Green and confused: What happens to old satellites?

Q.On the anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings, my eight-year-old son asked what happens to the old satellites and other debris in space. Will they eventually fall to Earth?

Your son has put his finger on what is becoming quite an environmental problem. First, tell him not to worry: he doesn’t have to go round with a hard hat on for fear of a wayward satellite flattening him. Most space debris, if it falls back to Earth, burns up as it re-enters the atmosphere.

However, there is a great deal of junk out there, zooming along at speeds of up to 25,000mph. At such a velocity, a mere flake of paint can do considerable damage to a satellite. Nasa frequently has to mend windows on its spacecraft because of penetration by minuscule flying objects.

No one is sure of the exact amount that has accumulated since the launch of the first satellite, the Soviet, in 1957, but over the years, millions of pieces of debris from space missions and satellites have contributed to what has become a revolving scrapyard way above our heads. Objects range from jettisoned spacecraft parts to tiny fragments of fuel and urine.

A United Nations body called the Inter-Agency Debris Co-ordination Committee uses sophisticated radar and monitoring equipment to track the debris and is able to detect objects (about 9,000) bigger than a tennis ball. Smaller objects can’t be tracked but are growing in number. One of the problems is that as these objects collide or break up, more debris is created. A discarded launch arm can wipe out a multimillion-dollar satellite. A bolt dropped during a space station repair could puncture the skin of a spacecraft and cause a catastrophe.

On occasions a space launch has had to be delayed until scientists were certain that the rocket would enter a “junk-free” zone. Now engineers are looking for ways to vaccuum up the debris before disaster strikes. It’s a bit like the mounting pile of rubbish deposited on Everest by climbers — the more we explore, the more junk is amassed. Man leaves an environmental footprint everywhere, even in space.

'Spiderbots' talk amongst themselves inside active volcano

squadron of 'spiderbots' inside Mount St Helens is the first network of volcano sensors that can automatically communicate with each other and with satellites, rather than sending data to a base station first.

Since the system can route data around any sensors that break and can simply be dropped into volcanoes, it is more robust and easier to deploy than current sensor systems, which must be carefully set up by hand.

Similar networked robots could one day be used to study geological activity elsewhere in the solar system, say scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which helped develop and monitor the robots.

Fifteen spiderbots, so-named because of the three spindly arms protruding from their suitcase-sized steel bodies, were lowered from a helicopter to spots inside the crater and around the rim of Mount St Helens, an active volcano in the US state of Washington, in July.

Each has a seismometer for detecting earthquakes, an infrared sensor to detect heat from volcanic explosions, a sensor to detect ash clouds, and a global positioning system to sense the ground bulging and pinpoint the exact location of seismic activity.

Once in place, the bots reached out to each other to form what is known as a mesh network. "It's similar to the internet," says Steve Chien, the principal scientist for autonomous systems at JPL. "You just lay them out, and they figure out the best way to route the data."

Self-healing

Other robotic volcano-monitoring systems exist, most notably around Mount Erebus in Antarctica. But they require permanent sensors to be buried in the ground or drilled into rock, which can take days of dangerous human labour.

The spiderbots are flexible and inexpensive enough that they can be set down almost anywhere. "You can imagine just dropping these out of a helicopter, and they'll just land like spikes in the ground and do their thing," Chien says.

The spider web's unique networking capabilities also give it a distinct advantage over other monitoring systems. The network is self-healing – if one node dies, the others automatically route data around it.

The scientists added this innovation after several early models were boiled, crushed or knocked over in the volcano's 2004 eruption. They also made the hardware more resilient. "These are much more rugged," says Rick LaHusen of the US Geological Survey. "They can take an impact and keep on working."

Space link

The network analyses data on the spot before sending it back to its base station at the nearby Johnston Ridge Observatory, allowing the spiderbots to provide real-time risk assessment – crucial in the event of an eruption.

