EcoRadio

Category: Archive

Archived material from historical editions of The Generator

  • Land clearing caused drought says Uni

    Dr McAlpine headed the research with Queensland Natural Resources and Water Department (DNRW) principal scientist Jozef Syktus.

    "Our work shows that the 2002-03 El Nino drought in eastern Australia was on average two degrees hotter because of vegetation clearing," Dr McAlpine said.

    "Based on this research, it would be fair to say that the current drought has been made worse by past clearing of native vegetation."

    The research’s co-authors are the UQ’s Dr Hamish McGowan, Associate Professor Stuart Phinn and Dr Ravinesh Deo as well as Dr Peter Lawrence of the University of Colorado and Dr Ian Watterson of CSIRO.

    Dr McAlpine said their research showed average summer rainfall decreased by between four and 12 per cent in eastern Australia, and four and eight per cent in southwest Western Australia – regions that have had the most extensive clearing over the years.

    He said eastern Australia was between 0.4 and two degrees warmer, and southwest WA was between 0.4 and 0.8 degrees warmer.

    "Native vegetation moderates climate fluctuations and this has important, largely unrecognised consequences for agriculture and stressed land and water resources," Dr McAlpine said.

    "Australian native vegetation holds more moisture that subsequently evaporates and recycles back as rainfall.

    "It also reflects into space less short-wave solar radiation… and this process keeps the surface temperature cooler and aids cloud formation."

    The study titled "Modelling Impacts of Vegetation Cover Change on Regional Climate" will be published later this year in Geophysical Research Letters, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.

  • Kansas rejects Coal Plant on Global Warming grounds

    In the past, air permits, which are required before construction of combustion facilities, have been denied over emissions such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. But Roderick L. Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said yesterday that "it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing."

    The Kansas agency’s decision caps a controversy over a proposal by Sunflower Electric Power, a rural electrical cooperative, to build a pair of big, 700-megawatt, coal-fired plants in Holcomb, a town in the western part of the state, at a cost of about $3.6 billion. One unit would have supplied power to parts of Kansas; the other, to be owned by another rural co-op, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, would have provided electricity to fast-growing eastern Colorado.

    Together the plants would have produced 11 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, nearly as much as a group of eight Northeastern states hope to save by 2020 through a mandatory cap-and-trade program they plan to impose. The attorneys general from those states had written a letter opposing the permit.

    The proposed Holcomb plants had become the center of a political dispute in Kansas, inflaming traditional tensions between the eastern and western parts of the state, dividing labor unions and posing a test for the energy policies of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is head of the Democratic Governors Association and is believed to harbor aspirations for federal office.

    Kansas, long a conservative Republican stronghold, is not generally considered to be on the leading edge of environmental causes. The GOP leadership in both the state Senate and House of Representatives endorsed the project. Although the regional United Steelworkers union opposed the plant, the state AFL-CIO supported it.

    "Now the Sebelius administration rockets to the forefront of the states [working] to solve the global warming crisis," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club lawyer.

    Like many governors, Sebelius has been promoting the expanded use of renewable energy, especially wind. In her state of the state address this year, she said: "The question of where we get our energy is . . . no longer just an economic issue, nor solely an issue of national security. Quite simply, we have a moral obligation to be good stewards of this state."

    But she said she was leaving the air permit decision on the Holcomb plants to Bremby, her close political ally.

    Tri-State and Sunflower spokesmen sharply criticized the decision and said they were examining their legal options. Bremby’s decision "has no basis in law or regulation," said Steve Miller, a Sunflower spokesman. "We still believe fiercely that this is the right project, that this is the right thing to do for customers and that the secretary has made a horrible error."

    Miller said that Sebelius had pledged not to oppose the plants but that her position was clear after her "moral steward" remark. "That implies that we’re not moral stewards of the land, which we don’t appreciate one bit," he said.

  • Tree dwelling fish reproduces on its own

    Biologists studying the killifish say they astonished it can cope for so long out of its natural habitat.

    The discovery, along with its ability to breed without a mate, must make the mangrove killifish, Rivulus marmoratus Poey, one of the oddest fish known to man.

    Around two inches long, they normally live in muddy pools and the flooded burrows of crabs in the mangrove swamps of Florida, Latin American and Caribbean.

