Every two years, the U.S. Department of Energy sponsors a competition called the solar decathalon on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Teams from universities around the country and across the world design low-cost, low-emissions, low-energy-use, architecturally pleasing homes, then bring them to the Mall to assemble them. For two consecutive weekends, folks like you and me can go and tour the innovative shelters. It's really an inspiring experience, and quite popular for that reason.

Here's some photos from last weekend. If you're in the DC area, the homes are open again this Thursday (tomorrow) through Sunday. You should check it out.

Labels: dc, energy, environmental, sun

Friday, October 23, 2009, CE Forum
12 noon - 1pm

"Community-Based Environmental Action"

Chris Bright, President and Co-Founder of the Earth Sangha, a non-profit environmental group

The Earth Sangha is a Buddhist environmental group based in Fairfax County co-founded by Chris and his wife, Lisa Bright, to work with volunteers on ecologically significant restoration projects in natural areas. Every year over 500 volunteers donate more than 10,000 hours of their time to the Sangha's restoration projects throughout northern Virginia. Volunteers have built the Sangha's Wild Plant Nursery, DC region's most comprehensive local-ecotype native-plant propagation center. (Local ecotypes are local, wild native-plant populations; the use of local ecotypes is a standard best practice in restoration because that helps to conserve the genetic diversity and local adaptation in the species planted.) The Earth Sangha is also a kind of low-tech innovator in the control of invasive alien plants; such plants are a major threat to local natural areas. In 2006, the Sangha transplanted a version of its community-nursery approach to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The Sangha's Tree Bank / Hispaniola program works along a portion of the Dominican Republic - Haiti border, where it helps impoverished farmers improve their incomes and restore patches of native forest on their lands.

Chris Bright will describe the Earth Sangha's work, the rationale behind it, and its implications for the conservation agenda. Before founding the Earth Sangha, Chris was a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank that tracks global environmental and social trends. He is the author of numerous articles and one book, Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World, the first global, interdisciplinary study of biological invasion written for a general audience.

Labels: action, environmental, meetings, nova

This is a short film made by one of my Rockies students as his final project for the class. Enjoy!

Labels: environmental, mining, montana, movies, ore

My colleague Ken Rasmussen (the other full-time geology professor at NOVA-Annandale) takes issue with George Will's most recent climate-change-denying column for the Washington Post.

Labels: climate change, dc, environmental, global warming, nova

Bill Parker put up an interesting piece last night on the Chinleana blog about John Muir, the conservationist icon, studying fossils in Arizona's petrified forest (silicified trees in the Chinle Formation badlands). Great historical photos -- Check it out!

Labels: arizona, blogs, environmental, fossils, plants

As a high school student in Arlington County, Virginia, I used to take regular hikes down a path called Windy Run, and then walk along the south shore of the Potomac River, upstream. It was in the days before I knew anything about rocks, and I was mainly appreciating other aspects of nature, like the plant life, the birds, the bugs, the salamanders, and occasionally something really cool like a raccoon. But I was aware that the scene I observed and enjoyed was not the same scene that had always persisted.

I heard rumors from my uncle about patches of woods inside the DC Beltway that preserved virgin forest -- giant trees that gave a hint of the former majesty of this eastern hardwood forest. I read about an eastern herd of bison that would migrate north and south through the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, crossing the Potomac near Alexandria (before we killed them all). I noticed a gazillion deer, and had it explained to me that the lack of predators like cougars and wolves resulted in the herbivores' population explosion. We used to have elk here, but European colonists had extirpated them. The last of the bison were killed off by 1800, and the final elk met a bullet around 1850. This used to be a pretty wild place!

I observed trash nearly constantly, often mixed obscenely with natural debris, sheathed in mud, or woven into birds' nests. Every few minutes, a jet airplane on its approach to National Airport would thunder overhead. Those of us who lived in the flight path would learn to automatically put conversations on "pause" during the 30 seconds it took for the planes to pass. Visitors didn't know what to do about the noise; it was too pervasive to be ignored. But live here long enough, and you learned to ignore it. You adapted, like the birds adapted by putting aluminum foil and plastic bags into their nests.

And the river itself? It's gross. In the modern day, it's constantly muddy and silty, with a foul-smelling sewage/sediment biofilm all over the rocks and logs in the water. There's scummy flotsam and rumors that you'll get a rash if you swim in it. There's people fishing down by Teddy Roosevelt Island, and you have to wonder why... They're not going to eat the fish they catch out of this polluted stream, are they?

The theme of this month's Accretionary Wedge is "time warp." The Wedge is a geoblog 'carnival,' though it's been inactive for a while, this month sees its return to 'accreting.' For those of you who are new readers to NOVA Geoblog, it's probably a great opportunity to check out some of the dozens of other interesting geoblogs out there. So what does this have to do with my reflections on the local woods, and the Potomac River? This month's Wedge host is Lockwood from Outside the Interzone. He asked geobloggers, "Where and when would you most like to visit to witness and analyze an event in Earth's history?"

I'm going to use my time travel experience to go back in time right here, in Washington, DC. I want to go back to 1491*. I want to see what my home looked like before European settlers showed up and brought their particular brand of industrialization / civilization / land use changes / ecological perturbations to the Potomac River valley. It may surprise readers to learn that I'd opt for this -- a simple experience of pre-colonization North American nature -- over something tectonic and structural, but that's what calls to me on a deep, emotional level. I want to see a vibrant ecosystem with big trees. I want to see the water of the Potomac River look like water; I want to go swimming in it. I want to see what bird migration looked like before it dropped off so precipitously. I want to see a passenger pigeon, a carolina parakeet. I want to see for myself what a healthy amphibian population looks like. And bison fording the Potomac in Alexandria... perhaps emerging from the clear water with the autumn colors ablaze on the far side of the river? That would just be... awesome.

