2012info.ca Earth Watch

Once-lowly charcoal emerges as ‘major tool’ for curbing carbon

Greenwire: Charcoal is taking root on the farm.

Simmered out of eucalyptus, charcoal is being hoed into the degraded soils of former forests in western Kenya. Roasted out of chicken manure, it is spurring the growth of malting barley in Australia. And in Iowa, researchers are plowing charcoal into corn rows, hoping to limit the tons of fertilizer that saturate the state’s fields each year.

At these farms and more, scientists are probing the limits of how high-grade charcoal, dubbed biochar, can be formed from plant and animal waste to squirrel away the atmosphere’s carbon for centuries, or even millennia. Inspired by ancient Amazonian soils, researchers have found that buried charcoal resists bacteria’s attempts to break it down. And thanks to its porous geometry, it has a knack for improving land in ways still being revealed.

“Once we get serious about climate change, this information is available now,” said James Amonette, an environmental geochemist at the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “[Biochar] is one of the major tools we can use to fight climate change, if we decide to do so.”

Charcoal’s status may be comparable to the start of the world’s head-over-heels embrace of synthetic fertilizer a century ago, scientists say. As piling evidence shows, converting organic matter — be it corn scraps, human sewage or chicken litter — to charcoal can, in effect, increase the carbon cycle’s latency by hundreds of years, buying humanity just a bit more time to solve its fossil fuel fix.

While it has roots in decades-old research, the biochar movement took life only recently, as soil scientists realized the scope of charcoal’s climate implications. The field, rich in unanswered questions, has exploded in the past five years, leading several hundred scientists to gather this month in Brazil for the world’s third annual biochar conference.

“Biochar is certainly not a fringe science anymore,” said Lukas van Zweiten, an Australian researcher running one of the world’s largest biochar field trials. “[It’s] a big change from five years ago, when we were still trying to convince the scientific community of its worth.”

Even Washington is digging into biochar. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced a bill supporting biochar research, and provisions tucked into the stalled climate measure sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) direct the Agriculture Department to provide grants to up to 60 research projects. It is funding that is sorely needed — currently, there is not enough biochar being produced to meet even scientific demand.

In Brazil, scientists will complain about lack of funding, of course, but they will also detail recent progress made in understanding why biochar can be so beneficial for degraded soils. They will discuss how variable biochar can be, depending on its source. (Forest and chicken waste, it turns out, are not created equal.) And they will tamp down some of the rapturous rhetoric that can accompany charcoal’s agricultural potential.

“Biochar is not a fix for all problems,” be it soil quality or climate change, said Johannes Lehmann, a scientist at Cornell University and perhaps the leading biochar researcher. It will only improve soil that can be improved, he said. “Whether it’s a viable global strategy? Nobody can say at this point.”

Biochar may not sequester all of society’s excess carbon, but it can play a tangible role in limiting emissions. Projections recently released by Amonette have found that biochar could trap the equivalent of 12 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions a year, in sustainable scenarios. Such a plunge, however, would carry steep economic costs and would likely only be spurred by putting a price on CO2 emissions.

In effect, these researchers believe that biochar will allow society to generate energy from plant waste and nonfood crops — a combustible oil is the major byproduct of charcoal production — while also ticking down CO2 emissions. Plants naturally absorb atmospheric CO2 to build themselves up and by delaying the escape of that carbon once crops die a thumb is placed on the carbon-cycle scale, mitigating emissions.

Unlike the geological CO2 sequestration proposed for coal-fired power plants, biochar can operate on small scales. It can be produced in massive factories but also in small stoves tagged for distribution in the world’s poorest regions, which often also have impoverished soil, an option that has drawn interest from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Such stoves, though they might not produce ideal charcoal, possess a rare trait in the development world: poverty relief that also reduces CO2 emissions.

For many scientists, biochar is about much more than climate change. It is a chance to rewire agriculture. For too long, farmers have neglected soil health, instead dousing their fields with escalating amounts of synthetic fertilizer, heavy in nutrients, to boost plant growth, said David Laird, a soil scientist at Iowa State University.

“Soil quality has not been the focus of a lot of research or industry over the years,” Laird said, with attention instead locked on fertilizer and irrigation. “Char is a paradigm shift. It puts the emphasis on building the soil resource base itself. That’s the opportunity.”

‘Many different chars’

It is appropriate that this month’s biochar conference is meeting just south of the Amazon.

It was there, decades ago, scientists found an unusually productive dark soil called terra preta that was rich in charcoal, among other ingredients. Seeds planted in the soil grew with unusual vigor and to surprising heights. The charcoal was ancient, its radiocarbon dating stretching back thousands of years. It had lingered, resisting degradation, for all that time.

Many believe that lost Amazonian cultures intentionally created the charcoal, though that is far from a settled fact, said Lehmann, who lived and worked in the central Amazon in the late 1990s. At first, Lehmann was not working directly on terra preta, but the draw was unavoidable. “You can’t help but be interested in it,” he said. The soil was so rich in nutrients and had just the right acidic balance.