    The latest discovery was made by biologists wading through swamps in Belize and Florida who found hundreds of killifish hiding out of the water in the rotting branches and trunks of trees.

    The fish had flopped their way to their new homes when their pools of water around the roots of mangroves dried up. Inside the logs, they were lined up end to end along tracks carved out by insects.

    Dr Scott Taylor of the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Programme in Florida admitted the creatures were a little odd.

    "They really don’t meet standard behavioural criteria for fish," he told New Scientist magazine.

    Although the cracks inside logs make a perfect hiding place, conditions can be cramped. The fish – which are usually fiercely territorial – are forced to curb their aggression.

    Another study, published earlier this year, revealed how they alter their bodies and metabolism to cope with life out of water.

    Their gills are altered to retain water and nutrients, while they excrete nitrogen waste through their skin.

    These changes are reversed as soon as they return to the water.

    Previously their biggest claim to fame was that they are the only known vertebrate – animal with a backbone – to reproduce without the need for a mate.

    Killifish can develop both female and male sexual organs, and fertilise their eggs while they are still in the body, laying tiny embryos into the water.

    They are not the only fish able to breathe air. The walking catfish of South-east Asia has gills that allow it to breathe in air and in water.

    The climbing perch of India can suffocate in water unless it can also gulp in air.

  • Red wine and Green tea may extend human life

    Diet it seems is a major contributory factor.An experiment with the worms proves that sugar turns on a genetic sequence that increases the amount of insulin produced by an organism, which in turn causes the body to demand more sugar. This increases damage to cells in the body, speeding up the slow degradation of cells that contribute to aging. Red wine and green tea have been shown to help repair cells and contribute to an increased lifespan.

    The most significant finding is that the worms remained vigorous till until the very end of their extended lives. In human terms it would mean that a person would remain young for decades, growing old very slowly. It also suggests a radical new method for treating maladies of aging such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and some cancers, which might be put off or eliminated if youth is extended. ‘Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases,’ says Kenyon. ‘So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease.’

    When asked whether it was possible to be immortal Kenyon says ‘I think it might be possible. I’ll tell you why. You can think about the life span of a cell being the integral of two vectors in a sense, the force of destruction and the force of prevention, maintenance and repair. In most animals the force of destruction has still got the edge. But why not bump up the genes just a little bit, the maintenance genes. All you have to do is have the maintenance level a little higher. It doesn’t have to be much higher. It just has to be a little higher, so that it counterbalances the force of destruction. And don’t forget, the germ lineage is immortal. So it’s possible at least in principle.’

  • PM told to get moving on emissions trading

    One of Australia’s most prominent energy experts says the economy will suffer serious damage unless an emissions trading scheme is rapidly introduced.

    Ian Dunlop is a former chairman of the Australian Coal Association and the Australian Institute of Company Directors and is the head of a CSIRO research centre.

    Mr Dunlop has accused the Prime Minister John Howard of a lack of leadership on climate change.

    He says the technology is available to make change and the extent of the problem is being downplayed.

    "We’ve been very good at managing the sort of incremental improvement of a resource-based economy, where every year we tweak it a little bit," he said.

    "We put in WorkChoices, we do things like that, we make it slightly better, but that’s management.

    "What we need now is leadership that really focuses on the big issue, which is climate change, and how we’re going to address that."

  • Ethanol plant shelved for lack of support

    The development of a $120 million ethanol plant in Condobolin, in central western New South Wales, has been shelved.

    The proponent, Agri Energy Limited, has announced a restructure and will not be going ahead with any of its development plans in Australia.

    Instead, the company say it has decided to invest offshore.

    The announcement, made through the Australian Stock Exchange, says the uncertainty of grain supply and lack of local support for alternative fuels drove the decision.

    Company chief executive officer Wayne Turner has declined to comment on the restructure.

    Approval for the plant at Condobolin had been expected to be announced by the NSW Department of Planning within weeks.

    Lachlan Shire Council general manager George Cowan says the decision will devastate the local community and council.

    He says the council had worked hard to make Condobolin an attractive location for the company to develop its new plant.

    "Council supported it strongly. We have in fact discounted, quite substantially, contributions to infrastructure to try and attract the development to this council, versus some other sites that were talked about in NSW," he said.

    "It was well supported and would be, should it be reinvigorated."