The Greenest Building Around
Denver 9News.com: NREL’s new Research Support Facility in Golden, Colorado, is 222,000 square feet and as large as that may be, it has the potential to produce as much energy as it uses.
“It’s a net-zero energy building. There are solar panels on the roof and on the parking structure and while the RSF will still be on the grid, the energy it produces should meet most, if not all of the buildings needs,” said Jeff Baker with the NREL office of laboratory operations.
EarthTalk: Global Warming and Wildflowers; and the Best Foods to Buy Organic
Dear EarthTalk: I’ve noticed that wildflower blooms in the mountains have been coming earlier and earlier in recent years. Is this a sign of global warming? And what does this mean for the long term survival of these hardy yet rare plants?
– Ashley J., via e-mail
As always, it’s hard to pin specific year-to-year weather-variations and related phenomena–including altered blooming schedules for wildflowers–on global warming. But longer term analysis of seasonal flowering patterns and other natural events do indicate that global warming may be playing a role in how early wildflowers begin popping up in the high country.
Aspen sunflowers, like the one’s pictured here, used
to first bloom in mid-May, but are now are doing so in
mid-April, a full month earlier. University of Maryland
ecologist David Inouye thinks that smaller snow packs
in the mountains are melting earlier due to global
warming, in turn triggering early blooms.
beautifulcataya, courtesy Flickr
University of Maryland ecologist David Inouye has been studying wildflowers in the Rocky Mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado for four decades, and has noticed that blooms have indeed begun earlier over the last decade. Aspen sunflowers, among other charismatic high country wildflowers, used to first bloom in mid-May, but are now are doing so in mid-April, a full month earlier. Inouye thinks that smaller snow packs in the mountains are melting earlier due to global warming, in turn triggering early blooms.
Smaller snow packs not only mean fewer flowers (since they have less water to use in photosynthesis); they can also stress wildflower populations not accustomed to exposure to late-spring frost. According to Inouye’s research, between 1992 and 1998 such frosts killed about a third of the Aspen sunflower buds in some 30 different study plots; but more recently, from 1999 through 2006, the typical mortality rate doubled, with three-quarters of all buds killed by frost in an average year thanks to earlier blooming.
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Mayan calendar end date and astrological influences
Forbes.com: Astrologer and chartist Arch Crawford sees a whole Mayan calendar full of trouble.
EarthTalk: Gas-Powered Motors on Wind Turbines? and Pouring Bleach Down the Drain
– Ryan Lewis, Plainwell, MI
Indeed, one of the major drawbacks to wind power is the fact that, even in windy locations, the wind doesn’t always blow. So the ability of turbines to generate power is intermittent at best. Many turbines can generate power only about 30 percent of the time, thanks to the inconsistency of their feedstock.
Some wind energy companies have developed back-
up systems that can spin turbines even when the
wind isn’t blowing, thus optimizing and keeping
consistent the power output. Colorado-based Hybrid
Turbines Inc., for example, makes systems that marry
a natural gas-based generator to a wind turbine. Even
with that fossil fuel usage, the electricity produced
is much cleaner than burning coal.
Jorge Lascar, courtesy Flickr
In order to overcome this Achilles’ heel of intermittent production, some wind companies have developed back-up systems that can spin turbines even when the wind isn’t blowing, thus optimizing and keeping consistent the power output. For example, Colorado-based Hybrid Turbines Inc. is selling wind farms systems that marry a natural gas-based generator to a wind turbine. “Even if natural gas is used, the electricity produced…is twice as environmentally clean as burning coal,” reports the company. Better yet, if a user can power them with plant-derived biofuels, they can remain 100 percent renewable energy-based.
