If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.
The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. And some 650,000 went online for the first time, every single day.
Perhaps the greatest calamity for anyone is to lose a child. That used to be common: Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27% of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4%.
“If you were given the opportunity to choose the time you were born in, it’d be pretty risky to choose a time in any of the thousands of generations in the past,” noted Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs the Our World in Data website. “Almost everyone lived in poverty, hunger was widespread and famines common.”
But … but … but President Donald Trump! But climate change! War in Yemen! Starvation in Venezuela! Risk of nuclear war with North Korea. …
All of those are important concerns, and that’s why I write about them regularly. Yet I fear that the news media and the humanitarian world focus so relentlessly on the bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction. A majority of Americans say in polls that the share of the world population living in poverty is increasing — yet one of the trends of the last 50 years has been a huge reduction in global poverty.
As recently as 1981, 42% of the planet’s population endured “extreme poverty,” defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10% of the world’s population now.
Every day for a decade, newspapers could have carried the headline “Another 170,000 Moved Out of Extreme Poverty Yesterday.” Or if one uses a higher threshold, the headline could have been: “The Number of People Living on More Than $10 a Day Increased by 245,000 Yesterday.”
Many of those moving up are still very poor, of course. But because they are less poor, they are less likely to remain illiterate or to starve: People often think that famine is routine, but the last famine recognized by the World Food Program struck just part of one state in South Sudan and lasted for only a few months in 2017.
Diseases like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis are on the decline, and global efforts have turned the tide on AIDS. Half a century ago, a majority of the world’s people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90% adult literacy. There have been particularly large gains in girls’ education — and few forces change the world so much as education and the empowerment of women.
You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. I get that. In addition, the numbers are subject to debate, and the 2019 figures are based on extrapolation. But I worry that deep pessimism about the state of the world is paralyzing rather than empowering; excessive pessimism can leave people feeling not just hopeless but helpless.
Readers constantly tell me, for example, that if we save children’s lives, the result will be a population crisis that will cause new famines. They don’t realize that when parents are confident that their children will survive, and have access to birth control, they have fewer children. Bangladesh was once derided by Henry Kissinger as a “basket case,” yet now its economy grows much faster than America’s and Bangladeshi women average just 2.1 births (down from 6.9 in 1973).
Yes, it’s still appalling that a child dies somewhere in the world every six seconds — but consider that just a couple of decades ago, a child died every three seconds. Recognizing that progress is possible can be a spur to do more, and that’s why I write this annual reminder of gains against the common enemies of humanity.
Climate change remains a huge threat to our globe, as does compassion fatigue in the rich world, and it’s likely that we will miss a U.N. target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. Meanwhile, here in the United States, Trump presents a continuing challenge to our institutions, and millions of families have been left behind and are struggling. We should keep pressing on all these fronts (the last one concerns me enough that it’s the topic of my new book), but we’ll get a morale boost if we acknowledge the backdrop of hard-won improvement.
“We are some of the first people in history who have found ways to make progress against these problems,” says Roser, the economist. “We have changed the world. How awesome is it to be alive at a time like this?”
“Three things are true at the same time,” he added. “The world is much better, the world is awful, the world can be much better.”
I also take heart from the passion so many — especially young people — show to make the world a better place. I recently published my annual “gifts with meaning” guide and suggested four organizations to support in lieu of traditional presents. Readers have so far donated more than $1.6 million to those organizations, saving and transforming lives at home and around the world.
So I promise to tear my hair out every other day, but let’s interrupt our gloom for a nanosecond to note what historians may eventually see as the most important trend in the world in the early 21st century: our progress toward elimination of hideous diseases, illiteracy and the most extreme poverty.
When I was born in 1959, a majority of the world’s population had always been illiterate and lived in extreme poverty. By the time I die, illiteracy and extreme poverty may be almost eliminated — and it’s difficult to imagine a greater triumph for humanity on our watch.
-- Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Single-use plastic ban becomes law on Oahu
Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Sunday signed into law one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastics, which will prohibit all single-use plastic plates, bowls, cups and service ware on Oahu by 2022.
Bill 40 was supported by environmental groups — including many college and high school students — who spoke of the long-term harm to the earth from continued plastic use. It was opposed by a broad spectrum of food industry and other businesses that said the bill is vague and requires too much too soon.
The bill’s effective date is Jan. 1, 2021, when plastic forks, knives and spoons would be banned while other types of service ware would be distributed to customers only upon request. The bulk of the prohibitions, however, will take place Jan. 1, 2022. That would include polystyrene and other plastic plates, bowls and other food ware, as well as the general sale of plastic products to food industry companies unless they have exemptions.
Bill 40 was supported by environmental groups — including many college and high school students — who spoke of the long-term harm to the earth from continued plastic use. It was opposed by a broad spectrum of food industry and other businesses that said the bill is vague and requires too much too soon.
The bill’s effective date is Jan. 1, 2021, when plastic forks, knives and spoons would be banned while other types of service ware would be distributed to customers only upon request. The bulk of the prohibitions, however, will take place Jan. 1, 2022. That would include polystyrene and other plastic plates, bowls and other food ware, as well as the general sale of plastic products to food industry companies unless they have exemptions.
Monday, December 09, 2019
the plastic problem
Since the 1950s, when the world was first introduced to the flexible, durable wonder of plastic, 8.3 billion metric tons of it has been produced. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, so technically, all of that tonnage is still sitting someplace on the planet. And a lot of it is in China.
That’s because when hundreds of countries around the world said they were “recycling” their plastic over the past few decades, half the time what they really meant was they were exporting it to another country. And most of the time, that meant they were exporting it to China. Since 1992, China (and Hong Kong, which acts as an entry port into mainland China) have imported 72 percent of all plastic waste.
But China has had enough. In 2017, China announced it was permanently banning the import of nonindustrial plastic waste. According to a paper published in June 2018 in the journal Science Advances, that will leave the world—mostly high-income countries—with an additional 111 million metric tons of plastic to deal with by 2030. And right now, those countries have no good way to handle it.
“We know from our previous studies that only 9 percent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled, and the majority of it ends up in landfills or the natural environment,” Jenna Jambeck, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s college of engineering who co-authored the study, said in a statement. ”Without bold new ideas and system-wide changes, even the relatively low current recycling rates will no longer be met, and our previously recycled materials could now end up in landfills.”
***
After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.
That’s because when hundreds of countries around the world said they were “recycling” their plastic over the past few decades, half the time what they really meant was they were exporting it to another country. And most of the time, that meant they were exporting it to China. Since 1992, China (and Hong Kong, which acts as an entry port into mainland China) have imported 72 percent of all plastic waste.
But China has had enough. In 2017, China announced it was permanently banning the import of nonindustrial plastic waste. According to a paper published in June 2018 in the journal Science Advances, that will leave the world—mostly high-income countries—with an additional 111 million metric tons of plastic to deal with by 2030. And right now, those countries have no good way to handle it.
“We know from our previous studies that only 9 percent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled, and the majority of it ends up in landfills or the natural environment,” Jenna Jambeck, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s college of engineering who co-authored the study, said in a statement. ”Without bold new ideas and system-wide changes, even the relatively low current recycling rates will no longer be met, and our previously recycled materials could now end up in landfills.”
***
After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.
But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.
***
By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans. PBS NewsHour takes a closer look at this now ubiquitous material, how it’s impacting the world and ways we can break our plastic addiction.
***
By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans. PBS NewsHour takes a closer look at this now ubiquitous material, how it’s impacting the world and ways we can break our plastic addiction.
Sunday, December 01, 2019
2019 U.N. Climate Report is bleak
With world leaders gathering in Madrid next week for their annual bargaining session over how to avert a climate catastrophe, the latest assessment issued by the United Nations said Tuesday that greenhouse gas emissions are still rising dangerously.
“The summary findings are bleak,” said the annual assessment, which is produced by the United Nations Environment Program and is formally known as the Emissions Gap Report. Countries have failed to halt the rise of greenhouse gas emissions despite repeated warnings from scientists, with China and the United States, the two biggest polluters, further increasing their emissions last year.
The result, the authors added, is that “deeper and faster cuts are now required.”
As if to underscore the gap between reality and diplomacy, the international climate negotiations, scheduled to begin next week, are not even designed to ramp up pledges by world leaders to cut their countries’ emissions. That deadline is still a year away.
Rather, this year’s meetings are intended to hammer out the last remaining rules on how to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord, in which every country pledged to rein in greenhouse gases, with each setting its own targets and timetables.
