Energy/Environment – Page 21 – artdiamondblog.com

Penguin “Bellwether of Climate Change” Thriving in Antarctica

“Rather than declining as feared, the Adélie penguin population generally is on the rise, scientists say.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A3) For the first time, researchers have counted all the world’s Adélie penguins–a sprightly seabird considered a bellwether of climate change–and discovered that millions of them are thriving in and around Antarctica.
Rather than declining as feared due to warming temperatures that altered their habitats in some areas, the Adélie population generally is on the rise, the scientists said Thursday.
“What we found surprised everyone,” said ecologist Heather Lynch at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., who led the penguin census. “We found a 53% increase in abundance globally.”
Counting the birds by satellite, Dr. Lynch and imaging specialist Michelle LaRue at the University of Minnesota found that the Adélie penguin population now numbers 3.79 million breeding pairs–about 1.1 million more pairs than 20 years ago. In all, they identified 251 penguin colonies and surveyed 41 of them for the first time, including 17 apparently new colonies.

For the full story, see:
ROBERT LEE HOTZ. “Antarctic Penguins Thrive.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 11, 2014): A3.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 10, 2014, and has the title “Adélie Penguin Census Shows Seabirds Are Thriving.”)

Climate Skeptic Vilified by Mainstream Establishment

“John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, with the weather data he recorded daily while growing up in Fresno, Calif., in the 1960s.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A14) “I detest words like ‘contrarian’ and ‘denier,’ ” he said. “I’m a data-driven climate scientist. Every time I hear that phrase, ‘The science is settled,’ I say I can easily demonstrate that that is false, because this is the climate — right here. The science is not settled.”

Dr. Christy was pointing to a chart comparing seven computer projections of global atmospheric temperatures based on measurements taken by satellites and weather balloons. The projections traced a sharp upward slope; the actual measurements, however, ticked up only slightly.
Such charts — there are others, sometimes less dramatic but more or less accepted by the large majority of climate scientists — are the essence of the divide between that group on one side and Dr. Christy and a handful of other respected scientists on the other.
“Almost anyone would say the temperature rise seen over the last 35 years is less than the latest round of models suggests should have happened,” said Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a California firm that analyzes satellite climate readings.
“Where the disagreement comes is that Dr. Christy says the climate models are worthless and that there must be something wrong with the basic model, whereas there are actually a lot of other possibilities,” Dr. Mears said. Among them, he said, are natural variations in the climate and rising trade winds that have helped funnel atmospheric heat into the ocean.
. . .
. . . , Dr. Christy argues that reining in carbon emissions is both futile and unnecessary, and that money is better spent adapting to what he says will be moderately higher temperatures.
. . .
. . . while his work has been widely published, he has often been vilified by his peers.
. . .
He says he worries that his climate stances are affecting his chances of publishing future research and winning grants. The largest of them, a four-year Department of Energy stipend to investigate discrepancies between climate models and real-world data, expires in September.
“There’s a climate establishment,” Dr. Christy said. “And I’m not in it.”

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL WINES. “Though Scorned by Colleagues, a Climate-Change Skeptic Is Unbowed.” The New York Times (Weds., JULY 16, 2014): A14.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 15, 2014.)

