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Officials Say They See Signs of a Slowdown in Deadly Arizona Wildfire

by Myrna Posted on July 3, 2013

Fire officials said they hoped to begin allowing hundreds of residents evacuated from the towns of Yarnell and Peeples Valley to begin returning as soon as Saturday. More –  Officials Say They See Signs of a Slowdown in Deadly Arizona Wildfire ; ;Related ArticlesAfter Failed Attempt in April, Europe Approves Emissions Trading SystemHans Hass, Early Undersea Explorer, Dies at 94National Briefing | Religion: Church Dropping Fossil Fuel Investments ;

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Officials Say They See Signs of a Slowdown in Deadly Arizona Wildfire

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Centuries worth of CO2 emissions could be stored underground, but at what cost?

by Sylvesterax6 Posted on June 28, 2013

Centuries worth of CO2 emissions could be stored underground, but at what cost?

By John Upton

Radoslaw Maciejewski / Shutterstock

We could store CO2 underground, though not in the London Underground.

We could liquefy and cram our carbon dioxide emissions into the ground for some 500 years before America’s geologic basins started to overflow with the stuff.

That’s according to a new assessment by federal scientists, who spent years scouring America for porous rocks thousands of feet beneath the ground that might be appropriate for carbon sequestration.

They studied 36 geologic basins that could be suitable and found that the best region for storing waste CO2 would be the Gulf Coast. From the Houston Chronicle:

Brenda Pierce, energy resources program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, … said one reason the Gulf is attractive is its relative lack of fresh groundwater, since any area with fresh groundwater was eliminated as a potential storage site. In addition, only rock layers deep enough to keep carbon dioxide under sufficient pressure to remain liquid and to prevent it from escaping were considered a good fit.

But just because the storage space is available doesn’t mean that the approach would be feasible. Or safe.

The scientists say the 36 potential underground storage spots might be able to hold roughly 3,000 metric gigatons of liquefied CO2. For context, the U.S. releases between 5 and 6 metric gigatons of CO2 every year from power plants, vehicles, and other spots where fuel is burned to produce energy.

Two-thirds of the total storage potential was found to be in the Coastal Plains region, mostly along the Gulf Coast. The dark gray spots on this map show the areas that were assessed:

USGS

But most of America’s CO2 emissions come from coal-burning power plants that are located far from the Gulf. To get the CO2 from the power plants to the Gulf, it would need to be ferried through pipelines, and that would be a costly proposition. From Platts:

[T]he study clearly shows that the basins with the highest potential for carbon storage are away from the Southeast region, Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley, which accounts for 65% of the US’ coal-fired capacity, according to the US Energy Information Administration. This means that despite the US storage potential, infrastructure needs — including a number of new pipelines which need to be built to connect power plants, compression stations and these basins — could make geologic sequestration costly.

De Smog Blog points to even more financial hurdles:

According to a database maintained at MIT’s Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program, there are currently six large scale CCS projects underway in the United States. Five of the six projects are still in the planning phase, with one project listed as under construction. The current projected price tag of these six projects is a whopping $16.7 billion.

That’s a lot to gamble on a risky technology that continues to struggle to prove it’s even possible to deploy on a global scale. And $16.7 billion is only the opening bet. A full scale deployment of CCS technology across the entire US would likely be in the hundreds of billions. Estimates run as high as $1.5 trillion a year to deploy and operate enough carbon capture and storage worldwide to significantly reduce carbon emissions from the fossil fuels we consume.

It’s also worth remembering that carbon sequestration can trigger earthquakes. Tremblers at CCS sites could not only cause physical damage around them, but release sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere, thereby making the whole effort futile.

And who knows what other problems might arise in the decades or centuries to come from stuffing all that liquefied CO2 into the ground.

Still, considering the massive threat posed by climate change, carbon sequestration is worth investigating. “The United States has the ability to store a lot of carbon dioxide,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “If this proves to be economically viable — and that hasn’t been answered in this study — sequestration could help.”

That said, there would be no carbon dioxide emissions to store if we switched over to renewables.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Centuries worth of CO2 emissions could be stored underground, but at what cost?