* Note that there's a good book by this same name, on this same theme, 1491. The book makes the case that there was already a lot of landscape/ecological modification playing out before Europeans arrived: that native Americans played a significant role in messing with natural systems and we shouldn't imagine an ecological paradise, just less of an ecological disaster.

Of course, going back to 1491 may have some negative aspects to it: there would be malaria endemic to DC at that time, and the native tribes might not take kindly to a time traveler popping in to ogle their forested homes. But I'll take those risks (they exist today in other places I've visited), since the pay-off would be such a profound deepening of perspective.

If I had the ability to go back in time, I'd use it to gain experience with pre-colonial North America. I'd check out the same river banks I would walk 500+ years later, and see what we've lost.

...And, once I've seen that former world, I can't guarantee that I'd come back.

Labels: amphibians, birdies, blogs, dc, environmental, geologic time, mammals, piedmont, rivers, virginia

An impressive talk, and the film he alludes to was released yesterday, for free.

The movie HOME is available now, for free download. Enjoy!

Labels: environmental, meetings, movies, websites

And now, a few images from April's Environmental Geology class field trip. We made three stops: (1) a large coal-fired power plant in Maryland, (2) Westmoreland State Park in Virginia to look at coastal erosion, and (3) Prince William Forest Park in Virginia to look at pyrite emplacement and acid mine drainage.

Here's one of the bluffs on the Potomac River at Westmoreland:

Note the recent pile of breakdown in the middle of the bluff where all the water seepage is, and also the orange trail as soil from the uppermost bluff has marked another mass wasting event's passage down to the river.

These are Miocene-aged sedimentary layers known as the Calvert Formation, part of the Coastal Plain. In places, the gray clay has been altered along fracture surfaces, as shown by these orange stripes criss-crossing one another. My toes for scale:


The students spent some time searching for fossils: this is an area where lots of shark teeth are found. We didn't have much luck, but after a long cold winter, it was nice to be standing in the warm sunshine and water:


At Prince William Forest Park, we hiked down to the Cabin Branch Pyrite Mine to look at the massive denudation there due to acid mine drainage, and we also spent some time poking around for treasures, in this case chunks of pyrite:


We had better luck than at Westmoreland...




...But of course we were in a national park at Prince William, so we left the pyrite where we found it. (Westmoreland, in contrast, allows you to keep any fossils you find in loose sediment: that figures, eh?)

I'd like to say that the group of students I had in Environmental Geology this past semester was terrific, one of the best groups I've worked with in a long time. Maybe it was because the class was discussion-focused, or maybe it was the cookies we ate every Tuesday night, but it was a great experience for me, and I'm looking forward to teaching the course again. Thanks, everyone, for making it so much fun!

Labels: coastal plain, environmental, field trips, maryland, miocene, nova, ore, piedmont, virginia

My student Joel recently went up to Clarion County, Pennsylvania, where he encountered this striking example of a stream contaminated with acid mine drainage (lifeless rust-filled stream at right) merging with an undegraded stream (at left). Wow:

Photograph by Joel Bosch.

Labels: environmental, minerals, mining, pennsylvania, water resources

Today, I present a guest post from my student Hope W., who described her experiences visiting the Chalk Point Generating Station in Maryland on our Environmental Geology field trip the weekend before last. The essay is posted here with her permission. Enjoy! -CB

The Chalk Point Generating Station is a coal burning power plant owned by the Mirant Corporation. Our guide during our tour was Greg Staggers, the plant manager. There were three main subject areas that Mr. Staggers talked to us about: power generation, the economic supply and demand, and environmental regulations and precautions.

Power Generation:
Mr. Staggers explained how the station has two different types of units. They have steam units and combustion units. Mr. Staggers described how the two different types of units are designed. He said that the steam units are like giant boilers, and that the combustion units are like jet engines. The plant has four steam units and seven combustion units, both types use fossil fuels to produce energy. Mr. Staggers explained how when power is first generated it is at too high of a voltage to be safely used by the public in homes or offices; and how the current has to be run through various lines to transformers and substations in order to be brought down from 20,000 volts (the level generated) to 110-220 volts (the level used in homes and offices.) Mr. Staggers pointed out the transformer field we drove past on the way in on the aerial photograph of the plant explaining that that’s where the process of conversion begins.

In response to Sophia's question about why the plant was built next to the water, Mr. Staggers explained the complex system for using water from the river to cool the equipment in the plant. As he talked in depth about this system he described how ideas improved through time and experience, as well as environmental regulations which lead the plant to finding more efficient and ecological ways of utilizing the river water. Later on when we took our tour through the plant we had the opportunity to see the some pipelines that the river water runs through. The water runs through the pipe-lines to cool the steam that is emitted during the power generation process. When the river water is released back into the river from the plant it has picked up no chemicals, and has only increased in temperature by approximately 20°F.

Mr. Staggers told us about four of the units that get run; units 1 and 2 which are combustion units and units 3 and 4 which are steam units. When running at full capacity units 1 and 2 operate at 90% efficiency, burn 2.5 million pounds of coal per hour, and use 14 megaWatts of the energy produced to operate; and when units 3 and 4 are running at full capacity the burn 650 gallons of oil per minute. Mr. Staggers informed us that the enormous pile of coal we saw on our way in would last for 45 days if the plant were running at full capacity.

