Healthcare Is Not Prepared For Peak Oil – In fact it throws our money out the window

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

This article is about a year old and it makes points that have been made before, such as:

1. The medical field is not prepared for Global Warming. Our Healthcare system world wide will not be able to cope with the shift in and increase in what are largely thought of as tropical diseases today.

2. Medical Communty’s contribute to Global Warming through inefficiencies.

They also make the point that whether you believe in Peak Oil or not, Healthcare is addicted to Oil.

3. The pharmaceutical industry’s dependence on Oil would cause it to collapse if oil supplies became restricted or suffered a huge price increase.

4. Hospitals are dependent on electricity (coal) for their medical practices and have very little flexibility built into their practice. eg. No xrays, then what?

But the most telling part for me is the following.

http://www.greens.org/s-r/45/45-05.html

Medicine at the Crossroads of Energy
and Global Warming

by Dan Bednarz, Ph.D., and Kristin Bradford, M.D., M.P.H.

The difficult thing now is there’s no [longer any] low-hanging fruit. — Roger Elliott, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Chippewa Falls, WI, on efforts to reduce hospital energy costs.

[A]ny field … should be judged by the degree to which it understands, anticipates, and takes action in regard to changes in society. — Bernard Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist

dot dot dot (as they say)

A given in hospital operations is unlimited inputs of energy and resources; this results in waste in the name of hygiene, insurance and regulatory considerations, and “the best” care. However, the fact that worldwide “energy demand is accelerating” and on its current pace “will double by the year 2050” will soon burst upon medicine.

Turning specifically to energy usage, the Health Care Energy Project tells us that hospitals “use twice as much energy per square foot as office buildings…” In addition, hospitals consume large quantities of petroleum-based, processed, and transported products ranging from aspirin to jells and lubricants to plastic dinnerware and gloves to pharmaceuticals, syringes, IV and dialysis tubing, to name but a few. And most of these items are produced for one-time, non-recyclable use. Petroleum derivatives are also found in many computer parts, electronic equipment, furniture, and so on.

… hospitals “use twice as much energy per square foot as office buildings…”

As noted, hospital administrators are somewhat aware of and responding to the rise in energy costs for heating, cooling, and lighting, primarily by locating the problem in the domain of facilities management. Therefore, controlling energy costs in a hospital largely is confined to electricity and natural gas bills.

As the costs of oil and natural gas have risen in recent years facilities managers are trying to make their buildings more energy efficient, hoping that such savings will offset price rises. Yet, a 2006 survey of hospitals found:

More than 90% … reported higher energy costs over the previous year [2005], and more than half cited increases in double-digit percentages.

The facilities management response is to replace, retrofit or upgrade inefficient infrastructure —boilers, lighting fixtures, building insulation, windows, etc., and in general to “modernize” facilities — in accordance with the Energy Star Program. Some of the newest “green” hospital building approaches promise to reduce energy consumption by as much as 60% below code mandates. This is encouraging, but only a beginning.

However, new construction is done only when it makes “economic sense,” leaving many older hospitals and kindred structures too obsolete to “economically” justify retrofitting or demolishing and replacement — again energy is presumed to be plentiful and cheaper than upgrading — and no consideration whatsoever is given to its scarcity. Moreover, the costs for new hospital construction are soaring, another factor traceable to increasingly expensive fossil fuels. Dave Carpenter, summarizing a 2006 energy survey of hospitals, comments on the constraints facilities managers face:

Money-related reasons were among those given most often in response to a … question asking why recommended energy-saving measures hadn’t been implemented, including 37% who reported a lack of funds. Additionally, 31% cited other priorities, 26% said the payback period was judged to be too long, 23% said operations and maintenance budgets were underfunded and 16% cited lack of senior management commitment and support.

Given these constraints:

Facilities managers have little choice but to stay on the lookout for energy savings wherever they can be found. [One manager] says “it’s going to get worse before it gets better…”

We would argue that “it,” energy costs, will not get better. The entire health care industry will be forced to accommodate to dwindling fossil resources while simultaneously beginning to face the consequences of global warming.

This is stark because the health care system —already stressed in other ways — could begin to fail and even collapse for want of energy and a surge in patients.

