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November 25, 2009
· Some greenies now embracing nuclear power
· This rooftop garden climbs down the wall
· Aeroponic spuds success story in Viet Nam
· Mad science? Growing meat without cows
·
Analysis: ‘Climategate’ – The fix is in
Some greenies now embracing nuclear power
(The
Washington Post)
It has been 13 years since the last new nuclear power plant
opened in the
From
Rather than deride the emphasis on nuclear power, some environmentalists are embracing it. Stephen Tindale typifies the shift.
When a brigade of Greenpeace activists stormed a nuclear
power plant on the shores of the
The construction of nuclear plants was banned in
"It really is a question about the greater evil -- nuclear waste or climate change," Tindale said. "But there is no contest anymore. Climate change is the bigger threat, and nuclear is part of the answer."
A number of roadblocks may yet stall nuclear's
comeback -- in particular, its expense. Two next-generation plants under construction
in
But experts also point to a host of improvements in nuclear
technology since the
A 'pragmatic' approach
So far at least, the start of what many are calling "a
new nuclear age" is unfolding with only muted opposition -- nothing like
the protests and plant invasions that helped define the green movement in the
As opposition recedes, even nations that had long vowed never to build another nuclear plant -- such as Sweden, Belgium and Italy -- have recently done an about-face as they see the benefits of a nearly zero-emission energy overriding the dangers of radioactive waste disposal and nuclear proliferation.
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In the
To be sure, many green groups remain opposed to nuclear energy,
and some, such as Greenpeace, have refused to back
"Our base is as opposed to nuclear as ever," said
David Hamilton, director of the Global Warming and Energy Program for the
Sierra Club in
But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign
at the Environmental Defense Fund -- a group that opposed new nuclear plants in
the
"If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table," he said. "We may not like it, but that's the way it is."
That position, observers say, marks a significant departure.
"Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active
on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our
internal policies," said Mike Childs, head of climate change issues for
Friends of the Earth in
Some leading environmental figures, including former vice
president Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear's
promise, largely because of the high cost of building plants and the threat of
proliferation, illustrated by Iran's recent attempts to blur the lines between
energy production and a weapons program. Other countries seeking to build their
first nuclear plants would probably purchase fuel from secure market sources in
Europe and the
"I'm assuming the waste and safety problems get resolved, but cost and proliferation still loom as very serious problems" with nuclear energy, Gore told The Washington Post's editorial board this month. "I am not anti-nuclear, but the costs of the present generation of reactors is nearly prohibitive."
Meeting tough goals
Yet for nations such as
As reserves of natural gas from the North Sea dwindle,
After years of resisting new plants after the
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As may happen in the
Tindale, 46, publicly switched his position less than a year after leaving his job as head of Greenpeace here. But his opinion began to change earlier, he said. Rather than being vilified by environmentalists, his public shift has sparked a thoughtful debate here among opponents, supporters and those on the fence.
"Like many of us, I began to slowly realize we don't have the luxury anymore of excluding nuclear energy," he said. "We need all the help we can get."
This rooftop garden climbs down the wall
(The New York Times) – IN most ways, the Barthelmes Manufacturing Company is a typical sheet metal fabricator. Five days a week, machines here stamp out thousands of computer cases, electrical patch panels and other items for companies like United Technologies.
Yet a growing part of the company’s business is being devoted to something decidedly unindustrial: edible walls — metal panels filled with soil and seeds and hung vertically.
They may sound like a piece of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. In fact, they are the latest development in green roof technology. Like green roofs, edible walls include a thick layer of vegetation on the outside of buildings to provide insulation and reduce heating and electricity costs.
But unlike green roofs — and their vertical cousins, green walls — edible walls also produce fruit, vegetables and herbs in far less space than typical gardens. That’s why advocates of urban farming have embraced them as a way to lower food costs, increase nutritional quality and cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions by using fewer delivery trucks.
“The traditional metal fabrication industry is shrinking,
and green is an emerging area,” said Larry Lehning,
the chief executive at Barthelmes, whose sales of
green products have doubled this year and make up 15 percent of the company’s
revenue. Edible walls — descendants of espalier, or trees grown against walls
that were popular during the Middle Ages in
Dickson D. Despommier, the
director of the Vertical Farm Project at
All of these solutions, though, require large investments and considerable technology. Edible walls, by contrast, can be built for a fraction of the cost, do not need computers or greenhouses and require far less maintenance.
The leader in this niche area is Green Living Technologies,
another company in
“Instead of bringing food to the city, we’re bringing the whole farm,” said George Irwin, the chief executive and founder of the company. “What we’re implementing is back to basics.”
