Category: Energy/Environment

Birds Adapt to Global Warming with “Overlooked Flexibility”

(p. D3) More than a century ago, zoologist Joseph Grinnell launched a pioneering survey of animal life in California, a decades-long quest — at first by Model T or, failing that, mule — to all corners and habitats of the state, from Death Valley to the High Sierra.
. . .
In 2003, museum scientists decided to retrace Grinnell’s steps throughout the state to learn what changes a century had wrought. And that’s why Morgan Tingley, then an ecology graduate student at the university, found himself trekking through the Sierra for four summers.
Dr. Tingley wanted to know how birds had fared since Grinnell last took a census. Years later, the answer turned out to be a bit of a shock.
Of 32,000 birds recorded in California mountain ranges in the old and new surveys — from thumb-sized Calliope hummingbirds to the spectacular pileated woodpecker — Dr. Tingley and his colleagues discovered that most species now nest about a week earlier than they did 70 to 100 years ago.
That slight advance in timing translates into nesting temperatures about two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the birds would encounter had they not moved up their breeding time — almost exactly counterbalancing the two-degree rise in average temperatures recorded over the last century.
The scientists’ analysis, published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the birds’ temperature-rebalancing act could limit the exposure of eggs and fragile nestlings to dangerous overheating.
. . .
The study of 202 species showed that most of them are adapting to rising temperatures with “overlooked flexibility,” the scientists reported — unexpected hope for wildlife in an uncertain time.
. . .
Ecologists generally believe that birds adapt to rising temperatures by moving to higher elevations or heading north. They shift their nesting time for a different reason: to sync with food availability, like an early appearance of plump caterpillars or swarms of insects.
But in 2012, researchers found that about half of the bird species in certain regions of the Sierra essentially stayed put over the past century, not significantly extending their ranges to cooler elevations even though the climate was warming.
The new study offers a plausible explanation. If the birds lay their eggs earlier, they can stay in their centuries-old range, with no need to migrate to higher altitudes.
“Ecologists have really kept range shifts like migrating upslope separate in their minds from phenological shifts, such as nesting earlier,” said Peter Dunn, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who was not involved in the new analysis.
“The research makes you realize that birds can manipulate all sorts of things, not only spatially by migrating upslope but also temporally — shifting their nesting time in response to rising temperatures.”

For the full story, see:
Wallace Ravven. “Survival of the Shrewdest.” The New York Times (Tuesday, July 31, 2018): D3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 30, 2018, and has the title “‘California’s Birds Are Testing New Survival Tactics on a Vast Scale.”)

Entrepreneur Carr’s Philanthropy Harmed Mozambique

(p. C6) It is an old, old story. A wealthy man comes to town, promising change and a brighter future. He’s the expert. He knows best. Inevitably, it doesn’t exactly work out that way.
Stephanie Hanes, an American correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, spent three years watching one particular version of that fairy tale unfold in central Mozambique.
The wealthy man was Greg Carr. An Idahoan, Mr. Carr had made millions first by selling voice-mail systems and then by running Prodigy, an early internet service provider. At age 40, he turned to philanthropy . . .
. . .
In “White Man’s Game,” Ms. Hanes outlines, in a nonpolemical way, the long history of Western involvement in Africa’s wilderness.
. . .
Turning to the present day, Ms. Hanes takes World Wildlife Fund, Nature Conservancy and other Western groups–known as Big Green–to task for their conservation colonialism.
. . .
She . . . points out that they are a bit cynical. “The conservation industry mirrors the humanitarian assistance industry,” she writes, “with alarmist pledge drives, heart-stirring photos and admonitions to ‘act now!’–all to be repeated for the next grant cycle.”
. . .
It is clear from Ms. Hanes’s account that a complex interplay of social, political and economic matters affected Gorongosa, not just one man’s ambition. The imported elephants inevitably roamed outside the park and into nearby towns, damaging crops and perhaps killing a villager. Mr. Carr’s tree planting, a laudable goal on the surface, was seen negatively by the people there because, culturally, tree planting was a way of marking one’s territory. When visiting a prominent local leader, Mr. Carr arrived in a red helicopter, oblivious to the fact that, in Gorongosi culture, red is the color of violence. For locals, Mr. Carr was the latest in a long line of outsiders invading their land. He destabilized rather than restored.
In the West, Mr. Carr’s work catalyzed praise: a glossy piece on Gorongosa in National Geographic by the noted biologist E.O. Wilson, a profile in the New Yorker. But the reality on the ground was different. Few tourists came to Gorongosa, and a flare-up of civil-war tensions led to violence. Overall the 150,000 Mozambicans who lived in the district, according to Ms. Hanes, saw little measurable improvement in their lives. Park staff even tortured suspected poachers.
In the most powerful scene in the book Ms. Hanes observes Mr. Carr and his associates staring at a map of Mozambique and contemplating expanding the park borders to incorporate a vast swath of land so that animals could migrate again. They wanted to rewild central Mozambique. It was just another example of the “generations of white man standing around maps,” observes Ms. Hanes. They never mentioned the millions of people who lived in those lands.

