Carbon Farming Could Play A Role In The Fight Against Global Warming
Imagine a new kind of farming. Not for food, or for fuel crops (corn, switch grass etc) but a kind of farming that traps atmospheric carbon dioxide and rebuilds lost soils. That’s carbon farming. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the University of California, Davis plan to make it happen.
Carbon farming could restor wetlands and fight global warming.
DWR has awarded USGS and UC Davis a three-year, $12.3 million research grant to take the concept of carbon-capture farming to full-scale in a scientifically and environmentally sound way.
Long-standing farming practices in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta expose fragile peat soils to wind, rain and cultivation, emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and cause land subsidence (the land actually sinks due to the loss of ground water). Industrial farming has been a disaster to this area, in order to capture or contain the carbon, farmers would “grow” wetlands. In doing so, they would begin to rebuild the Delta’s unique peat soils, take CO2 out of the atmosphere, ease pressure on the Delta’s aging levees and infuse the region with new economic potential.
Carbon-capture farming works as CO2 is taken out of the air by plants such as tules and cattails. As the plants die and decompose, they create new peat soil, building the land surface over time.
A map of the wetlands being restored
The USGS and DWR have already partnered on a pilot project that shows the promise of carbon-capture farming. On deeply subsided Twitchell Island in the western Delta, USGS scientists recorded elevation gains of more than 10 inches from 1997 to 2005 on two seven-acre test plots as cattails, tules and other plants grew, died and decomposed. The process leaves behind roots and plant remnants that compact into a material similar to what formed the peat soils initially.
Construction on the new wetlands, covering approximately 400 acres on a western Delta island, is scheduled to start in the spring of 2009.
“This project is an investment in California’s future that could reap multiple benefits over several decades - for California, the nation and the world,” said Dr. Roger Fujii, the project director and Bay-Delta program chief for the USGS California Water Science Center. “It will build on the results of the ongoing Twitchell Island Pilot Project and assess on a large scale the ability of re-established wetlands on Delta peat islands to sequester carbon, reverse subsidence and provide an economically sustainable land-use practice.”
“UC Davis scientists will play a major role in this project. We’ll be providing the scientific expertise necessary to gain a better understanding of the factors controlling carbon capture in these re-established wetlands,” said Dr. William Horwath, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources and the James G. Boswell Endowed Chair in Soil Sciences.
Added David Mraz, chief of DWR’s Delta-Suisun Marsh Office, “The developing carbon market holds great promise for regaining land elevation in the Delta. It could provide sustainable farming opportunities for Delta farmers and an economic incentive to sustain the existing Delta levee system.”
Throughout the Delta, oxidation of the soils from farming practices has resulted in land-surface subsidence - a steady loss of elevation. As a result, most of the farmed Delta islands are more than 20 feet below the surrounding waterways and are permanently protected by levees.
The falling land surface threatens the stability of the region’s levees, which in turn protect the Delta’s rich agricultural lands and the conveyance of much of California’s water supplies. Water flowing through the Delta’s levee-protected farmland provides fresh water to more than 25 million Californians and millions of acres of farmland in the Central Valley.
The research will develop wetland management approaches that maximize carbon sequestration and subsidence reversal. It will also evaluate and seek to minimize other potential environmental consequences, such as how to effectively manage any changes in mosquito populations. All in all carbon farming could have a positive effect across the planet as wetlands are re-established and regrown in order to trap carbon, return environments to a healthy state, and protect vital farm lands and water supplies.
This Is How Everyone’s Morning Commute Should Be
I know this is pretty much what mine looks like…
Green Driving Tips…
Did you catch the irony in that statement. If you are driving a car powered by anything other than solar/wind/renewable energy then it is impossible for you to drive green. Even then, do you really need such a big hunk of metal to be driving around in? But if you must drive, follow the tips above, or better yet walk, take public transport, or ride your bike.
Hat tip Maria Energia for the video.
BP Tells Me I’m Not Green Enough
I’m really, really sorry. I had no idea at all that I was living a terrible life, but it took those folks at BP to pull me back into the real world. According to their Greencurve there’s so much more I could be doing to make my life greener. Look at the graph (sorry “curve”) above and you can see I’m nowhere near “Aspire!” — whatever that means. I must be re-educated by BP.
Here’s what they say I should do to be greener (and my feelings):
“Try to travel when other people aren’t. This keeps you from wasting gas starting and stopping and can cut down your energy use considerably.”
(But I almost never drive — there was no option for going everywhere by foot, bus or train.)
