80beats » Environment

CO2 Emissions Are Rising. Or Falling. Actually, It’s Both.

Andrew Moseman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:20:38 +0000

This week in Nature Geoscience, a cadre of scientists going by the name Global Carbon Project will publish a meta-analysis of global carbon emissions. The study led to headlines like, “Global CO2 emissions to drop 2.8 pct in ‘09: report,” and many others more in the ominous vein of “Earth ‘heading for 6C (6 degrees Celsius)’ of warming.” So how did both headlines come from the same study?

This year’s dip is correct: “In 2009, it is likely that the global financial crisis will cause global emissions to actually fall by a couple of percent,” said Michael Raupach, co-author of the report and co-chair of the Global Carbon Project [Reuters]. But, he says, the carbon cut will be short-lived if the recession ends.

In that case, the researchers say, the world will return to its normal trend. Since 2000 emissions have been rising by an average 3.4 per cent every year, compared to one per cent in the 1990s [The Telegraph]. Overall, worldwide emissions rose by 29 percent from 2000 to 2008, and the scientists put forward that 6 degrees Celsius global warming figure as a worst-case scenario—what could happen if the overall rising trend continued unabated.

The timing of their warning seems clear. This week President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao talked climate during their meeting in China, with the world climate summit looming. The two committed their countries — the biggest emitters of the heat-trapping gases causing global warming — to backing a detailed political agreement at next month’s climate-change conference in Copenhagen. In their formula, rich countries would commit to reduction targets while developing ones would agree to meet softer goals that would be monitored [MSNBC].

The most troubling assertion of the Global Carbon Project study, however, might be this: The team believes that carbon sinks – the oceans and plants – are probably absorbing a slightly lower proportion of the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions than they were 50 years ago, although researchers admit that uncertainty about the behaviour of sinks remains high [BBC News].

Image: iStockphoto

Nanosilver Puts the Hurt on Microbes—and Maybe Fish, Too

Andrew Moseman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:56:46 +0000

Toys, refrigerators, washing machines, socks—more and more products contain silver nanoparticles. It’s no wonder: These particles, which measure less 100 nanometers (smaller than a single HIV virus), can kill microbes on contact. But, researcher Darin Furgeson says, nanosilver can also escape into ecosystems and cause serious damage to fish embryos. Furgeson’s team published its results in the journal Small.

In one new experiment, Furgeson, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences, exposed zebrafish embryos to silver nanoparticles in a laboratory, and found that some died and others were left with dramatic mutations. “Some of the fish became extremely distorted, almost making a number nine or a comma instead of a linear fish,” he said [Scientific American]. Eyes, tails, and other body parts turned out malformed in the fish that survived.

Just how much nanosilver gets into the environment? A separate study from Environmental Science & Technology washed nine kinds of nanosilver-containing textiles, including some “anti-bacterial and anti-odor socks” that are already on the market. The researchers found that anywhere from less than 1 percent to as high as 45 percent of the silver came out in the first wash. Most of the silver was in the form of coarse particles of greater than 450 nanometers, suggesting that mechanical stress in the washing machine was responsible for most of the release [The New York Times], and that the nanoparticles might have aggregated to reach that size.

Those nanoparticles flushed out by a washing machine can end up in both fish habitats and drinking water supplies. Furgeson says his fish experiments could help show whether nanosilver is a health concern for humans, too. “Zebrafish have similar tissues and organs to us,” Furgeson said. “They don’t have lungs, but they do have a liver, kidneys and heart – though it is only two chambered – and they have a blood-brain barrier” [Scientific American].

Image: Wiki Commons / Kristof vt

Scientists Solve the Mystery of Bangladesh’s Arsenic-Tainted Water

Andrew Moseman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:50:29 +0000

It was a twisted cycle: In the 1970s, Bangladeshis used surface ponds or rivers to collect rainwater for drinking. But thanks to garbage dumping and sewage, that water became a breeding ground for disease. So UNICEF sought to fix the problem—the agency helped residents drill simple wells that drew water from a shallow aquifer. But this remedy became a tragedy. Bangladesh’s groundwater was laced with arsenic. Now, in a study in Nature Geoscience, a team from MIT has answered one of the outstanding pieces of the Bangladesh puzzle: Just how all that arsenic got into the water in the first place.

