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More about Trees

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February 4, 2010 – 7:46 am

Forests in the northern hemisphere seem to be growing faster now than they were 200 years ago; according to a study of trees in eastern America, this is a result of climate change.

The trees appear to have accelerated growth rates due to longer growing seasons and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air. Scientists have documented the changes to the growth of 55 plots of mixed hardwood forest over a period of 22 years, and have concluded that they’re probably growing faster now than they have done at any time in the past 225 years – the age of the oldest tree in the study.

Geoffrey Parker, is a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. He said that the increase in the growth rate was unexpected and might be accredited to the higher temperatures and longer growing seasons observed in the region. The growth may also be influenced by the significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, said he.

The study, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that northern forests may become increasingly important in terms of moderating the influence of man-made carbon dioxide on the climate.

Dr. Parker and his colleagues have been carrying out a detailed census of the trees on a regular basis since 1987, measuring every tree and sapling which has a diameter of more than 2cm (0.78in).

They calculated that the forest is producing an additional two tons of wood per acre every year, which is equivalent to a tree with a diameter of two feet sprouting up in the space of a year.

The scientists identified a series of plots with trees at different stages of growth and found that both young and old trees showed increasing growth rates. More than 90% of the tree groups had grown by between two and four times faster than the scientists had predicted from estimates of the long-term rates of growth.
The scientists said that if the trees had grown as quickly throughout their lives as they had shown in recent years they would be much larger than they are now. They based their conclusions on 250,000 measurements taken over more than 20 years.

During the same period, the scientists measured the concentration of carbon dioxide in the forest air and found that it had risen by 12 per cent. The average temperature had increased by three-tenths of a degree, and the growing season had lengthened by 7.8 days. The scientists believe that all three factors have played a role in helping the trees to grow faster.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and extended growing seasons could be favorable for agriculture in some parts of the world, mainly in the northern hemisphere. The study in Maryland suggests that the extra growth in trees could help to act as a more efficient carbon “sink”, which would be able to offset the carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels.

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“Stuck on You” : A Love Story Despite Deforestation

February 3, 2010 – 7:53 am

Life has always been rough for the African wasp Certosolen arabicus. Their lifespan of two days doesn’t provide them with much time to get to know the world. But, if there’s one thing that makes these 48 hours worth living, it’s their intimate relationship with the fig tree Ficus sycomorus. A beautiful tale of romance…

These two species are inseparable. There might be ‘plenty of trees in the forest’, but the wasp only eats the fig’s nectar, while in return, the wasp is the only thing capable of pollinating the fig tree. For many long years, this unlikely partnership has carried on unfettered. But deforestation in the region means less fig trees and more sparsely distributed. Let’s hope this romance has a happy ending…

Researchers tested to see if the love-affair between the wasp and fig could stand the test of a long-distance relationship.

In an environment pumping with pollinator promiscuity, the symbiotic relationship of the wasp and fig compel a loyalty uncommon in the natural world. The fig tree, which serves as a nest for the wasp’s eggs, only opens its pollen-rich male flowers once the wasps are born. The same tree will wait two weeks to open its female flowers, to avoid being self-pollinated, with consideration that the wasps only live a couple of days.

So, the young wasps sip from the male flower’s small reserve of nectar, picking up pollen on the way, and then go out to find their next meal at another fig tree’s more nectarous female flower. They eat, pollinate, mate, lay eggs, and finally, die. Just like that.

Sadly though, due to deforestation, researchers worry that the fig trees will soon become too few, too isolated for the little wasps to get to them in their brief lives, effectively breaking the reproduction capability of the wasp and fig.

In an attempt to find out just how far the wasps were able to travel from a male flowering tree to a female flowering tree, scientists collected seeds from 79 different fig trees across Namibia and performed a DNA test on each.

Here’s what they found: While some trees may be closer to one another, the wasps still preferred to travel long distances to find a female fig flower. The paternity tests found that, on average, the wasps traveled a whopping 88.6 miles to pollinate, that’s in one evening! Actually scientists found at least one tree was pollinated with the DNA of another that was 150 miles away.

