Archive for November, 2007

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Climate Change: Prognosis Grim

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

George Monbiot, the long time investigator, reporter, activist, starts out with the bad, and gets worse.

I’m going to start with some bad news, and the bad news is this. Two degrees is no longer the target. And the news is contained in a recent paper written by James Hansen of NASA in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society(1). And what Hansen shows is that the profoundly pessimistic assumptions in the latest IPCC Report are insufficiently pessimistic.

And the reason for this is as follows. The IPCC assumes that the melting of the ice sheets at the poles will take place in a gradual and linear fashion. And Hansen’s own work with the paleontological record shows that that is an “entirely implausible” (to use his term) scenario.

The last time we had two degrees of warming in the Pliocene 55 million years ago, the ice sheets at the poles did not melt - as the IPCC proposes - over a millennia, but within the course of one century. And they did not cause a maximum sea level rise within the course of one century - as predicted by the IPCC - of 59 centimeters, but of 25 meters.

And Hansen proposes that through a series of factors - the collapse of the buttresses that prevent the ice from sliding into the sea, the melt water trickling down through crevasses and lubricating the base of the ice sheets, and melt water on the surface of the ice sheets changing the albedo, making the ice darker and therefore absorbing more heat, will lead to the sudden and - certainly in geological terms - almost immediate collapse of both the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets within the course of one a century at somewhat less than two degrees of warming.

Beyond Zero

Monbiot has written lots about lots. For more, particularly about Global Warming, here and here. If you have the stomach for it, see this sad exchange with the once trustworthy Alexander Cockburn.

For one couple’s response to the grim prognosis see DJ at www.asymptoticlife.com

Posted in Climate Change, General | No Comments »

Bali Conference Coming Up

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

The upcoming conference of nations in Bali will surely emit more CO2 than it saves. While U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says

“I believe we are on the verge of a catastrophe if we do not act,”

they will act by flying in on supersonic planes, living in luxury suites, eating food flown in from the four corners of earth and by deciding there is little, oh so little, that can be done. Let’s just live the highlife until the whole damn thing collapses!

Posted in Climate Change | No Comments »

CA Oil Spill Update

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

“About 2,150 birds have been found dead or have died at the bird rescue center since Nov. 7, the day the Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel oil.

Bird experts figure that for every bird found dead or alive, about five to 10 others go unreported because they sink at sea, get eaten by predators or fly elsewhere. That would put the fatality number at up to 21,500 birds.”

Birds Still Dying

Posted in Environment, Species | 1 Comment »

Global Climate Imagery

Monday, November 26th, 2007

Update below.

James E. Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who, through much of his career, has pressed elected officials to limit greenhouse gas emissions, used an set of images in recent testimony before Congress that has stirred some controversy.

“Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow the human impact. Increased fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, compared to the pre-industrial atmosphere, is due 50% to coal, 35% to oil and 15% to gas. As oil resources peak, coal will determine future CO2 levels. Recently, after giving a high school commencement talk in my hometown, Denison, Iowa, I drove from Denison to Dunlap, where my parents are buried. For most of 20 miles there were trains parked, engine to caboose, half of the cars being filled with coal. If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”

Andrew Revkin of the NY Times has written Hansen to ask if he has any second thoughts about the death trains, crematoria analogy. While waiting for his response many others have weighed in, including Peter Singer the bioethecist, and Kenneth Jacobson of the ADL.

Read on.

[Cross posted at Ruthgroup.org]

Update:

Hansen responded to the criticism of his imagery — originally coming from a Mining Company CEO — on his own website.

Averting Our Eyes

Andrew Revkin in his DotEarth also provides Hansen’s comments, along with a few comments of his own.

Dr. Hansen, like many who commented on Dot Earth after I wrote about his statements, insists that the parallels hold between the denial and passivity that allowed a human cataclysm to sweep Europe in plain sight and the denial and inaction now as the world prepares to build hundreds of conventional coal-burning power plants. In his recent statements and the new one, he warns that the tens of billions of tons of resulting emissions of carbon dioxide, if not captured and stored, will disrupt climate patterns, ecosystems and sea levels that have been remarkably stable through most of modern human history. The result will be an end to “creation” as we have grown to love it, he says.

Posted in Climate Change, Energy | No Comments »

A Rite of Confession: A Poem

Monday, November 26th, 2007

One of the great pleasures of reading, but even more, of listening to poetry, or music, especially opera, is the sudden jeweled surprise that flashes against a background of all we are accustomed to. So it happened to me at the annual American Literary Translators Association [ALTA] conference near Dallas Texas.

