Cooling The Earth's Air - Obama Global Warming Plan

The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays.

Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort. "It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table." Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching.

Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog." At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view.

However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions. Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously.

The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.

The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."

Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically. But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air - making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested - could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said. Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.

Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide - the chief human-caused greenhouse gas - out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.

Return Of The Victory Garden

Seed sales are up 20 to 30 percent at wholesalers such as Irish Eyes Garden Seeds in Ellensburg because of the bad economy and worries about genetically modified crops. Burpee, the world's largest seed company, says it's selling thousands of a $10 "Money Garden" package that it says will grow $650 worth of vegetables.

Out here on a farm just off Interstate 90, Greg and Sue Lutovsky hear every day how the economy is going.

Not so great for everybody else, excellent for them.

America had its Victory Gardens in backyards during World War II — not just for the food, but also to boost morale.

Now Victory Gardens are making a comeback: the 2009 Recession version.

Sue is the one who answers the phone at the couple's Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, which produces more than 400 kinds of seeds (mostly vegetables), as well as 70 different kinds of potatoes and 25 kinds of garlic.

By some of the questions they get from customers, the couple know these are first-time gardeners.

"We had one person ask us which way the seed goes in the ground," says Sue.


These days, she's handling 100 customer calls a day, and the family business expects to gross $1 million in sales this year. Business is up 20 to 30 percent over last year, both in seeds under its own label and seeds it packages for companies such as Burpee and Park Seed.

The business has a dozen employees packing seeds from shelves full of bins.

In another warehouse, seed potatoes fill big wooden crates, the kind used in apple orchards. Last year, Irish Eyes produced 160,000 pounds of seed potatoes, up from 30,000 the year before.

They've already sold out of six varieties of the tubers.

Why potatoes?

Maybe people are reaching back, back into their collective memory, back when potatoes were a staple food. Irish Eyes gets its name from that connection, the eyes referring to the eyes in a potato.

"It's the perfect food crop. It's got everything you need. It's a food source with very little effort. It can be stored a long time," says Greg. "There are not many things you can harvest in September and still be eating in June. You could live on potatoes and half a cup of cream and be healthy."

Some dietitians would argue against a cream-and-potatoes diet, but there is no denying that many in this country are now in survival mode.

Out-of-state visitors

There is no retail outlet at the 13 acres at Irish Eyes (the couple leases an additional nearby 90 acres), but customers find it anyway in the wind-swept Ellensburg countryside.

Greg says the wind is just fine with him. It helps pollinate the crops, he says, and it keeps the crops dry so fungal disease is almost nonexistent.

Recently, a customer drove from Montana, and another from northern Idaho, to pick up potato seeds.

"We can ship them to you at the appropriate planting time, probably mid-April" Greg says he told them.

But the Montana customer, who bought 500 pounds of potato seeds, "physically wanted them in their hands, I guess afraid we might run out," says Greg.

Says Sue, "I think they're scared."

Greg says about the run on seeds, "It's just about everything that's happening in the world, the stock market, the economy."

The Montana customer, says Greg, is a contractor who does part-time farming and sells produce at local farmers markets.

With not too much contracting work these days, the farming helps a lot. Those 500 pounds of seed potatoes will produce 5,000 pounds of potato crop, says Greg.

Greg says others show that they're newbie gardeners by placing an order for, say, one-eighth of an ounce of tomato seeds.

"That's like 900 tomato seeds. That's a lot of plants," he says.

Still, there is a simple math about planting your own garden.

"If a person has been laid off, and had a finite amount of money, they're looking at spending $2 for a head of lettuce that'll last two days," says Greg. "Or for $2 they can buy a packet of lettuce seeds that has 300 seeds and eat lettuce all summer long."

Belt-tightening time

It's not just Irish Eyes that has been booming.

A retail garden store like Sky Nursery in Shoreline says seed business is up "at least 20 percent."

And Burpee, the Pennsylvania-based world's largest seed company, says business also is up by that much.

Although it came up with the idea too late for this year's print catalog, on its Web site Burpee sells a "Money Garden" that for $10 puts together $20 worth of pea, tomato, pepper, bean, lettuce and carrot seeds.

It says the seeds will produce "over $650 worth of vegetables!"

"People are belt-tightening, particularly on large-ticket items," says George Ball, chairman of Burpee. "It results in an almost Depression mentality."

