California

Having gone to grad school in California, I often think of it wistfully- I miss the nice dry air, the amazing cornucopia of fresh produce, the amazing mountains, and of course proximity to my family in nearby Nevada. 

One thing I don't miss is the air pollution, though of course I was in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is much less polluted than LA. Southern California is afflicted with some of the worst pollution in the nation, and a recent study says it kills thousands of people per year. The next time someone tells you that there are things more important to spend money on, ask them how they feel about spending money to save lives. Yeah- it matters.

Greenland

This quote caught me today: "Scientists recently reported that the ice island lost 1 trillion tons of ice mass to the ocean in just four years, between 2011 and 2014." (from here) That change is affecting ocean levels and potentially, if I'm reading this right, "can result in extreme events [in Europe and North America], such as prolonged heat waves, flooding, and droughts, all of which have repeatedly reared their heads more frequently in recent years."

Doesn't it seem like a good idea to take action to address this?

Glad I was wrong

Looks like I was wrong not once, but twice! Maybe you should find someone more dependable to read.... :)

If you look back on this blog you'll find that I've been pretty anti-corn ethanol. I'm not really an expert, but the analyses I've seen have found it to be inefficient (saving little or no carbon on balance) and mostly just a sop for Big Corn. However, there is a really interesting writeup here defending the practice. Honestly, I'd be happy to be wrong: if the agricultural industry can do some good work for the environment without having to put a lot of time, energy, and money into retooling themselves, that would be a good thing. Note that there is a rebuttal posted here. (Thanks to Jane Wolfson for both!)

One point made in the first article has to do with something I do actually know a little more about. Some background: one way that people have come up with to fight climate change is by getting carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground. This is done a few ways, and one of the more common means is by agriculture. "No-till" agriculture involves preserving the integrity of the surface of the land rather than plowing it up all the time. The idea is that leaving root systems intact will leave some carbon behind when the top of the crop is harvested.

Well, an article my advisors and I published in 2005 found that this doesn't work very well. It looked to us like, "no-till cultivation may store no carbon at all if measurements are taken at sufficient depth." Fortunately for the world, it looks like we were wrong. A more recent study investigated quite thoroughly and found impacts even at depth. So hooray! Farmers' methods do seem to be getting the job done.

So you know what? Looks like it might turn out that I was wrong. And I'm perfectly fine with that!

No clean coal

Like many a technophile, I suppose, I was hopeful for this project that was supposed to trap the carbon emitted when a really dirty source of energy was burned. If it worked, it would bring jobs to a part of Mississippi in need of a boost, it would provide reasonably priced energy, and it would emit no (or close to no) carbon.

Alas, it hasn't panned out. This writeup blames mismanagement; I suppose that means there may be some hope left for the technology, though that's not clear. The companion article covers the broader issues, including the economics, in a really short, clean way. Take a look.

Climate change and plastic fibers

A couple of articles in the past few weeks are about addressing climate change via technology. The first is a creative approach to trapping carbon underground, while the second is a NYT article advocating for more nuclear energy, a topic that's come up here before. While no one is excited about dealing with nuclear waste, techniques have been developed for storing it safely for longer, and the fact is that removing reactors usually results in the use of more fossil fuels, doing climate damage.

A third article is about a threat to the environment I hadn't thought about: recently much has been documented about the damage done by tiny plastic beads used in facial scrubs and toothpaste, but this is the first I've heard of how synthetic fabrics, such as those produced by Patagonia, slough off tiny bits of plastic that also have a big effect on small creatures. To Patagonia's credit, it's their own research that uncovered the problem. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for the Snap-T, produced by my former employer from recycled PET bottles....

Aquaculture FTW

I've been excited about aquaculture for a long time, but now it's no longer the Next Big Thing: it's the current big thing. I'm not saying that all aquaculture is great- look no further than the devastating "marea roja" in Chile last month, which led the loss of 100,000 tons of farmed salmon. However, if done properly, aquaculture has a better chance of being sustainable than do most capture fisheries, IMHO.

Fruit in the news

Apple consumption has been stable for a long time, but for the industry there's a new hope: sliced apples. Just as baby carrots have revolutionized the carrot industry, slicing the fruit McDonalds-style is giving a big boost to apple farmers. Consumption in school lunches went up a great deal when apples were served sliced, and soon they'll be coming to supermarket shelves. Amazing how 30 seconds and a knife can do so much for consumption!

Also, have you heard that the end may be near for the banana as we know it? The most common banana is called the "Cavendish" banana and a disease threatens to wipe it out. This actually happened once before: 100 years ago the most popular banana was called the Gros Michel banana. It tasted better but didn't travel as well and proved susceptible to disease, and was eventually wiped out. Now scientists in the lab and in the field are both working to find a variety that is resistant to disease.