Nature and Science

China burns more coal than any other country; how it does so in the future will determine our planet's climate. Jeff Tollefson reports from Beijing.

The Texas highway department says no.

I thought this was interesting.  The Texas highway department – Texas, no less! -- says that
roads simply don’t pay for themselves:

… no road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees. For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon. This is just one example, but there is not one road in Texas that pays for itself based on the tax system of today. Some roads pay for about half their true cost, but most roads we have analyzed pay for considerably less. To conclude, in the SH 99 example, since the traffic volume for that road doesn't generate enough fuel tax revenue to pay for it, revenues from other parts of the state must be used to build and maintain this corridor segment. The same is true across the state, meaning that, as revealed by the tax gap analysis, overall revenues are not sufficient to meet the state’s transportation needs.

There may be some political shenanigans at play here that, not being a Texan, I know nothing about. (Haven't I heard that Texas is trying to build a massive toll-road corridor?) Still, the idea that roads don't pay for themselves -- and instead, must sap money from other funding sources -- seems like quite an admission from a highway department. Perhaps there are lessons here for road construction projects all across North America, not just in Texas.

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(Posted by Clark Williams-Derry in Transportation at 9:23 AM)

MILAN (Reuters) - The amount of a controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) found in baby bottles is tiny and cannot harm human health, the European Union's top food safety body said on Wednesday reacting to recent health concerns.

ATHENS (Reuters) - German archaeologists using radar technology believe they may have discovered the ancient horse racing track at Olympia where Roman Emperor Nero bribed his way to Olympic laurels.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Meat and milk from cloned animals may not be safe to be sold in the European Union after all, the bloc's top food safety agency will say on Thursday after a rethink on the issue, EU sources said.

Bottlenose dolphins whistle more to their newborns, perhaps to stop theft by other females, researchers say.

Newsnight's Susan Watts joins a team of scientists travelling to the Arctic to carry out crucial climate research.

Tiny fossils time the climate shift which gave rise to Antarctica's Dry Valleys, a landscape akin to Mars.

Novel way to use carbon credits to save trees.

International Polar Year is feeling the pinch.

At least 117 boys were being born for every 100 girls at the beginning of this century in China. Philip Ball asks whether Chinese birth rates can be controlled without exacerbating the gender imbalance.

The decision not to cull badgers in England to control tuberculosis in cattle is flawed in the short-term, say MPs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People infected with parasitic worms may be much more susceptible to the AIDS virus, according to a study published on Tuesday that may help explain why HIV has hit sub-Saharan Africa particularly hard.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Disease spread to wild bees from commercially bred bees used for pollination in agriculture greenhouses may be playing a role in the mysterious decline in North American bee populations, researchers said on Tuesday.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation supports a huge range of journalistic programs, ranging from experimental efforts in community journalism to massive players in the media ecosystem like National Public Radio. 180 of their grantees are in Chicago today at a meeting hosted by Knight designed to build connections between grantees and encourage cross-fertilization of projects. (The Rising Voices project of Global Voices is supported by the Knight Foundation, which is why I’m here.)

It’s also an interesting opportunity to see how people in the journalism world are looking at the business and technical challenges facing the field. The opening speakers, Rosental Alves from the University of Texas and Dianne Lynch from Ithaca College offer quite a bit of disparity in their views of journalism in a digital age. Rosental, who is a pioneering Brazilian journalist and a board member for Global Voices, is a devout cyberenthusiast, while Dianne, the Dean of the Park School of communications, is decidedly more skeptical

Rosental argues that it’s a mistake to think about the current changes in the journalism world as just another business cycle - it’s a revolution, he argues, comparable to the invention of the press or the industrial revolution. In this revolution, we shouldn’t expect broadcast media to disappear, but should expect people to experience media with people like themselves, to try to discover media that people like themselves are interested in.

The very nature of newspapers has changed, Rosental argues - “newspapers are now a hybrid of atoms and bits”. In some ways, the English language is a limitation here - in Portuguese, the word for newspaper is “jornal”, a word that has no implications about the physical delivery of the information. In a new journalism, the digital aspect of the work will be at the center, not at the periphery. Journalists need to discover new ways to tell stories in this medium, to engage communities in their work and to move beyond the “anachronism of the one-way web”.

