New England Clean Energy Council

by Sarah Laskow.

Before reading further in this post, ask yourself a question (and answer honestly): Which do you care about more, guiltless (if hungry) goats or the Galápagos Islands' giant tortoises?

If you answered goats, this post will make you sad.

Here was the situation on the Galápagos Islands of Española: a population of hundreds of thousands of tortoises had dwindled to a few thousand. As the tortoises' population decreased, the population of goats, introduced to the islands by humans, grew to tens of thousands. The goats were eating all of the islands' vegetation. It was not a good situation for the tortoises.

And so conservationists decided the goats had to go. They tried shooting them individually. They tried shooting them from helicopters and tracking them using radio devices and dogs. The goats endured. Finally, the anti-goat forces lit upon a diabolical scheme to get rid of the goats: they'd turn a select few of them into Judas goats. Solutions journal reports on how this scheme worked:

Certain goats were fitted with electronic collars, allowing hunters to find them—and the herd—easily. Hunters killed the herd but left the one goat with the electronic collar. They waited for the marked goat to locate another herd, and then they repeated the process until only the goat with the collar was left. Then it was shot.

The good news is that scientists were able to breed Española tortoises in captivity while this goat massacre was going on. The turtles were returned to the island and are doing well. The lesson here? Don't introduce rapidly breeding species to scientifically important habitats! Jeez. Also don’t be a goat, they get a raw deal.

 

by Sarah Laskow.

Orcas might be charismatic movie stars, but they are also killer whales. A family of beachgoers in New Zealand caught on film an orca fighting with a few sharks. One shark was so eager to get away from the whale that it beached itself in the shallow water. (That's the most interesting part of the footage, so if you've already seen Free Willy ten gazillion times, just fast-forward to 0:56.)

It's apparently pretty rare for sharks to resort to the extreme measure of self-beaching to escape a predator, unless that predator is super badass, which orcas apparently are. So basically if your kid is irrationally afraid of sharks, you need to get him or her an orca pool floatie. They’re like the security blanket of the sea!

by Jess Zimmerman.

Stephen Colbert has officially thrown his hat in the ring for definitely possibly considering a run for president. He's already out-polling Jon Huntsman! So what kind of environmental policy platform could we expect from a President Colbert?

Well, for starters, no more EPA! Everyone knows pollution is a job-creator.

Reverse the incandescent light bulb ban! Incandescent bulbs are American, macho, and anti-Communist.

No dairy regulation! We have a right to get dysentery.

School lunch overhauls: More tater tots and Wyyyyngzzz!

Approve Keystone XL, because it will create literally septillions of jobs!

Colbert does have one distinct advantage over all the other candidates except poor Huntsman, though: He believes in global warming.

Just maybe not in thermodynamics.

by Christopher Mims.

Some chemists came up with a really clever way to observe the intermediate stage of an atmospheric chemical reaction, and then some PR flack got a hold of it and suddenly science has invented a brand-new molecule that will solve all our climate change woes! As usual, things that seem too good to be true probably are.

The supposed miracle molecules, Criegee biradicals, are a short-lived intermediate step in the reaction of ozone (the major component of smog) with alkenes (organic molecules produced by plants and a few industrial sources). Scientists used bursts of light 100 times more powerful than the sun to detect the Criegee biradicals, confirming for the first time that these formerly-theoretical intermediates actually exist.

What's interesting about them is that Criegee biradicals react with pollutants in the atmosphere to form aerosols, which is a generic term for tiny particles in the atmosphere that (generally) reflect sunlight back into space. Here's how one of the researchers put it in an interview with LiveScience, which is apparently the only news outlet that bothered to call up the authors of the paper instead of just regurgitating the press release:

Given that 90 percent of the alkenes in the atmosphere that produce these intermediates come from Earth's ecosystems, the results suggest that "the ecosystem is negating climate change more efficiently than we thought it was," said study co-author Carl Percival, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. "The most important message here is that we need to protect the ecosystems we have left."

So! It turns out plants are shielding the planet from even more global warming by a previously not-so-well-understood mechanism. And that if we kill the plants, it's another way we'll accelerate climate change. But making the leap from that conclusion to some kind of hypothetical, never-outlined geoengineering scheme is more than a little premature.