Jim Hoggard read a poem of his in the pantoum form, a style of verse from Malaysia, apparently brought to the west by Victor Hugo. The rules for the pantoum are that it is written in quatrains whose lines should sustain the basic meter, though it doesn’t have to be a slave to a metronome. Now goes the fun. Lines 2 & 4 of the first stanza become lines 1 & 3 of the second stanza, and lines 2 & 4 of the second stanza become lines 1 & 3 of the third stanza. And so on as long as one wants to go. Then as we get to the final stanza, we realize that the only lines that have so far not been repeated are lines 1 & 3 of the first stanza. And in the final stanza those lines become 2 & 4, only in reverse order, with line 3 of the first stanza becoming line 2 of the final stanza, and line 1 of the first stanza becoming line 4 of the final stanza. That’s the classic form. Here is Jim’s “Rite of Confession.”

A RITE OF CONFESSION

Because the wind here blows insistently
we should be prepared for reversals
We should know how to read the world
in mysteries of rock and cloud and sea

We should be prepared for reversals
and not forget how threatening weather can be
in mysteries of rock and cloud and sea
We need to relearn how rough the world can be

and not forget how threatening weather can be
We should stop getting lost in ourselves
We need to recall how rough the world can be
when we look at it blindly or indifferently

We should stop getting lost in ourselves
We should know how to read the world
yet we look at it blindly or indifferently
Listen: the wind here blows insistently

–James Hoggard

Jim is a friend of many years. We have both translated from the Spanish, though he more from the Americas and I from Spain. In addition he has published several volumes of poetry and fiction. This poem concludes Wearing The River: New Poems, which won the PEN Southwest Poetry Award for 2007, published by Wings Press. Other Hoggard work can be found at Pecan Grove Press and Texas A&M Press

For more about ALTA you could visit a blog run by some of the members.

Tags:
Posted in General, Poems | 1 Comment »

Thin Film Solar: Innovation of the Year

Monday, November 26th, 2007

Some days I think climate change is going to get more of us faster than the public health disaster of ongoing wars. Some days I think the opposite. At least science and technology can have an effect on changing our energy consumption away from fossil fuels, whereas they only seem to increase the numbers and agonies of deaths in war, never decrease them.

Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal. That’s the promise of thin-film solar cells: solar power that’s ubiquitous because it’s cheap. The basic technology has been around for decades, but this year, Silicon Valley–based Nanosolar created the manufacturing technology that could make that promise a reality.

Popular Science: Innovation of the Year

There are other companies deep into R&D for thin-film solar, this Australian firm, for example as well as BPSolar, Kyocera and the big Chinese giant, SunTechPower. What seems to be unique about the Nanosolar product is its lack of silicon and the “printing press” technology for production. The weight reduction and lack of need to be mounted give this some definite advantages.

[Cross posted at Ruthgroup.org]

Posted in Climate Change, Non Fossil Energy, Science & Technology | No Comments »

Micro Hydro

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Rancher and local developer John McBride walked over to his electric meter Tuesday afternoon and pointed to the numbers ticking backward, as electricity was fed into the grid from his new micro-hydroelectric plant.

The custom-built system works both as gravity-fed irrigation and as a power plant — producing up to five kilowatts of electricity per hour

Micro Hydro

Micro Hydro

Posted in Non Fossil Energy | No Comments »

Plastic Gagging

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

Bag Monster

Bag Monster in San Francisco

I was recently in Richardson, Texas, along the stream of an urban mini-park. Mid-fall the water was low, a pleasant trickle. Spring high water was easily seen in the unending string of plastic sacks hooked to twigs, leaves, branches as far as the eye could see. It looked like a third-world dump, or a ghastly Halloween site. Plastic Bags in Trees

So, don’t use ‘em. Pick ‘em up when you seem ‘em. Tie ‘em in knots. Return to sender….

San Francisco, by the way, has banned them starting today.

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

Zap Cars

Monday, November 19th, 2007

Zap Obvio

I want one!

Posted in Energy, Environment, Science & Technology | 1 Comment »

States Right

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

“Frustrated with the slow progress of legislation in Washington on energy and global warming, the nation’s governors have created regional agreements to cap greenhouse gases and are engaged in a concerted lobbying effort to prod Congress to act.

“Beginning Monday, three Western governors will appear in a nationwide television advertising campaign sponsored by an environmental group trying to generate public and political support for climate change legislation now before the Senate.

“Governor Schweitzer said dealing with global warming was the “greatest imperative” of this and future generations. “We need to find a sustainable, renewable American energy supply so we will not commit the next generation to fight another oil war,” he said.