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Food-safety push in California hurts wildlife — and doesn’t make food safer

by bvds34dfsg Posted on May 14, 2013

Food-safety push in California hurts wildlife — and doesn’t make food safer

By Claire Thompson

Rigid rules for leafy greens are taking a toll on wildlife.

A deadly outbreak of E. coli in 2006, traced to a California spinach field, spurred an overhaul of food-safety regulations in the leafy-greens industry — and that’s got to be a good thing, right? Not so fast, says a study published last week in the journal Nature. Those regulations have contributed to a major loss of ecosystem diversity in California’s Salinas Valley, while at the same time doing little to alleviate the risk of food-borne illness.

In an effort to reduce the potential for contamination, the industry put in place standards that, while technically voluntary, quickly became widespread. Big produce buyers, fearing further disease outbreaks and the public-relations disasters they create, only want to do business with farmers conforming to the new guidelines. “Nationwide, U.S. fruit and vegetable farmers report being pressured by commercial produce buyers to engage in land-use practices that are not conducive to wildlife and habitat conservation, in a scientifically questionable attempt to reduce food-borne illness risk,” the study reports.

Scientific American describes what this ends up looking like:

Researchers discovered that the new farming practices have further de-incentivized growers from farming in ways that take into account the importance of natural systems of resource cycling and plant regeneration. Instead, many have cleared land of native vegetation, erected fences and laid poison to deter the presence of wildlife. As a result of growers’ attempts to control for all potential variables on crop sites, farmed areas have become not only uninhabitable for wildlife but also more vulnerable to climate change.

The Salinas Valley is not only an important agricultural area — California’s “salad bowl,” where 70 percent of the nation’s greens are produced — but also an ecological gem, The Guardian writes:

The floodplain habitat is a stopover and feeding ground for migrating birds like the Great Blue Heron, its plains and river harbour a number of endangered species like the steelhead salmon, and the waterway connects with one of the country’s largest marine sanctuaries.

The study found that between 2005 — before the E. coli spinach outbreak — and 2009, the Salinas Valley lost 13 percent of that precious riverside and wetland habitat. Clearing vegetation between crop fields and waterways not only disrupts ecosystems and displaces wildlife, it also gives pesticides and fertilizers an easier path to pollute water supplies, and eliminates natural plant buffers that slow erosion and diminish the impacts of flooding.

The worst part is that these new practices haven’t really done squat for food safety, SciAm writes:

Since the 2006 outbreak of E. coli was linked with spinach grown in California, at least 15 more domestic E. coli outbreaks have been reported. More than half included cases reported in California.

Obviously we want to do everything possible to prevent food — especially spinach, for goodness’ sake, which is supposed to the epitome of healthy — from killing people. But not with misguided, ineffective reforms that endanger the entire ecosystem and thus our ability to grow food in the first place.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Can Yahoo be more ‘efficient’ with more workers driving to the office?

by d2wk58 Posted on February 26, 2013

Can Yahoo be more ‘efficient’ with more workers driving to the office?

By Susie Cagle

Adam Tinworth

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer puts the kibosh on telecommuting.

In a decision that sent the internet into a tizzy today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that employees will no longer be allowed to telecommute to work. USA Today reports:

Yahoo’s decision is meant to foster collaboration, according to a company memo sent to employees Friday.

Yahoo’s head of human resources, Jackie Reses, wrote that communication and collaboration will be important as the company works to be “more productive, efficient and fun.” To make that happen, she said, “it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings.”

According to Census figures from 2010, about 9.5 percent of the U.S. workforce telecommutes at least one day a week. That’s actually not very much, considering telecommuting can be more productive for some workers, not to mention more comfortable. Millions of Americans working from home or local co-working spaces each day save millions of tons in emissions each year, and potentially cut down on traffic deaths.

According to a source inside the company, many workers across all of Yahoo’s divisions have been telecommuting for a long time now, in arrangements distinctly unlike those at other Silicon Valley tech giants.

The telecommuting issue is relevant to many office workers in America, but especially so in the Bay Area, with its crappy regional transit options and big distances between desirable office parks and desirable bedroom communities. Some of the biggest Silicon Valley tech companies have enlisted their own private busing systems to cut down on telecommuting and also keep up with the desires of their workers to live in dense urban areas outside of sprawly, beige, boring Silicon Valley.