Economic Supply and Demand:
In the 1990's the system was deregulated, which basically means that the power generation, wholesaling of the utility, and the supply distribution were all split up. So when the Chalk Point station produces energy they sell it to PJM a 'middleman' who will then sell it to the suppliers like Dominion Power etc. who then sell and distribute the supply to the public. I mentioned the transformer field earlier in this paper in reference to the generation process, but the transformer field has economic implications as well. The transformer field is also where the producers pass of the ownership of the energy to the middleman.

Mr. Staggers explained the bidding system for establishing the market value for each day. In the bidding system if you are over producing you get paid the difference in price from your morning bid in real time. During the tour we got to see the control rooms where the market price rates were being adjusted in real time. In response to Dustin's question about how they know when to produce Mr. Staggers explained how the middle men suppliers make that call based on the morning bids and the actual demand by the public, when the suppliers make the decision about production levels they call the plant to inform them of how much they need to be producing.

In terms of the national economy coal is the cheapest in explicit costs, in equivalent quantities the price for coal is 1/3 that of oil and natural gas prices, which is why more than 50% of the U.S.'s power is generated by coal. In terms of the local economy the Chalk Point station produces a 500 thousand volt ring around D.C. It is estimated that in the next five years 1 million homes will be added to the market that the Chalk Point station caters to.

The demand for coal is influenced by seasonal changes which gives it a cyclical demand. Callan asked if the increased attention on alternative methods of energy has affected the demand for coal in terms of reduction. Mr. Staggers said that no such change has been apparent and that the cyclical trend has followed a predictable pattern.

Environmental Regulations and Precautions:
Mr. Staggers told us about the regulations the plant has been mandated to conform to, as well as what the plant has done of their own accord for the sake of the environment. Some of the changes that the plant made in the past include setting up new stack facilities in 1982 because of environmental regulations. When the clean air act was passed in 1992 brought down their level of pollutants they were releasing into the atmosphere from 1.4 to .7 Further regulations such as; the separated overfire air controls in 2000, selective auto-catalystic reduction in 2007, and selective catalystic reduction in 2008 brought the pollutant rate down to .06. All of the methods above have dropped total output capacity by some amount.

The plant has also put up two boundary nets to protect fish from the areas where hot water is released and two more boundary nets as well as a fine mesh screen to prevent the fish from getting sucked up into the pumps for the cooling system. The plant has many systems in place to reclaim energy where they can to avoid waste, such as how they use residual heat from the coal burning process to heat the incoming air from its current temperature to be closer to the temperature required for being used as an infuser in the combustion process. The plant is in the process of building a "scrubber" which will reduce the sulfur emissions by 98%. The method this "scrubber" will use will allow the plant produce and collect gypsum which the plant will sell for its use in drywall. The plant also has a system set up to collect ash by a precipitation method; the ash collected is also sold for its use in drywall.

The plant has continuous emissions monitors which monitor emission levels of CO2, SO2, and NOx. The data from the monitors is sent quarterly to the State and the E.P.A. In the control room Callan asked a question about the plant's ppm output of CO2. Mr. Staggers said that measure by percentage and he did not know the output in ppm . This discussion lead to a very clear statement by Mr. Staggers that he wasn't convinced that it really made a difference. Mr. Staggers informed us that the plant's output of CO2 is 12% of flue gas volume, which Callan calculated to be 120,000 ppm. From Mr. Staggers' point of view as a producer of a commodity it is hard to see much else besides bottom line explicit costs. This was not his position out of greed, but out of responsibility to keep the company running so he has a job to provide for his family, and his employees as well. On the other hand, scientists cannot escape the implicit costs of CO2 emissions.

There needs to be a level headed discussion in a neutral setting were the two groups can learn to understand each other and start to cooperate. We as individuals and a nation must step up and set the example. When we start working together we will create the safe harbor necessary for understanding and cooperation to grow and flourish.

Labels: coal, energy, environmental, maryland, nova, oil, teaching

On May 1, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) will host a public hearing to receive comment on environmental sustainability opportunities within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). Community members are invited to participate with faculty, staff and students at the hearing, scheduled for 9 a.m. in the theater at the Ernst Community Cultural Center on NOVA's Annandale Campus, 8333 Little River Turnpike in Annandale.

"For several years, NOVA has been taking steps to make its buildings and operations more environmentally friendly, more energy efficient and more sustainable," President Robert G. Templin Jr. said. "The Virginia Community College System has now made such efforts a major priority for the entire VCCS."

To fulfill this mission, VCCS Chancellor Glenn DuBois appointed a Task Force on Environmental Sustainability. In his charge to the task force, DuBois said, "The sheer size of the VCCS, with nearly 400,000 students being served in more than seven million square feet of space throughout 220 buildings, demands leadership on the issues of energy efficiency, environmental stewardship and curricula development."

The task force will develop environmental sustainability priorities related to construction, renovation and the operation of facilities. The members will also identify opportunities to work with community partners to support and promote environmental sustainability. In addition, the committee will recommend curricula enhancements and new workforce programs that respond to the growing 'green' economy. Contracting procedures will be evaluated with a goal of implementing procurement practices that promote the use of technologies, products and practices that are environmentally beneficial.

To learn more, contact Ray Bailey, chair of NOVA's Committee on Environmental Concerns, at 703-257-6683 or rbailey@nvcc.edu.

Labels: environmental, nova

Geological Society of Washington: Meeting 1432
Wednesday March 25, 2009

• Andrew Todd, US Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado - Abandoned Mines and Trout: The Interaction of Geochemistry, Metal Bioavailability, and Stream Ecology.
  
