Plan a green chemistry course? Hear Nate Lewis?

I was hoping that someone would want to keep the blog rolling, but it looks like this will fall to me for awhile longer.

There have been several meetings in recent weeks

Roughly three weeks ago – students met (without me) to discuss directions for the Green Science Project. A number of worthy ideas were proposed. Promising.

Then two weeks ago – Sarah J., Erin S. and I gathered in Capeheart for lunch. Sarah and Erin were especially interested in learning how experiments in lab courses are (or are not) designed to be ‘green’.

Last week – Sarah J., Cameron K., Zuzu O., Kassandra R.-S., Julie Fry and I met in GCC A for lunch. Sarah’s notes on the meeting follow:

Thank you everyone who was able to make it to last week’s meeting. Last week we began a discussion of integrating green science at Reed. The idea of creating a green science/chemistry seminar or class was brought up along with the possible goals for doing so. Julie (our new environmental chemist) brought up her probable green environmental chemistry course next fall, in addition to interest in forming a green science class/seminar with student involvement. The practicality of another course at Reed was a recurring subject. We need to think of ways to balance students’ and professors’ already busy schedules with the possible addition of another class. An important factor in such a class would be student involvement. Any new class would require more than just interest. It would require involved student effort in creating and continuing such a class. The possibility of have the class be for credit to encourage students to add the class to their schedules, was brought up. The meeting ended with the idea of individuals bringing their own ideas of what to include in a possible green science course.

Sarah also added these newsy reminders for upcoming meetings:

This week’s meeting will be Tuesday at noon in the chemistry lounge. We will be continuing the discussion form last week about possible green chemistry and/or green science seminar topics. What would people be interested in looking at? What subjects should be covered in such a course at Reed? Please come with your ideas and opinions. Another topic for possible discussion is possible projects on campus, and looking at sustainability at Reed, with focus on the science departments’ environmental impact. Remember also that this Tuesday evening there will be an expedition to Linfield College for Prof. Nate Lewis’ talk (press release). If you are interested be in the Chemistry entry way by 6:15 PM Tuesday evening. (Note added by Alan: The meeting and Nate Lewis’ talk are the same day. See you there.)

Controlling Climate Change, PSU, 7 PM, Feb 26

The Environmental Science & Management program at Portland State will sponsor a seminar by Dr. Bert Drake of the Smithsonian Institution on “Beyond an Inconvenient Truth: Can We Control Rising CO2 & Global Warming?”. The seminar will be held in room 238, Smith Memorial Center on Thursday, February 26, 7 PM.

Costs of Climate Change

The Jan 9, 2009 issue of Science contains a paper (p. 240) and a commentary (“Higher Temperatures Seen Reducing Global Harvests”, p. 193) on the effects of climate change on agricultural yields. An atmospheric scientist, David Battisti (U. Washington, Seattle), and an economist, Rosamond Naylor (Stanford U., Palo Alto), analyzed predictions from 23 climate models used by the IPCC to figure out what might happen to agricultural yields by the end of this century.

“Their conclusions with regard to agriculture are sobering. “In the past, heat waves, drought, and food shortages have hit particular regions,” says Battisti. But the future will be different. “Yields are going to be down every place.” Heat will be the main culprit.” (emphasis added) Additional support comes from past observations. A heat wave struck France in summer 2003 and “the country’s corn and fruit harvests fell more than 25%.”

At the same time that agricultural yields might be falling, scientists expect to see a rise in global populations, a rise in demand for meat, and a rise in demand for water. If all of these trends collide, food costs could eat up a much larger fraction of the average person’s paycheck in developed countries, and food scarcity will affect many more people in developing countries.

To avoid these problems, we need to act now. Scientists need to develop new heat-resistant crop varieties and citizens, politicians, and scientists need to figure out ways of limiting the degree of climate change.

California leads the way towards green chemistry

“California launches nation’s first green chemistry program,” writes Env. Science & Technology. “With Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R-CA) signature on September 29, California became the first U.S. state to approve two laws that will move its regulatory scheme toward a comprehensive chemicals policy. The legislation is intended to improve public and environmental health protection and encourage green chemistry−the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances.”

The Nov. 19 ES&T article describes the California program, its supporters and detractors, and how it compares to the innovative REACH program being implemented by the EU for chemical manufacture. While the impact of the California program won’t be known for some time, the establishment of a state-wide green chemistry program could encourage other states to do adopt similar programs.

Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy

The American Institute of Physics has launched a new journal devoted to new energy sources. The Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy will be published online every two months during its first year and hopes to become a monthly afterwards. JRSE is free to the public so dig in and see what’s going in this area. Maybe share your treasures with the group? Too busy to read? Listen to a Science Friday interview with a JRSE editor (Nov 7, 2008).