“Madrid is an opportunity to get on course to get the speed and trajectory right,” said Rachel Kyte, a former United Nations climate diplomat who is now dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “What the Emissions Gap Report does is take away any remaining plausible deniability that the current trajectory is not good enough.”
The world’s 20 richest countries, responsible for more than three-fourths of worldwide emissions, must take the biggest, swiftest steps to move away from fossil fuels, the report emphasized. The richest country of all, the United States, however, has formally begun to pull out of the Paris accord.
Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 1.5 percent every year over the last decade, according to the annual assessment. The opposite must happen if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change, including more intense droughts, stronger storms and widespread hunger by midcentury. To stay within relatively safe limits, emissions must decline sharply, by 7.6 percent every year, between 2020 and 2030, the report warned.
Separately, the World Meteorological Organization reported on Monday that emissions of three major greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — have all swelled in the atmosphere since the mid-18th century.
“We are sleepwalking toward a climate catastrophe and need to wake up and take urgent action,” said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, on a phone call with reporters Tuesday after the publication of the report.
Even if every country fulfills its current pledges under the Paris Agreement — and many, including the United States, Brazil and Australia, are currently not on track to do so — the Emissions Gap Report found average temperatures are on track to rise by 3.2 degrees Celsius from the baseline average temperature at the start of the industrial age.
According to scientific models, that kind of temperature rise sharply increases the likelihood of extreme weather events, the accelerated melting of glaciers and swelling seas — all endangering the lives of billions of people.
The Paris Agreement resolved to hold the increase in global temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit; last year, a United Nations-backed panel of scientists said the safer limit was to keep it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
There are many ways to reduce emissions: quitting the combustion of fossil fuels, especially coal, the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel; switching to renewable energy like solar and wind power; moving away from gas- and diesel-guzzling cars; and halting deforestation.
In fact, many countries are headed in the wrong direction. A separate analysis made public this month looked at how much coal, oil and natural gas the world’s nations have said they expect to produce and sell through 2030. If all those fossil fuels were ultimately extracted and burned, the report found, countries would collectively miss their climate pledges, as well as the global 2 degree Celsius target, by an even larger margin than previously thought.
A number of countries around the world, including Canada and Norway, have made plans to reduce emissions at home while expanding fossil-fuel production for sale abroad, that report noted.
“At a global level, it doesn’t add up,” said Michael Lazarus, a lead author of the report and director of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s United States Center. To date, he noted, discussions on whether and how to curb the production of fossil fuels have been almost entirely absent from international climate talks.
The International Energy Agency recently singled out the proliferation of sport utility vehicles, noting that the surge of S.U.V.s, which consume more gasoline than conventional cars, could wipe out much of the oil savings from a nascent electric-car boom.
“For 10 years, the Emissions Gap Report has been sounding the alarm — and for 10 years, the world has only increased its emissions,” the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, said in a statement. “There has never been a more important time to listen to the science. Failure to heed these warnings and take drastic action to reverse emissions means we will continue to witness deadly and catastrophic heat waves, storms and pollution.”
The pressure on world leaders to pivot away from fossil fuels and rebuild the engine of the global economy comes at a time when the appetite for international cooperation is extremely low, nationalist sentiments are on the rise, and several world leaders have deep ties to the industries that are the biggest sources of planet-warming emissions.
If there’s any good news in the report, it’s that the current trajectory is not as dire as it was before countries around the world started taking steps to cut their emissions. The 2015 Emissions Gap Report said that, without any climate policies at all, the world was likely to face around 4 degrees Celsius of warming.
Coal use is declining sharply, especially in the United States and Western Europe, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief. Renewable energy is expanding fast, though not nearly as fast as necessary. City and state governments around the world, including in the United States, are rolling out stricter rules on tailpipe pollution from cars.
Young people are protesting by the millions in rich and poor countries alike. Even in the United States, with its persistent denialist movement, how to deal with climate change is a resonant issue in the presidential campaign.
“The summary findings are bleak,” said the annual assessment, which is produced by the United Nations Environment Program and is formally known as the Emissions Gap Report. Countries have failed to halt the rise of greenhouse gas emissions despite repeated warnings from scientists, with China and the United States, the two biggest polluters, further increasing their emissions last year.
The result, the authors added, is that “deeper and faster cuts are now required.”
As if to underscore the gap between reality and diplomacy, the international climate negotiations, scheduled to begin next week, are not even designed to ramp up pledges by world leaders to cut their countries’ emissions. That deadline is still a year away.
Rather, this year’s meetings are intended to hammer out the last remaining rules on how to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord, in which every country pledged to rein in greenhouse gases, with each setting its own targets and timetables.
“Madrid is an opportunity to get on course to get the speed and trajectory right,” said Rachel Kyte, a former United Nations climate diplomat who is now dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “What the Emissions Gap Report does is take away any remaining plausible deniability that the current trajectory is not good enough.”
The world’s 20 richest countries, responsible for more than three-fourths of worldwide emissions, must take the biggest, swiftest steps to move away from fossil fuels, the report emphasized. The richest country of all, the United States, however, has formally begun to pull out of the Paris accord.
Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 1.5 percent every year over the last decade, according to the annual assessment. The opposite must happen if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change, including more intense droughts, stronger storms and widespread hunger by midcentury. To stay within relatively safe limits, emissions must decline sharply, by 7.6 percent every year, between 2020 and 2030, the report warned.
Separately, the World Meteorological Organization reported on Monday that emissions of three major greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — have all swelled in the atmosphere since the mid-18th century.
“We are sleepwalking toward a climate catastrophe and need to wake up and take urgent action,” said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, on a phone call with reporters Tuesday after the publication of the report.
Even if every country fulfills its current pledges under the Paris Agreement — and many, including the United States, Brazil and Australia, are currently not on track to do so — the Emissions Gap Report found average temperatures are on track to rise by 3.2 degrees Celsius from the baseline average temperature at the start of the industrial age.
According to scientific models, that kind of temperature rise sharply increases the likelihood of extreme weather events, the accelerated melting of glaciers and swelling seas — all endangering the lives of billions of people.
The Paris Agreement resolved to hold the increase in global temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit; last year, a United Nations-backed panel of scientists said the safer limit was to keep it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
There are many ways to reduce emissions: quitting the combustion of fossil fuels, especially coal, the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel; switching to renewable energy like solar and wind power; moving away from gas- and diesel-guzzling cars; and halting deforestation.
In fact, many countries are headed in the wrong direction. A separate analysis made public this month looked at how much coal, oil and natural gas the world’s nations have said they expect to produce and sell through 2030. If all those fossil fuels were ultimately extracted and burned, the report found, countries would collectively miss their climate pledges, as well as the global 2 degree Celsius target, by an even larger margin than previously thought.
A number of countries around the world, including Canada and Norway, have made plans to reduce emissions at home while expanding fossil-fuel production for sale abroad, that report noted.
“At a global level, it doesn’t add up,” said Michael Lazarus, a lead author of the report and director of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s United States Center. To date, he noted, discussions on whether and how to curb the production of fossil fuels have been almost entirely absent from international climate talks.
The International Energy Agency recently singled out the proliferation of sport utility vehicles, noting that the surge of S.U.V.s, which consume more gasoline than conventional cars, could wipe out much of the oil savings from a nascent electric-car boom.
“For 10 years, the Emissions Gap Report has been sounding the alarm — and for 10 years, the world has only increased its emissions,” the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, said in a statement. “There has never been a more important time to listen to the science. Failure to heed these warnings and take drastic action to reverse emissions means we will continue to witness deadly and catastrophic heat waves, storms and pollution.”
The pressure on world leaders to pivot away from fossil fuels and rebuild the engine of the global economy comes at a time when the appetite for international cooperation is extremely low, nationalist sentiments are on the rise, and several world leaders have deep ties to the industries that are the biggest sources of planet-warming emissions.
If there’s any good news in the report, it’s that the current trajectory is not as dire as it was before countries around the world started taking steps to cut their emissions. The 2015 Emissions Gap Report said that, without any climate policies at all, the world was likely to face around 4 degrees Celsius of warming.
Coal use is declining sharply, especially in the United States and Western Europe, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief. Renewable energy is expanding fast, though not nearly as fast as necessary. City and state governments around the world, including in the United States, are rolling out stricter rules on tailpipe pollution from cars.
Young people are protesting by the millions in rich and poor countries alike. Even in the United States, with its persistent denialist movement, how to deal with climate change is a resonant issue in the presidential campaign.
