Global Warming New York | Search results for "green"

Cities deep underwater, frozen continents, the collapse of global agriculture: so far, much of the discussion about climate change has focused on these distant, catastrophic effects of a superheated world. What's less talked about is how global warming is making itself felt already. Even the modest temperature rise we've already experienced has set in motion fundamental shifts--and the further warming we can expect in the next few decades has the potential to set off dramatic changes. View Slideshow: Top 10 Places Affected by Climate Change [More] Chicago's Plans to Go Green You might assume that Chicago dislikes environmentalists, judging by the response they get along Michigan Avenue. They loiter on its crowded sidewalks, trying to stop people with the brightness of their T-shirts, the authority of their clipboards and the innocence of their question: “Do you have a minute to save the earth?” Almost no passerby has that minute, let alone $20 to donate to the cause. What most people have is a scowl, a dismissive wave of the hand and the accelerating stride of a running back. In a city synonymous with Al Capone, do-gooder appeals are about as practical as a citizen’s arrest. But although 2.8 million residents of Chicago may scoff at the notion that noble intentions can stop climate change, that doesn’t mean they think the problem can’t be solved. The city’s leaders know that to get people to save the earth, you must appeal to their bank accounts, not just their consciences. And those leaders are putting their reputation on the line to prove it. [More]

Tags: change, climate, chicago, people, earth

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are urging companies to broaden their carbon footprint calculations. They report that many U.S. companies in a variety of industries do not account for the entire supply chain that results in final goods and services--overlooking up to 75 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions involved. Most factories, it seems, assess only carbon dioxide released directly and not from materials processing or production of parts done by suppliers, which contributes significantly to the ultimate footprints. Similarly, most retailers analyze only their stores and not their merchandise supply lines. [More] News Scan Briefs: Sounds Like Thunder Take Two Pills and Don’t Call Me in the MorningUp to 58 percent of physicians in the U.S. regularly prescribe placebos, according to a survey of 679 rheumatologists and general internists conducted by Jon C. Tilburt of the National Institutes of Health and his colleagues. Even though placebos may contain no active ingredients, many ailments still respond positively to them [see “The Placebo Effect,” by Walter A. Brown; Scientific American, January 1998]. [More]

Tags: supply, placebo, footprint, chain, carbon

Cities deep underwater, frozen continents, the collapse of global agriculture: so far, much of the discussion about climate change has focused on these distant, catastrophic effects of a superheated world. What's less talked about is how global warming is making itself felt already. Even the modest temperature rise we've already experienced has set in motion fundamental shifts--and the further warming we can expect in the next few decades has the potential to set off dramatic changes. View Slideshow: Top 10 Places Affected by Climate Change [More] Chicago's Plans to Go Green You might assume that Chicago dislikes environmentalists, judging by the response they get along Michigan Avenue. They loiter on its crowded sidewalks, trying to stop people with the brightness of their T-shirts, the authority of their clipboards and the innocence of their question: “Do you have a minute to save the earth?” Almost no passerby has that minute, let alone $20 to donate to the cause. What most people have is a scowl, a dismissive wave of the hand and the accelerating stride of a running back. In a city synonymous with Al Capone, do-gooder appeals are about as practical as a citizen’s arrest. But although 2.8 million residents of Chicago may scoff at the notion that noble intentions can stop climate change, that doesn’t mean they think the problem can’t be solved. The city’s leaders know that to get people to save the earth, you must appeal to their bank accounts, not just their consciences. And those leaders are putting their reputation on the line to prove it. [More]

Tags: change, climate, chicago, people, earth

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are urging companies to broaden their carbon footprint calculations. They report that many U.S. companies in a variety of industries do not account for the entire supply chain that results in final goods and services--overlooking up to 75 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions involved. Most factories, it seems, assess only carbon dioxide released directly and not from materials processing or production of parts done by suppliers, which contributes significantly to the ultimate footprints. Similarly, most retailers analyze only their stores and not their merchandise supply lines. [More] News Scan Briefs: Sounds Like Thunder Take Two Pills and Don’t Call Me in the MorningUp to 58 percent of physicians in the U.S. regularly prescribe placebos, according to a survey of 679 rheumatologists and general internists conducted by Jon C. Tilburt of the National Institutes of Health and his colleagues. Even though placebos may contain no active ingredients, many ailments still respond positively to them [see “The Placebo Effect,” by Walter A. Brown; Scientific American, January 1998]. [More]

