Current Savers Blog

Just how hot is it going to get?

That’s what everyone wants to know, and the focus of a lot of research. But parsing through the science can present some problems, with plenty of opportunity for mischief.

Aaron Huertas has been in this game for a while, so he figured there might be problems as soon as he saw the headline on the release from Rice University: “Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong.”

The text of the release, which was promoting a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, noted that climate models can’t explain all of the heating indicated in the geologic record of a warm period some 55 million years ago. And one of the scientists who did the research told Reuters that this could mean current forecasts are underestimating how hot Earth’s atmosphere will get in the future.

But Huertas, press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, figured the initial headline from Rice University might be used by those skeptical about climate change — he calls them contrarians because he feels all scientists are skeptical — to argue that the carbon dioxide generated by human activities isn’t to blame for global warming.

Sure enough, USAToday’s headline read “Could we be wrong about global warming?” There was no reference to the notion that this research could indicate a greater global warming trend ahead.

The blog Right Side News went further, with a post entitled “UN models on global warming fundamentally wrong.” The subhead read: “Study shakes foundation of climate theory! Reveals UN models ‘fundamentally wrong’ - Blames ‘Unknown Processes’ — not CO2 for ancient global warming.”

“We haven’t heard a member of Congress that opposes climate legislation incorrectly cite this study yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time,” Huertas said in an e-mail accompanying his non-profit group’s analysis of the study.

He sees this as a matter of science education, made more difficult when those who oppose acting to curb climate change choose their own facts. “You’re dealing with an opposition movement that literally doesn’t care what the research is, they can just make stuff up,” Huertas told me.

One good thing: most peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Geoscience, are available in some form online. Check it out yourself, but be warned: the headline on this particular article is “Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum warming.”

Photo credits: REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus (workers during heat wave in Las Vegas, July 16, 2009); REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (sea otter cools off with an ice block, Antwerp, Belgium, July 2, 2009)

The green industry prides itself on innovation, perhaps especially in California, one of the most environmentally progressive states.

So it should be no surprise that a company in California has made headlines with a new technology that converts onion juice into electricity. Read about it here.

The company, Oxnard, Calif.-based Gills Onions, has been working on the project for years. But Steven Gill, co-owner of the family-owned company, didn’t set out with green energy as his goal. Gill just wanted to figure how to get rid of his onion waste in a sustainable, responsible way. Trucking excess onion tops, tails and skins out to the fields for composting was becoming a big hassle - and expensive.

In his research, and help from engineers at University of California at Davis and others, he discovered he could use the onion waste, especially the juice, in an anaerobic digester to create gas and then power up fuel cells. He ended up killing two birds with one stone. He got rid of his waste and created a clean energy source for his processing plant.

Gill said he’s gotten a lot of interest from other companies, including a carrot grower and processor. Will more food growers follow suit? Will we soon have fuel from not just onions, but carrots and potatoes and other vegetables?

– Reporting by Laura Isensee

(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth. A vendor holds a string of onions at his stall at the annual “Zibelemaerit” onion market in Bern, Switzerland.)

If you feel proud about having planted a tree sometime to help protect the environment, you may have to think again.

Pakistan has apparently set a record for tree plantings, with volunteers planting about 1,800 mangroves each in a day in mud and temperatures of up to 37 Celsius, according to the WWF International conservation group. 

Maybe such competitions will catch on if a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December includes measures to combat deforestation. Trees soak up greenhouse gases as they grow and release them when they burn or rot.

According to a WWF statement, 300 volunteers planted 541,176 young mangroves without any mechanical equipment in the Indus River Delta, about 150 km south east of Karachi. That beat the previous Guinness World Record of 447,874 trees in a day held by India, it says.

“We hope that tree planting competitions will become as popular as cricket matches,” Richard Garstang, head of WWF Pakistan Wetlands Programme, said in the statement. Mangroves provide homes for creatures such as shrimps and lobsters and help protect coasts from tsunamis.

Planting mangroves is labour intensive (you can’t cheat by simply throwing thousands of seeds into the air or quickly jabbing a sapling into the ground). The picture above left shows a mangrove being planted in Indonesia earlier this year.

Tree plantings have taken off in recent years — Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai (right, with the spade) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, partly for leading a campaign that had planted 20 million trees in Africa.

At the time, 20 million sounded like a lot of trees.

In 2006, the U.N. Environment Programme launched a “billion tree campaign” for world plantings by the end of 2007. That goal was surpassed and has been raised to 7 billion by the end of 2009 . It says plantings of 6.3 billion trees have now been pledged (although no one goes round checking to see if they really get planted, or keep growing).