“Mr. Schweitzer added: “Here’s a novel concept for Congress. Do something. Anything. Move.”

“The Midwestern governors expressed … impatience with the slow pace in Washington on global warming and energy issues. They have banded together to set up a regional emissions control program, to expand production of biofuels and to cooperate on environmental and energy infrastructure projects, like an interstate pipeline for moving carbon emissions from power plants to underground storage vaults.”


Governors On the Path

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

Drought? What Me Worry?

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

“A day after Gov. Sonny Perdue asked God to forgive Georgia for being wasteful with its water, county officials in the wealthy suburbs northeast of Atlanta confirmed Wednesday just how profligate one consumer had been.

A homeowner in Marietta, Ga., used 440,000 gallons in September, or about 14,700 gallons a day. By comparison, the average consumption in the United States is about 150 gallons a day per person, and in the Atlanta metropolitan area about 183 gallons.”


Drought? Not My Problem

So far, the appeal to God hasn’t worked too well, either….

Posted in Drought | No Comments »

Fuel Economy Standards

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

” A federal appeals court here rejected the Bush administration’s year-old fuel-economy standards for light trucks and sport utility vehicles today. It said the rules were not tough enough because regulators had failed to thoroughly assess the economic impact of tailpipe emissions that contribute to climate change.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voided the new regulations for 2008-2011 model year vehicles and told the Transportation Department to produce new rules taking into account the value of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Fuel Economy Standards: Not Good Enough

Posted in Energy, Environment | No Comments »

Greening of Junk Food

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

This can only wrench a wry smile from from your lips.

At Frito-Lay’s factory here, more than 500,000 pounds of potatoes arrive every day from New Mexico to be washed, sliced, fried, seasoned and portioned into bags of Lay’s and Ruffles chips. The process devours enormous amounts of energy, and creates vast amounts of wastewater, starch and potato peelings.

Vacuum hoses at an Arizona plant recapture water and reduce the amount of heat needed to cook potato chips.

Now, Frito-Lay is embarking on an ambitious plan to change the way this factory operates, and in the process, create a new type of snack: the environmentally benign chip.

Its goal is to take the Casa Grande plant off the power grid, or nearly so, and run it almost entirely on renewable fuels and recycled water. Net zero, as the concept is called, has the backing of the highest levels of corporate executives at PepsiCo, the parent company of Frito-Lay.


Green Chips!

We smile because it seems so odd, this idea of cleaning up the world while still pumping out billions of tons of stuff we don’t really need, and which, in the case of potato chips, are almost synonymous with ‘junk food.’ But then I have to smile at myself for my smile. It shows that I view human behavior as a seamless cloak when in fact it is a patchwork quilt of contradictory motivations, responses to pushes and pulls, rationality trying to mix into emotionality like vinegar into oil.

It turns out, that accepting Global Climate Change as a danger, is not a Damascus moment for most. It does not lead to complete changes of lives, to the rending of clothes and eating only what drops from trees. It leads to incremental changes — just what seems necessary, just what will get us by, just what — in this case– will shore up profitability.

As Robert Reich has argued, these go-to-green guys should not be praised for their morality and new care-for-the-earth sensibility. That’s not what it is about, mostly. They should be praised though — for re-reading their balance sheets, understanding the costs of energy burned and energy wasted, and understanding that their markets are changing, that people want not just the cheap but the good. Their customers — even those who can’t keep their fingers out of the potato chips — actually do want to pass on the world to their kids though it’s hard to put that into quantifiable value. So praise is due for being smart businessmen, albeit belatedly. Urging is due that they get on with it faster.

So it’s ok with me. I’d rather have less junk, and I’d rather have the junk produced closer to the consumers from raw materials closer to them. But, I’d a lot rather have the water re-cycled and the heat captured, and the solar panels arrayed in these existing mega-plants than not.

Posted in Energy, Environment, Science & Technology | No Comments »

Black Sea Disaster

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

While the Bay Area oil spill of about 65,000 gallons of bunker oil was contained late, it was contained; while oil hit the beaches, volunteers and paid workers were able to get at it in nice weather, stopping for lunches; while birds were covered in oil, dying and struggling not to die the numbers were in the hundreds.

In the Black Sea, matters are entirely different. Different enough, in years of neglect, greed and stupidity, in howling storms that are keeping people off the shore, that one environmentalist said “We could lose the Black Sea if we go on this way.”

Leading Russian environmentalists, meanwhile, said the oil spill was triggered by years of official negligence that allowed oil transport ships to use outdated and inadequate equipment.