• Ian G. Macintyre, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC - The Almost Total Loss of Acropora palmata from Shallow Waters off Barbados, West Indies, Initiated by Catastrophic Destruction of a Major Bank-Barrier Reef off the Southeast Coast.
  
• Thomas J. Casadevall, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado - Lusi: Long-lived Mud Eruption near Surabaya, Indonesia.

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
2170 Florida Ave NW
Washington, D.C.

Refreshments 7:30 pm; Meeting 8:00

Future meetings 2009: April 22 (Bradley Lecture); Sept. 23; Oct. 14; Nov. 4; Dec. 9.

Labels: environmental, fish, gsw, meetings, mining, reefs, volcano

Nevada's Yucca Mountain site for a proposed nuclear waste repository has lost much of its funding in President Obama's proposed budget. Personally, I think this is a good call - I never thought that the Yucca Mountain site seemed viable for the geological long-term. For a facility being designed to outlast human civilization (warning signs are not written in English, but in sign language that's predicted to still be useful when potential meddlers show up 10,000 years from now), Yucca Mountain is located in too tectonically-active an area for my liking. Basin and Range extension, with associated earthquakes and volcanism, imperils the facility's security over the long-term.

But then where do we put this nuclear waste? We've got more and more of it every day. I'm a fan of nuclear energy because I feel that in spite of the risks associated with radioactive leaks, it's a proven technology that looks better all the time because it produces no carbon emissions. To me, the relatively short-term (local) risk of radiation leaks is outweighed by CO2's long-term (global) risk of climate change. Provided sufficient security, I think it's a great "halfway house" between fossil fuels and 'alternative' energies like solar, wind, and geothermal.

Yucca Mountain has several advantages in terms of its location: it's dry, and it's not in someone's backyard (far from large populations -- though Los Vegas residents might quibble with the definition of "far"). But Nevada's regular seismic shaking (3rd in rank among the U.S. states, after California and Alaska) and the proximity of some young volcanic extrusions make me think it's not so great a spot if you want the waste to stay put. I'm thinking that the best place for nuclear waste would be in the craton, the stable interior of the continent. I'm thinking: Canadian Shield, maybe in Minnesota or Michigan or Wisconsin. The issue there is water: you would be trading tectonic stability for saturation and precipitation.

I'll readily admit I'm not an expert here -- just a geologist speculating on an issue that's more complex than mere geology. What do you think? Where's the best place to store nuclear waste until radioactive decay makes it reasonably safe? Use 10,000 years as your hypothetical timeline, bearing in mind how different the world is today than it was 10,000 years ago.

Labels: CO2, earthquakes, energy, environmental, michigan, minnesota, nevada, volcano, wisconsin

Sam Love, one of the original national staff members of the first Earth Day, will speak on April 22 on the impact of changing our environmental culture. The event will be at 12:30 p.m. in the CE Forum on the Annandale Campus. Free & open to the public.

In his Earth Day 2009 presentation, Love will review some of the early fantasies based on cheap abundant energy. He then lays out some operating rules for a sustainable future and why there is reason for hope.

More information on p. 11 of last week's Intercom.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova

Ha! The crazy things people do... Looks like LEEDS certification may hold the same moral high ground and real-life meaninglessness as the USDA "organic" label. Check out this gallery at Treehugger.com

Hat tip to the CCAN blog for alerting me to this.

Labels: blogs, energy, environmental

I've been really digging my iPod. Yeah, yeah: "late adopter" and all that. But it's really cool!

The podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts) available for free are diverse and awesome, and I'm finding them much more interesting, rich, and deep than traditional radio. I've got music podcasts, science podcasts, story podcasts, and humor podcasts. In the interest of sharing the love, here's what I'm listening to:

All Songs Considered - From NPR, an every-few-days podcast showcasing new and interesting music from a wide variety of genres, often accompanied by insightful commentary from host Bob Boilen and his guests.

Morning Becomes Eclectic - From KCRW in Santa Monica, California, Jason Bentley (no relation) hosts an excellent radio show of... well... eclectic music. The only shows they podcast are the ones where guest artists are performing live in the studio, but that's fine by me -- there's some real gems here. (Although, I'll admit that I miss the former host Nick Harcourt.)

The Moth - An incredible storytelling podcast featuring one person per episode telling a true story, live onstage & without notes. These are incredible tales from our fellow humans: people who have experienced surreal, heartbreaking, or uproarious things, and know how to describe them to others. An absolutely inspired series. Five stars!

Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me! - The oddly informative NPR news quiz show. Invariably funny, sometimes hilarious. Hosted by Peter Segal, accompanied by luminaries like Carl Kasell, P.J. O'Rourke, and Tom Bodett.

USGS CoreCast - A weekly podcast from the United States Geological Survey, wherein stilted-sounding hosts interview scientists about their work, usually related to some story that's in the current news cycle. Mediocre listenability, but often interesting content.

Nature Podcast - From the acclaimed journal Nature comes this hip, well-produced podcast that features several hosts (male, female, British, American) interviewing scientists about their recent Nature publications and why they matter. Sometimes they give background information, too -- to bring listeners up to speed before the interview. It's detailed enough to be satisfying for a professional scientist, but not stiff or formal. Two thumbs up!

Central Washington University Natural Science seminars - Video of seminars on cool topics like mammoth digs, etc.

American Meteorological Society Climate Change video: Environmental Science seminars - These are a series of science seminars put on by the AMS on Capitol Hill for the benefit of policy makers, captured on video. I often try to attend, but if I miss one, I can get it via the iPod.

