingly, for all intents and purposes, water is not “running out.” The hydrologic cycle is essentially a closed global system. The problem is how much freshwater is available for use and consumption, when it is available and exactly where it is. For the first time, cities house 50 percent of the world’s population – and by 2050 they are expected to house 75 percent. Locally, this means greater population density and increased economic activity in and around cities, creating more pressure on local water resources through increased consumption and greater pollution from domestic and industrial sources. In the developing world, 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation systems, and in the developed world the lack of smart management of aging infrastructure leads to growing pollution. Globally, increased populations (literally, more thirsty mouths) prompt a greater water demand.
Hence it is clear that the decrease of freshwater resources availability (for both quantity and quality aspects) is recognized as one of the major environmental issue of coming decades. The challenge then – for cities, governments and companies – is to find solutions that make a minimum environmental impact not only in terms of water resources, but also in terms of energy use while maintaining and promoting economic growth.
The water availability issue and, specifically, its inherent local nature will require becoming smarter in the way water is managed. This begins with understanding the impact societies are having on this crucial resource. In short, they must become more water-aware. To be smarter in decision-making processes, it is necessary to better understand the specific local nature of water challenges and the specific impacts of activities on freshwater resources. For this, cities, industries and citizens need data, smart-planning tools and more effective best practices to ensure a successful, sustainable future that takes into account new realities.
The need for calculation methods and metrics has been largely recognized in order to better understand and manage water resources. Although impacts of water-use could be expressed as a combination of indicators (i.e. aquatic ecotoxicity, eutrophication, scarcity, volume abstracted), there is a need for a composite stand-alone indicator that incorporates multiple variables. Such an indicator can be used for screening water assessment, supporting decision-making or communicating, among other things.
Current water footprint assessments tend to focus almost exclusively on volume – a valid indicator to raise awareness but not necessarily sufficient to represent the impact on a water resource. For instance, approximately 2,900 gallons1 of water are required to make one pair of blue jeans. But, what is the related impact on a given water resource – a reservoir, lake, river, etc.? An example to illustrate this point: Looking at two products – tomato sauce and peanuts2 – strictly by volume of water needed, peanuts would appear to have a much higher water-use impact than tomato sauce. However, according to a study3 on water stress-weighted foot printing, the opposite is true. Tomato sauce has a ten-fold greater impact on water resources than peanuts because tomatoes require more fertilizer and are produced in water-stressed areas with significant reliance on irrigation.
There has been quite an increase in interest and models being developed to address this integrated approach to management metrics. One example is Veolia’s new Water Impact Index (WII). This variation of such an indicator enables a comprehensive assessment of human activity impact on water resources. It allows an evaluation of how water-use could potentially deprive other water users (both humans and ecosystems) from this resource. As water, carbon and economics become more intertwined, the intent is to couple WII with carbon footprinting tools to provide a first attempt at a new decision-making process grounded in sustainability. It is critical that we build a better understanding of how water resources and human activities can be managed to offset our collective environmental impact. With this tool, for use on any product or process, the physical water balance is weighted by a quality index and a water stress index. This methodology is rooted in life-cycle concepts and methodologies, taking into account both direct and indirect water uses of any process.
The index has been tested in what Veolia believes to be the first-ever simultaneous analysis of water and carbon on a major metropolitan area’s water cycle. A study of the greater Milwaukee area’s water and wastewater systems (serving more than one million people) assessed the interaction of carbon (energy) and water, and their associated economic and environmental impacts. The study’s methodology assigned a value to water based on quality, quantity and resource stress. Veolia Water North America’s Technical Direction Group and the company’s global R&D team led the study in conjunction with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), the City of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Water Council and other local partners and utilities.
The study revealed that, in regard to drinking water production, WII is driven by direct water abstraction, as the quality of the resource used is very high. The sewage system contributes to reduce WII as the quality of wastewater collected is improved and becomes more in line with environmental requirements. The study of different scenarios, such as overflows management solutions or potential water treatment processes improvements, has highlighted that direct WII could be easily decreased with a low impact on indirect WII. Finally, comparative cost/carbon footprint/WII studies have shown that select improvements of the wastewater treatment process could add “win-win-win” solutions.
The Milwaukee-based water-carbon analysis yielded a number of findings on the local urban water cycle. These are local; results and findings may differ in other locations and for other utilities. However, some key findings include:
So why is this relevant? The information provided by multi-variable integrated metrics serves as a critical management input in order to make decisions. In addition, these types of results are important inputs to a broader dialogue about policies and strategies addressing water, energy and the environment. As need for environmental efficiency and resource management intensifies, organizations and communities will be able to use these tools to identify and to support business practices that create minimum environmental impact and pose reduced risks to water and air.
Intuitively one knows that a gallon of water is not the same everywhere in terms of its inherent “value.” But, more tangible, quantitative ways to assess this local aspect of water availability are necessary for better decision-making. Societies look at energy, climate, risks and economic factors when making decisions, yet they tend not to put enough emphasis on what may be the most critical factor of all – will we have enough water? Hopefully, tools that measure this aspect will become more commonplace in the near future.Issue No. 9, 2011
1 A.K. Chapagain , A.Y. Hoekstra , H.H.G. Savenije , R. Gautam. The water footprint of cotton consumption: An assessment of the impact of worldwide consumption of cotton products on the water resources in the cotton producing countries.
2 CSIRO – MARS study 2009.
3 Ridoutt, B.G., Pfister, S., 2010. A revised approach to water footprinting to make transparent the impacts of consumption and production on global freshwater scarcity. Global Environ, 20 (1), 113-120
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Canada is "celebrating" an anniversary of failure to tackle global warming this week. On April 26, 2007, Stephen Harper's government unveiled its "Turning the Corner" plan to regulate greenhouse gases. The media release proclaimed that "Canada's New Government will impose mandatory targets on industry, so that greenhouse gases come down."
Two years later, there are no mandatory targets for industry and no regulations; the government has not even published draft ones. The government did publish Canada's latest greenhouse gas numbers last week, and they're higher than ever. Countries are working feverishly to complete a new global climate treaty by year's end, but Canada is still coming to the table empty-handed.
Heavy industry accounts for half of Canada's greenhouse gas pollution. A Liberal government first committed to regulate industrial emissions in November 2002, then repeated the promise in April 2005. The Conservative government unveiled its own proposal in October 2006 and revised versions in April 2007 and March 2008. Now it's April 2009, and there are still no regulations.
