Wind Energy From Airports?

Wind Energy From Airports?

By: Jeanne Roberts
August 19th, 2010

According to Phoenix, Arizona resident Dick Hales, the turbulence created by commercial jets sitting on the runway waiting to take off is a prime source of wind energy, but to date no one has thought of a way to harness it.

Jets sitting on the runway pre-takeoff can create wind speeds of up to 300 miles per hour. In the United States, where about 35,000 passenger jets take off daily, from more than 900 commercial airports, the potential for harnessing this wind power represents an enormous energy advantage to airports.

But Hales is stymied on two counts. His device, which consists of a reinforced housing containing a wind turbine, flywheel, and generator, needs a prototype. And the prototype needs financing.

Of course, Hales has a patent on the idea, which involves five FreeWind units mounted in front of a blast fence (many of which are already being used at airports), with two additional baffles to make sure the turbulence is directed at the blast fence and not dissipated. The entire assembly is located perpendicular of the runway and flight path, since Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) rules prohibit obstructing either.

Hales admits some have called him “crazy”. Hales retorts by asking why so many solutions embrace the obvious (that is, the status quo, which in this case involves a wind turbine on a tower hoping to catch a breeze). Then he points to the Wright brothers’, who were also considered crazy, along with such notables as John Baird (the TV camera), Crick and Watson (DNA), Robert Folk (nanobacteria), and of course Joseph Lister, who developed the sterile technique.

Hales got his vision for using jet turbulence to create power several decades ago. Acting on the advice of colleague and noted American designer, Ray Eames – who told Hales to “create your design in terms of product or need” – Hales, also an industrial designer by trade, decided recently to see if that dream could be revived.

Hales sees his invention providing instant energy for the hundreds of electric-powered airport vehicles currently in operation, and the hundreds more being considered to curb airport emissions (and, by extension, climate change). Take, for example, MSP (Minneapolis, St. Paul International Airport) where, in 2009, Metropolitan Airport Commission (MAC) officials installed wind turbines to power an electric vehicle as part of the MAC’s Stewards of Tomorrow’s Airport Resources (STAR) program launched in 2008.

The device could also be used to help power lighting at various non-critical locations around the airport. Which, if you think of how much electricity the average city airport uses, day and night, makes Hales crazy like a fox.

Hales recently got a positive response from Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital in Vancouver, BC. But Hales admits he isn’t an engineer, so he is seeking a university, design group or engineering firm with a solid grasp of wind energy fundamentals and a willingness to walk on the wild side.

Hales, who taught at the University of California at Irvine, and ran his own business in Irvine from 1984 to 2000, is currently semi-retired, after a decade of teaching at Arizona State University “off and on”. He now runs another business, and is – at 64 – still willing to put everything he has into his dream.

“I’ve been in business for 40 years, and am an expert in project management. I just need to convince someone to fund my idea and work with me.”

Emphasizing the clear need to find and develop every form of clean energy available – a need highlighted by the recent heat wave in Russia (triggered, most agree, by climate change), Hales admits he is currently scrambling to find people who know enough about the technology to create a working prototype.

“In the meantime, I will just keep experimenting with cardboard and glue.” Hales chuckles.

'Cool' Roofs- A Hot Idea?

'Cool' Roofs – A Hot Idea?

    By: Christopher Solomon
    MSN Real Estate

This hidden-in-plain-sight upgrade can mean saving on your electricity bills and enjoying a much more comfortable home during hot summers.

Linda Hanson is accustomed to long, hot summers, and she wanted to find a new way to reduce her cooling costs. Hanson owns a home in Canyon Lake, Calif. "The average temperatures out here are well in the 100s all summer long, so our (electricity) bills were $800 a month. It was pretty outrageous. We could not cool the house down. We'd run the air conditioner all the time." A big problem was the original concrete tile roof, which sat on the rafters and radiated that heat right into the house.

Then Hanson and her husband swapped out that roof for a so-called "cool roof" of green tiles on their 3,000-square-foot house. (They made other improvements, too, such as upgrading the home's windows and adding attic insulation.)

