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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Scientists forecast decades of ash clouds

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    His findings coincide with new warnings that the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, which has disrupted air traffic across Europe for several weeks, could carry on for many months — and possibly years.

    Some geologists have also warned of a serious threat from a fourth volcano, Katla, which lies 15 miles to the east of Eyjafjallajokull. Two of its past three eruptions seemed to be triggered by those of its smaller neighbour and a report issued just before Eyjafjallajokull blew suggested Katla was “close to failure [eruption]”.

    The three other volcanoes cited by Thordarson as being potentially close to a large eruption are Grimsvotn, Hekla and Askja — all of which are bigger than Eyjafjallajokull.

    In the past, they have proved devastating. Hekla alone has erupted about 20 times since AD874, pouring out a total of two cubic miles of lava from a line of fissures that stretches 3Å miles across the mountain.

    There was a minor eruption in 2000 and geologists have reported that snow is once again melting on Hekla’s summit, suggesting that magma is rising.

    Grimsvotn, another highly active volcano, lies under the huge Vatnajokull glacier in Iceland’s southeast. An eruption in 1996 saw much of this glacial ice melt, causing a flood that washed away the country’s main ring road.

    It is linked to the massive Laki fissure volcano whose 1783 eruption ejected so much ash into the atmosphere that it cooled the entire northern hemisphere for nearly three years. The resulting low temperatures caused crop failures and famines that killed 2m people and helped trigger the French Revolution.

    Thordarson believes that the behaviour of the volcanoes is linked to movements in the earth’s crust which create massive subterranean stresses over wide areas.

    As these stresses build up, more volcanoes erupt and as the stress disappears, the volcanoes subside again.

    The theory is a controversial one. Gillian Foulger, professor of geophysics at Durham University, suggests that historic clusters of eruptions could well have occurred by chance. She said: “This needs rigorous statistical support.”

    However, both she and Thordarson agree that Europe needs to take the threat of further Icelandic eruptions more seriously, including improving the monitoring of active volcanoes. Foulger is writing to David Willetts, the new science minister, suggesting Britain could support Iceland in such a project.

    She said: “There are about 35 active [big] volcanoes in Iceland and if we put a high quality seismograph and some global positioning equipment on each one we would often be able to tell in advance if an eruption was coming. The cost is tiny compared with the potential economic damage from an unexpected eruption.”

    The most pressing question for Britain and the rest of Europe is how long the current eruption will continue.

    Professor Stephen Sparks, from the earth sciences department at Bristol University, said: “Every volcano has its own personality. This particular volcano has erupted before in 1612 and 1821. When it erupted in 1821 it continued erupting for 15 months so there is no reason why it could not last a similar period of time.”

    The new rules in place for aviation mean Iceland and Europe can probably cope with Eyjafjallajokull, but an eruption by Katla could cause far bigger problems.

    Dr Richard Waller, senior lecturer in physical geography at Keele University, believes the ash cloud could be immense, but for Iceland the biggest problem would be massive flooding.

    “Katla has a crater filled with ice more than 2,000ft thick, which will all melt,” he said.

  • Ocean fish could vanish in 40 years UN

    Ocean fish could vanish in 40 years: UN

    AAP May 18, 2010, 9:03 am

     

     

    The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts say.

    “If the various estimates we have received… come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish,” Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program’s green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

    A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones – ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.

    The report, opened to preview on Monday, also assesses how surging global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.

    UNEP director Achim Steiner said the world was “drawing down to the very capital” on which it relies.

    However, “our institutions, our governments are perfectly capable of changing course, as we have seen with the extraordinary uptake of interest. Around, I think it is almost 30 countries now have engaged with us directly, and there are many others revising the policies on the green economy,” he said.

    Collapse of fish stocks is not only an environmental matter. One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main animal protein source, according to the UN.

    The Green Economy report estimates there are 35 million people fishing around the world on 20 million boats. About 170 million jobs depend directly or indirectly on the sector, bringing the total web of people financially linked to 520 million.

    According to the UN, 30 per cent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 per cent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.

    The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish – with little attempt to allow the fish populations to recover.

    Fishing fleet capacity is “50 to 60 per cent” higher than it should be, Sukhdev said.

    “What is scare here is fish,” he said, calling for an increase in the stock of fish, not the stock of fishing capacity.”

    Creating marine preservation areas to allow female fish to grow to full size, thereby hugely increasing their fertility, is one vital solution, the report says.

    Another is restructuring the fishing fleets to favor smaller boats that – once fish stocks recover – would be able to land bigger catches.

    “We believe solutions are on hand, but we believe political will and clear economics are required,” Sukhdev said.

     

  • Scientists find vast unreported oil leak from Deepwater horizon

     

    After studying footage of the gushing oil scientists on board the research vessel Pelican, which is gathering samples and information about the spill, said that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day, or 3.4 million gallons a day. The flow rate is currently calculated at 5,000 barrels a day.

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    The vast amounts of oil pouring from the rig, which exploded on April 20 killing 11 people, is depleting the oxygen in the immediate area, raising fears that it could kill most of the sea life near the plumes. Oxygen levels have already dropped by 30 per cent near some of the plumes.