Sure, we have federal grants to retrofit homes, subsidies for renewable energy and investments in research. But in their current form, these programs barely scratch the surface of the problem. Even scaled up, they would at most be part of the solution.
The only ways to really "Turn the Corner" on the growth in our emissions is to cap them through regulations or to tax them. Successive federal cabinets have failed to do this because they didn't have the political will.
This presents our current Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, with a big opportunity. He can be the one to prove that Canada is finally serious about cutting greenhouse gas pollution.
Mr. Prentice has called 2009 a "pivotal year" for action on global warming. Governments will gather in Copenhagen in December to agree a new UN treaty on greenhouse gas reductions. Congress is debating legislation to cap U.S. emissions, and President Obama is moving to regulate them in case Congress can't pass a bill.
The truth is that the "Turning the Corner" plan was so flawed that it became a liability the moment the Americans got serious. So Mr. Prentice has promised to unveil new emissions "rules," aligned with the more rigorous U.S. approach, in time for the Copenhagen conference.
But if those rules are just another description of a framework - a mere political promise with the actual regulations left for later - why should anyone believe that promise after all the past broken ones?
The bar is higher now. Canadians have been let down too often; scientists have warned us that the climate threat is bigger and more urgent; years have been wasted. To have a minimum of credibility when he arrives in Copenhagen, Mr. Prentice needs to have already initiated the legal process required to cap Canadian emissions.
To earn Canadians' praise, the regulations will have to exhibit real leadership - not just copy whatever compromise may emerge from the U.S. Congress. This means three things.
First, Canada must set an emissions cap tight enough to immediately start moving investments into cleaner technology. And the cap needs to cover as high a proportion of national emissions as possible; this means not just industry but transportation and buildings too.
Second, the regulations need to be simple and transparent. Complicated exemptions and giveaways will only delay implementation. There must be no special treatment of Alberta's oilsands and no loopholes that allow firms to cut emissions on paper but not in reality.
Third, Canada's approach must reflect the urgency of the climate threat and provide the certainty craved by investors. Alberta was able to have greenhouse gas regulations in place (albeit very weak ones) just four months after announcing them in 2007. With sufficient political will, there's no doubt that a federally regulated emissions cap can be in force by the summer of 2010.
Governments worldwide have acknowledged that the economic downturn cannot be an excuse to delay action on global warming. Instead, the downturn is an opportunity to ensure that when growth resumes, it is concentrated in the clean energy, low-emission economy of the future. A well-designed regulated cap on emissions is the main tool we need to get there.
This week, Mr. Prentice is in Washington at a meeting of "major economies" convened by President Obama to help advance the global climate negotiations. Our repeated broken promises and failure to act will make it very hard for any of the other countries present to take Canada seriously.
Between now and the UN climate conference in December, Mr. Prentice has the opportunity to truly "turn the corner" by finally putting an end to Canada's years of inaction. Let's hope he seizes it.
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Study of 800-year-old tree rings backs global warming
The decline in recent decades of the mountain snows that feed the West's major rivers is virtually unprecedented for most of the past millennium, according to new research published today.
Seattle Times environment reporter
Surging Columbia River: Don't let this year fool you
This year, the Columbia River is swollen with massive runoff from mountain snowpacks, making for wild and sometimes perilous conditions for barge traffic. But new research shows that the long-term trend in the Columbia Basin and throughout the West is just the opposite: Snowpacks in most years are far below historic highs, thanks in part to climate change.
They looked at the rings of thousands of ancient trees in the mountains above the most important rivers in the West.
What they found may influence how water gets used from Arizona to Canada — and particularly in the Columbia River basin.
Despite odd years like this one, researchers have long reported declines in the mountain snows that power Western rivers. But on Thursday a group of scientists said they now also know this: Those declines are virtually unprecedented throughout most of the last millennium.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Washington measured tree-ring growth from forests that included 800-year-old trees. They learned that snowpack reductions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were unlike any other period dating to at least the year 1200, according to new research published in the journal Science.
The precise amount of those declines, particularly in the Cascades, has been the subject of fierce debate even within UW climate circles. But no more than half of the declines can be explained by natural shifts, the study shows.
"I think the findings are pretty significant," said lead author Greg Pederson, with the USGS. "It means trees are telling the same stories as computer models and instrument records — that human greenhouse-gas emissions are contributing to the loss of snowpack."
Pederson said the research suggests the runoff that fuels the Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River systems will continue to decline as global temperatures rise — even if precipitation increases. Those rivers supply water to 70 million people, and 60 percent to 80 percent originates as snowpack.
The hardest hit will likely be the Columbia River system, where balmier mountain winters mean very small temperature increases can cause massive melting. That makes the snow that fuels the Northwest's signature river more susceptible to warming than the high, cold snows of the Colorado basin.
The findings also highlight a fundamental flaw in how the U.S. views Western rivers, researchers said. Assumptions about how to allocate water have largely been based on early 20th century hydrology and flow patterns that may not be sustainable.
"Nature allowed us to expect things that we probably shouldn't expect in the long term," said study co-author Jeremy Littell, a professor with the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group. "We made a lot of investments and built up infrastructure based on expectations that don't appear tenable."
Given all the variables that influence the pace of climate change, it's difficult to project how and when snowpack reductions may translate into significant declines in river systems. Along the Colorado, for example, the Bureau of Reclamation and the seven states that rely on its water are in the middle of a multiyear study to answer that very question.
In fact, the nine authors of Thursday's paper were motivated in part by the need for research that could help water managers plan better.
Samples tell story
Every April since the Dust Bowl days in the 1930s, federal officials have taken snow-moisture samples in the mountains. Since some trees grow less and others grow more in high snow years, the researchers knew that by looking at tree-growth rings they could reconstruct past snowpack levels. So they sampled thousands of trees at 66 sites in key runoff areas of the West. Some were dead, and some were live. From the live trees they withdrew harmless pencil-thin core samples. They compared historic snowpack levels to temperature histories and charted the results.
"For us, it had this 'Oh my God' moment,' " said co-author Lisa Graumlich, dean of UW's College of the Environment. "We hadn't appreciated — until the day Greg [Pederson] made those maps — that the last few decades were truly unusual compared to the last 800 years."