"We also put a swimming pool in, and even with that swimming pool, with the filter running, our bills in the summer are probably 200 bucks a month less," she says. The best part, she says, is "my house is comfortable all the time."

Hanson's savings may be dramatic, but they illustrate the point: Installing a cool roof is a hidden-in-plain-sight way to cool your home, shrink your electricity bill and help the planet. It's such a simple, smart idea that Energy Secretary Steven Chu endorsed the idea in a meeting with Nobel laureates last year.

An Old Idea Made New

Inhabitants of places such as Bermuda and the Greek isle of Santorini have long known that painting their roofs white to reflect sunlight can keep their homes cool. Studies bear that out: While black surfaces such as traditional built-up asphalt shingle roofs can reach 185 degrees, a roof that's white can be up to 70 degrees cooler because it bounces so much sunlight back into space. "The science of it is very basic," says Hashem Akbari, a leader in the study of cool roofs and a professor at Concordia University in Montreal.

Houses That Make Their Own Energy

Net-zero energy homes are gaining in popularity, but before buying a green home or an add-on product designed to generate energy, make sure you do your homework.

White roofs make sense particularly on commercial buildings because those buildings have their cooling systems on most of the year as computers and other machinery inside them create heat, says Chris Scruton, a project manager in the California Energy Commission's research program in building energy efficiency. With a white roof, "As much as 75 or even higher percent (of sunlight) can be reflected," Scruton says. That's great, you say, but what if you don't want a white roof on your Colonial? You're in luck. There's a roof for you, too.

Choose Your Hue

Manufacturers can make colored cool roofs that stay much cooler than traditional colored roofs. They add pigments or glazing to roofing materials that reflect infrared light back into space. That unseen infrared light makes up 52% of light that falls to Earth; we can't see it, but we feel it in the form of heat.

These cool roofs can take the form of tiles, shingles or metal. California's MCA Clay Roof Tile, for instance, makes 33 cool roof tiles, with reflectiveness ranging from just over 30% (for many of the dark-hued tiles) to 76% (for "White Buff"), says Yoshi Suzuki, president and CEO. Traditional dark asphalt roofs only have about 5% to 15% reflectiveness.

Custom-Bilt Metals of Chino, Calif., Classic Metal Roofing Systems of Piqua, Ohio, and other metal roof manufacturers have added pigments to their line of painted metal roof products.

"People are starting to catch on" to the benefits, Suzuki says, but "it's not so much residential yet." In 2007, about one-quarter of the commercial roofing market consisted of Energy Star-rated (that is, highly efficient) roofing products, compared with about 10% of the residential market.

The World's First Really Green Oil Deal

The World's First Really Green Oil Deal

By: Esmé McAvoy
Sunday, 8 August 2010











Ecuador's scheme to save its rainforest from exploitation could point the way to sparing other threatened landscapes.

The Tiputini river on the border of Ecuador's Yasuni National Park, which is threatened by oil drilling. Ecuador's UN-backed plan to leave the oil in the ground would mitigate global warming

The world's first genuinely green energy deal is about to be sealed. In a plan which could be a blueprint for saving large tracts of the planet from exploitation, a greater value is being put on a pristine wilderness than on the oil that lies beneath.

While the world's industrialized countries are building complex carbon markets to enable them to carry on polluting, Ecuador has come up with a much simpler idea for mitigating climate change: leave the oil underground. It is promising to lock up as much as a fifth of its oil reserves indefinitely, providing rich nations pay out at least half the market value of the oil – some $3.6bn – as compensation.

The trail-blazing proposal was first floated in 2007, but it took a step towards reality last week when the UN Development Programme signed an agreement with the Ecuadorean government to be the independent administrator for the project's trust fund. The accord makes Ecuador the only country in the world offering to leave lucrative oil reserves untapped in an attempt to slow climate change.

