the light side of global warming

Listen to this, from Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel Laureate in physics and President-Elect Obama's Energy Secretary:

"There’s a recently published paper from people in our laboratory (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) that says, if you take only the city buildings that have flat-topped roofs and make them light-colored, and make the roads light-colored by using cement, the amount of carbon dioxide decreased is equivalent to taking all the cars in the world [carbon emission] and turning them off for 10 years." (Steven Chu, quoted in Taipei Times 15 December 2008 - from off-grid.net website)

This is certainly one of the most creative and inexpensive contributions to stemming global warming. Maybe all car roofs and truck roofs could be made white as well. We created this problem through the millions of little things we do everyday and we can help fix it the same way.

Let's just hope that Dr Chu does not lose his scientific edge when he enters the world of politics. It seems, though, that he already got a strong dose of real politik before his hearing today. His scientific stand against coal was softened in the face of coal-state senators who vote on his confirmation. Let's hope he and the administration guiding him won't retreat too much.

lessons learned from wood burning stoves

I know there are many of you who are way ahead of me on this one. I must confess that not only am I a late-comer to the joys and environmental value of wood burning stoves, but I actually bought a house with one and removed it in the renovations!

Now, I see the light. First of all, it calms you better than an aquarium. The hearthiness, the earthiness, the physical engagement (you have to manage the wood flow, the air flow, the cleanliness, the timing), the visual comfort of the flames, the colors and the show, especially if the window is spacious. (The heat of the fire cleans the window constantly so it is always clear.)

I have a backyard filled with wood, and with the cost of oil these days (yup, my electricity is all wind powered but my heat is oil), this stove will pay for itself in 2-3 years.

Here are things I am learning about the benefits of a wood-burning stove:

-- the newest stoves have a burn cycle that consumes most of the smoke's particulate matter and is said to burn so efficiently that it leaves less of a residue (including less CO2 - though I welcome an explanation of how this works) than naturally decomposing wood.

-- CO2 put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is CO2 that what would have been safely sequestered deep underground, save for the fact that we dug it out of the ground, and are now releasing it. Burning fossil fuel changes the CO2 equation, for the worse.

-- CO2 put into the atmosphere by burning wood would have been released into the atmosphere through decomposition anyway. So by burning wood, we are not adding to the cycle of existing above-ground, loose, CO2. That is, burning wood is CO2 neutral - and sustainable, as long as additional trees grow in their stead. (The source of the wood for these stoves could become an issue if we begin to destroy more trees than are replanted. A net-loss of tree cover is bad - no matter what the reason for cutting down the trees.)

-- Most interesting to me, however, is what I learned about radiant stoves and how that is being emulated in the broader construction and building maintenance business.

Wood stoves largely come in two varieties: circulating air and radiant. They both burn wood efficiently. They both heat the house. But one (circulating air) heats the air directly, and the other (radiant) heats a material (cast iron or soapstone) that absorbs and stores the heat and releases it evenly over an extended period of time. To heat air directly is to allow the heat to dissipate quickly. When the fire is gone, so is the heat. But when the fire's heat is absorbed by these efficient heat-storing materials, and released slowly over time, the fire keeps heating even after it is out.

The lessons learned here go beyond wood burning stoves. We build power plants to meet the maximum peak energy demand of a region. That is, we have to build new power plants mostly because most of us wake up between 6 am and 9 am and use hot water, lights, shavers, hair dryers, toasters, microwaves, coffee machines all at the same time. However, at 3:00 am, almost all of us are asleep, and the energy demand is minimal. If we could somehow shift our energy use schedule, and spread it out more evenly over the course of the day, we would not have to continue building new power plants at the same rate as is demanded today.

However, few of us are going to get up at 3:00 am or stumble around in the dark or otherwise make the significant shifts we have to (moving up to 50% of our daily energy use to off-peak hours). However, if the burden were placed not on the consumer to shift their use, but placed on the industry to create ways to store its energy, that might be a most useful tactic.

That is, what if the power companies generated a steady rate of energy 24 hours a day - and stored it in big batteries (or whatever creative technology they can devise - and I believe they can with the proper incentives and investments). The public, you and me, would draw on the energy as we needed it - and could even be enticed to shift some of our energy use, say, dishwashing, oven cleaning and clothes washing to off-peak hours, especially since many of these appliances are coming with built-in timers to help us do that.

But mostly, with efficient storage systems, the generation of energy could be constant even while the consumption of energy would still follow the circadian flow of human activity. Would this reduce our energy use or our CO2 emissions? Maybe. I need to learn more about that. But it would reduce the cost and waste associated with building and operating additional, unnecessary, facilities.

Heat storage and delayed release is what my stove is teaching me. That is what some construction companies and businesses are doing. They are using materials that can store and time-release the heat and cool that they have stored to ease peak-time energy crunches.

