Category: Energy/Environment

TransCanada Plans to Use Eminent Domain to Build the Keystone Pipeline

I am not opposed to the Keystone Pipeline on environmental grounds. But I have long believed that property rights should be defended, and that we too readily allow the violation of property rights through eminent domain.
If the Keystone Pipeline can be built without eminent domain, then I am in favor of allowing it. If it can only be built by violating landowners’ property rights, then I oppose it.

(p. 1A) LINCOLN — As the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate pledged quick approval of the Keystone XL pipeline early next year, final offers were landing Tuesday in dozens of Nebraska mailboxes.

TransCanada Corp. said it mailed new offers of right-of-way payments this week to more than 100 Nebraska landowners who have refused to sign an easement contract.
The letters also say the company will pursue eminent domain against landowners who don’t agree to terms by Jan. 16. The company says Nebraska law requires condemnation proceedings to start within two years of the state’s approval of the pipeline route, which occurred Jan. 22, 2013.

For the full story, see:
Joe Duggan. “TransCanada sends final offers to 100-plus Nebraska landowners.” Omaha World-Herald (Weds., DECEMBER 17, 2014): 1A & 3A.
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Keystone XL pipeline: TransCanada sends final offers to 100-plus Nebraska landowners.”)

Greenpeace Desecrates Fragile, Ancient Hummingbird Etching in Peru

(p. A7) CARACAS, Venezuela — An expression of concern by the environmental group Greenpeace about the carbon footprint was marred this week by real footprints — in a fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert.
The Peruvian authorities said activists from the group damaged a patch of desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird.
. . .
. . . the Peruvian authorities were seething over the episode, which they said had scarred one of the country’s most treasured national symbols.
. . .
“The hummingbird was in a pristine area, untouched,” Mr. Castillo said. “Perhaps it was the best figure.”
Mr. Castillo said that the culture ministry had sent out a team with drone aircraft equipped with cameras so that they could evaluate the damage without entering the delicate area.
He said that the harm was both physical and symbolic.
“This stupidity has co-opted part of the identity of our heritage that will now be forever associated with the scandal of Greenpeace,” he said.

For the full story, see:
WILLIAM NEUMAN. “Peru Is Indignant After Greenpeace Makes Its Mark on Ancient Site.” The New York Times (Sat., DEC. 13, 2014): A7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 12, 2014.)

Property Rights Increase Oyster Farming

(p. A14) Oyster farming, also known as aquaculture, is one of the few growing businesses here on the western shore of Maryland, a sleepy outpost best known for the sunburned watermen who have pulled crabs and fish from bays like Chesapeake and Calvert for generations. Recent changes to state policy and a growing national affection for oysters (sprinkled with lemon juice only, please) have brought back the shellfish, once as much a staple to Maryland as corn is to Iowa. In the past few years, the state has issued 111 oyster farming leases across 2,240 acres of waters; scores more are pending.
. . .
Oyster farmers — a mélange of scientists, businesspeople, new-career seekers and others — argue that by recreating oyster reefs, they are helping to clean the area’s bays, stimulate the very ecosystem that sustains crab and fish populations and return a tradition to the region.
. . .
[In 2010], Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the Shellfish Aquaculture Leasing bill, removing many impediments to shellfish aquaculture, including prohibitions on leasing in many county waters, making them available for the first time to nonresidents and corporations, and ending restrictions on the amount of space that could be leased. Oyster farming immediately took off in various regions of coastal Maryland.
Farmed oysters, like their wild kin, serve as filters for the water — one oyster can suck down and spit out 50 gallons of water a day — but are less prone to disease.

For the full story, see:
JENNIFER STEINHAUER. “A New Bounty of Oysters, but There Is a Snag.” The New York Times (Fri., NOV. 7, 2014): A14 & A18.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 6, 2014, and has the title “A New Bounty of Oysters in Maryland, but There Is a Snag.”)