For the full review, see:
James Zug. “The Do-Gooders’ Playground.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Aug. 5, 2017): C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 4, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Hanes, Stephanie. White Man’s Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden, and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017.

Floating Nuclear Power Plants May Be Cheaper, Greener, and Safer

(p. B5) MURMANSK, Russia — Along the shore of Kola Bay in the far northwest of Russia lie bases for the country’s nuclear submarines and icebreakers. Low, rocky hills descend to an industrial waterfront of docks, cranes and railway tracks. Out on the bay, submarines have for decades stalked the azure waters, traveling between their port and the ocean depths.
Here, Russia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but that critics call reckless.
The country is unveiling a floating nuclear power plant.
Tied to a wharf in the city of Murmansk, the Akademik Lomonosov rocks gently in the waves. The buoyant facility, made of two miniature reactors of a type used previously on submarines, is for now the only one of its kind.
Moscow, while leading the trend, is far from alone in seeing potential in floating nuclear plants. Two state-backed companies in China are building such facilities, (p. B5) and American scientists have drawn up plans of their own. Proponents say they are cheaper, greener and, perhaps counterintuitively, safer. They envision a future when nuclear power stations bob off the coasts of major cities around the world.
“They are light-years ahead of us,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the Russian floating power program.
Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear company, has exported nuclear technology for years, selling plants in China, India and a host of developing nations. But smaller reactors effectively placed on floats can be assembled more quickly, be put in a wider range of locations and respond more nimbly to fluctuating supply on power grids that increasingly rely on wind and solar.
The Russian design involves using submarine-style reactors loaded onto vessels, with a hatch near the bow to plug them into local electrical grids. The reactors will generate a combined 70 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 70,000 typical American homes. Rosatom plans to serially produce such floating nuclear plants, and is exploring various business plans, including retaining ownership of the reactors while selling the electricity they generate.

For the full story, see:
Andrew E. Kramer. “Drifting toward the Future.” The New York Times (Monday, Aug. 27, 2018): B1 & B5.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 26, 2018, and has the title “The Nuclear Power Plant of the Future May Be Floating Near Russia.” The online version says that the title of the New York edition version was “Rocking the Nuclear Boat.”)

Natural Gas Helps U.S. Reduce Carbon Emissions

(p. A11) BONN, Germany — Industrial emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to rise to record highs in 2017 after a three-year plateau, scientists said Monday [Nov. 13, 2017]. It’s a sign that the world is still far from achieving its goals to limit global warming.
. . .
. . . , after a brief dip last year, China’s emissions are projected to rise approximately 3.5 percent this year. Local governments invested heavily in infrastructure and construction projects to stimulate growth, while unfavorable rainfall patterns have reduced output from the nation’s hydropower dams, said Lauri Myllyvirta, who analyzes China’s energy trends for Greenpeace.
. . .
Much of the fall in American emissions has come as increasing supplies of natural gas, wind and solar power have driven hundreds of coal plants into retirement. .

For the full story, see:
BRAD PLUMER and NADJA POPOVICH . “Carbon Emissions, Once Flat, Are on the Rise.” The New York Times (Tuesday, NOV. 14, 2017): A11.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 13, 2017, and has the title “CO2 Emissions Were Flat for Three; Years. Now They’re Rising Again.”)

Affordable Methods for Countering CO2 in Atmosphere

(p. A13) A new study partly funded by Bill Gates has dramatically cut the estimated cost of removing CO2 directly from the air to as little as $100 a ton. According to the study, much of this expense could be recaptured by converting the CO2 into low-carbon motor fuel.
Assume California recovered 80% of its costs. For $500 billion a year, or 20% of state gross domestic product, California could solve the alleged problem for the whole world, reducing global emissions by half and meeting the widely touted goal of holding warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius according to prevailing climate models.
Too speculative? Too expensive? Many classic studies suggest that, at a cost as low as $2 billion a year, any highly motivated actor, even one with pockets less deep than California’s, could offset the entire warming effect of excess CO2 by distributing enough high-altitude sulfates or other aerosol particles to limit by 1% the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. Indeed, experts quietly acknowledge that, by reducing such particulates, our clean-air efforts have actually made our climate problem worse.

For the full commentary, see:
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. “If California Was Serious About Climate; Its pockets are deep enough to cool the planet if politicians believe their doom-mongering.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Sept. 1, 2018): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 31, 2018.)