The idea for the edible wall, which is often portable and hung from a structural wall, was inspired by Mr. Irwin’s young son and daughter about five years ago. Mr. Irwin, who was installing green roofs and green walls, was asked by his children if they could plant some lettuce seeds in a wall. Not expecting much, Mr. Irwin plopped the seeds into the soil in a panel that he was using for a sloped green roof. A few days later, they sprouted.
Mr. Irwin saw the potential for these vertical planters in cities where space is tight and food costs high. They can be hung in backyards, parking lots and other spots. He has sold them mostly to homeowners and schools, but he hopes to persuade restaurants and supermarkets to buy them so customers can pick their own food.
Uninterested in being a manufacturer, Mr. Irwin has contracted with Barthelmes and other companies for 2-foot-by-2-foot stainless steel and aluminum panels and other products.
The panels have intersecting slats inside that create 24 cells for seeds to be planted. The slats have long holes in them so roots can migrate between the cells, strengthening the soil and plants.
Mr. Irwin, who has an online column as the Green Wall
editor, holds two-day seminars where landscape designers pay $800 to learn how
to install products made by Green Living Technologies. One of the nearly 500
resellers is Kari Elwell Katzander,
a landscape designer in
In early November, Ms. Katzander
installed three panels, each four inches deep, for Brad Zizmor,
who has a backyard deck at his first-floor apartment in
Ms. Katzander and Plant Connection decided on 10 plants, including strawberries, lettuce, chives, oregano, parsley, rosemary and thyme. The panels, which weigh about 50 pounds each when filled, were hung on a wooden wall that surrounds the deck.
To irrigate the plants, a quarter-inch hose with tiny holes was draped across the top of the panels and attached to a larger hose. Ms. Katzander figured out how often to feed the plants to avoid runoff and to ensure that the plants would not be too dry or wet.
“What’s nice is you can be surrounded by the food you’re eating,” Mr. Zizmor said.
Mr. Zizmor is considering whether
to keep several panels cultivating on
AT about $125 a square foot, or $500 per planted panel, plus more for design, delivery and maintenance, edible walls do not make sense for every home, or even cities where there is open land.
Still, Mr. Irwin has shown that edible walls can work on a
larger scale. At four locations in the Skid Row area of
The project, urban farming advocates say, is just the start of something larger.
“We have 30 miles of rooftop in
Aeroponic spuds a success story in Viet Nam
(VietNamNet) –
This national project was carried out by Professor Nguyen Quang Thach, head of the Science
Council,
Thach said the frequency of spraying and the amount of the solution was adjusted according to the physical condition of the plant and the outside environment’s temperature. The nutrition regimen could be therefore calculated exactly for each plant.
The plant roots are completely suspended in the air. Nutrition and water was supplied in cycles. The solution coming out from the spray is collected, filtered and reused. Prof. Thach estimated using this method can conserve 98 per cent of water, 95 per cent of fertiliser and 99 per cent of preservation contents. With this method, the root’s temperature is always 2 degree Celsius lower than the outside temperature because of the evaporation process. Plants, therefore, grow faster than in soil.
The aeroponics method does not involve soil so the growing environment is clean and the plants are disease-free. When a particular plant does become diseased, it can be quickly removed from the plant support structure without disrupting or infecting the other plants.
According to Prof Thach, after only three days propagating potato’s breed by aeroponics, the seedling starts to have roots and can be collected eight to ten times per month. Whereas using the traditional method of in-vitro (plant tissue culture) growing takes three weeks to develop roots for propagating. Results from the Institute shows that so far, a seedling grown by aeroponics gives 50-60 tubers while planting in soil only produces four to five potatoes.
Out-of-season fruit
Beside potatoes, the institute also successfully propagated
tomatoes, strawberries, bell peppers, and sun flowers using the aeroponics
method. Aeroponics have also helped produce
out-of-season fruits which bring great economic benefits. Thach
has planted some winter plants in the summer in Ha Noi
by cooling the nutritional solution and tried plants that are only familiar
with northern temperatures in
Recently Prof Thach has continued his research using this method with other vegetables. Tomatoes and peppers harvested from this method has a lower amount of hazardous metal contents than growing in soil. Fruits also has more vitamin contents. According to Thach, because this method does not need a large amounts of water so the weight of the whole system is pretty light and it is easy to be set up in a city.
"We can both get clean vegetables and create a pleasant urban environment. With only a foam box, a pump and a self-set up pumping system which cost about VND1 million (US $70), households can create an aeroponics system to grow clean vegetables for themselves," Thach said.
Supporting this idea, Professor Tran Duy Quy, chairman of the project, former deputy director of the Viet Nam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said this idea was totally practical.
He added, "We needn’t introduce the high technology process as it is, as we need to adapt to the local conditions. In Thach’s experience, he used a disease free environment in a greenhouse and sterilised nutrition solution, but locals won’t have to use such expensive things. They can, instead, use PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastic tubes and simple nets to protect their plants from insects." Quy does not think the substitutes will have any negative affects on the process.
