·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Read the full post at NewsoftheNorth.net.

A global report on the state of the world’s birds has implications for Wisconsin, say state conservation organizations.

The report, issued by the organization BirdLife International (birdlife.org) details the decline of global bird populations. As the official International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List Authority for birds, BirdLife says its 2008 assessment of all the world’s birds reveals that more than 1,226 bird species (12.4 percent, or one in eight) are considered threatened with extinction.

Beginning today, The Economist is hosting a two-week long Oxford-style online debate on the value of water. The proposition is “This house believes that water, as a scarce resource, should be priced according to its market value.”

Some of the issues the debate will cover include: Would water supplies be better managed if it were treated as a commodity, and priced accordingly? Or is water a basic human right that governments should secure for their citizens? As both an industrial input and a prerequisite of life, water has become extremely scarce for roughly a billion people who do not have a constant supply of clean and safe water, so the issue is of extreme importance.

Anyone may vote or comment. The only requirement is to register for a pen name first.

Read the full story in the San Diego Union-Trubune.

Since November, Bill Stephens and his fellow water cops have issued more than 450 warnings and tickets to water wasters in Riverside County. They’ve targeted commercial, industrial and institutional customers in the Eastern Municipal Water District from Moreno Valley to Temecula.

This month, Stephens started to cite residents for excessively using water. After two warnings, homeowners will be fined $100 or more.

Read the full story in the Lansing State Journal.

Saying it’s only fair, Michigan lawmakers plan to raise residential electricity bills and drop business rates so all customers are charged the true cost of their power.

But when it comes to figuring out who should pay what for new renewable energy requirements, the playing field wouldn’t be even.

Though residents account for one-third of Detroit Edison’s electric sales, they would contribute two-thirds of what Michigan’s largest utility could collect from customers for wind and other sources of alternative power under bills that have passed the House and Senate.

Residential customers of Consumers Energy account for just over one-third of sales yet would pay nearly half the maximum amount charged by the state’s second-biggest utility for renewable energy.

Read the full post at Green Car Congress.

An international team of scientists, headed by Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld of the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has concluded that air pollution can either increase or decrease rainfall, depending on local environmental conditions. The determination of this issue is one with significant consequences in an era of climate change and specifically in areas suffering from manmade pollution and water shortages, including Israel, according to the researchers. A paper on the work appears in the 5 September issue of the journal Science.

Read the full post at Green Car Congress.

Arizona State University (ASU) has entered into a research and commercialization collaboration with Heliae Development, LLC and Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz) to develop, produce and sell bio-kerosene-based aviation fuel derived from algae.

Read the press release from the City of Wichita.

City of Wichita officials unveiled a fleet of 12 Honda Civic hybrid vehicles during Friday morning news conference at Century II, saying the 2008 model vehicles will be placed in service in September.

Read the full press release from Washington University St. Louis.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are proposing to borrow a process used in breweries and wastewater treatment facilities to make corn ethanol more energy efficient. They are exploring the use of oxygen-less vats of microorganisms that naturally feed on organic waste produced from the ethanol fermentation process.

Read the full story in Biodiesel Magazine.

Every summer, Calleva Inc.’s adventure camp near Poolsville, Md., offers teens and preteens the opportunity to spend a week exploring outdoor adventures including lessons in kayaking, sailing—and biodiesel production.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Even closely related plants produce their own natural chemical cocktails, each set uniquely adapted to the individual plant’s specific habitat. Comparing anti-fungals produced by tobacco and henbane, an international team of researchers discovered that only a few mutations in a key enzyme are enough to shift the whole output to an entirely new product mixture. Making fewer changes led to a mixture of henbane and tobacco-specific molecules and even so-called “chemical hybrids,” explaining how plants can tinker with their natural chemical factories and adjust their product line to a changing environment without shutting down intracellular chemical factories completely.

Read the full post at Biopact.