“The sheer fact there were soils that were undoubtedly generated thousands of years ago and maintained a higher carbon content … that was really kind of astounding in that environment,” he said.

Whether the charcoal was created artificially or naturally — some Australian soils are also rich in charcoal, the impromptu briquets caused by the continent’s legendary wildfires — it formed by a technique known as pyrolysis. Believed to be one of mankind’s oldest energy technologies, pyrolysis is a simple process: Carbon-rich organic compounds are baked under moderate temperatures, around 500 degrees Celsius, in nearly oxygen-free conditions.

The world is a different place without oxygen, and that holds true for pyrolysis. With oxygen, organic material — called, in shorthand, biomass — bursts into flame, releasing nearly all of its energy and carbon into the atmosphere, with piles of ash left behind. Without oxygen, the biomass resists ignition, instead separating into flammable oil and charcoal, a porous solid composed of disordered, stable stacks of ring-like carbon molecules, along with ash.

These carbon rings helped keep the terra preta stable through the centuries, resisting the bacteria that normally break down other supplements, like compost or manure, as it is slowly driven deeper into the soil by earthworms. Manure falls apart quickly, especially in tropical heat, while charcoal can last up to 100 times longer in the soil, recent research has shown — hundreds of years, or even thousands.

Biochar’s stability tends to vary with the climate, just like normal biomass. If a leaf falls in Nigeria, for example, it will degrade in a week, but if the same leaf falls in the depths of Siberia, it will last much longer. The point is that against normal biomass, biochar lasts many multiples longer. At least, the right kind of biochar, Lehmann said.

“We need to recognize that there are many different chars that have many different effects on soil,” he said. The process for creating the charcoal varies, as do feedstocks. “A biochar from poultry litter is less stable than one from oak wood,” Lehmann said. “But poultry is also less stable than oak wood.”

According to Amonette, biochar’s stability provides half of its greenhouse gas benefit; another third derives from replaced fossil fuel energy, and one-fifth to avoided emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, both powerful greenhouse gases. (The degree that biochar limits nitrous oxide emissions remains a matter of debate.) For nearly every farming region, it will be better to produce biochar for energy, rather than simply burning waste, Amonette’s study found, except for areas with already fertile soil that depend on coal-fired power plants.

Like biofuels, biochar has the potential, if widely used, to see forests sacrificed to farming, or food crops used instead for fuel. Well aware of these problems, Amonette’s projections relied only on the use of agricultural and human waste, along with dedicated energy crops that would only be grown on abandoned, degraded soil, he said. Estimates for biochar’s offset potential could have run higher, but not without untold indirect consequences.

There are other possible indirect consequences, Amonette added. Darkening soil with finely ground charcoal could cause more sunlight to be absorbed. And should too much charcoal escape into the air, it could become the equivalent of black carbon, blowing into arctic regions and glaciers, its darkness causing increased heat absorption. Watering down charcoal before use will limit those concerns, though, Iowa’s Laird said.

For some crops, biochar is a no-brainer, particularly rice, Amonette said. Water lies stagnant in paddies for weeks or months at a time. Bacteria feed off the rice waste and suck oxygen out of the water, creating space, once the oxygen is gone, for microbes that emit methane. (”Take any soil, put it in a beaker, and in a few weeks you’d be producing methane,” Amonette said.) Steps to eliminate such methane emissions with biochar, including production from manure and yard waste, make immediate sense, he said.

In other environments, biochar could prove an ineffective carbon sink, scientists warned. Seeding forests does not seem particularly promising, especially in colder climates. And there needs to be more study of the overall influence charcoal has on soil, Iowa’s Laird added. Does it bump the growth of carbon-chewing microbes? Does it encourage more carbon to settle?

“We actually have data that say both,” Laird said.

The Swedish biologist David Wardle has been one of the most prominent researchers calling for calm in the charcoal rush. He conducted a 10-year study of charcoal’s interaction with forest tundra and found that the charcoal accelerated the loss of carbon. (Wardle’s methodology may have been flawed, however, as it did not account for new charcoal-caused carbon deposits, Lehmann said.) It is one data set for one region, but the upshot is that a more holistic accounting needs to take place, Wardle said.

“A more realistic vision is a more nuanced vision,” he said. “If you have [charcoal] in the soil, there will be long-term consequences on microbial activity. It’s not as simplistic as it initially seems.”

Improving soil

While biochar’s carbon storage grabs headlines, what gets soil scientists exercised is its potential to improve soil in the United States and, especially, in the tropics, where so many currently suffer from food insecurity. For too long, farmers have focused on improving yield with fertilizers derived from natural gas, Amonette said. The soil itself has been neglected.

Cornell’s Lehmann has been at the forefront of testing how African soils could take to charcoal, running trials in western Kenya’s highlands for six years. Over the past century, the highland forests have been slowly razed for agriculture, resulting in a gradient of soil richness, from the lush dirt of recently deforested land to plots that have been farmed, year after year, for a century — a perfect experimental site.