The Ricky Gervais podcast - From the talented British comedian comes this sporadic podcast which varies tremendously in content and satisfaction from one episode to the next. When this one is on while I'm driving to campus, the ones that leave me guffawing are the ones where Ricky and Stephen Merchant talk with Carl Pilkington. The three of them have a remarkable style of mutually-insulting comedy.

You can get all of these for free, searching on iTunes. Enjoy!

Labels: environmental, geology, humor, music, news, podcasts and vodcasts, science and society

Good news!
Google's putting out a way for users to track their home electricity use from their computer. Check it out at the New York Times' "Bits" blog.
Thing is, you need a "smart grid" for it to work, so it's going to be a while before you actually get one in your house.
It's like the dashboard readout on the Prius: constantly giving you feedback about your energy use & efficiency.

Labels: energy, environmental, tech

I'd like to congratulate my friend and fellow MSSE candidate Rob Greenberg for being awarded this year's Outstanding Earth Science Teacher award for the state of North Carolina. (Link goes to GSA website where winners are listed; I read about it yesterday in this month's issue of GSA Today.)

Rob's one of the most enthusiastic people I know, and a gifted educator. He loves geology, astronomy, climate, and is a strong environmental advocate to boot! If you have ten years to spare, you can check out the wealth of materials he has online at his instructional website.

Congratulations, Rob!

Labels: environmental, msse, north carolina, teaching

"Solar Prius?" Gimme, gimme!

But it's a tease -- the roof's built-in solar panel only powers the A/C. (CNN)

Hey, that means the engine doesn't have to work as hard...
...but it's still a bit of a disappointment, eh?

Labels: energy, environmental, news, prius

President Obama is acting to (potentially) improve the fuel efficiency of cars manufactured in the United States. The official announcement will apparently come later today, but somehow the newspapers always find out first.

Meanwhile, Virginia's budget shortfall has led to the elimination of pollution inspectors, which means that instead of the usual inspection of 1400 sites in the Commonwealth this year, the reduced staff will likely get to 800 or so. In Maryland, by contrast, the article describes how the governor is actually increasing funding for the oversight of power plants. An interesting contrast from two Democratic governors (one of whom is now moonlighting as the head of the DNC).

PS - My Prius is less efficient in the cold. I've been hovering between 46.5 and 47.0 mpg for the past couple of weeks. Brrr.

Labels: energy, environmental, maryland, news, oil, prius, virginia

American Meteorological Society's Environmental Science Seminar Series

Coming to Grips with Sustainable Practices: Where Do We Go from Here?

What are the forces that shaped consumer culture in the U.S.? How does per capita consumption in the U.S. compare with that of other countries, especially in the realm of energy usage? What impact has consumerism had on resources and living standards in the U.S. and elsewhere? What are the implications of maintaining our present level of consumption? What are the implications of other countries aspiring to levels of per capita consumption on a par with ours? How might our society begin to identify and embrace more sustainable habits and practices, and what might such practices be? What policy steps might the new Administration and Congress consider codifying in the interest of promoting a more sustainable lifestyle and economy?

Public Invited

Monday, January 26, 2009
New Time: 12:00 noon - 2:00 pm
Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253 Washington, DC

Buffet Reception Following

Moderator:
Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science and Communication Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers:
Dr. Juliet B. Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

Betsy Taylor, Consultant, Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions, Strategic & Philanthropic Consulting on Climate Solutions & Sustainable Development, Takoma Park, MD

Program Summary

Sustainability, Consumption and the Path Forward At the center of the US ecological dilemma lies consumption. We have been a consumer nation for more than a century, having made a directed choice in the 1930s toward that path. Today, in the midst of the simultaneous crises of the economy and the environment, we are again faced with choices about how to move forward. Although it has gotten far less attention, business-as-usual spending is as problematic as BAU energy use. The US ecological footprint, which is twice the level of comparably rich European countries, exceeds the equitable global sustainability level by a factor of 5. Rising per capita consumption underlies the ecological overshoot of the world economy, which now exceeds biological capacity by 40%. In the United States, inflated-adjusted personal consumption expenditures increased 88% from1973 to 2003, which resulted in a 37% rise in our ecological footprint. This is important because it has accompanied decades of attempts to save energy and de-materialize production, all of which have proved inadequate. Fortunately, there is increasing awareness of these issues, and a grassroots movement to transform consumer patterns and habits is underway. However, it has had virtually no legislative presence to date.

In Dr. Schor's presentation, the issue of consumption will be placed into its historical and comparative context. New data will be presented on the magnitude of the 'cheap import' boom in material (and therefore ecological terms) over the last 15 years. Underlying economic factors such as labor market policies and the distribution of income affect the path of consumption and ecological impact. A medium term consumption path will be sketched out, which yields high levels of human well-being, is becoming broadly popular, and is ecologically sustainable.

Ms. Taylor will discuss an array of policy instruments that could promote a more sustainable standard of living and more sustainable consumerism. In the lead-up to address climate change through cap & trade or carbon fees, it would serve our collective interests to simultaneously address the root causes of ecological degradation and collapse. Ms. Taylor will also call for a rekindled debate on policies and programs that might steer our economy and culture in a more sustainable and durable direction.

Labels: climate change, energy, environmental, meetings

According to a study by the Washington Post, our area's electricity consumption dropped by a small but perceptible amount in the first nine months of 2008, as compared to 2007. The article linked to above describes the sources of data as being a mix of home audits in Arlington County, Virginia (40 out of 89,000 total), government figures for the number of miles driven on local roads, and utility billing information. Overall, the Post estimates a 2% reduction for the study period in 2008 as compared to the previous year. Now, the question is, Why? By their reckoning, it's likely to be a mix of increased consciousness of "green" energy practices, increased use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, and perhaps most importantly: mild weather.