“Wash your car at a car wash. 85% of car washes’ water is reclaimed and their systems are much more efficient than ours.”
(I never wash my car; the rain does it for me. It uses no energy and wastes no water.)
“For outdoor lighting, use solar. It’s easier to find than you might think (on most home and garden furnishings websites, do a search for “solar lighting”)”
(But…but…I don’t have any lights in my garden.)
“Start a recycling program in your neighborhood, local community center or school — anywhere a lot of paper is used.”
(Please sir, my council already do collect my recycling, and I don’t produce much waste anyway. And what about everything apart from paper?)
Gosh, how castigated I am feeling.
This is what is known as “conchoice” — consumer choice with the emphasis on the “con”. As I write in A Matter Of Scale:
Consumer choice would be far better entitled “Conchoice”, a term describing the true level of choice that individuals are provided with, should they find themselves within the consumer culture. Benjamin R. Barber puts it like this: “The apparent widening of individual consumer choices actually shrinks the field of social choices…For example, the American’s freedom to choose among scores of automobile brands was secured by sacrificing the liberty to choose between private and public transportation. This politics of commodity…offers the feel of freedom while diminishing the range of options and the power to affect the larger world.” The individual is being conned: there is no choice.
Look at the way you are currently living: you can “choose” between plasma, LCD, cathode ray tube or Internet TV, but not having a television is inconceivable to most people in the consumer culture; you can “choose” between shopping at Walmart, Aldi, Tesco, Carrefour or any other supermarket, but not using a supermarket is impossible for hundreds of millions of people who need to buy food and have no way of growing it themselves.
How much of your life was simply picked off the shelves of the Conchoice Mall, and how much of it came out of a conscious decision to live in that particular way?
I recommend you try out the Greencurve yourself, and have a think about the “choices” BP are presenting to you. This is not BP’s world, it is your world, and you can make your own choices, regardless of what a polluting oil giant might think. Tell them where to stick their “Greencurve”.
Slate’s Brendan I. Koerner On Colbert Report
Ha. Nice.
Pursuing Tar Sands And Other Non-Traditional Oil Sources Sure Sign Of Insanity
Exploitation of North America’s shale and tar-sand oil reserves could increase atmospheric CO2 levels by up to 15%, a new report from WWF-UK and the major UK financial group Co-Operative Financial Services (CFS) has warned.
Extraction of the projected 1,115 billion barrels of recoverable oil from unconventional fuel sources such as Alberta’s oil sands and Colorado’s oil shale, which involve much more energy intensive procedures for extraction than traditional oil reserves, would significantly increase global risks of dangerous climate change, the report said.
Unconventional Oil: Scraping the bottom of the barrel (pdf) reported that companies including Shell, ExxonMobil and BP have announced over $CAN 125 billion worth of development in Canada’s oil sands by 2015. Increasing oil prices are also increasing interest in unconventional oil sources has been given added impetus by rising oil prices.
“The extraordinary lengths some oil and gas companies go to in attempting to make the climate-hostile fuels somewhat less so should be re-directed to bringing forward low-carbon energy,” said Ian Jones, head of Responsible Investment at Co-Operative Investments, part of the CFS group. In other words, why bother spending billions of dollars on tar-sands when you could be putting up hundreds of thousands of wind turbines with that money?
“Most oil companies have hardly begun to factor in the externalities that are currently imposed on the environment.” Duh…they don’t give a shit about anything but making money. They don’t like wind energy because the fuel always stays the same price, free. They will make about the same amount of money every year from a wind farm. The price of oil on the other hand goes up and up and up and and up and up….
These externalities include mass deforestation, such as Alberta’s Boreal forests, which lie above 140,000 square kilometres of oil sands, and are now crisscrossed with seismic lines and open-cast mines.
This region, identified as a “life support system for the planet,” is home to 11% of global terrestrial carbon sinks, themselves necessary for mitigating the climate change.
Production of oil sands is also extremely water intensive, requiring three barrels of water to produce each barrel of oil. This is threatening the ecosystem of the Athabasca river by reducing flows to dangerous levels.
Canada’s indigenous communities are also concerned with water quality in former wetlands now featuring tailings ponds up to 50 square kilometres in size which can be seen from outer space. Only 5-10% of waste water is judged sufficiently non-toxic to be returned to waterways
Risks to investors
Scraping the bottom of the barrel outlines potential risks to investors from the high capital costs of sand and shale to oil projects, looming regulatory restrictions, the likelihood of litigation, environmental liabilities from tailing ponds and restoration requirements and reliance on unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage. Investors could end up with stranded assets,
The authors of the report themselves call for tighter regulations such as the Emissions Standards in place in California that, by prohibiting sales of fuels with high life cycle emissions, would effectively outlaw fuel extracted from tar sands and oil shale.