In these trials, Lehmann found that, after several years, the amount of corn grown per plot doubled in older soils supplemented with biochar. The yield gains were not unprecedented: By spreading dead sunflowers across the soil, scientists made similar improvements. But unlike the mulch, which will erode unless reapplied, the biochar’s benefits will linger, Lehmann said.

Similar studies have paralleled Lehmann’s work across multiple continents — China is building a large biochar research cohort — over the past five years, to varying results. In the United States, biochar has potential for the southeast United States, where soil is nearly as poor as the tropics. Fruit and vegetables grown in California’s Central Valley, too, are promising targets, Amonette said.

Such empirical trials are necessary, the grist of science. But as they have gone forward, soil scientists have grappled with a more fundamental question: Why does dumping a poor man’s version of graphite, which holds little of the mineral nutrients found in fertilizer, send corn stalks soaring? The answers, provisional and halting, are beginning to come, Lehmann said.

“We’re starting to be able to put our finger on the process by which biochar improves soils, or in some cases doesn’t,” he said. “Up to now a lot of that research was empirical.”

There is no one reason biochar improves soil, but many, researchers have found. Biochar is porous at the microscopic level, its nooks and crannies creating a massive surface area to catch bacteria and nutrients like nitrogen. Its structure seems to retain water, and depending on the feedstock, biochar can balance soil acidity. Most intriguingly, charcoal carries a negative electrical charge through its structure, attracting positively charged nutrients like calcium, potassium and magnesium that might otherwise flush away.

These are all useful mechanisms, but not useful everywhere, cautioned Australian researcher van Zweiten.

“We have examples where biochar does very little, at least in the short term, in soil, while other examples show quite stunning improvements in soil fertility and productivity,” van Zweiten said. Farmers should not get ahead of themselves in expectations, he said, “that biochar is always going to do good things in the soil, because I know for a fact this is not the case.”

Some of van Zweiten’s earliest field trials, on subtropical pasture in Australia, saw little in the way of additional growth when one biochar variety was added, he said. Another trial, though, begun three years ago, has had large yield gains for a mix of crops, such as malting barley; the site’s control plots, fed only fertilizer, are failing.

Few places have better farming soil than Iowa, where Laird tests biochar on row after row of corn. Given these conditions, biochar will only add a slight yield improvement, if any, he said. Laird’s hope, instead, is that charcoal will improve soil’s nutrient efficiency, dropping the vast amount of synthetic fertilizer dumped on cash crops each year, much of which then leaches into the watershed to cause seasonal “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico.

The nutrient efficiency questions are far from answered. “It’s going to take time to put all the pieces together and be able to come up with definite answers,” Laird said. But while it is not yet proven, he said, “I think we need to move ahead with testing of this at a significant scale.”

Revving up production

Pushing biochar use out to a scale large enough to spur some corporate investment is one of the goals of the International Biochar Initiative (IBI), a nonprofit lobbying group founded several years ago.

The initiative, led by Debbie Reed, a former legislative director under President Clinton at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, has been behind language supporting biochar research in the Senate’s recent climate bill, as well as the 2008 farm bill.

According to Lehmann, who serves as IBI’s chairman, getting biochar production up and running should be a priority for the agricultural community. Often, Lehmann gets requests from farmers interested in testing charcoal, and he has to turn them away. He barely has enough for his own trial fields, a situation shared by Iowa’s Laird.

“There are not enough biochar plants around that you can generate the biochar to fulfill even the scientific community’s interest,” Lehmann said. “We need to catch up, dramatically. There’s a little bit of urgency to meet that demand.”

Increased production should be accompanied by a classification system that can easily explain different biochar varieties, an effort being led by IBI. Currently, “there are lots of people who say they are creating biochar,” Reed said. But many of these products are high in ash and would never qualify as proper biochar, she said.

A grading system would also need to take account of soil differences, Laird added. For example, he said, “‘Grade A’ char is fantastic for acidic soils in the southeastern United States. But you would not want to put it in the Western corn belt.”

All sorts of best practices need to be established, Lehmann said. The government should be concerned that some biochar feedstocks could carry heavy metal contaminants or dioxin, though regulations governing manure and composts could easily be adapted for charcoal, he said. The pyrolysis process can also eliminate many problems, Australia’s van Zweiten added.

“Like these other products, what you put in is what you get out,” van Zweiten said. “The key advantage over these products is that organic contaminants … can usually be dealt with effectively during pyrolysis.”

Most scientists believe that the waste-management industry will be the first to stimulate biochar production, but even then there is doubt that investment will come without a price on CO2 emissions. Van Zweiten, however, believes biochar can be profitable even without a carbon cap, at least in soils that respond to charcoal.

In the end, it could be the powerful farm lobby that will ultimately push biochar forward. Farmers have long desired a way into the carbon markets that would be created by potential climate legislation, if it ever moves forward. And biochar could provide the greatest certainty that their biological carbon sinks cause true emission offsets, though only time will tell.

“Biochar becomes increasingly viable once we make a societal decision to deal with climate change,” Amonette said. “Until we do that, it will remain a niche.”

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Chinese offshore development blows past U.S.