Bangladesh occupies the flood-prone delta of the river Ganges [New Scientist], and that river brought the arsenic to the region’s sediments. But why doesn’t it just stay in the sediments once it’s there? Back in 2002, another MIT team began to answer the question by showing that microbes digest organic carbon in the soil in such a way that frees up the arsenic, but they couldn’t say where that carbon itself came from until Rebecca Neumann and colleagues figured it out this year: man-made ponds left behind by excavations.

Using a six-square-mile test plot, they found that the organic carbon comes from shallow ponds that were dug to provide soil for flood protection. The carbon compounds sink in the pondwater and seep underground where bacteria digest them, setting up the perfect chemical conditions to free up the soil’s arsenic. Groundwater flow then brings the arsenic-rich water to the wells [Scientific American].

Hopefully, these answers will help to turn around the Bangladesh disaster. Around 25m people in the country have been exposed to arsenic through water. Experts have described the situation as the worst mass poisoning of a population in history [BBC News].There’s no quick fix, but Neumann’s team suggests two things: Digging deeper wells that go below the influence of the ponds, and using wells that retrieve water from beneath rice paddies, which the team found to be less toxic than wells in other places.

Image: Sarah Jane White, MIT. Researcher Rebecca Neumann hangs off the end of bamboo scaffolding to set up an experiment.

In the Commute of the Future, Drivers Can Let a Pro Take the Wheel

Brett Israel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:32:17 +0000

The European Union has contracted an engineering firm to develop a public transportation system that doesn’t require users to leave their cars. The British consultancy Ricardo will work to develop a system that allows drivers to surrender control of their vehicles, and the company plans to test the system on public roads within the decade. It all sounds highly fanciful, but the firm insists it is a genuine attempt to build so-called “road trains”, whereby various cars or other vehicles travel in convoy with only the one at the front steering. Big names, such as Volvo, have also signed up [London Times]. The project has been dubbed Sartre, for Safe Road Trains for the Environment. Basically, a lead car, driven by a professional driver, will travel down the highway and other cars can fall in behind and turn the driving over to the lead car. Cars would be able to enter and exit the platoon at any time by sending a signal to the lead car.

Ricardo officials speculated that those joining a platoon or road train may one day pay for the privilege of someone else effectively driving them closer to their destination [BBC News]. The benefits of road trains extend beyond being able to sing along to the radio or eat breakfast in the privacy of your car. According to earlier research, fuel consumption could be cut by 20 percent because cars wouldn’t waste energy on abrupt braking or acceleration, and also because cars traveling close together would experience less air drag. Also, road capacity will increase at the same time that accidents from distracted or drowsy drivers decrease [Wired.com].

The Sarte development project will run for three years, and towards the end they will begin testing their convoys on private road tracks. Eventually they plan to start public road trials in Spain, which would consist of two- or three-car road trains. Click here for a schematic of how the road trains would work.

Image: flickr / Nrbelex

Study: The Chemical BPA, in High Doses, Causes Impotence

Brett Israel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:35:25 +0000

A chemical commonly found in plastics that has recently fallen under intense scrutiny by public health officials has now been linked to impotence. During a five year study, scientists followed 634 male Chinese factory workers who were exposed to high levels of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) on the job and compared their sexual health with that of similar Chinese factory workers not exposed to BPA. The men handling BPA were four times as likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction and seven times as likely to have difficulty with ejaculation [Washington Post]. The study (PDF), published in the journal Human Reproduction, marks the first time sexual dysfunction has been linked to BPA exposure.

To be fair, the workers were exposed to BPA levels that are 50 times greater than the average U.S. man faces, so scientists can’t say how smaller amounts of the chemical will affect sexual health. However, the chemical resembles the hormone estrogen and that’s fueled worries that even very small amounts of BPA can cause harm [NPR News]. The feds are determined to get to the bottom of the issue and have pledged $30 million to researchers over the next two years in an effort to finally settle the question of whether BPA is safe.