Lynch is skeptical that the world Rosental promises is here, now. She argues that “news consumers are not early adopters”. Instead, they’re “brand loyal”, willing to stay with their newspapers or sources like Yahoo news. Most consumers don’t read blogs, and those who do trust them even less than they trust news obtained from their neighbors. (Her stats here are from Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the News Media 2008 - they’re somewhat controversial figures, as some bloggers argue, as Amy Gahran did here, that some readers don’t know when they’re reading blog content.) She argues that citizen media is less open to comments than mainstream media. (I’m sitting next to Dan Gillmor, who points out that bloggers often react by posting on their own blogs, not neccesarily by posting comments.)

Bloggers are not, defacto, journalists, she argues. And journalism is alive and well, if suffering some major revenue problems - she points to the influence of Craigslist and Tulia in destroying the real estate classified market. Readership is up, if we incude online as well as offline readership, and the ad market is still pretty huge, at $45.5 billion last year. But she urges journalists not to obsess with the technology, but to “look through it” towards their function as journalists.

So perhaps bloggers versus journalists isn’t over. Or perhaps we’re simply not able to have a journalism conference without flogging this dead horse a few more times.

This post originally appeared on Ethan Zuckerman's excellent personal blog, My Heart's In Accra

Photo credit: Creative Commons User DiamondDuste

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Politics at 3:42 PM)

By Carey King

Moving toward a sustainable, or renewable energy-based economy, stresses the views of how people value their time and exertion. Our system of economics puts value on products and services that allow people to spend less time and/or exertion while performing a task. This value system is exactly why fossil fuels have been the driving factor for increases in accumulation of material goods and leisure time over the course of the industrial revolution.

Historically, fossil fuels have had such high energy density (and energy return on that invested to mine them) that we haven't worried too much about how to allocate the energy invested. When a barrel of oil is refined or a cubic foot of natural gas is burned, it has been obvious that we can produce more products and spend more time in leisure or progressive work. It is because of the concerns of fossil resource scarcity together with environmental effects (air pollution, greenhouse gases and climate change, etc.) that alternatives to fossil resources are sought.

By contrast, when it comes to renewable energy products, particularly biofuels, we've applied intense scrutiny to figuring out the energy return on total energy (or fossil energy) invested because the returns are not as easily determined as being sufficiently greater than one. Part of this scrutiny is because of the inherently lower energy density of carbohydrates (i.e. biomass) versus hydrocarbons (i.e. fossil fuels). Another part of the scrutiny derives from the knowledge that fossil fuels currently permeate the vast majority of the manufacturing and agricultural practices of the industrialized world, and understanding the optimal manner in which to deal with their reduced presence, and possible absence, is not obvious.

Allocation factors are an example of the struggle of society to understand the value of output of renewable energy systems and processes. The allocation factor is a term used to describe how much of the total energy input to a renewable energy system should be “allocated” to, or associated with, both the primary product output (e.g. ethanol, biodiesel, biocrude, etc.) as well as any process coproducts. These allocation factors are also used to assign greenhouse gas quantities to compare competing energy systems. Renewable energy systems that output electricity, such as photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines, are fairly straightforward in giving an allocation factor of one. That is to say, all of the energy and material inputs that go into manufacturing, operation, and maintenance of the system are used to produce the only output: energy in the form of electricity. There is no product other than the electricity.

Assigning an allocation factor for biofuel production is more difficult. Biofuels originate from some form of biomass (e.g. corn, soybeans, cellulose, etc.) that can be used for multiple purposes (e.g. food and fuel) and the extracting them creates output products besides the fuel itself, termed coproducts. For example, in the typical processing of biodiesel from soybeans, the major outputs are the primary product of biodiesel plus the coproducts of soy meal and glycerin [1]. Fossil fuels have similar product/coproduct distinctions (e.g. natural gas for fertilizers and petroleum for plastics), but because we know there is no long term sustainable use of them, there has been no need to scrutinize how we derive their various products.

So a question arises: for every unit of energy input from field to fuel, how much of that input should be responsible for each product? To answer this question, there are multiple proposed allocation concepts. The different allocation methods for coproducts are three non-energy methods and three energy-based methods [2] that are designated by whether the energy consumption of the processes is allocated according to:

Non-Energy Methods
• the 100% principle such that all energy consumed is allocated to the primary product (e.g. biofuel).
• the mass fraction of each of the products,
• the economic market value of each of the products,

Energy-based Methods
• the energy content (calorific value) of each of the products,
• the energy displaced by each of the products with respect to an existing or customary way of producing the product, or

100% Principle
Allocating 100% of energy inputs to renewable energy systems is the most simplistic and uninformative. There are no decisions to be made, and it removes the capacity for society to learn how to use all available resources and technologies while reusing and recycling as much as possible. On the other hand, its simplicity easily allows policymakers and consumers to understand the impacts and benefits of renewable systems. Essentially, the 100% principle is the extreme case that assumes no useful coproducts are possible, or that coproducts are free in terms of monetary or energy input.

