Friends of mine just replaced their traditional gas heating-cooling system with a geothermal system. The geothermal system utilizes the constant ground temperature to generate heat in the winter and dissipate heat in the summer, and results in virtually no CO2 emissions.

If you go 10-15 feet underground, the ground is pretty much always 53-55 degrees - year-round. A geothermal system includes about 1200 feet of water-filled tubes that are 15 to 125 feet underground (the tubes are installed using something called a directional bore, which threads the tubing underground without having to dig a trench or dig up the property). The water flowing through the tubing returns to the house at that ground temperature, and is then used by a heat pump to translate the temperature difference between the indoor air and the water to heat or cool the home.

And because the heat pump uses very little energy to operate, the systems dramatically reduce the energy consumption to heat and cool  home. AND, they generate essentially no CO2.

These systems cost 2-3 times more to install than a traditional furnace-A/C system, but will pay for themselves in 5-10 years through reduced utility costs. Obviously, like other alternative energy systems, geothermal is for someone who is thinking long-term!!

I spoke to someone who installs the systems, and he told me about a new subdivision going in in Hampshire IL, that will have geothermal systems for all the homes. The installer said that the systems are more cost-effective to install for new construction than for a retrofit, but are still expensive enough that they are pretty much only being used by some custom home builders. The production builders who are mostly interested in big homes for less money aren't thinking about long-term investments that will pay-off for the homeowner in a few years. But, maybe as the prices of gas and electricity keep going up, this type of system will become standard in new construction because people will start demanding it?

The Institute for Figuring is working on a really cool crocheted coral reef. 

The website says the reef is "a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world." The primary factor leading to the death of coral reefs around the world is Global Warming.

The above picture is part of the crochet reef. Below is a photo of part of an actual coral reef! While the wool reef is beautiful, let's hope that isn't the only type of reef we have left a century from now!



The website includes a nice explanation of how global warming affects coral. The warming water, plus increased acidity (due to increased CO2 levels in the oceans), plus increased cyclone activity all impact the reefs.

The Institute For Figuring is an educational organization dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figures and figuring techniques. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.

The Live Earth concerts that took place July 7, 2007, set out to have zero net emissions of global warming gases. The group just released a comprehensive Report that reviews the steps they took planning the event, waste produced, and energy used for the event (which featured 7 concerts on 7 continents with 150 performers and about 1 million concert-goes).

Not surprisingly, the break-down of energy used showed that 87% came from travel by the people attending the concerts - not the performers, but the audiences! Tokyo and Singapore did the best job of using public transportation to attend the event.

The organization I work for had its first fundraising event on Sunday. I decided to use it as an opportunity to figure out how to make the event "carbon neutral." The biggest benefit to the project was in learning how to think through what it means to be "carbon neutral" in practice. That meant understanding the CO2 implications of our actions - not just viewing an event in isolation, but really thinking about what it means to the planet, and then thinking about what choices we can make to counteract the impacts.

Basically, there were three steps in the process:

First, we had to figure out how much CO2 the event would generate.

We were hoping for about 200 people, and I estimated that they would arrive in 150 cars, and that each car would travel an average of 40 miles round trip,and the average car would get 20 mpg. We would have the facility for 4 hours, and a meal would be served.

I used several calculators to help me estimate the impact.

 Travel was easy. Assuming 150 cars traveling 40 miles each, getting 25 mpg, that's 6,000 miles, 240 gallons of gas, which translates into 4,800 pounds of CO2 (20 pounds per gallon of gas).

The facility's CO2 emissions were more difficult. The best calculator I found was through a site for The Climate Trust in Oregon. They have a companion website called Carbon Counter that has calculators and allows you to purchase offsets. Through their site, I calculated that the facility use would generate about 3,000 additional pounds.

So, that put us at roughly 4 tons (2,000 pounds in a ton).

We could have purchased offsets to help generate clean energy in some other part of the country, but that just didn't seem quite right. So instead, we decided to figure out how many trees we would have to plant locally to absorb the carbon produced by the event.

One tree, over it's 90-120 year lifespan will absorb a ton of carbon in its roots, trunk and branches. So, if we planted four trees, over the next 100 or so years, they would absorb an amount of CO2 equivalent to the amount generated by the event.

That seemed kind of lame.

Planting 400 trees would absorb about 4 tons of carbon in one year (on average). And they would do that year in and year out for about 100 years. That is great, but planting 400 trees is a lot of work!

I checked on some tree "offset" websites and found that they use the figure of 3 trees per ton of carbon for offsetting your CO2. Well, if we planted 12 trees, that would still take 30 years to absorb the CO2. That seemed slightly less lame than 100 years, but still, 30 years is a full generation.

Instead, we decided to take a middle position and go with 10 trees per ton - a 10 year return, plus the trees will continue absorbing carbon for about 90 years after the initial 10.

Just think, if everyone planted trees to offset their carbon! Not a bad thing.

 

 The third step in the process was planting the trees. And we did. 42 oak trees were planted on October 1st as part of a project to reforest the once abundant woodlands of this area. And we know those trees will be doing something else - they will be absorbing CO2 as the grow! A two-fer!

A Fresh Squeeze story casts doubt on the common mantra to "plant more trees" to combat global warming.

Quoting from the article, which cites a study released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: “New tropical trees are very effective in mitigating climate change,” said atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala, who led the study. “New trees in mid-latitudes have near-zero climate-mitigation effect. Planting new trees in high latitudes will accelerate global warming.”

The article goes on to say that: "Although trees sequester carbon dioxide, the study showed that at latitudes greater than 50, this is cancelled out by the extra sunlight they absorb. Forest canopies capture more sunlight than the ice and snow which typically cover high latitudes. Less reflected light means more heat is held to the Earth’s surface, increasing the effects of global warming."

