'Ice That Burns' May Yield Clean, Sustainable Bridge To Global Energy Future

Is "ice that burns" the next untapped source of energy? Derived from chunks of ice from the bottom of the ocean and beneath the permafrost in the artic, this frozen natural gas also known as gas hydrates, in many eyes is the next form of energy that will potentially reduced our dependence on oil for good. Many scientists believe that these gas hydrates will act as a bridge between oil and renewable energy, until the technology used in renewable energy is perfected.

In terms of amount, scientists estimate that around 85.4 trillion cubic feet of these hydrates could be extracted from Alaska alone. However, the problems still present in the gas hydrate business are the true cost of extracting the hydrates, the ability to make convert hydrates on a large scale, and the environmental impacts associated will the above processes. Stores of these hydrates are not only found in Alaska, they can be found in great amounts in the Gulf of Mexico, Japan, and regions of India.

However, gas hydrates bring with them a gas more atmospherically damaging then CO2. Methane being the main constituent of gas hydrates; they represent a climate changing force that is in motion everyday. Scientists stand by the fact that since methane has a quicker short-term effect on the atmosphere, that using gas hydrates will convert that once released methane into CO2 which has somewhat less burdening qualities on the atmosphere.

In terms of the policy involved in this growing hydrates business, I believe that we are still not making enough progress on renewable energies and still relying on nonrenewable ones that will ultimately warm our planet. In addition the environmental impacts associated with extracting and processing gas hydrates is very intensive when you consider the fact that most the reserves along continental shelves (where there is an abundance of people and wildlife) and in the diverse regions of the arctic where small impacts can have lasting effects. There are many unsolved factors and dangers still lurking around gas hydrates and I believe our current policy must look towards renewable energy such as wind or solar before we decide to use another energy source that could have even a bigger impact on the planet.

Corn Ethanol: Not a Clean Alternative for Coal and Oil

In today’s economy, the main problem that Americans face is how to decrease their dependency on oil and coal. One solution that has become popular is corn ethanol. However despite its attractiveness to solving oil and coal demands, corn ethanol is not the answer.

To begin, corn ethanol production has major drawbacks such as increases in greenhouse gas emissions. According to a Duke University-led study, “it makes more sense using today's technology to leave land unfarmed in conservation reserves than to plow it up for corn to make biofuel." Furthermore, the conversion of more land into strictly corn-producing fields can decrease the diversity of plants and make the fields more pests susceptible. As well, “more acreage to corn [in order to] make fuel can lead to higher prices for other crops, [as well as] increase soil erosion." One way to help is for corn producers to introduce soybean crops in order to lessen the threat of pests and increase the biodiversity.

In addition, corn ethanol production can increase greenhouse gas emissions because of farmers practicing deforestation in order to compensate for the economic pressures to produce more corn for ethanol. The deforestation methods will include plowing and setting fires to the land, which will only increase the CO₂ levels and contribute to global warming.

Even with corn ethanol seeming to help reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, the ethanol will only bring about 20% new energy per gallon produced. Furthermore, it still takes enormous amounts of fossil fuels to power the machinery to harvest the corn for ethanol, which ultimately increases the levels of greenhouse gases.

As an alternative, switchgrass can be used for biofuels. Unlike corn, switchgrass does not require annual replowing and planting. Furthermore, a study conducted for the Department of Energy confirmed that switchgrass “has the potential to slow the buildup of greenhouse gas[es]." Unlike fossil fuels, switchgrass can repeatedly recycle CO₂. As well, switchgrass only produces minor land changes than compared to corn.

Lastly, corn ethanol production is beginning to have an impact on bird species. Because of the increase in farmland conversion, increasing amounts of birds are losing their habitats in forested lands and starting to become endangered.

Overall, corn ethanol is an attempt to try to decrease the demands for coal and oil. Nevertheless, corn ethanol can only be considered as an improvement and not as a solution.

