Climate Experts Tussle Over Details. Public Gets Whiplash.

When science is testing new ideas, the result is often a two-papers-forward-one-paper-back intellectual tussle among competing research teams. When the work touches on issues that worry the public, affect the economy or polarize politics, the news media and advocates of all stripes dive in. Under nonstop scrutiny, conflicting findings can make news coverage veer from one extreme to another, resulting in a kind of journalistic whiplash for the public.

This has been true for decades in health coverage. But lately the phenomenon has been glaringly apparent on the global warming beat.

Discordant findings have come in quick succession. How fast is Greenland shedding ice? Did human-caused warming wipe out frogs in the American tropics? Has warming strengthened hurricanes? Have the oceans stopped warming? These questions endure even as the basic theory of a rising human influence on climate has steadily solidified: accumulating greenhouse gases will warm the world, erode ice sheets, raise seas and have big impacts on biology and human affairs.

Scientists see persistent disputes as the normal stuttering journey toward improved understanding of how the world works. But many fear that the herky-jerky trajectory is distracting the public from the undisputed basics and blocking change. “One of the things that troubles me most is that the rapid-fire publication of unsettled results in highly visible venues creates the impression that the scientific community has no idea what’s going on,” said W. Tad Pfeffer, an expert on Greenland’s ice sheets at the University of Colorado.

“Each new paper negates or repudiates something emphatically asserted in a previous paper,” Dr. Pfeffer said. “The public is obviously picking up on this not as an evolution of objective scientific understanding but as a proliferation of contradictory opinions.”

Several experts on the media and risk said that one result could be public disengagement with the climate issue just as experts are saying ever more forcefully that sustained attention and action are needed to limit the worst risks. Recent polls in the United States and Britain show that the public remains substantially divided and confused over what is happening and what to do. Some environmentalists have blamed energy-dependent industries and the news media for stalemates on climate policy, arguing that they perpetuate a false sense of uncertainty about the basic problem.

But scientists themselves sometimes fail to carefully discriminate between what is well understood and what remains uncertain, said Kimberly Thompson, an associate professor of risk analysis and decision science at Harvard. And, Dr. Thompson said, the flow of scientific findings from laboratory (or glacier) to journal to news report is fraught with “reinforcing loops” that can amplify small distortions.

For example, she said, after scientists learn that accurate, but nuanced, statements are often left out of news accounts, they may pre-emptively oversimplify their description of some complex finding. Better, but more difficult, Dr. Thompson said, would be to work with the reporter to characterize the weight of evidence behind the new advance and seek to place it in context.

Click here to read the full NY Times article.

Garbage as Fuel?

We all remember the end of 'Back to the Future' when the Doc fills up his DeLorean with garbage. Well, one of the areas of biofuel technology that must be watched is 'garbage as fuel'. A recent New York Times article, Gassing Up With Garbage, solidly summarized the existing condition of the quest.

As with most venture capital projects, there is no agreed-upon timeline, for full-scale production, but the market is making the research and long-term viability spring to life. Much of the garbage will be agricultural waste (see the photo of pine waste collected by the Forest Service). Garbage as fuel can be part of the mandated 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022 solution.

Perhaps the day will come when landfills will be mined for organics and the operators can get paid twice for our waste!

It's Easy Being Green: Save Money, Save Emissions—Work from Home

The commuter lifestyle is on its way out, and it’s taking some 26 billion pounds of carbon dioxide pollution with it. Telecommuting, or working from home, is a practice that could be the answer to ever-increasing gasoline prices and help the environment at the same time. If employees who could telecommute did so at least two days a week, their fuel consumption and cost would decrease by 40 percent—and that’s just one of the benefits.

Telecommuting is a work arrangement that allows for flexibility in hours and location. It provides more time with family members, and replaces productivity time that is normally lost in commutes. Technology plays a part as well; virtual private networks and videoconferencing are shrinking the gap between the workplace and home.

Many U.S. workers have been forced to move away from city centers in pursuit of a more affordable house and lifestyle, but they now face extraordinarily high transportation costs. Nearly half of all commuters travel more than 20 miles round trip to and from work every day, and with the average price of gas at more than $4 per gallon, it can cost hundreds of dollars to commute every week.

In addition, traffic congestion continues to worsen in American cities of every size. Not only do commuters spend 4.2 billion hours in traffic each year, this idling wastes 2.9 billion gallons of fuel—enough to fill 58 fully loaded supertankers.

Click here to read the full Center for American Progress article.

Hydrogen Cars Will Need Multi-Billion Dollar Jumpstart, Experts Warn

WASHINGTON, DC, July 18, 2008 (ENS) - It will take massive subsidies from the U.S. government to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles a significant part of the nation's transportation future, according to a National Research Council report released Thursday. The study finds that even under a best-case scenario only about two million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be on American roads by 2020, less than one percent of the nation's estimated total number of cars and trucks.

Achieving that goal would require the government to pump at least $55 billion in subsidies over the next 15 years to make hydrogen vehicles cost competitive with conventional cars and trucks, the report concluded. Current government spending has equaled some $879 million since 2004.

But the chair of the committee that wrote the report said the suggested government funding should be put in perspective with other subsidies.

If current funding and policies continue, the federal subsidy for corn-based ethanol over the same time period is on pace to reach $160 billion, said Mike Ramage, a former vice president for research and development at Exxon Mobil and chair of the 17-member panel. "We need durable, substantial and sustainable government help to make this happen, just as there is for ethanol," he said.

The 249 page report, which was requested by the U.S. Energy Department, contends that the funding may well be worth it as it could set the stage for accelerated adoption of hydrogen vehicles by mid-century. The allure of hydrogen fuel cells is their potential to help shift the U.S. transportation sector away from oil and to cut emissions linked to climate change. The only byproduct from a hydrogen fuel cell is water.

