Ever wondered how to solve the problem of traffic and pollution? Or how to align traffic and nature? EPA may have the answer for you. The Agency's role in abating global warming is finally gaining momentum. The Environmental Protection Agency of the U.S is experimenting with green parking lots to investigate how traffic pollutants (leaking oil, grease, chemicals, sediments and so on) affect underground water sources.
By using different permeable materials and construction designs for their parking lot in one of their facilities, the EPA will study:
- how to reduce the runoff of car pollutants from paved surfaces into underground water streams, and
- how to improve the filtering of polluted water that flows back into the ground.
According to ScienceDaily, we control most sources of pollution that infect drainage systems but it’s more difficult to control the large flow of pollution through ‘hard surfaces’, especially in crowded cities.
What’s the purpose?
The study will lead to strategies that make parking lots environmentally friendly and thus control a major water pollutant in urban areas. This will help underline the idea that simple measures can drastically reduce carbon emission.
How are they doing it?
A 43,000-square-foot area will be renovated to create three sections with different kinds of pavement materials and rain gardens (image above). After a decade, the effectiveness of each lot in terms of filtering pollutants from ‘stormwater’ (slow-flowing rainwater) will be evaluated.
Why is Stormwater Dangerous?
When it rains, not all water readily flows back into the city’s drainage systems. Sometimes, water settles on rooftops, pipes and potholes will accumulate harmful pollutants as the runoff flows across different surfaces.
Why is EPA doing this?
EPA is conducting the research through its National Risk Management Research Laboratory to help manage stormwater pollution on a national level.
It’s a half-hearted effort
So it seems like a half-hearted effort but it’s something! It may help prevent global warming and will lead contribute to green living. But the EPA has a lot more power than this, such as lobbying for a global climate change treaty, and that power should be leveraged properly instead of simply using it to look at groundwater pollution. And what about the millions of tons of carbon emitted by the US industry?
On the plus side, this endeavor will bring to attention the issue of global warming to the masses. And that’s needed more now because belief in global warming is falling in the USA.
Source: Science Daily, EPA, Cuyahoga Soil and Water
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The question isn't "how to stop global warming?", it's "what impact can individuals have on global warming?". The new answer, according to a study, is, "A lot".
If Americans voluntarily adopt green living, they could lower carbon emissions by 7.4% over the next decade without negatively impacting their well-being, a study says. By switching to environmentally-friendly techniques (mentioned below), consumers can effectively by their country leaders some time in completing the daunting task of reaching an international climate agreement, concluded a research led by Michigan State University which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The recommended measures, from the study as well as other sources, include:
- Driving fuel-efficient cars, and maintain highway speeds below 55 mph
- Insulating homes, including water geyser
- Regular car maintenance to check tire air pressure and engine efficiency
- Air drying laundry (on clothes-lines), instead of using electric driers
- Opting for efficient home heating systems
- Ensure water-heating system is below 120 F and turned on only when bathing
- Using slow-flow shower heads
- Turn off or unplug appliances when not in use, especially TVs, and mobile phones
- Installing energy-efficient light bulbs
- Regular change of furnace filters
- Plant a tree
- Switch off lights when not in room
- Walk, bike or share a car, instead of using your own all the time
- Conserve use of water and other products
- Use solar energy when possible
- Re-use and recycle
- Buy fresh food, instead of frozen
- Buy local instead of imported items
- Look into telecommuting options
- Instead of air-travel, opt for travel by road
Previously, no study had quantified effects of these measures, but now researches also know these techniques cost very little and can pay off in the long-run. Consumers now have greater incentive to live green.
According to MSU, in 2005, U.S consumers were responsible for 690 million tons of carbon, which was 38% of total U.S carbon emissions and 8% of global emissions, which exceeded the total emissions (households and industries) by any other country, save China.
These findings are more relevant just ahead of the UN Climate Change Summit in December, but will have trouble being accepted since belief in global warming is falling in the U.S.
Sources: Science Daily, Science Now, Reuters, StopGlobalWarming.org,iStockPhoto
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The United Nations recently admitted it did not expect a ‘legally binding’ deal to materialize at the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen this December, saying it might take some time, despite continuous insistence by top U.N officials.