Mass Fraction
Allocating by mass fraction is very straightforward and easy to understand. Techniques that minimize coproducts should be viewed as positive since otherwise, they would not be coproducts but instead the primary product. We can likely assume the primary product is the most market viable, at least at the time the renewable energy project is begun.

Market Value
Using market value to allocate coproducts is the method most akin to the free market principles. Brazil’s past and continued focus upon sugar cane as a cash crop theoretically enables their companies to decide how much sugar versus ethanol to produce from the same crop. If one price is up, they can focus on that product versus the other. Currently, the ethanol price is up as a group of Brazilian companies has arranged the first “practical application of verified sustainable ethanol” trade with Sweden [3]. Thus, a market value of coproducts potentially allows a producer to tune his process according to the rather short time scales of commodity fluctuations. The main drawback of this method is that market prices change, and what could be a good energy balance one day could be a poor one a week later [1].

Energy Content (calorific value) of Products
Focusing upon the energy content of the products seems like a fundamental method because the purpose of renewable energy systems is to produce a product with high energy content. The primary product should in fact contain more energy than the coproducts, otherwise the system may have to be reanalyzed in terms of thermodynamic efficiency. This suboptimal energy content ratio could possibly occur if there is pressure to tailor a biofuel to existing infrastructure (which would be a pressure from the market). The difficulty with this method is that it does not indicate the effort required to achieve the energy intensive fuel or product. For instance, lasers contain high power concentrated in a tight beam, but much power is required to get the energy in that form.

Process Energy Input
Allocation due to the energy input into the renewable system seems like a logical choice because we are, after all, trying to figure out how to allocate the energy consumed in the renewable energy process. However, this allocation method can be somewhat confusing when the primary product and one or more coproducts results from the same subprocess. For example, if there is an unavoidable coproduct that results from the feedstock processing steps, how much input energy went into that unavoidable byproduct? What if the coproduct has no use, meaning it is actually a waste? Nonetheless, this method can often be more straightforward as in the case with wet-milling corn ethanol since during pre-treatment the starch (used for ethanol) is separated from the grain (used for coproducts), and thus subsequent energy used for processing the grain can easily allocated to the coproducts.

Energy Displaced (energy for replacement coproduct)
Allocation due to the energy displaced is an inherently comparative methodology. It requires diligent astute knowledge of the field of the product in order to know the energy input into replacement products. Also, an equivalent replacement product must exist. Here, the energy required for producing the primary product is reduced by the amount of energy required for the replacement product. For instance, Shapouri assumes that animal feed products (e.g. DDG) produced from corn ethanol processing can directly replace soybean meal. A difficulty arises if soy meal, itself a possible coproduct from biodiesel production, might use corn-based animal feeds as a replacement product as well. They can’t both replace each other. So there can be multiple choices of replacement products that can provide a range of answers for the primary product.

Can these allocation factors reveal something about culture, society, and how we value our energy and time? Is there a correct or more ethical method?

Pradhan et al. suggest that the correct method depends upon the question being asked. If renewability is the question, they say the mass fraction should be used, but if economic sustainability is to be determined, then the market value allocation approach should be used [1]. For philosophers who like to find the ultimate truth, this solution is rather non-satisfactory, and it avoids the question of whether the market should recognize that energy return on energy invested (EROI) is the major driver for economic growth or if economic growth potential is the driver for the choice of energy resources. The tail can’t wag the dog, but hopefully with enough flow of accurate information the EROI and economic return will continuously feedback to each other and arrive at the same solution.

[1] Pradhan, A.; Shrestha, D. S.; Van Gerpen, J.; and Duffield, J. 2008. The Energy Balance of Soybean Oil Biodiesel Production: A Review of Past Studies. Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. 51 (1): 185-194.