Tags: supply, placebo, footprint, chain, carbon

A UK jury has decided that breaking the law and causing large scale criminal is justifiable in the name of climate change alarmism. Here is how The Independent reported it: The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners werejustified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-firedpower station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will haveshocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone CrownCourt cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage. Jurorsaccepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damageproperty at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greaterdamage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" underthe Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property toprevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of aburning house to tackle a fire. The not-guilty verdict, deliveredafter two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises thestakes for the most pressing issue on Britain's green agenda and couldencourage further direct action. Of course, this is only one idiot jury. But it can set a precedent unless the legal authorities determine to overturn it at law. Let us hope EOn has the sense to appeal.  More than that. Let us hope that these Greenepeace anarchists don't find out where we live as, it seems we in the UK who do not subscribe to alarmist GW theory, may be in real danger of seeing our houses and cars vandalised - without legal redress.  For the record . I have written a peace which sets out the opposite case and showing plainly why a coal-fired Kingsnorth should get the go ahead and drawing the analogy with a massive coal-fired plant in Western India given the go aherad because it will drag around 16 million out of abject poverty. Therein lies the bigger human picture. One version is due to appear in the magazine Energy Tribune (fo whom I am a features writer) in October or November. Another is sitting with an editor in a British magazine (so don't hold your breath for that one. ) US Old Farmers Almaanac 2009 Predicts Colder Winter - And Global Cooling Of course, it is not just the popular science and mass media that is hot on prophetic insight (if lousy on facts) but The Old Farmers Almanac -- which at least has a real stake in knowing -- predicts too. And they predict not only a colder 2008-9 winter, but global cooling over the next 50 years. Go here to USA Today for more.

Tags: damage, jury, strong, coal, global

A UK jury has decided that breaking the law and causing large scale criminal is justifiable in the name of climate change alarmism. Here is how The Independent reported it: The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners werejustified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-firedpower station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will haveshocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone CrownCourt cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage. Jurorsaccepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damageproperty at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greaterdamage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" underthe Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property toprevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of aburning house to tackle a fire. The not-guilty verdict, deliveredafter two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises thestakes for the most pressing issue on Britain's green agenda and couldencourage further direct action. Of course, this is only one idiot jury. But it can set a precedent unless the legal authorities determine to overturn it at law. Let us hope EOn has the sense to appeal.  More than that. Let us hope that these Greenepeace anarchists don't find out where we live as, it seems we in the UK who do not subscribe to alarmist GW theory, may be in real danger of seeing our houses and cars vandalised - without legal redress.  For the record . I have written a peace which sets out the opposite case and showing plainly why a coal-fired Kingsnorth should get the go ahead and drawing the analogy with a massive coal-fired plant in Western India given the go aherad because it will drag around 16 million out of abject poverty. Therein lies the bigger human picture. One version is due to appear in the magazine Energy Tribune (fo whom I am a features writer) in October or November. Another is sitting with an editor in a British magazine (so don't hold your breath for that one. ) US Old Farmers Almaanac 2009 Predicts Colder Winter - And Global Cooling Of course, it is not just the popular science and mass media that is hot on prophetic insight (if lousy on facts) but The Old Farmers Almanac -- which at least has a real stake in knowing -- predicts too. And they predict not only a colder 2008-9 winter, but global cooling over the next 50 years. Go here to USA Today for more.

