Tag Archives: blue marble

Can This Contraption Make Fracking Greener?

by 9ji7g4x Posted on March 5, 2013

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Although natural gas production emits less CO2 than other fossil fuels, it still spits plenty of junk into the atmosphere. But backers of a new gadget released yesterday say they’ve hit on a way to help frackers clean up their act.

Boosters of natural gas often flaunt the stuff as a “clean” fossil fuel, because when it burns—in a power plant, say—it releases far less carbon dioxide than coal or oil. But with the growth of fracking nationwide, some academics and environmentalists have flagged a silent problem that threatens to undermine the purported climate gains of natural gas: “fugitive” methane emissions.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, even more so than CO2 over the short-term. And natural gas production creates a lot of it: The EPA predicts that methane from the natural gas industry will be one of the top sources of non-CO2 emissions in coming decades. A 2011 federal study found that taken all around, the total greenhouse footprint for shale gas could be up to twice that of coal over a 20-year period. The catch is that it doesn’t have to be so bad. Much of that methane is leaking out (hence “fugitive”) unnecessarily from gas wells, pipelines, and storage facilities—so much so that the Environmental Defense Fund calls methane leakage from natural gas operations “the single largest US source of short-term climate-forcing gases“.

But nailing down exactly how much methane leakage there is has proved a bit challenging: Some independent academic studies say up to nine percent of all the natural gas extracted leaks out, while the official EPA figure is less than three percent. Academics, government agencies, and environmental NGOs are at work to shore up this figure, but the effort can be costly and require teams of specialized physicists and chemists.

Enter Picarro, a California-based scientific instrument company that yesterday released a new gadget the company says will streamline locating leaks and finding out how much methane is streaming out of them. The “Surveyor” attaches to any car, and consists of a computer, an air sampling hose, and a GPS device. Together, says Picarro CEO Michael Woelk, they can sniff out methane and pinpoint the exact spot—like a crack in a pipe—it’s coming from, then feed the data to any web-enabled mobile device in a format understandable without an atmospheric physics PhD.

“All we have to do is drive downwind of the source,” Woelk said.

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Can This Contraption Make Fracking Greener?

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We’re Scarily Close to the Permafrost Tipping Point

by dfonis5 Posted on March 5, 2013

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Permafrost—the ground that stays frozen for two or more consecutive years—is a ticking time bomb of climate change. Some 24 percent of Northern Hemisphere land is permafrost. That’s 9 million square miles (23 million square kilometers) found mostly in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, and other higher mountain regions.

Unfortunately, thawing permafrost releases massive amounts of methane and/or carbon dioxide. The question is whether that would happen over the course of decades or over a century or more. This short video from the Yale Climate Forum explains the current scientific thinking on just how close we might be to the lethal tipping point.

Meanwhile this 90-second permafrost primer from the Climate Desk explains exactly we want this northern freezer to remain frozen.

The map below shows land-based permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere. It also shows the subsea permafrost that underlies the continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean.

Map of Northern Hemisphere permafrost on the land and under the Arctic Ocean: Credit: Tingjun Zhang via the National Snow Ice Data Center

We really really don’t want permafrost to melt since its emissions have the potential to dwarf our own. As the Yale Climate Forum video says, we have the theoretical ability to control our carbon emissions but none whatsoever to stop a permafrost tipping point once it’s reached.

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We’re Scarily Close to the Permafrost Tipping Point

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"Promiscuous" Bees and Vanishing Insects Mean Less Food For Us

by s1cx54s Posted on March 5, 2013

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The foods that make our meals more colorful and delicious—coffee, watermelon, almonds, to name a few—depend on pollinators like bees. In fact, three-quarters of global food crops rely at least partly on pollination by animals. But two reports published in Science last week show how wild pollinating insects such as bumblebees, butterflies, and beetles are disappearing, putting these foods at risk. Plus, one of the reports reveals, substituting hives of honeybees isn’t going to cut it—according to research collected across 20 countries, managed honeybees don’t do nearly as good of a job at pollinating as their wild counterparts.

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"Promiscuous" Bees and Vanishing Insects Mean Less Food For Us

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This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument

by d2wk58 Posted on March 4, 2013

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“I don’t see what all those environmentalists are worried about,” sneers your Great Uncle Joe. “Carbon dioxide is harmless, and great for plants!”