Here's why: Throughout most of that time, much like this year, wet northern winters in the West typically came amid dry Southern ones, and vice versa. This year, for example, while snowpack in parts of the north are double or more above normal, the Southwest is scratch-dry and seeing record spring wildfires.
Throughout history, as seen through tree-ring data, even as weather fluctuated year to year — sometimes following decades-long El Niño and La Niña patterns — this climatic seesaw almost always held.
Only in the 1350s and 1400s, during two unusually warm periods, did snowpack decline throughout the West — until the late 20th century. And "the decline now is bigger, longer and more widespread," said Littell.
That suggested to the researchers that temperature, far more than precipitation, is now influencing snowpack levels. Temperatures, on average, have increased throughout the West. And mountain snowpack across the landscape since at least the early 1980s — perhaps since the 1950s — has been in a declining trend, too.
Even years like this one are not inconsistent with that trend, the scientists said, since weather can vary dramatically year to year.
For snowpack, "This year is basically just a blip on what otherwise has been a pretty consistent long-term downward trend," Pederson said.
Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or [email protected]
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Global warming, climate change, social degradation and economic crisis are posing serious threats for the organizations to survive. Day by day organizations are striving to be transparent and accountable to various stakeholders of the organization to preserve their reputation and brand image. To curtail this problem Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) took initiative towards a better tomorrow. Global Reporting Initiative is a non-profit organization that works towards a sustainable global economy by providing sustainability reporting guidance. Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines defines Sustainability Reporting as “the practice of measuring, disclosing and being accountable to internal and external stakeholders for organizational performance towards the goal of sustainable development”. The first environmental reports were published in 1980s by companies in chemical industry which had serious image problems. Sustainability Reporting is a recent trend forming part of the annual reports of many companies. These reports are intended to improve internal processes, engage stakeholders and influence investors
Role of CA in Sustainability Reporting:
A Sustainability Report is an organizational report that gives information about economic, environmental, social and governance performance. Sustainability Reporting is a vital element in Integrated Reporting that has evolved in the recent years portraying both financial and non-financial performance of the organization. GRI Focal Points are national offices that drive GRI activity in particular countries and regions. GRI currently has Focal Points in a number of strategic countries; Australia, Brazil, China, India and the USA. ​As we are aware about the supremacy of Institute of chartered Accountants of India in the Accounting and Assurance practices, to extend its wings ICAI joined GRI Focal point of India in 2011. Henceforth CA’s will venture in the administration of sustainability reporting practices of companies along with financial audit and assurance. According to a recent survey more than 50% of the sustainability reports in India are externally assured. So CA’s have a major role to play, not only to audit financials but to assure and monitor the sustainability reports of companies and save the bio-diversity of our nation.
Benefits of Sustainability Reporting:
According to Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Reporting benefits organizations in following ways:
· Increased understanding of risks and opportunities.
· Emphasizing the link between financial and non-financial performance.
· Influencing long term management strategy and business plans.
· Benchmarking and assessing sustainability performance with respect to laws, norms, codes and voluntary disclosures.
· Comparing performance internally and between organizations and sectors.
· Mitigating or reversing negative environmental and social impacts.
· Improves reputation and brand loyalty.
· Enabling stakeholders to understand company’s true value.
The GRI Five Phase Process: Following are the five phases in the development of Sustainability Reports:
Phase 1: Prepare
· Defining the report scope, boundary and time period which will be company specific.
· Getting started: Linking business goals and sustainability impacts.
Phase 2: Connect
· Understanding the importance of stakeholder engagement in the reporting process.
· Stakeholder identification and prioritization.
· Effective stakeholder communication.
Phase 3: Define
· Identifying relevant sustainability issues for action and reporting.
· Evaluating existing monitoring systems.
· Setting goals and performance targets.
Phase 4: Monitor
· Adhering to GRI indicators and protocols.
· Checking processes and monitoring activities.
· Ensuring quality of information.
Phase 5: Communicate
· Maximizing internal and external report value.
· Incorporating sustainability reporting into traditional annual report.
· Designing report for clarity and readability
Conclusion: Sustainability Reporting according to me is just not compliance or a mandatory requirement by SEBI for all the top 100 listed companies, but an opportunity for a CA to show his responsibility towards the nation. So being CA,s let’s join hands and give our share in protecting the ecological balance.
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Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s decision to stop the building of new nuclear power plants and explore solar and wind energy signals a drastic turn in Japan’s energy policy that has brought a sigh of relief to wary scientists, anti-nuclear groups and an increasingly anxious public.
Kan also announced Tuesday the shutting down of the reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in Shizuoka prefecture 200 kilometres north of the capital Tokyo, which scientists predict to be due for a massive earthquake. Reactors 1 and 2 have already been closed for repairs.
'The burning issue in Japan is how to deal with nuclear energy, which is now a major source and therefore pits economic interests over safety,' said Hiroaki Koide, a professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. 'The decision by Kan to suspend Hamaoka sends a critical message towards change.'
Koide has long lobbied against nuclear power, arguing that the technology that depends on nuclear fusion is too dangerous for Japan.
The argument against nuclear power was bolstered on Mar. 11 when a massive earthquake and tsunami hit north-eastern Japan and damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. A 30-kilometre radius around the area had to be cleared and communities displaced, to avoid the risk of radioactive contamination.
Japan currently has 54 nuclear reactors, heavily subsidised by public funds. The Hamaoka plant, which contains six reactors, started operations in 1976 and continued to expand till 1987. Chubu Electric Company, the second largest utility in Japan, operates the Hamaoka plant.
On the heels of Kan’s decision is a bill establishing a Feed-in Tariff policy now pending in the Japanese Diet. When enacted, the new regulation will, for the first time, pave the way for new companies to enter the energy business not only through state subsidies but also by selling power to big companies that had hitherto controlled the energy sector.
Hisayo Takada, energy expert at Greenpeace Japan, explained the new policy will revitalise the current power business, which is controlled by a select group of eight big companies.
'The bill should be passed in the Diet in June. Up to now financial subsidies were only extended for construction of new power plants. But by allowing newcomers to also enter the lucrative energy business, there will be renewed interest to invest in alternative renewable sources,' she said.
Opponents of nuclear power have long pointed to Japan’s vulnerability to earthquakes—20 percent of the world’s total occurs here—and density of the population near coastal areas that is flat, arable land comprising just one-tenth of the mountainous country.