But it's not just about saving money, says Bruce Butterfield, research director for the National Gardening Association.

"I think one place where a lot of people feel they have some small control over what is going on around them is in their backyard," he says. "It's this whole sense of, 'I'm gonna have better-quality food, and save money.' "

And if you don't have a backyard, or you want to garden in the company of others, P-Patches have proved popular.

In Seattle, the P-Patch program in 2008 had a waiting list of 1,230 for plots at its 68 sites, nearly triple the waiting list in 2006.

Food-system concerns

It's not just saving money that has increased business for Irish Eyes, says Greg Lutovsky.

It's also about GMOs.

That stands for genetically modified organisms — for example, corn that has been genetically modified to resist insects and diseases.

"People are starting to rebel against genetically modified seeds in our food system. There is no reason to have fish hormones spliced into a tomato," says Greg. He says that 95 percent of the seeds Irish Eyes sells are certified organic.

At Sky Nursery, Andrea Kurtz, 31, an acupuncturist who lives in Phinney Ridge, is looking over the seed rack.

This is the second year she's having a garden — Armenian slicing cucumbers, beets, pole beans, snow peas, lettuce, tomatoes. She's even going to raise chickens — three hens for eggs, and later they'll be slaughtered for meat.

"I like being able to grow what I eat, to pick something and eat it 10 minutes later," she says.

She's among the youngest of the garden crowd, who tend to be baby boomers.

Gordon Smith, 61, and Saphire Blue, 64, are husband and wife who've gardened for decades. They're retired city of Seattle employees, she a gardener, he a carpenter. They have two properties, one in Seattle and another on Vashon Island.

They talk about the joy of eating fresh produce.

But Saphire also mentions why they'll be growing more potatoes this year.

"If we have an earthquake, or in any way have to survive," she says, "you can trade potatoes with a neighbor for eggs."

That's not a quote you'd have expected to hear a couple of years ago during the boom times.

But these days, it's not about flipping houses for an easy profit.

Flipping dirt for that bumper bean crop is more like it.

Millions Of Native Aussie Animals 'Killed In Victoria Fires'

More than a million native animals may have perished in Victoria's fire inferno, a wildlife expert says.

The massive effort to rescue animals caught in the fire has begun with triage centres set up to assess injured wildlife at staging posts at Kilmore, Whittlesea and Redesdale near Bendigo.

The animals are then being treated and assessed by vets at nearby shelters, who make the agonising decision about which ones need to be euthanased.

Those animals still able to may wait several weeks before walking out of fire-affected forest, Gayle Chappell from the Hepburn Wildlife Shelter said.

Ms Chappell is among those working to rescue the animals and says the extent of the devastation may never be known.

"It (the animal death toll) will be in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions," Ms Chappell said.

"We are not just talking the animals we are familiar with, there are gliders and all sorts of possums, antechinus (a mouse-like marsupial), bandicoots, birds - there is so much wildlife.

"It is devastating, the actual size of the destruction is devastating to a number of wildlife populations."

It is feared endangered populations of gliders, owls and lizards may be among the dead.

For those that have survived, the recovery process will be long and slow.

"They have lost their homes too and they are not going to be rebuilt in a year or two years, it is a much longer-term picture," Ms Chappell said.

"You can't reconstruct a forest."

The fires also destroyed four wildlife shelters including Stella Reid's Wildhaven shelter at Kinglake.

Ms Chappell said Ms Reid escaped with her life, but the animals were not so lucky.

"It has been a real blow for everybody I think. That is what has really brought it home for everybody, hearing that Stella Reid's place was totalled and all her animals ... they weren't able to get any animals out at all."

Victoria's Black Saturday Superfire: When Two Degrees Separate Life And Death

Scientist Tim Flannery recalls the long, wet Victorian winters now replaced by a drier and dangerous climate.

The day after the great fire burned through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. For much of the way – indeed for hundreds of miles north of the scorched ground - smoke obscured the horizon, entering my air conditioned car and carrying with it that distinctive scent so strongly signifying death, or to Aboriginal people, cleansing.

It was as if a great cremation had taken place. I didn't know then how many people had died in their cars and homes, or while fleeing the flames, but by the time I reached the scorched ground just north of Melbourne, the dreadful news was trickling in. At first I heard that 70 people had died, then 108.