Okay. Take a deep breath. If you’re not careful, comments like this can result in dinner-table screaming matches. Luckily, we have a secret weapon: A flowchart that will help you calmly slay even the most outlandish and annoying of climate-denying arguments:

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This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument

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New Obama Admin. Report on Keystone XL Pipeline Has Enviros Worried

by Larissaiyb Posted on March 1, 2013

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On Friday afternoon, the State Department released a draft of its much-anticipated new analysis of the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Although the report makes no firm statement one way or the other about whether the controversial pipeline from Canada to Texas should be approved, some of its conclusions have enviros worried that a greenlight is inevitable.

The administration has spent more than two years considering whether to approve the 1,600-mile pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in Texas. Because the pipeline crosses an international border, the State Department gets to decide whether it should be built. Climate change activists have been holding rallies and civil disobedience actions outside the White House for the past year and a half in an effort to convince the administration to block the project. Obama delayed a decision on the pipeline in November 2011, asking the State Department to produce more research on the pipeline’s potential environmental impact—the report, a “supplemental environmental impact statement,” or SEIS, that was issued Friday afternoon.

Enviros immediately seized on the new report, arguing against its claim that any spills associated with the pipeline are “expected to be rare and relatively small,” and said it underestimated the project’s contribution to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. They also challenged the idea that TransCanada’s pipeline will not make a huge difference in the development of the tar sands, pointing to the industry’s own claims that the pipeline is essential to their plans to expand export of this type of oil.

“If they don’t have Keystone XL, they won’t be able to expand the tar sands like they’ve been planning to,” said Bill McKibben, the author and activist whose group, 350.org, has organized the pipeline protests. He called the pipeline “the most important issue for the environmental movement in a very long time,” noting that it has brought “huge numbers of Americans into the streets.”

Michael Brune, president of the Sierra Club, noted the timing of the draft’s release. “You know the news is bad when it’s buried at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon,” he said on a call with reporters shortly after the release. Enviros have framed the pipeline as a test of Obama’s sincerity on dealing with climate change. Brune acknowledged that the SEIS likely “makes the president’s job more difficult” because it will increase pressure on him to approve the pipeline.

But, Brune added, “this is the president’s decision. He can either lead our country to a clean energy future … or he can approve a pipeline that will bring the dirtiest oil on the planet through the US, and for the next decades we will know that the Keystone XL was approved under Obama at the time that we needed strong leadership on this issue.”

The report is in draft form and will be open for public comment for 45 days. After that, the State Department will issue a final report and, eventually, a final decision on whether the pipeline should be built.

McKibben said the pipeline’s critics will not be deterred by Friday’s draft report. “I don’t think anybody is going to walk away form this fight,” McKibben said. “My guess is this will produce more determination in a lot of people.”

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New Obama Admin. Report on Keystone XL Pipeline Has Enviros Worried

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Yep, Sugar (Not Other Stuff) Appears to Cause Diabetes

by oe8o7kdg Posted on February 28, 2013

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A new study published in the open-access science journal PLoS One offers some of the strongest evidence yet that sugar, and not other diet and lifestyle factors, is the primary cause of type 2 diabetes—a theory that the sugar industry has sought for decades to debunk.

The study’s four authors, including Robert Lustig of the University of California-San Francisco, examined data on sugar intake and diabetes prevalence in 175 countries “controlling for other food types (including fibers, meats, fruits, oils, cereals), total calories, overweight and obesity, period-effects, and several socioeconomic variables such as aging, urbanization and income.”


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For each bump in sugar “availability” (consumption plus waste) equivalent to about a can of soda per day, they observed a 1 percent rise in diabetes prevalence. This is a correlation, of course, and correlation does not always equal causation. On the other hand, it’s an exceptionally strong correlation. “No other food types yielded significant individual associations with diabetes prevalence after controlling for obesity and other confounders,” the authors wrote in their summary. “Differences in sugar availability statistically explain variations in diabetes prevalence rates at a population level that are not explained by physical activity, overweight or obesity.”