That would be a welcome development, since BPA is ubiquitous in consumer products—everything from plastic bottles to canned food linings is laced with the stuff. BPA is so widespread that 93 percent of the U.S. population has BPA in their urine, according to previous research. The Food and Drug Administration has maintained that BPA is safe, despite its own scientific advisory board’s criticism that the agency ignored over 100 research publications linking BPA to ill health effects. A growing body of research over the past decade has linked BPA to a range of health effects in laboratory animals, including infertility, weight gain, behavioral changes, early-onset puberty, cancer and diabetes [Washington Post]. BPA defenders have argued that the previous research conducted on animals is of limited use in determining the chemical’s toxicity, and have insisted that human data is necessary. The FDA is currently taking a fresh look at the issue, and is expected to complete its review by the end of the month.

Image: iStockphoto

Drilling Into a Stirring Volcano Is (Probably) Safe

Brett Israel — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:41:18 +0000

A super-colossal volcanic eruption rocked Italy 39,000 years ago, and troubling signs at the site, now known as Campi Flegrei, have many scientists wondering when the next big one will hit. To probe the issue, so to speak, the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project will drill nearly 2.5 miles down into the collapsed volcanic crater to find out if another blast is on the horizon. Though the researchers on this particular project point out that any risk is small, it will begin amid debate about whether such endeavours are safe, given the unknowns of a volcano’s interior. A few say drilling might even trigger a major eruption [New Scientist]. However, scientists on the project say this isn’t likely, as their drills won’t dig deep enough to set off an eruption.

Campi Flegrei isn’t well known because it lacks a volcanic cone, but it dwarfs Mount Vesuvius. All of Naples sits within its caldera, an eight-mile-wide collapsed area of land formed by the eruption 39,000 years ago. A similar volcanic eruption would leave large parts of Europe buried under ash, say scientists, however smaller eruptions occur every few centuries; the last eruption was in 1538. The researchers hope that by drilling into the volcano, they’ll learn if another smaller eruption is imminent. They hope to locate fracture zones and magma pools that could only be guessed at without drilling. This could show exactly where magma might ascend and collect prior to an eruption. Meanwhile, rock samples could be tested under high stresses in the lab to help model the ground deformation prior to eruption [New Scientist]. The caldera’s center has risen about 10 feet since the 1960s, which has lit a fire under the researchers since a similar rise proceeded a series of intense eruptions 4,000 years ago.

However, some critics do worry that the drilling could trigger an explosion prematurely rather than help prevent one. An oft cited examples is the 2005 Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) that was halted when drilling into magma for geothermal energy created an explosion. At Campi Flegrei, the greatest threat would be drilling 5 miles deep into a silica-rich magma chamber under high pressure. If they hit magma, the sudden rise in temperature would vaporise their drilling liquid, causing an explosion which could in turn trigger an eruption. It’s a sexy and dangerous headline, but … the risk doesn’t seem all that great: 4km [almost 2.5 miles] wouldn’t even be halfway deep enough to reach any known reservoirs of magma, so it’s probably a moot point [Gizmodo]. Either way, the project is moving forward, and the bores will drop in December or January.

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Donarreiskoffer

Japan Pushes Forward on Plans for a Giant Solar Power Farm in Space

Andrew Moseman — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:13:41 +0000

Refusing to cave to the “that’s far too crazy to ever work” crowd, Japan took a step forward this week in the country’s scheme to develop a giant solar power station in Earth orbit. JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, selected major Japanese firms like Mitsubishi Electric, Fujitsu, and Sharp to help develop the gargantuan project.

JAXA wants a system that can produce 1 gigawatt of electricity by 2030, and at one-sixth the cost Japan currently pays for electricity. The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves. These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs [AFP]. There the energy would be converted to electricity.

Japan isn’t alone; California utility Pacific Gas & Electric asked for regulatory approval of a similar project in April, though both schemes must confront a mountain of challenges. Sending equipment up to space is one. Operating and maintaining the system cost effectively is another. How about minimizing losses during conversion and transmission of energy [Greentech Media]?

And even if space solar power works, proponents might need to hire some talented public relations professionals: JAXA said the technology would be safe but conceded it might have to dispel fears of laser beams from above roasting birds or slicing up aircraft in mid-air [Sky News].

Image: Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer

Are There Pesticides in Your Soup? Dunk a Pollution Dipstick to Find Out.