Incentives for Home Solar Power

Many people see the positives of solar power: can be installed at almost any scale, ease of setup and connection to the grid, and the ability to provide clean renewable energy. Unfortunately they also see the one main drawback: the extremely high initial cost. Installation of photovoltaics can range in cost from $10,000-70,000 or more depending on system size and where you live. For solar power supporters and communities who want to make a change in how their energy is supplied, coming up with measures that make solar power more affordable is key.

In Gainesville, Florida the community leaders there are taking a step in Europe’s direction. Since the early 1990’s countries like Germany and Spain have implemented a financing system that has made them leaders in renewable energy, most notably solar and wind power. The idea is simple. Homes and businesses are paid higher rates for their renewable sources than the typical cost of coal. In some places in Germany residents are paid up to four times the rate of coal power. “The new payment method is referred to as a “feed-in tariff” in Europe. It is, in essence, a mandate by the government telling a utility to pay above-market rates for green electricity. It shifts the burden of subsidizing green energy from taxpayers, as is common in the United States, to electricity ratepayers. And the technique includes assurances that a utility will pay the high rates for a long period, often 15 to 25 years” (2). This system coupled with national tax credits, state rebates and even local credits makes the system extremely affordable. The idea is even gaining momentum in places like Canada.

Another possibility has its roots in California. Called “municipal financing”, the idea lies in the fact that the initial cost of the photovoltaics will be attached to the home, much like gas or water lines would be financed. In this program good credit is not required and thus any homeowner would be eligible. This program also overlaps with several other benefits: California residents receive a rebate of 20% of the cost of the system and thanks to the new stimulus bill a federal tax credit of 30% is extended to anyone. This program has taken off in other states such as Colorado, Texas, Virginia, Arizona, and many large cities are developing their own programs.

While both programs have promise, I believe that municipal financing has a better future. One of the largest issues with Americans is how much they move around. Only the municipal financing tackles this issue. No longer will studying and calculating the payback period be such an important issue, if the homeowners know that the cost of the photovoltaics are attached to the house and any future owners. In essence the biggest risk, the cost, has been extremely reduced. Aas long as the trend of decreasing costs of photovoltaics coupled with renewable energy incentives in the form of tax credits and rebates continue, the future for solar power looks bright.

Clean Coal: Reality or Myth?

Coal plants are approximately 50% of the electricity generated in the United States. However, coal fired power plants are one of the major contributors to climate change. These plants are responsible for 80% of the electric industry’s CO₂ emissions. The energy industry is moving in a new “green” direction as the grave affects of climate change are beginning to be known. Renewable forms of energy are in and old forms of production are on the way out. The coal industry is fighting to stay a major energy producer with their “clean coal” campaign. The major questions are: when will the technology be commercially available if at all, and can coal ever be truly clean?

The government has designated $3.4 billion dollars to some clean coal projects. Some of these projects are sponsored by Babcock & Wilcox, American Electric Power, and Duke Energy. The technology that these projects are going to used will at most capture 40% of the CO₂ in about 10 years. There are many projects related to “clean coal” across the nation but they are experiencing many problems. The US General Accounting Office looked at 13 clean coal projects, 8 of them had financial problems or other major delays and 6 were behind schedule from anywhere between 2-7 years.

Another major concern for environmentalist is that even if the carbon sequestration technology works, there are still environmental impacts to coal production. The technology when working traps the waste products and turns them into another medium, there will always be waste. Also what about problems like mountain top removal and coal ash disposal? Both of these have huge environmental impacts and they will continue to affect the environment even when the carbon technology is put in place.

The bottom line is that coal can never be clean and the technology claiming to make coal clean can only make it cleaner. The real solution to our energy problems are renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind. Clean coal technology is not a realistic goal for the near future. Companies have been researching this technology for decades and it still is not likely to happen on a commercial scale in the next decade. Coal has huge impacts from the mining process to the making of electricity. Even if the technology works there are still a number of environmental problems that coal brings. Coal will never be clean.

