EcoRadio

Author: admin

  • Rebuilding New Orleans to be energy efficient

    Related article from Renewable Energy News

    New Orleans is going green as it continues rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina — with a big assist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

    Sprouting in once-flooded neighborhoods are some new energy-efficient homes featuring rooftop solar panels, extensive insulation and more efficient climate systems. These standards will be applied citywide in schools and hospitals, too.

    Many of the improvements are based on renewable energy programs and strategies provided by DOE and the laboratory.

    Nor are the energy-saving improvements limited to hurricane reconstruction. Even before Katrina, many of the city’s commercial buildings and dwellings were blighted. Entire neighborhoods were built decades ago without insulation and are subject to termite infestations.

    The lab’s commitment to demonstration projects and community partnerships has encouraged city officials to embrace renewable energy.

    Now the motto “Cleaner … Smarter” is stenciled on the city’s new buses that run on a 5 percent biodiesel blend, and New Orleans has been selected as one of DOE’s Solar America Cities.

    “New Orleans has an amazingly vibrant local culture,” says senior project leader Phil Voss, who returned to Golden in January after 18 months in New Orleans. He is the lab’s first energy expert to be embedded in a field project.

    “And until now, that same culture has not been open to many outside ideas – like energy efficiency.”

  • British industrialists in denial about climate change

    Related article from UK Guardian

    Senior figures in the manufacturing industry do not accept that human activities are driving global warming or that action needs to be taken to prepare for its effects, the UK government’s science minister said today.

    Lord Drayson said recent discussions with leaders in the car industry and other businesses had left him “shocked” at the number of climate change deniers among senior industrialists. Of those who acknowledged that global temperatures were rising, many blamed it on variations in the sun’s activity.

    Speaking in London to mark the launch of a new centre that will gather information from satellites to improve understanding of how the Earth’s environment is changing, Lord Drayson said there was an urgent need to restate the scientific evidence for global warming and called for companies to focus on their environmental obligations despite the pressures of the economic downturn.

    “There is a significant minority of senior managers who do not accept the evidence for climate change and don’t see the need to take action,” Drayson said. “It really shocked me that those views are held, and it’s not limited to the car industry.”

    “The industrialists are faced with a very difficult challenge, which is huge infrastructure investment in existing ways of doing business and very difficult global economic circumstances.

    “The temptation is to say we’ll get round to dealing with climate change once we’ve fixed all this other stuff. We need to present them with the evidence to say this can’t wait, we need to fix both,” he added.

    The new centre will receive 33m pound over the next five years and will coordinate research using Earth-observing satellite data at 26 British universities and institutions. Known as the National Centre for Earth Observation, it will focus on ways to improve climate change models, sea level rise estimates, flooding forecasts and ways to predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It also hopes to develop improved weather forecasting software ahead of the London Olympics in 2012.

    A major task for the centre will be to use real-time measurements of sea ice melting, droughts and atmospheric conditions to hone computer models that climate scientists use to predict future warming and its effects.

    “Earth-orbiting satellites are revolutionising our understanding of planet Earth, in terms of how it works and what forces work against it, not least from climate change. But in order to get more from that data, to get climate information on 10 year scales, and on regional scales, we’ve got to iron out some significant issues we have with the computer models,” said Alan O’Neill, director of the centre.

    Some environmental processes are so poorly understood that they hinder the ability of climate models to make accurate predictions. The amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from deforestation in the tropics is so uncertain that estimates range from 0.7 to 2.6bn tonnes a year. Other scientists say that some feedback processes in the atmosphere are so unclear they do not even know if they will speed up global warming or slow it down.

    The centre was due to take data from Nasa’s ill-fated Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite, which crashed into the ocean near Antarctica shortly after take-off last month. The satellite was designed to bolster understanding of climate change by mapping levels of CO² in the atmosphere.

    Three new Earth observing satellites are scheduled to launch this year, including the European Space Agency’s Goce probe, which by mapping the Earth’s gravity field will reveal details of changes in ocean currents. Another satellite, Smos, will measure soil moisture and ocean salinity, with the third, cryosat-2, monitoring the thickness of continental ice sheets and sea ice cover.

  • Rainforest drought speeds up global warming

    Related article from Science Daily

    The Amazon is surprisingly sensitive to drought, according to new research conducted throughout the world’s largest tropical forest. The 30-year study, published in Science, provides the first solid evidence that drought causes massive carbon loss in tropical forests, mainly through killing trees.

