NASA Research Could Help Policymakers Restrict Carbon Emissions

A senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass., says new data retrieved from a NASA satellite could help scientists advise world governments on how to regulate carbon emissions. And one day, he says, it might even lead to a method of seeding iron into the oceans in order to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere. “We can develop better models to tell policymakers how much carbon can be admitted into the atmosphere, because that amount will be removed by the oceans; or say, ‘You need to emit less carbon into the atmosphere, because the ocean won’t continue to remove carbon as it has been,’” geophysicist Scott Doney said. At a telephone news conference last week (Thursday), which was billed as “the first-ever view” on global marine plant life, NASA revealed that a research team has discovered that it can track the health of phytoplankton in the ocean from the satellite images it gets. Using an instrument called MODIS, or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer – a special lens on NASA’s Aqua satellite – scientists can determine the availability of iron, an essential nutrient for phytoplankton. “Phytoplankton are important (because) they’re responsible for about half of the net photosynthesis on earth. This photosynthesis helps take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” Oregon State University scientist Michael Behrenfeld said at the news conference. By studying the availability of iron across the world’s oceans, then, scientists could better understand the amounts of carbon being absorbed by these microscopic marine plants. Past studies have led to the “iron hypothesis”-- the idea that by depositing iron in the oceans, scientists could produce large phytoplankton blooms capable of absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) – a “greenhouse gas” -- from the atmosphere. As Doney explained it to reporters: “By adding iron to an iron-poor region (of the ocean), the phytoplankton would grow stronger, you would pull carbon out of the water and eventually out of the atmosphere, and this could be used to slow the rise of atmospheric CO2.” This idea comes on the heels of a State Department proposal for a new “global warming” treaty under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). The proposal would place the United States under much stricter carbon emissions standards than nations with economies that the UNFCC considers “developing.” Finding estimates on how much carbon can be emitted --and therefore absorbed—by phytoplankton is probably “not a bad idea,” according to John Grasser of the Office of Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. “Certainly, the more information we have on carbon capture and storage is going to benefit the country,” Grasser told CNSNews.com. Already, a company “dedicated to removing carbon from the atmosphere,” Climos, has been formed. It initiated a scientific working group in summer 2008 to begin the process of testing iron fertilization in isolated areas. But some scientists warn that there could be a host of unintended consequences to sucking large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere into the world’s oceans. A spike in the acidity of the water near the fertilization sites is one concern, which could affect the health of coral reefs and other wildlife. Another potential problem: an eventual overabundance of phytoplankton, depriving the waters of oxygen that animals further up the food chain need to absorb from the water to breathe. In a 2001 article in Science magazine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology environmental engineering professor Sallie Chisholm co-wrote an article with other scientists warning that iron fertilization “would significantly alter oceanic food webs and biogeochemical cycles.” Grasser, meanwhile, said that iron fertilization is not currently a project of interest to U.S. researchers.“We have not looked at that recently,” he said. “All of our carbon capture and storage activities (involve) geologic storage.” Doney, when asked whether it was his aim to further develop the iron fertilization technique, Doney told CNSNews.com only that it is likely that companies or governments will try to experiment with iron deposits to see if the technique can work.“I want the (scientific) tool kit to be in place so that we can assess whether it is a valid strategy if somebody decides to go that way,” he added. NASA says it is unable to pinpoint how much it spent on the satellite project. However, the lens was only built to last five years, a date that has already come and gone. According to Doney, there is no guarantee how much longer the luminescence data will be transmitted. Once it is gone, he says, “We won’t be able to use that for a considerable amount of time. We’re going to have to depend upon raising our voices and trying to get this sensor put on future missions that are being planned now.”