“It’s a long-expected disaster,” environmentalist Sergei Golubchikov told journalists in Moscow Tuesday. “We could lose the Black Sea if we go on this way.

Russia has a lot riding on the health of the Black Sea: President Vladimir Putin has pledged to spend $12 billion on developing the port of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Eleven ships sank or ran aground in Sunday’s gale, including the tanker that spilled the fuel and a freighter that carrying sulfur, officials said. The bodies of three crew members from the freighter have been found, and crews were searching for five missing crewmen, said Sergei Kozhemyaka, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

High winds have prevented salvage teams from launching an effort to sweep the oil off the water’s surface, officials said, allowing patches of the slick residue to drift to the seabed, where it could linger for years.

Yelena Vavila, an expert with the regional environmental monitoring agency, warned about “increased concentration of oil in the water for at least five years.”

The most important task now is to build a dam to prevent the slick from floating into the Sea of Azov, said Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian state environmental safety watchdog Rosprirodnadzor. “We have a real chance to save the ecosystem of the Sea of Azov,” he said.

However, Russia and Ukraine have a long-running argument over which country controls what parts of the waterway. Ukraine has objected in the past to Russian plans to build a similar dam, calling it an attempt to strengthen Moscow’s claim to a disputed island.

Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov visited the region Tuesday and said that most of the oil could be cleaned off the shoreline within three weeks and that all would be gone within 45 days.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said he would meet with Zubkov and called for review of bilateral relations. “We definitely need to examine, or, perhaps, re-examine the treaty between Ukraine and Russia,” he told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Meanwhile, scores of birds — weighed down by thick coatings of the fuel oil — hopped weakly along the shore or perched helplessly in the sand. Workers with pitchforks and shovels collected vast clumps of oil mixed with sand, seaweed and dead birds.

Black Sea Death

Tags: , ,
Posted in Environment, Oceans | 1 Comment »

Aviation Fuel and CO2

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

“The European Union voted Tuesday to impose quotas on the emission of carbon dioxide by airlines, setting up a fight with the United States, which argues against unilateral actions on aviation, a relatively small but rapidly growing source of global warming gases.”

“On average, studies have found, a traveler making a typical trip in a plane accounts for roughly the same greenhouse gas emissions as one traveling alone by car — although much depends on the details of any particular trip.

At a conference last month in Washington on global aircraft emissions, Shigenori Hiraoka, a researcher at the Japan International Transport Institute, pointed out that transportation emissions were 14 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2004, but that aviation was just 6 percent of those emissions. That puts emissions from aviation in the range of 1 percent of all emissions. “Aviation’s share is still small,” he said. “Why bother?”

The answer, he said, was that aviation is galloping ahead, with growth of about 4.4 percent a year, overwhelming the fuel economy gains of about 1.3 percent a year. ”

Cutting Jet Fuel Pollution

Somehow I think CO2 emissions from aircraft are only part of the story of their contribution. The fact this is happening at 35,000 feet instead of at road level is not trivial, and CO2 is not all that is being exhausted. I don’t know that we’d ever all want to travel by dirigible to distant lands but there is lots to be done to crank down emissions of all kinds in high speed, high altitude travel.

Posted in Environment, Science & Technology | No Comments »

Green Public Policy

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Next-Ten is a new public policy group, founded by F.Noel Perry, a Menlo Park venture capitalist, which describes itself as “focused on innovation and the intersection between the economy, the environment, and quality of life issues for all Californians. We create tools and provide information that fosters a deeper understanding of the critical issues affecting all Californians. Through education and civic engagement, we hope Californians will become empowered to affect change.”

Of particular interest is a Green Innovation Index which Next-10 commissioned, and is intended to be renewed yearly. The Index was created by Collaborative Economics and using polling data from Field Research, well known to us in California.

The 10 main findings of the Index, the full report which can be downloaded here, are the following:

10 Main Findings

California’s first wave of green innovation, resulting from increasing energy efficiency since the 1970s, yielded significant economic and environmental benefits. This progress, coupled with the widespread recognition among Californians that global warming is a critical challenge that can be addressed by businesses, policymakers and citizens alike.

The First Wave of Green Innovation

1. California has become a world leader in addressing global warming.
2. California has one of the lowest per capita GHG emissions and highest growth domestic products in the nation.
3. California is more energy efficient than the nation and other comparable states resulting in significant savings to consumers.
4. California utility programs and efficiency standards yield major savings and reduced the need to build additional power plants.