The environmental benefits of hydrogen would be "less in the early years but would be dominant" over a longer time period, Ramage told reporters on a telephone briefing.
The committee's best case scenario envisions that if the technical and economic obstacles are overcome in the next 15 years, the growth of the technology could accelerate dramatically.

Click here for the full Environment New Service article.

U.S. Corn Production Feeds Expanding Gulf Dead Zone

WASHINGTON, DC, July 15, 2008 (ENS) - This year's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to be the largest on record and growing U.S. corn production is a primary cause of the worsening conditions, federal and state scientists said Tuesday.

The research team predicts that the dead zone - a stretch of water without enough oxygen to support marine life - could cover some 8,800 square miles this summer, an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey.

The forecast was announced today by scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University, LSU, who predicted the dead zone would be the largest since official monitoring began in 1985.

The dead zone forms annually off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, fed by nutrient heavy water from the Mississippi River. The country's largest river drains some 40 percent of the United States, including much of its agricultural heartland and its corn belt. From as far north as Minnesota, runoff water laden with fertilizer nutrients nitrogen and phosphorous flows into river and into the Gulf, stimulating an overgrowth of algae. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom and decompose, depleting oxygen levels in the water and choking out marine life.

The strong link between nutrients and the dead zone indicates that excess nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed during the spring are the primary human-influenced factor behind the expansion of the dead zone," said Rob Magnien, director of the NOAA Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research.

Last year's dead zone reached some 7,900 square miles, but the record came in 2002, when the area totalled nearly 8,500 square miles. Record corn harvests throughout the Midwest are clearly adding to the problem, according to Eugene Turner, a scientist with LSU, and leader of the research team. U.S. farmers are planting "an awful lot of corn and soybeans," he told reporters, adding that both crops leach nitrogen easily into soil and groundwater.
Corn production in the United States has shot up dramatically in recent years, driven by demand for corn-based ethanol. The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates some 87 million acres of corn were planted this year.

Turner warned that the economic impact of the dead zone would again ripple through the Gulf's lucrative commercial and recreational fishing industries. "The fish and shrimp have left this area and it is inconceivable that you could have that much change on the bottom and not change the fisheries in some way," Turner said. "This area is about 25-30 percent of U.S. fisheries - it is a pretty big fishery that is under threat."

Changing conditions to prevent the annual dead zone won't be easy, he added. "It is not just a matter of turning the switch today." "It is going to have to come from changes in land use," Turner said. "We will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen coming off the watershed."

Click here for the full Environment News Service article.

Decisions Shut Door on Bush Clean-Air Steps

Any major steps by the Bush administration to control air pollution or reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases came to a dead end on Friday, the combined result of a federal court ruling and a decision by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the morning, a federal appeals court struck down the cornerstone of the administration’s strategy to control industrial air pollution by agreeing with arguments by the utility industry that the E.P.A. had exceeded its authority when it established the Clean Air Interstate Rule in 2005. The court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the rule, which set new requirements for major pollutants, had “fatal flaws.”

A few hours later, the E.P.A. chief rejected any obligation to regulate heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide under existing law, saying that to do so would involve an “unprecedented expansion” of the agency’s authority that would have “a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy,” touching “every household in the land.”
Taken together, the developments make it clear that any significant new effort to fight air pollution will fall to the next president.

The comments by the E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, reinforced a message that the administration had been sending for months: that it does not intend to impose mandatory controls on the emissions that cause climate change. John Walke, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental group, said, “As a result of today, July 11, the Bush administration has failed to achieve a single ounce in reductions of smog, soot, mercury or global warming pollution from power plants.”

Mr. Johnson said he was “extremely disappointed” in the court decision “because it’s overturning one of the most significant and health-protective rules in our nation’s history.”
But on climate change, he said laws like the Clean Air Act were “ill-suited” to the complexities of regulating greenhouse gases.

Mr. Johnson’s comments appeared as a preface to a report by the E.P.A. staff sketching out how the emission of heat-trapping gases, particularly by vehicles, might be handled under the Clean Air Act. The report was intended to address a Supreme Court directive that the agency decide whether such gases threaten people’s health or welfare. But it also reflects the deep disapproval of controls on such gases by the White House and agencies like the Transportation, Agriculture and Commerce Departments.

Click here for the full article.

Richest Nations Pledge to Halve Greenhouse Gas

RUSUTSU, Japan — President Bush and leaders of the world’s richest nations pledged Tuesday to “move toward a low-carbon society” by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, the latest step in a long evolution by a president who for years played down the threat of global warming.
The declaration by the Group of 8 — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia — was the first time that the Bush White House had publicly backed an explicit long-term target for eliminating the gases that scientists have said are warming the planet. But it failed to set a goal for cutting emissions over the next decade, and drew sharp criticism from environmentalists, who called it a missed opportunity.
On Wednesday, leaders of developing nations took up the climate change issue and said that they too supported “a long-term global goal for emission reductions,” but they were not specific and fell short of supporting the Group of 8 declaration.
In a sense, the Group of 8 document represents an environmental quid pro quo. In exchange for agreeing to the “50 by 2050” language, Mr. Bush got what he has sought as his price for joining an international accord: a statement from the rest of the Group of 8 that developing nations like China and India, which have not accepted mandatory caps on carbon emissions, must be included in any climate change treaty.
European leaders, who have long pressed Mr. Bush to take a more aggressive stance on global warming, said the declaration could enhance efforts to reach a binding agreement to reduce emissions when negotiators meet in Copenhagen next year under United Nations auspices.

Click here to read the full NY Times article.