Deforestation still far outstrips growth of new trees in the tropics — about 20 percent of world greenhouse gases come from the loss of trees, mostly burnt to clear land for farming in places such as the Amazon or Congo basins.

So the world probably needs more 1,800-a-day planters.

And can anyone beat that number?

(Picture credits: Top: A worker plants a mangrove tree at a conservation garden in Jakarta to mark Earth Day — April 22, 2009. REUTERS/Dadang Tri. Right: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai plants a tree helped by the Rev. Timothy Njoya (L) after returning from Norway with her prize, Nairobi, Dec. 30, 2004. REUTERS/Radu Sigheti)

Stuart Gaffin is a climate researcher at Columbia University and a regular contributor with his blog “Exhausted Earth”. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content - the views are the author’s alone.

It seems that every few months I appreciate a new environmental benefit to green roofs. Two that have recently impressed me are: (i) the realization that green roofs are ideal new locations for urban weather stations (as opposed to traditional asphalt roofs with their extreme temperature biases); and (ii) a burgeoning urban beekeeping movement may be a new synergy to tap into with green roofs.

Siting weather stations in urban areas has always been a tricky endeavor. Issues like security and extreme localized heat sources (e.g. asphalt, vehicles, heating and air conditioning sources) are primary concerns. For these reasons, the National Weather Service stations are usually sited in urban parks or airports. Nevertheless many urban weather stations are still located on rooftops, but they can be suspect because of the temperature biases of dark roof membranes which can easily reach 176 degrees F (80 C). Green roofs completely remove the temperature biases of rooftops as they are essentially meadows in the sky! You can look at some of the comparative temperature data at my station ‘dashboards’ (see research stations on right-hand side).

If the number of such green roof weather station locations grow, this will improve data on true micro-climate variations within cities. A recent publication of mine about this is at this link. 

And then there is the growing interest in urban beekeeping that is perhaps part of the urban agriculture movement here and here. A number of city-dwellers love the idea of keeping hives and harvesting honey, etc.

The worrisome bee colony collapse syndrome, makes this interest in urban beekeeping even more important. I’m pretty sure that any urban beekeepers and their bees would prefer to have a green roof near their hive. The ones we have installed in New York City look to me like pretty strong oases of bee activity.

The recent photo (right) shows one of our native grassland green roofs that was just brimming with bees recently. Top left is a wider shot of the native roof planting.

Admit it: we all wondered just what Sarah Palin would turn her time and talents to after she announced her resignation from the Alaska governor’s job, and now she’s given what looks like an answer. In an op-ed column in The Washington Post, Palin took a swipe at Washington insiders and the mainstream media for ignoring the economy, and then tipped her hand.

“Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges,” she wrote. “So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be: I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”

In a brief story about this, we noted that Palin’s plans for spurring the U.S. economy include offshore drilling, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and exploring the possibility of nuclear power in every state.

We’re not the only ones who noticed Palin’s opening salvo. Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress Action Fund saw her column as “the first stop on Gov. Palin’s comeback tour.” In his opinion, Palin is definitely mulling a presidential run.

“She wants to make sure that she’s still seen as serious and relevant,” Weiss said. “Her policies, though, isolate her in the corner with big oil and big coal and Rush Limbaugh … It would not surprise me if she shows up in Iowa talking about ethanol or New Hampshire talking about nuclear power or in Louisiana talking about oil. That would appeal to primary or caucus-going voters on those states.”

Weiss told me he can’t wait for the Palin campaign, but others weren’t so enthusiastic. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that will take up U.S. carbon-capping legislation in September, took time out from a hearing to pour cold water on Palin’s contention that tackling the causes of climate change would send the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

“Sarah Palin wrote this naysaying op-ed piece on why we shouldn’t move forward …” Boxer said. “So I would just tell the American people to take a look at history. Every single time we’ve gone forward to go after pollution, the naysayers have been wrong about the predictions, wrong about the gloom and doom and we have in fact led the world.”

Another Democrat, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, criticized Palin’s piece, which for a while was one of the most popular on the Washingtonpost.com site.

“Unfortunately, her promise to roll up her sleeves and tackle serious issues is followed by a column that focuses on everything but the single grave challenge that forms the basis of all of our actions: the crisis of global climate change,” Kerry wrote in remarks that showed up on the Huffington Post. “Yes, she manages to write about the climate change action in Congress without ever mentioning the reason we are doing this in the first place. It’s like complaining about the cost of repairing a roof without factoring in the leaks destroying your home.”

Kerry took specific aim at the impact of climate change in Alaska, where warming permafrost and rising sea levels have prompted some villagers to leave their long-time homes as the earth melts under their feet.

There was no immediate response to Palin’s column from the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or the Republican National Committee.