Then 170. While the precise number of victims is yet to be ascertained, the overall situation at least is now clear. Australia has suffered its worst recorded peacetime loss of life. And the trauma will be with us forever.

I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed so insufferable to me as a young boy wishing to play outside vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself.

I could measure its progress whenever I flew into Melbourne airport. Over the years the farm dams under the flight path filled ever less frequently, while the suburbs crept ever further into the countryside, their swimming pools seemingly oblivious to the great drying.

Climate modeling has clearly established that the decline of southern Australia's winter rainfall is being caused by a build-up of greenhouse gas, much of it from the burning of coal.

Ironically, Victoria has the most polluting coal-fed power plant on Earth, while another of its coal plants was threatened by the fire. There's evidence that the stream of global pollution caused a step-change in climate following the huge El Niño event of 1998.

Along with the dwindling rainfall has come a desiccation of the soil, and more extreme summer temperatures.

This February, at the zenith of a record-breaking heatwave with several days over 40C, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever – a suffocating 46.1C, with even higher temperatures occurring in rural Victoria.

This extreme coincided with exceptionally strong northerly winds, which were followed by an abrupt southerly change.

This brought a cooling, but it was the shift in wind direction that caught so many in a deadly trap. Such conditions have occurred before. In 1939 and 1983 they led to dangerous fires.

But this time the conditions were more extreme than ever before, and the 12-year "drought" meant that plant tissues were almost bone dry.

Despite narrowly missing the 1983 Victorian fires, and then losing a house to the 1994 Sydney bush fires, I had not previously appreciated the difference a degree or two of additional heat, and a dry soil, can make to the ferocity of a fire.

This fire was quantitatively different from anything seen before. Strategies that are sensible in less extreme conditions, such as staying to defend your home or fleeing in a car when you see flames, become fatal options under such oven-like circumstances.

Indeed, there are few safe options indeed in such conditions, except to flee at the first sign of smoke.

My country is still in shock at the loss of so many lives. But inevitably we will look for lessons from this natural tragedy.

The first such lesson I fear is that we must anticipate more such terrible blazes in future, for the world's addiction to burning fossil fuels goes on unabated, with 10 billion tonnes being released last year alone.

And there is now no doubt that the pollution is laying the preconditions necessary for more such blazes.

When he ratified the Kyoto protocol, Australia's prime minister Kevin Rudd called climate change the greatest threat facing humanity. Shaken, and clearly a man who has seen things none of us should see, he has now had the eye-witness proof of his words.

We can only hope now that Australia's climate policy, which is weak, is significantly strengthened.

After ignoring the Kyoto protocol for years, just months ago we committed to a reduction in pollution of a mere 5% by 2020 over 2000 levels, with the possibility of increasing that to 15% if a successful treaty comes out at Copenhagen later this year.

Our national goal is a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050, but such targets are easy to articulate if the bulk of the work must be done by future governments.

As the worst greenhouse polluters, per capita, of any developed nation, there is an urgent need for Australians to reduce our dependency on coal. I believe that if we want to give ourselves the best chance of avoiding truly dangerous climate change, we should cease burning coal conventionally by around 2030.

No such policy is currently being contemplated. Instead, as perhaps anyone would, Australians have been focusing on the immediate cause of some of the fires.

Rudd has said that the arsonists suspected of lighting some fires are guilty of mass murder, and the police are busy chasing down these malefactors. But there's an old saying among Australian fire fighters — "whoever owns the fuel, owns the fire".

Let's hope that Australians ponder the deeper causes of this horrible tragedy, and change our polluting ways before it's too late.

Tim Flannery is a scientist at the University of Macquarie and author of The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change

Wind Power Is The Best Solution, Biofuels Is The Worst - Mark Jacobson

The US could replace all its cars and trucks with electric cars powered by wind turbines taking up less than 3 square kilometres – in theory, at least. That's the conclusion of a detailed study ranking 11 types of non-fossil fuels according to their total ecological footprint and their benefit to human health.

The study, carried out by Mark Jacobson of the atmosphere and energy programme at Stanford University, found wind power to be by far the most desirable source of energy. Biofuels from corn and plant waste came right at the bottom of the list, along with nuclear power and "clean" coal.

Watch a video of Jacobson discussing his findings.

To compare the fuels, Jacobson calculated the impacts each would have if it alone powered the entire US fleet of cars and trucks.