Climatewire: As proposed American offshore wind-farm projects creep forward — slowed by state legislative debates, due diligence and environmental impact assessments — China has leapt past the United States, installing its first offshore wind farm.

Several other farms also are already under construction, and even the Chinese government’s ambitious targets seem low compared to industry dreaming.

“What the U.S. doesn’t realize,” said Peggy Liu, founder and chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, is that China “is going from manufacturing hub to the clean-tech laboratory of the world.”

The first major offshore wind farm outside of Europe is located in the East China Sea, near Shanghai. The 102-megawatt Donghai Bridge Wind Farm began transmitting power to the national grid in July and signals a new direction for Chinese renewable energy projects and the initiation of a national policy focusing not just on wind power, but increasingly on the offshore variety.

Moreover, “it serves as a showcase of what the Chinese can do offshore … and it’s quite significant,” said Rachel Enslow, a wind consultant and co-author of the report “China, Norway and Offshore Wind Development,” published in March by Azure International for the World Wildlife Fund Norway.

Planned to strategically coincide with the World Expo in Shanghai, which is being fed electricity from the offshore farm, China is ready to show the world what its own homegrown wind technology can do.

All of Donghai Bridge’s 34 turbines, 3 MW capacity each, were built by Sinovel Wind Group, China’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, though designed in cooperation with American Superconductor. The Beijing-based company began building the farm at the mouth of the Yangtze River Delta in September 2008. CCCC Third Harbor Engineering Co. Ltd., also based in Beijing, installed the turbines, completing construction in February 2010. Shanghai’s Zhongtian Technologies Submarine Optic Fiber Cable Co. Ltd. manufactured the 78 km of submarine cable.

Powering 200,000 households while reducing CO2

In China, one key challenge will be developing foundations for the soft seabed commonly found off the coast of the East China Sea, especially since “most offshore wind farms that will be developed in China will be intertidal,” said Gerald Page, managing director of Equinox Energy Partners, a venture capital firm in Beijing.

The $337 million project, located 8 to 13 km (about 5 to 8 miles) from the coast, was erected on soft seabed conditions using a multi-pile foundation structure. About eight to 10 legs are placed on concrete piles, on top of which are stacked a concrete tack and then the turbines. Shanghai Investigation, Design and Research Institute conceived the foundation.

During low tide, the turbine foundations are exposed; during high tide, they become submerged in about 5 meters (16 feet) of water. Unlike in Europe, which is much more focused on developing deepwater (greater than 50 meters, or 164 feet, deep) turbine technology, China is exploring unique foundation technology and demonstrating innovative pursuits.

The farm is expected to eventually generate an annual 267 million kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough to power 200,000 Shanghai households. China’s government claims that annually, the wind farm will cut use of 100,000 tons of coal, reducing carbon emissions by 246,058 tons.

Currently, the wind farm’s capacity is equivalent to only 1 percent of the city’s total power production of about 18,200 MW, which is generated mostly from traditional fuel-based sources, according to China Daily, the state-run English-language daily newspaper in Beijing.

Construction of the Donghai project’s second phase, on the west side of the bridge, has been approved by authorities. It, too, is projected to produce about 100 MW. An additional four farms surrounding Shanghai are currently under negotiation, and the city hopes to complete 13 wind farms by 2020, with the majority of the expected 1,000 MW capacity supplied by offshore wind farms.

An industry’s itch to expand

The “Development Plan on Emerging Energies” released July 20 outlines wind production goals through 2020 by the Chinese government.

According to the plan, offshore wind power is expected to reach 30 gigawatts, and coastal provinces were required to start drafting offshore wind-grid implementation plans. This includes Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong provinces. In the next three to four years, according to the Azure-WWF report, in total, 514 MW should be installed along this coastline. As of March this year, pipelines accommodating 17 MW were already installed between Donghai and a pilot wind project in Bohai Bay near Tianjin.

The expected long-term cumulative pipeline, at 13.7 GW, is nearly halfway to the estimated 2020 goal, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Mandarins are fully behind renewable technologies and warmly welcoming a greener future.

“The top-level people are cautiously optimistic,” explained Andrew Grieve, a senior researcher at J Capital Research, an equities research company based in Beijing. “They are far more optimistic on the local and provincial level.”

Behind closed doors, industry insiders hear buzz and speculation that coastal provinces’ plans far exceed the existing Chinese central government’s plans.

Grieve stressed that the real force for wind comes from manufacturers that are itching to expand the market. “Comparatively speaking,” he said, “the central government is the most conservative of the lot.”

All this is without official numbers, as the 12th Five-Year Plan (for the 2011-2015 time period) has still not been formally unveiled. It remains in final draft form, and though the original release date was slated for March, approval keeps moving backward. Analysts expect the implementation date should, at the latest, arrive on Jan. 1, 2011.

The central government’s aim was to hit 10 GW by 2010, a goal that was quickly surpassed.

“Industry is either going to take their number and beat it, or government is going to have to step in and calm down growth,” Grieve said. Rumors support the latter, but given historical trends, the former would seem more likely.

The Azure-WWF report describes the offshore wind energy generation potential in China as huge — calculated as 11,000 terawatt-hours, similar to that of the North Sea in western Europe.