It’s not like we’ve looked to Yahoo for leadership in tech in a long (long, looong) time. Still, this is a sudden switch for the company’s culture, and it may be bad news for telecommuters at other organizations that want to get more “collaborative.”

So, Yahoo workers intending to keep your jobs by moving to the Bay Area: Please just don’t move to Oakland. Hey, I hear San Jose is pretty nice!

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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China’s pollution reaches Japan. Next stop: California

by Obeey99 Posted on February 4, 2013

China’s pollution reaches Japan. Next stop: California

By Philip Bump

Sam_BB

Smog in China.

My wife and I used to have an annoying neighbor. There were various ways in which he was annoying — he would holler every Sunday during the Saints games and would stand outside talking on his cell phone at all hours of the night. But most annoying was the smoking. He’d stand under our bedroom windows and smoke, the smell drifting into our apartment. Of all of his infuriating tendencies, this was the worst.

But at least what wafted into our clothes and lungs while we slept wasn’t toxic smog. That’s the problem Japan is having with its neighbor to the west. From Agence France-Presse:

The suffocating smog that blanketed swathes of China is now hitting parts of Japan, sparking warnings Monday of health fears for the young and the sick.

The environment ministry’s website has been overloaded as worried users log on to try to find out what is coming their way. …

Air pollution over the west of Japan has exceeded government limits over the last few days, with tiny particulate matter a problem, said Atsushi Shimizu of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).

Prevailing winds from the west bring airborne particles from the Asian mainland, he said.

These particulates are the same sorts of dust and soot that set records two weeks ago in Beijing. They’re deeply unhealthy, leading to asthma, other lung afflictions, and even heart attacks. While the pollution in China has inspired a cottage industry of solutions — canned air, house-sized domes, special face masks — such innovation is likely little consolation to the Japanese.

Nor is China’s pollution likely to stop in Japan. We’ve noted before that perhaps as much as a quarter of particulate pollution in California originates in China. It’s not entirely clear how much of the state’s air pollution, often detected by satellites, ends up at a breathable height. Today NASA is flying over the state’s Central Valley at various altitudes in an effort to determine how much particulate (and other) pollution is at ground level. The planes probably won’t detect China’s most recent pollution, given that it has just reached Japan, but some particulates from across the Pacific can certainly be expected.

NASA

A NASA plane flies over Fresno.

There’s actually a straightforward solution to this. I would encourage Japan and California to send a doctor’s note to their landlord (the U.N., I guess?) saying they’re allergic to China’s pollution. And, if that doesn’t work, simply move. It won’t be easy, but trust me, it works.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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California high-speed rail construction not exactly moving at high speed

by RubinkJoseph Posted on February 1, 2013

California high-speed rail construction not exactly moving at high speed

By Susie Cagle

The Golden State is set to begin construction on its much-vaunted (and much-moneyed) high-speed rail project this summer, a line that would run from Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area. Amtrak is on board and the Department of Transportation is pumped, but despite having less than six months to go until they break ground, California hasn’t bought the land where the train is supposed to go yet. Like, none of it, not “a single acre.” Oops.

California High Speed Rail Authority

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The complexity of getting federal, state and local regulatory approvals for the massive $68-billion project has already pushed back the start of construction to July from late last year. Even with that additional time, however, the state is facing a risk of not having the property to start major construction work near Fresno as now planned.

It hopes to begin making purchase offers for land in the next several weeks. But that’s only the first step in a convoluted legal process that will give farmers, businesses and homeowners leverage to delay the project by weeks, if not months, and drive up sales prices, legal experts say.

If the first 130 miles of rail aren’t completed by 2018, at a spendy rate of $3.6 million each day, the project stands to lose federal funding.

One major roadblock will be Central Valley farmland that has been skyrocketing in value due to a booming global tree-nut market. The longer California drags its feet, the more expensive those farms, and in turn that train, will turn out to be. The first stretch of the project is only 29 miles, but involves the purchase of about 400 different parcels, many of them fancy farmland that owners are reluctant to part with.