“Companies and investors claim to recognize the need to tackle climate change and support international efforts such as Kyoto. In oil sands we have an activity that is going against this imperative…it is time for investors to challenge this strategy” said James Leaton, WWF-UK’s senior oil and gas adviser.
“Shareholders should challenge those oil companies that fail to steward investment responsibly.” added Jones. The American public should also recognize that you don’t kick the oil habit by getting your drugs from a different source. Even if we could dig up enough tar-sands (assuming our eco-system holds out that long) to fuel our growing oil needs, we would still eventually run out. Even if it took 100 years, we would eventually run out, and have to find some other way to power our cars. The time is now to move over to an electricity based renewable energy driven energy system. Wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal should be the power sources of the future. Our earth can’t keep dealing with high carbon emissions, we must act now in order to avert economic, and ecological disaster.
Bee Baddies Being Beaten
(I would like to apologize for that title, but just couldn’t resist) One of the biggest world wide threats to honey bees, the varroa mite, could soon be about to meet its nemesis. Researchers at the University of Warwick are examining naturally occurring fungi that kill the varroa mite. They are also exploring a range of ways to deliver the killer fungus throughout the hives from bee fungal foot baths to powder sprays.
It well known that bees world wide are suffering serious declines and one of the causes of that decline is the varroa mite, Varroa destructor. Varroa mites feed on the circulatory fluid of honey bee pupae and adult bees, and in so doing they activate and transmit diseases which reduce the life expectancy of the bees and cause the colony to decline. Varroa has had a major impact in all countries where it has become established, for example it has caused losses of 30–50% of honey bee colonies when it first arrived in the UK and is now endemic. The loss of honey bees on this scale is affecting the pollination of commercial crops and wild plants. It originates in Asia, but has extended its range world-wide.
At present, the management of varroa is based on the use of chemical pesticides (bad), but the mites are developing resistance (even worse). Biological control technologies (the use of one organism to control another) could offer a way of moving pest management strategies away from a reliance on these synthetic pesticides but no natural insect or other enemies of varroa species have been identified on the varroa or on their bee hosts.
Now Defra-funded studies by researchers at the University of Warwick’s plant research group Warwick HRI, and Rothamsted Research has found some new natural enemies of varroa from other hosts.
University of Warwick researcher Dr Dave Chandler said:
“We examined 50 different types of fungi that afflict other insects (known as entomopathogenic fungi) to see if they would kill varroa. We needed to find fungi that were effective killers of varroa, had a low impact on the bees, and worked in the warm and dry conditions typically found in bee hives. Of the original 50 fungi we are now focusing on four that best match those three requirements.”
The team now hope to secure additional funding to further examine the effectiveness of these four fungi and to begin to consider the best ways of applying this weapon across the hive. A number of approaches are being considered including having fungal footbaths at the main entrances to hives. However the complex environment within bee hives means that more devious means of application may be needed.
Dr Chandler will be hosting the Society for Invertebrate Pathology (how awesome would those meetings be!) international conference at the University of Warwick, starting 4th August, where a special session is being held on honey bee health. The session will bring together some the world’s leading experts in bee colony collapse disorder to discuss the full range of its possible underlying causes.
I wish them, and their brave little Fungi, the best of luck.
So True…
more cat pictures
I know its a lol-cat, but you get wisdom in funny places some times. Happy Friday.
This Is Getting Old, Cape Wind Supporters Win Yet Another Legal Battle
In what is, by my count, the 6th (more here here here and here) legal victory against rich NIMBY landowners and their ilk, courts have approved the transmission cables for Cape Wind.
The Pawa law firm and the Global Warming Legal Action Project have scored a major victory in the Cape Wind case. Today the Energy Facilities Siting Board (”EFSB”) rejected nearly all of the arguments by the opponents of Cape Wind to dismiss the EFSB case filed by Cape Wind. The Pawa firm represents citizens group Clean Power Now in the case. Cape Wind filed the case seeking a certificate of environmental compliance after the Cape Cod Commission had denied Cape Wind a permit for its electric transmission line.
