Urban Ecoist

I want to say yes here, but it really depends on what your bio-diesel is made from.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have tested various sources of bio-diesel and have determined that the best choices for bio-diesel and ethanol production that actually reduce the net carbon released into the atmosphere is …drumroll, please…perennial grasses.

The researchers analyzed published estimates of changes in soil organic carbon in landscapes converted from natural or agricultural land to biofuel crops.

They focused on corn, sugar cane, Miscanthus, switchgrass and native prairie grasses. They also evaluated the impact of harvesting and using corn stover (the plant debris left over after corn is harvested) as a cellulosic biofuel source.

Their analysis showed that converting native land (grassland or forest) to sugarcane dramatically reduced soil carbon, creating a carbon deficit that would take decades to repay. While perennial grasses add carbon to the soil each year, DeLucia said, it could take up to a century for the sugar cane to rebuild soil carbon to former levels on native land.

Harvesting the corn residue for cellulosic ethanol production also reduced the carbon in the soil. The more plant residue was removed, the more the soil carbon declined.

Planting perennial grasses on existing agricultural lands had the most beneficial effect on soil carbon, the researchers found. –SPX via Biofuel Daily

Maybe you have and maybe you have not heard that corn-based ethanol is not the wisest choice for biofuels. First, you have the issue that 20% of American-grown corn is being diverted into ethanol production, and that is corn that is not being consumed as food, by Americans or anyone for that matter. Most ethanol is produced from corn kernels, so it’s not like this is waste plant matter that would be tossed or composted anyway. No, this is food stuff that no one is eating, which means if there is less corn in the supply side of the economic equation, the price of corn has gone up. With the price of corn rising, more and more farmers (yes, especially the big corporate farms) are planting corn.

With more corn going into the limited amount of arable farmland available to the US, that means less of everything else being planted. So, we now have an issue with other food crops supplies decreasing — pushing up the prices of well, everything. Have you noticed the cost of a loaf of bread lately? Less wheat is being planted and the decreased supply leads to increased prices, even if demand were to remain steady.. which it won’t as more and more people join us on this wacky blue marble in space.

So, what kind of biofuels are okay, for all us urban ecoists that want to help the planet, live lightly, be kind and rewind our consumption practices, etc? The latest study, that is going to be published in next month’s Global Change Biology Bioenergy journal (try saying that three times fast), details that every time the Earth is plowed or dug up, that action releases carbon. Soil acts as a carbon sink, and that carbon is what makes soil good for crops. Plants really, um, dig carbon dioxide, remember?

Hmm, what “crop” needs no plowing, or at least not yearly plowing? Perennial prairie grasses. The grasses grow during the growing season, can be cut or harvested at the end of that season, and the plants spend the winter dormant, and then grow again the next season. No plowing, no seeding, and little to no fertilizer required.

How ironic that so many farmers spent years and years and years plowing under the native prairie grasses of the Great Plains, only to find that those perennial grasses just may save the US transportation fleet one day…

bio-diesel, University of Illinois, biodiesel, biofuel, biofuels, corn, ethanol, perennial grasses, prairie grasses, carbon, carbon dioxide, crops, farms, farming, wheat, prices, food supply, carbon sink, plowing

When will humankind learn to choose a cautious path? Why is it that our species, and I am especially pointing fingers at the American sub-species, is quick to make a poor decision on a subject that would be best served with a little more understanding.

The Alaskan Pollock has become a “go-to” fish for a good portion of the American fishing fleet. Pollock is used in place of other seafood, such as crab and lobster, as well as in fish sticks and those unspecified-species-of-fish-sandwiches you get at fast food places. For years, fisheries experts have cited the Alaskan Pollock of an example of a successfully (sustainably) managed fish stock.

And now, the realization that maybe we are in fact overfishing the Alaskan pollock is starting to dawn on those who pay attention and worry about other species that also eat pollock — stellar sea lions, fur seals, whales, among other marine creatures.

I mentioned in Urban Ecoist’s step-sister site, Daily Science Dose, that it has been reported that a large percentage of Alaskan pollock are moving to the cooler waters of Russia. As waters around the Aleutian Islands, which are the spawning grounds for Alaskan Pollock (also known as walleye pollock), warm up, the fish are following their food to colder waters, leaving the American waters behind and depleting the numbers that American fishing ships are catching.