    “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said. “That is alarming.”

    News of the plumes came as the Obama Administration increased pressure on BP with a demand for “immediate public clarification” from Tony Hayward, the chief executive, over the company’s intentions about paying the costs associated with the spill. “The public has a right to a clear understanding of BP’s commitment to redress all the damage that has occurred or that will occur in the future as a result of the spill,” said Ken Salazar, the Interior Secretary.

    The company is still struggling to cap the leaking underwater oil well. Last night they were making a second attempt to insert a mile-long catheter into the leaking pipe by remote control, after a previous attempt to stem the flow by clogging a faulty seabed valve with rubbish hit a snag.

    Technicians using joysticks are operating robotic submersibles that will attempt to place a 6in (15cm) wide relief pipe into the remains of a 21in pipe that used to connect the wellhead to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on the surface.

    The aim is to use the relief pipe to pump a mix of densely packed items such as golf balls, knotted rope and lumps of plastic into the oil well’s blowout preventer — the giant safety device that failed to work when the rig exploded last month.

    An earlier attempt to place a containment dome over the leak was abandoned after the freezing temperatures and high underwater pressure caused a build up of mushy ice that blocked the funnel intended to carry the leaking oil to tankers on the surface of the sea.

    The company is drilling a relief well that will eventually seal the leak, but that may take up to three months to complete.

  • THE PROBLEM WITH HYBRID CARS

    This April, Lithium Energy Japan announced a huge new plant to produce 4.4 million lithium battery cells each year. Lithium-ion batteries hold a greater charge than nickel batteries, and so lithium is in high demand. But as demand increases, the years of production that can be expected to be obtained from ‘known reserves’ drops.

    Japan is planning on offering economic aid worth hundreds of millions of dollar in the form of loans to build a geothermal power plant in Bolivia, according to reports in early April.  South Korea is also keenly eyeing reserves in the South American country.

    The reason? Around half of the world’s lithium is thought to be in the Uyuni Great Lake of Bolivia, and the Japanese government believes that to win contracts with Bolivia, in the face of competition from other countries, an edge is needed. Similar moves have been carried out by Toshiba in Kazakhstan.

    A Toyota supplier has even formed a partnership to mine lithium in Argentina: a ‘green’ car industry appears to be no magic pill for the car industry’s problems.

     

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    But a potentially more troubling issue is the use of rare earth metals, with up to 1kg used in each motor, and up to 15kg used in the batteries of hybrid cars.

    There are, however, plenty of metals which are perhaps even ‘rarer’ than those called rare earth metals.

    Consumer-tech ‘rare metals’

    Tellurium, meanwhile, was extremely rare before its use within solar cells for solar panels was discovered, and prices have risen years as supplies of the metal – mostly sold as a by-product of copper mining for use as an alloy – are bought up. As with many rare metals, there’s no agreed timeframe on when we may run out.

    The big growth in the LCD business has also seen a sky-rocketing of indium prices. Mined as a by-product of zinc, some estimates even suggest we may run out of indium in the next ten years, although indium miners might have other ideas. According to Thomas Graedel at Yale University, indium prices rose from around US$200-300 per kilogram in the late 90s to around US$800 in 2006.

    Tantalum, says Graedel, has faced similar constraints to demand. It’s essential for many mobile phone base stations (the towers dotted around the country). Substitutes exist, but they come with major downsides. The battery life isn’t good enough, and they drop too many calls.

    Zirconium and its byproduct hafnium also present major problems. Zirconium, mined in Australia amongst other places, is important for nuclear reactors, but we’re not sure how much is left. Hafnium, meanwhile, been used in nuclear control rods, but is being touted as the metal that will be the core of the CPUs of the future. Some estimates put hafnium ‘reserves’ at as little as ten years, but as usual, there are no universally accepted numbers.

    Using the US’s National Research Council’s figures, Graedel also found a number of others to ‘fall into the region of danger’ on his ‘criticality matrix’, which also takes into account how vital a metal is in its uses.

    Rhodium, essential in catalytic converters, was found to be at high risk of impact disruption, and high risk of supply constraint.

    Platinum    , used in electrical circuits, catalytic converters, thermometers, dentistry equipment, currently popular in jewellery and, of course, platinum recording disks, was also found to be at high risk of supply.

    Manganese, used in disposable batteries and as a rust treatment, was found to be in danger, as was niobium, an important additive to steel alloys, often used to strengthen pipes such as gas pipelines.

    John Tilton at the Colorado School of Mines, working with Brian Skinner at Yale University, also found that supplies were ‘restricted’ to less than twenty five years for silver, gold, mercury, lead and thorium, often used in nuclear reactors.

    While their research was based on figures from 1994 – leaving them open to claims that estimations may change over time – their findings illustrate the fact that supply constraints must be considered.

    What’s clear is that we’re building and consuming products with, currently, little concern as to where the metals come from. And while the market’s price fluctuations could ensure that the right metal find themselves in the right place, for the right price, if attitudes and approaches do not change by choice, they may be changed by force.