… the health care system … could begin to fail and even collapse…

Finally, a word is needed on the third so-called “fall-back” fossil fuel we have barely mentioned, coal, since many energy experts offer it as a painless fix for peak oil. While the high levels of greenhouse emissions of coal are well known, what is less appreciated is that carbon sequestration to control greenhouse emissions is expensive and still an unproven technology. Second, recent reviews have concluded there are substantially less coal reserves than the commonly accepted estimates of 200–300 years supply. Perhaps as little as a few decades of recoverable coal remains, much of it low-grade and high in pollutants.

The dimensions of what we face are uncertain, but the major question undeniably is how will hospitals change given the ecological (global warming as well as multiple sources of pollution and resource scarcity) and geological (twilight of fossil fuels) state of affairs the world now faces?

And the answer is?

Healthcare Professionals Waste So Much Money – It is a dieing shame

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

The Disposable Society and Industrial Society hit the medical profession hard. They throw out and stamp out enough product to treat most of the third world. It is despicable actually. We wonder why we spend twice as much on medicine as the rest of the world and have crappier outcomes? Well once hospitals became “cost centers”, the game was pretty much over.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224183113.htm

Going Green in the Hospital: Recycling Medical Equipment Saves Money, Reduces Waste and Is Safe

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2010) — Wider adoption of the practice of recycling medical equipment — including laparoscopic ports and durable cutting tools typically tossed out after a single use — could save hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars annually and curb trash at medical centers, the second-largest waste producers in the United States after the food industry.

The recommendation, made in an analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers in the March issue of the journal Academic Medicine, noted that with proper sterilization, recalibration and testing, reuse of equipment is safe.

“No one really thinks of good hospitals as massive waste producers, but they are,” says lead author Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., a surgeon and associate professor of public health at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “There are many things hospitals can do to decrease waste and save money that they are not currently doing.”

Hospitals toss out everything from surgical gowns and towels to laparoscopic ports and expensive ultrasonic cutting tools after a single use. In operating rooms, some items that are never even used are thrown away — single-use devices that are taken out of their packaging must be tossed out because they could have been contaminated. Selecting such good devices for resterilization and retesting could decrease the amount of needless waste from hospitals.

And, the researchers say, hospitals could procure more items designed to be used safely more than once after being sterilized.

Hospitals, they add, are increasingly attracted to reprocessing because recycled devices can cost half as much as new equipment. Only about a quarter of hospitals in the United States used at least one type of reprocessed medical device in 2002, and while the number is growing, the practice is not yet widespread, they say. Banner Health in Phoenix, they write, saved nearly $1.5 million in 12 months from reprocessing operating room supplies such as compression sleeves, open but unused devices, pulse oximeters and more.

One Hospital ONE point 2 million $$$. How many Hospitals are there in operation in the US? My god people wake up.

Cutting Healthcare’s Enormous Energy Waste – This article is not on topic BUT

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

I had originally planned on taking a look at how much an X-Ray costs in energy terms. The Healthcare industry sucks up huge amounts of energy. Another thing I planned on looking at is their huge computer usage. Like utility companies, hospitals are nothing but giant billing agencies, add to that all of the data they must store and a hospital has got to be gulping the juice. This articles points out that ALL BURNING Behavior is much like most medical behavior, just plain sloppy living.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907514,00.html

The Key to Fixing Health Care and Energy: Use Less

By Michael Grunwald Monday, Jun. 29, 2009

Our health-care crisis and our energy crisis are complex dilemmas made of many complex problems. But our biggest problem in both health care and energy is essentially the same simple problem: we use too much. And in both cases, there’s a simple explanation for much of the problem: our providers get paid more when we use more.

Undoing these waste-promoting incentives — the “fee-for-service” payment system that awards more fees to doctors and hospitals for providing more services, and the regulated electricity rates that reward utilities for selling more power and building more plants — would not solve all our health-care and energy problems. But it would be a major step in the right direction. President Obama has pledged to pass massive overhauls of both sectors this year, but if Congress lacks the stomach for comprehensive reforms — and these days it’s looking like Kate Moss in the stomach department — a more modest effort to realign perverse incentives could take a serious bite out of both crises. (See pictures of Cleveland’s smart approach to health care.)

Everyone knows we use too much energy. Our addiction to fossil fuels is torching the planet, empowering hostile petro-states and straining our wallets. Meanwhile, studies by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere suggest that more than half of our energy is lost through inefficiencies, calculations that don’t even include the energy we fritter away through wasteful behavior like leaving lights on or idling cars. We’re on course to increase electricity usage an extra 30% by 2030, which could require trillions of dollars’ worth of new emissions-belching power plants, so it would be much better to eliminate the usage that doesn’t add to our quality of life.