Still, conservative politicians, bureaucrats and business sectors have pursued the technology based on the assumption that nuclear energy is efficient and viable in resource-poor Japan that has no other alternatives. Nuclear power, now providing 30 percent of electricity, is also touted as the best way to reduce greenhouses gases.
But the country’s energy policy is headed for a new direction, following the Mar. 11 disaster. Led by Kan, Japan will embark on a complete overhaul of the national target, a landmark change against a policy that aimed to increase nuclear power supply to 50 percent of overall consumption.
Instead, Kan issued sobering statements to the press. He pledged his cabinet will spearhead a campaign to expand alternate energies such as solar and wind power to 20 percent, up from the current one percent, of the country’s energy needs.
The decision comes against a new report by the United Nations panel on climate change issued on Monday that projected 80 percent of the world’s nuclear energy supply could be met by renewable energy.
Local activists in Hamaoka are delighted. Yukie Tokura, who started Stop Hamaoka Nuclear Plant only last month after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, said Kan has taken a huge step in the right direction.
'I was so happy today that I promptly called Chubu Electric Company and thanked them for suspending Hamaoka operations,' she told IPS. Tokura lives 20 kilometers away from the plant in Shizuoka prefecture.
'For decades I had lived close to the nuclear plant and was not worried too much. But Fukushima was a wake-up call which is what I stared my protest organisation,' she explained.
In a sign of the growing anxiety in the country, Tokura’s site has now more than 6,400 petitions, which she has presented to Chubu Electric Company.
Despite what activists applaud as a key direction in Japan, moving away from nuclear power is expected to be no easy feat.
For example, Chubu Electric Company employs at least one third of the local population living close to Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. Shutting down the reactors will mean a loss of personal income and will also affect the local factories that are bracing for power cuts.
Bu Takada points out that the Fukushima accident has illustrated the enormous costs, in terms of financial and human loss, so that the argument nuclear power is good for the economy is fast losing steam.
'Our research has shown that Japan with its green technology innovation can do well without nuclear power. The only thing that was needed was strong leadership. Maybe Kan means what he says,' she said.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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Humankind’s common ancestor with other mammals may have been a roughly rat-sized animal that weighed no more than a half a pound, had a long furry tail and lived on insects.
In a comprehensive six-year study of the mammalian family tree, scientists have identified and reconstructed what they say is the most likely common ancestor of the many species on the most abundant and diverse branch of that tree — the branch of creatures that nourish their young in utero through a placenta.
The work appears to support the view that in the global extinctions some 66 million years ago, all non-avian dinosaurs had to die for mammals to flourish.
Scientists had been searching for just such a common genealogical link and have found it in a lowly occupant of the fossil record — Protungulatum donnae, which until now has been so obscure that it lacks a colloquial nickname.
But as researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science, the animal had several anatomical characteristics for live births that anticipated all placental mammals and led to some 5,400 living species, from shrews to elephants, bats to whales, cats to dogs and, not least, humans.
A team of researchers described the discovery as an important insight into the pattern and timing of early mammal life and a demonstration of the capabilities of a new system for handling copious amounts of fossil and genetic data in the service of evolutionary biology.
The formidable new technology is expected to be widely applied in years ahead to similar investigations of plants, insects, fish and fowl.
Given some belated stature by an artist’s brush, the animal hardly looks the part of a progenitor of so many mammals (which does not include marsupials, like kangaroos and opossums, or monotremes, egg-laying mammals like the duck-billed platypus).
Maureen O’Leary of Stony Brook University on New York’s Long Island, a leader of the project and the principal author of the journal report, wrote that a combination of genetic and anatomical data established that the ancestor emerged within 200,000 to 400,000 years after the great dying at the end of the Cretaceous period. At the time, the meek were rapidly inheriting the Earth from hulking predators like T. rex.
Within another 2 million to 3 million years, O’Leary said, the first members of modern placental orders appeared in such profusion that researchers have started to refer to the explosive model of mammalian evolution. The common ancestor itself appeared more than 36 million years later than had been estimated based on genetic data alone.
Although some small primitive mammals had lived in the shadow of the great Cretaceous reptiles, the scientists could not find evidence supporting an earlier hypothesis that up to 39 mammalian lineages survived to enter the post-extinction world. Only the stem lineage to Placentalia, they said, appeared to hang on through the catastrophe, generally associated with climate change after an asteroid crashed into Earth.
The research team drew on combined fossil evidence and genetic data encoded in DNA in evaluating the ancestor’s standing as an early placental mammal.
Among characteristics associated with full-term live births, the Protungulatum species was found to have a two-horned uterus and a placenta in which the maternal blood came in close contact with the membranes surrounding the fetus, as in humans.
The ancestor’s younger age, the scientists said, ruled out the breakup of the supercontinent of Gondwana around 120 million years ago as a direct factor in the diversification of mammals, as has sometimes been speculated.
Evidence of the common ancestor was found in North America, but the animal may have existed on other continents as well.
After a six-year study, scientists have identified and reconstructed what they say is the most likely common ancestor of humankind and other mammals — a half-pound, rodent-like creature that had a long, furry tail and subsisted on insects.
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Dec. 1, 1997 Halt to Gulf Stream and Other Currents Could Freeze Europe; Dublin Would Share Spitsbergen's Icy Climate
On the eve of the international meeting on global warming that opens Dec. 1 in Kyoto, Japan, one of the world's leading climate experts warned of an underestimated threat posed by the buildup of greenhouse gases ' an abrupt collapse of the ocean's prevailing circulation system that could send temperatures across Europe plummeting in a span of 10 years.
If that system shut down today, winter temperatures in the North Atlantic region would fall by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit within 10 years. Dublin would acquire the climate of Spitsbergen, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
"The consequences could be devastating," said Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and author of the new research, which appears in the Nov. 28 issue of the magazine Science.
A complex of globally interconnected ocean currents, collectively known as the Conveyor, governs our climate by transporting heat and moisture around the planet. But the Conveyor is delicately balanced and vulnerable, and it has shut down or changed direction many times in Earth's history, Professor Broecker reports. Each time the Conveyor has shifted gears, it has caused significant global temperature changes within decades, as well as large-scale wind shifts, dramatic fluctuations in atmospheric dust levels, glacial advances or retreats and other drastic changes over many regions of the Earth, he said.