Mountaintop Removal: Once It's Gone, It Won't Come Back

Tucked away in a small West Virginia town, Kayford Mountain  is now an island in the vast desert that has been created by a process known as mountaintop removal. To put it in layman's terms, a company takes control of an area, clears it of all forests and vegetation, blasts open the top of the mountain, rips the coal out of the earth, dumps the waste from the process into the now empty strips, and bulldozes over it.  The result is a series of dusty, jagged plateaus where a mountain used to be. Mountaintop removal is the poster child for industry taking advantage of the land for its own profit with no regard for the resources or the citizens it affects.

Although this is happening in select mountain areas, the effects of mountaintop removal are widespread.  Towns located near sites must contend with tons of toxic sludge and dust, which settles on homes and washes into the water supply. Blasts from the site endanger not only the lives of workers, but citizens too.  Flooding from a lack of trees and wildlife in the area occurs while air pollution spans the east coast.  Dust and contaminated waste also seep into the headwaters that flow throughout the United States. Even more streams are buried forever along with the waste of the mountains, cutting off water supply for many areas. And once the mountains are gone they will not resurface naturally for thousands of years, if at all.

Three Virginia counties are home to mountaintop removal sites: Lee, Dickenson, and Wise County. Wise County is also welcoming a new coal fired power plant, which will be fed coal from the removal sites. Many grassroots organizations around Virginia have mobilized to stop both the plant and the removal operations that supply it from occurring.  In 2005, The Clean Water Protection Act was introduced in Congress. By mandating that fill material cannot contain waste, the CWPA would essentially ban mountaintop removal.  The bill has resurfaced in the current Congress, and states have begun to fight back too. Georgia and North Carolina (the two largest consumers of coal produced from mountaintop removal mining) have both introduced legislation to ban mountaintop removal.  Many Virginia representatives have thrown their weight behind the CWPA. Although legislators are taking baby steps in the right direction, without the passing of the CWPA it is very unlikely that mountaintop removal will be halted in the near future.

Corn-Based Ethanol’s Effects on Global Warming

Corn-based ethanol has recently been touted as a readily available, carbon-neutral alternative to gasoline. Ethanol can be easily made and distributed by preexisting means, to ordinary cars. This makes it a more feasible alternative than, say, hydrogen fuel cells. For these reasons and more, US farmers now receive subsidies under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Recent research, however, suggests that corn based ethanol production isn’t what it was cracked up to be.
Corn-based ethanol is called carbon-neutral because, supposedly, any greenhouse gases emitted in the processing and use of the fuel are re-absorbed from the atmosphere by the next crop. There are problems with this theory, however. Much of the carbon dioxide sequestered by plants is in the soil beneath the plant, not the plant itself. This sequestered carbon dioxide is released when the ground is plowed for planting, which occurs each time a new crop of corn is planted. This extra carbon, depending on prior land use, may completely obscure the benefits of the biofuel created for 50 years.
If land used for a parking lot, a stripped mine, or any other plant-free area were converted to corn-based ethanol production, the reduction in greenhouse emissions over gasoline would be around 20%.2 This is because these areas have relatively little biological activity occurring within the soil, and so the soil has very little carbon sequestered in it. Economically, it’s cheaper to convert fallow fields into cornfields than it is to convert unproductive soils. Fallow fields sequester great amounts of carbon dioxide in the soil due to their productivity and lack of tillage. This carbon is released during cultivation, resulting in the situation described earlier. For a technical description of soil carbon sequestration, see the “Sequestration of C in Soil” and “Tillage” sections of “Emission of carbon dioxide from soil.”
For the short term, rather than giving subsidies for producing corn-based ethanol, subsidies should be given for practicing no-till farming, and to landowners who leave grassland and forest undisturbed, as these practices sequester more carbon than typical production of corn-based ethanol. In the long run, however, I recognize that gasoline use is environmentally unsound. Cellulosic ethanol, though not yet feasible, would produce ethanol without yearly tillage, allowing carbon to remain in soil while still providing a renewable liquid fuel source. Governmental plans for this are included in the 2008 Farm Bill.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Oil Drill Proposal

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Department of the Interior (DOI), consists of 19 million acres in Alaska. Of the 19 million acres, 1.5 million acres in the north east portion of the coastal plain is said to be the most promising site for U.S. onshore oil drilling. The Refuge, especially the coastal plain, is home to a wide variety of plant and animal life in a nearly undisturbed state. (http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/04Jun/IB10111.pdf). To go into this area to drill would ruin the undisturbed feeling and threaten many animal species and their ecosystems.