The study, partly funded by Bill Gates, that is mentioned above, is:

Keith, David W., Geoffrey Holmes, David St. Angelo, and Kenton Heidel. “A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere.” Joule 2, no. 8 (Aug. 15, 2018): 1573-94.

“They Say ‘Yes,’ and We Pay the Price”

(p. A14) ELLENSBURG, Wash. — When a company from Seattle came calling, wanting to lease some land on Jeff and Jackie Brunson’s 1,000-acre hay and oat farm for a solar energy project, they jumped at the idea, and the prospect of receiving regular rent checks.
They did not anticipate the blowback — snarky texts, phone calls from neighbors, and county meetings where support for solar was scant.
. . .
The political power in Washington State, and the agenda for renewable energy and much else, comes from the liberal urban expanse around Seattle, and many people in conservative rural places east of the Cascades, like Kittitas County, chafe at the imbalance.
. . .
Opponents of the solar project have a shorthand line of attack: Seattle is pushing this.
“The wind farms aren’t located in the greater Seattle area, the wolves aren’t located in the greater Seattle area, the grizzly bear expansion isn’t slated for the Greater Seattle area, and the solar farms aren’t there either,” said Paul Jewell, a former county commissioner, ticking off highly debated initiatives that government officials have considered in recent years.
“They’re all in the rural areas,” said Mr. Jewell, who opposes the solar project. “And so there’s really a disconnect there — they say ‘yes,’ and we bear the burden. They say ‘yes,’ and we pay the price.”

For the full story, see:
Kirk Johnson. ” A Farm Country Clash Over Renewable Power.” The New York Times, Travel Section (Thursday, July 12, 2018): A14.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 11, 2018, and has the title “Solar Plan Collides With Farm Tradition in Pacific Northwest..”)

Resilient Wichita Zoo Flamingo Flies Free in Texas

Flamingo stands free and tall in Texas, nearly 13 years after escaping Wichita zoo. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) That can’t be right.

A flamingo? In South Texas?

Ben Shepard, in the first week of his summer internship with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, thought it must have been something else.

. . .

Mr. Shepard had the rare pleasure of spotting No. 492, an African flamingo that, for more than a decade, has shown you can still survive when no one gets around to clipping your wings.

. . .

In June 2005, on a very windy day in Wichita, a guest reported seeing two flamingos out of their enclosure. No. 492 and No. 347 had flown out; the staff had missed the signs that their feathers needed to be clipped again.

Each attempt to approach the flamingos spooked them. Soon they flew away to a drainage canal on the western side of Wichita, where they remained under observation of park officials for a week, Mr. Newland said.

They couldn’t get closer than 50 yards away from the birds, and were stumped on how to get them back. Perhaps they could try in the cover of night, using a spotlight to disorient them.
They never got the chance. July 3 brought a terrible thunderstorm. And on July 4 — Independence Day, . . . — the birds were gone.

. . .

But great fortune was ahead for No. 492. Soon after it arrived in Texas, it found an unlikely companion: a Caribbean flamingo that, Mr. Newland speculates, may have been blown into the Gulf during a tropical storm. They were seen together as early as 2006 and as recently as 2013.

“Even though they’re two different species, they are enough alike that they would have been more than happy to see each other,” he said. “They’re two lonely birds in kind of a foreign habitat. They’re not supposed to be there, so they have stayed together because there’s a bond.”

Though they’re often referred to as mates, no one knows the sex of either bird. And Mr. Newland said the fact that they’re roughly the same height suggests they’re likely to be the same sex.

. . .

“It’s less about animals escaping from a zoo than how resilient the animals on our planet are,” he said.

For the full story, see:

Daniel Victor. “Flamingo, After Cinematic Escape and Years on the Run, Is Spotted in Texas.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 28, 2018): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 27, 2018, and has the title “A Flamingo? In Texas? A Zoo Fugitive Since 2005 Is Still Surviving in the Wild.” Where the wording differs between versions, the quotes above follow the somewhat more detailed online version.)

History of Energy Shows Power of Human Ingenuity to Solve Problems

(p. 16) In this meticulously researched work, Rhodes brings his fascination with engineers, scientists and inventors along as he presents an often underappreciated history: four centuries through the evolution of energy and how we use it. He focuses on the introduction of each new energy source, and the discovery and gradual refinement of technologies that eventually made them dominant. The result is a book that is as much about innovation and ingenuity as it is about wood, coal, kerosene or oil.

. . .

Moreover, there is a familiar pattern when one energy source supplants another: As each obstacle is cleared, a new one appears. The distillation of Pennsylvania “rock oil,” for instance, established that it offered a superior mode of lighting, a discovery that immediately presented the challenge of producing such oil — then collected from places where it bubbled to the surface — in sufficient quantities. Similarly, the invention of the petroleum-fueled internal combustion engine required Charles F. Kettering and Thomas Midgely Jr. to resolve the pressing problem of “engine knock” that resulted from small, damaging explosions in the cylinders.