Friday, November 22, 2019
computer debates itself
The chamber hushed as the debate got underway at the Cambridge Union and the teams launched into their carefully crafted opening statements.
The topic - whether artificial intelligence would do more harm than good - was something each side had a big stake in because both were using the technology to deliver their arguments.
Cambridge University, home to the world’s oldest debating society, was the setting Thursday night for a demonstration of what the future might hold. IBM’s Project Debater, a robot that has already debated humans, was for the first time being pitted against itself, at least in the first round.
Artificial intelligence “will not be able to make a decision that is the morally correct one, because morality is unique to humans,” the computer system said in a synthetic and vaguely feminine voice.
“It cannot make moral decisions easily and can lead to disasters. AI can cause a lot of harm,” it continued. Artificial intelligence can only make decisions it has been programmed for and “it is not possible to program for all scenarios, only humans can."
Then, the machine switched sides, delivering the opposing team’s argument.
Artificial intelligence “will be a great advantage as it will free up more time from having to do mundane and repetitive tasks,” it said, its voice embodied by a blue waveform on a screen set into a two-meter-tall sleek black monolith-like pillar.
Audience members at the society, which has hosted notable figures including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates over its 200-year history, were spellbound by its first non-human guest.
The topic - whether artificial intelligence would do more harm than good - was something each side had a big stake in because both were using the technology to deliver their arguments.
Cambridge University, home to the world’s oldest debating society, was the setting Thursday night for a demonstration of what the future might hold. IBM’s Project Debater, a robot that has already debated humans, was for the first time being pitted against itself, at least in the first round.
Artificial intelligence “will not be able to make a decision that is the morally correct one, because morality is unique to humans,” the computer system said in a synthetic and vaguely feminine voice.
“It cannot make moral decisions easily and can lead to disasters. AI can cause a lot of harm,” it continued. Artificial intelligence can only make decisions it has been programmed for and “it is not possible to program for all scenarios, only humans can."
Then, the machine switched sides, delivering the opposing team’s argument.
Artificial intelligence “will be a great advantage as it will free up more time from having to do mundane and repetitive tasks,” it said, its voice embodied by a blue waveform on a screen set into a two-meter-tall sleek black monolith-like pillar.
Audience members at the society, which has hosted notable figures including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates over its 200-year history, were spellbound by its first non-human guest.
Saturday, August 03, 2019
U Must Have Antenna
[5/7/19] Saw this antenna on sale at Amazon and it had good ratings, so I decided to try it out. It think it was a $25 or $30 antenna and I got it for $15.45. [I no longer see the item being sold at Amazon -- but the 1byone antenna seems similar.]
This antenna comes with an amplifier, but I first tried it without it first.
My first attempt was to put the antenna above the hallway. That way it had better height than if I just put it next to the TV.
The first scan caught 18 channels plus 3 channels that were weak.
Then I plugged in the amplified and it caught only 9 channels.
Finally I tried extending the cable and put it by the couch near the window. That gave the best results catching 31 channels plus 4 weak channels.
A few weeks later [5/31/19], I hooked it up to the TV at the back of the house. It caught only 4 channels.
Here's the results:
CH hallway w/amp couch back
2-1 KHON-HD x x x
2-2 KHON-CW x x x
2-3 KHON-GT x x x
2-4 KHON-LF x x x
4-1 KITV-HD x x x
4-2 MeTV x x x
4-3 KITV-D3 x x x
4-4 Start TV x x x
4-5 H&I x x x
5-1 KGMB x
5-2 THIS x
5-3 Escape x
5-4 Bounce x
9-1 KHII DT x
11-1 KHET-1 w x
11-2 KHET-2 w x
11-3 KHET-3 w x
13-1 KHNL-DT x
13-2 K5 x
13-3 Ant TV x
13-4 Grit x
14-1 KWHE-D1 x x x
14-2 KWHE-D2 x x x
20-1 KIKU w
20-2 EVINE w
20-3 LAFF w
20-4 SonLife x
26-1 KAAH-D1 x x
26-2 Hillsng x
26-3 KAAH-D3 x x
26-4 KAAH-D4 x x
26-5 KAAH-D5 x x
27-3
32-1 KBFD-D1 x x x
32-2 KBFD-D2 x x x
38-1 KALO x
So I can get a good signal at my house, but it has to be at the front of the house, not the back.
Saw this video from Reviews.org on youtube comparing antennas from Amazon. The winner was the one from Vansky. It's currently selling for $22.99, so I'm tempted to try this next.
Then saw this video from Freakin' reviews on youtube. The $3 antenna was just about as the good as the more expensive models.
Saw this video from Reviews.org on youtube comparing antennas from Amazon. The winner was the one from Vansky. It's currently selling for $22.99, so I'm tempted to try this next.
Then saw this video from Freakin' reviews on youtube. The $3 antenna was just about as the good as the more expensive models.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
car makers strike deal with California
WASHINGTON — Four automakers from three continents have struck a deal with California to produce more fuel-efficient cars for their US fleets in coming years, undercutting one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive climate policy rollbacks.
The compromise between the California Air Resources Board and Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW of North America came after weeks of secret negotiations and could shape future US vehicle production, even as White House officials aim to relax gas mileage standards for the nation’s cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs.
Mary Nichols, California’s top air pollution regulator, said in an interview Wednesday that she sees the agreement as a potential ‘‘olive branch’’ to the Trump administration and hopes it joins the deal, which she said gives automakers flexibility in meeting emissions goals without the ‘‘massive backsliding’’ contained in the White House proposal.
In a joint statement, the four automakers said their decision to hash out a deal with California was driven by a need for predictability, as well as a desire to reduce compliance costs, keep vehicles affordable for customers, and be good environmental stewards.
The deal comes as the Trump administration is working to finalize a huge regulatory rollback that would freeze mileage requirements for cars and light trucks next fall at about 37 miles per gallon on average, rather than raising them over time to about 51 mpg for 2025 models — the level to which the industry and government agreed during the Obama administration. The proposal would also revoke California’s long-standing authority to set its own rules under the Clean Air Act, a practice the federal government has sanctioned for decades.
The White House argues that more lenient standards would lower the sticker price of vehicles and encourage Americans to buy newer, safer cars. But California has vowed to enforce stricter requirements to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and the auto industry itself has implored the Trump administration to try to find common ground with California.
Trump officials quickly rejected the idea of embracing the new deal as a blueprint for federal mileage goals, and said it was pressing ahead with its rollback.
‘‘The federal government, not a single state, should set this standard,’’ said White House spokesman Judd Deere in an e-mail.
Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Michael Abboud said of the agreement, ‘‘This voluntary framework is a PR stunt that does nothing to further the one national standard that will provide certainty and relief for American consumers.’’
And officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is co-writing federal tailpipe standards, noted in a statement that the administration’s proposal doesn’t prevent manufacturers from building more efficient vehicles if they so choose.
Under the new accord, the four companies, which represent roughly 30 percent of the US auto market, have agreed to produce fleets averaging nearly 50 mpg by model year 2026. That’s just one year later than the target set under the Obama administration, which argued that requiring more-fuel-efficient vehicles would improve public health, combat climate change, and save consumers money at the gas pump without compromising safety.
The share of the US auto market affected by the new terms could grow significantly if other automakers also join the deal. Last month, the Canadian government also pledged to align mileage requirements for its auto market with California rather than the Trump administration.
The compromise between the California Air Resources Board and Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW of North America came after weeks of secret negotiations and could shape future US vehicle production, even as White House officials aim to relax gas mileage standards for the nation’s cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs.
Mary Nichols, California’s top air pollution regulator, said in an interview Wednesday that she sees the agreement as a potential ‘‘olive branch’’ to the Trump administration and hopes it joins the deal, which she said gives automakers flexibility in meeting emissions goals without the ‘‘massive backsliding’’ contained in the White House proposal.
In a joint statement, the four automakers said their decision to hash out a deal with California was driven by a need for predictability, as well as a desire to reduce compliance costs, keep vehicles affordable for customers, and be good environmental stewards.
The deal comes as the Trump administration is working to finalize a huge regulatory rollback that would freeze mileage requirements for cars and light trucks next fall at about 37 miles per gallon on average, rather than raising them over time to about 51 mpg for 2025 models — the level to which the industry and government agreed during the Obama administration. The proposal would also revoke California’s long-standing authority to set its own rules under the Clean Air Act, a practice the federal government has sanctioned for decades.