Percival noted that scientists aren't close to being ready to use the intermediates in geoengineering to generate more aerosols and proactively cool Earth's climate. The main point, he said, is that we need to preserve the ecosystem so that it can naturally produce more Criegee intermediates.

by Jess Zimmerman.

We here at Grist mock a lot of people. But we don't always manage to mock some sense into them. Which is why we're pretty psyched about the response to Sarah Laskow's feature story revealing that congressional staffers were making deadly wildfires into a fun office pool: 

McKie Campbell, the [Senate Energy and Natural Resources] committee’s Republican staff director, said the contest has been stopped.

“It will never happen again,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “It was in no way indicative of disrespect for any of the folks who put their lives on the line to battle the fires.”

The pool, organized by Energy and Natural Resources Committee staffer Frank Gladics, had staffers (mostly, though not all, Republicans) guess how much destruction wildfires would wreak in a year. The winner got a hat: "the Wizard Hat; the When Pigs Fly Hat; or the mechanical Holly-Jolly Christmas Hat." The losers died or lost all their possessions in a wildfire.

A morbid version of a jellybean-counting contest, the pool asks staffers to guess the number of acres that will burn each year; guesses that exceed the actual number, as reported in the National Interagency Fire Center Situation Report [PDF], are disqualified.

At best, this little stunt could be excused as gallows humor -- a peculiar inside-the-Beltway bonding ritual for disaster wonks. Since wildfires level people's homes, imperil both residents and firefighters, and serve as a barometer for climate-change-driven havoc, the annual game might also simply be tone-deaf, tasteless, and heartless.

But, you know, no disrespect.

Having their gross little game exposed was very embarrassing for the staffers, not to mention seriously pissed off firefighters and their families. Gladics apologized in an email and will probably be punished by not being allowed to wear the Holly-Jolly Hat for a week. I'm not sure I trust someone who thinks this stuff is fun any further than I can take out his appendix, but at least in theory, the contest is over for good.

by Christopher Mims.

In Mozambique, home brewing is big -- not because the country is full of mustachioed, fixie-riding expats from Portlandia, but just because it’s less expensive. So when brewing giant SABMiller wanted to figure out how to sell beer to people who are already making their own, they had to do it on the cheap, reports Marc Gunther at GreenBiz. Using local ingredients and less energy turned out to be key to keeping prices competitive with the corner moonshine still.

The result is Impala, a beer made from cassava, the starchy root endemic to Africa. Cassava is uniquely suited to locavorism because once it's out of the ground, it goes bad within a couple of days, so it can't be exported. You want to eat it, you have to eat it local. SABMiller processes it on site, using a mobile processing unit invented by the Dutch. The lack of hops wheat or barley in the beer also means that it happens to be gluten free -- so even if this beer isn’t made by hipsters, they’ll probably be drinking it.

"Africa's agricultural potential is enormous, but currently under-exploited," he went on. "By creating market opportunities for subsistence farmers in our value chains, we are able to increase their productivity, allowing them to feed their families and generate an income for the first time." The company said it is buying cassava from more than 1,500 smallholders.

by Jess Zimmerman.

We went back and forth on whether this would be relevant to your interests, but it's about the universe and the Earth is in the universe, right? I think that's a non-controversial scientific statement even Rick Santorum would agree with. (Maybe. Does Rick Santorum believe in the galaxy?) Anyway, astronomers have found the exact color the Milky Way galaxy would appear if you were standing outside it, and it turns out it is a color that can only be expressed in poetry.

"The best description I can give would be that if you looked at new spring snow, which has a fine grain size, about an hour after dawn or an hour before sunset, you'd see the same spectrum of light that an alien astronomer in another galaxy would see looking at the Milky Way," Prof Newman told BBC News.

It's the color of new spring snow! New spring snow an hour after dawn. Guys, I think I liked this scientific discovery better when it was Jewel lyrics.

No, actually, I am completely delighted with this and very much looking forward to what I assume will be a protracted scientific dispute over whether the color is more like new spring snow an hour after dawn or new spring snow an hour before sunset. Further research will uncover evidence that it's actually the color of a wedding dress viewed through a haze of whiskey and regret, which will then be retracted in favor of new data showing that a miscalculation was made and it's the color of hope.

by Sarah Laskow.

Anti-nuclear campaigners, why do you dislike nuclear power? Is it because of the risk of massive meltdowns? The unsolved issue of what to do with waste? The lack of realistic evacuation plans?