In the Earth’s history, periods of relatively stable climate have often been interrupted by sharp transitions to a contrasting state. For instance, glaciation periods typically ended suddenly. About 34 million years ago the Earth’s long lasting tropical state in which most recent life forms evolved, shifted abruptly and irreversibly to a cooler state with ice caps. This shift is known as the “Greenhouse-Icehouse-Transition”. Scientists long suspected that such sharp transitions – called “Abrupt Climate Change” (ACC) events – might be related to tipping points where positive feedback mechanisms lead to self-propelling change. They have now found typical warning signals that preceded the onset of such ACC events in the past. The findings are highly relevant to the current debate about how to mitigate climate change, and to the question of whether we should prepare for ACC.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London have developed a system that eliminates the need for antibiotics and resistance genes in the engineering of industrial and medical products. The method involves safer, less costly alternatives and is well suited for industrial production of many types of biofuels and biopharmaceuticals. The research has been published as an open access article in BMC Biotechnology.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Meeting the world’s growing energy needs while responding to global warming during the 21st Century will be one of the biggest challenges humanity has ever faced, say scientists in a set of interesting but basic podcasts produced by the American Chemical Society for its Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions series. However, there are many renewable energy solutions and revolutionary energy concepts that are becoming ever more feasible, they say.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Scientists from Ohio State University have developed a very cheap non-precious metal catalyst that converts biofuels like ethanol into hydrogen with an efficiency of up to 90%. This development opens up a future of decentralised, on-the-spot hydrogen production for use in fuel cell cars. What is more, it makes the prospect of a carbon-negative transportation fuel more realistic.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Scientists at Michigan State University have identified a new protein necessary for chloroplast development, which might lead to a whole new class of energy crops. The discovery allows researchers to design crops that grow oil in their leaves, stems or roots, instead of only in their seeds. The first lab trials with such engineered crops are already under way: a type of cold-tolerant root-crop (rutabaga) has been modified to become ‘oily’, growing biomass with the consistency of an avocado, full of easily extractable oil.

Read the full post at Biopact.

A little known fungus tucked away in the gut of Asian longhorned beetles helps the insect munch through the hardest of woods according to a team of entomologists and biochemists. Researchers say the discovery could lead to innovative methods of controlling the invasive pest, and potentially offer more efficient ways of breaking down plant biomass for generating next-generation biofuels. The findings will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Over the past few months, stories about the dramatic die-off of bee colonies have grabbed headlines. In the U.S., the situation is critical, with the phenomenon – dubbed “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) – eliminating anywhere between 30 and 70 percent of all bee-hives. The situation is not much better in Europe. According to many scientists, the collapse of bee colonies is due to a complex cocktail of factors: the use of pesticides and insecticides, the emergence of a destructive mite which helps spread a deadly virus, a changing climate, the reliance on monocultures and a general lack of biodiversity. Tackling this crisis is crucial, because bees pollinate a whole range of crops – from oranges to soy beans – which provide 30% of all our food.

Perhaps the key to solving the problem can be found in growing energy crops. Here is how and why.

Read the full post at Biopact.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University are combining gasification with high-tech nanoscale porous catalysts, to create ethanol from a wide range of biomass, including distiller’s grain left over from ethanol production, corn stover from the field, grass, wood pulp, animal waste, or garbage.

Read the full post at Biopact.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), one of America’s most important national science labs, has signed an $89 million energy savings performance contract with Johnson Controls, Inc. to apply advanced energy conservation solutions and to build a biomass gasification system with a ’super boiler’ to power its campuses. Being the most competitive and reliable of all renewable energy systems, the biomass power plant will reduce the lab’s fossil fuel requirements by 80% and, in combination with conservation efforts, push down energy costs dramatically.

Read the full story in The Statesman.

Stony Brook University is starting to become a little more environmentally conscious with a new initiative to retrofit the campus buses by converting their engines to run off of vegetable oil, a cleaner burning fuel.

Read the full story in the Frederick News-Post.

While world leaders and scientists debate global warming and its potential far-reaching effects, one local student is working to fix the problems he believes his generation faces.

Monocacy Middle School seventh-grader Ben Freed, 12, recently was named one of 300 semifinalists in the Society for Science and the Public’s national middle school science competition for his project on biodiesel production.

Read the full story in the New Mexico State University Round Up.

As part of the worldwide search for alternative energy resources, a two-year-old NMSU project headed by area researchers to turn algae into biodiesel has proven to be highly successful.

Read the full story in Forbes.

A pair of Missouri universities and electric companies announced plans Friday to use the carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants to grow green pond scum that could be turned into biofuel.

Read the full story in the Dayton Business Journal.