The White House argues that more lenient standards would lower the sticker price of vehicles and encourage Americans to buy newer, safer cars. But California has vowed to enforce stricter requirements to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and the auto industry itself has implored the Trump administration to try to find common ground with California.
Trump officials quickly rejected the idea of embracing the new deal as a blueprint for federal mileage goals, and said it was pressing ahead with its rollback.
‘‘The federal government, not a single state, should set this standard,’’ said White House spokesman Judd Deere in an e-mail.
Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Michael Abboud said of the agreement, ‘‘This voluntary framework is a PR stunt that does nothing to further the one national standard that will provide certainty and relief for American consumers.’’
And officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is co-writing federal tailpipe standards, noted in a statement that the administration’s proposal doesn’t prevent manufacturers from building more efficient vehicles if they so choose.
Under the new accord, the four companies, which represent roughly 30 percent of the US auto market, have agreed to produce fleets averaging nearly 50 mpg by model year 2026. That’s just one year later than the target set under the Obama administration, which argued that requiring more-fuel-efficient vehicles would improve public health, combat climate change, and save consumers money at the gas pump without compromising safety.
The share of the US auto market affected by the new terms could grow significantly if other automakers also join the deal. Last month, the Canadian government also pledged to align mileage requirements for its auto market with California rather than the Trump administration.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
18 months (and counting)
Do you remember the good old days when we had "12 years to save the planet"?
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030.
But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.
The idea that 2020 is a firm deadline was eloquently addressed by one of the world's top climate scientists, speaking back in 2017.
"The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can't be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and now director emeritus of the Potsdam Climate Institute.
The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time.
"I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival," said Prince Charles, speaking at a reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers recently.
One of the understated headlines in last year's IPCC report was that global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C.
Current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit. Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5.
As countries usually scope out their plans over five and 10 year timeframes, if the 45% carbon cut target by 2030 is to be met then the plans really need to be on the table by the end of 2020.
What are the steps?
The first major hurdle will be the special climate summit called by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which will be held in New York on 23 September.
Mr Guterres has been clear that he only wants countries to come to the UN if they can make significant offers to improve their national carbon cutting plans.
This will be followed by COP25 in Santiago, Chile, where the most important achievement will likely be keeping the process moving forward.
But the really big moment will most likely be in the UK at COP26, which takes place at the end of 2020.
The UK government believes it can use the opportunity of COP26, in a post-Brexit world, to show that Britain can build the political will for progress, in the same way the French used their diplomatic muscle to make the Paris deal happen.
"If we succeed in our bid (to host COP26) then we will ensure we build on the Paris agreement and reflect the scientific evidence accumulating now that we need to go further and faster," said Environment Secretary Michael Gove, in what may have been his last major speech in the job.
"And we need at COP26 to ensure other countries are serious about their obligations and that means leading by example. Together we must take all the steps necessary to restrict global warming to at least 1.5C."
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
creating oxygen
from carbon dioxide.
Science fiction stories are chock full of terraforming schemes and oxygen generators for a very good reason—we humans need molecular oxygen (O2) to breathe, and space is essentially devoid of it. Even on other planets with thick atmospheres, O2 is hard to come by.
So, when we explore space, we need to bring our own oxygen supply. That is not ideal because a lot of energy is needed to hoist things into space atop a rocket, and once the supply runs out, it is gone.
One place molecular oxygen does appear outside of Earth is in the wisps of gas streaming off comets. The source of that oxygen remained a mystery until two years ago when Konstantinos P. Giapis, a professor of chemical engineering at Caltech, and his postdoctoral fellow Yunxi Yao, proposed the existence of a new chemical process that could account for its production. Giapis, along with Tom Miller, professor of chemistry, have now demonstrated a new reaction for generating oxygen that Giapis says could help humans explore the universe and perhaps even fight climate change at home. More fundamentally though, he says the reaction represents a new kind of chemistry discovered by studying comets.
Most chemical reactions require energy, which is typically provided as heat. Giapis's research shows that some unusual reactions can occur by providing kinetic energy. When water molecules are shot like extremely tiny bullets onto surfaces containing oxygen, such as sand or rust, the water molecule can rip off that oxygen to produce molecular oxygen. This reaction occurs on comets when water molecules vaporize from the surface and are then accelerated by the solar wind until they crash back into the comet at high speed.
Comets, however, also emit carbon dioxide (CO2). Giapis and Yao wanted to test if CO2 could also produce molecular oxygen in collisions with the comet surface. When they found O2 in the stream of gases coming off the comet, they wanted to confirm that the reaction was similar to water's reaction. They designed an experiment to crash CO2 onto the inert surface of gold foil, which cannot be oxidized and should not produce molecular oxygen. Nonetheless, O2 continued to be emitted from the gold surface. This meant that both atoms of oxygen come from the same CO2 molecule, effectively splitting it in an extraordinary manner.
"At the time we thought it would be impossible to combine the two oxygen atoms of a CO2 molecule together because CO2 is a linear molecule, and you would have to bend the molecule severely for it to work," Giapis says. "You're doing something really drastic to the molecule."
The apparatus Giapis designed to perform the reaction works like a particle accelerator, turning the CO2 molecules into ions by giving them a charge and then accelerating them using an electric field, albeit at much lower energies than are found in a particle accelerator. However, he adds that such a device is not necessary for the reaction to occur.
"You could throw a stone with enough velocity at some CO2 and achieve the same thing," he says. "It would need to be traveling about as fast as a comet or asteroid travels through space."
That could explain the presence of small amounts of oxygen that have been observed high in the Martian atmosphere. There has been speculation that the oxygen is being generated by ultraviolet light from the sun striking CO2, but Giapis believes the oxygen is also generated by high-speed dust particles colliding with CO2 molecules.
He hopes that a variation of his reactor could be used to do the same thing at more useful scales—perhaps one day serving as a source of breathable air for astronauts on Mars or being used to combat climate change by pulling CO2, a greenhouse gas, out of Earth's atmosphere and turning it into oxygen. He acknowledges, however, that both of those applications are a long way off because the current version of the reactor has a low yield, creating only one to two oxygen molecules for every 100 CO2 molecules shot through the accelerator.
Science fiction stories are chock full of terraforming schemes and oxygen generators for a very good reason—we humans need molecular oxygen (O2) to breathe, and space is essentially devoid of it. Even on other planets with thick atmospheres, O2 is hard to come by.
So, when we explore space, we need to bring our own oxygen supply. That is not ideal because a lot of energy is needed to hoist things into space atop a rocket, and once the supply runs out, it is gone.
One place molecular oxygen does appear outside of Earth is in the wisps of gas streaming off comets. The source of that oxygen remained a mystery until two years ago when Konstantinos P. Giapis, a professor of chemical engineering at Caltech, and his postdoctoral fellow Yunxi Yao, proposed the existence of a new chemical process that could account for its production. Giapis, along with Tom Miller, professor of chemistry, have now demonstrated a new reaction for generating oxygen that Giapis says could help humans explore the universe and perhaps even fight climate change at home. More fundamentally though, he says the reaction represents a new kind of chemistry discovered by studying comets.
Most chemical reactions require energy, which is typically provided as heat. Giapis's research shows that some unusual reactions can occur by providing kinetic energy. When water molecules are shot like extremely tiny bullets onto surfaces containing oxygen, such as sand or rust, the water molecule can rip off that oxygen to produce molecular oxygen. This reaction occurs on comets when water molecules vaporize from the surface and are then accelerated by the solar wind until they crash back into the comet at high speed.
Comets, however, also emit carbon dioxide (CO2). Giapis and Yao wanted to test if CO2 could also produce molecular oxygen in collisions with the comet surface. When they found O2 in the stream of gases coming off the comet, they wanted to confirm that the reaction was similar to water's reaction. They designed an experiment to crash CO2 onto the inert surface of gold foil, which cannot be oxidized and should not produce molecular oxygen. Nonetheless, O2 continued to be emitted from the gold surface. This meant that both atoms of oxygen come from the same CO2 molecule, effectively splitting it in an extraordinary manner.
"At the time we thought it would be impossible to combine the two oxygen atoms of a CO2 molecule together because CO2 is a linear molecule, and you would have to bend the molecule severely for it to work," Giapis says. "You're doing something really drastic to the molecule."
The apparatus Giapis designed to perform the reaction works like a particle accelerator, turning the CO2 molecules into ions by giving them a charge and then accelerating them using an electric field, albeit at much lower energies than are found in a particle accelerator. However, he adds that such a device is not necessary for the reaction to occur.