Crucially, the oil in question – some 846 billion barrels of crude – lies beneath the Yasuni National Park, one of the most bio-diverse swathes of rainforest on the planet. Located in the heart of the Ecuadorean Amazon, one hectare contains more tree species than the whole of the US and Canada combined. It is also home to 105 amphibian species – the UK has six – more than 500 birds, 200 mammals and countless insects and plants. Declared a world biosphere reserve by Unesco in 1989, the park is also the ancestral land of two of the world's last remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane.

The plan, backed by Greenpeace, the WWF and even the oil-producing Opec countries – applies to a 675sq mile area of Yasuni known as the ITT block after the three oil-fields that lie beneath it. Locking up the oil would not only protect the rainforest and the indigenous tribes, but it would also stop at least 407 million metric tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere, according to Carlos Larrea, the initiative's technical adviser. "That's more than the total annual emissions of France or Brazil," he said.

In return, Ecuador is asking for $3.6bn – roughly half the expected revenue if the oil was extracted and sold at current prices – to be invested in renewable energy developments to help the country further cut its carbon emissions.

If it works, the scheme could be rolled out to countries such as Colombia, Peru and the Philippines which face similarly stark choices between protecting globally significant ecosystems and oil. "Ecuador began exporting oil in 1972, and oil now accounts for over 60 per cent of exports," Mr Larrea said. "Locking away 20 per cent of our oil reserves is a bold decision but we can't do it without international support."

Yet, after three years, securing anything more concrete than praise has proved elusive. At the end of last year, President Rafael Correa embarked on an international tour, including the UK, France, Sweden and Canada, to drum up support for the proposal before December's climate change summit in Copenhagen. But none has offered a firm cash commitment.

The Yasuni-ITT committee was originally poised to sign the agreement at the summit, but Mr Correa, unhappy with the terms, baulked at the 11th hour. His actions, and subsequent statements, led to several resignations from the Yasuni-ITT board. But a new board was assembled, with some original members, and the contentious points in the agreement have been ironed out.

Despite the setbacks, Germany remains a supporter and is likely to contribute around $50m, although no figures are confirmed. Signing up an independent body such as the UN to oversee the trust fund was a key German criterion, along with the support of at least one other country. With the trust fund in place, Mr Larrea is confident the final obstacle will be removed. "Spain and Belgium have expressed support, as have a number of other European countries. We're very optimistic."

Contributions to the fund would be spread over at least 10 years and countries would be issued with Yasuni Guarantee Certificates (CGYs in Spanish) to the value of the non-emitted CO2 their contribution has secured. Should any future Ecuadorean government break the commitment and drill for oil, the certificates entitle their holders to their money back with interest.

Next month, individuals and private companies will also be able to donate via the Yasuni-ITT website. "We hope individuals and environmentally aware companies all over the world will be excited by what we're doing and want to contribute as a gesture of solidarity," Mr Larrea said. "Supporters will be symbolically 'buying' their barrel of oil with the guarantee it will stay underground." Such international "crowd funding" would create an intimidating network of public opposition should any future government try to break the pact.

The $3.6bn will be invested in renewable energy to reduce the country's oil dependency and cut carbon emissions. These investments are expected to generate annual returns of about 7 per cent, which will go into a second pot to fund environmental and social development projects, such as reforestation, social programmes for indigenous groups and eco-tourism. Projects will be decided by a steering committee of representatives from the Ecuadorean government, the donor countries and a nominated public representative.

Reducing illegal logging is the top priority, according to Mr Larrea. Ecuador has one of the highest rates of deforestation in South America, despite protected areas covering over a quarter of the country. Matt Finer of the environmental organisation Save America's Forests has called the Ecuadorean Amazon "a complicated and confusing array of overlapping protected areas, indigenous reserves and crude oil concessions", testament to the way conservation has regularly been sidelined by oil interests. Legal loopholes have permitted oil concessions within national park boundaries and even where areas are protected, they are woefully understaffed.

Ecuador's northern Amazon bears the scars of decades of reckless oil extraction. One of the biggest environmental lawsuits has been raging for 17 years between the oil giant Chevron and 30,000 Ecuadoreans whose land and water are contaminated by oil spills and toxic open waste pits. If found liable, Chevron faces damages of more than $27bn.