Students at the Miami Valley Career Technology Center will gain first-hand experience with the science of biodiesel this year as they work to convert vegetable oil from the cafeteria to biodiesel fuel for the vocational school’s diesel vehicles.

Via Treehugger.

:: Travel green in one of the world’s most polluted cities: Mexico City.

:: Make a scrumptious and seasonal Green Bean Salad with Pumpkin Seed Dressing.

:: Instead of tossing your orange peels, put ‘em to good use!

Read the full post at Treehugger.

Sorry for the somewhat cryptic title, but with the recent announcement that researchers from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire have genetically engineered a bacteria that could aid in cellulosic ethanol production , and now this following announcement from the UK, it some seemed appropriate. Don’t know if there was any mental cross-pollination here, but the two discoveries share the same principle: By using thermophilic bacteria in the cellulosic ethanol production process, the whole thing can be made more energy efficient. Here are the details:

Science Daily reports that researchers from Guildford have developed a new strain of bacteria which can aid in the processing of cellulosic ethanol, making the procedure more efficient and less costly than traditional fermentation processes.

Read the full post at Treehugger.

It’s been a pretty long road to making cellulosic ethanol commercially viable. As it stands there is one demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States, and the the first commercial-scale biorefinery recently received approval back in July. Suffice it to say, cellulosic ethanol holds promise but is a work in progress.

Now comes word that researchers have engineered a bacteria which they say will make manufacturing the biofuel less expensive. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science but Reuters gives the details for those of us who aren’t subscribers.

Read the full post at Treehugger.

Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce – Green Committee (SLCC-GC) was working overtime at this year’s Sunset Junction Street Festival to help both vendors and attendees “Think Before You Toss.” As part of their Zero Waste Initiative, the SLCC-GC encouraged the over 25,000 attendees to not only sort their recycling but also to compost.

Read the full post at Treehugger.

There are a number of companies trying to produce a biofuel alternative to petroleum-based aviation fuels, and a number of airlines have made biofuel test flights using various mixtures of biofuels, but none are yet available in commercial quantities. Another milemarker has been passed on the road to greener aviation (and for the moment let’s overlook the bigger question of whether aviation could ever really be green) Algae-innovator Solazyme has announced that its bio-kerosene has passed the ASTM’s requirements for “Aviation Turbine Fuel”.

Read the full story in Treehugger.

In much the same way that more ice/snow reflects UV rays instead of absorbing the heat the way the oceans do (think: feedback loop that results from melting polar ice caps), cities are now giving white roofs a second look as a way to cool cities and fight climate change. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Climate Change Research Conference, held this week, advised that if buildings and road surfaces in 100 of the largest cities in the US were covered with lighter and heat-reflective surfaces the savings could be massive. Roofs account for 25% and pavement account for 35% of surface area in cities.

Read the full story from ABC News.

Should we be worried about pesticides in groundwater contaminating the water we drink and the food we eat?

According to many public health and environment officials nationwide, the answer is yes.

In the last year and a half, public interest law firm Earthjustice has filed four federal lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the use of pesticides.

Many of the pesticides at the center of those legal battles are the same pesticides that recently surfaced as cause for concern in the state of Oregon. Of seven pesticides highlighted as contaminating groundwater in Oregon — three of which are listed as possibly or likely to cause cancer by the EPA — only two are are not subjects of Earthjustice’s pending lawsuits.

Read the full story in ES&T.

In January 2008, the U.S. EPA launched a program that asks industries to submit available information about the nanomaterials that they manufacture or use. The voluntary program, called the Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program (NMSP), was intended to provide basic information to help guide regulatory decisions. In the 7 months since its launch, 22 companies have reported to EPA, but critics say that the program is creeping along and that the human-health and environmental risks of this rapidly growing technology remain uncertain.

In the meantime, markets are filling up with products made of these small but powerful nanomaterials. From toothpaste to bacteria-free socks, and even including a swimsuit and running shoes used at the recent Olympics in Beijing, there are 803 products that reportedly contain nanomaterials, according to an analysis by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN), a nonpartisan group.

Despite the promise of nanotechnology improving our lives, the potential risks of the technology remain largely uncertain. While researchers try to bridge the data gap to help risk assessors, experts around the world are emphasizing the need to regulate and oversee manufacturers to minimize potential risks from exposure to nanomaterials in workers, consumers, and wildlife.