"Scientists can sit in their office, and see through the internet what happened at Mt St Helens one second ago," says WenZhan Song of Washington State University in Vancouver, the principal investigator of the project.

It is also the first of its kind to communicate with a satellite.

The network can call the satellite to take pictures if it senses an unusual tremor, or the satellite can ask the network to focus its attention on a particular spot if it sees an anomalous heat source. "There's an autonomous interaction between the ground and the space systems – no people are needed," says LaHusen.

Europa submarine

The satellite link also lets scientists control the spider web from a distance. "We can upgrade lots of spiders by one mouse click," Song says.

The self-organising, self-healing, remotely controllable network would be essential for using similar robots on other planets or their moons, where scientists can't carefully place each sensor or replace one if it breaks.

Chien imagines using a similar network to study seismology on Mars or explore hydrothermal vents in the ocean thought to lie below the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

"In the Mount St Helens case, when it sees something interesting, it calls in satellite observations," Chien says. "On Europa, you might imagine you'd have a submarine that places sensors on these hydrothermal vents, and they call the mothership when they see things."

http://brightcove.newscientist.com/services/player/bcpid1873822884?bctid=33323552001

The Earth Is Warming? Adjust the Thermostat

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President Obama and the rest of the Group of 8 leaders decreed last month that the planet’s average temperature shall not rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above today’s level. But what if Mother Earth didn’t get the memo? How do we stay cool in the future? Two options:

Should the United States and other governments start supporting climate engineers’ research? Join the discussion.

Plan A. Keep talking about the weather. This has been the preferred approach for the past two decades in Western Europe, where leaders like to promise one another that they will keep the globe cool by drastically reducing carbon emissions. Then, when their countries’ emissions keep rising anyway, they convene to make new promises and swear that they really, really mean it this time.

Plan B. Do something about the weather. Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.

Today this approach goes by the slightly less grandiose name of climate engineering, and it is looking more practical. Several recent reviews of these ideas conclude that cooling the planet would be technically feasible and economically affordable.

There are still plenty of skeptics, but even they have started calling for more research into climate engineering. The skeptics understandably fear the unintended consequences of tampering with the planet’s thermostat, but they also fear the possibility — which I’d call a near certainty — that political leaders will not seriously reduce carbon emissions anytime soon.

The National Academy of Sciences and Britain’s Royal Society are preparing reports on climate engineering, and the Obama administration has promised to consider it. But so far there has been virtually no government support for research and development — certainly nothing like the tens of billions of dollars allotted to green energy and other programs whose effects on the climate would not be felt for decades.

For perhaps $100 million, climate engineers could begin field tests within five years, says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science. Dr. Caldeira is a member of a climate-engineering study group that met last year at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics under the leadership of Steven E. Koonin, who has since become the under secretary for science at the United States Department of Energy. The group has just issued a report, published by the Novim research organization, analyzing the use of aerosol particles to reflect shortwave solar radiation back into space.

These particles could be lofted into the stratosphere to reproduce the effects of sulfate aerosols from volcanic eruptions like that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, which was followed by a global cooling of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit. Just as occurred after that eruption, the effects would wane as the particles fell back to Earth. Keeping the planet cooled steadily (at least until carbon emissions declined) might cost $30 billion per year if the particles were fired from military artillery, or $8 billion annually if delivered by aircraft, according to the Novim report.

The idea of even testing such a system scares many people, and some scientists argue that climate-engineering research should remain theoretical. But Dr. Caldeira says that small-scale testing — perhaps an experiment intended to slightly cool the Arctic — could be safer than the alternative.

“The worst-case scenario,” he says, “is one in which you have an untested system that you need to deploy quickly at large scale in a desperate attempt to ward off some sort of climate crisis. It could be much better to start testing soon at small scale and to observe what happens as the system is deployed.” The sooner we start, he reasons, the more delicately we can proceed.

“Because of natural variability in weather and climate, the smaller the experiment, the longer it needs to be observed for the signal to rise out of the noise,” Dr. Caldeira says. “With short testing periods, you would need to hit the system with a hammer.”