Scientists Seriously Discuss Geoengineering Solutions to Global Warming

(p. A1) UTRECHT, the Netherlands — The solution to global warming, Olaf Schuiling says, lies beneath our feet.
For Dr. Schuiling, a retired geochemist, climate salvation would come in the form of olivine, a green-tinted mineral found in abundance around the world. When exposed to the elements, it slowly takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Olivine has been doing this naturally for billions of years, but Dr. Schuiling wants to speed up the process by spreading it on fields and beaches and using it for dikes, pathways, even sandboxes. Sprinkle enough of the crushed rock around, he says, and it will eventually remove enough CO2 to slow the rise in global temperatures.
“Let the earth help us to save the earth,” said Dr. Schuiling, who has been pursuing the idea single-mindedly for several decades and at 82 is still writing papers on the subject from his cluttered office at the University of Utrecht.
Once considered the stuff of wild-eyed fantasies, such ideas for countering climate change — known as geoengineering solutions, because they intentionally manipulate nature — are now being discussed seriously by scientists.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “Climate Cures Seeking to Tap Nature’s Power.” The New York Times (Mon., NOV. 10, 2014): A1 & A6.
(Note: italics in original; ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 9, 2014, and has the title “Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path.”)

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (C.C.D.) Is “Over”

(p. A27) In 2006, beekeepers in Pennsylvania’s apple country noticed the first sign of many bad things to come. Once thriving beehives were suddenly empty, devoid of nearly all worker bees, but with an apparently healthy, if lonely, queen remaining in place. Over a period of just three months, tens of thousands of honeybees were totally gone. Multiply this across millions of beehives in millions of apiaries in the more than 22 states that were soon affected, and suddenly we faced a huge, tragic mystery. Up to 24 percent of American apiaries were experiencing colony collapse disorder (C.C.D.).
. . .
We still don’t really know why C.C.D. was happening, but it looks as if we are turning the corner: Scientists I’ve spoken to in both academia and government have strong reason to believe that C.C.D. is essentially over. This finding is based on data from the past three years — or perhaps, more accurately, the lack thereof. There have been no conclusively documented cases of C.C.D. in the strict sense. Perhaps C.C.D. will one day seem like yet another blip on the millennium-plus timeline of unexplained bee die-offs. Luckily, the dauntless efforts of beekeepers have brought bee populations back each time.

For the full commentary, see:
NOAH WILSON-RICH. “Are Bees Back Up on Their Knees?” The New York Times (Thurs., SEPT. 25, 2014): A27.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date SEPT. 24, 2014.)

Model Flaws Result in No Useful Climate Consensus

At the end of the first page of the commentary quoted below, the following biographical credentials were provided for the author of the commentary:

(p. C1) Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.

(p. C1) The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.
. . .
(p. C2) We often hear that there is a “scientific consensus” about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn’t a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences.
. . .
• Although the Earth’s average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.
Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.
. . .
• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity–that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today’s best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.
These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not “minor” issues to be “cleaned up” by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.
Yet a public official reading only the IPCC’s “Summary for Policy Makers” would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that “climate science is settled.”

For the full commentary, see:
STEVEN E. KOONIN. “Climate Science Is Not Settled.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 20, 2014): C1-C2.
(Note: italics in original; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 19, 2014.)

Moss Revived After 1,500 Years

(p. D3) Typically, plants break down into organic matter as they become permafrost. Looking at the ancient moss from Signy Island, however, Dr. Convey and his colleagues wondered if, after centuries of frozen darkness, it could grow again.
It was an unlikely idea. Scientists had not managed to revive moss that had been frozen for more than 20 years. Still, Dr. Convey thought it would be interesting to try. “It was just kite-flying,” he said.
The scientists put a core of Signy permafrost under a lamp in a lab in Britain and misted it from time to time with water. After a few weeks, the moss was sending up new green growth.
The deepest layer in which the resuscitated moss grew was three and a half feet below the surface. Based on radiocarbon tests, as they report in the journal Current Biology, the revived moss turned out to be more than 1,500 years old. It’s been in a state of suspended animation, in other words, since the age of King Arthur.
. . .
In some cases, organisms may naturally revive after thousands of years without scientists’ help. And it’s possible that they play an important role in their ecosystems.
At the end of each ice age, for example, retreating glaciers leave behind bare ground that develops into new ecosystems. Dr. Convey wonders if moss, and perhaps other species, may survive under the ice for thousands of years and revive when the glaciers melt. “That gives you a very different way of understanding the biodiversity of a region,” he said.
While cloning mammoths remains speculative, reviving dormant organisms is now passing out of its proof-of-concept stage. The research could lead to using revival to help bolster endangered species.
“You could use whatever is stored in ice or sediment as a sort of backup for biodiversity,” said Luisa Orsini of the University of Birmingham in England. But, she said, “one has to be really, really careful introducing something from the past.”

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “MATTER; A Growth Spurt at 1,500 Years Old.” The New York Times (Tues., MARCH 18, 2014): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 17, 2014.)