While some wind energy companies may want to invest in such technologies to wring the most production out of their big investments, utilities aren’t likely to suffer much from the intermittent output if they don’t. Even the utilities that are most bullish on wind power still generate most of their electricity from other more traditional sources at the present time. So, when wind energy output decreases, utilities simply draw more power from other sources–such as solar arrays, hydroelectric dams, nuclear reactors and coal-fired power plants–to maintain consistent electrical service. As such, reports the American Wind Energy Association, utilities act as “system operators” drawing power from where it’s available and dispatching it to where it is needed in tune with rising and falling power needs.
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Baylor Study Finds “Cool” Imagery Lower Hot Flashes Through Hypnotherapy
Baylor University: With an estimated 85 percent of women experiencing hot flashes as they approach menopause, researchers are concentrating on finding effective treatments that do not include hormonal or other pharmaceutical therapies. Now, a new Baylor University study has shown that women who specifically pictured images associated with coolness during hypnotherapy had a dramatic decrease in hot flashes.
The results appear in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.
“This is an interesting finding because it begins to shed light on what is it, specifically, about hypnotic relaxation therapy that reduces the hot flashes,” said Dr. Gary Elkins, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor’s College of Arts and Sciences, who has conducted several studies on hypnotic relaxation therapy. “The finding may indicate that areas of the brain activated by imagery may be identical to those activated by actual perceived events. Consequently, it may be that while a woman suffering hot flashes imagines a cool place, she also feels cool rather than the heat of a hot flash.”
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Indian Ocean Sea Level Rise Threatens Coastal Areas
A new study in Nature Geoscience finds that Indian Ocean sea levels are rising
unevenly and threatening residents in some densely populated coastal areas,
particularly those along the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra,
and Java. This image shows the key player in the process, the Indo-Pacific warm
pool, in bright orange. This enormous, bathtub-shaped area spans a region of the
tropical oceans from the east coast of Africa to the International Date Line in the
Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees
Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily because of human-generated emissions
of greenhouses gases. (Image courtesy NASA Earth Observatory.)
UCAR: Indian Ocean sea levels are rising unevenly and threatening residents in some densely populated coastal areas and islands, a new study concludes. The study, led by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that the sea level rise is at least partly a result of climate change.
Sea level rise is particularly high along the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and Java, the authors found. The rise–which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India–could have future impacts on both regional and global climate.
The key player in the process is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, an enormous, bathtub-shaped area spanning a region of the tropical oceans from the east coast of Africa to the International Date Line in the Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily because of human-generated emissions of greenhouses gases.
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EarthTalk: Weed Killer Cautions; Recycling Plastic Sandwich Bags and Wrap
– Brit Brundage, Fairfield, CT
In short, yes and yes: You will jeopardize the health of your fruit trees and your yard in general if you use such products. Scott’s Bonus S Weed and Feed, as well as many other “weed-and-feed” fertilizers (Vigero, Sam’s, etc.), contain the harsh chemical herbicide atrazine, which excels at terminating fast-growing weeds like dandelions and crabgrass but can also kill other desirable plants and trees and damage your entire yard as toxin-carrying root systems stretch underground in every corner and beyond.
Howard Garrett, founder of the Dirt Doctor website,
recommends sticking to organic fertilizers — which
contain naturally buffered blends of major nutrients,
trace minerals, organic matter and carbon — for the
well being of plants, humans and animals alike.
The Dirt Doctor
Howard Garrett, a landscape architect who founded the DirtDoctor.com website and is an evangelist for natural organic gardening and landscaping, points out that anyone who reads the label on such products will learn that even manufacturers don’t take their health and environmental effects lightly. Some of the warnings right there in black and white on the Scott’s Bonus S Weed and Feed packaging include precautions against using it “under trees, shrubs, bedding plants or garden plants” or in the general vicinity of any such plants’ branch spreads or root zones.
Scott’s also recommends not applying it by hand or with hand-held rotary devices or applying “in a way that will contact any person either directly or through drift.” And just in case you were thinking it was okay for the environment, Scott’s adds that “runoff and drift from treated areas may be hazardous to aquatic organisms in neighboring areas” and that the product is “toxic to aquatic invertebrates.”
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