"You could throw a stone with enough velocity at some CO2 and achieve the same thing," he says. "It would need to be traveling about as fast as a comet or asteroid travels through space."
That could explain the presence of small amounts of oxygen that have been observed high in the Martian atmosphere. There has been speculation that the oxygen is being generated by ultraviolet light from the sun striking CO2, but Giapis believes the oxygen is also generated by high-speed dust particles colliding with CO2 molecules.
He hopes that a variation of his reactor could be used to do the same thing at more useful scales—perhaps one day serving as a source of breathable air for astronauts on Mars or being used to combat climate change by pulling CO2, a greenhouse gas, out of Earth's atmosphere and turning it into oxygen. He acknowledges, however, that both of those applications are a long way off because the current version of the reactor has a low yield, creating only one to two oxygen molecules for every 100 CO2 molecules shot through the accelerator.
Wednesday, May 08, 2019
Nature is essential
You may go your entire life without seeing an endangered species, yet the globe's biodiversity crisis threatens all of humanity in numerous unseen or unrecognized ways, scientists say.
A massive United Nations report this week warned that nature is in trouble, estimated 1 million species are threatened with extinction if nothing is done and said the worldwide deterioration of nature is everybody's problem.
"Nature is essential for human existence and good quality of life," the report said.
Food, energy, medicine, water, protection from storms and floods and slowing climate change are some of the 18 ways nature helps keep people alive, the report said. And it concluded 14 of those are on long-term declining trends.
"You destroy nature and it's going to bite you back," Duke University ecology Stuart Pimm said, pointing to how difficult it has been for China to recover from decades of forest loss.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report points to more than 2,500 wars and other conflicts over fossil fuels, water, food and land to show how important nature is.
"Protecting biodiversity means protecting mankind because we human beings depend fundamentally on the diversity of the living," UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in announcing the report in Paris.
Here are four ways humanity depends on nature, according to the report and scientists:
FOOD
Nearly all food comes directly from nature, said report co-author Kai Chan, an environmental scientist at the University of British Columbia. Even though overall the world is growing more food, pressure on crops from pollution, habitat changes and other forces has made prices soar and even caused food riots in Latin America, he said.
Pollinators across the globe, not just bees, are in decline. Three quarters of the world's food crops, including fruits, vegetables, coffee and cocoa, require pollination. The report said pollinator loss could cost the world $285 billion to $577 billion a year.
MEDICINE and HEALTH
About 70% of the drugs used to fight cancer "are natural or are synthetic products inspired by nature," the report said. About 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines.
George Mason University ecologist Thomas Lovejoy points to a single heat-thriving microbe that comes out of Yellowstone National Park's hot springs. Pieces of its genetic code are the key to a scientific technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that is used for medical, genetic and forensic tests and much of modern biotechnology.
"Nature underpins all dimensions of human health," the report said.
FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE
The world's forests and oceans suck nearly 6.2 billion tons (5.6 billion metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air each year, the report said. That's about 60% of what humans produce through burning fossil fuels.
Earth would be warming more and faster without forests and oceans, scientists said.
Climate change and biodiversity loss are equally huge environmental problems that make each other worse, report chairman Robert Watson said.
STORM PROTECTION
People can build expensive time-consuming sea walls to fight the rise of oceans from climate change or the same protection can be offered by coastal mangroves, the report said.
But mangroves are in trouble, Watson said.
"They often act as a nursery for fisheries basically," Watson said. "And they clearly help to protect land from severe weather events and storm surges from the sea."
The problem, he said, is that many mangrove systems have been converted to shrimp farms, leaving the land vulnerable to storm surges and devoid of biodiversity.
LIVING PLANET
People may think of biodiversity or endangered species as something detached from their daily lives. But those people don't understand that Earth functions as a "living planet" with many parts dependent on each other, George Mason's Lovejoy said.
"We're here in Paris. Can you experience Paris without nature?" asked report co-chairman Eduardo Brondizio of Indiana University. "Every place we turn here we see biodiversity exposed to us in the streets. When we open the tap here, we drink excellent water. When we look at the parks, when we look at the atmosphere here in the city, it's all about nature."
-- by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
A massive United Nations report this week warned that nature is in trouble, estimated 1 million species are threatened with extinction if nothing is done and said the worldwide deterioration of nature is everybody's problem.
"Nature is essential for human existence and good quality of life," the report said.
Food, energy, medicine, water, protection from storms and floods and slowing climate change are some of the 18 ways nature helps keep people alive, the report said. And it concluded 14 of those are on long-term declining trends.
"You destroy nature and it's going to bite you back," Duke University ecology Stuart Pimm said, pointing to how difficult it has been for China to recover from decades of forest loss.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report points to more than 2,500 wars and other conflicts over fossil fuels, water, food and land to show how important nature is.
"Protecting biodiversity means protecting mankind because we human beings depend fundamentally on the diversity of the living," UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in announcing the report in Paris.
Here are four ways humanity depends on nature, according to the report and scientists:
FOOD
Nearly all food comes directly from nature, said report co-author Kai Chan, an environmental scientist at the University of British Columbia. Even though overall the world is growing more food, pressure on crops from pollution, habitat changes and other forces has made prices soar and even caused food riots in Latin America, he said.
Pollinators across the globe, not just bees, are in decline. Three quarters of the world's food crops, including fruits, vegetables, coffee and cocoa, require pollination. The report said pollinator loss could cost the world $285 billion to $577 billion a year.
MEDICINE and HEALTH
About 70% of the drugs used to fight cancer "are natural or are synthetic products inspired by nature," the report said. About 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines.
George Mason University ecologist Thomas Lovejoy points to a single heat-thriving microbe that comes out of Yellowstone National Park's hot springs. Pieces of its genetic code are the key to a scientific technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that is used for medical, genetic and forensic tests and much of modern biotechnology.
"Nature underpins all dimensions of human health," the report said.
FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE
The world's forests and oceans suck nearly 6.2 billion tons (5.6 billion metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air each year, the report said. That's about 60% of what humans produce through burning fossil fuels.
Earth would be warming more and faster without forests and oceans, scientists said.
Climate change and biodiversity loss are equally huge environmental problems that make each other worse, report chairman Robert Watson said.
STORM PROTECTION
People can build expensive time-consuming sea walls to fight the rise of oceans from climate change or the same protection can be offered by coastal mangroves, the report said.
But mangroves are in trouble, Watson said.
"They often act as a nursery for fisheries basically," Watson said. "And they clearly help to protect land from severe weather events and storm surges from the sea."
The problem, he said, is that many mangrove systems have been converted to shrimp farms, leaving the land vulnerable to storm surges and devoid of biodiversity.
LIVING PLANET
People may think of biodiversity or endangered species as something detached from their daily lives. But those people don't understand that Earth functions as a "living planet" with many parts dependent on each other, George Mason's Lovejoy said.
"We're here in Paris. Can you experience Paris without nature?" asked report co-chairman Eduardo Brondizio of Indiana University. "Every place we turn here we see biodiversity exposed to us in the streets. When we open the tap here, we drink excellent water. When we look at the parks, when we look at the atmosphere here in the city, it's all about nature."
-- by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
Friday, April 19, 2019
it's alive! (a little bit)
In a study that raises profound questions about the line between life and death, researchers have restored some cellular activity to brains removed from slaughtered pigs.
The brains did not regain anything resembling consciousness: There were no signs indicating coordinated electrical signaling, necessary for higher functions like awareness and intelligence.
But in an experimental treatment, blood vessels in the pigs’ brains began functioning, flowing with a blood substitute, and certain brain cells
regained metabolic activity, even responding to drugs. When the
researchers tested slices of treated brain tissue, they discovered
electrical activity in some neurons.
The
work is very preliminary and has no immediate implications for
treatment of brain injuries in humans. But the idea that parts of the
brain may be recoverable after death, as conventionally defined,
contradicts everything medical science believes about the organ and
poses metaphysical riddles.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Oahu recycling update
The bad news from China took effect on New Year’s Day, 2018: Due to
growth, development and a mounting pile of its own recyclable waste, the
world’s second-largest economy was no longer in the market to buy
America’s trash as raw materials.
Suddenly, U.S. cities — which had benefited from an easy way to make recycling pencil out, given that for decades, China had been happy to buy up 40-50 percent of the recyclable materials — now had to come up with other solutions.
While the islands face a particular problem given the added factor of shipping costs, Oahu is not alone: Philadelphia, for example, has begun sending half of its recyclables to the incinerator.