Well, not only are the pollock movin’ on up to the East Side, but there are also less of them.

Pollock was not always the fish of choice for US Consumers. Remember cod? Maybe you don’t actually, as it has been severely over-fished and extreme hard to find. The World Wildlife Fund has gone so far as to call cod endangered. Because cod was taken off the menu for a cheap white fish, pollock stepped in to fill the gap. And now, 20 or so years after the cod fishery started sinking, and the pollock became the substitute of choice, scientists are finding evidence of plummeting numbers of pollock. Low enough to cause concern among environmentalists and scientists that are allowed to be honest about the situation (i.e. not paid for by the fishing industry).

And that brings me to the fur seal. Northern Fur Seals live on the remote Commander Islands (the westernmost Aleutians that are actually closer to Russia than Alaska) as well as the Pribilof Islands up in the Bering Sea (map at right). And the fur seals, after almost being wiped out by over-hunting (they have really nice pelts), face a similar fate if their main food source is over-fished.

Greenpeace has launched a campaign to try and help the fur seals before their numbers also plummet. The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is about to set the 2009 quota for pollock, and you can write a letter to the NPFMC to speak out against their ideas to raise the quota rather than lower it in order to try and restore the pollock population. If you want to get involved, check out the link here.

Also, you may want to avoid pollock. If demand is driven down, we may be able to rectify the situation that certain fishery management councils won’t.

pollock, Alaska, Alaskan pollock, walleye pollock, American fishing, fisheries, Pacific, Commander Islands, Pribilof Islands, Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea, Russia, fish stocks, fishsticks, fast food, imitation crab, imitation lobster, stellar sea lions, fur seals, whales, Greenpeace, cod, overfishing, North Pacific Fisheries Management Council

Ah, traffic. It really is the worst thing about city-living, and more and more cities across the globe are following the American model of individual vehicles for each driver. Our freeways are congested, and commute times rival the time you’d spend watching a sports game. If you have ever driven during rush hour on the interstate system in Atlanta, LA, Detroit, San Francisco, Tampa, Miami…you know what I am talking about. Well, more and more global urban centers are starting to see what I am talking about.

Location: Beijing, China — we all heard that some draconian driving laws started a little before the Olympic Spectacle began. Recent reports from China are detailing the utter confusion that most Beijing drivers are feeling with some of the new laws and their post-Olympic variants. It seems that back in July, Beijing made alternate-day driving a rule for two months…

Beijing launched new driving restrictions on Sunday [July 20] that will ban more than a million cars from its streets in a bid to rein in the city’s notorious air pollution and traffic for next month’s Olympics.

Traffic on the capital’s normally bustling streets was noticeably light on Sunday, even for a weekend, amid the new rules that will ban cars with odd- and even-numbered licence plates from the roads on alternate days for two months.–France 24/AFP

…and it was good.

Many in China seemed to approve, taking to the Internet to mostly praise the measures, which in the end produced bluer skies and generally smoother traffic flows. A survey of 5,058 people by the New Beijing News last month showed 68.9 percent supported the traffic controls based on odd- and even-numbered license plates, 19 percent objected to them and 12.1 percent had no opinion. Asked what they would do if the restrictions were to continue, 18 percent of interviewees said they would buy another car.

“Recently, it takes me nearly twice as long to commute than it did during the Olympics,” said Zhang Fengyan, 30, an appliance salesman. “The difference is too big. I’d love it if they can make this rule permanent.” –Washington Post Oct. 2

However, it seems that the more severe alternate day driving was easier to understand for most people. The one car-less day a week is further complicated when the day changes.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing car owners, many apparently puzzled by no-driving days designated by the last digit of their license numbers, now face revised rules which threaten even greater confusion.

The no-car days, introduced on Oct 11 to reduce gridlock and pollution, have apparently left so many drivers scratching their heads that one Beijing newspaper runs front-page notices each day to remind drivers which weekday they aren’t allowed to drive. –via ENN

I guess this week, the day you could not drive was moved back a day, and it threatening to destroy the whole system. Ok, I made that destroy thing up, but it is a little confusing when the days change on you, kind of like when your trash/recycling pick-up day is if it’s a holiday week.