One thing I can say about that lattermost factor: this year, 2009, is so far not really of the "mild weather" variety. It's dang cold here!

Labels: dc, energy, environmental, maryland, news, virginia

This is pretty good... from the Coyote Crossing blog:

Labels: art, climate change, coal, environmental, global warming, politics

Ecofont is a free font that has lots of little holes in the letters, using less ink and therefore extending the life of your printer cartridge. You can download it at the link above; they claim it works best at 9- or 10-point size.

Blackle is Google, but with a black screen instead of white. Because it takes energy to produce the luminescence we see as the white screen when we go to Google, Blackle's creators reckoned you could save some energy if you just changed the color of the background. A simple, elegant notion. So far, they claim 1,010,466.263 Watt-hours have been saved by computer users who use their website over the traditional Google screen.

Labels: environmental, tech

A quick note for fellow Virginians: CNN reports on the new efforts by the Bush administration to drill for oil offshore from the Old Dominion.

Labels: environmental, news, oil, petroleum, politics, virginia

Labels: climate change, environmental, global warming, humor, oil, politics

Starting this month and going into January, Arlington County, Virginia is hosting a series of free workshops designed to help citizens make more environmentally-sustainable choices in their homes and workplaces.


For more information, click here.

Labels: environmental, meetings, nova, virginia

Labels: art, climate change, environmental, global warming, humor

Yesterday, I went up to Delaware Bay to help the Nature Conservancy count spawning horseshoe crabs. I carpooled with my student Efrain and his friend Dennis. We did some birding at Cape Henlopen State Park, then had dinner and a few crafty craft beers at the Dogfish Head Brewpub in Rehoboth Beach (I had crabcake, natch.), and then headed out to Big Stone Beach for the main event: the spring tide and the new moon mean spawning horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) by the thousands. We were helping the Nature Conservancy tally up the numbers of male and female crabs. You can learn more about horseshoe crabs at this excellent website. Or you can just look at these images:



























...You get the idea. Other images on the Flickr photostream. Joining a couple of medical doctors from Delaware (well, originally from Virginia, but stationed in Delaware), we surveyed the beach using TNC's rope and square-meter protocol. The weather turned cold and rainy, but we kept it up, and saw a lot of crabs. I estimate that altogether, we saw somewhere around 5,000 crabs. Pretty cool: one of the great wildlife concentrations in the world, and it's only 2.5 hours from DC. Next up: sandhill cranes on the Platte River in Nebraska, or maybe polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba...

Labels: critters, delaware, environmental, field trips, travel

There's been some interesting articles in my media subscriptions lately. Thought I'd use today's post to share.

In the June National Geographic, a study of the geology of Stonehenge reveals the source of the monoliths ("polyliths?") there. They came from the Preseli Mountains of Wales. That's a long journey for such big rocks. Also in the same issue is an eye-popping pictorial piece on sea slugs. You must check it out, because it features dozens of David Doubilet images like this one:

WIRED's cover story this month is about environmental "heresies": ideas that supposedly environmentalists aren't supposed to like, but need to happen. The basic premise is that "only cutting carbon matters," and so they come up with some interesting recommendations like: (1) use A/C more, and heating less, (2) "screw the spotted owl" (don't worry about the loss of biodiversity), and (3) buy a used Geo Metro rather than a new Prius. I found this last of particular interest, as it recounts a web rumor that it took less carbon to make a Hummer than a Prius, and therefore Hummers were more environmentally friendly. (The Prius' battery has a lot of high-carbon-cost nickel in it.) WIRED breaks it all down into BTUs, and runs the numbers. According to their analysis, it takes the Prius 100,000 miles to catch up (i.e. be more carbon-efficient) than an old Toyota. Bummer... Big bummer. (At least the Hummer bit has been debunked.)

As usual, Smithsonian had a bunch of interesting pieces in it. Almost everything in there catches my imagination. It's a very well done magazine.

The New Yorker had a couple of articles, too: In their recent "innovators issue," Alex Ross profiled John Luther Adams, the man responsible for the mesmerizing "the place where you go to listen" in the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. If you haven't ever been there and find yourself in Fairbanks, I would recommend this museum highly, and this one room / art installation in particular: it plays certain notes and tones and changes the lighting depending on what the aurora, seismic activity, and other Earth processes are doing. And Margaret Talbot profiled Irene Pepperberg, who raised the parrot Alex and taught him to talk. This article explores the insights into intelligence gained from this serendipitous longterm experiment.

On the commodities front, the New York Times reports today that thieving biofuellers are stealing vegetable oil in Oregon, and that guano stocks are being closely guarded in Peru. Telling quote from the latter: "Before there was oil, there was guano, so of course we fought wars over it," (Pablo Arriola).

Labels: alaska, birdies, environmental, mollusks, news, prius, wales

An article in today's Washington Post explores the constant feedback that Prius drivers get about their fuel consumption -- and how that may be one of the main reasons that Prii* get lower gas mileage than other vehicles. I've noted this phenomenon before, so I thought I'd pass along a link to the article.

* "Prii" = plural of "Prius," at least in my world.

Labels: action, environmental, oil, prius, tech

This map was in this morning's Washington Post. The red dots are currently-existing coal-fired power plants. The black dots with the central stars are proposed future coal-fired power plants.