The results of this research are reassuring to scientists who fear that fig trees isolated by great distances due to deforestation will gradually be lost. So these two lovers will bestaying together, we’re happy to report.

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CASE: Forever Looking Good in the Sun

February 2, 2010 – 8:00 am

The dream of integrating solar power with building materials has been a source of wonder for decades, but aesthetics has been one of the biggest challenges, according to Anna Dyson, director of the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology, or CASE.

Most applications presented so far, according to Ms. Dyson,

“are pretty ugly and impede your view.”

Let’s face it architects and developers have to have aesthetics in mind, even when it comes to saving energy, because consumers want to be in fashion – and can you blame them?
Many building-integrated solar technologies are also somewhat inefficient, Ms. Dyson said, which means that large parts of a building have to be covered with solar energy-gathering materials, in order to receive significant benefits.

CASE, a research and development collaboration between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and other engineering and architectural companies are confident in their abilities to overcome these challenges.

The group has developed what it calls a Dynamic Solar Facade — a glass frontage that looks something like an oversize bead curtain, with rows of transparent, pyramid-shaped concentrators, configured in a honeycomb pattern and hung up on wires that move from up to down, or twist from side to side, in order to track the sun.

Every concentrator comes equipped with a lens that magnifies light nearly 500 times and directs it to a postage stamp-size Spectrolab solar cell made of gallium arsenide.

The concentrators also bring light into the building while deflecting heat and glare, thereby reducing the need for artificial light during the day.

Meanwhile, heat sinks placed behind the solar cells absorb the sun’s warmth and may be used to heat water in the building.

Together, the Dynamic Solar Facade uses the sun’s light and heat with 60 to 80% efficiency, Ms. Dyson said, who also added that savings in electricity and heating costs could pay for the system in as little as two and a half years.

CASE has installed its first full-scale demonstration project – 64 concentrators in an 8-by-10-foot glass installation at the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems. It is scheduled to open in March.

Commercialization also depends on the ability of Spectrolab, which makes the gallium-arsenide cells.

The technology is apparently stylish enough to satisfy one prominent client: the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Though still a few years away, they have plans to include the solar facade in the development of a new student center.

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Rockin’ Down to Electric Avenue, Part II

February 1, 2010 – 8:11 am

Shai Agassi closed a deal, financing his company Better Place, two days before the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. They closed at $350 million, pricing the firm at $1.25 billion.

Agassi became inspired to enter the electric car market at the World Economic Forum meeting three years ago, when he left software giant SAP.

Their biggest investor was HSBC, which took 10% of the company for a $125 million. Other investors included Morgan Stanley, as well as investors from the first round of financing, led by the Israel Corporation, which now has 30% of the company.

When asked how a company which has no revenues, hasn’t begun operating and has no proven business model, can round up that much worth from investors, Agassi said:

“The round indeed reflects a valuation of $1.25 billion, which is three to four times more than the valuation during our last round two years ago. … In terms of the speed with which the value was created – there haven’t been any companies like this. This is the largest investment since the crash in 2008 and the largest investment ever in clean-tech.”

Ok, but THAT kind of valuation?

“That’s a very interesting question. Look … we’re selling kilometers. The people selling kilometers until now were the oil companies.”

What’s selling kilometers? What does that mean?

“When you go to a gas station nowadays, you buy kilometers. It looks like a model whereby someone fills up the tank and pays, but ultimately, it’s a purchase of kilometers, 500 to 600 kilometers. It’s the same business, an energy distribution network, which is currently called oil companies or gas companies. The global kilometer market is currently worth $3 trillion a year, and [gas stations are] living on profit margins of 1% to 2%… Now, we’re buying the raw goods at a price that’s constantly decreasing … and we’re starting at very high profit margins, much more than 1%.”

Explain again about that valuation, what with no revenues and all?

“The total value of the Israeli kilometer market is about $10 billion. It’s being sold in servings of NIS 6.5 per liter – for us, the market share is 500,000 cars that get a lot of mileage – half of the distance traveled in Israel. These are leased cars, and the cars of people who drive 30,000 to 40,000 kilometers a year. That’s worth $5 billion …. We can get to that market share with profit margins of 40% to 50%.”