At the same time, leaders of the European Union aim to reach an agreement at the summit in Brussels this Thursday, to help establish the economic bloc’s position in the sphere of global economics and politics. The bloc needs to decide upon their stance on funding to poor nations to avoid a reduction in their economic growth, despite cuts in use of fossil fuels in booming industries.
Views of industrialized as well as developing countries are too divergent at this stage to perceive the threat and solutions to global warming from one angle. Funding to poor nations to curb carbon emission growth as fight climate change is a major obstacle at this moment, so it’s more likely that a simple ‘political declaration’ will result as a starting point. Even in that, the talks will be a milestone.
Because the problem is transcendental and complicated, and belief in global warming is waning according to a recent U.S Poll, it may take many years to resolve the issue. Moreover, ironing out loopholes in treaties takes several years, compromising the efficacy of such initiatives, such as the recent flaw detected in the Kyoto Treaty.
The U.S plays an important role in the success of climate talks, being one of the largest economies which did not previously agree to limit carbon emissions. However, under President Obama’s regime, a carbon-footprint limit has been proposed in a draft bill, but it’s far from ready. Nevertheless, prospects are encouraging.
Momentarily, progress is too slow, both in the E.U and the U.S for an ambitious agreement to be reached in Copenhagen.
Sources: Reuters, Scientific American, CS Monitor, BigStockPhoto
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As I was reading the newspaper, I came along the following comic strip from Wizard of Id, by Brant Parker and Johnny Hart. The comic is decades old but keeps track of current affairs, so every now and then, you’ll be forced to smile about a serious concern, such as the recent global credit crunch, or violations of animal rights, or even the misleading clauses inserted in insurance policies. This particular strip is about global warming and how it affects the little town called Id, supposedly existing several centuries ago.
We've always heard global warming skeptics ask for more temperature. But now, new evidence proofs global warming exists by logging temperature for 200,000 years!
A recent study disputes the claim of global warming skeptics that the current rise in temperatures is explained by natural climatic variation.The credit goes to geologists from ScienceDaily, who have discovered sediments of insects and algae in a Canadian Arctic lake which are dramatically different from samples retrieved from previous warming intervals.
Skeptics point out that Earth’s natural temperature swings, moving from warm to cool, every few centuries because of tilts in the earth’s axis. Consequently, these skeptics claim, global warming is a hoax. However, the new sediment sample offers preserved climate data about the last 200,000 as opposed to 10,000 years for samples collected by scientists so far, which allows for more and accurate comparisons over the planet’s history.
The UB study shows that up until the 1950s, the varying ecology of the lake (rise and fall in temperature) was concurrent with variations during previous warming periods over 200,000 years, but soon after the mid of last century, ‘things really changed’, says Jason P. Briner, who led the research at UB.
During the last few decades, however, the ecosystem ‘is different from those seen during any of the past warm intervals’, indicating the effects of extreme carbon emissions, thus providing further evidence that global warming is a real phenomenon.
The Arctic sheet was formed 10,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, therefore climate data from that era gets preserved in earth’s sediments in glaciers. This lake was unique in the sense that glaciers did not ‘erode’ previous data.
The study, led by geologists in University at Buffalo (UB), was revealed in a paper titled, Recent changes in a remote Arctic lake are unique within the past 200,000 years, published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research simply highlights the gravity of the situation a couple of months ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Sources: Science Daily, US Geological Survey, ABC News
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Biomass is a threat. Potentially. Or when it is grown on land which has been cleared of vegetation because it may leave a higher carbon footprint than previously thought. Biofuel crops that result from ‘displacement of crops’ may be twice as harmful in terms of CO2 emission as when biofuel crops are grown on dedicated pieces of land, a study led by Jerry Melillo from Marine Biological Laboratory reveals.
This is because the removal or displacement of pastures causes a sharp drop in CO2 absorption by plants, which counts as ‘carbon losses from indirect land use’ under the Kyoto Protocol accounting rules. Direct land-use emissions are generated when biomass is grown without reducing the land’s agriculture. Large amounts of greenhouse gasses that are released as a result of large biofuel programs are an ‘unintended consequence’ in both indirect and direct land-use, but the consequence is greater when clearing of forests is involved.