Read the full story in ES&T.

In the unfolding global biodiversity crisis, freshwater ecosystems are losing even more species than terrestrial or marine environments are. Evidence points to dam construction and biological invasions as major culprits in these losses. In the U.S. alone, more than 80,000 major dams and 2.5 million smaller impoundments (such as reservoirs) have altered natural hydrology, and nearly 1000 introduced species now disrupt native aquatic systems. A new study published in the September issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (2008, 6, 357–363) concludes that dam construction and biological invasions are closely linked.

Read the full story in ES&T.

The only antibiotic approved for use in milk cows shows up in groundwater near dairy operations, entering the environment from farm waste lagoons and other possible sources. In a study published this month in a special issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality (2008, 37, S-78–S-85), researchers have documented for the first time just how far the drug monensin can travel in the environment. But questions remain about the veterinary pharmaceutical’s environmental impacts as well as its breakdown products.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

Eliminating wasted energy from automobiles, homes, and businesses is equivalent to tapping a hidden energy reserve that will help the United States improve its energy security and reduce global warming, an American Physical Society (APS) study panel concluded in a major report released Sept. 16.

Read the press release.

Pentel of America, maker of the unique line of Recycology(TM) products, announces a successful Back To School season. Pentel attributes its early fall excitement to the newly-introduced Hyper-G pens (made from 57% recycled plastic) and the Recycology(TM) (http://www.recycology.pentel.com) line of environmentally friendly products.

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations:  EPA Needs More Information and a Clearly Defined Strategy to Protect Air and Water Quality from Pollutants of Concern.  GAO-08-944, September 4.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-944
Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08944high.pdf

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations:  EPA Needs More Information and a Clearly Defined Strategy to Protect Air and Water Quality, by Anu K. Mittal, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, House Committee on Energy and Commerce.  GAO-08-1177T, September 24.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-1177T
Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d081177thigh.pdf

Wildlife Refuges: Changes in Funding, Staffing, and Other Factors Create Concerns about Future Sustainability.  GAO-08-797, September 22.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-797
Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08797high.pdf

Wildlife Refuges: Trends in Funding, Staffing, Habitat Management, and Visitor Services for Fiscal Years 2002 through 2007, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans, House Committee on Natural Resources.  GAO-08-1179T, September 24.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-1179T
Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d081179thigh.pdf

Read the full post at EcoGeek.

Arguably the world’s most famous billionaire dork, Bill Gates, has just plopped some cash down on one of EcoGeek’s favorite technologies…algae fuel.

Sapphire Energy, which hopes to create fuel for cars from algae, is undergoing series B financing, and Gates and several other large investment companies brought up Sapphire’s total invested capital to $100 M.

The New York Times has a special section on green business. The main focus is energy. See also their new blog Green, Inc., which covers energy and green business.

Read the full story from the CBC.

Scientists have noticed some disturbing changes in the water, and the reproductive organs of fish, in the St. Lawrence River near Montreal.

Concentrations of estrogen as high as 90 times the normal rate have been discovered just downstream from the island of Montreal, according to researchers from l’Université de Montreal.

Read the full post at News.com.

Famed investor Vinod Khosla is one of the clean-tech industry’s most vocal cheerleaders. But most of today’s clean technologies fall short of his 1-billion-car test.

“If it doesn’t scale, it doesn’t matter,” says Khosla. “Most of what we talk about today–hybrid, biodiesel, ethanol, solar photovoltaics, geothermal–I believe are irrelevant to the scale of the problem” of climate change.

Khosla delivered the keynote speech at the EmTech08 conference (formerly called the Emerging Technology Conference) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday, where he talked about energy, policy, and investment.

EPA today released the “2008 Report on the Environment: Highlights of National Trends” (2008 ROE HD), which provides the American people with an important resource for better understanding trends in our nation’s health and environment. The report is intended for a general audience and summarizes highlights of the more comprehensive “EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment,” which was released in May, and provided the scientific and technical information. Together the two reports present national environmental trends and inform EPA’s strategic planning process with the best available, scientifically sound information.

EPA also launched a new Web site that allows the user to search the full technical report for specific trends in air, water, and land.