Labels: CO2, coal, dc, energy, environmental, nova

Last week, my friend Michelle loaned me her copy of Farewell, My Subaru, a humorous account of a year spent trying to live locally. The author, Doug Fine, buys a ranch in New Mexico, then converts it to solar power and solar heated water, and raises goats and vegetables. And, yes, he trades in his Subaru for a R.O.A.T. (Ridiculously Oversized American Truck), which runs on vegetable oil. Along the way, he has lots of mishaps (many involving the goats) and finds love, happiness, and satisfaction. In general, he has a nice reflective time of it, accumulating enough experiences and insight to warrant a book. He's also got a great sense of humor. Recommended.

Labels: books, environmental, oil

Periodically I post book reviews on this blog of geology-relevant books. I haven't done too many of these since I started the blog because it's been the spring semester, and that means I've been too busy to read. But now that the summer's here, I've got a bit more time. Today's tome is Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv.

The theme of the book is "nature deficit disorder," a condition the author loosely defines as adults not caring about the natural world because they never spent any time outside as children. Setting aside the quasi-disease-sounding name (which Louv acknowledges as being iffy), it's pretty much a priori that if you don't know something, you don't value it. When children spend their time playing video games instead of romping in nature, they end up caring about the one and not about the other. Last Child gets a little tedious making this point over and over: do you really need a whole book to explain that?

In the course of that protracted treatment, however, Louv brings up some good points. For instance, natural play has been effectively "criminalized" in our (U.S.) litigious society. We care so much for our kids' safety that we prevent them from doing anything dangerous. He also makes the point that nature education has dropped off, resulting in lower knowedge about natural systems.

Some passages rang particularly true for me. On page 139, Louv describes an observation by Robert Stebbins, an old-school naturalist (and professor emeritus at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley). Stebbins has been going out to the California desert for many years studying reptiles and other critters. The rise of ATV (all-terrain vehicle) recreation in his study sites has obliterated the local wildlife. He found that 90% of invertebrate life had been destroyed in popular ATV areas. I'll quote Louv quoting Stebbins here:

What upset him most was not the destruction that had already occurred, but the devastation yet to come and the waning sense of awe -- or simple respect -- toward nture that he sensed in each successive generation. "One time I was out watching the ATVs. I saw these two little boys trudging up a dune. I went running after them. I wanted to ask why they weren't riding machines -- maybe they were looking for something else out there. They said their trail bikes were broken. I asked if they knew what was out there in the desert, if they had seen any lizards. 'Yeah,' one of them said, 'But lizards just run away.' These kids were bored, uninterested. If only they knew."

Labels: books, environmental, teaching

What's the difference between these pictures?

... Find out at the NASA Earth Observatory feature page that examines "Cities at night: the view from space."

Labels: environmental, maps, satellite imagery

Thought I'd pass these along:

(1) This weekend's New York Times Magazine is the "Green Issue" with a wealth of articles on environmental issues and their solutions. The range of authors they got to contribute is pretty impressive.

(2) A video on YouTube which simplifies thinking about our choices regarding climate policy, and provides a compelling argument that action is the right choice, even if climate science turns out to be wrong:

Labels: climate change, environmental, global warming

What would it look like if Napolean Dynamite designed a website to promote energy conservation by switching out lightbulbs? Maybe something like the "Unscrew America" website. The navigation is a bit of a head-spinner, though. Take your Dramamine before you start moving that mouse around.

Labels: energy, environmental, websites

It's almost cherry blossom season, so that means it's also time for the annual DC Environmental Film Festival. For two weeks, lots of interesting films are hosted by dozens of libraries, theaters, embassies, NGOs, and the like. Many of them are free. If you live in the DC area, this is an excellent opportunity to see some movies that you won't otherwise get access to. Even if you're not in the Capitol area, you can check out some of these films: this year, several of the films (like tonight's snow leopard movie) are available for watching free via the Internet. Enjoy!

Labels: dc, environmental, movies

On Thursday, I posted some reflections on one of the talks at the most recent meeting of the Geological Society of Washington. At the same meeting, there was another talk that got my attention, and I wanted to briefly share its findings with the geoblogosphere. The talk was entitled "Mineralogy of the Atmosphere: Assessing environmental and health impacts of airborne particulate matter." It was given by Reto Giere, of the University of Freiburg, Germany. (He's currently in DC as a Visiting Investigator at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.)

Reto's research has lately focused on particulate matter in the air. He collects it and then evaluates it using transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and other techniques. The first point he made in Wednesday's talk is that "soot" is a matter of definition. Natural and anthropogenic sources can both be found in the sub-1-micrometer range. If you look at small particulates, Switzerland's environmentally-lauded train system actually generates three times as much "soot" as their traffic output.

So what's in that "soot?" Turns out that a lot of it is anglesite, PbSO4 and some of it is gunningite, ZnSO4'H2O. (There are also droplets of elemental selenium, Se.) The majority of these metal sulfates (and others) are coming from flue gases from power plants. And the thing is, because they're so small, all these goodies end up in our lungs. Reto has run modeling experiments to see what weight-percent of the average person's dose of inhaled metals gets extracted by the lung fluid. In one week, 80% of the zinc was absorbed by the lungs, 55% of the nickel, and 35% of copper. Yum! (I would have been interested to see the actual masses of these absorbed metals compared to the quantities present in a typical vitamin pill, but that wasn't covered.)

There's good news that stems from Reto's work too: the particular "cocktail" of minerals in a sample may be diagnostic of a specific source, which would be useful for forensic identification of polluters. Overall, I found it an interesting talk, on something I'd never really thought about before.