D.C. Temperatures Plummeted as Soon as House Passed Global Warming Bill--And Left Town

No sooner did the House of Representatives pass legislation designed to fight global warming by cutting so-called greenhouse gas emissions than the temperature around the nation's Capitol, where the bill was enacted, plummeted below seasonal norms, according to National Weather Service data.At the same time, Congress adjourned and members left town, taking their red-hot rhetoric with them.The global warming bill itself is not yet law and will not become law unless it passes the Senate and is signed by President Obama.From June 27--the day the House passed the global warming bill--through July 5, the mean daily temperature in Washington D.C., averaged more than 4 degrees cooler than normal. “That period (June 27 to July 5) is 4.1 degrees (Fahrenheit) below the normal for that period. It’s just calculating those days compared to the average for those days,” Brian Lasorsa, spokesman for the National Weather Service (NWS), told CNSNews.com on Monday. “So the average for those days is 77.8 and the actual temperature averaged out for those days was 73.7, which gives you a difference of 4.1,” he added. According to National Weather Service historical data for the nation’s capital, the biggest variation from the mean daily temperature during the period in question took place on July 5. On that day, the mean actual temperature was 69 degrees Fahrenheit while the historical mean temperature was 78. That is a 9-degree difference. Alan Carlin, a 38-year research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, said the lower temperature readings constitute a “global temperature anomaly.” Temperatures of individual states or districts do not pinpoint what is going on globally, he said, but indicated the lower temperatures in D.C. do seem to parallel an overall global temperature drop for the month of June. “My view is that individual readings of individual cities or regions are not particularly indicative, but in the last few days there has been a release of data for June, this is satellite data on global temperature and it shows a drop,” Carlin told CNSNews.com. Carlin based his observations off data from a chart of satellite readings crafted by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “Their data comes from satellites,” Carlin told CNSNews.com. “There are two general ways to gather this information--one is from satellites and one is from surface readings. It’s my view that the surface readings are extremely inaccurate.” The Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington D.C. liberal think tank, however, told CNSNews.com that lower temperatures through much of the nation do not mean that “global warming” is not a problem. “NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said that April was the fifth warmest April globally and it said that May was the fourth warmest May on record. So, I think the year to date, I think this is the fifth warmest January to May,” Joseph Romm, a scientist at CAP told CNSNews.com.As far as the drop in temperatures for June in the United States goes, Romm said: “The United States has certainly been warming in the past decade, but like any relatively small part of the world it can, its weather fluctuates even as the climate gets warmer. I think it’s pretty clear that we are headed towards much warmer temperatures in the near term globally.”Nevertheless, according to the chart from which Carlin made his observations, “June 2009 saw another--albeit small--drop in the global average temperature anomaly.” Carlin explained that right now we are at a “zero anomaly point” -- meaning there is little or no actual change currently compared to the period of 1979 to about 1996. Based on the chart, he predicts the trend in temperatures in the next few years will continue to go downward. In addition to the lower temperatures in Washington D.C., news reports indicate there were also cooler than normal temperatures recently in several regions in the U.S., as well as in places such as New Zealand and the Arctic. National Weather Service data reveals that New York City experienced the coldest June since 1958. The Associated Press reported that in Los Angeles, Calif., June temperatures were “below normal.” “June's average daily high in downtown Los Angeles was 74.5 degrees, five degrees below normal,” the AP reported on July 1. In Chicago, the July 1 high of 65-degrees marked the chilliest open to a July since 1930 and was one of the three coolest July 1 readings on the books in 139 years of weather records, the Chicago Tribune reported.In Cape Cod, Mass., the weather affected more than just beach losses.“The gloomy cold weather has affected more than just beach traffic. Farmers are facing thousands of dollars in losses following a Cape and Islands June that felt more like April,” The Cape Cod Times reported on July 6.In New Zealand, May was the coldest month with June trailing close. “May was the coldest recorded in many parts of New Zealand and June was not far behind, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) climate scientist Georgina Griffiths said yesterday,” The New Zealand Herald reported on July 3.Meanwhile, Joe D’Aleo, executive director and certified consultant meteorologist at the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project revealed: “Arctic temperature is still not above 0°C-- the latest date in fifty years of record keeping.” Carlin, meanwhile, said he believes that the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 will not have much of an impact on the actual environment because there is not enough evidence that “warrants” it.“My view is that the current scientific evidence that we have does not warrant taking any action at this time other than possibly doing the homework and the background research which would allow us to rapidly influence global climate if that should become necessary,” Carlin told CNSNews.com.“It’s not necessary now and what’s being proposed would not have much effect in my opinion,” he added.CNSNews.com reported on June 30 that the EPA did not publicly release a March report by Carlin that had raised questions about the validity of the agency's conclusions on global warming.