Or is it the influence of a James Bond movie you probably watched at least a couple times as a bored child -- Dr. No?

David Phillips, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said recently that Dr. No's nuclear-powered island lair helped drive the "entirely negative" view people have of the industry.

Yup, that must be it. The world also irrationally hates on lasers, solar power, submarines, and aquifers -- all of which Bond villains have depended on at some point in the British spy's long career.

by Sarah Laskow.

New York City promises to double the percentage of waste diverted from landfills within the next five years.

Increasing shale gas production could squash renewable energy development.

The Obama administration released a draft plan for protecting the country's oceans.

Scientists are fiddling with photosynthesis in order to make biofuel.

The Navy is trying to prevent the release of a report detailing toxic exposures at a Marine camp.

To ameliorate climate change, cut methane and soot, not just carbon, a new study says.

by Jess Zimmerman.

The staff at NPR has been responding to the news of Hostess' bankruptcy by getting up to some Twinkie shenanigans. Forget that James O'Keefe stunt, this is NPR's real shame. (But seriously, how do we get in on this action? Call me!)

First, Science Desk tried seeing if one would dissolve in Mountain Dew. (Verdict: Not after two hours, but that mouse carcass had a lot longer.) Then the food blog came up with 10 more things to do with Twinkies. 

Science Desk also has a whole raft of other experiments they want to perform ("At what temperatures do Twinkies ignite? Do they explode in the microwave? Is the Twinkie magnetic?"), so you should probably make that NPR donation you've been planning -- somebody has to keep the staff in snack cakes, so they can do this important food science for the rest of us.

by Jess Zimmerman.

Is it getting boring to make fun of Rick Santorum? I don't really care, because frankly the dude is both a menace and an ignoramus and that is comedy gold even if he didn't look like the love child of Ryan Reynolds and a turtle. (Yes, I recycled that joke, but it's TRUE.) It's all very well to talk about frothy mixtures and whatnot, but opportunities to mock Santorum go well beyond his Google problem. Although seriously, does anyone else feel sort of dirty when they type his name, like they should be writing "Sant*rum" or something?

Anyway, Treehugger found a doozy of a quote from Sir Mixture-a-lot about global warming. Let's mock it! (Note to Rick and adherents: We are not in the "then they laugh at you" stage of Gandhi's, or whoever's, hierarchy. We are just laughing at you.)

The question is on how do I get my policies with climate change science. I get asked this question a lot, and you look at the data and you can see some change in the climate. But then again, pick a point in history where you haven’t seen a change in the climate. The climate does change. The question is, what is causing the climate to change?

"The question is climate the change change climate change. When you look at the climate, the climate change climate the climate. What climates the change?"

And so why have we decided that this one particular factor, carbon dioxide, is in fact that tip of the tail that wags the entire dog. Why from a scientific point of view do we make the assertion that this is in fact what is the case when there is a whole lot of other factors out there that could be affecting it? So, that’s the question.

Whoa, Rick Santorum doesn't know what "wag the dog" means or how to use it. I look forward to the day when he explains that he opposes gay marriage because it's the lipstick that pigs the downfall of society.

Some people have very strong feelings that it is that. There are a lot of other people who don’t. 

Okay, here I can't really fault him. The public editor of the New York effin' Times just asked the paper's readership whether journalists should, like, try to write the truth or something. Given that sort of context, how can we expect some poor sap like Santorum to understand that scientific evidence is not the same as feelings? That would be wagging the dog's tail for it.

Here’s the question. Let’s even assume, for purposes of argument, not that I agree with it, but for purposes of argument, that they are right. Then what would be a rational response? Well, if you have a problem and you want to craft something, what should that thing that you’re crafting do? Solve the problem. Do any of the proposed solutions put forward by Al Gore and his friends do anything to solve the problem? Even the scientists who support the theory will admit to you that it doesn’t do anything to solve the problem. So query, why support the solution, other than you may have some other agenda that may be in place here.

Right?

"Let's pretend human-produced carbon dioxide was a factor in climate change, which of course is an absurd feeling that is felt only by liberals so don't go thinking I feel this feeling because there are very few feelings I'm authorized to feel. Then you should craft a solution, and what should the solution that you crafted be? A solution. ZING. QED. No wait, I'm not done ... oh right, so obviously reducing carbon emissions would do nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and furthermore Al Gore doesn't even have a magic wand to cure climate change instantly, and if he did I would burn him as a witch, and therefore humans have nothing to do with climate change and also rape victims can't have abortions. Vote Santorum!"