In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was passed by Congress designating more than 100 million acres in Alaska to national parks and wildernesses areas. Congress specifically left open the question of future management of the Coastal Plain because of its potentially enormous oil and gas resources leaving the possibility of drilling up to the people. (http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/factsheets/policy/Policy006.pdfpolicy/Policy006.pdf) Those drilling insist that the Arctic Refuge could be developed on as little as 2,000 acres within the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain. This is far from true because the U.S. Geological Survey discovered that oil drilling cannot be concentrated in a single area but rather spread out between more than 30 small deposits. This would require a drastic amount of new road and pipeline construction that would greatly impact the region. (http://www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/arctic.asp)

Not only would it be devastating to the environment but it would be extremely costly and inefficient. Americans consume roughly nine million barrels of oil a day just in their cars! (http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html) At best, a five percent chance, drilling in the ANWR will recover 11.8 billion barrels. If this oil is used solely in our cars supplies will last roughly three and a half years. There is a 95 percent chance that drilling in the ANWR will recover only 4.25 billions of barrels lasting only 412 days! Permits for oil drilling increased from 3,802 per year in 2002 to 7,561 per year in 2007 but did not affect gas prices in a positive way. In 2007 profits totaled over $155 billion for big oil while gas prices continued to climb. (http://www.defenders.org/resources/publications/policy_and_legislation/addressing_high_gas_prices.pdf) Drilling in the arctic is just another way for our government to support oil companies and avoid the actuality that green energy is essential for America.

Restoration and Health of the Chesapeake Bay

The water quality of the Chesapeake Bay has been declining for the past few decades. Little improvement is being made year-to-year and very few goals to restore it are being reached. The current overall health of the Bay waters is only 38 percent (based on a 100 percent scale). The waters of the Bay are home to many fish, shellfish, and several mammals. Many people depend on the Bay and its diversity for a way of life or for a source of recreation. With declining water quality this diversity is threatened and populations are falling.


In order to consider a body of water 'healthy' the water must have low enough levels of contaminants or sediment that aquatic life can survive. Also the water must be safe enough for humans to be in contact with it during activites such as swimming or fishing (or even drinking). In the Cheasapeake Bay, researchers use four determinants to decide the quality of the water: dissolved oxygen, water clarity, Chlorophyll a, and chemical contaminants. Similar to any environmental restoration program, goals are set for each of these indicators that researchers believe would restore water quality.

There are many factors that add to the decrease in water quality in the Bay and its watershed. One such is land use. The water shed of the Chesapeake covers six states and Washington D.C. Some of which are already densly populated areas and the numbers are growing quickly. Because of the population growth, development is rampant and thousands of acres of forest are lost each year. With deforestation and the numerous acres of agricultural lands, many chemicals and pollutants runoff the surface into streams and rivers that lead to the bay.

When combined, all of the factors lead to a dangerously impaired estuary. Many fisheries have been completey overfished or are greatly reduced. Three fisheries that have been taken advantage of are oyster, blue crabs, and rockfish. All three are symbols of the Chesapeake Bay and of the state of Maryland. All three havee reached significantly low numbers. The rockfish reached such low productivity levels that conservation efforts were in place and the fish has now grown to previous numbers. However, the oyster and blue crab have not had such luck, both being of very high value.