“China has the largest wind resources in the world, and three-quarters of them are offshore,” Barbara Finamore, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Beijing office, told Scientific American.

The existing industry is nowhere near that large. As Grieve explained, “apart from the 1 gigawatt of bids this year, there are no central government national targets for offshore wind, although possible national targets of 5 gigawatts by 2015 and 30 gigawatts by 2020 have been suggested.” The provincial government-proposed provincial offshore development plans amount to 10.2 GW by 2015 and 22.7 GW by 2020.

The growth in China’s wind manufacturing market remains focused on the domestic market — for now. Dheeraj Choudhary, who runs Parker Hannifin Corp.’s Global Renewable Energy business unit, said “60 to 70 percent of wind turbine market growth has come from domestic manufacturers, and not the international guys.”

Joanna Lewis, an assistant professor of science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University who works as a China program adviser to the Energy Foundation, agreed: “No one has nearly as much capacity [as China] installed in the world.” As a result, there is still “very strong demand for wind turbines in China, and they’re not at stage where supply exceeds demand.”

Eyeing markets abroad

Talk to wind turbine and technology experts and manufacturers, and they see a day not too far off when Chinese-produced (and in some cases, Chinese-invented) turbines will service foreign markets.

Anthony Fullelove, project manager for North Brown Hill Wind Farm, based in Sydney, Australia, expects that his country, as well as Europe and the United States, will see a sharp increase in turbines sourced from China — as the technology rises to meet global standards and prices drop — to make wind farms viable especially in a generation sector without a carbon price.

“Turbine manufacturers in China are starting to look for markets abroad upon seeing Chinese market getting tighter and tighter, with more companies selling in China,” Lewis added.

For the time being, Chinese manufacturers still work hand in hand with foreign engineers and designers. But that is starting to shift.

“Reliance is much lower,” noted Choudhary. Instead, Chinese manufacturers look to foreign companies to provide subsystems and components. All of China’s top five turbine manufacturers have worked with foreign engineers yet retained the intellectual property rights on the technologies.

Meanwhile, as China moves forward with installing water-based wind farms as well as developing its domestic technological know-how, not a single offshore wind turbine is in use in the United States.

Though the 130-turbine Cape Wind project, in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts, has received federal approval, several potential regulatory and judicial hurdles lurk. Similarly, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission recently approved a power purchase agreement proposed for the Block Island farm off of Rhode Island, which would start with an initial eight turbines as a model, yet Attorney General Patrick Lynch (D) has vowed to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

When discussing the creation of an Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium in February, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said it currently takes seven to nine years for offshore wind project to receive approval. At this point, Cape Wind is moving into its 10th year of negotiations.

In comparison, China’s Renewable Energy Law was implemented in January 2006. By November 2007, the Bohai model turbine was installed. So important was the Donghai farm to the Chinese Communist Party, it footed the bill to ensure the project would be completed in time for Expo 2010 in Shanghai, during which time China has the eyes of the whole world watching.

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The role of clouds on Earth’s climate

Environmental News Network: Modeling for climate  change is an extremely complex process because Earth’s climate is so complex. It is an interrelated system that involves the atmosphere, biosphere, land, and oceans. A change in one can cause a chain reaction in all the others. By studying ancient climate change patterns, scientists are better able to predict what might happen in future events. However, one factor that remains far from understanding is the role of clouds — how they will react to and influence a changing climate.

On the one hand, clouds provide shade for the surface of the planet and effectively reflect incoming solar radiation  back into space. Therefore, a rise in cloudiness will result in a cooler planet. On the other hand, clouds are made up of water vapor which is in itself, a powerful greenhouse gas. This would mean that more clouds would trap more heat
than would be reflected.

The question is not just how much cloud cover there is, but where it is and what type of cloud. Would a warming world create more dark, storm clouds (stratus)? More great, big, puffy clouds (cumulus)? More high, wispy clouds (cirrus)? How each type would influence, and be influenced by, higher temperatures remains unknown. However, according to Dave Randall, cloud modeler at Colorado State University, “We do know a lot about clouds. We just don’t know enough. We’re not in the infant stages of understanding any more; we’re in first or second grade, and on the way to adolescence.”

The consensus among climate modelers is that global warming would lead to more evaporation of the oceans, which would create more water vapor in the air and more clouds. Yet, more water in the atmosphere may not necessarily lead to more clouds, because higher temperatures would require more water vapor to become saturated. This means that more water vapor would be needed to form clouds, leading to the same amount of cloudiness that there would be otherwise.

The study of clouds is ongoing, and there are many projects in the works to better understand them. MIT scientist, Richard Lindzen has proposed the Iris Hypothesis, which states that increasing humidity as the Earth warms will create a shift from cirrus to cumulus clouds which better reflect sunlight. This would create a counterweight to global warming. There is also a real-world experiment called the GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment) Cloud System Study conducted by multiple government agencies. The GEWEX team observes clouds from aircraft, ships, and remote sensing instruments, and then compares them to models that simulate clouds on those same scales.