The Conveyor "is the Achilles heel of the climate system," Professor Broecker wrote in Science. "The record . . . indicates that this current has not run steadily, but jumped from one mode of operation to another. The changes in climate associated with these jumps have now been shown to be large, abrupt and global."
The ongoing accumulation of heat-trapping industrial gases blanketing the Earth threatens to raise global temperatures, he said, but such a rise would occur gradually. Far more worrisome is the buildup's potential to stress the climate system past a crucial threshold that would disrupt the Conveyor and set off a rapid reconfiguration of Earth's climate, predicted by existing computer models.
Professor Broecker also offered a new theory: Scientists generally agree that periodic changes in Earth's orbit and the amount of solar radiation it receives have paced fundamental climate changes on the planet over millions of years. But the global climatic flip-flops may have been set in motion by sudden switches in the operation of the Conveyor, he said.
Today, the driving force of the Conveyor is the cold, salty water of the North Atlantic Ocean. Such water is more dense than warm, fresh water and hence sinks to the ocean bottom, pushing water through the world's oceans like a great plunger. The volume of this deep undersea current is 16 times greater than the flow of all the world's rivers combined, Professor Broecker said, and it runs southward all the way to the southern tip of Africa, where it joins a watery raceway that circles Antarctica. Here the Conveyor is recharged by cold, salty water created by the formation of sea ice, which leaves salt behind when it freezes. This renewed sinking shoves water back northward, where it gradually warms again and rises to the surface in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
In the equatorial Indian Ocean, surface waters are too warm to sink. Northern Pacific waters are cold, but not salty enough to sink into the deep. This is primarily because prevailing winds that whip around the planet hit the great mountains of the western United States and Canada and drop their moisture. The resulting snow and rain runs into the Pacific, adding a dose of fresh water that dilutes the Pacific's saltiness, said Professor Broecker, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty, Columbia's earth science research institute in Palisades, N.Y.
Northern Atlantic surface waters have only about 7 percent more salt than their counterparts in the northern Pacific, but that is just enough to reach the threshold that allows them to sink. But if the North Atlantic waters warmed by only a few degrees, or if they were diluted by just a bit more fresh water from melting glaciers and sea ice or more rainfall, for example, the threshold would not be achieved, and the waters would not sink. Computer models that simulate the Earth's climate system show that the ocean's so-called thermohaline circulation (from the Latin for 'heat' and 'salt') is sensitive to such small changes, Professor Broecker said. The entire Conveyor might shut down or rearrange in a different pattern, with serious effects on global climate, he said.
Today, the Conveyor comes full circle, eventually propelling warm surface waters, including the Gulf Stream, back into the North Atlantic. In winter months, this warm water transfers its heat to the frigid overlying air masses that come off ice-covered Canada, Greenland and Iceland. Thus tempered, the eastward-moving air masses make northern Europe noticeably warmer in winter than comparable latitudes in North America. Without the Gulf Stream, nothing would temper the Arctic air, and Europe would enter a deep freeze.
In recent years, evidence has mounted that the Earth frequently has experienced rapid, large-scale climate changes. Greenland ice cores have shown that during the last ice age Earth's climate switched back and forth every few thousand years between periods of intense and moderate cold, with the transitions occurring on a timescale of a few decades to as little as a few years. Each interval of intense cold was matched by the launching of great armadas of icebergs in the North Atlantic, seen in ocean sediment cores, and a great influx of dust into Earth's atmosphere, indicating a pronounced change in wind and storm patterns. Wetlands in tropical areas and mountain glaciers in Chile and New Zealand expanded and shrank in synchrony with the North Atlantic changes.
There is also strong evidence, from tropical latitude glaciers, that the water vapor content of Earth's atmosphere can shift, too. Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere and a marked reduction would lower air and ocean temperatures significantly.
"Although the exact linkages that promote such climate changes have yet to be discovered, a case can be made that their roots must lie in the ocean's large- scale thermohaline circulation," Professor Broecker said. The most telling clue is that the boundaries that mark climate changes in continuous sediment or ice core records are sharp, not gradual. That is true even in climate change records spanning millions of years, whose rhythms are governed by Earth's orbit. Professor Broecker suggests that sudden switches in thermohaline circulation may act as a trigger that sets off ice ages and other large-scale climate cycles. Professor Broecker noted that abrupt climate changes have occurred not only during ice ages but during warmer eras such as today's. The Eemian Period - the last major warm period before the last ice age began about 115,000 years ago - ended with a brief but intense cold period. A brief, intense cold spell also occurred about 8,000 years ago -- about 2,500 years after the last ice age ended -- when conditions were similar or warmer than they are now.
"Through the record kept in Greenland ice, a disturbing characteristic of the Earth's climate system has been revealed, that is, its capability to undergo abrupt switches to very different states of operation. I say 'disturbing' because there is surely a possibility that the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases might trigger yet another of those ocean reorganizations and thereby the associated large atmospheric changes," Professor Broecker said. "Were this to happen a century from now, at a time when we struggle to produce enough food to nourish the projected population of 12 to 18 billion, the consequences could be devastating."
Professor Broecker is one of the world's leading authorities on global climate change. He has won nearly every major geological award, including the Vetlesen Prize, considered by many to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in earth sciences. Last year he was awarded the National Medal of Science and the Blue Planet Prize, for achievements in global environmental research.
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is part of the Columbia Earth Institute, a new enterprise at Columbia University dedicated to creating innovations for wise stewardship of our planet.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Columbia University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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Leading-Edge Research and Development > Research Profiles > Profiles Archive > CNSE professor leads groundbreaking emission reduction project
CNSE professor leads groundbreaking emission reduction project
A research project led by CNSE Assistant Professor of Nanoengineering Dr. Michael Carpenter will make strides toward a cleaner environment by addressing concerns related to global warming.
|Dr. Michael Carpenter stands in his |
lab where he works toward enabling
technologies for near-zero emission
Dr. Carpenter has been awarded a $300,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to continue his work toward enabling new technologies for near-zero emission power plants. He and his team of students are working to develop nanotechnology-enabled controls and sensors that will detect, and aid in reducing, emission levels from fossil fuel-burning power plants.
Dr. Carpenter was selected as part of a highly competitive process to receive a grant that is awarded through DOE's University Coal Research Program -- its longest-running student-teacher research grant initiative - designed to advance new ideas to support near-zero emission power plants, and to train a new generation of scientists and engineers in the investigation of long-term solutions for clean and efficient use of the nation's abundant coal resources.