Another way to cool the globe would be to spray seawater mist from ships up toward low-lying clouds, which would become brighter and reflect more sunlight away from Earth. (For details, see nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

This cloud-brightening technology might counteract a century’s worth of global warming for $9 billion, according to J. Eric Bickel and Lee Lane. They identified it as the most promising form of climate engineering in a report published Friday by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which is sponsoring cost-benefit analyses of strategies for dealing with climate change.

Other researchers say that it is impossible to do a cost-benefit analysis of these engineering proposals because the potential downside is so uncertain — and large. Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere or brightening clouds would do more than just cool the planet. In a paper in the current Science, Gabriele C. Hegerl and Susan Solomon point to a drop in global precipitation after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and warn that climate engineering could lead to dangerous droughts.

A less risky form of climate engineering would be to gradually remove enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to keep the planet cool. Some experts argue that the technology already exists to make this “air-capture” method reasonably economical, and that its political advantages make it the most realistic long-term strategy. What politician wants to tamper directly with the climate and risk getting blamed for the next hurricane or drought?

But if the climate does become dangerously warm, there could be enormous political pressure to do something quickly. And while it wouldn’t be easy reaching international agreement on how to reset the planet’s thermostat, in some ways it is less daunting than trying to negotiate a global carbon treaty.

If rich European countries with strong green constituencies cannot live up to their own promises to cut carbon, how much hope is there of permanently enforcing tough restrictions in the United States, much less in poor countries like India and China? If even a few nations demur or cheat, the whole system can break down.

By contrast, climate engineering does not require unanimous agreement or steadfast enforcement throughout the world. Instead of relying on politicians’ promises, we might find it simpler to deal directly with Mother Earth’s hot air.

Key to climate bill, offsets have plenty of critics

America’s first major stab at tackling global climate change comes in the form of the American Clean Energy Security Act, a massive piece of legislation that would touch nearly every corner of the U.S. economy.

The bill, often referred to as “Waxman-Markey” after its principal sponsors in the House of Representatives, contains provisions for clean energy technology, energy efficiency, green building codes, green jobs, and adaptation measures to help ease people into a new world order. But its most talked about feature is the regulation arm, “cap and trade”: limit pollution to a finite amount, lower the allowable amount each year, and let polluters trade pollution permits to create market incentives for businesses to reduce emissions as cheaply as possible.

Modeled, in part, on the federal program created in the early 1990s to combat acid rain, the Waxman-Markey trading scheme would create a mandatory (or compliance) market in greenhouse gas emission credits for businesses regulated under the cap. Credits would be measured in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), where each type of greenhouse gas is converted to its equivalent in CO2, the most common greenhouse gas. Hence the term “carbon markets.”

But here’s the rub: Waxman-Markey does not propose a pure cap-and-trade scheme. It’s actually cap and trade and offset. Offsets, put simply, would let polluters pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they would be permitted under the “cap” part of the program. Companies would earn that right by investing in projects in the United States or in other countries that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.

Supporters, including regulated industries, agribusiness, and some environmentalists, say offsets would control the cost of pollution permits, helping the country transition to a low-carbon economy without jolting price increases for energy. One factor that influenced the inclusion of offsets in Waxman-Markey was a June 23 EPA analysis (PDF), which found that without international offsets, the cost of permits, also called allowances, would be 89 percent higher.

Still, critics charge that offsets as envisioned by Waxman-Markey would defeat the overriding goal of cutting emissions. That’s because ensuring the quality of offsets—i.e. that greenhouse gas reductions are actually happening—has proven to be a tall order.

Offsets are hardly a new phenomenon. A robust voluntary market emerged internationally and in the United States during the past decade as businesses raced to flaunt their sustainable bona fides. Several major rental car companies give drivers the option of buying offsets. Online retailer Destination Lighting touts its purchase of offsets as a selling point. Pacific Gas and Electric, a huge utility in California, announced in July that it is offsetting some of its carbon emissions by supporting The Conservation Fund’s forestry projects; money for the offsets comes from customers who opt to pay extra each month. Dell, the personal computer manufacturer, is a large purchaser of offsets, as is search-engine giant Google.