Brett Israel — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:32:07 +0000

Environmental monitoring is often expensive, cumbersome, and time-intensive. Equipment that can run quick and easy tests for pollutants like pesticides in our food are almost nonexistent. However, researchers in Canada are working on a new biomonitoring technique using treated paper on a stick that can quickly identify trace amounts of pesticides in your chicken soup, or your first early morning cup of joe [Technology Review]. Could these dipsticks lead to DIY pollution monitoring one day? That may still be far off, but this technology could give researchers a reliable and cheap way to get a better picture of what pollutants—even at trace amounts—are in the environment, and how they interact with our bodies.

In the study, published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the researchers describe a new paper-based test strip that changes color shades depending on the amount of pesticide present. In laboratory studies using food and beverage samples intentionally contaminated with common pesticides, the test strips accurately identified minute amounts of pesticides. The test strips, which produced results in less than 5 minutes, could be particularly useful in developing countries or remote areas that may lack access to expensive testing equipment and electricity, they note [R&D Magazine]. If the dipsticks pan out, restaurant customers may one day have more to complain about than a stray hair in their soup.

Image: ACS

A Crack Opens in the Ethiopian Landscape, Preparing the Way for a New Sea

Eliza Strickland — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:07:42 +0000

In 2005, the earth cracked open in Ethiopia. Two volcanic eruptions shook the desert, and a 35-mile-long rift opened in the land, measuring 20 feet wide in some places. Now a new study adds weight to the argument that the opening of this crack marks the first step in the formation of a new sea that may eventually separate East Africa from the rest of the continent. Says lead researcher Atalay Ayele: “The ocean’s formation is happening slowly, likely to take a few million years. It will stretch from the Afar depression (straddling Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti) down to Mozambique” [ABC News].

The study, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, explains that the seismic movements observed in Ethiopia are very similar to the changes wrought by faults and fissures on the seafloor, where the processes that move tectonic plates usually begin.

Seismic data from 2005 shows that the rift opened in a matter of days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began “unzipping” the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today. “We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this” [LiveScience], says study coauthor Cindy Ebinger.

The active volcanic region in Ethiopia’s Afar desert sits at the boundary of the African and Arabian tectonic plates, which have been gradually spreading apart for millions years; the new study shows that large-scale seismic events can speed up that process. The gradual separation has already formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea. The thinking is that the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea in a million years or so [LiveScience].

Image: University of Rochester

The Snows of Kilimanjaro Could Be Gone by 2022

Eliza Strickland — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:27:49 +0000

The glaciers that shine at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, could vanish entirely within 15 years, according to a somber new report. Says glaciologist Lonnie Thompson: “Of the ice cover present in 1912 … 85% has disappeared and 26% of that present in 2000 is now gone” [USA Today]. The mountaintop glaciers are both shrinking around the edges and growing thinner, Thompson’s team found. If the current rate of ice loss continues, the mountain could be ice free as early as 2022.

Thompson says his team has fresh evidence that global warming is to blame. As similar changes are occurring on other mountains in Africa, South America, and in the Himalayas, Thompson says that global climate change, not local weather effects, must be responsible for the receding ice. “The fact that so many glaciers throughout the tropics and subtropics are showing similar responses suggests an underlying common cause,” Thompson said [AP].

For the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers used maps, aerial photographs, and satellite images to track the ice’s retreat over the last century, and also looked at data from instruments implanted in the glaciers in 2000. Some previous researchers have argued that Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are disappearing because of what they viewed as local factors, namely less snowfall and more sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor. But Thompson found that higher temperatures are melting the ice, and he also argues that the drier and less cloudy conditions leading to sublimation on Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro are part of a suite of changes driven by global warming. “You change the temperature profile of this planet, you are going to change precipitation and cloudiness and humidity and temperature,” he said. “Those are all part of climate change. And so to say that that Kilimanjaro is not responding to global climate change is untrue” [National Geographic News].

If the glaciers disappear entirely, it will make an anachronism of a great piece of literature. The “snows of Kilimanjaro” were made famous in the Ernest Hemingway short story of that name in 1938, in which the main character notices “as wide as all the world, great, high and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro” [USA Today].

