Mereja

Author: bill

  • Scientists seek fair accounting of biofuel emissions

    From Green Right Now Reports

    Ninety of America’s leading scientists have urged Congressional leaders to be certain that any climate/energy bill or regulation accurately accounts for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from bioenergy sources, including biofuels such as ethanol.

    In a letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Majority Leader Harry Reid, and key Obama Administration officials, the group says that ignoring the carbon impact of bioenergy can actually lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions because not all forms of bioenergy produce less carbon dioxide pollution than fossil fuels.

    “There may be a public perception that all biofuels and bioenergy are equally good for the environment and are all lower in carbon emissions than fossil fuels, but that’s not true,” said Dr. William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, one of the scientists who signed the letter. “Many produce just as much or more carbon pollution than oil, gas, and coal.

    “If our laws and regulations treat high-carbon-impact bioenergy sources, like today’s corn ethanol, as if they are low-carbon, we’re fooling ourselves and undercutting the purpose of those same laws and regulations.”

    Failure to properly account for bioenergy CO2 emissions could seriously undermine other efforts to address climate change, the scientists warn. “Many international treaties and domestic laws and bills account for bioenergy incorrectly by treating all bioenergy as causing a 100% reduction in emissions regardless of the source of the biomass. … Under some scenarios, this approach could eliminate most of the expected greenhouse gas reductions during the next several decades …”

    The letter cautions decision makers about the basic mistake that biomass is “carbon neutral.”

    “Clearing or cutting forests for energy, either to burn trees directly in power plants or to replace forests with bioenergy crops, has the net effect of releasing otherwise sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, just like the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. That creates a carbon debt, may reduce ongoing carbon uptake by the forest, and as a result may increase net greenhouse gas emissions for an extended time period and thereby undercut greenhouse gas reductions needed over the next several decades.”

  • College team touts off-hour electricity bargains

    From Green Right Now Reports

    Photo: Green Right Now

    Photo: Green Right Now

    Try as we might to conserve energy and cut down on those electric bills, doing so can be a challenge.

    Clothes need to be washed. You can fill the dishwasher to capacity, but it still has to run.

    But what if you could program those functions to work when electricity usage is at its lowest and rates are cheapest? Six students at Michigan Technological University are developing a way to do just that. The group has designed a prototype for a “smart meter” that would replace the average home’s watt meter.

    “There’s currently a mismatch between how much electrical power we can generate and when consumers need that power,” faculty advisor John Lukowski says. “The goal was to create a device that would record, analyze and store data about energy consumption and current time-of-day energy pricing.”

    Not only can homeowners learn when power usage (and price) are at their lowest, but the meter also can control household devices based on time and date.

    “Say it has been determined that the price of power is lowest at 2 a.m.,” says Lukowski. “The meter can be set to automatically start the dishwasher at that time each day.”

    Until theory becomes reality, the group recommended several ways to be smarter power consumers:

    • Run the vacuum, do a load of wash, or turn on the outdoor sprinklers when neighbors are asleep—very early in the morning or late at night.
    • Don’t run five household devices at once—try to stretch out the usage throughout the day (and night).
    • Run the dishwasher and clothes dryer at times when you are not also using lights, TV, computers and other electrical devices.

  • New research could help model Gulf oil spill dispersion

    From Green Right Now Reports

    The eruption of a volcano in Iceland and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have drawn attention to the concept of how particles flow both in the air and in water. A pair of researchers at Virginia Tech and at École Polytechnique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium say that flow, though seemingly random, can be characterized more effectively.

    Shane Ross and colleague Francois Lekien reported their findings in the publication Chaos. Their research “will aid scientists and engineers in understanding and in controlling this type of global-scale phenomena, such as pollution dispersion in the atmosphere and the ocean, and large-scale transport of biological organisms, including airborne plant pathogens and respiratory disease agents,” said Ishwar Puri, head of the Engineering Science and Mechanics department at Virginia Tech.

    The current BP spill, for instance, could be modeled using Ross and Lekien’s findings to provide greater insight into how the particles might be dragged into the Gulf of Mexico’s Loop Current.

    Ross and Lekien said they employed existing scientific principles of Lagrangian coherent structures, which reveals the separation of the atmosphere into dynamically distinct regions, to investigate the shapes of geophysical flow patterns. They used the 2002 discovery of the Antarctic hole in their work because they viewed it as a “prototype atmospheric event” allowing for their studies on topological divisions on the mixing and transport of atmospheric tracers.

    Reviewing data from the event, they were able to determine that an isolated “blob of air” was slowly rotating over Antarctica. Lagrangian coherent structures, some which repel nearby air and some that attract it, formed inside the vortex. The vortex pinched off, sending the northwestern part of the ozone hole off into the mid latitude range while the southwestern portion returned to its regular position over the South Pole.

    Consequently, they write, when there is more than one vortex flow on a sphere, such as the planet Earth, “complicated spatial structures can arise and evolve, such as the polar vortex split.” They were able to model this event, capturing some of its dynamic features.