The DOE's investment in Dr. Carpenter's program speaks to the importance of developing new technologies to reduce emissions. "With this new technology, we are specifically looking at the optical properties of nanocomposite materials and how these properties change as a function of the environment," says Dr. Carpenter. "When monitoring and controlling the emissions, it is essential that we create sensors that are extremely sensitive, but also harsh-environment compatible."
|A dual target physical vapor deposition |
tool in Dr. Carpenter's lab.
Dr. Carpenter's program is plasmonics-based. Plasmonics is the science and application of plasmons, which carry light energy as a packet of free electron oscillations. The properties of plasmons are being developed for a range of technology areas, including communications, sensors and cloaking. In this work, the plasmonic properties of gold nanoparticles are being probed remotely for the development of a harsh environment compatible sensor and can be considered a form of wireless technology.
"This is a very exciting technology," says Dr. Carpenter. "We are essentially learning a new science that has a direct application, which is to aid in the reduction of emissions from fossil fuels. Furthermore, this has great potential to be applied to other technology areas and other combustion sources."
CNSE was one of just six universities selected nationwide to receive grants under DOE's University Coal Research Program.
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The Arctic is ground zero for the impacts of climate change . Defenders of Wildlife is actively involved in a number of policy initiatives that will help species like polar bears , wolverines and walruses adapt to the realities of a warming planet.
How We’re Helping
Defenders participates in regular planning workshops and provide input to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s draft Polar Bear Conservation/Recovery Plan. As the “poster child” of climate change in the U.S., polar bears and their habitat have become a natural focus as we work to help the many species affected by climate change.
We also provide technical assistance and policy guidance to a number of state and national agencies to ensure wildlife and habitat considerations are deliberately and appropriately factored into land management and planning decisions in Alaska, particularly in such sensitive areas as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge , the Chugach National Forest and the Kenai Peninsula .
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Energy is a scalar physical quantity and is often defined as the ability to do work. In physical terms, the conservation of energy describes the conversion from one (status, object) to another. In social terms, energy is converted to other 'products' such as heat, steam, electricity. Energy becomes less useful to society when transformed to heat or electricity as it will be used-up after conversion.
In society, the use of energy is one important aspect for development. With the use of usable energy resources (such as fuels, petroleum products and electricity in general) human society can adapt to the environment (e.g. darkness, heat, cold) and expanded technological development. A developed society relies on energy supply and energy management.
The increasing use of energy since the Industrial Revolution has initiated serious problems. Whenever usable energy resources are consumed, e.g. by turning on light, running an industrial machine or a car, new energy must be produced to sustain human basic and/or secondary needs. Many electric power plants burn fossil fuels in order to generate electricity for energy needs. This process generates air pollutants and Green House Gases.
Oil, Coal, and Gas take the highest share in the global energy mix (at the given ranking) and the largest resources of fossil fuels (at the given ranking). The industrial sectors electricity generation, steel, non-ferrous metals, construction materials, oil processing and chemicals account for nearly 70% of the global energy use. In the construction materials sector, China produced about 44% of the world's cement in 2006.
Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of crude oil (507mt in 2006, equaling ~13% of the world production) and exporter (306mt p.a.). The US is globally the largest consumer of fossil fuels and producer of nuclear power. The US consumes 25% of the world's energy (with a share of global productivity at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%). For electricity consumption, China is ranking two on the global scale behind the US. Russia is the largest producer and exporter of natural gas whereas China is the largest producer of coal and hydroenergy. Japan is the largest importer of coal.
The most significant growth of energy consumption can currently be measured in China, which has been growing at 5.5% per year over the last 25 years. Its population of 1.3 billion people is currently consuming energy at a rate of 1.6 kW per person. Despite headlines about global warming and campaigns urging consumers to consider conservation, Americans continue to use resources at a rapid rate. Over the past four years, electricity consumption in the US has risen 1.46 percent between 2004 and 2008 (mkwh/a). Power consumption is projected to hit 4,333,631 mkwh by 2013 resulting in a growth rate of 1.93 percent over the next five years. The US should be mature to tackle this conflict, unlike developing or transformation countries such as China, India, and Indonesia.
As described above, the use of energy is one important aspect for development. Therefore, focus shall be on China, the 'growing energy eating dragon', and the EU, the growing 'energy importing community'. China is facing environmental problems as the energy production is consumed within China; the EU is decentralizing this problem by importing energy. Nonetheless, when burning fossil fuels, pollution will take place within the EU and Green House Gas Emissions will have a global effect.
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When the history of the 21st century is written, the years 2010-2012 will almost certainly be
seen as a watershed. In two intergovernmental processes between now and 2012 - the
‘Rio+20’ Conference on Sustainable Development and the UNFCCC Conference of
Parties negotiations - the world’s governments will respond to the inter-linked
challenges of sustainable development and climate change. In this crucial period humankind
will take – or not take - decisions that will determine our common destiny. Let’s
consider how future historians might judge us.
Where We Are Now
Based on evidence now widely available, historians could reasonably conclude the following. In
2010, we humans knew that:
- Our economic activities and lifestyles had set in train far-reaching changes in global ecosystems
and atmospheric processes. These changes were well documented, had led to major international
commitments in 1992 and 2002, and were closely monitored. While there were some scientific
uncertainties, it was understood that many of these changes could have irreversible and potentially
catastrophic impacts. The extinctions of numerous species and melting ice sheets were clear
indicators of the profound changes already underway.
- Our civilization – including our diverse political, social and economic systems – was
wholly built and dependent on the healthy functioning of natural eco-systems. It had become clear,
however, that over-use of non-renewable and renewable natural assets, and the failure to limit the
production of waste materials, were undermining the foundations for future human and ecological
well-being. The issue of climate change in particular highlighted the dilemma. Our USD 60
trillion global economic system was based largely on finite supplies of fossil fuels. However,
avoidance of dangerous climate change - an essential pre-condition for sustainable development -
implied substantial de-carbonization within decades.
- There was no single, universally agreed cause of the destructive process that had been triggered.