However, groundbreaking changes to the constitution in 2008 mean Ecuador is the only country in the world to recognise the rights of nature and ecosystems to survive and flourish, permitting any Ecuadorean citizen to sue on nature's behalf if these rights are infringed.

Understandably, the Ecuadorean government isn't prepared to wait for ever for international co-operation: "If by December 2011, Ecuador doesn't receive at least $100m, the government has the right to call off the proposal," said Bisrat Aklilu, the executive co-coordinator of the UN's multi-donor trust fund office that will administer the Yasuni fund. "The government will repay contributors the face value of their contribution and then make up their own minds about whether to drill."

For some, the plan amounts to little more than blackmail, with Mr Correa holding the Amazon to ransom; if Ecuador can get funding for Yasuni, what's to stop other countries cashing in? Saudi Arabia made possibly the most audacious bid for financial support yet this week, claiming compensation for the expected loss of oil revenue should climate change agreements result in a drop in production.

Against a backdrop of public outrage at the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the argument for "post-oil" economies seems stronger than ever. Maria Espinosa, Ecuador's Heritage Minister, agrees. "Ten years from now projects like this will be the rule, not the exception," she said last week.

Giant Ice Island Off Greenland Breaks

Giant Ice Island Off Greenland Breaks
By: msnbc.com

August 6,2010


Floating ice sheet is four times the size of Manhattan, scientists say.

Greenland's Petermann Glacier, shown in 2009, lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile-long floating ice-shelf on Aug. 5, 2010.

An ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off from one of Greenland's two main glaciers, scientists said Friday, in the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 620 miles south of the North Pole between Greenland and Canada.

The ice island has an area of 100 square miles and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building, said Andreas Muenchow, professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware.

Muenchow said he had expected an ice chunk to break off from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest remaining ones in Greenland, because it had been growing in size for seven or eight years. But he did not expect it to be so large.

"The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson Rivers flowing for more than two years," said Muenchow, whose research in the area is supported by the National Science Foundation.

"It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days."

Global warming?

He said it was hard to judge whether the event occurred due to global warming because records on the sea water around the glacier have only been kept since 2003. The flow of sea water below the glaciers is one of the main causes of ice calvings off Greenland.

"Nobody can claim this was caused by global warming. On the other hand nobody can claim that it wasn't," Muenchow said.

Scientists have said the first six months of 2010 have been the hottest globally on record. The El Nino weather pattern has contributed to higher temperatures, but many scientists say elevated levels of man-made greenhouse gases are pushing temperatures higher.

The initial discovery of the calving was made by Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service.

The ice island could fuse to land, break up into smaller pieces, or slowly move south where it could block shipping, Muenchow said.

The last time such a large ice island formed was in 1962 when the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf calved an island. Smaller pieces of that chunk became lodged between real islands inside Nares Strait.

In July, a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan fell off of Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier.

In Search of The Perfect Bottle

In search of the perfect (Coke) bottle

By: Marc Gunther

Since joining The Coca-Cola Co. in 1997, Scott Vitters has gone to work most days with one question on his mind:

“How do we get to our vision of a 100% renewable, 100% recyclable bottle?”

It’s a simple question, with anything but a simple answer—getting to a renewable, zero-waste bottle requires technology breakthroughs, favorable economics that will drive recycling, changes in human behavior and supporting policy from governments around the country, if not around the world.

This winter, though, Coca-Cola is taking a meaningful step towards its goal with the introduction of what it calls a PlantBottle – a bottle made of PET plastic, 30% of which is sourced from Brazilian sugar cane and molasses. That puts Coke on the road to 100% renewable.

PET, meanwhile, is 100% recyclable—although actual recycling rates are far lower. It’s a start.

“It’s incredibly exciting for us to be able to see a route forward to zero waste,” says Vitters, who is head of global sustainable packaging for Coca-Cola.