Fishing with Mosquito Nets, Where Food Is the Binding Constraint

(p. 1) BANGWEULU WETLANDS, Zambia — Out here on the endless swamps, a harsh truth has been passed down from generation to generation: There is no fear but the fear of hunger.
With that always weighing on his mind, Mwewa Ndefi gets up at dawn, just as the first orange rays of sun are beginning to spear through the papyrus reeds, and starts to unclump a mosquito net.
Nets like his are widely considered a magic bullet against malaria — one of the cheapest and most effective ways to stop a disease that kills at least half a million Africans each year. But Mr. Ndefi and countless others are not using their mosquito nets as global health experts have intended.
Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog.
“I know it’s not right,” Mr. Ndefi said, “but without these nets, we wouldn’t eat.”
Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years.
The nets have helped save millions of lives, but scientists worry about the collateral damage: Africa’s fish.
. . .
“The nets go straight out of the bag into the sea,” said Isabel Marques da Silva, a marine biologist at Universidade Lúrio in Mozambique. “That’s why the inci-(p. 10)dence for malaria here is so high. The people don’t use the mosquito nets for mosquitoes. They use them to fish.”
But the unsparing mesh, with holes smaller than mosquitoes, traps much more life than traditional fishing nets do. Scientists say that could imperil already stressed fish populations, a critical food source for millions of the world’s poorest people.
. . .
In many places, fish are dried for hours in direct sunlight on treated mosquito nets. Direct sunlight can break down the insecticide coating. Anthony Hay, an associate professor of environmental toxicology at Cornell University, said fish could absorb some of the toxins, leaving people to ingest them when they eat the fish.
“It’s just another one of these ‘white man’s burdens,’ ” Mr. Hay said, referring to William Easterly’s well-known book critical of foreign aid by the West. “We think we have a solution to everybody’s problems, and here’s an example of where we’re creating a new problem.”
. . .
For Mr. Ndefi, it is a simple, if painful, matter of choice. He knows all too well the dangers of malaria. His own toddler son, Junior, died of the disease four years ago. Junior used to always be there, standing outside his hut, when Mr. Ndefi came home from fishing.
Mr. Ndefi hopes his family can survive future bouts of the disease. But he knows his loved ones will not last long without food.

For the full story, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “Meant to Keep Mosquitos Out, Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., JAN. 25, 2015): 1 & 10.
(Note: ellipses are added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 24, 2015, and has the title “Meant to Keep Malaria Out, Mosquito Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In.”)

The book referenced by Professor Hay, is:
Easterly, William. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

“In Nebraska, You Don’t Have to Die to Go to Hell”

A 1939 entry from Don Hartwell’s diary:

(p. 300) July 10
The same clear, glaring sky & vicious blazing killing sun. Cane is about dead, corn is being damaged; it will soon be destroyed. Those who coined the phrase ‘There’s no place like Nebraska’ wrote better than they thought. In Nebraska, you don’t have to die to go to hell.

Source:
As quoted in: Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
(Note: italics in original.)

Private Power Lights the Darkness

(p. A10) NUSEIRAT CAMP, Gaza Strip–It was just after sunset when the power went out in this Palestinian refugee camp. Within seconds, Ali al-Majdalawi flipped a switch on a blue generator in his backyard and the lights in 500 homes flickered back on again.
The 64-year-old patriarch runs what he calls the A. Majdalawi Electricity Co., a pop-up utility that consists of three generators and a spider’s web of power lines radiating from an empty lot he owns in the camp.
Mr. Majdalawi has no license to operate his company. But he does have an invoice pad at the ready and boasts a long list of customers including five mosques, a library and a police station.
. . .
Along with three partners, Mr. Majdalawi, a retired school official for the U.N., invested $80,000 of their savings to buy several diesel-powered generators two years ago and set about building their own power-delivery network.
The community of about 65,000 began in 1948, the year of Israel’s creation, when hundreds of families displaced by war between Jews and Arabs set up rows of temporary dwellings. Decades later, the refugees and their descendants still live here, tightly packed among schools run by the United Nations and a cemetery built into a sand dune at the center of town.
Because his company is private, Mr. Majdalawi couldn’t use municipal power polls to string up lines. He and his sons asked neighbors to let them use the walls of their homes for the wiring and allow crews to come in for periodic maintenance.
In most other respects, the business runs much like any other electricity company. Customers apply to join the grid and if approved, one of Mr. Majdalawi’s sons enters their names into a computer for monthly billing. Most clients request two amperes, enough to run lights, a television and a computer during blackouts. The price is 120 shekels a month, about $30.
“It is an alternate grid,” explained Mr. Majdalawi’s son, Rafet, the company’s chief accountant.
Deya Shaheen, a 25-year-old barber, said Mr. Majdalawi’s electricity has kept his year-old shop in business. The electric razors and the lights he uses to light the shop when customers drop in at night are powered on the three amperes he receives from the grid.On many nights, his shop is filled with young men looking for somewhere to watch soccer matches on television.
“Look, the power thing destroys your life,” he said. “People go to bed early not because they are sleepy, but because there is no power. There is nothing to do, no TV, no Internet. It is just dark.”