Parents concerned that states are banking blood samples from newborns without parents' consent

Matthew Brzica and his wife hardly noticed when the hospital took a few drops of blood from each of their four newborn children for routine genetic testing. But then they discovered that the state had kept the dried blood samples ever since - and was making them available to scientists for medical research. n "They're just taking DNA from young kids right out of the womb and putting it into a warehouse," said Brzica, of Victoria, Minn. "DNA is what makes us who we are. It's just not right."The couple is among a group of parents challenging Minnesota's practice of storing babies' blood samples and allowing researchers to study them without their permission. The confrontation, and a similar one in Texas, has focused attention on the practice at a time when there is increasing interest in using millions of these collected "blood spots" to study diseases.Michigan, for example, is moving millions of samples from a state warehouse in Lansing to freezers in a new "neonatal biobank" in Detroit in the hopes of helping make the economically downtrodden city a center for biomedical research. The National Institutes of Health is funding a $13.5 million, five-year project aimed at creating a "virtual repository" of blood samples from around the country.The storage and use of the blood is raising many questions, including whether states should be required to get parents' consent before keeping the samples long-term or making them available to scientists, and whether parents should be consulted about the types of studies for which they are used. The concern has prompted a federal advisory panel to begin reviewing such issues.

There has not been a good national discussion about the use of these samples," said Jeffrey Botkin, a pediatrician and bioethicist at the University of Utah who is studying policies and attitudes about the newborn blood samples as part of a federally funded project. " Genetics is an area that touches a nerve. The public is concerned about massive databases."Hospitals prick the heels of more than 4 million babies born each year in the United States to collect a few drops of blood under state programs requiring that all newborns be screened for dozens of genetic disorders. The programs enable doctors to save lives and prevent permanent neurological damage by diagnosing and treating the conditions early.Although parents are usually informed about the tests and often can opt out if they object for religious and other reasons, many give it little thought in the rush and exhaustion of a birth. And parents are generally not asked for permission to store the samples or use them for research. Each state determines what is done with the blood spots afterward.The stored samples are mostly used to validate the accuracy of newborn screening and evaluate new tests. But scientists are also using them for other types of research, including to study specific genetic disorders, explore the frequency and causes of birth defects, decipher how genes and environmental factors interact, and probe whether exposure to chemical pollutants early in development plays a role in cancer and other diseases.Research projects are approved, officials in Maryland and other states said, only after undergoing careful scientific and ethical review. In most cases, all identifying information is stripped from the samples.But the states can still link each sample to an individual child - and that worries some parents, patient groups, bioethicists and privacy advocates, especially with advances in genetics and electronic data banks linking medical information from different sources."It's fine and good to say these can't be identified, but how real is that?" said Hank Greely, a Stanford University bioethicist. "Just because you don't have a name or Social Security number doesn't mean you can't identify it.""I'm not a big scaremonger about the dangers of DNA medicine," Greely said. "But you could use someone's DNA to make some inferences about their future health, about their future behavior, and if you got samples from their parents or a DNA databank, you can make inferences about family relationships."Because of those and other concerns, parents and privacy activists in Minnesota are asking that more than 800,000 blood spots that have been stored without parents' approval since 1997 be destroyed.The Minnesota case prompted a similar parents' lawsuit in March against Texas, which since 2002 has stored an estimated 4 million samples. The litigation spurred the Texas legislature to require the state health department to start getting parents' permission to store the samples and honor requests that samples be destroyed. But the lawsuit is pending over what should be done with the samples on file.Law enforcement agencies have been cataloguing millions of DNA fingerprints in recent years, raising similar concerns.State officials argue that strict safeguards protect the privacy of information associated with the blood samples and say details about a child's medical history are provided to researchers only if parents are contacted individually for approval.Concerned that the debate might undermine the newborn screening programs, the federal Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children will discuss the issue in September."There are obviously legal and ethical issues that need further discussion," said Rodney Howell, who chairs the committee. "Unfortunately we live in a world of conspiracy theories. We want to inform people that these spots are retained in some states and that they are carefully guarded. We want to be totally transparent."