Tags: damage, jury, strong, coal, global

Technology policy lies at the core of the climate change challenge. Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people. The key is new low-carbon technology, not simply energy efficiency. [More] Green Buildings May Be Cheapest Way to Slow Global Warming North American homes, offices and other buildings contribute an estimated 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year--more than one third of the continent's greenhouse gas pollution output. Simply constructing more energy-efficient buildings--and upgrading the insulation and windows in the existing ones--could save a whopping 1.7 billion tons annually, says a new report from the Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an international organization established by Canada, Mexico and the U.S. under the North American Free Trade Agreement to address continent-wide environmental issues. [More]

Tags: carbon, energy, buildings, billion, environmental

You might assume that Chicago dislikes environmentalists, judging by the response they get along Michigan Avenue. They loiter on its crowded sidewalks, trying to stop people with the brightness of their T-shirts, the authority of their clipboards and the innocence of their question: “Do you have a minute to save the earth?” Almost no passerby has that minute, let alone $20 to donate to the cause. What most people have is a scowl, a dismissive wave of the hand and the accelerating stride of a running back. In a city synonymous with Al Capone, do-gooder appeals are about as practical as a citizen’s arrest. But although 2.8 million residents of Chicago may scoff at the notion that noble intentions can stop climate change, that doesn’t mean they think the problem can’t be solved. The city’s leaders know that to get people to save the earth, you must appeal to their bank accounts, not just their consciences. And those leaders are putting their reputation on the line to prove it. [More] Cap and Dividend, Not Trade: Making Polluters Pay If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More]

Tags: carbon, cap, permits, people, chicago

You might assume that Chicago dislikes environmentalists, judging by the response they get along Michigan Avenue. They loiter on its crowded sidewalks, trying to stop people with the brightness of their T-shirts, the authority of their clipboards and the innocence of their question: “Do you have a minute to save the earth?” Almost no passerby has that minute, let alone $20 to donate to the cause. What most people have is a scowl, a dismissive wave of the hand and the accelerating stride of a running back. In a city synonymous with Al Capone, do-gooder appeals are about as practical as a citizen’s arrest. But although 2.8 million residents of Chicago may scoff at the notion that noble intentions can stop climate change, that doesn’t mean they think the problem can’t be solved. The city’s leaders know that to get people to save the earth, you must appeal to their bank accounts, not just their consciences. And those leaders are putting their reputation on the line to prove it. [More] Cap and Dividend, Not Trade: Making Polluters Pay If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More]

Tags: carbon, cap, permits, people, chicago

If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More] Clean Cities and Dirty Coal Power--China's Energy Paradox CHONGQING--This year china surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And coal is largely to blame. The dirty black rock is burned everywhere, from industrial boilers to home stoves, and generates 75 percent of the nation’s electricity. More than 4,000 miners die every year digging the fossil fuel out of China’s heartland. One consequence of the country’s reliance on coal is most visible in the air. Smog cloaks cities, reducing the sky to little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. As the pollution builds, it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that in a week’s time crosses the Pacific Ocean to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution. The haze means no true horizon can be seen when one is walking the streets of Chong­qing, an inland port city on the Yangtze River that produces most of China’s motorcycles as well as other industrial goods. It seems the entire Rust Belt of the U.S. has been crammed into this “furnace of China,” as it is known--a single community of more than 30 million people, twice the size of the New York City metropolitan region. [More]

Tags: carbon, china, coal, permits, air

Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American, for the seven days back dated to February 20th, 2008, because I actually filed on the evening of the February 21st, well, I'm Steve Mirsky by the way. If you have been breathlessly waiting for this ’s podcast I apologize, I was out of town at a couple of conferences and this week's episode features some highlights from one of them and that's the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the AAAS, which took place last week in the beginning of this current week in Boston. The other conference was inside baseball, was about the future of science journalism, which is going to be good, thankfully. So, this week on the podcast we'll hear from Nobel laureate David Baltimore about HIV research. We also have an interview with the director of the jet propulsion laboratory, Charles Elachi, and in a real coup, we actually managed to get Scientific American editor Mark Fischetti to come on board and make an appearance. First up, David Baltimore, he is the president of the AAAS and professor of biology at Caltech. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the reverse transcriptase. I attended his presidential address to the conference and he spent a few minutes reviewing the effort to create an HIV vaccine. Here's what he said. [More] Dark Side of Solar Cells Brightens It takes power to make power--even with a solar grand plan. From the mining of quartz sand to the coating with ethylene-vinyl acetate, manufacturing a photovoltaic (PV) solar cell requires energy--most often derived from the burning of fossil fuels. But a new analysis finds that even accounting for all the energy and waste involved, PV power would cut air pollution--including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change--by nearly 90 percent if it replaced fossil fuels. [More]