Inevitably, the offsets trend prompted a backlash: questions about methodology and merit, comparisons to sin indulgences, nicknames like “rip-offsets” (thanks, Joe Romm!), and parodies like Cheat Neutral. In August 2008 the Government Accountability Office lent a stamp of authenticity to these concerns by issuing a report that outlined the challenges associated with the voluntary market for offsets. And on August 3, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report (PDF) that, while concluding offsets under the Waxman-Markey bill would likely reduce compliance costs and cut carbon emissions, conceded that a lot depends on the design of the program and how offsets are certified.

If regulated companies are allowed to buy offsets as an alternative to reducing their own emissions or buying extra allowances under the cap, and if those offsets aren’t actually reducing pollution, then we would be merely running a “shell game,” not tackling climate change, said Daphne Wysham, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In spite of these concerns, lobbyists for offsets struck it big with Waxman-Markey: The bill, which was narrowly passed by the House on June 26, would authorize up to 2 billion tons annually until 2050. In 2007, 2 billion tons would have been about 29 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA’s 2009 U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report. This is a massive increase over the 10.2 million tons traded in the United States in 2007, according to the August 2008 GAO report.

“Enormous numbers of offsets defer to a later day the time at which [entities under the cap] will have to change their behavior,” said Michael Wara, a climate scientist and professor at Stanford Law School who has studied and written about offsets. “If you look at the EPA analysis of [Waxman-Markey], there will not be a change in the amount of electricity coming from coal until 2020 or 2030. My own analysis shows that emissions under the cap will not have to fall until 2030.”

But the outcome pleased Max Williamson, a lawyer at Andrews Kurth law firm in Washington, D.C., who lobbied legislators on behalf of the Carbon Offsets Providers Coalition, a group of offset providers, marketers, generators, and financiers. “We applaud Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey for recognizing that offsets are an important cost-containment mechanism,” said Williamson.

Some critics stress that offsets are not the only or best way to control costs under a cap-and-trade scheme. Wara would prefer a “safety valve” that would allow regulated businesses to buy unlimited allowances to pollute if the price of carbon rose to a predetermined level. The underlying premise is similar to the strategy behind the inclusion of a large number of offsets in Waxman-Markey: adding supply reduces demand, thereby keeping costs down.

But with a safety valve, the government could use the money raised by selling excess allowances to buy and retire offsets. “What that does is disconnect the cost-control [mechanism from] emission-reduction activities outside the cap, thereby improving the incentives to fund only the higher quality projects,” Wara said.

Bill Burtis of Clean Air Cool Planet would prefer to control costs using a “price collar” that sets both a ceiling and a floor. The collar would be set at some percent below and above market cost, so as the market rate goes up or down, the collar moves with it.

“Basically the idea is that, particularly for businesses and others who might be impacted by these costs, they can see what the potential range will be and plan accordingly,” Burtis said.

As for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Wysham, she would like to see a straightforward carbon tax. “While prices would rise in some sectors, they would decrease in others, creating a shift in subsidies,” she said. “So you would not only have stick, you’d also have a carrot for clean energy, public transportation, alternative vehicles.” Because she believes that it is impossible to verify that offsets are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, “my personal perspective is that offsets are a dangerous distraction from real action,” she said.

In spite of these arguments, “the political reality has been that offsets are what we’re using,” said Stanford’s Wara. That reality has been created in part by the voluntary offset market, which has worked to make legislators and the general public alike more familiar with its product over the last few years.

“Current offset companies exist because of the prospect of something like this system,” said Wara. “Companies that do voluntary offsets in the U.S. right now are basically laying down markers on what are going to be very valuable compliance-grade offset projects in the future.”