Labels: environmental, gsw, minerals

A sizable group of researchers (21; all members of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London) has put forward an idea in this month's issue of GSA Today: they suggest that humans have altered the planet enough that it will show up in the geologic record of the future. They suggest, therefore, that we may have already entered a new geologic epoch defined by human alteration. As a result, they've adopted the name originally suggested by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen: "the Anthropocene." (Crutzen won in 1995, with two other chemists, for his work on the depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere.)

The evidence they offer for this assertion is compelling, but it raises a few questions about how we define these stratigraphic breaks in the geologic record.

Here's the only figure from the paper, a temporal comparison between several lines of data (top to bottom): sea level, average global temperature, atmospheric CO2, terrestrial erosion rates, and human population of the planet.

This is a powerful image. The authors note that climate essentially stabilized in the Holocene, the "long summer" of Brian Fagan's phrasing. In a classic display of scientific understatement, they note that this prolonged period of stable climate "has been a significant factor in the development of human civilization."

How will the rise of humanity be remembered by the geologic record? They note that we've accomplished some major changes to the rate of erosion and sedimentation : "directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude." I may be missing something here, but it would seem to me that anthropogenic erosion would produce more sediment due to our land use practices, but that less of that sediment would make it to the sea due to the "sediment trap" effect of dammed reservoirs. I mean, the Colorado River doesn't even make it to the ocean anymore.

Then there's temperature. A quote from the paper: "Temperature is predicted to rise by 1.1 °C to 6.4 °C by the end of this century, leading to global temperatures not encountered since the Tertiary." The high end of that estimate is indeed the sort of temperature change that one would think would leave a profound mark in the geologic record. (I find it interesting to note that a cast of 21 stratigraphers persists in using the outmoded and archaic term "Tertiary," by the way. I guess that's as sure a sign as any the Wernerian Chronology still has some kick left in it.)

I think one of the most compelling arguments made in favor of the Anthropocene is the rapid change in the Earth's biosphere. As the authors of the GSA Today paper point out, we've wiped out the majority of the big terrestrial animals, and concomitant wave of extinctions has rippled through the marine realm. Since changes in fossil biota have been the benchmarks of change in the geologic timescale, it seems certain that our tenure will be marked clearly for future paleontologists to see. Not only are species going extinct, those that survive are migrating to new territories as a result of shifting climate.

I'm pleased that the authors also explored changes to ocean chemistry, which will likely be a major source of information to future geologists. They cite Ken Caldiera and Michael Wickett's 2003 study on ocean acidification (which I blogged about last month) which shows that pH in the world's oceans has already dropped by 0.1 unit, and is predicted to continue acidifying so long as there's excess carbon dioxide to absorb from the atmosphere. Of course, add sea level rise to that (as is predicted via accelerated melting of continental ice sheets), and you've got a distinctive stratigraphic signature.

And I guess that brings me to a point that's been on my mind since I started listing these items. Will these changes persist for a long time, or will they be a small but distinct signature, a la the iridium layer at the K/Pg (formerly known as the "K/T") boundary? Another way of putting this: are we seeing the beginning of the Anthropocene's modus operandi, or are we seeing the environmental catastrophe which paves the way for a new, different, and (at this time) unpredictable Anthropocene status quo? At this point, we don't know what the Anthropocene will really look like in bulk. While it makes a lot of sense to point out the accelerated rates of change unfolding in so many geological realms, what it all portends for an as-yet-unattained future equilibrium remains to be seen.

I think papers like this are important. It's both broad in scope and displays some excellent thinking outside the box. I'm curious to see what reaction it provokes in the scientific community. Certainly it's getting some press.

* A side note: Does anybody else find GSA Today to be a weird journal? It always has one main article and then a bunch of stuff about meetings, awards, and the like, of interest to members of the GSA. But the articles featured each month are all over the map. Some, like this month's, are potentially ground-breaking works of scholarship. Others, just seem a bit... fringe. Like the one in December about how a team has shared Denver's geologic story with the public. Or the one about a historical critique of Lord Kelvin. Don't get me wrong: both topics are well and good, but if you're putting out only a single article each month that gets mailed to the entire GSA membership, why those? Sometimes I'm just left perplexed and scratching my head.

References:

Caldeira K., Wickett M.E. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature. v. 425. p 365. doi: 10.1038/425365a
Fagan, Brian. (2004) The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. Basic Books. ISBN 0465022812
Zalasiewicz J, Williams M, Smith A, Barry TL, Coe AL, et al. (2008) "Are we now living in the Anthropocene?" GSA Today: Vol. 18, No. 2 pp. 4–8. doi: 10.1130/GSAT01802A.1

Labels: CO2, environmental, global warming, stratigraphy

Whole Foods stores have decided to phase out the use of plastic bags in their stores, aiming to be rid of the nasty things by Earth Day. Bravo! The sea turtles thank you. Let's use that (petroleum-derived) plastic for something else.

Labels: environmental

I watched a cool documentary the other night about the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. The film is called Manufactured Landscapes. (It's available from Netflix.)

It follows Burtynsky mostly through China (with asides to Bangladesh and North America) as he photographs of places where humankind has indelibly altered nature to produce landscapes that are at once disturbing and utterly beautiful. By trailing Burtynsky, the documentarians film the landscape through his eyes, as well as showing his still photos. Burtynsky maintains a website with some of his best images available in an online gallery. It's a remarkable ensemble. I recommend that you check out this visionary photographer.

Labels: art, environmental, movies