So far, the preliminary assessment suggests clouds will accelerate warming, but the results are far from definitive. Yet most scientists say that the case is getting stronger. Some say that even if clouds have a cooling effect, they would not be sufficient to halt rising temperatures. One thing that all scientists will freely admit, like all climate science, is that they do not understand everything. But if they are anywhere close to being right, we are in for a warmer future.

Read more on the Iris Hypothesis

Read more on the GEWEX Cloud System Study

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Constant whirl of motion, but few calories fall off

The New York Times: Even as they swing in constant, languid motion, orangutans burn fewer calories than a human couch potato.

To study this, scientists did not go to the rain forests of Southeast Asia, the native habitat of orangutans, but instead enlisted four orangutans living at the Great Ape Trust, a nonprofit research lab in Des Moines, Iowa. Although in captivity, the four live in a large habitat similar to that of wild orangutans.

Since the orangutans possess a rudimentary understanding of spoken commands or requests, the researchers could ask them to drink water that had been modified to contain heavier isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen and then to urinate in cups for analysis.

“It’s that easy,” said Herman Pontzer, a professor of biological anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and lead author of the study of the energetics of orangutans that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s easier than working with 3-year-olds.”

Because some of the heavier oxygen is breathed out as carbon dioxide, reflecting the amount of physical exertion, the changing ratio of the hydrogen and oxygen isotopes tells how many calories the orangutans burned.

For example, the two female orangutans, Katy and Knobi, each weighing about 120 pounds, burned about 1,600 calories a day, several hundred less than a woman of similar weight who is getting moderate amounts of exercise.

Dr. Pontzer said the orangutans may have evolved this parsimonious metabolism to avoid starving when the ripe fruits that they eat periodically become scarce in their native rainforests. The evolutionary tradeoff is that orangutans grow slowly and reproduce at a low rate.

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Signal like you mean it: Orangutan gestures carry specific intentional meanings, study finds

ScienceDaily: Great ape gestures have intentional meaning and are made with the expectation of specific behavioral responses, according to Erica Cartmill and Richard Byrne from the University of St. Andrews in the UK. The study1 of meaning in animal communication takes a significant step forward with the authors’ new systematic approach to assessing intentional meaning in the gestural communication of non-humans, applied here to a group of orangutan gestures.

Their work is published in Springer’s journal Animal Cognition.

The first section of this paper sets out their proposed method (goal-outcome matching) which takes into account the apparent aim of the gesturing individual as well as the reaction of the recipient that apparently satisfies the signaller. Where the two match consistently, across examples of a particular gesture, an intentional meaning is identified for that gesture.

The authors then applied this approach to a sample of orangutan gestures to identify gestures that are used predictably to induce specific reactions and to begin a lexicon of orangutan gestures and their intentional meanings.

The researchers observed 28 orangutans in three European zoos — Twycross Zoo in the UK, Apenheul Primate Park in the Netherlands and Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey — for nine months. They identified 64 gesture types, 40 used frequently enough to be analyzed for meaning. These 40 gestures were used predictably to achieve one of six social goals: to initiate an interaction (contact, grooming or play), request objects, share objects, instigate joint movement (co-locomotion), cause a partner to move back, or stop an action.

The researchers then tested their analysis by examining what the gesturing ape did when the response to its gesture did not match the gesture’s meaning, as deduced by the goal-outcome matching method. They found that the apes were more persistent with their gestures when their partner did not respond in the intended way.

The authors conclude: “Orangutan gestures are made with the expectation of specific behavioral responses and thus have intentional meaning as well as functional consequences. The level of specificity we were able to identify in the intentional meanings of orangutan gestures resulted from our novel use of goal-outcome matching as a means of incorporating signaler intentions into the analysis of signal meaning. When paired with a high frequency of intentional use, goal-outcome matching is a strong tool for identifying intentional meaning.”

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New research suggests orangutans not so solitary

The Associate Press: When British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace arrived in Borneo’s jungles 150 years ago, one of his great hopes was to see orangutans. Even he was surprised at his success, spotting the red apes feeding along river banks, swinging between branches, and staring down from trees almost the moment he arrived. He saw 29 — shooting more than half of them and sending their skins and skeletons back home — in just 100 days, an experience shared by many other adventurers and collectors during the same period.

“Whereas some early explorers would see as many as eight orangutans in one tree or encounter 35 along a river in one day, spotting even one in the wild in the same undisturbed forests is now rare,” said Erik Meijaard, one of the authors of a study published Wednesday in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science.

“This prompted us to ask if these notoriously solitary apes once lived in much higher densities,” said Meijaard. “We believe hunting may have caused a change in behavior, causing them to be less social.”

The scientists measured the density of orangutan populations now compared with assumed densities in past — based in part on frequency of sightings by 19th century explorers — and found that encounters were three to six times higher back then. They also looked at possible causes, including ecological changes and disease, and determined the continuing tradition of hunting was the most likely reason for the decline.

Today, orangutans are shot for their meat or as agricultural pests.