Anja Raudabaugh, executive director of the Madera County Farm Bureau, which is suing to halt the project under the California Environmental Quality Act, said the rail authority will face strong opposition to condemnation proceedings in the Central Valley. The bureau has hired a condemnation expert to help battle the land seizures.

“It is a harried mess,” she said.

She noted that agricultural land prices rose rapidly last year across the nation. In the Central Valley, the average price of farmland is $28,000 per acre, while the rail authority’s budget anticipates an average price of $8,000 per acre, she said.

Kole Upton, an almond farmer who leads the rail watchdog group Preserve Our Heritage, questioned the rail agency’s expertise in conducting complex appraisals of agricultural land that has orchards, irrigation systems and processing facilities.

“I am not sure this thing has been well thought out by people who have a deep understanding of agriculture,” Upton said.

This ride will be long, uncomfortable, bumpy, and expensive. Kind of like all American train rides, come to think of it.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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A ‘fusion’ of good news: Solar stocks are ‘hot’ thanks to Warren Buffett’s ‘flare’

by gerdi Posted on January 4, 2013

A ‘fusion’ of good news: Solar stocks are ‘hot’ thanks to Warren Buffett’s ‘flare’

By Philip Bump

It’s generally a good sign when Warren Buffett starts investing in your company/industry/country. Known as the “Wizard of Omaha” due to his ability to send little girls back to Kansas, Buffett is the second most famous representative of investment powerhouse Berkshire Hathaway. (His heavily taxed secretary is the most famous.) And when Berkshire Hathaway makes an investment, markets move.

The investment, via SmartPlanet:

[Berkshire Hathaway subisidary] MidAmerican Renewables kicked off 2013 with another major purchase. The company announced this week it has acquired SunPower’s Antelope Valley Solar Projects, two co-located projects in Kern and Los Angeles counties in California.

MidAmerican didn’t disclose the purchase price. However, analysts have pinned the purchase price somewhere between $2 billion and $2.5 billion.

Together, the combined projects will form the largest permitted solar photovoltaic power development in the world, according to SunPower and MidAmerican.

The market action, via the Los Angeles Times:

The SunPower deal, worth as much as $2.5 billion, sent solar stocks on a tear.

SunPower soared as much as 41% to $8.68 a share. Lazard Capital Markets upgraded the company to buy from neutral.

Suntech was up more than 18% to $1.90 a share, while First Solar gained as much as 11% to $35.60 a share.

Shutterstock

GET IT?

Those stock increases are still holding strong today, via MSN.com.

SunPower:

Suntech:

First Solar:

Tip to business owners: Rename your companies “Sun”-something. Or, alternately: “Solar”-something. See also: SolarCity, as covered at GigaOm:

Following an IPO that saw solar installer and financier SolarCity’s shares rise almost 50 percent on its first day of trading, the Elon Musk-backed company now says it has a robust growth plan in place for its solar roofs in 2013. This year, SolarCity says it plans to install 250 MW of solar roof capacity, up from 156 MW of solar roofs capacity installed in 2012.

To put that in perspective, the entire solar panel industry in the U.S. is estimated to have installed 3,200 MW (3.2 GW) of solar roof capacity in 2012, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. There were a record number of solar roof installations in the U.S. last year.

SolarCity’s stock was up 13.44 percent in morning trading to $14.77.

And SolarCity’s stock now?

A lesser person would make the following joke: Who knew the sun was so hot? What a jerk that guy would be, making that dumb joke.

It bears noting that occasionally stock prices go down, I guess. I don’t know. Who am I, Warren Buffett?

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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It’s high-speed rail vs. farmers in California

by johnsmithwindows Posted on December 29, 2012

It’s high-speed rail vs. farmers in California

By Susie Cagle

California High Speed Rail Authority

A planned high-speed rail line in California is looking forward to a bumpy 2013 (and 2014, and 2015 …). It may be attorneys rather than travelers who really win from the largest public works project in the state’s history, at least in the immediate future. The Fresno Bee reports that many farmers and other property owners along the intended route in the Central Valley have vowed to fight the project, potentially forcing the state to exercise eminent domain to seize needed properties.

