Another option for Obama to do good

As part of his deplorable legacy, one of the last things George W. Bush rushed through in his last days of power was a set of changes in environmental policy that basically gutted protections for endangered organisms. Our new president has been given the power to undo those changes in a recent spending bill.

Obama may now, with the stroke of a pen, rescind the Bush Administration’s last-minute rules that:

  • forcibly removed global warming from the list of extinction threats to the polar bear (despite scientific opinion that global warming is the bear’s chief extinction threat)

  • allowed oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitats

  • eliminated the need to consult with wildlife and marine scientists when allowing mining, building, logging and other destructive projects that might increase extinction threats to endangered species.

Make it so, President Obama.

Let’s talk about clean coal

When power plants burn coal to produce energy, the coal doesn’t just vanish into the atmosphere to cause global warming. No, there’s a substantial amount of left-over sludge called coal ash, a nasty mess that is enriched for toxic heavy metals. It is seriously nasty stuff. This glop has to be stored, somewhere, usually piled up and walled-off, because it’s not healthy for anything.

Behold what happens when the containment walls fail.

This is happening right now, here in the United States. Yesterday, a retaining wall failed, and 500 million gallons of coal ash — the vile grey slime in the video — poured down into the tributaries of the Tennessee River, the water supply for Chattannooga and environs.

We’re looking at a major environmental catastrophe, bigger than any oil spill, and most of the news media are silent about it. I checked CNN, MS-NBC, even Fox News…not a word. The local newspapers have a few articles, and the regional blogs are trying to follow it, but otherwise, I guess we’re going to pretend it didn’t happen.

A step closer to efficient solar power?

I have to confess that the title of this paper, The remarkable influence of M2δ to thienyl π conjugation in oligothiophenes incorporating MM quadruple bonds, is Greek to me, that the abstract was impenetrable, and the paper itself was thoroughly incomprehensible. I’m a biologist, not a chemist or materials engineer! Fortunately, there are a couple of summaries that simplify the explanation enough that I can understand the gist of it, and it’s cool stuff. Researchers have made a new material that promises to greatly increase the efficiency of solar cells. It works by collecting photons over a wider spectrum of wavelengths and by using both fluorescence and phosphorescence to create an electron flow, allowing it to both collect more energy per unit area and facilitating the production of current.

This is promising news, and also illustrates why we need to fund basic research — these are the kinds of discoveries that can’t be simply planned and forced into existence, but require the liberty of the research enterprise to explore new ideas freely.

Don’t get too excited just yet, though. The research has uncovered useful properties of a combination of molecules that have only been tested in minute quantities. It remains to be seen if it can be scaled up efficiently, if it can be made cost-effective, and whether it can be simply made to work at a practical level. It’s still an exciting idea — they’re talking about nearly 100% efficiency.

Californians, it’s your turn

There is currently a proposal before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to rip through desert wilderness in your state to put powerlines. Chris Clarke makes the case against it; you don’t have much time to respond, so phone or email your protests IMMEDIATELY. Let the state government know that there is a dedicated bloc of environmentally aware voters in the state who are not going to sacrifice what makes California a state worth living in for power company profits.

The McCain record on the environment

John McCain made some pleasant noises about supporting science in his Science Debate 2008 responses. They were outright lies, however. If you want to get pissed off at a politician, read the analysis of McCain’s voting record on environmental and alternative energy issues. His voting record is nearly indistinguishable from James Inhofe’s — he has routinely either skipped out on crucial votes or voted against renewable energy and environmental conservation.

And it’s not just the environment! If you want to be really frightened, read what he said about health care:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

He wants to do to health care what the Republican party has done to the economy!

Judge him by what he has done, not what he says he has done, because the straight-talk express seems to be a twisty bunch of lies and detours that never gets to its promised destination.

Proud Ecuador

When we were in Ecuador, much of the local political discussion was around their efforts to write a new constitution for the country. I’d heard that there were some significantly progressive elements to the work, but this is the first I’ve seen some of the articles being considered: as is perhaps unsurprising for a nation well-endowed with natural resources and reliant on maintaining those resources to support the economy, they’ve done something terrific: they’ve not only written rights for nature (personified as “Pachamama”), but they’ve acknowledged the importance of evolution.

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is
reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and
regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in
evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to
demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public
organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will
follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral
restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation
on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people
and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including
the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources,
the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the
restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or
mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and
juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will
promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and
restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the
extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the
permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material
that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is
prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and
nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and
form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its
production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the
State.

It’s awfully fuzzy on exactly how they’re going to protect the rights of Nature (will she have lawyers working on her behalf?), but the sentiment is excellent.

Dr Chilingar, AKA Dr Chill

Most of you haven’t seen Sizzle, but there is one global warming denier in the movie who is a wonderfully strange character, Dr Chilingar. He is interestingly idiosyncratic, but the movie didn’t really pursue his views very far…but Tim Lambert has. Chilingar is guilty of comparing CO2 over billions of years to human CO2 over centuries and using formulas that assume greenhouse effects don’t change to argue that greenhouse gases will have no effect.

<hack> <hack> Excuse me, I had a little cough.

Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy

That gadfly of the science communication world, Randy Olson, has a new movie out, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and many bloggers all over the place are putting up their reviews today. I tried something a little different. The other day, I invited a group of people from Morris, Minnesota to watch the movie with me, and then we discussed what we thought of it afterwards…while my daughter, Skatje, video taped the whole thing.

Here’s the team: Nancy Carpenter (UMM chemistry), Kristin Kearns (astronomy/physics), Pete Wyckoff (biology), Len Keeler (physics), Kathy Benson (psychology), Athena Kildegaard (poet), Kathleen and Lawrence Owen (retirees), Arne Kildegaard (economics), Nic McPhee (computer science), and me.

We all watched the movie together, and then…our reaction. It got us all going, and we talked for over 45 minutes, which I’ve edited down to 10 minutes here.

You don’t want to watch the whole thing? Well, the overall response was that, alas, the movie is mediocre as both a documentary and as a movie — it’s not really about global warming at all, but is more about how people respond to information. This is one of those awkward media misfits — it doesn’t really fit into any of the conventional niches. It also doesn’t accommodate itself to passive viewing; I think sitting alone and watching it would have been exasperating. As a catalyst for a discussion, though, it was much more rewarding.

So don’t see it alone! Bring along a few people so you can have a good entertaining argument afterwards.

Seed has a new blog

We have a new blog here: Next Generation Energy, a temporarily active blog discussing alternative energy. It’s a bit of an odd duck and an experiment, with a team of bloggers focused on this one issue and exploring it for a limited term, but check it out.

One concern I can predict: it’s sponsored by Shell Oil (what next? A blog on the virtues of vegetarianism sponsored by McDonalds?). To allay concerns a bit, we’ve been assured that Shell will not be imposing editorial constraints — although, of course, there is always the indirect pressure caused by the fact that displeasing your patron may mean they will not fund future ventures — and the blogging team they’ve put together has a history of independence on this subject. I also think that the commenters here can play a role in keeping the discussion honest, since Shell isn’t paying you.