Please read the rest of the brief article. It is thought provoking.

More on Green Medical Technology tomorrow.

Cap And Trade This Year – I know this seems like a little off topic

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

We will get back to energy use and Healthcare tomorrow. This is such an obvious linkage that I thought I would put it up.

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2259898/obama-healthcare-victory-clears

Obama’s healthcare victory clears path for climate change bill

As Democrats secure historic healthcare reforms, fresh details emerge of proposed climate change bill

James Murray, BusinessGreen, 22 Mar 2010

The chances of US climate change legislation passing this year received a major boost after President Obama secured victory in his historic battle to pass healthcare reforms late last night.

The successful House vote on the legislation following over a year of intense and fraught negotiations will clear a path for the administration to turn to its next large piece of administrative business: climate change.

Some senior Democrat Senators have suggested that following such a long battle to pass healthcare legislation the Senate will have “no appetite” to deal with a climate change bill that is likely to prove equally contentious.

However, both the administration and Democrat leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives remain adamant that they want to pursue a vote this year and with the party still behind in the polls ahead of November’s mid-term elections the race is now on to move the legislation forward as quickly as possible.

The key healthcare vote comes just days after the compromise version of the climate change bill being prepared by the bi-partisan trio of Senators Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham, and independent Joe Lieberman, received a further boost when both environmental and industrial groups signaled their support for the proposed legislation.

In a surprise move, Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist at the US Chamber of Commerce, told reporters last week that the work being done by the three senators was “largely in synch” with the business group’s views.

Josten stopped short of fully endorsing the bill, but following a meeting with the Senator’s last Wednesday he struck a markedly different tone to the outright opposition to previous versions of the bill that the Chamber adopted last year.

“The fairest comment would be, directionally speaking, the way they are trying to conform and shape this bill I would suggest is largely in sync with what most people in American industry think is the direction you are going to have to go if you are going to have a successful program,” he told reporters.

Scientists Are Such Wimps – No guns blazing here

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

This is a pretty simple (dare I say it) observation. Instead of scaring the crap out of people and tagging the polluters as the killers that they are, scientist must haggle over DATA. That’s the way to get the high school graduates all excited. Even college graduates in say, Education, Physical Ed., Social Work and other softer occupations at the college level don’t believe in something directly observable like evolution, let alone something arcane as climate destabilization. Don’t even get me started about all those people who get a “religious education”.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/235084

Sharon Begley

Their Own Worst Enemies

Why scientists are losing the PR wars.

Published Mar 18, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Mar 29, 2010

It’s a safe bet that the millions of Americans who have recently changed their minds about global warming—deciding it isn’t happening, or isn’t due to human activities such as burning coal and oil, or isn’t a serious threat—didn’t just spend an intense few days poring over climate-change studies and decide, holy cow, the discretization of continuous equations in general circulation models is completely wrong! Instead, the backlash (an 18-point rise since 2006 in the percentage who say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, Gallup found this month) has been stoked by scientists’ abysmal communication skills, plus some peculiarly American attitudes, both brought into play now by how critics have spun the “Climategate” e-mails to make it seem as if scientists have pulled a fast one.

Scientists are lousy communicators. They appeal to people’s heads, not their hearts or guts, argues Randy Olson, who left a professorship in marine biology to make science films. “Scientists think of themselves as guardians of truth,” he says. “Once they have spewed it out, they feel the burden is on the audience to understand it” and agree.

That may work if the topic is something with no emotional content, such as how black holes form, but since climate change and how to address it make people feel threatened, that arrogance is a disaster. Yet just as smarter-than-thou condescension happens time after time in debates between evolutionary biologists and proponents of intelligent design (the latter almost always win), now it’s happening with climate change. In his 2009 book, Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style, Olson recounts a 2007 debate where a scientist contending that global warming is a crisis said his opponents failed to argue in a way “that the people here will understand.” His sophisticated, educated Manhattan audience groaned and, thoroughly insulted, voted that the “not a crisis” side won.

Like evolutionary biologists before them, climate scientists also have failed to master “truthiness” (thank you, Stephen Colbert), which their opponents—climate deniers and creationists—wield like a shiv. They say the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political, not a scientific, organization; a climate mafia (like evolutionary biologists) keeps contrarian papers out of the top journals; Washington got two feet of snow, and you say the world is warming?