Tracking Signs of the Next Wave of Green Innovation

5. Californians are at the forefront of recognizing that global warming is a critical challenge that can be addressed by citizens and businesses as well as government.
6. Widespread innovation in the adoption of green products and services is already happening in California.
7. Innovation in the creation of new green products and services is also increasing in California.

The Challenge and Prospects for the Future

8. California needs to rapidly increase its pace of change through breakthroughs in energy efficiency and the adoption of clean energy.
9. While California is currently a leader in green innovation, it needs to continue to invest in research and commercialization that promotes the creation and adoption of clean energy.
10. California is taking steps to achieve the goals of AB 32 and the public supports taking action to address global warming.

There are more details in the Index, of course, or for a summary, you could read David Baker’s article in the SF Chronicle.

Next-10 has interests beyond this Green Index and seems to have first come to prominence with an on-line game to involve citizens in the California budget discussion. Click here, and then on the orange button to the right of the screen. I took it, and of course ended up with a 6 billion deficit over 5 years. ho hum….

Posted in Economy, Environment, General | No Comments »

Oily Mushroom Hair

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Interesting small scale technology to help clean up the oil mess in San Francisco.

Using mats made of hair, volunteers are absorbing the droplets of oil that have washed ashore since a cargo ship rammed the base of a Bay Bridge tower last week, spilling 58,000 gallons of fuel.

Hair, which naturally absorbs oil from air and water, acts as a perfect sponge, said Lisa Gautier of San Francisco, who provided 1,000 hair mats. They are about the size of a doormat, tightly woven with dark hair, and feel somewhat like an S.O.S pad. …

Once the mats are soaked with black gunk, oyster mushrooms will take over, growing on the mats and absorbing the oil. …

Gautier said the mushrooms will absorb the oil within 12 weeks, Gautier said, turning the hair mats into nontoxic compost.

Oil Cleanup

Posted in Environment, Science & Technology | No Comments »

Greensumption

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

Jerry Mander teams up with Koohan Paik to make a scathing YouTube attack on saving the world through [green] consumption.

Watch it, then see the quick interview Andrew Revkin of the NY Times has with Mander.

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

Black Sea Disaster

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Of course we all feel stronger about a situation, the closer it is to us. So, the oil spill in San Francisco Bay of some 65,000 gallons of oil and 150 birds dead, has us all alarmed and ready to go out and help, and to damn those who caused the accident.

But as disasters go, it’s relatively small, even if gumming up the shores of paradise.

Black sea bird

Take the Black Sea spill of 650,000 gallons and 30,000 birds dead. 11 ships sunk, sailors dead.

A flock of about 1,000 rails, a species of wetland bird, were huddled on the beach, unable to fly because their feathers were coated with oil. Some were unable to stand.

Cleanup workers said wild dogs had been taking advantage of the birds’ condition to attack them. A Reuters reporter found a number of the birds on the beach with their heads torn off.

MSNBC on Black Sea Disaster

Al Jazeera coverage

NYTimes with additional information: damage to persist for year.

Ship in High Sea

It seems a bit cruel to post news of disasters about which we can do little but gape in shock. The elements are almost always the same: idiocy and greed in the face of the predictable. No double hulls on the tankers. River ships used at sea. Ignoring storm reports. [It seems the tanker that broke apart never got its anchor up, leaving it particularly vulnerable. As every sailor knows, in big storms you put to sea.] Improper safety measures. Changing the damn-the-consequences economic culture that rules the world is something we can be part of.

No mention yet of how the ferocity of the storm compares to years past. In the North Sea, a storm front at the same time pushed tides higher higher by several feet and was in process of scaring the bejesus out of everyone before it died down, fearing tides as high as the 1953 disaster when over 2,400 died in Europe.

Posted in Oceans | No Comments »

Translated Love

Friday, November 9th, 2007

I’ve been off in Richardson, Texas, appendage to the greater Dallas area, for several days, soaking in the heady wine of conversation with some 300 people who love literature, and the translation of it, like most of us love breathing. A friend of mine presented his book of translations of Wallace Stevens’ Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction into Portuguese! This would not be a usual project as we believe fervently one should always translate into one’s native tongue. Here, he acted as co-translator and “defender” of the original, pushing his partner into the closest proximation possible. And this just begins it. Readings from Russian, from Chinese. Lots of Spanish and French. A terrific fellow from west Africa dealing with the translations of Francophone pidgins into English. Books you’ve always heard of and books you’d never hear of except at gatherings like this. Gregory Rabassa and Margaret Sayers Peden, our venerable elders, are here. Fine, indeed.

Posted in Art & Culture | No Comments »

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