World's Largest Natural Gas Station for Heavy Trucks Opens At L.A. Port Complex

As part of the ongoing effort to clean up the air at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, truckers are being required to get rid of older, dirty diesel tractors and replace them with clean diesel or cleaner natural gas models.
Quite a few are opting for natural gas - which has far fewer particulate pollutants and a lot less carbon content that diesel - and to to serve the growing demand for the fuel, Clean Energy Corp. has just opened what it claims to be the world's largest natural gas truck fueling station
The company, one of the world's largest natural gas retailers, said the station, which is open 'round the clock, seven days a week, can store up to 50,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG), has eight pumps and can deliver the fuel as a liquid (right) in six of the pumps or as compressed natural gas (CNG) from two pumps, depending on the type of the fuel a truck is set up to use.
Clean Energy expects the station to provide fuel for several hundred trucks a day right now and plans to double the fuel storage capacity as demand increases with the number of natural gas trucks operating at he ports.
An older port-area station also operated by Clean Energy is presently pumping about 10,000 gallons of LNG a day.----------

Americans are driving less, and that's a good thing

Marylanders who took to their cars over the long July 4th weekend likely noticed the trend -- fewer fellow travelers on the roads. The dip in holiday traffic was a revealing reflection of the bigger picture: On a year-to-year average, Americans are driving about 4 percent less, the biggest drop since the invention of the automobile.A year ago that shift might have been blamed on high gasoline prices, but today a gallon of gas is about $1.45 cheaper than in 2008. The economic downturn and job losses have no doubt been a factor as well, but the U.S. has weathered recessions before -- and oil shortages in the late 1970s that forced rationing at the pump -- with less impact on American's driving habits.Admittedly, there are parts of the U.S. where traffic has been picking up in recent months (at least according to the most recent federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics report), but the shift appears to be a relatively minor blip on the radar compared to the two-year


One of the most immediate effects of the drop in driving has been a corresponding reduction in highway deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last week that about 7,689 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the first three months of the year, a 9 percent decline from one year ago.At the current pace, U.S. highway fatalities could reach their lowest levels in a half-century.Both trends suggest that something noteworthy is going on. Spurred by last year's high gasoline prices, people are economizing. They are combining trips, car-pooling, shopping closer to home, telecommuting and taking alternative forms of transportation when available. The reduction in fatalities suggests they may even be slowing down on the roads, a fuel saving tactic that can also save lives.This is a trend that ought to be cultivated. Fewer vehicle miles traveled translates into less greenhouse gases and other pollutants pumped into the atmosphere, less dependence on foreign oil, improved productivity and economic savings, and countless lives and serious injuries spared.Such an approach requires not only a much larger investment in public transit so that alternative modes of transportation are available to all who would choose them. But it also requires public policies that encourage people not to drive so much. That includes a more serious approach to smart growth that directs development (and redevelopment) to cities and towns rather than sprawl that chews up rural greenscape.America's love of the automobile is well-documented, but people have also shown a willingness to change when circumstances require it. Public policy needs to catch up with the transformation in attitudes and behavior that's already so clearly in evidence.