Some pointed to ‘market failures’, where the real value of natural assets and services
was not properly reflected in their price, resulting in unsustainable production and consumption
patterns. Others pointed to governance or ethical failures, including corporate vested interests
influencing decision-making for their own short-term economic gains. Whatever the differences, it was
known that nearly seven (and shortly nine) billion people all stood to be adversely
- The scale and speed of the changes underway created huge political and communications problems
for political and business leaders. Responses – political, institutional and economic –
were not in proportion to the magnitude of the problems. There was a growing sense that in addressing
near-term economic pressures, leaders had failed to communicate how disruptive change could be, and
how the transition to a resource- efficient green economy was no longer an option but an imperative.
In turn, this ‘vision gap’ encouraged the tendency to think short term and led to
reactions that included denial, helplessness and even resignation.
And our response?
While the decisions to be taken between now and 2012 remain unknown, it is challenging to
consider what historians might identify as some of the successful response options that were
– or could have been - adopted at the time to align human and ecosystem health.
Led by governments, climate change and sustainability were prioritized by all sectors of society.
Changes in the Earth’s natural systems were finally seen as ‘game changers’ which
could not be addressed by ‘business as usual’ policies and institutions.
By recognizing the unprecedented scale of the challenges and putting them at the heart of government
strategy, it became easier to find the policies, resources and synergies necessary to act decisively.
Although committing national budgets above the levels, for example, of military spending was considered
to be expensive, this was seen as an investment in security of an even more fundamental kind. It also
helped create sustainable growth and avoid progressively higher adaptation costs down the road.
Policy responses were integrated. It was recognized that an effective climate change response could
not be achieved without an equally effective and just sustainability response. It made no sense, for
example, to massively develop renewable energy if this drove even higher levels of resource
consumption and waste. An effective response to climate change, including a green energy revolution,
however, would be a major contribution to sustainable development.
Policy approaches were judged on their effectiveness to measurably improve the net sustainability
footprint. No approach was excluded, and responses ranged from voluntary approaches to product bans
or phase-outs and sector nationalization. Particular attention was given to ensuring that global
trade and investment policies were consistent and supported climate and sustainability goals.
The limitations of a market-based economic system were recognized and adjusted where required.
Harnessing the full power of free enterprise was understood to be crucial in order to develop new
technologies, help shape consumer and investor behaviour, and to create new business models. At the
same time, free enterprise did not mean being free to do anything. Business was the new front line of
defence, but had to prove that it took the well-being of society into consideration to retain its
license to operate.
Recent financial crises had exposed the large-scale risks of under-regulated markets, and raised
deeper questions about their net contribution to human and ecological welfare. Business led the
change by measuring and reporting its contribution to climate protection and sustainable development.
Regulators offered incentives and encouraged reforms, such as the integration of financial and
‘non-financial’ reporting, which provided the missing transparency on sustainability
Policy mechanisms routinely favoured long-term benefits. While near-term challenges such as avoiding
double dip recession, creating jobs and saving financial institutions were seen as important,
response strategies sought win/win approaches that increased the growth of activities that would lead
to reduced energy and materials use, while vastly expanding investments in education, health and the
other foundations of future prosperity.
Regions of the world that were the poorest, fastest growing or neediest became early adopters. A UN
Conference in 2012 laid the foundations of a decisive global push towards green and equitable
development. It built on climate change commitments in a context that fast-tracked emissions
reduction through a mix of policies driving emissions transparency and the rapid uptake of energy
efficiency and clean energy technologies. In this way, a green industrial revolution was launched
that increased resilience to the changes underway and made markets work for, instead of
New decision-finding mechanisms were actively developed. Recognizing that responses to 21st
century problems were not being addressed quickly or effectively enough, innovative approaches
took the place of often rigid and out-of-date diplomatic processes and groupings.
Multi-stakeholder initiatives at local, national and international level unlocked diverse and
creative responses which profiled and built on best practices. Skilled professionals, including
financial experts, sociologists and communications experts provided knowledge on change management.
These initiatives were actively promoted, supported and employed by governments and international
The historical record will surely show that in a time of impending crisis we had the knowledge, the
technologies and the finance to react to the challenges at hand. Historians may also reasonably
conclude that the single greatest decision taken in the 2010-2012 period was whether or not to
respond in a manner commensurate to the scale of the problems. That crucial piece of history is still
to be written. How we do it will determine our future and claim to the name ‘homo
A former Australian diplomat, Paul Hohnen is an Associate Fellow of Chatham House and an
independent consultant on sustainable development. For more information, see www.hohnen.net
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Feb 22, 2012
Drexel engineers develop cement with 97% smaller carbon dioxide and energy footprint
Drexel University engineers have found a way to improve upon ordinary Portland cement (OPC), the glue that's bonded much of the world's construction since the late 1800s. In research recently published in Cement and Concrete Composites the group served up a recipe for cement that is more energy efficient and cost effective to produce than masonry's most prevalent bonding compound.
Drexel's "green" variety is a form of alkali-activated cement that utilizes an industrial byproduct, called slag, and a common mineral, limestone, and does not require heating to produce. According to Dr. Michel W. Barsoum, A.W. Grosvenor professor in Drexel's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, this alternative production method and the ubiquity of the mix ingredients, lessens the cost of materials for Drexel's cement by about 40 percent versus Portland cement and reduces energy consumption and carbon dioxide production by 97 percent.
"Cement consumption is rapidly rising, especially in newly industrialized countries, and it's already responsible for 5 percent of human-made carbon dioxide. This is a unique way to limit the environmental consequences of meeting demand," Dr. Alex Moseson, one of the lead researchers on the project, said.
While forms of alkali-activated cement have been used as far back as the 1950s and 1960s in several buildings in the former Soviet Union, much of the inspiration for this research came from the Pyramids in Egypt, as well as buildings in ancient Rome.
"Our cement is more like ancient Roman cement than like modern Portland," Moseson said. "Although we won't know for 2,000 years if ours has the longevity of Roman buildings, it gives us an idea of the staying power of this material."
In contrast to ordinary Portland cement, Drexel's cement is made of up to 68 percent unfired limestone, a plentiful, cheap, and low-carbon dioxide resource; American Society for Testing and Materials' standards for Portland cement limit the amount to 5 percent. To this base, a small amount of commercial alkali chemical is added along with the iron slag byproduct. In Portland cement the substitute for this mixture, called clinker, is produced by firing a number of ingredients in a kiln, thus requiring more energy and generating more carbon dioxide.
During Moseson's work in India to commercialize the technology, he developed products that meet local standards, using entirely local materials and techniques. He also investigated how the availability of green cement could help make quality building materials more affordable and accessible to marginalized populations living in slums, and create jobs by jump starting small-scale cement manufacturing in the country.