Scott and I met in Coca-Cola’s Washington office, where we enjoyed turkey sandwiches and Coke beverages. (Diet Coke for me, Honest Tea organic mango green tea for him.) Scott is 36 and a self-styled environmental geek, though he’s not an engineer. He’s got a degree is in political science from Franklin & Marshall, which should come in handy because his job is largely about mustering support for the company’s efforts to remake packaging. Most Coke products, remember, are made by independent bottlers, while recycling systems are run mostly by private companies and shaped by a mishmash of state and local government rules. So his work is mostly about persuading people to change.

While other beverage companies have labored for years to lower the environmental impact of their packages—my friend Ben Packard has toiled for a decade or so to come up with a recyclable paper cup for Starbucks—Coca-Cola has done more than most. The company light-weighted its bottles, built the world’s largest bottle-to-bottle PET recycling plant in South Carolina with bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises, and invested in RecycleBank, an innovative startup that rewards consumers who recycle more of their household trash.

Producing a renewable, recyclable bottle is hard because you have to consider the entire lifetime of the product—where it comes from and where it goes, as well as its cost and performance. Right now, most PET bottles come from petrochemicals and more than 60% end up in landfills, a literal waste.

Some people want to get away from PET. Packaging made from a material called PLA (and marketed under the trade name Ingeo) comes from plants and it can be composted. But PLA bottles don’t hold carbonation and they can’t be blended easily into the existing plastic recycling stream.

So Coca-Cola has been trying to “green” PET.

PET “works for sparkling and still beverages,” Vitters says. “It’s extremely efficient. And we’ve built a whole infrastructure for PET over the years.”

The company’s scientists have figured out how to make monoethylene glycol, which makes up 30% of PET, from sugar cane and other plants. Now they are trying to find economical ways to make terephthalic acid, which makes up the other 70% of PET, from plant material as well.

“We see the potential of a carbon neutral bottle,” Vitters says.

Of course, it’s a long way from here to there. Right now, Coca Cola uses raw materials from Brazil to make bottles that first be introduced in Denmark (for the Copenhagen climate talks), Vancouver (for the 2010 Winter Olympics) and select U.S. markets including Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. You can see the marketing gurus at work. Future launches are expected in Brazil, Japan and Mexico.

“We don’t have an optimized supply chain today,” Vitters admits, “but we wanted to get moving.”

Eventually, Coca-Cola would like to use non-food, plant-based waste, such as wood chips or wheat stalks, to produce recyclable PET bottles.

That leaves the other end of the life cycle–disposing of bottles. Until the company, its consumers and recyclers can find ways to get more bottles into the recycling stream and keep them out of the trash, a carbon-neutral package will remain a dream. Changing the makeup of the bottles may prove easier than getting Americans to throw less stuff away. I say Americans because in poor countries, glass and plastic bottle recycling rates are much higher for what should be obvious reasons.

A video about the Plant Bottle: http://video.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/avcenter/view/sustainability/plantbottle

My takeaway: Coca-Cola’s packaging work is impressive. As the world’s largest beverage company, Coke has impact. Others will follow.

My wish: That Coca-Cola, which delivers nearly 1.6 billion servings a day, will make what’s inside its bottle healthier and more sustainable, too.

The Value of Real-Time Wind Forecasting

The Value of Real-Time Wind Forecasting


July 22nd, 2010
By: Matter Network

The rapid growth of wind power is offering new challenges for transmission grid operators throughout the world, especially in the U.S. As wind power levels comprise an ever larger portion of utility supply portfolios, rapid changes in the speed and direction of wind resources often cause wind farms to deviate significantly from scheduled deliveries. When this happens, grid operators must tap into volatile spot market to keep the transmission grid in balance.

The value of spot market purchases required to balance the grid can cost from -$100/Megawatt hour (MWh) (during times of oversupply) up to $6,000/MWh (during times of supply shortages), depending upon wholesale supply conditions. Near real-time forecasting data for wind could be worth millions of dollars – both earned and saved. So far, few of the handful of firms that provide wind resource assessment and forecasting have developed a coherent business strategy to tap this emerging market for their products and services.

When compared to simple reliance upon climatology, an advanced forecasting system will reduce short-term forecasting errors by 40 to 60 percent. The bar chart below illustrates the magnitude of potential revenue losses, which can reach almost $4/MWh.

