I’ll have the tuna melt, without the coal, please …

The connection between coal power and tuna fish sandwiches is far from obvious. Coal comes out of big holes in the ground. Tuna comes out of the depths of the sea. However, like the old saying goes, if you look closely enough at any one thing, you will eventually see the entire Universe. In this case, you don’t have to go all that far. Coal contains mercury and burning coal in power plants releases mercury into the atmosphere where it finds its way into the ocean and the global food chain. No part of the planet is immune.

To learn more, take a look at This Much Mercury … How the coal industry poisoned your tuna sandwich by Dashka Slater (Sierra Magazine, Nov/Dec 2011). And, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys a tuna sandwich or sushi several times a week, spend a little time studying the But What Fish Can I Eat? graphic to find fish with lower mercury loads. The full-size image is a PDF and can be printed. Your brain will thank you.

Predicting Future Climate: The Devil is in the Details

Scientists who simulate future climate work with programs that are coarse-grained. For example, they predict that the “globe” will, on average warm up over the next hundred years. They even predict that “high northern latitudes” will warm up to a greater extent than lower latitudes. “High latitudes” will also see more precipitation.

But what if you are a civil engineer and it’s your job to dig up your city’s streets and replace the storm drain pipes? Can scientists tell you how big the new pipes should be in order to handle the rain water that you are likely to see over the next 75 years? According to “Vital Details of Global Warming Are Eluding Forecasters” (Science, 14 October 2011, p. 173) the answer is no. Making detailed forecasts for a city as large as Seattle, a region as large as the Pacific Northwest, “or even the western half of the United States,” appears to be beyond the abilities of current simulation programs. Or is it?

Read the article to see just how controversial regional climate modeling can be.

 

Carbon Emissions: Making it Personal

In April 2010 (“Fooling Yourself with Statistics?“) we looked at an Oregonian article about a Metro study of greenhouse gases, “Most Oregon Greenhouse Gas Not What You Think.” We took Metro (and the Oregonian) to task for not drawing a clear line between the carbon emissions of entire sector (transportation) and the carbon emissions under the control of a single person.

The “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” graphic in the July/August 2011 issue of Sierra Club magazine makes the same point. The picture (see below) comes from Mike Berner-Lee’s book, How Bad Are Bananas? (Greystone, 2011). Even if some of these figures are off by a whopping factor of two, you can see that a few hours spent on vacation air travel can wipe out a thousand intelligent decisions about plastic bags, bananas, and paperback books. What was it my Dad used to say, ‘penny wise, pound foolish’?

Water, water, everywhere …

“Water scarcity is one of the most serious global challenges of our time. Presently, over one-third of the world’s population lives in water-stressed countries and by 2025, this figure is predicted to rise to nearly two-thirds.” – M. Elimelech and W.A. Phillip, Science, 5 Aug 2011, p. 712, The Future of Seawater Desalination: Energy, Technology, and the Environment.

Many of these people find themselves in a situation not unlike that of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, surrounded by abundant seawater, but with limited or no access to freshwater (the poem says, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”) . The dream for them is to convert seawater into fresh water through “desalination,” the removal of dissolved salts. “The Future of Seawater Desalination” describes the best practices for doing this (reverse osmosis), its energy requirements, possible enhancements through the development of new membrane materials, and whether desalination can ever be made sustainable.

Toxic Solvents You’ve Never Heard Of

Glymes are a family of solvents that can test your organic chemistry geek factor. There’s a good chance you’ve heard of ‘ether’, but, unless you’ve worked full-time in an organic chemistry lab, you’ve probably never heard of ‘glyme’ (rhymes with ‘rhyme’).

That’s about to change. According to the Mother Nature Network (August 8, 2011, “EPA takes on obscure chemicals in consumer products”), the EPA is about to crack down on these widely used, but seldom recognized, toxic solvents.

Studies in rodents have shown that all three solvents can cause abnormalities in developing animals. Some of these glymes also cause reproductive problems. A 1995 study funded by the Semiconductor Industry Association and published in a full issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine reported a pattern of increased miscarriages among women workers exposed to mixtures of ethylene-based glycol ethers including diglyme.

Glyme solvents are widely used in manufacturing, and their uses are not limited to semiconductor and electronic products. When the EPA rules go into effect, 14 different members of the glyme family will be controlled.