Tags: week, science, conference, solar, american

Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American, for the seven days back dated to February 20th, 2008, because I actually filed on the evening of the February 21st, well, I'm Steve Mirsky by the way. If you have been breathlessly waiting for this week’s podcast I apologize, I was out of town at a couple of conferences and this week's episode features some highlights from one of them and that's the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the AAAS, which took place last week in the beginning of this current week in Boston. The other conference was inside baseball, was about the future of science journalism, which is going to be good, thankfully. So, this week on the podcast we'll hear from Nobel laureate David Baltimore about HIV research. We also have an interview with the director of the jet propulsion laboratory, Charles Elachi, and in a real coup, we actually managed to get Scientific American editor Mark Fischetti to come on board and make an appearance. First up, David Baltimore, he is the president of the AAAS and professor of biology at Caltech. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the reverse transcriptase. I attended his presidential address to the conference and he spent a few minutes reviewing the effort to create an HIV vaccine. Here's what he said. [More] Dark Side of Solar Cells Brightens It takes power to make power--even with a solar grand plan. From the mining of quartz sand to the coating with ethylene-vinyl acetate, manufacturing a photovoltaic (PV) solar cell requires energy--most often derived from the burning of fossil fuels. But a new analysis finds that even accounting for all the energy and waste involved, PV power would cut air pollution--including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change--by nearly 90 percent if it replaced fossil fuels. [More]

Tags: week, science, conference, solar, american

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Flooding the Grand Canyon to Save a Fish Man-made deluge scours Grand Canyon in the name of endangered fishTo survive, the humpback chub--an endangered fish with a prominent hump of flesh immediately behind its long-snouted head--needs sandbars in the Colorado River. These silt deposits create calm waters where the fish can spawn and also cloud the river creating conditions in which the chub can thrive. But the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s ended the natural ebb and flow of the river that courses through the Grand Canyon, which severely altered the natural conditions in which the chub evolved, pushing the silvery-green fish onto the path of extinction. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne personally supervised the release of 41,500 cubic feet (1,175 cubic meters) of water per second over a 60-hour period to mimic a natural flood that will enlarge existing sandbars. The bars themselves, however, won't survive very long--they'll be quickly eroded when river levels are shifted to maximize electricity generation. And there are no plans to repeat the inundation, which is itself a repeat of similar efforts in 1996 and 2004 that didn't succeed in helping the fish. One environmental advocate told The New York Times that the well-publicized event was a "charade." (USGS, The Economist, The New York Times)  [More]

Tags: fish, canyon, river, grand, natural

If you tried to dump harmful waste on the property next door, your neighbor would either stop you or require you to pay a fee. But if you dump carbon dioxide into the air, no one charges you a penny because no one, as yet, owns the air. This free ride results in what economists call a market failure. The actual costs of polluting the atmosphere are enormous, but polluters don’t pay them. Instead future generations are stuck with the tab. A carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, can fix this market failure, but because American politicians are loath to impose taxes, a cap is far more likely. Under a cap, government sets a limit on total carbon emissions and issues tradable permits up to the limit. Each year the number of permits declines, reducing emissions over time. Permits can be issued to companies that emit carbon dioxide or to those that supply it for burning--oil, coal and natural gas firms. Issuing permits to suppliers is easier to administer because no smokestacks need to be monitored. [More] Clean Cities and Dirty Coal Power--China's Energy Paradox CHONGQING--This year china surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And coal is largely to blame. The dirty black rock is burned everywhere, from industrial boilers to home stoves, and generates 75 percent of the nation’s electricity. More than 4,000 miners die every year digging the fossil fuel out of China’s heartland. One consequence of the country’s reliance on coal is most visible in the air. Smog cloaks cities, reducing the sky to little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. As the pollution builds, it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that in a week’s time crosses the Pacific Ocean to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution. The haze means no true horizon can be seen when one is walking the streets of Chong­qing, an inland port city on the Yangtze River that produces most of China’s motorcycles as well as other industrial goods. It seems the entire Rust Belt of the U.S. has been crammed into this “furnace of China,” as it is known--a single community of more than 30 million people, twice the size of the New York City metropolitan region. [More]