He emphasised that the method was
particularly useful for mass production of potatoes for commercial use such as
potato chip manufacturers. "Before, we had to import expensive potato
seedlings from
Truong Nam Hai, director of the
Besides the project at the
"Our company has been providing potato seedlings for potato producing manufactures in the north and the south. One hectare of land can provide 60,000 minitubers. There are 2,500ha of land for potato growing in the north and 1,500 in the south so you can see the potential benefits out of it if we all use aeroponics," Cuong said.
Mad science? Growing meat without cows
(LiveScience.com) – Winston Churchill once predicted that it would be possible to grow chicken breasts and wings more efficiently without having to keep an actual chicken. And in fact scientists have since figured out how to grow tiny nuggets of lab meat and say it will one day be possible to produce steaks in vats, sans any livestock.
Pork chops or burgers cultivated in labs could eliminate contamination problems that regularly generate headlines these days, as well as address environmental concerns that come with industrial livestock farms.
However, such research opens up strange and perhaps even disturbing possibilities once considered only the realm of science fiction. After all, who knows what kind of meat people might want to grow to eat?
Advantages touted
Increasingly, bioengineers are growing nerve, heart and
other tissues in labs. Recently, scientists even reported developing artificial
penis tissue in rabbits. Although such research is meant to help treat
patients, biomedical engineer Mark Post at
The researchers noted that growing skeletal muscle in labs — the kind people typically think of as the meat they eat — could help tackle a number of problems:
* Avoiding animal suffering by reducing the farming and killing of livestock.
* Dramatically cutting down on food-borne ailments such as mad cow disease and salmonella or germs such as swine flu, by monitoring the growth of meat in labs.
* Livestock currently take up 70 percent of all agricultural land, corresponding to 30 percent of the world's land surface, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Labs would presumably require much less space.
* Livestock generate 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the vehicles on Earth, the FAO added. Since the animals themselves are mostly responsible for these gases, reducing livestock numbers could help alleviate global warming.
Need to scale up
Stem cells are considered the most promising source for such meat, retaining as they do the capacity to transform into the required tissues, and the scientists pointed to satellite cells, which are the natural muscle stem cells responsible for regeneration and repair in adults. Embryonic stem cells could also be used, but they are obviously plagued by ethical concerns, and they could grow into tissues besides the desired muscles.
To grow meat in labs from satellite cells, the researchers suggested current tissue-engineering techniques, where stem cells are often embedded in synthetic three-dimensional biodegradable matrixes that can present the chemical and physical environments that cells need to develop properly. Other key factors would involve electrically stimulating and mechanically stretching the muscles to exercise them, helping them mature properly, and perhaps growing other cells alongside the satellite cells to provide necessary molecular cues.
So far past scientists have grown only small nuggets of skeletal muscle, about half the size of a thumbnail. Such tidbits could be used in sauces or pizzas, Post and colleagues explained recently in the online edition of the journal Trends in Food Science & Technology, but creating a steak would demand larger-scale production.
Dark thoughts
The expectation is that if such meat is ever made, scientists will opt for beef, pork, chicken or fish. However, science fiction has long toyed with the darker possibilities that cloned meat presents.
In Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's epic sci-fi satire "Transmetropolitan," supermarkets and fast food joints sell dolphin, manatee, whale, baby seal, monkey and reindeer, while the Long Pig franchise sells "cloned human meat at prices you like."
"In principle, we could harvest the meat progenitor cells from fresh human cadavers and grow meat from them," Post said. "Once taken out of its disease and animalistic, cannibalistic context — you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead — there is no reason why not."
Of course, there are many potential objections that people could have to growing beef, chicken or pork in the lab, much less more disturbing meats. Still, Post suggests that marketing could overcome such hurdles.
"If every package of naturally grown meat by law should have the text, 'Beware, animals have been killed for this product,' I can imagine a gradual cultural shift," Post said. "Of course, we still have a long way to go to make a product that is even remotely competitive with current products."
Analysis: ‘Climategate’ – The fix is in
(Jewish World
Review) – By Robert Tracinski: In early October,
I linked to a breaking story about evidence of corruption in the basic
temperature records maintained by key scientific advocates of the theory of
man-made global warming. Global warming "skeptics" had unearthed evidence that scientists at the
Climatic Research Unit at
But now newer and much broader evidence has
emerged that breaks this scandal wide open. Pundits have already named it
"Climategate."
A hacker—or more likely a disillusioned
insider—has gathered thousands of e-mails and data from the CRU and made them
available on the Web. Officials at the CRU have verified the breach of their
system and acknowledged that the e-mails appear to be genuine.