Solutions are at hand. There is no one single magic bullet - but with thousands of little innovations, we can conserve, shift and redirect our energy so that we can run a more efficient, and ultimately healthier society, both for the economy and the environment.

a garden outside our windows

I had the pleasure of hearing Delegate Jon Cardin speak the other night of his commitment to environmental causes. He mentioned a statistic I had never heard before: the State of Maryland loses an average of 6000 acres of tree cover a year and we only plant approximately 850 acres of trees. Assuming we lose some of those new trees to drought and illness and neglect, the problem becomes even worse.

This loss of trees, he goes on to say, has to be stopped. This is bad for all sorts of reasons: loss of trees contributes to increased CO2 emissions suffocating the atmosphere; increases in erosion; reduces the soil's capacity to filter out pollutants; reduces shade and moisture; reduces an invaluable air-scrubbing quality that trees provide; and reduces the amount of fresh oxygen that trees return to the atmosphere in their respiration.

What can we do? First and foremost, plant more trees in our own yards. Small trees can even grow in planters on porches outside our apartments. Get together and plant small groves of different kinds of trees that are friendly to and comfortable in our growing zone. (You can find a list of native trees at Treemendous Maryland's website: http://www.dnr.state.md.us/criticalarea/trees.html

Second, plant trees at our synagogues. Many of our congregations have large, expansive lawns. Planting orchards and groves of trees on them offer a variety of benefits:

-- it adds natural beauty to our over-civilized urban and suburban landscapes.
-- it connects each of us involved in the process of playing in the dirt in an most intimate way with the land around us
-- it adds all the benefits that trees provide: shade, healthier air, outdoor programming spaces, soil conservation and health, water purification, spiritual delight
-- it is less expensive to maintain trees than to constantly mow, seed, fertilize, and otherwise maintain our lawns
-- it diminishes the environmental harm that lawns cause. Nutrient and pesticide runoff harm our drinking water, the public waterways and the wildlife and economy that is dependent on them. [The urban lawn is estimated to receive an annual input of five to seven pounds of pesticides per acre (Schueler, 1995b) www.stormwatercenter.net].

In addition, traditional gas-powered lawn mowers are responsible for 5 percent of the nation's air pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. One gas mower running for an hour emits the same amount of pollutants as eight new cars driving 55 mph for the same amount of time, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. (www.dailycamera.com)

Imagine Sukkot in the midst of an apple orchard; or Passover with the fragrance of magnolia blowing in the shul. Talk to your rabbi and facilities committee now to begin planning for the spring planting season.

Third, support upcoming legislation that responds to this issue. (When we learn of such legislation, hopefully in the upcoming spring 2009 session, we will pass that information along to you.)

Trees won't solve all our problems, but the truth is, we cannot live without them.

Bidding 5768 goodbye

The difficulties we are experiencing at the end of this year are certainly making it a pleasure to bid it goodbye. The financial markets worldwide, led by the United States mortgage fiasco, are teetering and fragile. Unemployment is up. Consumer confidence is down. Ethical behavior is in tatters. Basic rights guaranteed under the constitution of the United States are sliced away in the guise of security and our own best interest. How could the Treasury Secretary even imagine, even as a bargaining ploy, to dare ask for the exclusive, non-reviewable, non-challengeable, non-supervised right to single-handedly manage and distribute $700 billion?

And we just learned that despite all our efforts at stabilizing our atmospheric greenhouse gases, they rose 3% this past year, almost all increases coming from the developing world. China - now the largest contributor to greenhouse gases - is responsible for 60% of this 3% increase. The good news is that we in the "developed world" are holding our emissions steady - and soon might be able to see them decline. Just this past week Maryland and nine other eastern states held their first Regional Greenhouse Gas carbon auction, which will both limits CO2 emissions and create funds for alternative energy research.

So while things are looking rough we cannot throw up our hands. Just as China is beginning to crack down on manufacturing abuses that are killing their children, sooner or later China will begin to crack down on the pollution that is killing the world's environment. And when they do, we should be ready with technologies that can help them. Then, we will be the grand exporters and China the importers. We will turn the economic tables. Green industry, research and technology can re-establish America at the head of the technological revolution and enable us to become the green industry leaders. But we must invest well, fully and wisely.

This is not the time to be timid.

We created the money to prosecute a fabricated war; and to bail out a banking industry that could have avoided this whole fiasco if it just did not seek usurious rates from greed-driven mortgages.

We might not think we have any money left over for grand, Manhattan Project like efforts to green our industries, but surely if we do not invest in efficiency technologies, in new renewable forms of energy, we will within ten years be spending billions of dollars we also do not have to take care of people displaced by - and repair their homes damaged in - increasingly angry storms, spend more money on a gallon of clean water than a gallon of gasoline when local water systems are polluted and unhealthy, heat and cool our homes with over-priced energy that continues to degrade the environment.