The correlation, they also found, was “independent of other changes in economic and social change such as urbanization, aging, changes to household income, sedentary lifestyles, and tobacco or alcohol use. We found that obesity appeared to exacerbate, but not confound, the impact of sugar availability on diabetes prevalence, strengthening the argument for targeted public health approaches to excessive sugar consumption.”

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Yep, Sugar (Not Other Stuff) Appears to Cause Diabetes

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Good Riddance: 112th Congress Had Worst Environmental Record Ever

by marinavhunt Posted on February 23, 2013

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“The best that can be said about this session of the 112th Congress is that it’s over,” League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said this week.

The sentiment comes in reaction to the League’s 2012 Congressional Scorecard, released on Wednesday, which showed that in a year that saw record breaking heat waves, drought, wildfires, Hurricane Sandy, and other climate-change fueled disasters, the Republican-led House of Representatives came out with the worst environmental record ever.

The League tallies its scores by looking at each member of congress’ votes on laws that have major environmental implications. Last year, the House put forth more than 100 bills, riders, and amendments related to the environment and public health, mostly with harmful effects. On top of that, House Republicans’ proposals sought to trample on virtually every area related to the environment, from rolling back EPA safeguards for waterways and wildlife that stand in the way of the pursuit of coal, to limiting the president’s power to preserve land as National Monuments. Not even the sea turtles were safe. Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) offered an amendment to a bill that would prohibit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from enforcing a rule that prohibits fishermen from snaring the endangered reptiles in their nets. (The amendment was later dropped.)

The league credited the Senate and the Obama Administration for batting down many of the most appalling affronts to the environment, but a few slipped through. What is striking in the data is how starkly the scores fell along party lines. House Democrats had an average score of 82, while their Senate counterparts scored 89. House Republicans had a score of 10, while GOP Senators’ average was 17.

The divide is also reflected in the scores of party leadership. Democrats Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Majority Whip Dick Durbin were both deemed environmental champions by LCV with perfect scores of 100, while Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip Jon Kyl both had dismal scores of 7, only voting for two eco-friendly measures that also concerned subsidies for farmers.

In the House, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi scored 94 and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer scored 91 for their attempts to stem the deluge of environmentally corrosive laws. Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor scored 3, voting against or abstaining on everything except flood insurance reform, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy scored 6, voting against the protection of the water supply in his home state of California. (Speaker of the House John Boehner got a pass because the speaker votes at his own discretion.)

“These issues have traditionally been bipartisan,” Jeff Gohringer, spokesperson for the League, said. “Now members of Congress are standing up for the polluter agenda over the desires of their constituents. It’s been taken to a whole new level in terms of the extreme leadership in the Republican Party in the House. They’ve cemented their position as the worst House ever in the face of historic extreme weather all across the country.”

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Good Riddance: 112th Congress Had Worst Environmental Record Ever

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87 Percent of Snapper is Mislabeled, Study Says

by rakil23 Posted on February 21, 2013

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Trust salmon, maybe red snapper, but not canned tuna. These are the lessons a nervous seafood eater could glean from a new study by the marine-life advocacy group Oceana. A whopping 87 percent of red snapper and 84 percent of canned “white” tuna tested was found to be mislabeled, the study found.*

But only seven percent of salmon—one of the most commonly consumed fish in the US—was mislabeled, making it a somewhat bright spot in a sketchy fish market.

More than 300 volunteers served as food detectives for the study, purchasing more than 1,200 samples of seafood from 674 restaurants, sushi bars, and grocery stores in in major cities between 2010 and 2012. Oceana then DNA-tested the fish to catch imposters.

So what are you eating, really? For example: The report found a hodgepodge of fish masquerading as snapper, some more palatable than others:

The best chances of finding actual red snapper were in Miami, New York, and in Boston, where several samples of red snapper ironically turned up in a grocery store mislabeled as a different fish. In samples from out west, including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles, all of the red snapper was mislabeled, according to USDA standards.

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87 Percent of Snapper is Mislabeled, Study Says

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Coal Country Bank First to Report Carbon Footprint to Shareholders

by d2wk58 Posted on February 21, 2013

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There’s a growing interest among enviros these days in combating climate change with direct offensives against the fossil fuel industry, sights locked on its bottom line. The idea is that while we scramble to invent more efficient light bulbs and throw up solar panels, we also chip away at the mountain of money that gives the industry its power, by turning shareholders on to the idea that unwise investments can make them accomplices in global warming.