"Our results and the literature confirm that it performs as well or better than OPC," Barsoum said. "We are very close to having the cement pass an important commercialization milestone, ASTM C1157, a standard that judges cement-like products on performance, such as strength and setting-time, regardless of composition"
The next step for the cement is getting it to the market, which the group is working toward via a start-up company called Greenstone Technologies, Inc.
Source: Drexel University
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It is past time to have a discussion with you concerning the most undervalued plants growing on your property. These uncultivated, unappreciated, demonized plants are all grouped into a single category — weeds. A weed is defined as a plant growing where it is not wanted. It is understandable to object to chickweed stealing water and nutrients from a planting of alyssum, or crabgrass aggressively turning a bluegrass lawn into a rough meadow.
But is a plant a weed if it is holding an unattended banking from eroding or painting a field in with black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s Lace and Ox-eye daisies? What if the plant palette is composed of bracken, curled dock, devils paintbrush, horsetail and yarrow, all early colonizers that survive on severely disturbed ground and prevent it from washing or blowing away?
Many weeds develop taproots several feet deep that aid in breaking up hardpan layers, thus improving drainage and aeration. Their deep questing roots bring to the surface nutrients and trace elements that have long been lost or consumed by previous crops. They allow subsequent surface-rooting crops, flowers and vegetables to root and feed and better withstand drought.
Purslane (Portulaca), pigweed (Amaranthus), lamb’s quarter (Chenopodium) and burdock (Arctium) fiberize and condition the soil and provide a supportive environment for beneficial soil micro-flora to prosper. They serve as a “green manure” crop to increase the organic matter content of the soil. Weeds store up nutrients and minerals that otherwise would be washed, blown or leached away from bare ground.
Weeds provide cover and food for wildlife. They can serve as forage for farm animals. Certain weeds serve as indicators of soil or environmental conditions.
Numerous weeds came to these shores from Europe, used as medicinal herbs and food plants. Dandelion, plantain, coltsfoot, stinging nettle, greater celandine and dozens of other plants were used medicinally. Lamb’s quarters, chicory, witchgrass, watercress, along with dandelion were commonly eaten.
Many plants have aesthetic qualities such as milkweed, goldenrod, Joe Pye weed and boneset. At a recent agricultural fair at Old Sturbridge Village, I was privileged to judge a series of dried flower bouquets created from the seed stems, leaves and pods of weeds. Weeds are an important aspect of nature. In the eye of man, they are a plant out of place; in the scheme of nature, they are very much in place.
Gardens have myriad needs (May 5, 2013)
Chilly nights still a concern (Apr 28, 2013)
From garden to plate (Apr 21, 2013)
Spring cleanup on tap (Apr 14, 2013)
Get your grass going (Apr 7, 2013)
Focus indoors (Mar 31, 2013)
Bring on the spring (Mar 24, 2013)
Ready to ditch snow shovels (Mar 17, 2013)
Changes are underfoot (Mar 10, 2013)
Several peas to ponder (Mar 3, 2013)
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Although many people overlook them, moths are numerous and widespread, with over 2,500 species in Britain living in a wide range of habitats. They are a major part of our biodiversity and play vital roles in the ecosystem, affecting many other types of wildlife.
Both adult moths and their caterpillars are food for a wide variety of wildlife, including other insects, spiders, frogs, toads, lizards, shrews, hedgehogs, bats and birds. Night-flying adult moths form a major part of the diet of bats. Many birds eat both adult moths and their caterpillars, but the caterpillars are especially important for feeding the young. Some of Britain's favourite garden birds rely on caterpillars to rear their nestlings, with our blue tit chicks alone needing an estimated 35 billion a year!
Moth caterpillars have a great impact on plants by eating their leaves. This had led to many types of plant evolving special chemicals to make them less appealing to caterpillars and limit the damage. But moths also benefit plants by pollinating flowers while feeding on their nectar, and so help in seed production. This not only benefits wild plants but also many of our food crops, which depend on moths as well as other insects to ensure a good harvest.
Moths also play a vital role in telling us about the health of our environment, like the canary in the coalmine. Since they are so widespread and found in so many different habitats, and are so sensitive to changes, moths are particularly useful as indicator species. Monitoring their numbers and ranges can give us vital clues to changes in our own environment, such as the effects of new farming practices, pesticides, air pollution and climate change. To find out about moths and climate change, use the link on the left.
|
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President Bush Signs Executive Order on Efficiency, Renewable Energy
January 31, 2007
President Bush signed an executive order on January 24th that mandates an increased use of energy efficiency and renewable fuels throughout the federal government. Executive Order 13423 calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by cutting their energy intensity 30 percent, relative to their energy use in 2003, by 2015. Agencies must meet most of their electronic product needs with Energy Star devices, and must enable the energy-saving features on computers and monitors. New building construction and renovations must meet the Guiding Principles for Federal Leadership in High Performance and Sustainable Buildings, which include a target energy use of 30 percent below the average building performance for new buildings and a target that's 20 percent below the average for renovations. By 2015, 15 percent of each agency's building inventory must meet these Guiding Principles, which a number of federal agencies agreed to in early 2006. See the 2006 Memorandum of Understanding (PDF 190 KB), which includes the Guiding Principals, on the Energy Star Web site. Download Adobe Reader.
The executive order also emphasizes a cut in petroleum use for federal fleets of vehicles. Agencies that operate fleets of at least 20 motor vehicles are required to reduce their fleet's total consumption of petroleum products by 2 percent annually through 2015, while increasing their consumption of non-petroleum-based fuel by 10 percent per year. Agencies are also required to use plug-in hybrid vehicles when they become commercially available at a cost comparable to other vehicles, including operational costs over the life of the vehicle.
The order also mandates that at least half of any agency's required supply of renewable energy be provided by facilities placed in service since 1999. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires federal agencies to draw on renewable energy for 3 percent of their electricity use from this fiscal year (FY) through FY 2009, 5 percent for FY 2010 through FY 2012, and 7.5 percent thereafter. In addition, the order includes a general requirement for procuring biobased and energy-efficient products, and includes a number of other environmental goals, such as reduced water consumption, increased recycled content in purchased items, minimized use of toxic and hazardous materials, and reduced environmental impacts from electronic products. See the executive order on the White House Web site.
|
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