There is less backlash against climate science in Europe and Japan, and the U.S. is 33rd out of 34 developed countries in the percentage of adults who agree that species, including humans, evolved. That suggests there is something peculiarly American about the rejection of science. Charles Harper, a devout Christian who for years ran the program bridging science and faith at the Templeton Foundation and who has had more than his share of arguments with people who view science as the Devil’s spawn, has some hypotheses about why that is. “In America, people do not bow to authority the way they do in England,” he says. “When the lumpenproletariat are told they have to think in a certain way, there is a backlash,” as with climate science now and, never-endingly, with evolution. (Harper, who studied planetary atmospheres before leaving science, calls climate scientists “a smug community of true believers.”)

Global Warming’s Impact On Illinois – Slightly warmer wetter Springs,

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

Slightly cooler wetter Summers, and slightly warmer and wetter Falls with earlier first frosts. Oh that sounds so scary. But if you think about it, it is. I have said all along that the biggest early effect of Global Warming is the disruption in farming. Farmers won’t know when to plant. They will have replant and they may not be able to harvest…This will mean that we can feed ourselves but we can’t feed the world. Food riots have already happened 2 years ago, thought governments were better prepared last year.

Don’t believe me? Let’s ask the experts.

http://www.isws.illinois.edu/atmos/statecli/ElNino/elnino.htm

El Niño and La Niña in Illinois

El Niño and La Niña refer to periods when sea-surface temperatures along the equator in the Pacific Ocean are either unusually warm (El Niño) or cold (La Niña). These events typically begin in the spring or summer and fade by the following spring. A more complete description of El Niño and La Niña can be found under Other Resources below.

The NOAA Climate Prediction Center has identified a weak El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean. This event is expected to strengthen and last through this winter (2009-2010). Here is a series of maps on the historical impacts of El Niño on monthly temperature and precipitation (pdf). In general, they produced warmer-than-normal temperatures in September and during December-March. In contrast, cooler-than-normal temperatures prevailed in August and April-May. The impact on monthly precipitation was both weaker and less consistent. Somewhat wetter conditions prevailed in August, October, and December while drier conditions were found in September. [posted September 22, 2009]

Summary of Impacts of El Niño

El Niño events vary in size, intensity, and duration. As a result, the impacts can vary from one event to the next. In addition, there may be other factors that influence our weather during these events.

Summers tend to be slightly cooler and wetter than average
Falls tend to be wetter and cooler than average
Winters tend to be warmer and drier
Springs tend to be drier than average
Snowfall tends to be 70 to 90 percent of average
Heating degree days tend to be 80 to 90 percent of average. Lower heating degree days mean lower heating bills.
Tends to reduce tornado activity in the High Plains and Midwest and increases it in the Sout

He wants to blame it on El Nino, but notice later he says they have been getting weaker and weaker…What happens when they do not come?

http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news4422.html

Farmers Who Plant – Or Replant – After June 20 May See Yields Shrink By Half

Published: Jun. 10, 2008

Source: Emerson Nafziger, 217-333-4424, ednaf@illinois.edu

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A costly deadline looms for many growers in the Midwest, as every day of waiting for the weather to cooperate to plant corn and soybeans reduces potential yields. Research indicates that Illinois growers who plant corn or soybeans near the end of June can expect a 50 percent reduction in crop yield, according to a University of Illinois agriculture expert.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that corn and soybean growers in several Midwestern states are behind schedule on their planting. A cooler and wetter-than-average spring has left Illinois and Indiana furthest behind on planted corn and soybeans. Several other states are lagging behind their normal planting schedules, but by a lesser margin.

In Illinois, 95 percent of the corn is planted and 88 percent has emerged, but less than half of that is reported to be in good or excellent condition. Fully 14 percent of the acres planted are in poor or very poor condition, with another 38 percent reported as fair. Those acres in poor or very poor condition may have to be replanted.

In Illinois, the corn was 7 inches high as of June 9, compared to an average of 17 inches by this time in recent years. Illinois crop sciences professor Emerson Nafziger says cool temperatures and the third wettest January-April since 1895 in Illinois have led to delays that are undercutting potential yields.

http://www.agpowermag.com/articles/articles.php?articleid=408

Think Twice Before Tilling Corn Ground This Spring

May, 1998

Thinking of taking a disk or field cultivator to last year’s no-till field? Agronomists warn that just one tillage pass is enough to negate many of the long-term benefits of no-till farming.