Image: Lonnie G. Thompson / Ohio State University

Lesson of the Ancient Nazcas: Deforestation Can Kill a Civilization

Eliza Strickland — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:36:58 +0000

From an ancient Peruvian civilization comes this warning: Don’t chop down all your trees, or there will be hell to pay.

The Nazca people are famous for the enormous earthworks they carved into an arid plateau, in designs that range from simple geometrical forms to representations of animals like hummingbirds, lizards, and monkeys. They were previously known to have disappeared around A.D. 500, when massive floods powered by El Niño ravaged the valley where they made their home. Now, a new study that examined the pollen in buried layers of soil in order to trace the horticultural history of the land may have revealed why those floods were so devastating.

The Ica Valley, about 120 miles south of Lima, is barren today but was once a riverine oasis — a fertile landscape capable of supporting many people. The key to that fertility was a tree called the huarango [Los Angeles Times]. The huarango tree provided wood for building and fuel, and seed pods that can be ground up and used in flour or beer. Its branches caught the water in morning mists, and its roots stabilized the topsoil. Says lead researcher David Beresford-Jones: “These were very special forests…. It is the ecological keystone species in the desert zone enhancing soil fertility and moisture and underpinning the floodplain with one of the deepest root systems of any tree known” [BBC News].

The new study, published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, found that the pollen in the older layers of soil came almost entirely from huarango trees. But by A.D. 400, pollen from corn and cotton plants had replaced the tree pollen, suggesting that the Nazca people had chopped down the forests to make room for agricultural fields. About AD 500, a major El Niño built up in the Pacific, deluging the nearby Andes with rain. Walls of water and mud washed down the valley and over the denuded landscape, sweeping away food crops, buildings and artifacts. Beresford-Jones compared it with the 1997-98 El Niño, which left the city of Ica 6 feet underwater [Los Angeles Times]. The floods of A.D. 500 were many times worse, the researchers say.

In the soil layers that came directly after the flood, the only pollen came from salt-tolerant plants that could survive in the arid conditions left behind in the aftermath of the natural disaster. The land was clearly no longer able to support agriculture, and the Nazca people vanished. But although the El Niño floods were dramatic, they didn’t have to mark the end of a civilization, the researchers say. “The landscape only became exposed to the catastrophic effects of that El Nino flood, once people had inadvertently crossed an ecological threshold,” explains Dr Beresford-Jones. “Such thresholds or ‘tipping-points’ are sharply defined in these desert environments” [BBC News]. The study refutes the notion that pre-Columbian people always lived in perfect harmony with nature, the researchers say–and also serves as a reminder that medding with the ecosystem can have devastating consequences.

Image: Alex Chepstow-Lusty

Europe’s Plan to Draw Solar Power From the Sahara Moves Ahead

Eliza Strickland — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:15:46 +0000

When European Union officials first discussed the idea of a massive solar power plant in the Sahara to provide power to all of Europe, many people took it as a thought experiment, a plan that was far too outlandish to ever come to pass. But now a band of alternative energy companies have announced the formation of a consortium dedicated to pushing the project ahead.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) aims to provide 15% of Europe’s electricity by 2050 or earlier via power lines stretching across the desert and Mediterranean sea. The German-led consortium was brought together by Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, and consists of some of country’s biggest engineering and power companies [The Guardian].

The $400 billion project calls for building enormous solar power plants in the sun-drenched Sahara, and using new high voltage direct current cables that can efficiently transport electricity over long distances to bring the power to Europe. The power stations would use concentrated solar power, in which mirrors concentrate the sun’s rays on a fluid container. The super-heated liquid then drives turbines to generate electricity. The advantage over solar photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, is that if sufficient hot fluid is stored in containers, the generators can run all night [The Guardian].

The countries of the northern Sahara–Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia–are said to be interested in the project, although their governments are expected to insist that a portion of the clean energy remains in Africa and is allotted to their own countries. Meanwhile, the project’s backers say they’ll need evidence that the project won’t suffer due to local political instability or terrorism threats. But if all the players can agree on a way forward, the first solar thermal power station could be built in the desert by 2015.