Unfortunately, Beijing is only an example and a beginning to bigger headaches when it comes to transportation and its infrastructure and all of those darn cars polluting our skies. Think about it. Beijing has 3 million cars for its 17 million residents. That is one car per 5.6 people. In the whole of the United States, we have 250 million cars/trucks per 305 million people. So that is one car per 1.2 people. Think what Beijing would be like if it’s car ownership rate were the same as the United States.

Wait. Is it fair that I would compare Beijing to the whole of America and its multiple car households, instead of comparing Beijing’s numbers with another major urban center, such as New York City. It seems that Beijing is more like New York, if you look at these numbers.

From the New York Department of Motor Vehicles, in 2007, there were 1,738,970 registered personal vehicles in the whole NYC area. The population of the area is approximately 8,250,000 as of 2006. That’s about 0.2 cars per person in NYC. Beijing is 0.17, so it’s not far off from the US’s largest metropolis. The real problem is that Beijing is adding 1,000 new vehicles a day — if you figure 365,000 new cars a year, that represents a 12% increase. That 12% means that Beijing’s number of cars will double in less than seven years.

If I haven’t advocated it enough, this world really, really needs to figure out mass public transportation. It’s not so much that it is not available in some cities, it is that it’s seemingly ineffective. People don’t want to spend an hour on a bus or a train if they can drive themselves in their car in twenty minutes. Or what on a good traffic day is twenty minutes. More cars will mean more roads, more delays, and despite our best efforts at switching over to fuel-efficient vehicles and even electric cars, if we don’t cut the overall number of vehicles, we are all screwed.

Get a bike. Avoid suburbs.

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Greenpeace has just released it’s updated ninth edition of the Guide to Greener Electronics. As this site is not Flash-enabled, I cannot embed the neat-o graphic to give you a quick view of which companies are making the grade in responsible manufacturing as well as disposal and recycling of their obsolete gadgets.

© Greenpeace / Will Rose

Oddly, as I traded in a Nokia (which leads the rankings) for a Motorola cell phone, I find myself on the lower end of the responsibility scale. Same with my Xbox 360. Luckily, the Dell laptop I use and the Apple desktop are in the middle in the rankings, but that really doesn’t make me feel any better. I hate my Dell, but I love my Xbox. What is an ecoist-nerd to do?

Let’s first look at Motorola. Here is the Greenpeace summary of the company’s efforts.

Motorola drops to 15th place, scoring 3.7 points, losing points because although its models of chargers are certified as Energy Star compliant in March 2007 – this is not since the latest energy efficiency standard for chargers (v.1.1) came into effect, which was in January 2005; it therefore scores no points on this criterion. In the U.S, all Motorola’s mobile phone chargers exceed ENERGY STAR Tier 2 requirements by more than 50 percent in sleep and standby/no-load modes – but what about chargers sold outside the US? On the other energy criteria Motorola scores relatively well for disclosing greenhouse gas emissions, committing to cuts and reporting a 5.4% renewable energy use (as proportion of all electricity purchased) in 2007. Motorola scores better on the chemicals and e-waste criteria. The company has launched 55 models of mobile phone with BFR free circuit boards. However, Motorola is the only mobile phone brand to still fail to commit to eliminating all BFRs and PVC with a timeline, in all of its products. On waste issues, Motorola provides a take-back and recycling service in 73 countries, representing over 90% of global mobile phone unit sales. It reports a global take-back rate of 3% of total handsets sold in 2005.

I do have to wonder how the “take-back” percentage is figured out. Is it just what Motorola itself takes back or any of the phone recyclers? I know that when I switched over to Credo Mobile, I was sent an envelope to recycle my old phone. Let’s say that is also a Motorola, but if I am sending it to a third-party recycler, would that phone be counted by Motorola in it’s “take-back” numbers?

Now, Microsoft.

Microsoft is in 17th position with a miserable score of 2.2 points, mainly on toxic chemicals criteria. The company provides a timeline of the end of 2010 for eliminating phthalates. On e-waste, Microsoft scores only on its weak support for Individual Producer Responsibility. On energy, the company only scores for reporting its total carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, from its own operations and although it now has a Climate Change Policy it makes no reference to specific reduction targets for greenhouse gases.

Perhaps Microsoft has been spending too much of its efforts in its lame ad campaigns, instead of making the company more environmentally responsible? The Seinfeld ad was just stupid, and watching Bill Gates “adjust” himself was just disturbing.

Good thing I have put off buying that Wii. Check out Nintendo’s scoring.