The alternative contemplated by the City and County of Honolulu is a variant of that, though in milder form. Noting the falling values of recyclable glass, aluminum and paper now being collected in the city’s curbside recycling program, the city auditor in 2017 proposed redirecting much of it.
The waste, recyclable or otherwise, could go to the garbage-to-energy plant, H-POWER, to reduce the volume of what otherwise is bound for the landfill, according to the audit. The numbers are hard to dispute. From a high in 2011 when the sales value of the collected materials topped $2.5 million annually, it has dropped by more than half — and continues to fall.
Regardless, the notion of abandoning the curbside recycling effort quickly drew opposition from environmental groups, including the Sierra Club. Jodi Malinoski, policy advocate for the Hawaii chapter, said the organization does not want to see the city continually feeding its garbage to the plant, even if harvesting energy from it is a partial offset.
“It seems like we have to keep the fire going,” she said. “It’s time to cut that out.”
Rather than curbing the recycling, Malinoski said environmentalists favor finding a way to cut costs by reducing waste overall and by manufacturing a product with recyclable materials on-island rather than shipping it elsewhere.
There may be a point at which the city and the environmental groups can meet in the middle, said the city’s environmental services chief, and that discussion is likely to happen over the next several months.
***
***
Suddenly, U.S. cities — which had benefited from an easy way to make recycling pencil out, given that for decades, China had been happy to buy up 40-50 percent of the recyclable materials — now had to come up with other solutions.
While the islands face a particular problem given the added factor of shipping costs, Oahu is not alone: Philadelphia, for example, has begun sending half of its recyclables to the incinerator.
The alternative contemplated by the City and County of Honolulu is a variant of that, though in milder form. Noting the falling values of recyclable glass, aluminum and paper now being collected in the city’s curbside recycling program, the city auditor in 2017 proposed redirecting much of it.
The waste, recyclable or otherwise, could go to the garbage-to-energy plant, H-POWER, to reduce the volume of what otherwise is bound for the landfill, according to the audit. The numbers are hard to dispute. From a high in 2011 when the sales value of the collected materials topped $2.5 million annually, it has dropped by more than half — and continues to fall.
Regardless, the notion of abandoning the curbside recycling effort quickly drew opposition from environmental groups, including the Sierra Club. Jodi Malinoski, policy advocate for the Hawaii chapter, said the organization does not want to see the city continually feeding its garbage to the plant, even if harvesting energy from it is a partial offset.
“It seems like we have to keep the fire going,” she said. “It’s time to cut that out.”
Rather than curbing the recycling, Malinoski said environmentalists favor finding a way to cut costs by reducing waste overall and by manufacturing a product with recyclable materials on-island rather than shipping it elsewhere.
There may be a point at which the city and the environmental groups can meet in the middle, said the city’s environmental services chief, and that discussion is likely to happen over the next several months.
***
WHAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE BINS?
>> Green bins contain the green waste. That’s largely yard clippings: grass and tree and hedge trimmings. But it also can include plain vegetable and fruit waste unmixed with other ingredients.
>> Blue bins contain the recyclables, which can all be mixed together. Paper products are limited to newspaper, corrugated cardboard and white or colored office paper. Paper should exclude glossy paper or inserts, clips, envelopes and sticky labels. Glass bottles and jars, aluminum cans, metal food cans and plastic containers of types 1 and 2 (look for the triangle with a 1 or 2 inside, usually embossed on the bottom of the container).
>> Gray bins contain the regular trash — everything else suitable for general disposal, excluding anything hazardous. These are items such as plastic bags, Styrofoam, junk mail, magazines, cereal boxes and other chipboard, food cans and plastic containers other than those coded No. 1 or No. 2.
>> Green bins contain the green waste. That’s largely yard clippings: grass and tree and hedge trimmings. But it also can include plain vegetable and fruit waste unmixed with other ingredients.
>> Blue bins contain the recyclables, which can all be mixed together. Paper products are limited to newspaper, corrugated cardboard and white or colored office paper. Paper should exclude glossy paper or inserts, clips, envelopes and sticky labels. Glass bottles and jars, aluminum cans, metal food cans and plastic containers of types 1 and 2 (look for the triangle with a 1 or 2 inside, usually embossed on the bottom of the container).
>> Gray bins contain the regular trash — everything else suitable for general disposal, excluding anything hazardous. These are items such as plastic bags, Styrofoam, junk mail, magazines, cereal boxes and other chipboard, food cans and plastic containers other than those coded No. 1 or No. 2.
***
WHO GETS IT, AND WHERE DOES IT GO?
>> Green waste goes to Hawaiian Earth Recycling in Wahiawa, which processes it into mulch and soil amendments such as compost.
>> Mixed recyclables are screened, separated and packed for shipping at the RRR Recycling plant at Campbell Industrial Park. According to its website: Corrugated cardboard and newspaper are sent largely to Asia to be remade into more cardboard, brown paper bags, more newspaper, wrapping paper and molded packaging. Aluminum cans are shipped to the mainland to be reprocessed into new aluminum cans and other products; glass bottles may be crushed and used as construction backfill locally, but much of it is shipped to the mainland to be melted into new glass products; plastics are shipped to the mainland or Asia to be remanufactured.
>> Trash largely goes to H-POWER to be burned for the heat that drives electrical generators; what can’t be incinerated goes to the landfill.
>> Green waste goes to Hawaiian Earth Recycling in Wahiawa, which processes it into mulch and soil amendments such as compost.
>> Mixed recyclables are screened, separated and packed for shipping at the RRR Recycling plant at Campbell Industrial Park. According to its website: Corrugated cardboard and newspaper are sent largely to Asia to be remade into more cardboard, brown paper bags, more newspaper, wrapping paper and molded packaging. Aluminum cans are shipped to the mainland to be reprocessed into new aluminum cans and other products; glass bottles may be crushed and used as construction backfill locally, but much of it is shipped to the mainland to be melted into new glass products; plastics are shipped to the mainland or Asia to be remanufactured.
>> Trash largely goes to H-POWER to be burned for the heat that drives electrical generators; what can’t be incinerated goes to the landfill.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
How we stopped climate change (in 31 years)
we're unleashing our imagination and exploring a dream, a possible future in which we're bringing global warming to a halt. It's a world in
which greenhouse emissions have ended.
Mass Electrification (Batteries Hold The Power)
(Editor's note: Each story has two sections, the first reflecting the present and the second imagining the world of 2050.)
2019: I went looking for people who've mapped out this world without greenhouse emissions. I found them in Silicon Valley.
Sila Kiliccote is an engineer. The back deck of her house, high up in the hills, overlooks Cupertino. Apple's circular headquarters is hidden in the morning mist. It's a long way from Istanbul, in Turkey, where she grew up; a great place to conjure up future worlds.
"Maybe you'd like some coffee?" Kiliccote says.
Her coffee machine is powered by solar panels on the roof. So is her laptop and her Wi-Fi.
"Everything runs on electricity in this house," she says.
This is the foundation of a zero-carbon world: Electricity that comes from clean sources, mainly the sun and the wind, cheap and increasingly abundant.
Today, it powers this house; tomorrow, it could drive the world.
***
2050: The first step was electric cars. That was actually pretty easy
"By 2025, battery technology got cheaper," she says. Electric cars were no longer more expensive. "At that point there was a massive shift to electric vehicles, because they were quieter, and cleaner, and [required] less maintenance. No oil change! Yippee! You know?"
Heating and cooling in homes and office buildings have gone electric, too. Gas-burning furnaces have been replaced with electric-power like heat pumps.
We needed more electricity to power all this right when we were shutting down power plants that burned coal and gas. It took a massive increase in power from solar and wind farms. They now cover millions of acres in the U.S., 10 times more land than they did in 2020. Huge electrical transmission lines share electricity between North and South America. Europe is connected to vast solar installations in the Sahara desert, which means that sub-Saharan Africa also has access to cheap power.
"It just changed Africa," Kiliccote says. "It actually fueled the economies of Africa."
***
The Urbanization Of Everything (A Desire Named Streetcars)
2019: I'm taking a walk through downtown Toronto, in Canada, with Jennifer Keesmaat, the city's former chief planner.
Keesmaat wants me to see one particular street. King Street. It's the seed of a zero-carbon future, she says.
King Street has a little bit of everything: glass-walled office buildings, theaters, old brick warehouses.
Two years ago, a new set of traffic rules went into effect here. "Basically, what we've done is, we've limited through-traffic for cars," Keesmaat says. It forced cars away from King Street and launched a whole cascade of changes.