Image: Desertec Foundation

America’s Electronic Waste Is Polluting the Globe

Eliza Strickland — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:48:16 +0000

It seems that every day brings a new electronic gadget to the market, whether it’s a smart phone, an electronic reader, a laptop the size and weight of a magazine, or a television the size of a wall. But each advance adds to the world’s electronic waste, which is the fastest-growing component of solid waste. Much of the electronic refuse ends up in developing countries, where workers strip down the gadgets to get at the copper and other valuable metals inside, often exposing themselves to toxins in the process. Now, scientists are calling for federal regulations in the United States to stem the tide.

Although the U.S. is one the world’s largest producers of electronic waste (e-waste), it is hardly a leader in addressing this problem, given that the country has “no legally enforceable federal policies requiring comprehensive recycling of e-waste or elimination of hazardous substances from electronic products,” the researchers say [Scientific American]. Instead, e-waste policies are left to the states, not all of which have laws on the books. In the article, published in Science, the authors note that the United States has not ratified the Basel Convention, which regulates the movement of hazardous wastes across international borders and has the support of 169 of the 192 United Nations member countries [Scientific American].

Electronics can contain a host of dangerous materials, from heavy metals to toxic chemicals. Toxic e-waste shows up in forms as varied as high lead levels in the blood of children in Guiya, China, where millions of tonnes of e-waste are illegally dumped, and as fire-retardant chemicals in the eggs of California’s peregrine falcons [CBC News].

Image: Basel Action Network. E-waste in a Nigerian dump.

A Major Quake Could Release Plutonium From Los Alamos Lab

Brett Israel — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:20:26 +0000

Federal experts believe that a major earthquake could trigger fires at Los Alamos National Laboratory, releasing radioactive materials and endangering lives. The rupture of a seismic fault that runs underneath the lab would shake the ground more than scientists previously thought, according to a new report (PDF). A natural disaster here would be bad news, since the lab, just west of Santa Fe, is the main plutonium factory in the United States, believed to hold thousands of pounds of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons (the actual amount is classified).

Researchers study plutonium inside glove boxes—a Hollywood movie staple, consisting of a sealed enclosure with gloves so that someone outside the box can work on dangerous materials inside. A major earthquake would shake the ground enough to topple the glove boxes, says the new study. Some glove boxes are enormous and even contain furnaces to cast and mold plutonium. If one of these were to crash, the resulting fire would be uncontrollable and would create a vaporized plutonium cloud that could drift outside of the lab, says the safety report. In a worst-case scenario, a fire could release so much airborne plutonium that a person on the boundary of the lab would get a dose of radiation—potentially many thousands of times greater than a chest X-ray—that could be fatal in weeks, according to individuals knowledgeable about the study [Los Angeles Times].

The amount of vaporized plutonium could potentially be as much as 100 times more than the level allowed by the Department of Energy. Los Alamos responded to the report by saying they have taken many actions in the past year to increase fire safety including repacking plutonium into containers that would survive the accident. The lab also installed ventilation filters that perform at higher temperatures, improved the fire suppression system, implemented new controls for combustibles, added fire extinguishers to critical areas and developed plans to support firefighter response [AP].

The warning was delivered by Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an auditing agency that oversees federal nuclear programs; the board urged Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to act quickly to improve safety at Los Alamos. The laboratory will present a formal response to the report later this week.

Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Would You Turn Vegetarian to Slow Global Warming?

Eliza Strickland — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:58:00 +0000

Lord Nicholas Stern, the British economist who produced an influential report on the potential costs of global warming, is strongly urging the British public to go vegetarian in order to slow the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. Said Stern: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better” [The Times]. Stern also suggested that climate change legislation that makes it more expensive to generate greenhouse gases could soon force meat producers to raise prices, which might lower consumption.

In a 2006 report, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, it said, all the world’s cars, trains, planes and boats accounted for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions [BBC News]. The gases are produced by each step of livestock production. Take cows, for example. First forested land is cleared for cattle grazing or for agricultural operations that generate livestock feed, then there’s the methane emitted by burping cows and the nitrous oxide in their manure, and finally there are the energy costs associated with slaughtering the cows and transporting the meat.

Not everyone is calling for the drastic measure of eliminating meat entirely from our diets. Many experts agree that we could make a good start merely by dropping meat one day a week. This is what the citizens of the Belgian city of Ghent have been doing, voluntarily, all this year, without noticeable ill effects [The Times].

Image: flickr / Cathy, Sam, Max and Mai