For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS CASEY. “Entrepreneur Fills in Gaza Electricity Gap; Palestinian Territory’s One Power Plant Meets Barely a Quarter of Demand, Posing an Obstacle in Reconstruction Efforts.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., DEC. 24, 2014): A10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 23, 2014, and has the title “Entrepreneur Fills in Gaps in Gaza Electricity Supplies; Palestinian Territory’s One Power Plant Meets Barely a Quarter of Demand.”)

The Federal Government’s “Arrogance on a Grand Scale” Encouraged the Dust Bowl

(p. 126) In the last years of the wheat boom, Bennett had become increasingly frustrated at how the government seemed to be encouraging an exploitive farming binge. He went directly after his old employer, the Department of Agriculture, for misleading people. Farmers on the Great Plains were working against nature, he thundered in speeches across the country; they were asking for trouble. Even in the late 1920s, before anyone else sounded an alarm, Bennett said people had sown the seeds of an epic disaster. The government continued to insist, through official bulletins , that soil was the one “resource that cannot be exhausted.” To Bennett, it was arrogance on a grand scale.
“I didn’t know so much costly misinformation could be put into a single brief sentence,” he said.

Source:
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Yucca Mountain Has Multiple Barriers to Isolate Nuclear Materials

(p. A20) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday [Oct. 16, 2014] released a long-delayed report on the suitability of Yucca Mountain as a disposal spot for nuclear waste, finding that the design met the commission’s requirements, laying the groundwork to restart the project . . .
. . .
. . . the report released Thursday, mostly done in 2010 but frozen until a recent court decision, concluded that the design had the required multiple barriers, to assure long-term isolation of radioactive materials.

For the full story, see:
MATTHEW L. WALD “Calls to Use a Proposed Nuclear Site, Now Deemed Safe.” The New York Times (Fri., OCT. 17, 2014): A20.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 16, 2014., and has the title “Calls to Use Yucca Mountain as a Nuclear Waste Site, Now Deemed Safe.”)

How the Federal Government Caused the High Plains Dust Bowl

(p. 50) People were pouring into town, taking up rooms at the Crystal Hotel– suitcase farmers who had no intention of ever settling there. They wanted only to rent out a tractor and a piece of ground for a few days, drop some winter wheat into the fresh-turned fold, and come back next summer for the payoff. It was a game of chance called “trying to hit a crop.” One suitcase farmer broke thirty-two thousand acres in southeast Kansas in 1921. Four years later, he plowed twice that amount. The banks seldom said no. After Congress passed the Federal Farm Loan Act in 1916, every town with a well and a sheriff had itself a farmland bank — an institution! — offering forty-year loans at six percent interest. Borrow five thousand dollars and payments were less than thirty-five dollars a month. Any man with a John Deere and a half-section could cover that nut. If it was hubris, or “tempting fate” as some of the church ladies said, well, the United (p. 51) States government did not see it that way. The government had already issued its official view of the rapid churning of ancient prairie sod.
“The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses,” the Federal Bureau of Soils proclaimed as the grasslands were transformed. “It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up.”

Source:
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Lower Cost LEDs Will Reduce Light Prices, and Increase Quantity Consumed (Yes, Virginia, There Really Is a Law of Demand)

(p. A29) The growing evidence that low-cost efficiency often leads to faster energy growth was recently considered by both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency. They concluded that energy savings associated with new, more energy efficient technologies were likely to result in significant “rebounds,” or increases, in energy consumption. This means that very significant percentages of energy savings will be lost to increased energy consumption.
. . .
That’s not a bad thing. Most people in the world, still struggling to achieve modern living standards, need to consume more energy, not less. Cheap LED and other more efficient energy technologies will be overwhelmingly positive for people and economies all over the world.

For the full commentary, see:
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER and TED NORDHAUS. “The Problem With Energy Efficiency.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 9, 2014): A29.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 8, 2014.)

Government Encouraged the Dust Bowl of the 1930s

Timothy Egan in The Worst Hard Time helps us to understand the motives and struggles of those who suffered in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s in the Great Plains of the United States. Sometimes he also illuminates the role that the government had in encouraging ordinary people to move to a place that would soon be hell on earth.
In the next few weeks, I will quote several of the most thought-provoking passages of Egan’s book.

Book discussed:
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.