The academic paper reporting the research summarized above, is:
Roads, Esme, Royce E. Longton, and Peter Convey. “Millennial Timescale Regeneration in a Moss from Antarctica.” Current Biology 24, no. 6 (March 17, 2014): R222-R223.

Evidence Some Flies Can Adapt to Climate Change

(p. D7) In the early 2000s, Ary A. Hoffmann, a biologist then at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, wondered how the many species in tropical rain forests would cope when their humid environment dried out.
. . .
. . . at the end of the experiment, the flies were no more resistant to dry air than their forebears. The flies seemed to lack the genetic potential to evolve. Those results suggested that if the rain forest home of Drosophilia birchii loses its high humidity, the flies will die off.
. . .
Recently, two of Dr. Hoffmann’s collaborators — Belinda van Heerwaarden and Carla M. Sgrò of Monash University — decided to rerun the experiment, but with a crucial twist.
Rather than expose the flies to 10 percent relative humidity, Dr. van Heerwaarden and Dr. Sgrò tried 35 percent. That’s still far drier than the moist air of rain forests, but it’s not the aridity one might encounter on a summer day in Death Valley.
“It’s a humidity that’s more relevant to the predictions for how dry the environment would become in the next 30 to 50 years,” Dr. Sgrò said.
. . .
Unlike the flies in the earlier studies, it didn’t take long for these to start evolving. After just five generations, one species was able to survive 23 percent longer in 35 humidity.

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “MATTER; Study Gives Hope of Adaptation to Climate Change.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 29, 2014): D7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 24, 2014.)

The recent paper discussed above, is:
van Heerwaarden, Belinda, and Carla M. Sgrò. “Is Adaptation to Climate Change Really Constrained in Niche Specialists?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, no. 1790 (2014): 1-1.

Warming of Northwest Is Due to Waves, Not Human Activity

(p. A19) Scientists have long known that sea surface temperatures are lower when strong winds whip up ocean waves, and higher when the seas are calm. Researchers generally have assumed that the phenomenon was but one factor in that warming, and that increased levels of carbon dioxide from human activity play a major role in driving rising temperatures.
But the new analysis, which relies on wind, barometric pressure and temperature data recorded from 1900 to 2012, concludes that human activity has little impact.
“The concept of winds controlling or affecting ocean temperature in that very way is not controversial, but the strength of that relationship was quite amazing” in the northwestern Pacific, said James Johnstone, a climatologist and the study’s lead author. “It explains practically every wiggle in the ocean temperature variations. It’s a phenomenal correlation.”

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL WINES. “Human Role in Warming of Northwest Played Down.” The New York Times (Tues., SEPT. 23, 2014): A19.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 22, 2014.)

The Johnstone paper, summarized above, is:
Johnstone, James A., and Nathan J. Mantua. “Atmospheric Controls on Northeast Pacific Temperature Variability and Change, 1900-2012.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online before print, September 22, 2014, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1318371111.

The Invention of the Vacuum Tube as a Revolutionary Event

(p. A11) Mr. Bryce’s engrossing survey has two purposes. The first is to refute pessimists who claim that technology-driven economic growth will burn through the planet’s resources and lead to catastrophe. “We are living in a world equipped with physical-science capabilities that stagger the imagination,” he writes. “If we want to bring more people out of poverty, we must embrace [technological innovation], not reject it.” The book’s other purpose is to persuade climate-change fundamentalists that they are standing on the wrong side of history. Instead of saving the planet by going backward to Don Quixote’s windmills, they need to take a progressive approach to technology itself, he says, striving to make nuclear power safer, for instance, and using the hydrocarbon revolution sparked by fracking and deep-offshore exploration to bridge the way to the future.
. . .
Mr. Bryce focuses in particular on the vacuum tube, designed in 1906 by Lee de Forest, the man also credited with inventing the radio.
The discovery of the vacuum tube, Mr. Bryce says, was a revolutionary event. By trapping the energy generated from the free flow of electrons and directing it to boost a small AC current into a much larger one, de Forest created electric amplification–which the transistor and integrated circuit would multiply exponentially.

For the full review, see:
ARTHUR HERMAN. “BOOKSHELF; How to Defuse the Power Elite; To compel the switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar power is to consign billions of people to a life of poverty and darkness.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., May 22, 2014): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 21, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper’ by Robert Bryce; To compel the switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar power is to consign billions of people to a life of poverty and darkness.”)

The book being reviewed is:
Bryce, Robert. Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014.