“After two to five years of continuous no-till farming, we see significant improvements in soil structure and organic matter levels,” says Jerry Hatfield, a researcher with the USDA-ARS Soil Tilth Lab in Ames, Iowa. No-till ground also resists crusting and has a higher cation exchange capacity, which is the soil’s ability to hold onto nutrients. Tillage — even just one pass – diminishes those benefits.

Once you revert back to tillage, you’re also giving up more immediate benefits like time, labor, and fuel savings, points out Mike Plumer, natural resources educator with the University of Illinois.

Despite these benefits, no-till corn acreage has leveled off nationally and declined in some eastern Corn Belt states, according to the Conservation Technology Information Center. Many blame unseasonably cool and/or wet spring weather. In Iowa, for example, last April was the coldest April since 1983 and the 16th coldest in 125 years of state record keeping. Last May was

the seventh coldest May in 125 years.

Under these conditions, no-till soils start out cooler and can take longer to warm up. That can put a strain on corn emergence and early growth.

If El Nino brings warm, dry weather to the Corn Belt this spring, no-till corn acreage could rebound, says Wayne Pedersen, plant pathologist with the University of Illinois. “No-till systems always do well in dry years,” Pedersen says. “No-till soils hold onto moisture better than tilled soils. As a result, no-till corn can tolerate a lack of rainfall — without yield loss — for a much longer period than conventional till corn.”

I know that is 2008 analysis and comment. but like I said what if it doesn’t go away? hmmmmmm

http://web.extension.illinois.edu/stephenson/news/news17285.html

Spring Forage Seeding Considerations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2010

Mother Nature did not allow many graziers to frost seed red clover in late February-early March. Wet conditions have prompted several forage producers to ask about seeding. In the recent Iowa State University Integrated Crop Management News newsletter, Steve Barnhart, Extension forage specialist addressed the topic of “wet spring forage planting considerations”. With some minor modifications for Illinois, the article follows.

Can spring forage stands still successfully be plant? The short answer is – yes, into the first ten days to two weeks of May (late-summer seedings are more successful in southern Illinois). The end of the spring forage planting season is limited by seedling development and growth into the summer months. Most forage seedlings are emerging and growing root systems

into the top one to three inches of the seedbed during the three to four weeks following germination.
The increasingly dry and hot soil surfaces in late May and June increase the risk that the small forage seedlings do not establish. So, the risk depends on rainfall and soil temperatures

from here on. If conditions turn normal or hotter and dryer than normal, the risk of late planted forage seeding failures increases. If late May and early June conditions remain cooler and wetter than normal, then later-than-desired spring forage seedings may survive very well.
Planting later than desired, adds to vulnerability to erosion and weed competition. Keep

cereal companion crop planting rates to half of a full seeding rate or less, and mow or clip new

seedings several times during the early seedling development months to allow sunlight to reach small developing legume and grass seedlings. Also scout for and manage potato leafhoppers in new alfalfa seedings.

More tomorrow…

Global Warming – Tundra melts releasing Methane by the ton and Pelicans refuse to migrate

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

Anybody that says there is no proof of Global Warming is either being paid off, blind or lying.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2229

11 Jan 2010: Report

Arctic Tundra is Being Lost
As Far North Quickly Warms

The treeless ecosystem of mosses, lichens, and berry plants is giving way to shrub land and boreal forest. As scientists study the transformation, they are discovering that major warming-related events, including fires and the collapse of slopes due to melting permafrost, are leading to the loss of tundra in the Arctic.

by bill sherwonit

During the summer of 2007, lightning strikes sparked five tundra fires on Alaska’s North Slope. Two of the fires — rare events north of the Arctic Circle — began in neighboring drainages, only a couple of days apart. That, in itself, might have gained the attention of tundra researchers. But the 2007 fire season would ultimately burn a record swath across the North Slope, while reshaping the way scientists think about the Arctic’s response to global warming.