The streetcars that run down the middle of King Street weren't stuck in traffic anymore.
They became the best way to get across town at rush hour. "The volume of people being moved is astronomical!" Keesmaat says, as one rolls by. The streetcars, of course, are powered by electricity, and one passes every two or three minutes.
Meanwhile, thousands of people have been moving into this downtown neighborhood, buying condos and renting apartments. Keesmaat knows one of them. He's the father of one of her friends.
"He said to me a few weeks ago, he thinks he takes out his car about once every two weeks," Keesmaat says. He walks to shops, restaurants and basketball games. His neighbors walk to jobs in the financial district right down the street. He's not heating a big free-standing house, either.
He has cut his energy use, and his greenhouse emissions, dramatically.
"That wasn't the driver for him," Keesmaat says. "He didn't say, 'How do I in fact live smaller?" It just happened naturally in this new urban geography.
2050: At this point, Keesmaat and I open up our minds and take a leap into a world that could be. Greenhouse gas emissions have dropped to zero.
How did we do it? By gradually reshaping our cities so that they look more like this neighborhood, with lots of people living close together, within walking distance of many of the things they need.
Keesmaat can already see this city in her mind, and describe it. "The vast majority of streets have been pedestrianized; that's how people get around, by walking down the street," she says.
"What has happened to the sprawling suburbs?" I ask. "Are people living there? How are they getting around?"
"Some of the large homes haven't changed at all," Keesmaat says. They've just been turned into multifamily units." Other free-standing houses that once lined suburban cul-de-sacs have disappeared; each one has been replaced with a building that contains five or six homes. With the local population booming, those neighborhoods also attracted shops and offices. Suburban sprawl morphed into urban density.
Cars have mostly disappeared. "There are cars, but people don't own cars," Keesmaat says. "Because a car is something that you use occasionally when you need it." Streetcars and buses go practically everywhere in the city now, and you rarely have to wait more than a couple of minutes to catch one. Fast buses and trains connect towns. For other destinations, there's car-sharing.
And it wasn't just technology, Hoornweg says. Over the past three decades, from 2020 to 2050, a huge cultural shift has taken place.
Just one example: In Toronto, the sharing economy that started decades ago with Uber and Airbnb is everywhere now. "Sharing rides, sharing tools, sharing somebody to look after your dog when you're not there."
Yes, we apparently still have dogs in 2050.
In part, people are forced to share things; cars are scarce and homes are smaller. (Scores of home builders went belly-up in the 2030s when millions of people suddenly decided that big houses weren't just expensive; they were lonely, too.)
But the scale of zero-carbon life also makes it easier to share. We're living closer together and run into neighbors all the time. "We have more acquaintances — somebody we met in our ride pool or car pool or whatever," Hoornweg says. "There's no better way to [meet your neighbors] than sitting in a [shared] car and you can't get away from them for 20 minutes or whatever."
Some people hated losing their yards and their solitary commutes at first. Others loved the changes. Eventually, Hoornweg says, it just became normal. People stopped talking about it.
Life now goes on as it always did. But there's one huge difference. We're no longer heating up the planet.
Mass Electrification (Batteries Hold The Power)
(Editor's note: Each story has two sections, the first reflecting the present and the second imagining the world of 2050.)
2019: I went looking for people who've mapped out this world without greenhouse emissions. I found them in Silicon Valley.
Sila Kiliccote is an engineer. The back deck of her house, high up in the hills, overlooks Cupertino. Apple's circular headquarters is hidden in the morning mist. It's a long way from Istanbul, in Turkey, where she grew up; a great place to conjure up future worlds.
"Maybe you'd like some coffee?" Kiliccote says.
Her coffee machine is powered by solar panels on the roof. So is her laptop and her Wi-Fi.
"Everything runs on electricity in this house," she says.
This is the foundation of a zero-carbon world: Electricity that comes from clean sources, mainly the sun and the wind, cheap and increasingly abundant.
Today, it powers this house; tomorrow, it could drive the world.
***
2050: The first step was electric cars. That was actually pretty easy
"By 2025, battery technology got cheaper," she says. Electric cars were no longer more expensive. "At that point there was a massive shift to electric vehicles, because they were quieter, and cleaner, and [required] less maintenance. No oil change! Yippee! You know?"
Heating and cooling in homes and office buildings have gone electric, too. Gas-burning furnaces have been replaced with electric-power like heat pumps.
We needed more electricity to power all this right when we were shutting down power plants that burned coal and gas. It took a massive increase in power from solar and wind farms. They now cover millions of acres in the U.S., 10 times more land than they did in 2020. Huge electrical transmission lines share electricity between North and South America. Europe is connected to vast solar installations in the Sahara desert, which means that sub-Saharan Africa also has access to cheap power.
"It just changed Africa," Kiliccote says. "It actually fueled the economies of Africa."
***
The Urbanization Of Everything (A Desire Named Streetcars)
2019: I'm taking a walk through downtown Toronto, in Canada, with Jennifer Keesmaat, the city's former chief planner.
Keesmaat wants me to see one particular street. King Street. It's the seed of a zero-carbon future, she says.
King Street has a little bit of everything: glass-walled office buildings, theaters, old brick warehouses.
Two years ago, a new set of traffic rules went into effect here. "Basically, what we've done is, we've limited through-traffic for cars," Keesmaat says. It forced cars away from King Street and launched a whole cascade of changes.
The streetcars that run down the middle of King Street weren't stuck in traffic anymore.
They became the best way to get across town at rush hour. "The volume of people being moved is astronomical!" Keesmaat says, as one rolls by. The streetcars, of course, are powered by electricity, and one passes every two or three minutes.
Meanwhile, thousands of people have been moving into this downtown neighborhood, buying condos and renting apartments. Keesmaat knows one of them. He's the father of one of her friends.
"He said to me a few weeks ago, he thinks he takes out his car about once every two weeks," Keesmaat says. He walks to shops, restaurants and basketball games. His neighbors walk to jobs in the financial district right down the street. He's not heating a big free-standing house, either.
He has cut his energy use, and his greenhouse emissions, dramatically.
"That wasn't the driver for him," Keesmaat says. "He didn't say, 'How do I in fact live smaller?" It just happened naturally in this new urban geography.
2050: At this point, Keesmaat and I open up our minds and take a leap into a world that could be. Greenhouse gas emissions have dropped to zero.
How did we do it? By gradually reshaping our cities so that they look more like this neighborhood, with lots of people living close together, within walking distance of many of the things they need.
Keesmaat can already see this city in her mind, and describe it. "The vast majority of streets have been pedestrianized; that's how people get around, by walking down the street," she says.
"What has happened to the sprawling suburbs?" I ask. "Are people living there? How are they getting around?"
"Some of the large homes haven't changed at all," Keesmaat says. They've just been turned into multifamily units." Other free-standing houses that once lined suburban cul-de-sacs have disappeared; each one has been replaced with a building that contains five or six homes. With the local population booming, those neighborhoods also attracted shops and offices. Suburban sprawl morphed into urban density.
Cars have mostly disappeared. "There are cars, but people don't own cars," Keesmaat says. "Because a car is something that you use occasionally when you need it." Streetcars and buses go practically everywhere in the city now, and you rarely have to wait more than a couple of minutes to catch one. Fast buses and trains connect towns. For other destinations, there's car-sharing.
And it wasn't just technology, Hoornweg says. Over the past three decades, from 2020 to 2050, a huge cultural shift has taken place.
Just one example: In Toronto, the sharing economy that started decades ago with Uber and Airbnb is everywhere now. "Sharing rides, sharing tools, sharing somebody to look after your dog when you're not there."
Yes, we apparently still have dogs in 2050.
In part, people are forced to share things; cars are scarce and homes are smaller. (Scores of home builders went belly-up in the 2030s when millions of people suddenly decided that big houses weren't just expensive; they were lonely, too.)
But the scale of zero-carbon life also makes it easier to share. We're living closer together and run into neighbors all the time. "We have more acquaintances — somebody we met in our ride pool or car pool or whatever," Hoornweg says. "There's no better way to [meet your neighbors] than sitting in a [shared] car and you can't get away from them for 20 minutes or whatever."
Some people hated losing their yards and their solitary commutes at first. Others loved the changes. Eventually, Hoornweg says, it just became normal. People stopped talking about it.
Life now goes on as it always did. But there's one huge difference. We're no longer heating up the planet.