The 2008 ROE HD, ROE and searchable eROE: epa.gov/roe

In a novel approach to return land to productive use, EPA has identified thousands of properties that could potentially host solar, wind or biomass energy production facilities. EPA pinpointed these energy assets using Google Earth and has listed each property’s attributes for energy redevelopment.

“EPA is putting renewable energy production on the virtual map,” said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. “Our new interactive Website encourages states and energy companies to put previously contaminated properties back to work.”

EPA worked with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to collect information on renewable energy availability across the country, and merged it with EPA’s data from several land cleanup programs. In addition, EPA applied screening criteria including distance from power lines, closeness to roads, and site acreage to identify sites that are good candidates for hosting renewable energy production facilities.

In producing the interactive state maps, EPA used information on properties from several land cleanup programs, including abandoned mine lands and lands under EPA’s Superfund, Brownfields, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act programs.

These properties have varying levels of historic contamination. Contamination at some of these properties has already been addressed, while the level of contamination at others is still to be fully investigated. It is likely that some of the brownfields properties have little historic contamination. The appropriate steps to address the contamination at these properties will vary from site to site, depending on the nature of the contamination and intended reuse.

The properties offer a number of attractive features for the development of renewable energy facilities including:

• appropriate location, useful infrastructure, such as transmission lines and roads, and appropriate zoning for development;
• landowners and local communities that are often eager to see new economic uses for these properties;
• an alternative to using green spaces, which may help reduce community concerns about the effects of a planned renewable energy facility.

Information about renewable energy development potential on contaminated lands:
http://www.epa.gov/renewableenergyland

Read the full story in the New York Times.

Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves.

The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:

• Cleantech Investments Counter Environmental Deficits
• State-Level Policies Work; Utilities and States Issue RFPs for Renewable Energy
• Slicing Solar Power Costs
• The Future of Hydrogen Is Now
• How Long Will It Take to Apply Enhanced Geothermal Systems?
• World’s Largest Companies Looking for Clarity on Climate Change Regulation
• Through Thick and Thin

Via Docuticker.

Integrating Invasive Species Prevention And Control Policies
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Programs and policies to minimize the threat of, or mitigate the damages from, invasive species work best if designed in concert with each other. Whether program emphasis should be on prevention or control depends on the biological characteristics and size of the invasive species population, ecological characteristics of invaded ecosystems, the cost and efficacy of prevention measures relative to control measures, and the level of prevention costs borne abroad. Because all of these factors are highly variable, data needs are constant if intervention is to be both effective and economical.

+ Full Report (PDF; 417 KB)

Read the full story in Technology Review.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a simple, two-step chemical process to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuels. The compounds created during the process could also be used to make other industrial chemicals and plastics.

The Los Angeles Times just published a special report on green chemistry. Highlights include:

• Products derived from natural, nontoxic ingredients — once seen as fringe — are now mainstream
• Most industries remain dependent on hazardous substances
• L.A. firm is freed from a chemical fix
• Potential environmental risks aren’t part of chemical engineers’ training
• Not-so-dirty dozen: 12 principles of green chemistry
• Top 10 chemicals produced in the U.S.
• The green chemistry award goes to …

Fix Our Energy Addiction

Win $10,000 for your design idea! The 2009 Next Generation® Competition is seeking bright ideas that focus on Energy. Now in its sixth year, the Next Generation® Design competition recognizes design innovation on all scales ­from products and interiors to landscapes, buildings, and everything in between. The competition is open to young designers in practice 10 years or less and, whether on your own or in teams, we invite you to submit your smart ideas. The winner will receive the $10,000 seed money to help realize his or her idea, and will be featured in Metropolis magazine.

The online application is now available! Remember the competition deadline is January 30, 2009.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 11:00am PDT/1:00pm CDT/2:00pm EDT. The webcast is free and CE credits are available. Register now.

There’s a lot of talk about greening data centers; a lot of ideas and concepts floating around that are interesting, but often backed with little or no data. There also is a rush to build data centers and get them online quickly, and in doing so, owners, engineers, and managers may not be planning adequately for growth, or leading them selves into problems that will surface in the future in a very expensive way.

This one-hour Webcast will have three presentations by three experienced data center design engineers who will provide practical, detailed knowledge and experience aimed a helping engineers and owners design, build, and operate data centers with energy efficiency, modularity, and reliability in mind.