The findings are still preliminary and likely to be controversial, but if correct, they could affect the way we come to understand the development of orangutans as a species and their conservation needs.

There are only an estimated 50,000 orangutans left in the wild, all living in small, scattered populations on Borneo island and nearby Sumatra, according to Serge Wich, a scientist with the Great Ape Trust of Iowa and co-author of the new study.

Orangutans are gregarious when they are young. But unlike the other great apes — chimpanzees and gorillas — they spend most of their time alone when they are adults, foraging for fruit or sleeping in the trees. They are rarely seen together in groups larger than two or three.

Their low population densities, typically around four animals per sq. mile (two animals per sq. kilometer) of forest, is generally thought to have characterized their evolutionary development, from their long reproduction cycles to the way they communicate and interact between the sexes.

“Scientists have learned about orangutans by studying them under present-day conditions and densities,” said Meijaard. “But it might be a bit like studying bushmen in the Kalahari to understand the behavior of a New Yorker.”

The team acknowledged the limitations of comparing historic literature and records to modern field surveys. They also point to harder to identify biases: In places where humans are considered to be a threat, for instance, have orangutans become more elusive?

Even so, nine surveys in different parts of Borneo between 2002 and 2009, which mirrored as closely as possible historic detection methods, resulted in the spotting of 108 orangutans over a period of 724 days — three times lower than in Wallace’s days, they wrote.

Ian Singleton of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program said one explanation could be that even undisturbed forests are not as productive today as they once were, pointing to soil degradation and other factors.

“Now you have to walk further away from the rivers and closer to the hills to find orangutans,” he said. “So even though the forests may look similar, and are in the same region, they probably aren’t as good as when Wallace was wandering around.”

But the authors of the new study note that the general belief is that forests in Borneo — which is divided largely between Indonesia and Malaysia — and Sumatra can not accommodate higher densities of orangutans because of restricted space and food supplies.

That limits the number of ‘rehabilitated’ animals that can be released in one area, affecting conservation efforts.

Though habitat destruction has long been identified as the biggest threat to orangutan’s survival, the new study also says hunting may have played a more devastating role than generally accepted.

It’s a theory Colin Groves, of Australian National University’ School of Archaeology and Anthropology, says is extremely plausible.

“There were large numbers of orangutans shot by our forebears, not to mention obtained for zoos, and then the extremely slow rate of reproduction it is very likely indeed that they would not have recovered anything like their former population densities,” said Groves.

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Marine animals suggest evidence for a Trans-Antarctic seaway

Environmental News Network: A tiny marine filter-feeder, that anchors itself to the sea bed, offers new clues to scientists studying the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — a region that is thought to be vulnerable to collapse.

As part of a study for the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) analysed sea-bed colonies of bryozoans from coastal and deep sea regions around the continent and from further afield. They found striking similarities in particular species of bryozoans living on the continental shelves of two seas — the Ross and Weddell — that are around 1,500 miles apart and separated by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

This new finding, published this month in the journal Global Change Biology, leads the science team to conclude that these animals could have spread across both seas only by means of a trans-Antarctic seaway through what is now a 2 km solid layer of ice. They suggest also that this seaway opened up during a recent interglacial (warm period between ice ages) perhaps as recently as 125,000 years ago when sea level was about 5 metres higher than today.

While some geological evidence suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) collapsed at least once in the last million years, scientists are keen to determine the frequency of collapse and to understand the processes and connections between warm periods and deglaciation events. Elsewhere around Antarctica the marine animals that could help scientists estimate the date when West Antarctica was ice free, were obliterated during ice ages by advancing glaciers that bulldozed their fossil remains off the continental shelf.

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NOAA Reopens More than 4,000 Square Miles of Closed Gulf Fishing Area

Environmental News Network: Today NOAA reopened 4,281 square miles of Gulf waters off western Louisiana to commercial and recreational fishing. The reopening was announced after consultation with FDA and under a re-opening protocol agreed to by NOAA, the FDA, and the Gulf states.

On July 18, NOAA data showed no oil in the area. Light sheen was observed on July 29, but none since. Trajectory models show the area is at a low risk for future exposure to oil, and fish caught in the area and tested by NOAA experts have shown no signs of contamination.

“Scientists, food safety experts, members of the fishing industry and local, state, federal officials, are working together every day to ensure that seafood from the Gulf is safe to eat,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “We will remain vigilant and continue to monitor and test seafood in reopened waters.”

Between July 26 and July 29, NOAA sampled the area for both shrimp and finfish, including mackerel and snapper. Sensory analyses of 41 samples and chemical analyses of 125 specimens that were composited into 14 samples followed the methodology and procedures in the re-opening protocol, with sensory analysis finding no detectable oil or dispersant odors or flavors, and results of chemical analysis well below the levels of concern.

At its closest point, the area to be reopened is about 185 miles west of the Deepwater/BP wellhead. The entire area is heavily fished by fishermen targeting reef fish, menhaden and shrimp.