Monday, February 25, 2019
global warming, what are the chances?
OSLO (Reuters) - Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a
“gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in
greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on
Monday.
“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.
They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.
Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.
Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.
“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”
Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.
U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.
Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.
They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.
Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.
Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.
“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”
Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.
U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.
Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
artificial leaves
One can not help but marvel at the ingenuity of nature. Leaves, for
instance, do an incredible job of converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into oxygen, making a better planet for us all.
Impressively, researchers have successfully copied nature and created artificial leaves that work just as well or even better than real ones. These engineered leaves mimic photosynthesis effectively; however, they have one caveat. So far, they only work in labs.
Impressively, researchers have successfully copied nature and created artificial leaves that work just as well or even better than real ones. These engineered leaves mimic photosynthesis effectively; however, they have one caveat. So far, they only work in labs.
Because they use pure, pressurized carbon
dioxide from tanks, these little marvels of engineering could not be
taken outside in the real world where they could help with reducing CO2,
until now.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have invented a solution that could see artificial leaves be used in the real world. Better yet, their leaves would be 10 times more effective at converting CO2 than real ones.
"So far, all designs for artificial leaves that have been tested in the lab use carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks. In order to implement successfully in the real world, these devices need to be able to draw carbon dioxide from much more dilute sources, such as air and flue gas, which is the gas given off by coal-burning power plants," said Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering in the UIC College of Engineering and corresponding author on the paper.
To solve this dilemma, Singh and his team have devised an artificial semi-permeable membrane that would allow water to evaporate when hit by sunlight. When this occurs the water would also pull in carbon dioxide from the air.
Then, an artificial photosynthetic unit would convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen. The carbon monoxide would be collected and used in the development of synthetic fuels. The oxygen, however, could be released back into the environment where it is very much needed.
"By enveloping traditional artificial leaf technology inside this specialized membrane, the whole unit is able to function outside, like a natural leaf," Singh said.
"So far, all designs for artificial leaves that have been tested in the lab use carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks. In order to implement successfully in the real world, these devices need to be able to draw carbon dioxide from much more dilute sources, such as air and flue gas, which is the gas given off by coal-burning power plants," said Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering in the UIC College of Engineering and corresponding author on the paper.
To solve this dilemma, Singh and his team have devised an artificial semi-permeable membrane that would allow water to evaporate when hit by sunlight. When this occurs the water would also pull in carbon dioxide from the air.
Then, an artificial photosynthetic unit would convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen. The carbon monoxide would be collected and used in the development of synthetic fuels. The oxygen, however, could be released back into the environment where it is very much needed.
"By enveloping traditional artificial leaf technology inside this specialized membrane, the whole unit is able to function outside, like a natural leaf," Singh said.
Sunday, February 03, 2019
stop buying water
Like most people, I’m frustrated over the plastic pollution problem and
wonder if anything I do will make a difference. So last week Craig and I
met after work at Hanauma Bay to attend a talk given by a speaker
representing Plastic Free Hawaii, a branch of the Kokua Hawaii
Foundation started by musician Jack Johnson and his wife, Kim. The
charitable organization is dedicated to environmental education, one
being a program to reduce our consumption of single-use plastic.
And there I sat with my Plastic Free Hawaii bag full of single-use plastic. I had stopped at a grocery store for our dinner of sushi and drinks.
The subjects of plastic use, recycling, landfills, fishing gear and burning trash for electricity are so complex, and so biased, that after listening to the Hanauma Bay talk and spending hours on the internet, I’m still not convinced of the best way to deal with our island trash.
I am, however, convinced of one thing: We must stop buying drinking water in plastic bottles.
In one of the most successful marketing rip-offs of our lifetime, corporations have convinced people they need to buy water. Bottling companies have also persuaded people that to be healthy they should drink water all day long in substantial quantities.
The doctors I know think that the advertising to drink more (meaning buy more) water has caused people to be obsessed about dehydration. Feeling thirsty, they tell me, is not harmful. Pay attention to this natural drive, and when it happens, drink something.
A mind-boggling 50 billion plastic bottles of water are sold in the U.S. each year. That’s just one number I chose for this column, but the internet has dozens of websites offering nearly any drinking water statistic you prefer to believe.
I prefer to believe that Hawaii’s tap water is of high quality. That’s why I was so angry recently when I heard a vendor at the Honolulu airport tell a visitor that she needed to buy a bottle of water to go with her sandwich because you can’t drink tap water in Hawaii.
Hawaii has some of the purest water in the country. The vendor told me, though, he doesn’t believe that.
If you don’t trust government reports or scientific studies, or don’t like the taste of your water, install a filter on your kitchen faucet. If you prefer sparkling water, buy a Soda Stream machine that makes it.
The ever-changing pluses and minuses of recycling, HPOWER, packaging, waste dumps and drinking water are hard to sort out in our overcrowded, throw-away world. But to me there’s no question about buying water. This swindle of the century litters oceans, fouls beaches, fills trash cans and stokes fears of illness.
What with packaging as it is today, it’s nearly impossible to not buy plastic. Not buying water, though, and spreading the word, is one big thing we can do to help.
It’s one more reason to love visiting, and living in, Hawaii. It’s safe to drink the water.
-- Susan Scott, Ocean Watch, Star Advertiser, 1/19/19
And there I sat with my Plastic Free Hawaii bag full of single-use plastic. I had stopped at a grocery store for our dinner of sushi and drinks.
The subjects of plastic use, recycling, landfills, fishing gear and burning trash for electricity are so complex, and so biased, that after listening to the Hanauma Bay talk and spending hours on the internet, I’m still not convinced of the best way to deal with our island trash.
I am, however, convinced of one thing: We must stop buying drinking water in plastic bottles.
In one of the most successful marketing rip-offs of our lifetime, corporations have convinced people they need to buy water. Bottling companies have also persuaded people that to be healthy they should drink water all day long in substantial quantities.
The doctors I know think that the advertising to drink more (meaning buy more) water has caused people to be obsessed about dehydration. Feeling thirsty, they tell me, is not harmful. Pay attention to this natural drive, and when it happens, drink something.
A mind-boggling 50 billion plastic bottles of water are sold in the U.S. each year. That’s just one number I chose for this column, but the internet has dozens of websites offering nearly any drinking water statistic you prefer to believe.
I prefer to believe that Hawaii’s tap water is of high quality. That’s why I was so angry recently when I heard a vendor at the Honolulu airport tell a visitor that she needed to buy a bottle of water to go with her sandwich because you can’t drink tap water in Hawaii.
Hawaii has some of the purest water in the country. The vendor told me, though, he doesn’t believe that.
If you don’t trust government reports or scientific studies, or don’t like the taste of your water, install a filter on your kitchen faucet. If you prefer sparkling water, buy a Soda Stream machine that makes it.
The ever-changing pluses and minuses of recycling, HPOWER, packaging, waste dumps and drinking water are hard to sort out in our overcrowded, throw-away world. But to me there’s no question about buying water. This swindle of the century litters oceans, fouls beaches, fills trash cans and stokes fears of illness.
What with packaging as it is today, it’s nearly impossible to not buy plastic. Not buying water, though, and spreading the word, is one big thing we can do to help.
It’s one more reason to love visiting, and living in, Hawaii. It’s safe to drink the water.
-- Susan Scott, Ocean Watch, Star Advertiser, 1/19/19
Friday, February 01, 2019
immunotherapy
Cancer has an insidious talent for evading the natural defenses that
should destroy it. What if we could find ways to help the immune system
fight back?
It has begun to happen. The growing field of immunotherapy is profoundly changing cancer treatment and has rescued many people with advanced malignancies that not long ago would have been a death sentence.
It has begun to happen. The growing field of immunotherapy is profoundly changing cancer treatment and has rescued many people with advanced malignancies that not long ago would have been a death sentence.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
stopping Alzheimer's?
If you bled when you brushed your teeth this morning, you might want
to get that seen to. We may finally have found the long-elusive cause of
Alzheimer’s disease: Porphyromonas gingivalis, the key bacteria in chronic gum disease.
That’s bad, as gum disease affects around a third of all people. But the good news is that a drug that blocks the main toxins of P. gingivalis is entering major clinical trials this year, and research published today shows it might stop and even reverse Alzheimer’s. There could even be a vaccine.
That’s bad, as gum disease affects around a third of all people. But the good news is that a drug that blocks the main toxins of P. gingivalis is entering major clinical trials this year, and research published today shows it might stop and even reverse Alzheimer’s. There could even be a vaccine.
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