    “For years the Amazon forest has been helping to slow down climate change. But relying on this subsidy from nature is extremely dangerous”, said Professor Oliver Phillips, from the University of Leeds and the lead author of the research.

    “If the earth’s carbon sinks slow or go into reverse, as our results show is possible, carbon dioxide levels will rise even faster. Deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilise our climate.”

    The study, a global collaboration between more than 40 institutions, was based on the unusual 2005 drought in the Amazon. This gave scientists a glimpse into the region’s future climate, in which a warming tropical North Atlantic may cause hotter and more intense dry seasons.

    The 2005 drought sharply reversed decades of carbon absorption, in which Amazonia helped slow climate change.

    In normal years the forest absorbs nearly 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The drought caused a loss of more than 3 billion tonnes. The total impact of the drought – 5 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – exceeds the annual emissions of Europe and Japan combined.

    “Visually, most of the forest appeared little affected, but our records prove tree death rates accelerated. Because the region is so vast, even small ecological effects can scale-up to a large impact on the planet’s carbon cycle,” explained Professor Phillips.

    Some species, including some important palm trees, were especially vulnerable”, said Peruvian botanist and co-author Abel Monteagudo, “showing that drought threatens biodiversity too.”

    The Amazon accounts for more than half of the world’s rainforest, covering an area 25 times as great as the United Kingdom. No other ecosystem on Earth is home to so many species nor exerts such control on the carbon cycle.

    The study involved 68 scientists from 13 countries working in RAINFOR, a unique research network dedicated to monitoring the Amazonian forests.

    To calculate changes in carbon storage they examined more than 100 forest plots across the Amazon’s 600 million hectares, identified and measured over 100,000 trees, and recorded tree deaths as well as new trees. Weather patterns were also carefully measured and mapped.

    In the wake of the 2005 drought the RAINFOR team took advantage of this huge natural experiment, and focused their measurements to assess how the drought had affected the forest.

    The study found that for at least 25 years the Amazon forest acted as a vast carbon sink. A similar process has also been occurring in Africa.

    In fact, over recent decades the tropical forests have absorbed one fifth of global fossil fuel emissions.

    But in 2005 this process was reversed. Tree death accelerated most where drought was strongest, and locations subject even to mild drying were affected. Because of the study, we now know the precise sensitivity of the Amazon to warming and drought.

    If repeated, Amazon droughts will accelerate climate warming and make future droughts even more damaging.

    The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

     

  • Tropical pastures may help fight climate chaos

    The related article below is from The Land

    A specialist researcher believes there are opportunities and significant challenges in reducing greenhouse gas emission from livestock production systems, while maintaining and even increasing productivity.

    The researcher is Beverley Henry from Meat and Livestock Australia’s Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change unit, who will be a speaker at the Australian Tropical Pastures Conference at Goondiwindi, Qld, on March 18-19.

    Dr Henry said about 60pc of Australia’s total methane emissions were derived from livestock industries.

    This represented about 11pc of total national greenhouse emissions.

    She said on current knowledge, the greenhouse emissions could be reduced by about 20pc.

    “The challenge is particularly difficult for extensive production systems where few options currently exist for practical intervention,” she said.

    “In some intensive livestock industries, strategies such as feeding supplements and using nitrification inhibitors can be developed for widespread application.”

    An acknowledged global authority on carbon sequestration under tropical pastures will speak at the conference dinner.

    He is Myles Fisher, a researcher and consultant from the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, Columbia.

    Dr Fisher has been involved in considerable research on the environmental benefits of tropical pastures in Africa, South America and other countries.

    Dr Fisher said pastures had a massive role to play in providing ecosystem services.

    “In South America, for example, there are 50 million hectares of introduced pastures that could impact on the global carbon balance,” he said.

    Dr Fisher said the spot price for accumulated carbon sold as an environmental service is $40/tonne on European exchanges.

    However, there were requirements that would have to be met before this option would be considered by buyers, he said.

  • Wong says Darling benefits by 11billion litres

    The following transcript is from the ABC

    TONY EASTLEY: In the old days landholders downstream from Toorale Station in western New South Wales had little to cheer about. They had seen their water flows diminish over the years.

    But a controversial buy-back of the huge station by the state and federal governments has them celebrating and describing the buyback as good value for money.

    Figures released by the Federal Water Minister show that the buyback has put an extra eleven-billion litres of water into the Darling River.

    But the Minister is still under pressure to do more about upstream users in Queensland.

    More from environment reporter, Shane McLeod.