There is still debate about how much of an impact planting trees locally will have on balancing carbon emissions. We live at about 42 degrees latitude, so it is hardly tropical - yet. We also tend to have deciduous trees - meaning trees that shed their leaves in the fall. One of the things that does is allow for reflected light from ice and snow. We see very few "closed canopies" in the winter around here. Also, a lot of carbon in stored in the actual trunk, roots, and branches of the tree (about 1 ton over the life of the tree) - carbon that would go free otherwise. So, in the balance, I think planting more trees has to be a good thing.

According to two recent reports, both polar bears and walruses are showing the effects of global warming.

There are only about 24,500 polar bears remaining on the planet. Despite some erroneous statements in the blogosphere, this number is in fact lower than historic levels. The naysayers point to polar bear population recovery following over-harvest decades ago. This is hardly the same thing.

Dr. Andrew Derocher, Chair of the IUCN (World Conservation Union) SSC (Species Survival Commission) Polar Bear Specialist Group summarized the polar bears' plight quit succinctly:

"... no habitat, no seals; no seals, no bears. This never was an issue of polar bears alone. The only effective conservation approach is to protect the habitat and this is an issue of climate change. You can distort the issue any way you so desire. At the end of the day, the sea ice is disappearing. Take away the habitat and the species follows shortly thereafter (or before).

"Comparing declines caused by harvest followed by recovery from harvest controls to declines from loss of habitat and climate warming are apples and oranges. Ignorant people write ignorant things."

 

There is an excellent article by Joseph Romm posted on Grist.

There is also a technical report on the polar bear topic that was published in Integrative & Comparative Biology. This one quote from the article sums the situation up pretty clearly: "...it is unlikely that polar bears will survive as a species if the sea ice disappears completely as has been predicted by some.^"



Quoting an Associated Press story: "Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.

"Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

"Walrus feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform over water beyond their 630-foot diving range or gathering spots on shore, thousands of walrus picked Alaska's rocky beaches.

"It looks to me like animals are shifting their distribution to find prey," said Tim Ragen, executive director of the federal Marine Mammal Commission. "The big question is whether they will be able to find sufficient prey in areas where they are looking."

The walrus's situation is compounded by wasteful and illegal killing of these animals for their tusks. Tusk ivory commands a high price in Japan where the tusk ivory is used to make small seals called hanko, and also has high value in the market place where ignorant people still buy ivory carved objects, not thinking about the terrible damage they are causing to a species.

Tim Flannery, Australian climate-change expert, recently told the Australian media that the upcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will state that greenhouse gases have already reached a level that will pose great risk for the planet. Previously, the IPCC had estimated that these levels would not be reached for about another decade.

The changes can be traced directly to human-related sources as industrial expansion proceeds at a high rate of growth, particularly in China and other Asian nations.

Well, Al Gore just took a seat next to former President Jimmy Carter, Desond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, the Quakers, Martin Luther King Jr, and Reforestation Activist/Advocate Wangari Maathai (among many others) in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize!

Al Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will share this year's Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

My brother sent me an article from FT.com, website of London's Financial Times.

The article's about some companies in Britain that are going to start adding "grams of CO2" to food labels to indicate approximately how much carbon dioxide the production of the item generated.

Well, Cadbury is one of the companies mentioned in the article, and I just have to mention that Tom's favorite candy in the whole world is Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate bars!

Quoting from the article: "Many of these companies are working with the UK government-funded Carbon Trust, which has helped to develop certain methodologies for measuring the carbon that went into manufacture. The Carbon Trust says more than 150 companies have approached it about using the labels.

"Mr Murray says the process takes several months for the first product or service, but faster to roll out subsequently to other products. Companies have to scrutinise factors such as their electricity usage, their transport, heating, their use of materials, and any greenhouse gases produced by chemical processes in their manufacturing.

"The cost of the process varies widely from one company to another, from several thousand pounds to £10,000 or more. Undertaking such a review can be beneficial, Mr Murray reports: companies can find and solve inefficiencies in their supply chain, such as cutting their energy use. He estimates most companies could shave at least 20 per cent from their energy bills alone without major changes."

Imagine that, companies could actually cut their energy use just be going through the process of really understanding the energy consumed during the manufacturing process!

So far it is just starting in Britain, but with any luck, it will spread throughout the planet, and become ubiquitous, like the nutrition labels we see here.

I can see my thought process now: Hmm, should I get a Kit-Kat or a Snickers bar? Let me see, which has more calories? Now, which produced more CO2? Decisions, decisions!

The other day, a friend told me about something called a WindSpire wind turbine for home installation. The turbine generates about 1 kilowatt hour of energy a day - that is about 1/3 to 1/4 of the electricity we use daily. Also, it includes an inverter that will allow us to reverse the flow back to ComEd when it is generating energy we aren't using (like when we are not at home).

It's basically a cylindar that's 3 feet tall, 2 feet wide, and 30 feet tall. Now, that may sound very tall, but on our lot, I think it could work. The company we contacted is called Mariah Power in Nevada. They will be starting to install these systems this fall.


(This is NOT our property! This is from the company's website.)

Our property slopes to the back, so the garage is in the basement. Also, the house is tall - not large, but tall. Two stories with an attic that you can stand up in. We also have several old, tall trees on the parcel, so I think we could get away with a tall pole-like thing. The units are quiet - about 25 decibels at 5 feet away.

The pay-back on energy savings is 20 years (they cost about $4,000 and another $1,000 to install). I'm going to research the tax credits that go along with it. Also, I'll look into the City codes to make sure we can get a permit.