Nintendo remains in last place with a pitiful 0.8 points out of 10, scoring zero on all e-waste criteria. The company has banned phthalates and is monitoring use of antimony and beryllium and although it is endeavouring to eliminate the use of PVC, it has not set a timeline for its phase out. Nintendo discloses carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its own operations and commits to cutting CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases by 2% over each previous year. However, Nintendo admits that an increase in business led to a 6% rise in CO2 emissions in 2006.

If you would like to explore the Guide to Greener Electronics yourself, you can visit the Greenpeace website here.

This guide and many like it underscore the problems with the end-life issues with the electronics that we all have and love. I will discuss more about the problem with e-waste in the next few days.

© Greenpeace / Natalie Behring

Greenpeace, Guide to Greener Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft, Dell, Apple, Wii, Nintendo, Xbox, Xbox 360, e-waste, toxic substances, recycling, environmentally responsible computing, cell phone recycling, take-back

Wow, try saying that one three times fast…

I ran across this little story in one of last month’s Newsweek magazines. My not-so-green secret is that I get a lot of magazines in the mail. I do recycle them, but with printing, shipping and the paper stock involved, it is still a bit of a waste, I admit. But then again, I would be using electricity to read magazines online, so either way I am screwed. And I only get magazines so I have something to read on the bus, which is better than driving my car…

But I disgress.

Anyhoo, this article in the August 2, 2008 Newsweek featured news on pollen and pollen-producing trees and plants, like ragweed — the bane of many an allergy sufferer, myself included. It seems that just one more depressing effect of global warming is that plants and trees will produce more pollen in a warmer world. Not only that but with the spring warm-up coming sooner and sooner every year, trees are pumping out pollen earlier and the allergy season is thus extended by cutting into what we used to call winter.

Here are some selected quotes:

Global warming and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels appear to supercharge the growth of ragweed. And not only does ragweed grow larger and produce more pollen, its pollen is more allergenic, studies show.

Oh, great. Super-pollen. I cannot wait to experience that.

To test his ragweed hypothesis, [Lewis] Ziska [a weed ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Crop Systems and Global Change Laboratory] planted the weed in three plots: a rural farm, a semi-rural county park and downtown Baltimore. The urban plot’s ragweed produced four times the pollen count of the rural site. “Cities already have more carbon dioxide than rural areas and are hotter,” Ziska says. “Cities are a surrogate for global warming.”

Maybe that is why I supposedly “grew into” bad allergies. I lived out in the country during most of my childhood.

Allergists are also worried. One new concern: a startling rise in the amount of tree pollen. Warmer temperatures in Europe are causing birch trees to bloom earlier, prompting an earlier and perhaps longer allergy season. Studies at Duke University show that elevated carbon dioxide increases pollen production of loblolly pines. Allergists suspect that record pollen counts are contributing to the onslaught of new allergy and asthma patients. “I’m seeing an epidemic of new cases,” says New York City allergist Clifford Bassett.

So much for being a tree-hugger, right?

If plant biomass increases due to elevated CO2 and global warming, fungi may proliferate as well, they suspect. Fungal spores are problematic because they affect air quality indoors as well as out. Higher temperatures will lead to increased use of air conditioners, which spread spores if improperly maintained. Heavier rainstorms and floods predicted under climate-change scenarios will also increase indoor dampness, allowing fungal spores to proliferate in homes and buildings, according to the 2007 study “Climate Change, Aerobiology, and Public Health in the Northeast United States.”

So, mushrooms will become the new enemy? I wonder when the Republicans will start exploiting that fear…

The article also mentions that us city-dwellers suffer the double whammy of increased smog due to ground level ozone — couple that with more powerful and just more pollen, and yeah, maybe it is time to look for a pleasant little cottage out in the country. Also, poison ivy was discovered to produce more potent poison when hit with increased levels of CO2. And finally, if I haven’t freaked you out enough, warmer temperatures usually result in more insects, such as stinging insects, like yellow jackets. In many places, like Alaska, rising temperatures are bringing in new insect populations. Reports of severe stings from yellow jackets and their equally-stinging cousins have increased 600 per cent since 2000 up in the 49th state.

All the more reason to try and mitigate this whole global warming issue. Unfortunately, no one seems to be all that concerned about it in the US Government. Maybe we should change the government…

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