The error rate in day-ahead wind forecasts for any single wind farm is between 12 percent and 20 percent. But if these forecasts are aggregated across an entire region, error rates drop to roughly 5 percent. Even that level of error carries large financial impacts.

In Europe, where wind penetration is greatest, the costs of the variability of wind have largely been socialized. Therefore grid operators have not had as strong of an incentive to keep track of near real-time wind data.

In the U.S., forecast markets vary considerably by region. The Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO) appears to be developing the most advanced market for wind forecasting services, as it changes its market rules to fully integrate wind into its scheduling markets. The new market redesign will include a “dispatchable intermittent” category where any wind farm would be treated virtually the same as traditional generation, with only one special provision. Instead of dispatching wind at the amount that generators offered into the market, MISO will dispatch these resources up to the maximum MW output figures provided by a real-time forecasting system.

Current best bets for near-term are “nodal markets” where spot prices are segmented according to different transmission line nodes. In these nodal markets, generation units are typically committed to provide power every 15 minutes; power is dispatched every five minutes, offering multiple opportunities to buy and sell. To date, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), MISO, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland (PJM) ISO and now ERCOT are all in varying degrees of nodal market development. To give a sense of scale, the Texas transmission market will feature 4,000 different nodes.

How Net Metering Leads to Low Energy Bills

How Net Metering Leads to Low Energy Bills


Published on May 8th, 2010
By Chris Hale

Why solar and wind energy makes sense from a financial perspective. It is a sound investment that will provide you at least a 10 percent return on your initial investment for the next 30 years. Now the question is, “How do you make money on wind and solar?

The answer is that it saves you money through a program called net metering.

To start off this explanation, it is good to review your utility bill. Your utility bill has in it many line items for supply and delivery broken out into many different costs per kilowatthour (kwh). Kilowatt-hours are measurements of power used by you over a period of time, usually the billing cycle.

The simplest example is that if you leave the room and don’t turn off that lamp. Say that lamp has a 60-watt bulb and you don’t return to the room to turn it off for two hours. You have just used 120 watt-hours. We figure this out by taking the wattage of the bulb (60 watts) and multiplying it by the number of hours it was on (two hours):

60 watts X 2 Hours = 120 watt-hours

So what’s a kilowatt-hour? A kilowatt-hour is 1,000 watt hours.

Are you getting the drift? Your utility charges you by the kilowatt-hour.

Next question: How much am I paying for my electricity?

Answer: Figure out how much you are paying per kilowatt-hour. Take your total electrical portion of the bill (ignore the gas/oil portions), which usually says something to the effect of “total electricity costs,” and divide this number by the number of kilowatt-hours listed on the bill.

So for example, the bill says $100 and the number of kilowatt-hours used that month is 500, then you are paying $0.20 per kilowatt-hour:

$100 / 500 kilowatt-hours = $0.20/kilowatt-hour

Now that you know how much you are paying per kilowatt-hour, you can figure out how much you can save by using renewable energy. But first, let’s go over how renewable electricity saves you money. By installing a solar electric (photovoltaic) system on your roof or a wind turbine in your backyard, you are producing your own electricity. The electricity being produced is being used right away. If that lamp is on during the day, then your solar system is powering that lamp.

Any excess power that the system creates that is not being used will be sent back to the utility grid. In this case, your utility meter will (drum roll, please) spin backwards!

I cannot tell you how exciting it is to see the meter spin backwards. All these years, the utility meter is spinning forward, racking up all these charges that will be sent to you on your bill. Now, it is your turn to declare your independence, create your own power, send it back to the utility and watch the meter spin backwards.

Through this program called “net metering”, the utility commits to buying back the power you create at the same rate that it is charging you for the power. So during the day, your system produces power, sends the excess power back to the grid, and you receive credit for it. Then at night, or when the wind is not sufficient and the system is not producing power, your electricity will come from the utility grid.

You save money by producing your own power and receiving credit from your utility. As utility prices go up, you receive that much more money for power you produce.