Top UN climate official to AP: G-8 should help poor countries now with global warming

Developing countries need money now to grapple with global warming, and the Group of Eight summit this week could energize troubled climate negotiations if it decided to make "significant" funds available, the top U.N. climate official said Monday.The focus of U.N. climate talks over the past 18 months has been on an agreement to control greenhouse gases after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, including cash for developing countries.But Yvo de Boer, who oversees the talks among 192 nations, says bumping up existing climate funds now would be a "practical, useful, tangible" signal to developing countries that the rich countries are serious about a deal. The accord is due to be completed in Copenhagen in December.De Boer declined to mention figures, but studies by the World Bank and other institutions suggest between $5 billion and $10 billion a year are needed to help countries deal with changing weather patterns affecting agriculture, fishing and the effects of severe storms and drought. That figure could grow to $100 billion annually by 2020.


Accounts in the World Bank and special U.N. facilities now contain a few hundred million dollars.Putting money on the table at the G-8 conference in Italy would allow poor countries "to prepare plans to limit the growth of their emissions and adapt to the impact of climate change," De Boer told The Associated Press from his office in Bonn, Germany.More than 100 countries — many of them among the world's poorest — will suffer severely from climate change, he said."If I look at the magnitude of challenge, I think a significant amount would be important," he added.For many of the poorest countries, climate change will mean more erratic and expensive food supplies, Oxfam International said in a report released Monday as a briefing paper for the G-8 leaders.The British-based charity said chronic hunger may be "the defining human tragedy of this century," as climate change causes growing seasons to shift, crops to fail, and storms and droughts to ravage fields.It predicted that as weather patterns change, farmers will be forced to abandon traditional crops. Water and food scarcity could lead to mass migration and conflict, it said in a study that found striking similarities across geographic zones.More than 1 billion people, or about one in six people on earth, go hungry today. Without action, Oxfam said, most of the gains of fighting poverty in the world's poorest countries over the past 50 years will be wiped out, "irrecoverable for the foreseeable future."Scientists warn that of potentially catastrophic climate change if average global temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. To prevent that, greenhouse gas emissions should peak within the next few years and then rapidly decline by mid-century, according to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The U.N. climate talks are stuck over demands that the industrial countries commit to specific pollution targets, while the wealthy nations insist that everyone must help limit greenhouse gases. Developing countries have agreed to shift toward low-carbon growth, if the receive technology and funding to help them.Leaders of other major economies such as China, India and Brazil will join the G-8 leaders when climate change comes up on the agenda during the three-day summit at L'Aquila, Italy.De Boer said he hoped the session would deal with "big picture" issues. Besides financing, those might include fixing a firm pollution target for 2050 and setting an objective for 2020."These are the leaders who can make a difference, and this is the time to make a difference," De Boer said.The 1997 Kyoto Protocol required 37 countries to cut carbon emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. But it made no demands on developing countries, which was one reason the United States rejected the accord.Since then, China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest polluter, and India is rapidly approaching their league. The U.S., in a major policy shift under President Barack Obama, says it wants to be part of the Copenhagen deal.As part of the negotiations, the industrial countries have been asked to say how much further they will reduce emissions by 2020. Russia became the latest to put up numbers, pledging last week to be 10 percent to 15 percent below 1990 levels.Environmentalists denounced that target, since Russia's pollution fell dramatically after the fall of communism and the collapse of its economy in 1989. The World Wide Fund for Nature said it would amount to a "significant acceleration" of Russian emissions over the next decade of 2 to 2.5 percent a year.With the Russian proposal, De Boer said all rich countries except New Zealand have now pledged figures for 2020, and it was time for hard bargaining to begin."Countries will begin examining each other's numbers, comparing them with each other, and seeing how they can show the maximum ambition in Copenhagen," he said.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

WHO works on aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene where the health burden is high, where interventions could make a major difference and where the present state of knowledge is poor: :: Drinking-water quality :: Bathing waters :: Water resources :: Water supply and sanitation monitoring :: Water, sanitation and hygiene development :: Wastewater use :: Water-related disease :: Healthcare waste :: Emerging issues in water and infectious disease
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