    For more on e-recycling, click here.

  • Huge swell sinks wave energy generator

     

    Early efforts to tow the barge to safety were abandoned due to the rough conditions.

    The Chief Executive Officer of the Port Kembla Ports Corporation, Dom Figliomeni, says the structure was battered against the break water.

    He says attempts to retrieve the barge will be made this week.

    “There’s been no impact on the provision of services to shipping and where it is at the moment it’s not a navigation hazard,” he said.

    “We will continue to monitor its location.”

    The generator’s Sydney-based developer, Oceanlinx is investigating what happened.

    Tags: disasters-and-accidents, environment, alternative-energy, tidal-energy, australia, nsw, port-kembla-2505

  • Labor needs detente with the Greens

     

    “My seat of Melbourne has been vulnerable to the Greens since 2001. I now hold it by only 4.7 per cent . . . There are three Labor seats in my area at risk of falling to the Greens in the forthcoming Victorian State election,” Tanner, the Finance Minister, wrote.

    “Why is this happening? If the Greens had voted with Labor, the Senate would have passed the government’s climate change legislation, because two Liberals crossed the floor to vote with us. We’re now left with no legislation at all. The Greens’ political posturing took precedence over the need for action on climate change.”

    Tanner, nominally from the ALP’s Left, presents as an approachable, moderate and articulate voice for Labor (he is, in some circles, viewed as a potential leader) but his comments about the Greens tell just part of a more complex story.

    It is true that the Greens voted against the government’s emissions trading scheme legislation on the grounds that they believed its low greenhouse reduction targets squandered an opportunity to achieve more ambitious cuts. Yet it should be remembered that the government refused to negotiate with them at all.

    It was determined, instead, to win passage of its emissions legislation with the support of Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals. Remember the timing? Rudd was insisting on having the legislated ETS bill in his pocket when he went to the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen late last year.

    To take any other path, he said at the time, would be an act of political cowardice.

    Rudd, his deputy Julia Gillard and the Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, did not foresee (although plenty of signs were afoot) the possibility that Turnbull would be rolled and the Liberals would change their position with their leader before the Senate vote. Regardless, they have continued to blame the Liberals and to a lesser extent the Greens, for what has, effectively, been the death of the emissions trading scheme.

    It has been about a year since Rudd has had a long face-to-face meeting with Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown. Why so long? The Greens – together with one or two recalcitrant Liberal senators and perhaps independent Nick Xenophon – might have co-operated, in the right circumstances, to pass the government’s ETS bill.

    Even today, with Rudd’s environmental credentials under a cloud in the face of what promises to be a tight election, his government has been unwilling to enter good faith negotiations with the Greens over an interim carbon tax.

    “Kevin was crystal clear from the start – the Greens couldn’t be allowed any sort of ownership of the [emissions] trading scheme and the Liberals would have to support it so that they’d wear the [associated increased] costs to voters,” a Labor source said.

    It might be politically convenient for the government to blame the Liberals and the Greens for scuttling its climate change legislation but this flies in the face of the reality of legislating in a two-chamber parliament.

    Voters expect governments to push their legislation through the Senate by force of negotiation. It should be remembered that is how the Keating government attained its Mabo legislation, how the Howard government won its Goods and Services Tax and how the Rudd government has already secured the passage of numerous contentious bills including those to facilitate the 2009 economic stimulus measures.

    It will also need to negotiate the passage of its super profits tax on mining companies, its Commonwealth-state health reforms and its cigarette tax hikes.

    The next Parliament will, hypothetically, be easier for the government.

    That is because, barring a complete collapse in the Green vote, Brown’s party is almost assured of winning the balance of Senate power in its own right. Sure, the Greens would like to knock off Tanner, Plibersek and Albanese – but balance of Senate power is arguably more critical.

    If Labor is returned, if the Liberals remain opposed to an ETS and if whoever happens to be leading Labor in 2012 wants to have another go at emissions trading, the Greens will hold the key.

    It would seem to make sense, therefore, for Labor to begin building a more constructive relationship with the Greens.

    In his post-budget speech to the National Press Club last week, Swan made it clear his government would do what was expected of it by attempting to negotiate the resources super profits tax through the Senate. In the same breath he uttered the Labor mantra that the Liberal Party was responsible for the postponement of emissions trading.

    Governments can blame oppositions all they like for stalling their agendas. But in the end it is the government, not the opposition, that seeks re-election on the back of its legislative achievements.

    Towards the end of last week it appeared that the prime minister was displaying new conviction on climate change.

    “We’ve been frustrated domestically, politically, frustrated internationally by the lack of progress there, but we will not be deterred, we will progress this matter and we will achieve the best possible means of bringing down our greenhouse gas reductions, greenhouse gas levels in the future,” he declared.

    “And the bottom line is this . . . there is no way you can stare in the mirror in the future and say that you have passed up the core opportunity to act on climate change. I will not do that.”

    Pick up the telephone, Kevin. And call Bob Brown.

    Source: smh.com.au