The CRU has already called in the police to
investigate the hacker, but those resources are misdirected. The cops should be
investigating the CRU itself.
The e-mails show, among many other things,
private admissions of doubt or scientific weakness in the global warming
theory. In acknowledging that global temperatures have actually declined for
the past decade, one scientist asks, "where the heck is global warming?... The fact is that we can't account for the lack of
warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." They still
can't account for it; see a new article in Der
Spiegel: "Climatologists
Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out." I don't know where these people
got their scientific education, but where I come from, if your theory can't
predict or explain the observed facts, it's wrong.
In another e-mail, a prominent global warming
alarmist admits to using a statistical "trick" to "hide the
decline" in temperatures. The "trick"
consists of selectively mixing two different kinds of data—temperature
"proxies" from tree rings and actual thermometer measurements—in a
way designed to produce a graph of global temperatures that ends the way the
global warming establishment wants it to: with an upward "hockey
stick" slope.
Confirming the earlier scandal about
cherry-picked data, the e-mails show CRU scientists conspiring to evade legal
requests under the Freedom of Information Act for their underlying data. It's a
basic rule of science that you don't just get to report your results and ask
other people to take you on faith. You also have to report your data and your
specific method of analysis, so that others can check it and, yes, even
criticize it. Yet that is precisely what the CRU scientists have refused.
But what stands out most in this cache of
e-mails is extensive evidence of the hijacking of "peer review" to
enforce global warming dogma. Peer review is the practice of subjecting
scientific papers to review by other scientists with relevant expertise before
they are published in professional journals. The idea is to weed out research
with obvious flaws or weak arguments, but there is a clear danger that such a
process will simply reinforce groupthink. If it is corrupted, peer review can
be a mechanism for an entrenched establishment to exclude legitimate challenges
by simply refusing to give critics a hearing.
And that is precisely what we find in this
case.
In response to an article challenging global
warming that was published in the journal Climate Research, CRU head
Phil Jones complains
that the journal needs to "rid themselves of this troublesome
editor."
I think we have to
stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal.
Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to
no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.
Note the circular logic. Skepticism about
global warming is wrong because it is not supported by scientific articles in
"legitimate peer-reviewed journals." But if a journal actually
publishes such an article, then it is by definition not "legitimate."
You can also see from these e-mails the panic
among top global warming alarmists at any dissent appearing in the
scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical
Research Letters, Mann complains,
"It's one thing to lose Climate Research.
We can't afford to lose GRL." Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome
editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the
greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find
documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU [American
Geophysical Union] channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they
did, and a later e-mail boasts
that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now with new editorial
leadership there."
Not content to block out all dissent from
scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly
reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones
suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance
that "All of them know the sorts of things to say�without any prompting."
So it's no surprise when another e-mail
refers to an attempt to keep inconvenient scientific findings out of a UN
report: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report.
K and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the
peer-review literature is!" Think of all of this the next time you hear
someone invoke the authority of peer review—or of the UN's
IPCC reports—as backing for claims about global warming.
This scandal goes beyond scientific journals
and into other media used to promote the global warming dogma. For example,
RealClimate.org has been billed as an objective website at which global warming
activists and skeptics can engage in an impartial debate. But in the CRU
e-mails, the global warming establishment boasts
that RealClimate is in their pocket.
I wanted you guys to
know that you're free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin
and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through�. We can hold comments up in
the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be
screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd like us to include.
Think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal�.
We'll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics don't get to use the RC
comments as a megaphone.
And anyone doubting that the mainstream media
is in on it, too, should check out New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin's toadying apologia
for the CRU e-mails, masquerading as a news report.
The picture that emerges is simple. In any
discussion of global warming, either in the scientific literature or in the
mainstream media, the outcome is always predetermined. Just as the temperature
graphs produced by the CRU are always tricked out to show an upward-sloping
"hockey stick," every discussion of global warming has to conclude
that the warming is happening and that humans are responsible. And any data or
scientific paper that tends to disprove that conclusion is smeared as
"unscientific" precisely because it threatens the established
dogma.
For more than a decade, we've been told that
there is a scientific "consensus" that humans are causing global warming,
that "the debate is over" and all "legitimate" scientists
acknowledge the truth of global warming. Now we know what this
"consensus" really means. What it means is: the fix is in.
This is an enormous case of organized
scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal
act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research,
dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they
seek government money—Phil Jones has raked in a total of �13.7 million, about $25 million, in grants
from the British government—which they use to falsify data and defraud the
taxpayers. It's the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits
are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even
manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is a noble lie
intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being
"confused" by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism.
The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a
few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of
this scam is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed
if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global
economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy.
This is the scandal of the century. It needs
to be thoroughly investigated—and the culprits need to be brought to justice.
End Transmission