Some article titles from the inaugural issue:

• Fabrication of organic solar array for applications in microelectromechanical systems
• Flexible Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ solar cells fabricated using alkali-silicate glass thin layers as an alkali source material

• Geothermal Energy: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Your Feet

Real Green Action

Zenger Farm Greenhouse

Within our very own city there is a CSA farm doing the real footwork needed to transform our food system. In most educated discussions of our food system, decentralizing farming and associating small farms with urban centers are discussed as essential strategies. The CSA model is a great, profitable model that reestablishes the link between farmer and consumer that is lost within the national supermarket distribution system.

In their own words, how it works:

Shareholders come to the farm once a week to pick up their share of the produce (the kinds of shares available are listed to the right). We’ll post a list to tell you how much food to take. The weekly pick-up offers ample opportunity for sampling and socializing.

Please note: While a share entitles you to the bounty of the harvest, it also means a share of the risk. On occasion a crop may fail due to inclement weather, pests, disease, or other conditions beyond our control. Our goal is to bring you, despite these challenges, an abundant and diverse harvest throughout the season.

They farm at three locations, one of which is an educational farm/wetland property on Foster called Zenger Farms. If anyone else is interested in actually going somewhere/doing something, I can probably swing us a tour of the place. Reply, let me know. The easiest time to go would probably be a friday or saturday afternoon and would take 1-2 hours.

Climate change: heard about it, still don’t get it

Everyone has heard about climate change, but what do we really understand? If the temperature rises, what will be the consequences? How soon will they appear? If we need to do something about climate change, how much do we need to do and how soon do we need to do it?

A recent Times magazine article, “What the Public Doesn’t Get About Climate Change” by Bryan Walsh (Oct 28), contrasts views held by the American public with views held by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

“In a paper that came out Oct. 23 in Science, John Sterman — a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management — wrote about asking 212 MIT grad students to give a rough idea of how much governments need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by to eventually stop the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. These students had training in science, technology, mathematics and economics at one of the best schools in the world — they are probably a lot smarter than you or me. Yet 84% of Sterman’s subjects got the question wrong, greatly underestimating the degree to which greenhouse gas emissions need to fall.”

Sterman’s students, all of them deeply versed in the language and concepts of science, mathematics, and modeling, grossly underestimated what kind of action was needed on carbon emissions and how soon action is needed to prevent worst-case scenarios. No wonder the public doesn’t get it. Do you get it?

Links:

• What the Public Doesn’t Get About Climate Change by Bryan Walsh, Time, Oct 28
  , online story also contains audio of Walsh’s interview of Prof. Sterman
• ECONOMICS: Risk Communication on Climate: Mental Models and Mass Balance by John D. Sterman, Science 24 October 2008, Vol. 322. no. 5901, pp. 532 – 533, DOI: 10.1126/science.1162574

Oct 31 meeting notes

Present: Erin Smith, Look Tobin, Kassandra Reuss-Schmidt, Patrick Fink, Sarah Jablonski, Alan Shusterman

Food pundit Michael Pollan’s open letter to the next president has attracted media interest. The article was described in a post made by Stonebikkhu on Oct 13. He was also recently interviewed by Teri Gross for Fresh Air (Oct 20). We listened to a good bit of the interview, but had to stop with about 10 minutes left to go.

The full 40 min interview can be listened to online. (Podcasts of Fresh Air episodes can also be downloaded for free.)

Buddha Goes Green

In a beautiful and rather stunning climax of the green movement, the Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew temple in Thailand surfaced through the news media today. The Buddhist temple is constructed almost entirely or glass bottles, totaling an estimated 1.5 million bottles used in the construction of everything from the crematorium to the toilets.

As a building material, the bottles are free, don’t fade, are easy to maintain, and allow natural light to pass through into the temple. On the interior, bottle caps were also used to make mosaics to decorate the space. While this likely isn’t going to become as popular a building method as earthships, it certainly demonstrates that recycling has few limits.

More on the temple here.

What Drives the Cost of Oil?

When petroleum prices soared last summer to over $140 a barrel, Americans began changing their daily routine, their car buying habits, and their political preferences. Now, only a few months later, the price has crashed.

Watching prices posted at Portland gas stations has been instructive. Prices were well over $4/gallon last summer. This weekend I passed a station on Highway 26 that was selling gasoline for just under $3/gallon.

It is tempting to approach this as a resource issue. How much petroleum is still in the ground? How much is being pumped out? Who wants it and what are they willing to pay for it? But before we travel down the road of supply-and-demand with the oil companies and their political friends (drill, baby, drill!), we should realize that it is highly unlikely that either supply or demand has varied all that much in the last 10 weeks. Something else might be driving the price shifts.

Living on Earth’s Bruce Gellerman reports that “hedge fund manager, Michael Masters, told a Senate subcommittee that supply and demand can only explain a part of the volatility. Masters says the real reason is market manipulation, not necessarily by a small group of Dr. No evildoers, but by institutional investors, who funneled hundreds of billions of dollars into what are called commodity index funds.” You can read the entire interview at Living on Earth (Sept 19, 2008) or download the podcast (mp3).