Category Archives: climate change

Drought And The Mississippi River – How low can you go

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I was going to write a piece today on the stupidity of trying to maintain our addiction to liquid fuels that are not sustainable like ethanol. But then it suddenly dawned on me, if the corn can’t get to the processing plant then there is really nothing to write about. Yup the barges are stacking up in a river that is, in some places down to one lane and in an 11 mile stretch it is closed. They also point out that after the flooding last year they did no dredging cause the rich people won’t pay their taxes. Oh sorry.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/this-years-drought-is-so-severe-you-can-see-its-toll-on-the-mississippi-river-from-space/261428/

This Year’s Drought Is So Severe, You Can See Its Toll on the Mississippi River From Space

Aug 22 2012, 9:42 AM ET

Last year, the Mississippi River flooded. Major storms combined with melting snow brought the waterway more than 56 feet above river stage in May. The Army Corps of Engineers lifted the floodgates of the Morganza Spillway, deliberately inundating some 3,000 square miles of rural Louisiana to spare worse damage in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In August of last year, NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite took a picture of the swollen river. Here’s what it saw:

(note: I know longer post pictures on this blog for the most part. They take to much time and effort to post.)

 

This year it’s an entirely different story. At the end of last month, more than 60 percent of the lower 48 states were in drought, and the might Mississippi was running low. An 11-mile stretch of river has been closed on and off since August 11, and earlier this week nearly 100 boats lined up near Greenville, Mississippi, waiting to pass. Water levels near Memphis are ranging from 2.4 to 8.3 below river stage, compared with 11.7 feet above at this time last year. To make matters worse, the floods of last year deposited huge amounts of sediment on the river bed, reconfiguring the existing channels.

Again NASA was there to capture the view from space, this time with Landsat 7. Here’s that image:

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Go there and see the startlingly different pictures and read. More tomorrow.

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Utility Companies Are Struggling Against Global Warming – Since they helped cause it you would think they would have a plan

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But that would mean that monopoly utilities were smart and they are not. Now that the problem has been shoved in their face by the warming up of the sun, they want to talk about it. Great.

http://www.pgecurrents.com/2012/08/07/climate-change-comes-to-the-power-industry/

August 7, 2012
Climate Change Comes to the Power Industry

By Jonathan Marshall

With temperatures setting new records across the country, and over half of the continental United States now experiencing serious drought, global warming is no longer just a prediction of climate scientists. It’s a reality, here and now.

Though every sector of human activity is feeling the impact, electric utilities are feeling them especially keenly, as they struggle to keep up with peak summer demand for air conditioning. At the same time, heat and drought threaten to curb their ability to generate and transmit power in the first place.

As Matthew Wald reported in his Green blog, one power plant in the Midwest was recently curtailed and another shut down altogether because river water levels dropped too low for their cooling intake valves. This was no fluke. A number of Texas power plants reduced their output in 2011 due to water shortages. Three years earlier, many more plants throughout the drought-stricken Southeast came close to shutting down.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Global Warming Causes The Illinois Drought – This will probably last until May 2014

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Why do I say that. Because the Sun is finally into its warming phase. The Sun always has 4 cycles: cooling, quietude, warming and maximus. These cycles inhabit an 11 year cycle most probably related to the creation of some of the heavier elements in its core. What does change in no known sequence is which is bigger the cooling cycle or the warming cycle and I suppose some brief time periods of equilibrium. For the last 30 years (almost 3 full cycles) the cooling side of the cycle has been bigger than the heating cycle and the last quietude was almost 2 full years which I believe is the biggest in recorded history. Here is the point. The planet should be cooling but it isn’t. During the cooling we still had some pretty hot years. Why. There is no other thing to blame, but humans. Now that the Sun is heating up and for the next 3 years or so, Watch Out!

http://www.examiner.com/article/drought-affects-nation-s-energy-prices

If you think the drought of summer 2012 is only increasing the prices of the nation’s corn and grain supplies, you’re missing a large part of the picture. Drought reaches into every corner of American pockets, affecting even the cost of driving a car and what we pay for air conditioning.