Activist investment is nothing new, of course, the best-known case being the massive movement to divest from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. But it’s gaining traction in the realm of climate change: Bill McKibben in particular has campaigned recently for colleges and universities to divest their endowments from fossil fuels, and Al Gore this month backed the efforts of Harvard students to do so.

Shareholders at a host of corporations nationwide—including Exxon Mobil, fracking giant Nabors, and, incongruously, Dunkin’ Donuts—have climate-related resolutions on the table this year that aim to require companies to account to shareholders on everything from mountaintop removal to greenhouse gas emissions to renewable energy use. This week, an unexpected institution became the first major bank to join their ranks and have its climate impact interrogated by shareholders. From the LA Times:

The resolution, which follows years of protests over banks financing certain coal operations, is to be included in proxy material being sent to shareholders of PNC Financial Services Group of Pittsburgh before the bank’s April 23 annual meeting.

It asks PNC to assess and report back to shareholders on how its lending results in greenhouse gas emissions that can alter the climate, posing financial risks for its corporate borrowers and risks to its own reputation.

PNC is the only major bank based in Appalachia, a region where coal and gas extraction is a major business. It has long lent to mining companies, including those engaged in mountaintop removal, which involves blowing up peaks to reach coal seams below and has been blamed for degrading landscapes, destroying habitat and polluting streams.

You might not expect a bank smack dab in the heart of coal country to have the most environmentally progressive shareholders, but then again PNC, heavily entwined with the coal industry but not as unbreakably massive as, say, Bank of America, could be fertile ground for climate leadership. The bank has in recent years tried to give itself a green makeover, but apparently not enough to satisfy the shareholders behind the resolution, including a Roman Catholic group and Walden Asset Management. The case PNC ultimately makes to its investors should be an interesting study in the practical power of wielding shares as a weapon against climate change.

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Coal Country Bank First to Report Carbon Footprint to Shareholders

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Can Sustainable Food Feed the Whole US?

by dig1iti43 Posted on February 20, 2013

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In the early 20th century, political ads for then-presidential candidate Herbert Hoover promised Americans continued prosperity, or a “chicken in every pot.” But today, in a new era of ecological crises, does our ability to feed ourselves in the future hinge on a chicken in every backyard?

This was one of the ideas explored at last night’s panel of food journalists, moderated by New York Times contributing columnist Allison Arieff and co-sponsored by Mother Jones and the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). Addressing a room of 70-90 modern farmer types, urban-planners, and Bay Area locals, Mother Jones‘ Tom Philpott, Earth Island Journal‘s Jason Mark, and former Grist.org editor Twilight Greenaway discussed issues taking up the most space on their plates, along with their vision for the future of the sustainable food movement. You can listen to their conversation here:

“The implication that we can vote with our fork will only get us so far,” said Philpott, who went on to critique the idea that consumer choice and a backyard crop alone can reverse an entrenched trend of industrialized and consolidated control of the food supply. “The infrastructure for small farms doesn’t exist,” he said. “The only policy solution is federal policy.”

One way to legislate change would be through anti-trust laws that dismantle Big Ag’s grasp on production, Philpott explained, but even so, the sustainable food movement is dealing with its own internal struggles in attempting to expand. “What’s the sweet spot for scale for the sustainable food movement?” asked Jason Mark. While organic farmers are still negotiating the balance between quality and affordability of their products, “It’s a rational choice to buy junk food instead of healthy food,” Mark added.

But as stubborn as the status quo may be, panelists also shared stories about small, ecology-minded innovation in the age of engineered shmeat (“meat grown on a sheet,” Twilight Greenaway explained). Greenaway also discussed polyculture experiments in the Long Island Sound, and panelists bounced insights off one another about the challenges and promises of biotech in the sustainability movement. “We’ve got this beautiful niche happening,” Philpott said of efforts to de-industrialize food production in the last decade. “But staying away from self-satisfaction,” he added, “is paramount.”

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Can Sustainable Food Feed the Whole US?

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