Come capture CO2 with us!

We will be meeting in Rm. 402, the chemistry student lounge, at noon on Thursday this week (Oct 29).

The main topic: carbon dioxide capture and sequestration. Julie has sent around two graphics from the Sept 25 “special issue” of Science magazine that is devoted to carbon capture and sequestration. One graphic shows a global map of carbon sequestration projects (p. 1644-5). The other shows how the carbon cycle works (p. 1642-3). Paul also sent in a link to a Daily Show interview of Energy Secretary Steven Chu on some of these same topics from July 21. (C’mon, Paul – the Daily Show is not a news source!)

As usual, we will have a chance to talk about other issues of interest, e.g., the events sponsored by 350.org last weekend, and anything else that pops up.

 

Crude – the movie

We skipped our lunchtime meeting last Thursday to free up some time to take in a movie on Friday night.

10 of us (Julie, Claire, Emily, Rhiana, Kassandra, Josh, Paul, Dave, Gwen, and Alan) gathered in the lobby of the Northwest Film Center at 7:30 PM to await the Portland premiere of Crude: The Real Price of Oil, a documentary film by Joe Berlinger. While we waited, we had a chance to people watch as members of the Portland elite who were attending the opening night gala for China Design Now, a new exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, streamed through the lobby.

Crude tells a gripping story about a David-and-Goliath struggle between natives of Ecuador’s Amazon region and multi-national oil companies (Texaco, and then Chevron after they purchased Texaco) over who would be held legally responsible for the destruction of the natives’ habitat, livelihood, and health. The natives’ suffering was documented extensively and the movie also included a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes footage of the environmental and human rights NGO personnel who have taken up the natives’ cause. While we usually focus on fossil fuels from where they enter our lives at the gas pump and exit our cars at the tailpipe, this movie showed us an entirely different set of costs that must be paid in order to feed our addiction to cheap imported oil.

After the movie was over, we walked over to Julie and Dave’s for late-night refreshments and more conversation. Which brings me to an idea that has been suggested before, would anyone like to arrange the rental and screening of other environmentally focused movies? Maybe do this on campus after Fall Break? Any volunteers?

Meeting notes – Th, Oct 1

Present: Claire, Paul, Josh, Julie, Alan

All kinds of ideas were kicked around at our lunch meeting. I was shocked when I finally looked at the clock and saw how quickly the hour had passed. Some of the topics that we picked up:

• Organic farming – is it better than conventional farming?
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. According to the Old Testament, Ishmael is the half-brother of Isaac, the favored son of Abraham. In Daniel Quinn’s novel, Ishmael is a gorilla, a “half-brother” to the human narrator. Follow the link to learn more, or better yet, read the book.
• What is the world’s carrying capacity? According to the folks at www.myfootprint.org humans are generally consuming the Earth’s resources for supporting life and then some. Try taking the (short) quiz at their web site and see what your footprint comes out to be (you can also learn ways to shrink your footprint – which ways seem to have the greatest appeal?). Our lunch discussion led to a discussion of “footprints” of various sorts and how a footprint is affected by a society’s technological capacity, e.g., how we can grow much more food from an acre of land today than we could before we started using fossil fuels. I encourage everyone to read the letter that a retired chemist, William Garwood wrote in 2003, titled “Why I Studied Chemistry” (reprinted at the department’s web site with the author’s permission).
• Toxic chemicals. We began by reviewing the article on e-waste being shipped to China for recycling. Discussion then took off in several directions. One direction was the process by which toxic materials and unsafe disposal sites become identified and dealt with. Students were unfamiliar with the case of Love Canal, one of the most famous episodes in recent American history of improper waste disposal. (I strongly recommend reading “Happy Birthday, Love Canal” in Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42(22), 8179-8186.) Another direction involved how toxic chemicals ever get approved for commercial use in the first place. Different countries use different rules and the Precautionary Principle is a rule that has gained favor in Europe, but not in the USA. Why do you suppose this is? Finally, as time ran out, we considered the role that good design might play in preventing toxics from finding their way into commercial products in the first place. Can synthetic chemistry ever mimic Nature’s ability to work with inherently degradable, reusable materials? Some of you might find inspiration in the book, “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.