But what do you think? Does this effort mean she’s running for president? Will she take a bigger role in the debate over climate change?

Photo credits: REUTERS/Tami Chappell (Palin in Duluth, George, December 1, 2008); REUTERS/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (Satellite image of Arctic ice, September 10, 2008)

The idea to tap solar power from the Sahara desert to provide CO2-free electricity for Europe and northern Africa has captured the public’s imagination in Germany after the Desertec Industrial Initiative was formally launched in Munich on Monday. Several German commentators compared the notion of catching the sun’s rays in the Sahara to the boldness of the U.S. space programme in the 1960s with its drive to put a man on the moon. As my colleague Christoph Steitz pointed out in his report, 12 companies took the first step towards the project that could be delivering up to 15 percent of Europe’s power by 2050.

Even if it was only the start and details on how it will all work remain sketchy, the Desertec story led the news broadcasts on all the major German networks on Monday and triggered an avalanche of front-page media coverage and editorials, most favourable. Germans see Desertec as a “win-win-win” prospect. It would a) produce CO2-free energy, b) create hundreds of thousands of jobs in Europe and Africa, and c) promote better relations between countries north and south of the Mediterranean through business and trade connections similar to the way Europe grew together after World War Two. There is, of course, another point — d) it could give German companies, many of which have spent the last decade building up their know-how with solar and wind energy, a chance to take advantage of their expertise on an even larger scale.

“It’s rare that I’ve been so fascinated by a news item as I have by the idea of using the hot desert as a giant socket,” wrote Bild newspaper’s venerable Franz Josef Wagner, one of Germany’s most popular columnists known for his usual biting criticism. “Desertec is for me the greatest leap for mankind since Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk. The hot desert could save humanity. This project is greener than green. Desertec is the bright future.”

And Michael Miersch, in a commentary for the conservative daily Die Welt, wrote: “It seems at first glance like some sort of Jules Verne Utopia but it’s nevertheless being backed by 12 large companies that want to invest in it. Even if it falls short of the goal of delivering 15 percent of Europe’s electricity by 2050, it is nevertheless a clear start signal — it could possibly mark the beginning of the end of the oil age.”

Miersch also likened Desertec to the U.S. space programme and quoted President John F. Kennedy’s rallying cry “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.” Miersch wrote: “There is a large choir of critics. But problems are there to be solved.”

Joachim Wille wrote a column in the left-leaning Frankfurter Rundschau that also compared Desertec to the Apollo programme. “It is far more than just electricity for our sockets. It represents a quantum leap forward into a new energy age.”

But Andreas Heitker cautioned in a page one editorial in the Boersen-Zeitung business daily that it was far from unsure if Desertec would ever be built: “Desertec could give a boost to renewable energy in Europe but whether the 400-billion euro project turns out to be anything more than a good idea remains doubtful. It shows quite clearly, in any event, that there is still a great untapped potential for solar energy.”

Hamburger Abendblatt columnist Oliver Schade said: “It makes a lot of sense to put such a major project in an area where the sun shines brighter and more often than between Flensburg and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Europe is moving in the right direction by launching a project like this. It sounds like a fairy tale — but in fact solar power plants in North Africa and Arabia could be delivering one in seven kilowatt hours that we need in Europe by the year 2050.”

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper observed that after Monday’s news conference the executives from the 12 companies that signed the memorandum of understanding were lined up, as planned, for a group picture. But before the assembled photographers could start snapping, the stage quickly filled up with political leaders who were also attending the launch. “It was a situation that was perhaps symbolic — everyone wanted to be part of it and they wouldn’t feel they were part of it if they weren’t in the picture,” wrote the Munich daily’s Thomas Fromm.

There is clearly a buzz about Desertec in Germany even if the same level of enthusiasm hasn’t yet been detected in any of the other countries that might be involved. Maybe it has something to do with Germans’ yearning for sunshine and fascination with the sun in their country that is often covered by clouds? Or maybe it has something to do with companies getting a whiff of profits in the air — the sun doesn’t send any bills, after all.

PHOTO: A “solucar” solar park in Sanlucar La Mayor, near Seville, November 6, 2008. The solar thermal power plant uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto the top of a 100 metre (300 foot) tower where it produces steam to drive a turbine, producing electricity. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

Last year, when G8 leaders agreed a “vision” of halving world greenhouse gases by 2050 at a summit in Tokyo, Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel looked around the table and wondered aloud if any of them would still be around to ensure the plan worked — or held to account if it didn’t.

“Probably only Dmitry”, one of the leaders said, referring to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, according to a G8 source. At the time, Medvedev was 42 and will be 84 in 2050.

