Planet Earth
tfk | October 25, 2006The Energy Department is doing a major policy analysis of energy policy and future directions. Obviously, the major issue has to be finding ways to reduce our reliance on petroleum, especially from foreign sources, and replacing it with renewable domestic sources.
Who, then, do you expect was picked to head up the panel writing this report? The question is not who you would choose, but who you expect was chosen by the administration that put a Safari Club member in charge of our wild lands.
If you guessed Lee Raymond, former CEO of ExxonMobil, then congratulations, you understand the craven…
tfk | October 22, 2006Via NASA's EarthObservatory, we learn that Greenland is melting.
Historically minded readers know that Leif Erikson named Greenland (Groenland) after its verdant coastlines, even though most of its landmass is covered with ice.
Cinematically inclined readers know that the prospect of that massive ice-sheet melting enough to slip off of the island is a significant concern raised in Al Gore's recent film, An Inconvenient Truth.
Scientifically minded readers now know that a new paper in Science shows that "The amount of ice lost in two years is roughly the same as the amount of water that…
tfk | October 21, 2006Newfound bacteria in South Africa are fueled by radiation. The scientists who discovered it summarize the discovery by saying:
"The bottom line is: Water plus rocks plus radiation is enough to sustain life for millennia."
The paper in Science is less succint:
Most subsurface microbial ecosystems examined to date (including subseafloor sediments, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, terrestrial sedimentary aquifers, and petroleum reservoirs) ultimately depend on sunlight. …
To determine the long-term sustainability of a deep terrestrial environment, we examined the microbial diversity and metabolic…
tfk | October 10, 2006My article at Seedmagazine.com discusses the role of good government in promoting both economic development and in protecting natural resources, a claim some people find counterintuitive.
But examples abound. A week ago, a deal was announced for the U.S. to Cut Guatemala’s Debt for Not Cutting Trees:
the government of Guatemala has agreed, in exchange for the debt forgiveness, to invest $24.4 million over the next 15 years in conservation work in four nature regions.
This is the largest amount of debt that has been forgiven by the United States under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act,…
tfk | October 5, 2006India shows the shape of things to come:
Wind power may still have an image as something of a plaything of environmentalists more concerned with clean energy than saving money. But it is quickly emerging as a serious alternative not just in affluent areas of the world but in fast-growing countries like India and China that are avidly seeking new energy sources.
While the US focusses on finding ways to make coal cleaner, the global market in wind generation is dominated by European companies (Vestas, Gamesa, Siemens) and an upstart from India. The Indian electrical grid is unreliable, so many…
tfk | October 2, 2006The (valid) concern over the eminent domain ruling in Kelo v. New London has been misappropriated for some truly awful purposes. Activists in several western states are using it to push the idea that regulations are "takings," and are trying to block environmental regulation (or bankrupt states). As John Echeverria, executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, told the Post, "The agenda behind these initiatives is to make it so expensive for local and state governments to regulate land use that they can hardly function at all."
The underlying idea is based…
tfk | September 29, 2006I have no opinion about marijuana. Never toked, never cared to, and I can't say I feel strongly about whether anyone else chooses to, especially while cigarettes are legal.
That said, the periodic discoveries of pot farms in national parks and forests is a definite disaster, and one that can be fixed.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a Big raid in Marin County:
The discovery of 22,740 marijuana plants growing in and around Point Reyes National Seashore last week wasn't only the biggest pot seizure ever made in Marin County. It was an environmental mess that will take several months…
tfk | September 26, 2006As the Supreme Court begins to emerge from its summer hibernation, lots of stories are coming out previewing impending cases and controversies. The ACS blog takes a look at Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120 a case about whether the EPA is obliged by law to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
The Clean Air Act either requires or permits the EPA to regulate any “air pollutant” that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” Since it's fairly clear that climate change will endanger public health and welfare, that…
tfk | September 20, 2006Bush announces climate change plan: throw money at the problem:
The Bush administration Wednesday proposed to address climate change through a new program that would provide billions of dollars to accelerate development of technologies needed to reduce emissions of Earth-warming pollutants.
In a vacuum of ideas, this would be better than nothing. But we've heard essentially the same rhetoric from him for decades. And here we still are. Apparently the plan sets goals for limiting atmosphere heating emissions, but doesn't actually have an enforcement mechanism, other than the hope that…
tfk | September 6, 2006Before we begin, I should point out that the ozone hole and the greenhouse effect are totally different. A lot of people get confused about that, and I'm about to talk about both phenomena, so I'd hate to contribute to that confusion.
In 1980, scientists examining satellite measurements of the atmosphere over Antarctica noticed that a lot of data were missing. Checking through their FORTRAN code, they found that a data integrity check that tossed numbers that were improbably low was removing data from most of the southern polar region. In 1987, the nations of the world agreed to phase out…
tfk | August 28, 2006The Wichita Eagle editorializes on drought, a topic we've discussed before:
This summer, Kansas streams had "less volume of water than at any time since records have been kept," including the Dust Bowl years, said Steve Adams, natural resource coordinator for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.
Moreover, many state reservoirs are 10 to 20 feet or more below normal levels, making them unusable for recreation and threatening city water supplies.
Such problems aren't simply a result of less rainfall, Adams said; in some cases, through heavy use, "we're making more demands than what the…
tfk | August 27, 2006Ask A ScienceBlogger:
The destruction of the rainforest was a hot-button topic in the early '90s, but I haven't heard anything about it in ages. Are the rainforests still being destroyed wholesale? Are they all gone? Is it still important? Is the coffee I drink making it worse, and is "free trade" and/or "shade grown" coffee any better?
It is still a problem, and I've been remiss in not answering this question.
The simplest guide can be seen in this satellite image of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On the Haitian side, where forests nationwide have declined 5% between…
tfk | August 24, 2006One of the measures I use to judge whether someone is a serious thinker in Kansas politics is by seeing where they stand on water policy. It seems like there are drought warnings every summer, and those droughts have let other states leap ahead of Kansas in wheat production – a major part of our economy.
This summer looks to be no different:
Although the entire state is now under a drought warning, it has been a weird summer with some places inundated with water while others just a few miles down the road remain dry.
“We’ve seen some rain showers around the state, but overall it’s still very…