If you really want to see poor Turtle Reynolds flail in person, here's video:

by Jess Zimmerman.

Scientists thought they had found the world's smallest frog just a month ago, when a researcher announced he'd found coin-sized amphibians in New Guinea. But psych! Those weren't the smallest frogs. This is the smallest frog. In fact it's the smallest vertebrate known to man.

These guys are so weeny that the scientists who found them couldn't even see them at first:

Their high-pitched calls make them sound like crickets, and perhaps explorers have long mistaken them for insects. “It doesn’t sound like a frog at all,” says [researcher Christopher] Austin, who had no idea what was making the call when he first heard it. “After several failed attempts to find it, we ended up just scooping up a big handful of leaf litter where the call was coming from and putting it all in a clear plastic bag. We went through that bag leaf by leaf until we discovered the incredibly small frog making the call.”

Think about what tiny kisses it would give, and what a tiny prince it would turn into!

by Jess Zimmerman.

I'm told, by people with less finicky stomachs, that sometimes even the most well-intentioned foodies and factory-farm opponents really jones for an Egg McMuffin. If you can't resist the occasional splurge -- maybe it's been a late and smokey night at college, if you know what I mean -- then at least you can make sure you don't see your picture splashed across the front page of Food Scold Daily or something.

by Jess Zimmerman.

According to this graph from the Daily Livestock Report, we are way past Peak Beef. U.S. beef consumption has been dropping for the last 40 years, and projections put it back down at 1950s levels this year, which would mean we're eating less meat than at any time in the last 50 years. Americans are eating a lot less meat overall, but beef and to a lesser extent pork have seen the biggest reductions -- which is cool, because cattle and pigs are the most resource-intensive livestock.

Tom Laskawy speculates about the causes for the drop-off:

What really struck me was how this latest news mirrors the trend in consumer attitudes on meat-eating uncovered by the food industry's own market research. It turns out that since 2007, there has also been a 12 percent drop in the number of consumers who report that they have "no problem" eating meat or dairy (a bare majority of respondents currently feel that way).

by Christopher Mims.

North Atlantic sea ice in areas where harp seals breed has declined as much as 6 percent every 10 years since 1979, according to scientists from Duke University and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. As a result, in low-ice years, entire populations of brand-new seal pups die, reports Yale e360.

According to Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans department, as many as 80 percent of seal pups born in 2011 may have died because of a lack of sea ice.

Seal, moping, by Peter Hedger

by Christopher Mims.

Hey makers of right-wing talking points! Pay attention to these solar companies. They might fail this year, and as we all know, when a solar company fails you can repurpose its hide into a political hobby-horse and ride it forever.

Here are this year's candidates for companies most likely to be mispronounced by one of the interchangeable hosts on Fox News, courtesy Matt Feinstein of Lux Research:

• Nanosolar
• Solopower
• Abound Solar
• Solarworld
• Oerlikon
• Suntech Power

That list doesn't even include the two solar companies that already announced cuts in the new year, reports Katie Fehrenbacher at GigaOm:

A week ago power electronics maker, Satcon Technology, announced it will lay off 35 percent of its workers and shut down its factory in Canada. That news followed reports that Silicon Valley solar panel maker GlobalWatt canceled a plan for a solar factory in Michigan.

Fehrenbacher's also got a list of the 13 solar companies aside from Solyndra that failed in 2011. So it seems like companies in competitive new fields of technology fail, a lot. That's sort of the definition of capitalism.

by Sarah Laskow.

In design, biomimicry -- the idea that nature does design best -- is all the rage. So it must have been a head-slapping "duh" moment when solar-power designers sought inspiration from sunflowers -- a plant that has "sun" in its name, for goodness' sake! It turns out that sunflowers are really good at using the sun (NO WAY), and mimicking their structure can allow designers to seriously reduce the size of concentrating solar power farms.

Concentrating solar power facilities use mirrors to focus solar energy at a single point, usually a high tower. But CSP fields of mirrors take up a lot of space, and unlike solar panels, you can’t just stick a CSP generator on top of your house. (For real, they need a LOT of space.) Copying the layout of sunflowers' florets, though, can boost efficiency and reduce the amount of land needed by about 20 percent.

by Sarah Laskow.