The EFSB ruled today, in favor of Clean Power Now and Cape Wind, that
(1) the Cape Cod Commission’s procedural denial of the permit was in fact a denial;
(2) the Commission’s denial was a final decision and therefore reviewable by the EFSB;
(3) that it would not remand the case to the Commission given the extensive evidence already submitted on the Cape Wind project;
(4) that the EFSB case would be limited to the transmission line, which crosses state waters - and would not address any impacts of the wind farm itself, which lies beyond state jurisdiction in federal waters; and
(5) that its review of the Commission’s decision would not be limited to the record developed by the Commission.(via)
You can read more about this here. While this is a fairly esoteric ruling about transmission lines and who gets to say what about them, the fact of the matter is that every single time the NIMBY (not in my back yard) rich yacht owners try to stop this project, the courts rule against them. The opponents of this environmentally sound, clean, and renewable energy project, have spent millions of dollars to make sure that the nations first off shore wind farm doesn’t happen. It looks to me like that might turn out to be a big waste of money.
Normal people understand the need for clean renewable sources of energy, the courts understand that Cape Wind is on sound legal footing, and politicians are quickly learning that global warming is the biggest threat to this nation that we have ever seen. All in all I see this as a very good sign for Cape Wind.
Blue Planet Run Foundation Brings Hope and Health to Kenyan Hospital
Long Term Success Implementing Water Projects Can Be Tricky.
Blue Planet Run Foundation is pleased to share a success story thanks to the Peer Water Exchange.
Annette Fay visited Blue Planet Run’s project in Kisii, a crowded town nestled on top of a hilly, green part of the Kenyan countryside. The news from the completed water project demonstrates just how immense the impact of safe drinking water can be on a community. Annette shares her story:
I met with the Hospital Superintendent Dr. Otomu, the District Water Engineer Mr. Orangi and the Head Nurse Mrs. Monayo, the latter two walked me through the project.
The 200 bed Kisii District Hospital serves 525,000 people directly and is a referral facility for an additional 2,430,000, as far south as the Tanzanian border and west as Lake Victoria’s south-eastern shore. The Kisii area has a high density of HIV/AIDS victims and is known for the prevalence of the deadly highlands malaria after the rainy season. The hospital’s water needs are 180,000 litres per day. Before the water project, if all systems were functioning properly, the hospital had 40,000 litres of water per day from the following sources: 15,000 from a borehole, 10,000 litres from rainwater harvesting and 15,000 litres from the municipal water system.
The system installed by the municipality, whose supply is shared with the rest of the community, was put in place 30 years ago when the the population of the area was a fraction of what it is today. Not only does the overtaxed municipal water system usually run dry, but the equipment frequently breaks down and the hospital goes long periods of time with only enough water to use for essential services. Outdoor latrines were used, sheets were not provided for beds, polluted river water was purchased from vendors to use for cleaning, and doctors and nurses had little water to clean their hands after treating patients. People were dying from complications because of the lack of water, patients often had to be referred elsewhere (after traveling long distances on public transportation) because operations couldn’t be performed without sufficient water despite the equipment available; the Hospital was not performing at the level it could because of its water problem.
Eight months ago, the Kisii District Hospital Water Project became functional – running water in the hospital! The project has been an incredible success, both for the hospital and the community. Part of the project was to construct water points at the source for the community and a washing bay for women who come to wash their clothes. Because water is stored and directed to the hospital only overnight, the community still uses the source throughout the day; there’s even an emerging market near the washing bay now. The water pump has functioned with no problems and is easily delivering the 180,000 litres of water the hospital needs daily. Visiting the water source, one can easily see why this is where people were collecting water for the hospital and why there are always so many people taking advantage of the water available: despite the capture of 180,000 litres overnight plus the all-day use of the community, there are still multiple streams all around – you even have to cross through a deep puddle to get to the water pump and storage tank!
Since the water project was completed eight months ago, the Kisii Hospital has been elevated to a Provincial Hospital. That means it is the referral hospital for the entire Kisii District, whereas before special operations would have been referred to a larger hospital. This is a huge improvement for many patients in the area, who already struggle to get to Kisii from their villages as they won’t have to travel any further.
The major roadblocks the project faces at this point are electrification and a piping network. The water pump is currently working on a generator and long-term maintenance will be more effective if it is operating through electricity. Also, water is not supplied to every ward in the hospital, but to the most central wards. In an ideal world, it would be available in every room.
Everyone at the Kisii District Hospital was very grateful for water: telling me how the hospital is better, how people aren’t dying like they were before, how happy they are, how it’s allowed the hospital to save up for renovations. Thank you Blue Planet Run! For a full report, please visit www.peerwater.org/projects/61. You can also click on the link back to the Project Application to read more about the initial situation and the dialog during the Review of the project.
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