Current drought conditions

The United States is experiencing the most severe drought, with the highest percentage of land affected by it, in over 60 years, according to the National Climatic Data Center‘s July 17 report. (See August 5 Palmer drought severity map at left. Yellow = moderately dry, orange = severely dry, red = excessively dry.)

Parched conditions have now led to disaster declarations in more than half the counties in the nation–1,584, in 32 states–this growing season. The declarations make these areas eligible for government aid, including low-interest emergency loans to hold the line until farms and ranches recover.

And the ripple effects of this brutal weather will extend farther than the farms in the Midwest, where corn and soybean crops are failing. It will affect meat production nationwide as well because pasture and grazing land has been blighted, forcing farmers and ranchers to seek other–and more expensive–feed for cows and other animals.

In some areas, cattle have to be fed with next year’s grain reserves because local pasture lands have dried up. Almost four million acres of federal conservation land has been opened for haying and grazing. Crop insurers have also begun to provide penalty-free 30-day grace periods on 2012 premiums.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Recycling By Anyother Name – Moves us to a steady state economy

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Methane is the single biggest greenhouse gas that never gets talked about because environmentalists see it as a “bridge” to a clean energy future. Making power from food refuse makes complete sense. I hate to say it but backyard composters, as well meaning as they are, just throw the stuff up in the air.  Ashley Halligan sent me this article:

http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/cafm/resource-recovery-facilities-economic-efficient-energy-supply-1071212/

Resource Recovery Facilities: An Economic And Efficient Energy Supply

by Ashley HalliganProperty Management Analyst, Software Advice
July 12, 2012

Although the number of U.S. landfills has steadily declined since 1990, the size of landfills has increased. In fact, Americans generated 250 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) in 2010 alone. It’s thus no surprise that MSW landfills are our third-largest, human-generated source of methane emissions. But this is more an opportunity than it is a problem.

Many landfills are becoming resource recovery facilities–places where waste or byproducts are reclaimed and converted into energy. Captured by wells installed throughout a landfill, naturally-occurring methane emissions (or landfill gas–LFG) can be converted into multiple energy sources, including electricity, a replacement for fossil fuels in industrial operations, or upgraded to pipeline-quality gas. Methane’s heat can also be used directly. Of the approximately 2,400 operating or recently closed MSW landfills in the U.S., 535 (around 22 percent) currently have resource recovery projects.

To learn more about these projects and the benefits they deliver, I spoke to several industry experts–including David Specca, Assistant Director for Bioenergy and Controlled Environment Agriculture at the Rutgers University EcoComplex, and Barry Edwards, Director of Engineering and Utilities at Catawba County–and looked at three examples of successful projects.

____________________________
Ashley M. Halligan
Facility Management Analyst
Software Advice

(512) 539-0016
ashley@softwareadvice.com

By the way, we’re hiring…

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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The Hottest Year Ever Recorded By Science – I was gona continue the solar meditation

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And in away this is a solar earth issue, just not one that involves pollution free power generation. It has always amazed me how good a source of news Rolling Stone has become. It was the home of Hunter S. Thompson too.

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/3_215_high_temperature_records_broken_or_tied_in_the_us

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is

July 19, 2012 9:35 AM ET

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the “largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.” The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.

Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world’s nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn’t even attend. It was “a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago,” the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls “once thronged by multitudes.” Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I’ve spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.

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Go there and read. More next week.
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This Guy Had A Lot Of Guts – But the year is turning out the way he thought

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I love guys that think clearly about the future. So we will end the week with The Energy Collective and Gil Friend. I do not like the fact that they are backed by Siemens but I am something of a purist.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/75727

 

Posted by: Gil Friend

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It’s a rugged mix of bad news and good.)

Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence — more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big supply chain disruptions, ever-rising insurance payments — will drive more businesses to take global warming seriously as a business risk, even as The Economist and others blast the journalistic malpractice that leaves “climate” out of the weather disaster stories, and President Obama takes cover in an “all of the above” energy strategy.

US falls behind in solar China, Germany, Brazil — and California — continue to invest policy and capital in the new economy, while Washington remains lost in ideological shock and awe (as House republicans tell the Pentagon “you have to waste taxpayers money and make the troops less safe so we can continue to ignore both the science and the economics of climate change”). But there are surprises too: “red state” Iowa has decided that exporting $6b/year to buy fossil fuel from unfriendly nations might not be the most “conservative” plan, and is investing government money to reduce that balance of payments deficit!

EPA battle royal The right’s war on the EPA (and on regulation in general) will continue, and in fact heat up as campaign fodder. Little noticed: 191 house votes attacking the EPA in 2011. Expect this battle to continue into 2013 (depending on how the elections turn out). But there’s good news too.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Oh If This Were True – Humans voluntarily give up fossil fuels

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How cool would the world be if we actually stopped raping the Earth and started responsible stewardship instead. But I am suspicious around humans, so we will just have to see.

http://www.wheels.ca/news/peak-oil-are-we-looking-at-it-all-wrong/

Peak oil: Are we looking at it all wrong?

By as early as 2015, global demand for oil will begin to decline, some scientists say. Not because we’ll have run out of the fossil fuel, but because we just won’t need as much of it.

Published May 31, 2012

I don’t know about you, but when I’m skimming around on the Web and I catch sight of the phrase “Scientists now say” or “Some analysts find” I usually just click right on by. Because that article is going to be a bummer. Those analysts will find that the U.S. educational system is actually removing knowledge from children’s minds, and those scientists will turn out to say that pizza consumption is related to early-onset dementia. So I keep going until I find something about psychic twins or a baby raised by goats.

But it’s a good thing I broke with tradition when I came to the New Scientist article “Dump the pump: When oil will lose its luster.” Guess what these scientists and analysts now find? You know that whole problem with oil, how eventually it’s going to run out and trigger a global depression and maybe a breakdown of civilization and is it really such a good idea to bring children into this crazy world? Well don’t sweat it, everything’s going to be totally fine. It’s all going to be one hundred percent a-okay.

All right, that might be a somewhat simplistic rendering of the argument. What the scientists and analysts are arguing – and presenting evidence for – is that although we’ve been worrying this whole time about peak oil supply, the operative force will actually be peak oil demand. Due to a variety of factors – the article focuses mainly on advances in automotive fuel efficiency – global demand for oil is only going to keep increasing for a few more years, after which it will begin to decline and will continue on a downward path.

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I just printed the premise. Go there and read the rest. More Next week.

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Earth Day The Organization – I have probably posted about this group before

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But posting every year gets it out there. I know that I have never posted anything from their blog. This is about Earth Day in India and I though it was cool because it shows how far the idea has spread.

http://www.earthday.org/blog/2012/05/01/guest-blog-corbett-foundation-mobilizes-india-earth-day-2012

Guest Blog: Corbett Foundation Mobilizes in India for Earth Day 2012

5/1/12 | Earth Day Network

Guest blog by: Zaara Kidwai

Between April 14 and 23, the Corbett Foundation (TCF) carried out a series of events and activities for Earth Day 2012 in Corbett, Kutch, Bandhavgarh and Kanha, India. We engaged schoolchildren here in a variety of interactive seminars and competitions designed to teach them and their communities about the importance of sustainable living and preserving the environment.

Throughout the week, the Corbett office of TCF organized activities such as environmental film screenings, presentations, health awareness sessions and quiz competitions for 6th-10th graders in 11 schools in and around the Corbett Tiger Reserve.

TCF–Kutch celebrated a one-day mega event on April 22 with children from two schools in Bhuj: Army Public School and Matruchaya Girls School. The event was organized in collaboration with the Gujarat Forest Department, Kutch West Division. A total of 125 students participated in the event, which included a screening of a film about conserving the Great Indian Bustard followed by a drawing and poster-making competition.