Greater use of fertilizer on this biofuel cropland may also contribute to greenhouse gas emission in the form of nitrous oxide (N2O), thus warming up the planet quicker than previously thought, the study noted. A model created by the scientists predicts that as the demand for biomass, and hence fertilizer increases in the future, N2O will contribute more than CO2 to rising temperatures.
Currently, no country or legislation counts the net effect of biomass crops that stem from changes in land-use, i.e. crop removal or displacement. Therefore, this study reveals a critical flaw in man’s recent attempt to limit fossil fuel emissions by aggressively shifting energy dependence to biofuels.
This simply compounds the recent flaws discovered in the Kyoto Protocol accounting rules, which fail to consider the net increase in greenhouse gasses as large firms begin to burn and cut down forests in order to grow biomass.
Source: Marine Biological Lab, Science Daily, iStockPhoto
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A critical accounting flaw in the Kyoto Protocol Treaty lowers the carbon emission targets set by the treaty, according to ScienceDaily. Scientists said the error undermines the accuracy of measuring compliance with carbon limits, but that the flaw was ‘fixable’.
The current guidelines fail to consider carbon emissions resulting from use of renewable energy, which means biomass is incorrectly considered carbon-neutral. These omissions include:
- CO2 emitted from exhaust pipes of vehicles and chimneys of homes and industries that use bioenergy.
Problem: Both bioenergy and fossil energy lead to comparable carbon emission but if the growth of biomass exceeds its harvest to create biofuels, the carbon emission is ultimately lowered.
- Emissions that result when biomass, such as maize, is grown and harvested, after clearing away other vegetation from the land (a process which emits carbon)
Problem: This may encourage oil and energy firms, as well as other industries, to clear up large areas of forests (by burning, which would release CO2 that isn’t accounted for) and plant biomass instead (which would result in carbon credits, in order to falsely comply with the treaty).
In short, the source of bioenergy is ignored when carbon emitted by bioenergy is not factored into the calculations.
These accounting rules were based on guidelines set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when the Kyoto Treaty was being devised. These guidelines state that CO2 from bioenergy can be ignored only if the emissions from clearing up land (deforestation) are counted as ‘emissions from land use’. However, since the Kyoto Protocol doesn’t place limits on emissions from deforestation, this leads to an incentive to harvest good forestland, for the sake of compliance.
The solution is simple: carbon emission from both bio-energy and fossil energy should be accounted for, and then offset against the carbon emitted from deforestation (i.e. emissions from land use).
These accounting rules are also used for global warming related legislation passed in Europe (the European Union's Emissions Trading System) and USA (American Clean Energy and Security Act) and the errors within them must be ironed out before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.
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Source: BigStockPhoto, Science Daily
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If you wanted statistics on the number of consumers going green, or were wondering if more people were going green, you may prepare to get dismayed.
A rising number of American feel there isn’t enough evidence to support the idea of global warming (43% up from 29% in 2007). Plus, fewer people feel that humans are contributing to climate change (36% down from 47% in 2006). These results come despite growing scientific evidence that commercial farming, industries, transport systems and energy generation activities have occasioned greater carbon emissions which get trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere and raise temperatures.
Some results are encouraging, nonetheless. Around half the respondents favoured a policy that imposed credit limits and a carbon tax for companies, even if it meant a rise in energy prices. Similarly, a majority felt that USA should join hands with other countries to set standards for curbing carbon emission.
The significance of these results stem from their timeliness as the US Senate prepares to debate over ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions and the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference is set to take place in Copenhagen in December.
The results come from a survey of 1,500 Americans, which was conducted by Pew Research Centre.
The director of the center, Andrew Kohut, said that the reason fewer people consider global warming a serious issue was probably due to the current dismal situation of the economy which means that ‘the priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down’. As another analyst put it, scientific awareness is diminishing due to politics.
Source: Daily Mail, Pew Research Centre, iStockPhoto (Image)
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