Existing offset providers would likely sell to both the voluntary and compliance markets. That’s because, although approximately 85 percent of the U.S. economy would be under the cap as defined by Waxman-Markey, the market for voluntary offsets will continue, said Josh Margolis, co-CEO of San Francisco-based CantorCO2e, a broker for the world’s emissions and environmental markets.

Individual consumers will still want to neutralize their impact on the climate, and shareholders and stockholders of companies without a compliance requirement will recognize liabilities associated with the carbon emitted in manufacturing and selling products, he said. Insurance companies may also want offsets as a hedge against the carbon consequences of business operations.

But Clean Air Cool Planet’s Burtis believes the voluntary market will decrease over time. “The role that plays is certainly reduced once you’ve got a cap on carbon and people are paying for it,” he said. “The farther upstream that cap is in place, the more [everyone is], in effect, regulated.” For example, oil producers will be paying for carbon emissions, as will gasoline refineries. “Do I feel a need any longer to purchase an offset for my automobile?” Burtis asked.

Of course, none of this has been enacted, as the Senate must still produce its own climate bill. Nevertheless, if Congress passes a final bill this year, offsets will likely be included—and the compromises made along the way will undoubtedly satisfy very

Census of Marine Life: Scientists Conduct Comprehensive Study of Ocean Species

For the first time since our ancestors first crawled out of the ocean onto dry land, mankind is returning to the sea to discover everything we left behind.

More than 2,000 scientists from 80 countries are engaged in the most comprehensive census of marine life ever conducted, a 10-year, $650-million effort to identify and catalog every species that lives in the world’s oceans, from the smallest microbes to the largest fish and marine mammals.

Obama’s EPA plans fewer toxic cleanups

For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of America's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less.

Environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers railed against President George W. Bush's cleanup record. But this time, they're shying away from speaking out against a popular president who's considered an ally in the fight to clean up the environment.

In Obama's first two years in office, the Environmental Protection Agency expects to begin the final phase of cleanup at fewer Superfund sites than in any administration since 1991, according to budget documents and agency records. The EPA estimates it will finish construction to remove the last traces of pollution at 20 sites in 2009 and 22 sites in 2010.

During the eight years of the Bush administration, the agency finished construction at 38 sites on average a year.

"Certainly, we are very disappointed that we can't get our ... numbers up," said Elizabeth Southerland, the acting deputy of the EPA's hazardous waste cleanup program, known as Superfund.

Obama’s team gives familiar explanation
The explanation by the Obama team is the same one put forward time and time again by Bush officials: The sites on the list have become increasingly complicated, contaminated and costly. That means it takes years for sites to reach the final cleanup stage, and as a result fewer are getting there.

Of the 527 contaminated properties still needing cleanup on the Superfund list, 40 have progressed to the point where all that's left is removing the last piles of contaminated soil, building a treatment plant to strip the groundwater of toxic pollutants, or capping a landfill so contamination does not enter the drinking water or air in surrounding neighborhoods.

At the other 1,060 hazardous waste sites still on the list, construction is finished and the last stages of the cleanup are under way — a process begun before Obama took office.

When EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explained this trend to a Senate committee this year, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer replied: "That's the same answer the Bush administration gave us and I don't buy it

Later, in an interview with The Associated Press, Boxer elaborated. "It doesn't matter to me who the president is. What matters to me is these sites get cleaned up," she said.

But not everyone is so critical of Obama's Superfund numbers.

Lack of money plagues Superfund
Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and some Democratic lawmakers who highlighted how little the Bush administration did on hazardous waste cleanups are now silent. They say it's because Obama, unlike Bush, wants to address the problem that has plagued Superfund for years — a lack of money.

A tax on petroleum, chemicals and large companies once helped EPA pay for the multimillion cleanups. It expired in 1995 and Superfund has been on financial life support since.

The pool of money ran dry in 2004, when Superfund cleanups that did not have a company to foot the bill ceased to be subsidized by the tax on polluters and started being paid by taxpayers.