“Because of our strict adherence to the reopening protocol agreed to by the states and the federal government we have confidence that seafood harvested from this area is free from harmful oil residues and can be enjoyed by consumers around the nation,” said Margaret Hamburg, M.D., Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

NOAA will continue to take samples for testing from the newly re-opened area, and the agency has also implemented dockside sampling to test fish caught throughout the Gulf by commercial fishermen.

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Indonesian Volcanos

Environmental News Network: The geography of Indonesia is dominated by volcanoes that are formed due to subduction zones between the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate. Some of the volcanoes are notable for their eruptions, for instance, Krakatau for its global effects in 1883, Lake Toba for its supervolcanic eruption estimated to have occurred 74,000 Before Present which was responsible for several years of cold of volcanic winter, and Mount Tambora for the most violent eruption in recorded history in 1815. Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung has recently erupted, two days after it sprang back into life after over 400 years of inactivity.

Volcanoes in Indonesia are a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire
. There are about 150 known volcanic sources. Most are in what is called the Sunda Arch (Sumatra and Java). The remaining volcanoes are those of Halmahera, including its surrounding volcanic islands, and the volcanoes of Sulawesi and the Sangihe Islands. The latter group is in one volcanic arc together with the Philippine volcanoes.

The most active Indonesian volcanoes are Kelut and Merapi on Java island which have been responsible for thousands of deaths in the region. Since AD 1000, Kelut has erupted more than 30 times. While Merapi has erupted more than 80 times.

The first eruption of Mount Sinabung — which caught many scientists off guard since the volcano is not as closely monitored as other volcanoes — over the last August weekend was followed by a second, more powerful blast on August 30th that spewed soot and debris more than a mile into the air, leaving the region on high hazard alert.

Mount Sinabung last erupted in 1600 and government vulcanologists acknowledged they had made no efforts before the mountain started rumbling last week to sample gases or look out for rising magma or other signs of seismic activity.

The Indonesian government was reported to have evacuated around 17,500 people from the region on and around the volcano.[11] The government issued the highest-level warning for the area, which was expected to remain in force for around a week, since scientists were unfamiliar with the characteristics of the volcano, due to it having been dormant for so long.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the occasional tsunami. It can well be considered a very dangerous place to live despite its beauty due to these tectonic caused effects. Yet geothermal power in Indonesia is an increasingly significant source of renewable energy. As a result of its volcanic geology, Indonesia has about 40% of the world’s potential geothermal resources. To live well one may have to live dangerously.

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New effort broadens weatherization program, includes renewable technologies

The Energy Department announced a $120 million effort today to broaden its approach to weatherizing homes by testing new partnerships to snare outside funding and — for the first time — small-scale solar and wind equipment.

DOE said $90 million in new funding will go to more than 100 local programs in 27 states that already participate in the Weatherization Assistance Program and have been identified as high-performing, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi said in a conference call. Each of those groups, she said, has already weatherized at least 30 percent of its target number of homes and spent 30 percent of its allotted funds.

The new money will let those groups spend on technologies that the program had not previously covered: solar heating systems, new insulation technologies, cool roofs, high-efficiency appliances, tankless hot water systems, high-efficiency combination boilers for heat and hot water, in-home energy monitors, and ductless heat pump systems.

Some groups submitted proposals that included installing solar photovoltaic panels and shingles or small wind turbines for beneficiaries, power generation technologies that DOE spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said have not previously been covered under the efficiency program.

Groups in 10 states — Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Virginia and Washington — will install solar photovoltaic or wind power systems on some homes. Industry analyses of those technologies often paint them as attractive for their renewability and carbon-free operation, but generally not cost-effective from a dollars-and-cents perspective without significant upfront subsidies.

Stutsman said the funding announced today amounted to an opportunity to gather data and assess the cost-effectiveness of new technologies for which the department lacks information and that the inclusion of renewables and other technologies was called for in authorizing legislation.

“At this point, we aren’t opening the program up. This is intended to be a more limited, pilot scale for how these technologies can interact in a home and what the energy savings can be for consumers,” she said.

DOE is also putting $30 million toward projects that expand on the existing program’s partnership, strategy or financing guidelines.

Several of those projects will use the funds as collateral for weatherization loans, allowing far more households to upgrade within the allotted amount. The projects aim to leverage federal dollars by as much as a factor of three, according to Zoi.

Other projects combine weatherization with efforts to reduce in-home lead exposure, or use education or energy displays in an effort to increase energy savings.

Exceeding targets

DOE officials announced the new funding along with news that American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding in June helped more than 31,000 homes improve their energy efficiency nationwide — passing a goal of reaching 25,000 homes per month.

The program has been criticized for the slow pace at which pledged weatherization funding has been spent, and officials have said one factor contributing to delays is that the money is being given to states for work with local organizations, often small and with limited experience, that cannot ramp up their operations quickly.

Zoi said June’s high rates of completion reflected, in part, the speed-up of construction during summer months in many areas of the country. She said the program would likely weatherize between 20,000 and 25,000 homes per month through its completion in March 2012.

She said the weatherization program created 13,000 jobs during the past quarter, a rate of program-related job expansion that she expects will remain roughly constant over the life of the stimulus funding.

Jenny Mandel, E&E reporter

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