[2] Larson, E. A review of life-cycle analysis studies on liquid biofuel systems for the transport sector. Energy for Sustainable Development. June 2006, Vol. X, No. 2: 109-126

[3] Guardian, UK. June 25, 2008. Brazil signs deal to export sustainable ethanol. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7609299.

Photo Credit: Flickr/jimmedia, licensed by Creative Commons.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Columns at 3:37 PM)

Should we add one more gas to the Kyoto list?

Time to head back into my pillow fort:

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) can be called the missing greenhouse gas: It is a synthetic chemical produced in industrial quantities; it is not included in the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases or in national reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and there are no observations documenting its atmospheric abundance...With 2008 production equivalent to 67 million metric tons of CO2, NF3 has a potential greenhouse impact larger than that of the industrialized nations' emissions of PFCs or SF6, or even that of the world's largest coal-fired power plants.

Yoinks.  So there's at least one greenhouse gas that's NOT recognized by international global warming protocols, but IS a significant climate concern. Great. Just great. Of course, the gas is used in tiny quantities -- but molecule-for-molecule, NF3 is about 17,000 times as potent as CO2 in warming up the atmosphere.

Still, there's a pretty straightforward solution here: just add nitrogen trifluoride to the list of climate-warming pollutants that are covered under any global warming regulatory system or GHG tax.  (Are you listening, WCI? How 'bout you, British Columbia?)

(Editor's note: About 75 percent of NF3 is used for computer microchips, the rest is used for LCD screens.)

[Hat tip to Brandon.]

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(Posted by Clark Williams-Derry in Climate Change at 3:14 PM)

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation supports a huge range of journalistic programs, ranging from experimental efforts in community journalism to massive players in the media ecosystem like National Public Radio. 180 of their grantees are in Chicago today at a meeting hosted by Knight designed to build connections between grantees and encourage cross-fertilization of projects. (The Rising Voices project of Global Voices is supported by the Knight Foundation, which is why I’m here.)

It’s also an interesting opportunity to see how people in the journalism world are looking at the business and technical challenges facing the field. The opening speakers, Rosental Alves from the University of Texas and Dianne Lynch from Ithaca College offer quite a bit of disparity in their views of journalism in a digital age. Rosental, who is a pioneering Brazilian journalist and a board member for Global Voices, is a devout cyberenthusiast, while Dianne, the Dean of the Park School of communications, is decidedly more skeptical

Rosental argues that it’s a mistake to think about the current changes in the journalism world as just another business cycle - it’s a revolution, he argues, comparable to the invention of the press or the industrial revolution. In this revolution, we shouldn’t expect broadcast media to disappear, but should expect people to experience media with people like themselves, to try to discover media that people like themselves are interested in.

The very nature of newspapers has changed, Rosental argues - “newspapers are now a hybrid of atoms and bits”. In some ways, the English language is a limitation here - in Portuguese, the word for newspaper is “jornal”, a word that has no implications about the physical delivery of the information. In a new journalism, the digital aspect of the work will be at the center, not at the periphery. Journalists need to discover new ways to tell stories in this medium, to engage communities in their work and to move beyond the “anachronism of the one-way web”.

Lynch is skeptical that the world Rosental promises is here, now. She argues that “news consumers are not early adopters”. Instead, they’re “brand loyal”, willing to stay with their newspapers or sources like Yahoo news. Most consumers don’t read blogs, and those who do trust them even less than they trust news obtained from their neighbors. (Her stats here are from Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the News Media 2008 - they’re somewhat controversial figures, as some bloggers argue, as Amy Gahran did here, that some readers don’t know when they’re reading blog content.) She argues that citizen media is less open to comments than mainstream media. (I’m sitting next to Dan Gillmor, who points out that bloggers often react by posting on their own blogs, not neccesarily by posting comments.)

Bloggers are not, defacto, journalists, she argues. And journalism is alive and well, if suffering some major revenue problems - she points to the influence of Craigslist and Tulia in destroying the real estate classified market. Readership is up, if we incude online as well as offline readership, and the ad market is still pretty huge, at $45.5 billion last year. But she urges journalists not to obsess with the technology, but to “look through it” towards their function as journalists.

So perhaps bloggers versus journalists isn’t over. Or perhaps we’re simply not able to have a journalism conference without flogging this dead horse a few more times.

This piece originally appeared on Ethan Zuckerman's excellent personal blog, My Heart's In Accra.

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Media at 3:07 PM)

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Academic failure appears to trouble teen-age girls more deeply than boys, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.