Researchers have known for years that the Arctic landscape is being transformed by rising temperatures. Now, scientists are amassing growing evidence that major events precipitated by warming — such as fires and the collapse of slopes caused by melting permafrost — are leading to the loss of tundra in the Arctic. The cold, dry, and treeless ecosystem — characterized by an extremely short growing season; underlying layers of frozen soil, or permafrost; and grasses, sedges, mosses, lichens, and berry plants — will eventually be replaced by shrub lands and even boreal forest, scientists forecast.

Much of the Arctic has experienced temperature increases of 3 to 5 degrees F in the past half-century and could see temperatures soar 10 degrees F above pre-industrial levels by 2100. University of Vermont professor Breck Bowden, a watershed specialist participating in a long-term study of the Alaskan tundra, said that such rapidly rising temperatures will mean that the “tundra as we imagine it today will largely be gone throughout the Arctic. It may take longer than 50 or even 100 years, but the inevitable direction is toward boreal forest or something like it.”

iStock

With temperatures increasing across the Arctic, the Alaskan tundra as we know it could be gone before the end of the century, some scientists predict.

Dominique Bachelet, a climate change scientist at Oregon State University, forecasts that by 2100 tundra “will largely disappear from the Alaskan landscape, along with the related plants, animals, and even human ecosystems that are based upon it.” She made that prediction in 2004, and now says “the basic premise still holds, but the mechanism of change may be different than we thought.” Instead of long-term, incrementally complex changes caused by gradually warming temperatures, “extreme events will be the important triggers for change.” Hot-burning fires or slumping hillsides tied to melting permafrost could “clean the slate and allow new species to establish themselves,” Bachelet said.

The transformation of the tundra — the word comes from the Finnish, tunturia, meaning “treeless plain” — will have a profound impact on the creatures that live and breed there, including grizzly bears, wolves, foxes, and many species of waterfowl and migratory songbirds. Especially hard-hit could be caribou, which depend heavily on lichen as a food source.

This is an amazing article. More amazing because Sarah Palin has lived through this for the last 10 years and still does not admit that it is even happening. Then there is the methane and the frozen Woolly Mammoths that keep popping out of the ground.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane

Arctic permafrost leaking methane at record levels, figures show

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

David Adam, environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 January 2010 19.00 GMT

Article history

Permafrost in Siberia. Methane emissions from the Arctic permafrost increased by 31% from 2003-07, figures show. Photograph: Francis Latreille/Corbis

Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point.

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.

They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.

Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: “High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions.”

Global warming is occuring twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Some regions have already warmed by 2.5C, and temperatures there are projected to increase by more than 10C by 2100 if carbon emissions continue to rise at current rates

And it is confusing the birds.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/brown_pelicans_wont_flow_south.html

Environment, Oregon Coast, Outdoors »

Brown pelicans won’t fly south from Oregon coast and that worries scientists

By Lynne Terry, The Oregonian

March 12, 2010, 6:06PM

View full sizeBenjamin Reed/Los Angeles TimesA group of brown pelicans gathers at the Wildlife Center of the North Coast near Astoria. These birds were among those lodged at the center after they failed to fly south for the winter.Unlike past years, they’ve refused to return to California.

In January, scientists were stunned to see hundreds of brown pelicans that normally fly south before winter lingering on the Oregon coast.

Now it’s March and dozens are still here.

“This is a first for us,” said Roy Lowe, seabird specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Biologists are worried. Birds have starved to death and been pummeled by storms. Scientists are also perplexed about why they’ve altered their habits. Climate change could be a factor — no one really knows for sure.

But last week, birders counted dozens on the coast. Lowe said there have been sightings of 60 in Newport, 25 at Charleston and seven in Depoe Bay.

“Maybe some of them will survive the spring,” he said. “I haven’t heard of any moralities. They haven’t looked good for a long time, but they continue to hang in there.”

The downwelling ocean conditions off the coast this time of year do not support an abundance of forage fish for the pelicans. Lowe said they could be finding food in estuaries and lower bays, but they’re also scavenging.

“They’ve been hanging around where people are crabbing and going for any bits of fallen food,” said Deborah Jaques, a wildlife biologist in Astoria who contracts with state and federal governments.

In the summer, flocks of about 20,000 brown pelicans live on the Oregon Coast and then fly to Southern California and Mexico before winter to breed.

Scientists said the El Nino conditions, with warmer ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, could have affected the brown pelican’s food supply.

In January, many were found injured by storms or starved to death.