Obama, unlike Bush, has called for the reinstatement of the tax in 2011. That will require action by Congress. It will also be up to Congress to set aside more money for cleanups if the tax is reinstated. In the past, when Superfund was flush in cash from the tax, Congress did not always provide more money for cleanups.

Sometimes, cleanup comes with delays
Supporters also point out that the Obama administration has asked for slightly more money in its budget for Superfund — $1.31 billion compared with the $1.29 billion in Bush's last year. There's also an extra $600 million from the economic stimulus plan for cleanups at 50 sites across the country.

But neither has helped boost the number of sites ready for the final stage of cleanup, although they could down the road.

Cleanups come with surprises. Workers can discover contamination they didn't know existed, leading to a new series of delays.

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Southerland, the Superfund manager, says that has happened more often in recent years as money has been more targeted on the cleanup, rather than studies to map out the contamination.

"The problems are the same," said Katherine Probst, an expert on Superfund at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future. "The point is they need more money, whether it is under Bush or Obama."

In the meantime, EPA officials say they are looking to find a new way to measure Superfund progress.

Atlantic Salmon returns to Seine

After an absence of nearly a century, Atlantic salmon have returned to France's Seine River, with hundreds swimming past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral this year alone, researchers told AFP.

The reappearance of salmon and other species chased from these waters by dams and pollution is all the more remarkable because no efforts have been made to reintroduce them.

They came back on their own.

"There are more and more fish swimming up the Seine," said Bernard Breton, a top official at France's National Federation for Fishing.

"This year the numbers have exceeded anything we could have imagined: I would not be surprised if we had passed the 1,000 mark," he told AFP by phone.

2008 was already a record-breaking year, with at least 260 tallied on a video system in the fish passage of the Poses dam above Rouen, a city roughly half way between Paris and the Atlantic Ocean.

Historically, the Seine hosted a flourishing population of salmon, a migratory species that return from the sea to their freshwater birth place to reproduce.

But the construction of dams, and especially the fouling of the Seine with chemical runoff from industry and agriculture along with organic pollution, led to their local extinction sometime between WWI and WWII.

Today, Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, is listed as a threatened species throughout Europe.

Imagine the surprise, then, of the weekend angler who reeled a six-kilo (13-pound) specimen just downstream from Paris at the end of last month.

Or the dozing fisherman in Suresnes, also downstream from the city gates, who snagged an even bigger one last October, the first such catch in over seven decades.

Salmon are not the only fish in the Seine making a comeback.

In 1995, only four species were known to swim its waters -- eels, redeye, bream and carp -- and at least one of these is invasive.

Today there are at least 32, according to the water purification authority for the larger Paris region. The lamprey eel, sea trout and shad have all joined salmon in the Seine over the last few years.

The reason, say scientists, is simple: cleaner water.

In the mid-1990s, "between 300 and 500 tonnes of fish died in the Seine up river from Paris every year because of pollution," said Breton.

But massive efforts over the last 15 years, including a new water purification plant, have removed much of the river's pollutants.

The results suggest that when it comes to conservation, restoring an ecosystem is probably a better strategy than restocking depleted waters, notes Breton.

Scientists at France's National Institute for Agricultural Research who track salmon say it is a "bellwether species", a living indicator of their habitat's state of health.

To find out more about how Atlantic salmon are recolonising their ancient river haunt, they recently captured and released seven adults in the Seine.

Four had spent less than two years at sea before returning to fresh waters, two had returned in the Spring after two years in open waters, and one had waited three years before leaving the ocean.

Atlantic salmon were once abundant throughout the north Atlantic, from Quebec to New England in the west, and from the Arctic Circle to Portugal to the east.

But over the last three decades, their populations have plummeted, with commercial catches declining by more than 80 percent.

Adults spend most of their lives in small groups roaming vast distances at sea in search of food, mainly squid, shrimp and small fish such as herring.

Salmon fast during the arduous, upstream journey to their birth place, where females lay eggs and males fertilise them before dying.