He considered not just the quantities of greenhouse gases that would be emitted, but also the impact the fuels would have on the ecosystem – taking up land and polluting water, for instance. Also considered were the fuel's impact on pollution and therefore human health, the availability of necessary resources, and the energy form's reliability.

"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most," says Jacobson.

"Some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," he says. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply, and land use than current fossil fuels."

Biofuel concerns

Jacobson says it would take 30 times more space to grow enough corn to power the US fleet than would be needed to erect enough wind turbines, while bioethanol would produce more greenhouse gases than wind power.

Biofuels have received a considerable amount of political backing in recent years with the US and Europe setting targets to phase in their use and gradually replace oil.

Energy and wildlife experts have expressed concerns about biofuels and the EU last year appeared to reconsider its position.

Nuclear is another energy source whose merits have been debated by European and US leaders alike in the past 12 months. "It results in 25 times more carbon and air pollution than wind," says Jacobson. Half of those emissions are caused by the time it takes to plan and build a nuclear power plant – time during which fossil fuels have to be burnt for energy.

"Clean" coal – the process of burning coal then capturing the emitted carbon dioxide and storing it underground – is another political favourite. Jacobson's calculations show that building and using enough clean coal power plants would emit up to 110 times more carbon than building than using wind turbines only.

Focused efforts

"The philosophy that we should try a little bit of everything is wrong," says Jacobson. "We need to focus on the technologies that provide the best benefit. We know which these are."

Jacobson acknowledges that politicians are calling for a massive jobs programme to pull the economy out of recession, but says investment in renewable energy is one way to do that.

"Putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles, and transmission lines would not only create jobs but also reduce costs due to healthcare, crop damage, and climate damage – as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power," he says.

Jacobson presented his results to the chairman of the Senate energy and Natural Resources Committee in October last year. They are published in Energy and Environmental Science this month (DOI: 10.1039/b809990c).

Can Liquid Wood Make Plastic Obsolete?

Plastic was one of the great chemical inventions of the 20th century, but now liquid wood may be the plastic of the 21st century, according to a group of German scientists. Plastics are non-biodegradable as well and in many cases harbour carcinogens and other toxic substances.

And apart from all that, most plastics are based on petroleum, a non-renewable resource.

Crude oil is the basis of the chemical for plastics, notes Norbert Eisenreich, a senior researcher and deputy of the directors at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology in Pfinztal, Germany.

As the price of crude oil increases, so does the price of plastics and the interest in finding replacements, he noted.

His team of German scientists have come up with a substance they call Arboform, which is basically liquid wood.

It is derived from wood pulp-based lignin, and can be mixed with hemp, flax or wood fibres and other additives such as wax to create a strong, non-toxic alternative to petroleum-based plastics, Eisenreich says.

But what exactly is liquid wood?

"The cellulose industry separates wood into its three main components - lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose," explains ICT team leader Emilia Regina Inone-Kauffmann.
"The lignin is not needed in papermaking, however. Our colleagues mix lignin with fine natural fibres made of wood, hemp or flax and natural additives such as wax.

From this, they produce plastic granulate that can be melted and injection-moulded."
Car parts and other durable items made of this bio-plastic already exist, but it is not suitable for toys or household appliances in this form.

To separate the lignin from the cell fibres, the workers in the cellulose industry add sulphurous substances. Toys and other household items should not contain sulphur, if for no other reason than that it can smell very bad.

The German researchers were able to reduce the sulphur content in Arborform by about 90 per cent.

Can the material be recycled?

"To find that out, we produced components, broke them up into small pieces, and re-processed the broken pieces - 10 times in all. We did not detect any change in the material properties of the low-sulphur bio-plastic, so that means it can be recycled," says Inone-Kauffmann. - ScienceDaily

A Dozen Pups Skinned Alive To Make One Fur Coat

A ban on the "abhorrent" trade in cat and dog fur comes into force in the UK this week. From Thursday, it will be illegal to import, export or sell the fur harvested from millions of cats and dogs slaughtered each year in the Far East.

The fur is used for products ranging from children's soft toys, to coats, trims on clothes, linings in boots, pet toys and rugs. It has been found for sale across Europe, including the UK.

The majority of the cats and dogs are killed in China, where they are kept in cruel conditions and sometimes skinned alive.