Tags: carbon, china, coal, permits, air

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Flooding the Grand Canyon to Save a Fish Man-made deluge scours Grand Canyon in the name of endangered fishTo survive, the humpback chub--an endangered with a prominent hump of flesh immediately behind its long-snouted head--needs sandbars in the Colorado River. These silt deposits create calm waters where the fish can spawn and also cloud the river creating conditions in which the chub can thrive. But the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s ended the natural ebb and flow of the river that courses through the Grand Canyon, which severely altered the natural conditions in which the chub evolved, pushing the silvery-green fish onto the path of extinction. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne personally supervised the release of 41,500 cubic feet (1,175 cubic meters) of water per second over a 60-hour period to mimic a natural flood that will enlarge existing sandbars. The bars themselves, however, won't survive very long--they'll be quickly eroded when river levels are shifted to maximize electricity generation. And there are no plans to repeat the inundation, which is itself a repeat of similar efforts in 1996 and 2004 that didn't succeed in helping the fish. One environmental advocate told The New York Times that the well-publicized event was a "charade." (USGS, The Economist, The New York Times)  [More]

Tags: fish, canyon, river, grand, natural

The U.S. government--and major U.S. banks--seem to have lost their appetite for coal. After spending five years and approximately $50 million on preliminary studies as well as selecting a proposed site in Mattoon, Ill., the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has scuttled plans to build the so-called FutureGen power plant. The facility would have captured the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) that is emitted when coal is burned for electricity generation. Instead, the DOE hopes to help industry add carbon-capture-and-storage capability to advanced coal plants already in the works. "This restructured FutureGen approach is an all-around better investment for Americans," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement announcing the change. The DOE is asking Congress for $407 million to research how to burn coal most efficiently, along with $241 million to demonstrate such carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies--at least $900 million less than DOE said it would have cost to complete FutureGen. [More] Smog Can Make People Sick, Even Indoors Smog caused by ground-level ozone isn't just an outdoor air problem. A new study shows that when the irritant's level rises outside, the number of people inside suffering from so-called "sick building syndrome" also increases. (Ozone, an air-polluting oxygen molecule (O3), forms when sunlight strikes motor vehicle tailpipe emissions.) "We found that outdoor air pollution, ozone, is associated with symptoms of lower-respiratory and upper-respiratory stress that occur in buildings to workers," says environmental health scientist Michael Apte of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, who analyzed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data gathered on office air quality across the country. "These symptoms are prevalent at fairly high levels throughout the U.S. and are similar in other parts of the world." [More]

Tags: coal, doe, air, million, futuregen

The U.S. government--and major U.S. banks--seem to have lost their appetite for coal. After spending five years and approximately $50 million on preliminary studies as well as selecting a proposed site in Mattoon, Ill., the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has scuttled plans to build the so-called FutureGen power plant. The facility would have captured the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) that is emitted when coal is burned for electricity generation. Instead, the DOE hopes to help industry add carbon-capture-and-storage capability to advanced coal plants already in the works. "This restructured FutureGen approach is an all-around better investment for Americans," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement announcing the change. The DOE is asking Congress for $407 million to research how to burn coal most efficiently, along with $241 million to demonstrate such carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies--at least $900 million less than DOE said it would have cost to complete FutureGen. [More] Smog Can Make People Sick, Even Indoors Smog caused by ground-level ozone isn't just an outdoor air problem. A new study shows that when the irritant's level rises outside, the number of people inside suffering from so-called "sick building syndrome" also increases. (Ozone, an air-polluting oxygen molecule (O3), forms when sunlight strikes motor vehicle tailpipe emissions.) "We found that outdoor air pollution, ozone, is associated with symptoms of lower-respiratory and upper-respiratory stress that occur in buildings to workers," says environmental health scientist Michael Apte of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, who analyzed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data gathered on office air quality across the country. "These symptoms are prevalent at fairly high levels throughout the U.S. and are similar in other parts of the world." [More]