How do you get to profit margins of 40% to 50%? What about returning the investment, what about operations?

“I buy a battery and electricity, and I sell kilometers. On the way I’ve laid a lot of infrastructure in order to translate one into the other …. And my profit margins are constantly improving and eventually become very large because batteries keep getting cheaper and electricity keeps getting cheaper, while the price of a kilometer increases since there isn’t much cheap fuel left in the world.”

With Agassi’s plan, drivers will need to recharge every 150 kilometers – they’ll come to a recharging station, where a robot will remove the empty battery and insert a full one. The entire process takes two minutes, and most drivers won’t need to recharge more than once every two weeks.

When the project launches, hopefully in the second half of 2011, Israel will have 70 recharging stations. The infrastructure, that is the recharging stations, plus setting up chargers at customers’ homes, will cost the company $150 million. That being said, the company hopes to return the investment within 18 months.

It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to set up a charger at a customer’s house. Customers will not pay for electricity usage. They’ll pay a flat cost.

The charging stations will recognize cars based on a SIM-card-like device.

“The program that manages electricity consumption is amazing, because this is essentially the first time that cars will have a computer running Windows 7 inside them and a constant cellular Internet connection…This changes the complete driving experience. You can do things like navigation with other cars.”

Will the drivers like it? Will the masses get used to it?

“These changes happen in all fields. The large [car manufacturing] companies are looking at the changes and not moving. They’re like deer caught in the headlights. Look at the newspapers versus Google, look at pharma versus biotech, at the music industry.”

While the driver may lose due to the inconvenience of having to charge every 150 kilometers Plus, the up side is that electric cars will be less expensive: around NIS 100,000, he cites as an example, or NIS 20,000 to NIS 30,000 less than current car prices in Israel.

What is the word from Amdocs, Nice or Comverse?

“They see a decrease in costs, they see a fixed price for car maintenance. Remember that a year and a half ago, the price of gas suddenly jumped. And they also see a marketing opportunity for their company – an opportunity to be innovative leaders.”

And how will they sell it?

“First of all, the worker will benefit from the lower valuation of the car for income tax purposes.”

Agassi also said that Gas stations have no reason to fear the new business model – at this point, most of their revenues come from

“selling sandwiches and ice cream.”

If they become recharging stations, they shall maintain the traffic that powers their stores.

What about oil refineries? The company’s main investors are Sammy, Idan and Eyal Ofer. They also control the oil refinery in Haifa.

“Idan told me during our first meeting: ‘You told me that the days of the refineries are numbered, so why should I let someone else kill them? I want to be the person who kills them, because if this works, electric cars will be more profitable for me than refining oil.’”

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The Dangers of Bisphenol

January 30, 2010 – 10:27 am

For those of you who are concerned about health conditions such as, breast and prostate cancer, sexual development abnormalities, and now heart disease, linked to the packaging additive bisphenol A (BPA), there is promising news for you:

Earlier this month, the FDA reversed its stance on the chemical, saying it is now

“taking reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the food supply.”

It is truly a huge first step, as is the move by cities and states around the country to ban the suspected endocrine disruptor from baby products such as formula cans and ’sippy’ cups. It could still be years, however, before we see BPA removed from thousands of other products on the market. Yes, this is including those canned soups that you enjoy every day for lunch, but don’t fret, because I enjoy them too.

What is so disconcerting about the BPA issue is that consumers have not been granted the knowledge to decide for themselves whether or not they want to buy products that are packaged with it. As with genetically modified foods, it becomes a consumer guessing game: To date, there are no labeling requirements for thousands of industrial chemicals like BPA that turn up in our food stuffs and packaging.

Here are some tips…..
Soup Swap:
A recent Consumer Reports test found BPA in 19 name-brand foods; the highest levels were in canned soup, including Campbell’s chicken noodle. Switch to Dr. McDougall’s BPA-free soups packaged in FSC-certified cartons, or just make your own from scratch, like mom used to.