The EU-wide ban follows similar legislation in America and Australia, but China continues a thriving trade with some other countries, particularly Russia.

Struan Stevenson, the Scottish MEP who has campaigned for a ban for nine years, said that China needed to act.

"China must now follow suit if it genuinely wants to belong to the global family of civilized nations," said Mr Stevenson. "I urge the Chinese authorities to ban this trade and, in particular, to close down the export of cat and dog skins to Russia."

He added that the use of the skins for fashion goods and novelty items could not possibly justify the "cruel rearing, cramped living conditions or the barbaric killing of over two million animals each year".

He urged retailers and shoppers to remain vigilant to make sure the banned fur is not bought or sold in the UK.

A breach of the ban will bring a penalty of up to seven years in prison.

Customs officers will enforce the ban using forensic techniques such as DNA analysis to detect cat and dog fur, and build on work they already carry out to prevent the illegal movement of endangered species.

In the past, it has been difficult to assess fur imported into the UK, especially if it had been dyed. Evidence suggests cats are often hung from the neck by a wire noose, and can be skinned while still alive.

They are either rounded up or bred in captivity, often in dark, cramped conditions, and transported without food or water. Breeding farms are usually in northern China, where the colder climate enhances the quality and thickness of their coats.


Products include coats each made from 12 Alsatian puppies, and Labrador rugs.

In order to appear more acceptable to customers in Europe, items are often labelled as being made from fake fur, or from fur from a different animal.

UK trade minister Gareth Thomas said it was an "abhorrent trade which has no place in our markets". He added: "This ban will give UK consumers confidence that whether shopping here or within the EU, they will not be sold products containing cat or dog fur."

The trade was exposed a decade ago and a ban has attracted high-profile support, including from Sir Paul McCartney, his former wife Heather Mills, rock star Rick Wakeman, and Dennis Erdman, the director of television show Sex And The City, who persuaded Hollywood celebrities to write to Brussels supporting a ban.

In 1999, a London fur firm was exposed as trading in cat and dog fur. A salesman was filmed offering 10,000 dog furs from China and 150,000 cat furs.

It is still not mandatory to label fur included in garments in the UK, although the British Fur Trade Association introduced a voluntary labelling scheme in 2003.

Dr Barbara Maaf, chief executive of campaign group Care for the Wild, said the ban was a "step in the right direction", but added that it was not enough to end the trade in Europe. - Scotsman

Japan's Coming Food Crisis

Tiny Baby Muntjac Deer

A tiny baby Muntjac deer which was delivered three weeks early by Caesarean section at a wildlife hospital in Buckinghamshire after his mother was hit by a car


Lucy Davies, aged three, admires the autumn colours of the Japanese maples at Barthelemy nursery near Wimborne in Dorset


A farm worker holds a piglet and two of three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother last week at a zoo in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine...


...a mother pig agreed to nurse the three little tigers together with a dozen of its own piglets


A Siamese cat sits on a table before receiving free vaccinations in Makati City, east of Manila, Philippines

British Olympic diver Tom Daley opens an atraction at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida


A couple of three-week old male lion cubs are shown by owner of a game park in Abony, Hungary


Two-year-old dog Susi romps around in autumn leaves in Nuremberg, Germany


A young snowy egret sees its reflection in a window in Vacaville, California


Three eleven-week-old Siberian tiger cubs, Sayan, Altai, and Altay, are pictured with mum Nika at Howletts Wild Animal Park in Bekesbourne, Kent


Baby parrots sit in a federal police station in Rio de Janeiro. Federal police said a man was arrested while trying to smuggle 200 baby parrots


Penguins rescued off Brazilian shores are seen on a Brazilian Navy ship bound for Antarctica from Rio de Janeiro. Penguins arrive from the Antarctic Circle on ice floes that melt near Brazil's shores and the birds wash up on Rio beaches every winter


An East African Crested Crane is pictured at the animal orphanage in Nairobi's National Park


A firefighter examines one of two cats rescued from a fire in Corpus Christi, Texas. The kitten had minor injuries, including singed whiskers


A woman receives a snake massage at a spa in Talmei Elazar, Israel


Two four-week-old Persian leopard cubs are held at the Budapest zoo


Footprint, Fidget, Bruiser, Kate and Little Nicky: these five cute puppies are Britain's most endangered breed of dog. There are only 1,000 Glen of Imaal terriers in the world