To quote William Wallace in Braveheart, “Freedom!”

The Greenhouse Effect

The Greenhouse Effect

The "greenhouse effect" is the heating of the Earth due to the presence of greenhouse gases. It is named this way because of a similar effect produced by the glass panes of a greenhouse. Shorter-wavelength solar radiation from the sun passes through Earth's atmosphere, then is absorbed by the surface of the Earth, causing it to warm. Part of the absorbed energy is then reradiated back to the atmosphere as long wave infared radiation. Little of this long wave radiation escapes back into space; the radiation cannot pass through the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The greenhouse gases selectively transmit the infared waves, trapping some and allowing some to pass through into space. The greenhouse gases absorb these waves and reemits the waves downward, causing the lower atmosphere to warm.
 

PCBs, DDT, and PBDE’s Found in Marine Mammal Brains

PCBs, DDT, and PBDE’s Found in Marine Mammal Brains

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

A Woods Hole grad student, Eric Montie, now working at the University of Southern Florida’s Mann Lab for Marine Sensory Biology, has released the finding from a study he conducted on marine mammal brains, and the news is not good. It seems that human’s propensity to use the oceans as a dumping ground (as well as our ineptitude in realizing that dangerous chemicals don’t just go away when we no longer see them) has resulted in bio-accumulation of some nasty substances in marine mammals.

Yes, again with the flame retardants…

Eric Montie went to work with Environment Canada to “learn the painstaking techniques required to extract and to quantify more than 170 different pollutants and their metabolites.” He brought back the methods to Woods Hole and started analyzing the brains of 11 whales and dolphins and a grey seal. The animals came from around the Cape Cod area, and darned if you didn’t guess, some not-so-nice chemicals were present in the cerebrospinal fluid as well as the grey matter.

And yes, our dear friends DDT, an overly effective pesticide that has been banned around the world, but doesn’t seem to want to go away; PBDEs, or flame retardants which are only know being scrutinzed despite their ubiquity; and PCBs, again a banned chemical family that just doesn’t go away have all been found in the marine mammalian brain studied by Montie. In fact, the levels of PCBs in the seal were in the parts per million, which may seem small, but according to Montie, “you rarely find parts per million levels of anything in the brain.”

So what’s the big deal? Well, PCBs kind of trick a body into thinking that they are thyroid hormones and instead of healthy and needed thyroid hormones, the body gets PCBs. That can lead to all sorts of neurological issues and problems when it comes to brain development and can disrupt the sensory functions of mammals like dolphins, seals and whales that really depend on their sense of hearing to live.

Just how these chemicals might impact marine mammal health is something Montie plans to pursue. This summer, Montie, [David] Mann [the man behind the aforementioned Mann Lab], and Dr. Mandy Cook (from Portland University) will partner with scientists from NOAA to test the hearing in dolphins living near a Superfund site in Georgia and compare it to dolphins from locations where ambient concentrations of pollutants are significantly lower. Montie is also working with Frances Gulland, director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, to examine how California sea lions’s exposure to PCBs may increase their sensitivity to domoic acid, a naturally produced marine neurotoxin associated with “red tides.”

EPA Rejects Big Coal's Greenhouse-Gas Appeal

EPA rejects Big Coal's greenhouse-gas appeal

Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Columbus Dispatch

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week gave a thumbs-down to a request by the Ohio Coal Association and industry groups in Texas and Virginia for the federal agency to reconsider its view that greenhouse-gas emissions damage the environment and cause health problems in people.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week gave a thumbs-down to a request by the Ohio Coal Association and industry groups in Texas and Virginia for the federal agency to reconsider its view that greenhouse-gas emissions damage the environment and cause health problems in people.

The industry groups had argued that the EPA had relied on inaccurate science when it made its finding in 2009. Because of that finding and a 2007 opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court, the EPA is required to issue regulations curbing greenhouse gases if Congress fails to act on its own.

The groups argued that hacked e-mails from scientists at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain had discredited findings by the EPA that greenhouse gases from fossil-burning fuels contributed to global warming.

But EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency finding "is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world."