The environmental picture is not looking much better despite all our efforts. But we cannot stop - rather must work harder. How do we do that and not give in to despair? What keeps us going?

No doubt we each have our own answer. In no small measure it is the company we keep, the comforting and encouraging presence of those who care just as much as we. And just like the star thrower - who threw back all the starfish he could, even thought there were many more he could not - we do what we can, hoping that cumulatively someday it will all add up to something big. No doubt someday it will.

And some of us keep going for the pure joy we get from less, from a life of increased simplicity. From buying less, and wasting less, and disturbing the world less. Surprisingly, the less gives me so much more - a greater appreciation of all, an awareness of worlds in littler things and individual acts. Being green isn't just good; it is fundamentally, life-alteringly, fulfilling.

My very best wishes to you all for a healthy, sweet, green new year, filled with its full share of blessings that will heal this fractured world of ours.

Shana tova

hide and secrete?

The on-line version of Scientific American posted this fascinating news item July 14:

Volcanic rocks deep beneath the sea off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington State might prove one of the best places to store the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing global warming, a new study finds. In fact, the very instability that causes earthquakes and eruptions adds an extra layer of protection to keep the CO₂ from ever escaping.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other experts, including the G8 (Group of Eight) leaders of the world's richest nations, have called carbon capture and storage a critical tool in the fight against climate change. In essence, such technology catches the CO₂ and other pollutants emitted when coal or other fossil fuels are burned. It is then compressed into a liquid and, theoretically, pumped deep beneath the surface to be permanently trapped.

Such technologies have been demonstrated on a small scale to enhance the recovery of oil from tapped out fields; pumping down the CO₂ pushes up more of the black gold. But geophysicist David Goldberg of Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and his colleagues found that pumping such CO₂ into basalt rock beneath the ocean floor might be a better solution.

Specifically, liquid CO₂ is heavier than the water above it at 8,850 feet (2,700 meters) or more under the surface, meaning any leaks would never bubble back into the atmosphere. Further, the CO₂ mixes with the volcanically warmed water below the surface and undergoes chemical reactions within the basalt (the black rock created from rapidly cooling lava) to form carbonate compounds—otherwise known as chalk—effectively locking up the greenhouse gas in mineral form. The 650-foot (200-meter) layer of marine sediment on top of the basalt rock acts as yet another barrier. "You have three superimposed trapping mechanisms to keep your CO₂ below the sea bottom and out of the atmosphere," Goldberg says. "It's insurance on insurance on insurance."

This is a great solution IF we want to keep mining, digging and burning fossil fuels. The question is, do we? Why spend all this money on the excavation of fossil fuels, the degradation of the environment (especially with the extraction of coal) and then the cost of sequestration, all for a time-limited and volume-limited commodity when we could put that creative energy, money and public support behind renewable energies?

Clearly, no one technology is going to be the be-all-and-end-all solution, so sequestration might be one part of the solution. But we have to keep the other renewable options on the table, moving forward and well-funded and publicly supported.

Enjoy this fabulous summer weather!

the one that didn't get away

If the cheapest power plant is the one that you don't have to build, then the best carbon dioxide is the amount that doesn't get released - and that you don't have to capture and store.

The Dept of Energy's Secretary Samuel Bodman pulled the plug on its $1 billion plus boondoggle with Futuregen that would build a plant in Illinois to explore the large-scale feasibility of burning coal without releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Instead, the CO2 would be captured and stored underground. The expanding and unforseeable expenses in that technology blew it out of contention, but it should also be nixed forever because of the questionable safety of the gas being sequestered securely (it could leak and escape or blow up and escape), and the inability of the earth to reabsorb that carbon in a stable fashion (the way oil and coal and gas have been for millions of years). These concerns alone should put a cabash on CCS (carbon storage and sequestration, or storage) as a viable alternative to renewable energy.

And let us not forget that the coal has to be dug up first, which not only causes the loss of 1000s of lives world-wide in harvesting the stuff, but also destroys the land that harbors it.

The best CO2 is the stuff that stays in the ground. Sun and wind, and perhaps other possible sources that we have yet to discover, do not create CO2 so we don't have to worry about capturing it or storing it or even reabsorbing it. Or paying huge costs to clean up a mess we did not need to create. (CSS means that we pay twice for our energy: getting it and using it, and storing its waste forever.) We should take our billions of dollars and put them into research and development of those truly clean fuels. We need to harness the energies of power sources that no one can own, and that cannot be put at the mercy of one grand industry or cluster of nations. (How interesting that the least researched energy sources are the ones that cannot be owned and thus sold at market fluctuating prices!)

Secretary Bodman did the right thing but for the wrong reason. Let him - and others - know that R&D in the right places can get us where we want to go if we would only invest wisely and well and abundantly in them.