Tags: coal, doe, air, million, futuregen

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Flooding the Grand Canyon to Save a Fish Man-made deluge scours Grand Canyon in the name of endangered fishTo survive, the humpback chub--an endangered with a prominent hump of flesh immediately behind its long-snouted head--needs sandbars in the Colorado River. These silt deposits create calm waters where the fish can spawn and also cloud the river creating conditions in which the chub can thrive. But the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s ended the natural ebb and flow of the river that courses through the Grand Canyon, which severely altered the natural conditions in which the chub evolved, pushing the silvery-green fish onto the path of extinction. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne personally supervised the release of 41,500 cubic feet (1,175 cubic meters) of water per second over a 60-hour period to mimic a natural flood that will enlarge existing sandbars. The bars themselves, however, won't survive very long--they'll be quickly eroded when river levels are shifted to maximize electricity generation. And there are no plans to repeat the inundation, which is itself a repeat of similar efforts in 1996 and 2004 that didn't succeed in helping the fish. One environmental advocate told The New York Times that the well-publicized event was a "charade." (USGS, The Economist, The New York Times)  [More]

Tags: fish, canyon, river, grand, natural

So you bought a compact fluorescent lightbulb in a bid to be green. Such bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents and screw into standard sockets. Should you treat them like their older cousins? [More] China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe? SHANGHAI--For over three decades the Chinese government dismissed warnings from scientists and environmentalists that its Three Gorges Dam--the world's largest--had the potential of becoming one of China's biggest environmental nightmares. But last fall, denial suddenly gave way to reluctant acceptance that the naysayers were right. Chinese officials staged a sudden about-face, acknowledging for the first time that the massive hydroelectric dam, sandwiched between breathtaking cliffs on the Yangtze River in central China, may be triggering landslides, altering entire ecosystems and causing other serious environmental problems--and, by extension, endangering the millions who live in its shadow. Government officials have long defended the $24-billion project as a major source of renewable power for an energy-hungry nation and as a way to prevent floods downstream. When complete, the dam will generate 18,000 megawatts of power--eight times that of the U.S.'s Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But in September, the government official in charge of the project admitted that Three Gorges held "hidden dangers" that could breed disaster. "We can't lower our guard," Wang Xiaofeng, who oversees the project for China's State Council, said during a meeting of Chinese scientists and government reps in Chongqing, an independent municipality of around 31 million abutting the dam. "We simply cannot sacrifice the environment in exchange for temporary economic gain." [More]

Tags: dam, china, government, project, chinese

So you bought a compact fluorescent lightbulb in a bid to be green. Such bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents and screw into standard sockets. Should you treat them like their older cousins? [More] China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe? SHANGHAI--For over three decades the Chinese government dismissed warnings from scientists and environmentalists that its Three Gorges Dam--the world's largest--had the potential of becoming one of China's biggest environmental nightmares. But last fall, denial suddenly gave way to reluctant acceptance that the naysayers were right. Chinese officials staged a sudden about-face, acknowledging for the first time that the massive hydroelectric , sandwiched between breathtaking cliffs on the Yangtze River in central China, may be triggering landslides, altering entire ecosystems and causing other serious environmental problems--and, by extension, endangering the millions who live in its shadow. Government officials have long defended the $24-billion project as a major source of renewable power for an energy-hungry nation and as a way to prevent floods downstream. When complete, the dam will generate 18,000 megawatts of power--eight times that of the U.S.'s Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But in September, the government official in charge of the project admitted that Three Gorges held "hidden dangers" that could breed disaster. "We can't lower our guard," Wang Xiaofeng, who oversees the project for China's State Council, said during a meeting of Chinese scientists and government reps in Chongqing, an independent municipality of around 31 million abutting the dam. "We simply cannot sacrifice the environment in exchange for temporary economic gain." [More]

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