Things better change soon…

After The Energy Audit – All of the things that I suggested that you do

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

All of those things could have taken SEVERAL Years to complete.You have to ask yourself, “How badly must my house have been designed for me to have to do all this work”? The answer is VERY badly. The big housing push in post WWII America led to many bad practices. But let’s face it our population went from 60 million to over 325 million in 3 decades and energy was a nickle or less a kilowatt. That is just an excuse I know but it is all I got. Hostility to our environment is a genetic trait for Americans. Having a Capitalistic Economy does not help because it has a total disregard for the environment. It is in fact dismissed as an externality. Is Capitalism psychotic? Look at how it treats the only home we have got. It defiles it.

So hear is a look at more earth friendly models.

http://scienceray.com/biology/ecology/three-extreme-eco-friendly-houses-of-the-future/

Three Extreme Eco-friendly Houses of the Future

Published by Nelson Doyle
November 9, 2008, Category: Ecology

The most extreme eco-friendly houses of the future reduces the environmental impact on the planet and demonstrates how less means more quality living.

With so much attention being drawn towards the perils of our planet and the environmental impact that a global population is causing on natural resources, some forward-thinking companies and individuals are developing new ways to solve our housing needs and the future impact to the environment once built. It requires creative people like these to develop solutions to solve critical issues like the ones we have to deal with in today’s environment.

The majority of eco-friendly houses share similar engineering characteristics such as; smaller living spaces and recycled building materials incorporated into the design. Some houses incorporate solar panels, wood-burning stoves or other energy-saving heating and cooling appliances. The potential costs saving on utility bills, property taxes, home maintenance, and furniture would more than make this kind of living ideal for single or duel family housing.

Ewok-Style Tree House

I could post the photos but out of respect I will say please see the article for more.

This Ewok-style tree house designed by Canadian carpenter Tom Chudleigh saw the future and built it.

Portable Martin House-To-Go

Honestly, this has to be the most practical house on the planet that is eco-friendly to the extremes. Live anywhere and change your scenery when the mood strikes in your own portable house. The Martin portable house-to-go is built to the highest building standards and is weatherproofed with NASA-approved insulation to endure in extreme weather conditions.

Dome House

The Japanese are amazing engineers in both housing and technology, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that a prefab home manufacturer Japan called “Japan Dome Housing Co., Ltd., developed an amazingly energy-efficient, extreme weather durable, Styrofoam expandable modular igloo-shaped kit house. Oh, yes, it’s true. The house of the future that can be purchased and assembled by you and two or three of your friends in just a matter of 3-days if you work around the clock or about a week if you take your time.

More tomorrow.

I Was Gona Do Another Post On Solar Water Heaters – The commercially available ones complete with installation

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

I was going to include a rant here:

That Americans have been brainwashed to believe that energy isn’t free. The point being that if all we allowed was renewables that is all we would have. If we mandated geothermal and solar water heating for residential then in 20 years most of America would be off the grid. But powerful mining operations employing 1000s of people and powerful oil interests employing 10s of 1000s of people are never going to allow that, let alone the utility industry which employs millions of people. Then I ran across this article on PeakOIL and I thought isn’t this a much better way to put it…more on solar water heaters tomorrow.

(This was my original lead in march with the below citation for an obscure publication that ran an interesting article about the transition movement in Milwaukee of all places. I am not even sure I like the town that much..But after a nasty interaction with the editor I have taken that piece down completely…..June, note DN)

According to this dreadful woman:

From: Katherine Keller <editor@bayviewcompass.com>
Subject: You have published copyrighted material (publisher is “bitching”)
To: info@censys.org
Cc: “Daniel Gray” <dangray35@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 2, 2010, 9:29 PM

I am really only allowed to publish 12 words, but she would graciously give me 150 if I would just limit myself to that. SO:

please do not go to this website…ever…because it really sucks

http://bayviewcompass.com

Here are some sites that don’t:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

Transition Towns

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Totnes, Devon: a Transition Town

Transition Towns (also known as Transition network or Transition Movement) is a movement that originates from a student project overseen by permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland. The term “transition town” was coined by Louise Rooney^[1] and Catherine Dunne. Following its start in Kinsale, Ireland it then spread to Totnes, England where Rob Hopkins and Naresh Giangrande developed the concept during 2005 and 2006.^[2] The aim of this community project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil. The movement currently has member communities in a number of countries worldwide. The Transition Towns movement is an example of socioeconomic localization.