Up and down the Valley, the rail authority anticipates spending tens of millions of dollars to buy the land it needs in Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties. The agency hopes to begin construction next year on a stretch of about 30 miles from northeast of Madera to the south end of Fresno — the first portion of what is ultimately planned as a 520-mile system linking San Francisco and Los Angeles.

But some vocal property owners, including farmers, are loathe to part with their property and have vowed to force the state to use its power of eminent domain — a potentially costly and time-consuming ordeal.

The line will eventually connect L.A. to San Francisco, but the first portion to be built will go through the through the Central Valley bread basket, pitting awesome California Cuties against awesome California regional transit. The total cost of the project is currently projected at $68 billion, but that likely doesn’t include enough money to settle cases with all property owners, especially farmers whose livelihoods are directly tied to their property.

Because trains traveling at 220 mph cannot make tight turns, some of the line will slice in an arc through farms rather than skim the squared-off edges of properties or hug existing freight railroad lines.

For farmland, “just compensation” may encompass much more than the per-acre value of the land. Other factors may include the production value of permanent crops on the acreage, the effect that the rail line would have on the remainder of the parcel, whether any structures or irrigation systems have to be moved, and access to acreage that sits on the other side of the tracks and whether those leftover pieces can be farmed economically.

California projects that this first, contentious portion of rail line will be complete by the end of 2017, though that date keeps being delayed.

Federal funding for the project, which is supposed to make up half of its budget, is also in question, as the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned in a recent report. But High-Speed Rail Authority Chair Dan Richard is still optimistic, telling The San Francisco Examiner, “This is truly a statewide rail modernization plan which includes improvements that will greatly enhance the efficiency and reliability of regional transit.”

Yeah, let’s hope the farmers see it that way.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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The EPA tightens limits on soot, predicting huge health benefits

by Myrna Posted on December 14, 2012

The EPA tightens limits on soot, predicting huge health benefits

By Philip Bump

At least there’s a bit of good news today: implementation of hard-fought public policy that will have a hugely beneficial effect on public health.

The EPA’s tightened standard on soot pollution — announced in June and sent for final sign-off to the White House earlier this week — has been approved.

National Archives

From The Washington Post:

The new rule limits soot, or fine particulate matter, which stems from activities ranging from burning wood to vehicle emissions, and which causes disease by entering the lungs and bloodstream. Fine particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, or one-thirtieth the width of a human hair, ranks as the country’s most widespread deadly pollutant.

The new rule is a result of a 2009 court ruling that said the EPA standards for the amount of soot permissible in the air on an annual average ignored the advice of scientific advisers by maintaining the standard established in 1997 and must be rewritten. That limit was 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

The EPA cut the level to 12 micrograms per cubic meter.

That new level is actually on the lower end of what the EPA was considering — still higher than the 11 micrograms some health advocates sought, but significantly better than it could have been. At 12 micrograms, the EPA expects that America will save between $2.3 and $5.9 billion a year in health costs. By 2020, that figure could rise to $9.1 billion annually. The Sierra Club’s Mary Anne Hitt notes that as many as 15,000 premature deaths will be prevented annually. Other soot-related health problems that the new rules will help prevent, according to the EPA:

nonfatal heart attacks,
irregular heartbeat,
aggravated asthma,
decreased lung function, and
increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing or difficulty breathing.

Another benefit: The new limit will also improve visibility at national parks. And you’ll be alive to enjoy the views.

For states and counties, meeting the new standard may not be that difficult. An EPA compliance map suggests that only seven counties — all in California’s Central Valley and Inland Empire — won’t meet the new standard by the end of the decade.

MAP

EPA

The industries responsible for particulate pollution said what you’d expect, according to The Hill.

Several industry groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Petroleum Institute, opposed the tougher rules and warned they would thwart economic growth. NAM CEO Jay Timmons slammed EPA’s decision on Friday and said the agency should stick with the standards set in 1997.

“This new standard will crush manufacturers’ plans for growth by restricting counties’ ability to issue permits for new facilities, which makes them less attractive for new business. Essentially, existing facilities will have to be shuttered for new facilities to be built in these areas,” Timmons said in a statement.

This is what is always said.

The soot regulation is good news: lives saved, preventable damage prevented, lobbyists defeated. Now if only we could be so rational in other areas of public policy.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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