Beware of Beans:
Don’t reach for canned beans to whip up that batch of black bean chili, unless you’re going to buy Eden Organic, or other such brands. Westbrae Natural, for instance, says on its website that the lining of its cans is

“a type of food-grade epoxy…the simplest earth friendly coating available.”

Tomatoes and Tuna:
If you love making pasta sauce from scratch, but even that innocent looking little can of tomato paste likely has BPA in it. This all the more reason to plant your own tomatoes, or check out the Bionaturae brand of tomato paste.

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Stimulus Causes Growth in Alternative Energy Economy

January 28, 2010 – 7:40 am

According to Whitehouse.gov, the release of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) 4th Quarter 2009 industry assessment indicated that stimulus spending is directly responsible for turning a potential 50% decline in wind power sector growth into a 39% increase in growth in the country’s wind plants, just in 2009 alone.
Denise Bode, the trade association’s chief executive told The New York Times Deal Book Blog:

“The U.S. wind industry shattered all installation records in 2009, and this was directly attributable to the lifeline that was provided by the stimulus package…The second half of the year was extraordinary. But manufacturers didn’t see much growth because they had built up so much inventory.”

The White House also pointed out the environmental benefits to the economic growth:

“America’s wind power fleet will avoid an estimated 62 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, equivalent to taking 10.5 million cars off the road.”

Massachusetts Democratic Representative Edward J. Markey, co-author of the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill, proudly praised the results of the assessment:

“In 2009, America’s wind capacity grew by nearly 40 percent – blowing past the expectations that existed prior to the passage of the Recovery Act, These numbers show the potential for growth in clean energy, if only our country will make a commitment to these technologies.”

The AWEA report also pointed out, however, that:

“The wind manufacturing sector has the potential to employ many more Americans in green jobs, but without a renewable electricity standard to provide a long-term market, the sector will be slow to grow.”

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Report Shows Job Growth within the Green Sector

January 27, 2010 – 11:01 am

In an age where employment is touch-and-go for most economies, the green jobs sector is growing faster than any other. A Pew Charitable Trusts report on the Clean Energy Economy counted 770,000 jobs in all 50 states that met the “double bottom line” of economic growth and environmental sustainability. Clean energy economy jobs grew by 9.1% between 1998 and 2007, compared to the 3.7% in overall job growth in those years. Venture capital investment totaled $12.6 billion in the clean tech sector between 2006 and 2009.

A new report from the Global Climate Network predicts that the world’s eight leading economies will create 20 million new jobs between now and 2020. In the U.S. the stimulus package and the American Clean Energy and Security Act could help create as many as 1.9 million new green jobs in the period. The move to a “smart grid” could create 270,000 jobs and a further 138,000 if U.S. smart grid technologies are exported to a global market.

According to the Pew report, 65% of the national clean energy jobs in 2007 went to conservation and pollution mitigation. Clean energy accounted for 11.6% of new jobs in the period, energy efficiency for 9.5%, environmentally friendly production 7%, and training and support 6.8%. However, environmentally friendly production saw the most growth: up 67% from 1998 to 2007 (followed by clean energy, up 23%).

Of the top 10 clean-tech employers around the world identified by Clean Edge, four are in the U.S.: Illinois, Washington, Arkansas and California. Clean Edge defines the top five sectors for clean-tech jobs in the U.S.
In descending order they are:
Solar
Bio-fuels and Biomaterials
onservation and efficiency
Smart grid and wind power

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Ccs to the Rescue: Innovation By and For the Dreamers

January 26, 2010 – 11:01 am

Dreamers imagine this: a form of electricity which emits to the atmosphere ZERO carbon dioxide emissions, while being affordable.
Dreamers imagining, you are engaging the vision proposed by MIT researcher Dr. Thomas Adams and Lammot du Pont professor of Chemical Engineering, Paul I. Barton.

Their system uses solid-oxide fuel cells to produce power from fuel without burning it. The electricity generating system runs on natural gas, plentiful to the point of lasting approximately 60 years at current consumption rates.