Natural gas companies are looking into "super fracking," which uses larger, deeper cracks and draws power from our planet’s yellow sun.

West Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and Ohioans are all hoping that Shell will choose to build a petrochemical refinery in their state, because the plant promises jobs.

Maybe it's time to abandon Ulysses S. Grant's laws for federal land, which dictate that hard-rock mining is the best use for any plot.

We could be losing Lake Titicaca to urban waste. Cool it, you pervs, this is is serious!

Green gadget designers are still obsessed with bamboo.

by Jess Zimmerman.

As any Portlandia fan knows, ethical meat-eaters don't just want their food to be humanely raised and humanely slaughtered. They also want it to have had a happy life. And it turns out that what makes pigs have a happy life is video games. Seriously -- pigs like to snuffle at flashing lights, which is basically Galaga. Accordingly, ethical farming researchers at Wageningen University are working with designers from the Utrecht School of the Arts to develop a human/pig interactive gaming app. The game, called Pig Chase, is designed to relieve some of the tedium of being a pig on a farm -- bored pigs aren't just a bummer for Portlandia food snobs, they're also more cranky and aggressive.

To play Pig Chase, humans would use their touchscreen device to move a target around (the temptation to trace out "SOME PIG" would probably be enormous). The pigs touch the flashing lights with their snoots, because that's something pigs like to do. And when the two species work together, they can get the light ball into a target, and they win! The pigs win a fireworks display on their screen, which in the demonstration they appear not to give a crap about, and the humans get bragging rights I guess.

by Jess Zimmerman.

An independent research group has analyzed oil industry contributions to Congress, and figures that President Obama is staring down a $12 million barrel of political opposition on Keystone XL. Some of that is going out in huge chunks -- 16 Republican House members and one Democrat have received $100,000 or more in contributions from the oil lobby, and lo and behold, the representatives are all voting just the way their evil overlords would like them to. But the industry is also spreading the wealth around. A total of 118 House members list the oil and gas industry among their top 10 contributors, and most of them are toeing the line as well.

[Research group] Maplight found only two of the 118 members of the House of Representatives who list oil and gas industry among their top 10 campaign contributors opposed fast-tracking the pipeline. The two hold-outs were Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who headed the global warming committee that has since been disbanded by the Republican leadership in the house, and Charlie Bass, a New Hampshire Republican.

Only 10 of the 195 members of the House of Representatives who list the oil and gas industry among their top 20 contributors opposed the bill. In all, the oil and gas industry has given nearly $12m in direct contributions to members of Congress in the last two years, Maplight said.

That means it's really worth House members' time to push through Keystone XL approval, and cockblock any attempts to analyze or ameliorate its environmental effects. But, you know, it's all about jobs! Really! 

Here's the Guardian's list of House members getting $100,000 or more from oil and gas interests, along with their votes on fast-tracking Keystone XL approval (spoiler: they all voted in favor).

1 – Rep. Steven Pearce [Republican] / AYE / $370,020

2 – Rep. Mike Pompeo [R] / AYE / $333,156

3 – Rep. Bill Flores [R] / AYE / $266,184

4 – Rep. Cory Gardner [R] / AYE / $205,124

5 – Rep. Dan Boren [D] / AYE / $201,800

6 – Rep. John Sullivan [R] / AYE / $179,200

7 – Rep. Jeff Landry [R] / AYE / $176,050

8 – Rep. Tim Griffin [R] / AYE / $164,709

9 – Rep. James Lankford [R] / AYE / $156,760

10 – Rep. Rick Berg [R] / AYE / $151,561

11 – Rep. Michael Conaway [R] / AYE / $136,850

12 – Rep. Tim Murphy [R] / AYE / $133,700

13 – Rep. Dennis Rehberg [R] / AYE / $133,152

14 – Rep. Steve Scalise [R] / AYE / $125,335

15 – Rep. Francisco Canseco [R] / AYE / $121,767

16 – Rep. Pete Olson [R] – AYE – $106,400

17 – Rep. Tom Cole [R] / AYE / $103,400

Update: An earlier version of this post had "anti-Keystone" in the headline because, I don't know, I'm an idiot? Anyway, PRO.