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http://www.transitiontowns.org/

What is a Transition Town (or village / city / forest / island)?

Here’s how it all appears to be evolving…

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model (explained here at length, and in bits here and here) with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

A Transition Initiative is a community (lots of examples here) working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

“for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”

After going through a comprehensive and creative process of:

awareness raising around peak oil, climate change and the need to undertake a community lead process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon
connecting with existing groups in the community
building bridges to local government
connecting with other transition initiatives
forming groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc)
kicking off projects aimed at building people’s understanding of resilience and carbon issues and community engagement
eventually launching a community defined, community implemented “Energy Descent Action Plan” over a 15 to 20 year timescale

This results in a coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life that strives to rebuild the resilience we’ve lost as a result of cheap oil and reduce the community’s carbon emissions drastically.

The community also recognizes two crucial points:

that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there’s no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
if we collectively plan and act early enough there’s every likelihood that we can create a way of living that’s significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

If you want to find out more, check out the other menu items on the left hand site of the page.

Final point

Just to weave the climate change and peak oil situations together…

http://www.transitionus.org/

Great Unleashings in Carrboro-Chapel Hill, NC, Bloomington, IN and Laguna Beach, CA!

As part of the Transition Model, the Great Unleashing is the coming together of the people in a community to envision a positive, resilient future in response to climate change and the end of cheap oil. For many groups, the Great Unleashing marks the kick-off of working groups to start in earnest to build the community that they want to see. Here are some recaps of the Unleashing events this month across the country, with each place with its own unique flavour.
May Round-up of What’s Happening in the World of Transition – US Edition

Here are some highlights of what’s keeping Transition Initiatives busy across the country and around the world…
Tucson takes it up a notch: Cyclovia Tucson

In Arizona, members of Sustainable Tucson, 29th Official Transition Initiative in the US, have been collaborating with the folks planning Cyclovia for Tucson. The Inaugural Cyclovia Tucson took place on April 18th, 2010, within the comfortable traffic free city streets, public parks and areas in-and around the University of Arizona.

More tomorrow

Don Blankenship – He blows the tops off mountains and pushes the rubble into the valleys

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Doug Nicodemus

These are the guys I think should lead the list but he is number 12 here. Don’t just take it from me or Tim Dickinson

http://www.grist.org/article/don-blankenship-seventh-scariest-person-in-america/

Don Blankenship: Seventh scariest person in America

Massey Energy CEO is a really bad dude

24 Oct 2006 5:40 PM
by David Roberts

The venerable print magazine Old Trout was recently relaunched with a splashy issue on “The Thirteen Scariest Americans.” I was asked to write up the scariest American from an environmental point of view.

The choice was not difficult. The scariest polluter in the U.S. is Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy. The guy is evil, and I don’t use that word lightly.

The issue is out now. (Look for it on a newsstand near you!) The folks at Old Trout have given me permission to publish an expanded version of the piece after a suitable period of exclusivity. So watch for that at the beginning of December.

In the meantime, check out three things.

First, there’s this longish New York Times piece on Blankenship from Sunday. In the usual style of mainstream reportage, it is studiously neutral in tone, woefully downplaying the environmental destruction Massey does and the thuggish tactics Blankenship has imposed. But you can get a pretty accurate general picture of the guy.

Second, watch this short clip from Bill Moyers‘ PBS special Is God Green? At the end there’s an archival clip of Blankenship from 1984. To me it’s absolutely mesmerizing. I’ve probably watched it 50 times. The sunken, lifeless eyes, the flat affect, the utter lack of empathy … like I said, it bespeaks psychopathy. I’ve shown it to a bunch of other people and they don’t find it quite as chilling as I do, so your mileage may vary:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/12

The Climate Killers

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming

TIM DICKINSON

The Coal Baron
Don Blankenship
CEO, Massey Energy

In an age when most CEOs are canny enough to at least pay lip service to the realities of climate change, Blankenship stands apart as corporate America’s most unabashed denier. Global warming, he insists, is nothing but “a hoax and a Ponzi scheme.” His fortune depends on such lies: Massey Energy, the nation’s fourth-largest coal-mining operation, unearths more than 40 million tons of the fossil fuel each year — often by blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains.

The country’s highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office,” Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. “He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”

Trust me, if he could sell you coal and make you eat it he would.

Medicine at the Crossroads of Energy and Global Warming