Such innovations like these are what we are in such dire need of. As it stands today, natural-gas power plants produce an average of 1,135 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt-hour of electricity that is produced; while natural gas accounts for only 22% of electricity production.

The system of solid-oxide fuel cells would eliminate harmful gas emissions, and only release pure carbon dioxide into the air. The process of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) would store the carbon dioxide underground. The same cell system would also produce clean water, useable for a plethora of purposes.

Carbon Capture Sequestration involves separating out the carbon dioxide from other gases and injecting the potentially harmful gases into deep geological formations, keeping them from heading out into the atmosphere.

While the cheapest fuel will always be pulverized coal, the system designed by Adams and Barton comes fantastically close.

A very low level of carbon tax, about $5 to $10 per ton, would make the technology cheaper than coal plants. Combined-cycle natural gas plants, the most efficient type of fossil-fuel power plants, could be set up with a carbon capture system, thereby reducing the output of greenhouse gases by more than 90% at a comparable cost and even with a substantially higher efficiency. Once there is a form of carbon pricing, the true price exacted on the environment by greenhouse gas emissions will be known and seen by all.

Prototype megawatt-scale plants are planned for 2012. Once the system has been proved at any size, it may be increased to fill the need.
Ultimately an instance of innovation by and for the dreamers.

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Gates Goes Green and Everything In Between

January 24, 2010 – 1:17 pm

Business mastermind and software revolutionary turned full-time philanthropist, Bill Gates gave his two cents on a very hot button issue when he posted on his sort-of-blog “Gates Notes”, about cutting green house emissions. The name of the article is “We Need Productivity and Sustainability.”

He opined that cutting emissions by 30% by 2025 is unrealistic, while cutting by 80% by 2050 is a decent goal to set.

The reasons why he feels that the 2025 deadline is unrealistic seems to be realistic enough, they are:

In order to do so, participating countries would have to cut electrical production and transportation related emissions, by 100%.
Poor countries will still not be able to participate.
There will still be inevitable emissions from domestic animals, making fertilizer, and the decay process.

So instead, feels Gates, the emphasis should be on developing innovations for power generating. As he puts it, what we need is “innovation, not just insulation”.

“One of the reasons I bring this up is that I hear a lot of climate change experts focus totally on 2025 or talk about how great it is that there is so much low hanging fruit that will make a difference.”

“This mostly focuses on saving a little bit of energy, which by itself is simply not enough. The need to get to zero emissions in key sectors almost never gets mentioned. The danger is people will think they just need to do a little bit and things will be fine.”

Wouldn’t it be neat if Microsoft came up with an effectual solution?

The “Gates Notes” is currently also headlining pieces about H1N1, global warming, education reform and the Sundance Film Festival.

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Tough To Kill: The Saga of Homo erectus

January 24, 2010 – 1:08 pm

New genetic findings suggest that early humans living about one million years ago became at one point very close to extinction.

Well, this genetic evidence suggests that the population of early human species back then, including Homo erectus, Homo ergaster and archaic Homo sapiens, was made up of about 18,500 individuals. It is widely held that modern humans evolved from Homo erectus.

One might assume that hominin numbers were expanding at that time, if for no other reason, than because evidence shows that members of our Homo genus were spreading across Africa, Asia and Europe.

To make these estimates we can analyze Alu sequences. These are short snippets of DNA that move between regions of the genome. They move with such low frequency, however, that their presence in a region suggests it is quite ancient. Because older Alu-containing regions have had time to accumulate more mutations, we are able to estimate the age of a region based on its nucleotide diversity. The comparison was made between the nucleotides in the old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in overall population size, and thus genetic diversity between modern and early humans.

“This is an original approach because they show that you can use mobile elements…to flag a region of the genome,”

said Cédric Feschotte, an evolutionary geneticist from the University of Texas at Arlington.

The effective population researchers estimate at about 18,500 reveals that the extent of genetic diversity among hominins living one million years ago was between 1.7 and 2.9 times greater than among humans today.

It would make sense that the diminished genetic diversity, one million years ago, suggests that our human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time, one as devastating as a purported massive volcano, thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago.

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