. . .

. . . , by the end one gets a sense of boosted confidence about the ability of technology and human ingenuity to solve even those problems that at first seem insurmountable.

For the full review, see:

Meghan L. O’Sullivan. “Power On.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, June 24, 2018): 16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 18, 2018, and has the title “A History of the Energy We Have Consumed.”)

The book under review, is:

Rhodes, Richard. Energy: A Human History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

It No Longer Pays to Recycle

(p. B1) Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway.
In recent months, in fact, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of American cities and towns — including several in Oregon — have gone to landfills.
. . .
(p. B5) Recycling companies “used to get paid” by selling off recyclable materials, said Peter Spendelow, a policy analyst for the Department of Environmental Quality in Oregon. “Now they’re paying to have someone take it away.”
In some places, including parts of Idaho, Maine and Pennsylvania, waste managers are continuing to recycle but are passing higher costs on to customers, or are considering doing so.
“There are some states and some markets where mixed paper is at a negative value,” said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, which handles 10 million tons of recycling per year. “We’ll let our customers make that decision, if they’d like to pay more and continue to recycle or to pay less and have it go to landfill.”
Mr. Spendelow said companies in rural areas, which tend to have higher expenses to get their materials to market, were being hit particularly hard. “They’re literally taking trucks straight to the landfill,” he said.

For the full story, see:
Livia Albeck-Ripka. “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not?” The New York Times (Thursday, May 31, 2018): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 29, 2018.)

China Will Fail to Corner the Lithium Market

(p. B12) Since emerging as an industrial superpower in the 2000s, China has repeatedly tried to lock up essential resources like iron ore and so-called rare earths. The latest example is lithium, a key battery element: . . . .
. . .
The reality is more mundane.
. . .
. . . it will take just $13 billion in investment to satisfy annual lithium consumption as of 2030, against more $100 billion for nickel and copper.
Even if only a relatively small amount of mining capital spending migrates from mainstays like iron ore into lithium over the next decade, supply probably won’t be a huge problem.

For the full story, see:
Nathaniel Taplin. “China Won’t Be Able to Dominate Lithium Mining Forever.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, May 18, 2018): B12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 17, 2018, and has the title “China Won’t Dominate Lithium Forever.” The last sentence quoted above appeared in the online, but not in the print, version of the article.)

Google Nurtures Cats That Eat Threatened Owls

(p. 1) MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Silicon Valley is booming, and longtime residents are being driven out everywhere. But only in Shoreline Park are the newcomers eating the natives.
A handful of burrowing owls live in this 750-acre wildlife and recreation area, deep in the grass. As the breeding season begins, they are among perhaps 50 left in Silicon Valley. A California species of “special concern,” burrowing owls nest in the ground. That makes them especially vulnerable.
Death strikes hard at Shoreline. The remains of an owl — a leg, a wing, a few scattered feathers — were found here in 2015, shortly after a feral cat was seen stalking it. Another owl was discovered dead near its burrow, and a third disappeared that year and was presumed killed. That was fully half the owls nesting in the park.
Environmentalists have been alarmed for a long time about the number of cats at Shoreline, but they could not determine where they were coming from. Gradually, public records requests and old-fashioned snooping uncovered a trail. It led southwest from the sun-burnished slopes of the park, up Permanente Creek and into the ever-expanding empire of Google.
Google never set out to threaten biodiversity in its front yard, of (p. 4) course. Like so many stories these days about Big Tech, this is a tale about how attempts to do good often produce unexpected consequences, and how even smart people (especially, perhaps, smart people) can be reluctant to rethink their convictions.
At Google, it is not so much that workers do not like birds as it is that they really love cats. There is an employee group called GCat Rescue that traps the cats around the so-called Googleplex. Kittens and friendly adults are put up for adoption. Less-friendly adult cats are neutered and released.
Google is famous for feeding its employees well, and the cats are no different. Every night, all night, dinner is served from cat-feeding stations. The cat community calls this approach “colony care.”
. . .
“Cats that are fed still hunt,” said Mr. Longcore, assistant professor of architecture, spatial sciences and biological sciences at the University of Southern California. “Even neutered cats and spayed cats hunt.” He added, “If you have an outdoor cat sanctuary, you can expect there to be consequences to the native wildlife.”

For the full story, see:
Streitfeld, David. “Google Doesn’t Hate Owls. It Just Loves Cats.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 27, 2018): 1 & 4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 26, 2018, and has the title “As Google Feeds Cats, Owl Lovers Cry Foul.” The online version says the print version appeared on May 6 on p. A17 of the New York Edition. My print version, as usual, was the National Edition.)