In 2008 only 21 percent of water quality goals were reached. Restoration attempts are failing repeatedly, with no improvement between 2007 and 2008. During the summer of 2008, 84 percent of the Bay had dangerously low levels of dissolved oxygen. If changes aren't made soon the Chesapeake could be permanently destroyed. The development that occurs directly around the Bay needs to be stopped, if it continues attempts to keep pollutants down and diversity up will become a losing battle. The population wants to look out their back windows and see a beatiful view of the water but if alterations aren't made in the way we see the Bay, as just a body of water and not a habitat, a way of life, or a privelege, then the Bay is on a crash course with disaster. And the people who depend on it will follow.

Renewable Energy Under The Obama Administration

The International Scientific Congress has found that if countries provide adequate financial and political support, renewable energy technologies could supply 40 percent of the world’s electricity by 2050. It is estimated that investing in this could cost the US $12.8 to $25.5 billion per year and without US investment, the contribution of renewable sources of energy could drop from an estimated 40 percent to less than 15. That leads to the question, what is the Obama administration going to do about this? Obama has recently cut the red tape on offshore renewable energy by giving this responsibility to the Department of the Interior. They will oversee offshore projects that generate energy from wave and tidal currents. This is part of his goal of doubling renewable energy production over the next three years. Opponents argue that environmental policies like the ones Obama means to enact will impose an unnecessary economic hardship on a country in recession. The administration argues back. “There can be no economy without the environment.” A global recession will slow down the growth in carbon emissions and with proper investment, the administration can even use the tax payer’s money to boost the economy and create jobs in the environmental improvement sector.
Obama created his ‘Green Dream Team’, certain Cabinet secretaries and top officials who will be responsible for environmental and energy policies. The team will help to achieve Obama’s top environmental goals such as creating millions of new green jobs, freeing our country from its dependence on oil and preserving this planet for posterity. His ‘Green Path’ in the stimulus plan will accomplish all of these goals. This path includes both short-term projects to jump start economy and long-term goals for safeguarding the environment.
In his first 50 days in office, Obama was mostly occupied with reversing some Bush energy decisions like offshore drilling as well as drilling in Montana and Utah. Now he has time to institute his comprehensive environmental plan, including large changes regarding renewable energy sources. Obama is pushing ‘smart-grid’ technology for purposes of energy conservation and efficiency while also trying to ensure that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable resources by 2012 and increase that to 25 percent by 2025.

Cost of Big Game

“The Cost of Big Game”

A study has shown that human-hunted species have undergone the most rapid change and that this has forced dramatic shifts in features such as average size and age of reproductive animals. The way that natural selection works is that predators target the small, the weak, and the sick. Hunters on the other hand target the largest, strongest animal with the largest hides, horns, tusks, or antlers.

Researchers have now discovered that bighorn sheep in Alberta, Canada have adopted smaller horns compared to 30 years ago. Similarly, red kangaroos in Australia have become both smaller and fewer in size and fewer African and Asian elephants have tusks. In today’s context, survival of the fittest includes having no tusks; this plays an advantage because these individuals are less attractive targets to hunters. So has evolution completely flipped? This newly developing pattern has been at the expense of the collective species’ population. “Tusks use to make elephants fitter, as a weapon or a tool in foraging – until ivory became a precious commodity and having tusks got you killed”. When you take out the big game you are merely left with losers to do the breeding. Logically, “losers” do not make the best breeders and subsequently, the demographic shifts and threatens the viability of the species.

According to Richard Harris, a conservation biologist, “The hunters wish for animals with large antlers and large horns, and yet their actions are making that harder to achieve.” This leads to a vicious cycle of seeking out the best trophies. Needless to say these method have become counter to natural predation.

This really begs the question as to what the scope of the EPA is in such a case. Obviously, they regulate and manage endangered species, but what about such non endangered species? There are strict rules and regulations when it comes to hunting game however to what extent should these regulations be extended in order to aid in survival of reproductively fit animals. This is not to say there are not some useful purposes to hunting. Hunting is often necessary for deterring overpopulation as well as for sustaining a source of food and nutrition yet at what point is that line crossed? When the need of hunting for survival subsides and the drive to hunt for big antlered game heightens who is to define that gray line. “We’re changing the very essence of what remains, sometimes within the span of only two decades. We are the planet’s super-predator’