Sustainability Film Series (and a MicroBrew)

See the winners of Multnomah County’s Climate Short Film Contest plus a new documentary, Deep Green – Solutions to Stop Global Warming Now at 6 PM, Sun, July 31, McMenamin’s Bagdad Theater (SE 37th and SE Hawthorne). Doors open at 5 PM. The movies are free. The beer is (probably) not.

Lighter, More Powerful Batteries

The cutting edge in consumer batteries are the so-called “lithium batteries” found in electronic devices and (higher-priced) electric vehicles. The selling point of a lithium battery is the punch it delivers, the fact that it can be recharged, but most of all, its light weight, a feature that stems from the fact that, atom for atom, lithium is one of the lightest substances in the universe. (In fact, lithium is atom #3 on the periodic table. Only hydrogen and helium are lighter.)

Lithium, however, is only half the story as far as lithium batteries are concerned. When a lithium battery discharges (or charges), electrons move between lithium and some other substance, and there’s the rub, finding a companion substance with all of the right properties, including light weight. “Getting There” (Science, 24 June 2011, p. 1494) reports on the latest research advances in “lithium” battery technologies (from 4th Symposium on Energy Storage: Beyond Lithium Ion held at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, June 7-9), including “lithium ion”, “lithium sulfide” and “lithium air” batteries.

The sidebar on Battery FAQs makes for some interesting reading:

Regulating Coal – And Coal Fights Back

“E.P.A. Issues Tougher Rules for Power Plants” (NY Times, July 7, 2011) tells a familiar story. The power plant regulations, which will take effect in 2012, are expected to “reduce emissions of compounds that cause soot, smog and acid rain from hundreds of power plants by millions of tons at an additional cost to utilities of less than $1 billion a year.” In addition, “cleaner air would prevent as many as 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks and hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma and other respiratory ailments every year.”

Regulations like these seem like a no-brainer, but predictably enough, the coal-burning industry is fighting back.

Decoupling from “King” Coal

When we think about the production of energy, our minds tend to focus (drill in?) on gasoline, that is, oil. Almost everyone has some awareness of at least one part of the Gasoline/Oil Problem: how much it costs, the foreign countries that have large amounts of oil, the oil spills, the dwindling supply, the greenhouse gases released by gasoline engines, and so on. Our last president said that our nation was “addicted to oil” and the phrase was powerful because “oil” registers in our conscious thought.

So what about coal? Did you know that when it comes to generating electricity, coal (not oil) is king? Since 1995, coal-burning power plants have provided roughly 50% of the energy needed to drive electrons through the nation’s power grid. Turn on your computer, click the remote on your TV, text a friend, flick on the lights – 50% of the power (on average) comes from the burning of coal. And did you know about the greenhouse gases produced by coal? 41% of worldwide CO2 emissions in 2005 were attributed to coal burning.*

Struggling to Find a UNified Vision for Sustainable Development

Two articles in the May 30, 2011 issue of C&E News describe political roadblocks in the path of sustainable development: when it comes to shared resources, nations readily fall into the trap of thinking they have conflicting interests.

One article, “Whither Sustainable Development” (p. 39) describes how U.N.-sponsored negotiations fell apart in mid-May over the definition of “green economy”. That issue, plus failing to agree on the responsibility of industrialized (“rich”) countries to provide financial and technical assistance to developing (“poor”) nations, stopped talks cold. Negotiators walked away from their tables and a number of agreements were left in limbo. Cross your fingers that the delegates will find a way to resolve their differences before next year’s U.N.-sponsored conference on sustainable development.

A second article, “Resources: Boosting Efficiency While Curbing Environmental Harm” (p. 40),  describes a new report on “Decoupling” from the U.N. International Resource Panel (IRP). Bottom-line: the entire world needs to “decouple”, that is, learn how to create products and services while consuming a lot less material. Otherwise we’re screwed. Industrialized countries like the U.S. should lead the way in this effort, of course, because our citizens consume the largest quantities of natural resources per capita. However, as the populations of less affluent countries grow, it will be just as daunting to figure out how to provide for the material needs of their citizens. You can read the full report, a fact sheet, an English-language summary, and a PowerPoint presentation for free.