  • Kudzu may also contribute to ozone pollution

    From Green Right Now Reports

    Photo: James H. Miller, USDA

    Photo: James H. Miller, USDA

    Here’s one more reason to bemoan the spread of kudzu throughout the southeastern United States: When the ubiquitous “vine that ate the South” isn’t gobbling up landscapes and devastating ecosystems, it also is adding to ozone pollution, a new report says.

    In the May 17 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researcher John Hickman and colleagues (who worked together at Stony Brook University) concluded that kudzu is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen at a high rate, potentially altering the nitrogen cycle. Hickman, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, compared nitrogen cycling and nitrogen oxide fluxes from both invaded and unaffected soils.

    “Kudzu had the potential to add a lot of nitrogen to soils, so we expected to see some pretty big impacts on the soils of invaded ecosystems in the United States,” he said. “It turns out that the changes you can’t see in a kudzu invasion are just as dramatic as the ones you can.”

    Measurements in Georgia showed that some rates of nitrogen cycling were up to ten times faster in soils where kudzu had invaded. In addition to profound changes in rates of several components of nitrogen cycle, the researchers found that kudzu caused a doubling of emissions of nitric oxide from soils. Along with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitric oxide is the key precursor to ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere.

    “Air pollution is a risk that hasn’t been considered much in the conversation about invasive species, but it’s something we may have to pay more attention to,” Hickman said.

    Though it wasn’t examined in the study, kudzu also emits isoprene, a VOC produced in large quantities by certain plant species, which is involved in reactions with NOx to form ozone.

    “In the case of kudzu, you have a plant that is generating NOx from the soil and emitting VOC’s from its leaves—it’s like a living tailpipe,” Hickman said.

    “Maybe they’ll start calling kudzu ‘the vine that choked the South.’”

  • American University plans to be carbon neutral by 2020

    From Green Right Now Reports

    A worker installs solar panels at American University's School of International Service. Photo: Jeff Watts

    A worker installs solar panels at American University's School of International Service. Photo: Jeff Watts

    American University plans to become a carbon-neutral campus, and the Washington D.C.-based institution is even willing to set an ambitious deadline: 2020.

    “We have used the geographical limitations of our urban 84-acre campus in the nation’s capital to our advantage to more aggressively pursue renewable energy and carbon offsets,” said Chris O’Brien, director of sustainability. “Of the few plans that call for earlier carbon neutral dates, American University’s size, location, and academic focus make our active pursuit of sustainability distinctive.”

    To meet its goals, AU will employ four strategies: reduce consumption, produce renewable energy, buy green power and buy and develop carbon offsets.

    American, Northern Arizona State University, Antioch University, and the University of Montana are the only doctorate-granting universities with 2020 carbon neutrality dates. The announcement comes two years after President Neil Kerwin signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), pledging that AU would work to achieve carbon neutrality.

    Of the 685 signers, 200 have submitted plans thus far. Many call for carbon neutrality by 2025, 2040, or 2050.

    A recent purchase of wind-generated renewable energy credits equivalent to 100 percent of the university’s annual electricity usage has already helped the university progress more than halfway toward its carbon-neutrality goal. The campus also features a new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold-designed building for the School of International Service, and the university is participating in a pilot program with the U.S. Green Building Council to develop a streamlined approach to green building certification for campuses.

    Currently, a team is working to certify 30 AU buildings to LEED standards.

    American University’s student population is around 11,000, counting undergraduates and graduates.

  • Lost transparency poses threat to Lake Tahoe’s native fish species

    From Green Right Now Reports

    Photo: Nevada Division of State Parks

    Photo: Nevada Division of State Parks

    Lovers of California’s picturesque Lake Tahoe long have lamented development’s effect on the lake’s legendary deep blue water and high transparency. Now, a study by Miami University’s Global Change Limnology Laboratory suggests that the change may be a threat to native fish species, too.

    According to the group, maintaining high ultraviolet (UV) transparency may be the key to reducing invasion of warm-water fish, such as bluegill. The study, led by Andrew Tucker, doctoral student in zoology at Miami, is published in the March issue of the journal Ecology.

    The study examined how underwater UV radiation (UVR) can regulate warm-water fish invasion. Changes in the UV transparency of the waters of the sub-alpine lake have allowed warm-water fish species to invade and spread. Transparency has decreased over the past several decades, and a number of nonnative warm-water fish species have established populations in some portions of the lake.

    “For example, invasive bluegill can only nest successfully when human disturbance such as shoreline development reduces UV transparency,” said Craig Williamson, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Ecosystem Ecology and head of the Global Change Limnology Lab. “This creates a UV refuge, an ‘invasion window,’ which enables the bluegill to spawn in the surface waters where the temperatures are warm enough for survival of its embryos and larvae.”

    The study indicated that dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and chlorophyll were important regulators of variation in the UVR in near shore areas of Lake Tahoe. Regulating chlorophyll and “DOC inputs” or runoff could help stem future declines in UVR transparency and in turn help reduce invasion of nonnative fish.

    An understanding of the mechanisms underlying UVR transparency in Lake Tahoe could “enable us to better understand how regional and global environmental changes related to the factors that mediate UVR transparency could, in turn, affect habitat invasibility in the large, highly transparent lake,” Tucker said. “We suspect that this framework and our results could be directly relevant to other transparent lakes.”