    SHANE MCLEOD: The $23-million price tag brought plenty of criticism for the federal and New South Wales governments when they snapped up Toorale Station near Bourke last September. But some like the president of the Australian Floodplain Association, Wilcannia grazier Mark Etheridge, believes it’s money well spent.

    MARK ETHERIDGE: I think government paid about $24-million for it. We have had a relatively minor flow come down the Warrego now and there is probably a lot of money’s worth of water coming into the Darling.

    SHANE MCLEOD: The Federal Minister for Water Penny Wong thinks it’s a good investment. She says that as a result of the purchase, more than eleven billion litres of water has flowed on downstream.

    PENNY WONG: That is water that would otherwise have been taken if the station hadn’t been purchased; it would have been taken out of the river.

    SHANE MCLEOD: The Minister will pay a visit to Toorale later today. The return of water has been achieved because since taking control of the property, the governments haven’t used their water rights and they haven’t used the storages and levees on the property to force the Warrego’s floodwater out onto the plains.

    Mark Etheridge says it’s something that’s been possible because the flow in the Warrego hasn’t been at major flood levels.

    MARK ETHERIDGE: The issue at Toorale is that when the storages are full and the pipes in the storage banks can no longer handle the influx then water will spill out onto a flood plain; which in itself is not a bad thing. I guess more water would spill onto that floodplain given that the banks are there.

    Now in a moderate flow as we’ve just had, the banks and the pipes can handle the amount of water. In a larger flow then I think we need to look at altering the structures to allow more water down the channel of the Warrego itself.

    SHANE MCLEOD: While water’s flowing through Toorale, further upstream in Queensland so-called sleeper licences are being activated on the Warrego.

    The Minister says it’s being dealt with but keeping in mind the legal rights of those upstream.

    PENNY WONG: No, look these licences in Queensland are already existing property rights. Whether or not people agree with that, that is the position of those entitlements. What we have done through purchasing Toorale is return water to the river that would not otherwise have been in the Darling River and that is a good thing for the environment.

    TONY EASTLEY: Penny Wong, the Minister for Climate Change and Water speaking there with Shane McLeod.

  • Let’s talk about mowing

    This account of Steve Posselt’s journey down the Murray Darling river system paints a terrifying picture of the impact of our land management on our rivers. Posselt concludes that we have reduced our river systems to drains and killed the landscape in the bargain. He observes that the natural landscape works like a sponge, absorbing and holding water in good years that is released gradually, keeping the landscape alive during drought years. With the natural sponges drained, mined and exposed, the land is now vulnerable to drought.

    On The Generator, we recently interviewed a farmer who had invested in extra fencing to create many small paddocks so he can move his stock out of a paddock before the grass gets eaten right down. His logic is that water and sunlight are free resources that he needs to maximise. If the grass is eaten right down, then valuable sunlight is being wasted. As a result of this ‘Cell pasture management’ he has now has lush pasture that soaks up rainfall and delivers it deep into the soil. He measured that he now has about 700 tonnes of root matter per hectare. This compares to his neighbour’s paddocks that have 15! Same species of grasses, same species of sheep, a slightly lower stocking rate and so slightly lower profits in good years, but more than forty times the water, carbon and soil microbes. After rain, his neighbour’s topsoil washes away, exposing dry subsoil.

    I pondered Posselt’s drains and Marsh’s grasses last week as I walked by the river. Landcare is regenerating the riparian forest along a two hundred metre stretch of the river bank. This blocks the council mowers from a narrow sliver of the river bank where the town parks meet the mangroves. Where council mowers no longer go, the grasses have grown a metre high and the ground underfoot is boggy and spongy. Three months before, it was all one broad sweep of lawn. Simply letting the grass grow has reduced evaporation and the runoff of water to the point that a well kept lawn has become a bog.

    The natural environment is a sponge that holds water and releases it slowly. Nah duhr! How is it that we can absorb a statement like that intellectually but not see what it means until we are actually standing in it?

    Every time we expend precious energy on mowing grass, we increase evaporation and run off. As well, we produce methane from the rotting grass. Every time we unblock a meandering stream to make it flow faster, we rob the surrounding landscape of the opportunity to soak up more water.

    Lawn is great for sporting grounds and picnic areas, but unless you need to spread the picnic tartan or toss the bocce balls, you should let the grass grow longer. In fact, you should plant out the lawn with food trees and ground covers and build a living landscape that you can eat.

    Rediscover your natural sponge. It may well feed and water you in the hard times ahead.

    Giovanni is the founder of The Generator, on air Bay FM 99.9 this morning 9:00am – 11:00