TCF-Bandhavgarh organized a nature walk for school children followed by a visit to an interpretation center. They also distributed solar lanterns to the Kulohawah village, located inside the Bandhvagrah Tiger Reserve, and organized an exhibition of traditional crafts.

TCF-Kanha organized an environmental awareness rally and a roadside clean-up in which 70 students and villagers from four villages participated. The rally started in Manjitola village; then, participants marched to the Mukki gate of the Kanha Park. Along the way, students chanted slogans like “Save Earth, Save Life, One Earth, One Chance.”

We hope our efforts will motivate people around us to adopt an environmentally-friendly lifestyle.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Final Post On Lawn Care For This Year – Who knew that there was a whole organization

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I mean really, a whole organization dedicated to the safe cultivation of lawns? But it is true.

http://www.safelawns.org/blog/

PBS Program to Showcase Glenstone’s Organic Lawn

The natural lawn care movement in the United States will get a major boost in August when Growing A Greener World, hosted by Joe Lamp’l, showcases the organic lawn renovation at Glenstone, the modern art museum in Potomac, Md. The episode, estimated to be watched by nearly a million people nationwide in its first run, is scheduled to be aired in late August.

SafeLawns was on-hand, both to observe and to participate in the segment. We have been the lead consultants on the project since its inception in July of 2010 and the Growing a Greener World team is the first film crew to be allowed on the 160-acre Glenstone property, which has not had any synthetic chemicals used on its grounds since our arrival.

The two-day shooting session began in dreary, cold and wet conditions on Monday that ultimately led the crew indoors to the College Park laboratory of Dr. Mark Carroll and Dr. Thomas Turner, the two University of Maryland scientists who are working on an organic lawn research project with SafeLawns and Glenstone. The following day in Potomac, however, temperatures were in the 60s under brilliant blue skies.

“When you look at this place, the only thing you can say is ‘Wow,’” said Lamp’l, who is in his third season with this show.

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Good there and read. More tomorrow.

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Pushing A Mower With No Engine Is Tough – But it is rewarding

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Technically they are called Reel Lawn Mowers. They are not easy to use. They push tough and you have to cut your grass alot because they do not handle high grass at all. For example our mower deck is set at 4 inches, so we cut grass at 6 inches. No way you can do that with a push mower. If you like short grass and you have a small yard, they are perfect. This article takes its own sweet time getting to the point.

http://environment.about.com/od/pollution/a/lawnmowers.htm

Mowing the Grass is Greener When You Don’t Use a Gas-Powered Mower

Lawn Mowers May Account for Five Percent of U.S. Air Pollution, EPA Says

From

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that gas-powered lawn mowers, despite their small engine size, actually pollute as much as cars. If this is true, is there a greener way to cut my grass?
– Jon Haufe, Seattle, WA

Reports about those noxious fumes emitted from gasoline lawn mowers are indeed true. A Swedish study conducted in 2001 concluded, “Air pollution from cutting grass for an hour with a gasoline powered lawn mower is about the same as that from a 100-mile automobile ride.” Meanwhile, the 54 million Americans mowing their lawns each weekend with gas-powered mowers may be contributing as much as five percent of the nation’s air pollution, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Small Engines Lead to Big Pollution Problems
The problem is that small engines emit disproportionately large amounts of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides that contribute to smog. The human health effects of smog-laden air are well known, and include inflammation and damage to lungs, increased risk of asthma attacks, and lowered levels of oxygen in the bloodstream, which can aggravate heart conditions.

New Standards Expected to Reduce Mower Emissions
Fortunately, the EPA is now phasing in new emissions standards for gas mower engines that will result in a 32 percent smog reduction for all models made starting in 2007. And with even more stringent standards slated to go into effect soon in California, environmental leaders are hoping that the old adage for automobile trends (“as goes California, so goes the nation”) will soon apply to lawn mowers too.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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