At this year’s G8 summit, the discussion came up again when the leaders agreed other distant targets, including an 80 percent reduction in emissions by developed nations by 2050. (Critics said they should have focused more on 2020 goals that are most relevant to a new U.N. climate treaty due in December.)

“We probably have a second person — Barack will still be here,” one of the leaders said of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is now 47 and took over from former President George W. Bush in January.

But then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the oldest of the leaders at 72, piped up:

“I will still be here. Look at me — I don’t look old . That’s why I have so many problems with the ladies.”

(Picture: from L-R: Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev react as they pose for a group photograph at the G8 summit in L’Aquila July 8, 2009. Leaders from the Group of Eight major industrial nations and the main developing economies will hold talks from July 8-10. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer)

So, how much do you want for your Aviator?

Once-proud SUV owners are gaining green street cred cashing-in on President Obama’s $1 billion “Car Allowance Rebate” program giving car and truck buyers a $3,500 or $4,500 credit to swap their aging gas-guzzlers for new, more fuel efficient models.

While not an alternative to highway approved cars, it won’t be surprising if those who value image most in switching to a more green way of getting around pass up Global Electric Motorcar’s GEM e4 or Ducati Enegria’s “Free Duck” quadricycle. Neighborhood Electric Vehicles have been the vehicles of choice for leaders at the G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, who seem happy to sacrifice chic in the name of the planet and photo opportunities. Form aside, GEM cars get the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon, or two cents per mile, according to the company. And that’s a lot farther than the boat of a truck you bought before the tech bubble burst.

Are you willing to trade in your clunker, and for what? If you already have, how easy was it to get your credit?

What’s the real cost of global warming? More to the point, how much would you — the person reading this blog — be comfortable paying to stave off the worse ravages of climate change? A hundred bucks to keep the rising seas out of your back yard? A thousand to replenish mountain snowpack? Maybe a few dollars to put more trees back in the rainforest?

Luckily, there’s no shortage of estimates of how much each individual in the United States might have to pay to curb the greenhouse emissions that spur climate change. One particularly pertinent estimate was delivered on Capitol Hill by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at a Senate hearing geared to send the message that, yes, the United States Congress is getting serious about tackling the problem.

As Reuters’ Jasmin Melvin wrote in this story, Jackson said it would cost the average U.S. household about 50 cents a day to fight global warming, though wealthier households would probably pay more. Even if this cost doubled, Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, that would only be a dollar a day. Who wouldn’t pay that?

Apparently a fair number of people, according to Sen. James Inhofe, who cited a July 1 poll showing the 56 percent of Americans are unwilling to pay anything.

So what would you be willing to pay? Is a dollar a day too much? And if you shouldn’t pay, should anyone?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco (Worker inspects U.S. dollar bills in Manila, December 15, 2008)

The green hill in the distance looks to be natural but then you think “hang on, this is Dallas. There aren’t any hills here … ”

The hill, in fact, masks what was once an illegal landfill filled with cast off debris. The garbage now lies beneath a thick clay cap to prevent the methane, a greenhouse gas on steroids, from seeping out. Natural grass has been planted on the top.

Nearby fish-filled ponds mark the gateway to a 6,000 acre ecosystem which is the largest urban hardwood forest in the United States. And it is all just minutes away from historically disadvantaged and mostly black neighborhoods on the south side of Dallas.

I had been meaning to visit the Trinity River Audubon Center, a partnership between the city of Dallas the National Audubon Society, since it opened in October of last year. I got a gap the other day and it was an eye-opening visit.

Basically, the city and the green group are transforming a wasteland into an urban oasis on the banks of the Trinity River which is a magnet for bird life and mammals such as beaver and white-tailed deer.

This is a “good news” green story that shines a spotlight on many different issues: the environmental costs of poverty (no illegal landfills in affluent white suburbs); the range of sources for the greenhouse gases linked to global warming (people think of cars and power plants, not garbage sites);and our ability to reverse environmental damage.

The center’s director Chris Culak showed me aerial photos which showed the gradual transformation as the garbage — which at one point had burnt off and on for several months — was buried, grass was planted and the center was built.

Among other things the center serves as an educational show piece complete with labs to provide inner city kids with a natural experience they wouldn’t otherwise get. This is important as environmentalism is sometimes seen as an “elitist” pursuit which doesn’t involve or engage poor and minority communities. (It brings to mind the green movement in South Africa, where I was based for many years. It was largely white and well-heeled and often seemed far removed from the country’s townships and squalid squatter camps).

In Phoenix, a similar project is under way near the downtown area, where a former dumping ground for industrial business is being transformed into a riverside park and nature center.

It all beats the hell out of a landfill or dump.

(Photo: Trinity River Audubon Center, courtesy of Audubon)