Planetary Ruin

Some leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders have agreed to put aside their fierce differences over the origin of life and work together to fight global warming.
Representatives met recently in Georgia and agreed on the need for urgent action. Details on the talks will be disclosed in Washington on Wednesday.

“Whether God created the Earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today,” said Rich Cizik, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 churches.

Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, agreed, saying: “Scientists and evangelicals have discovered that we share a deeply felt common concern and sense of urgency about threats to life on Earth and that we must speak with one voice to protect it.”

Chivian and Cizik, both of whom participated in the talks, declined further comment.

In February 2006, 86 evangelical leaders signed a statement to fight global warming, saying that human-induced climate change is real, that its consequences will hit the poor the hardest, and that Christian moral convictions demand an urgent response.

They argued that governments, businesses, churches and individuals all have a role to play. Signatories included presidents of evangelical colleges, aid groups, churches and pastors of megachurches.

The powerful National Association of Evangelicals, however, did not join the initiative. It is unclear whether Cizik’s involvement in the new campaign will lead the organization to adopt the environment as a central part of its agenda.

Evangelicals and scientists previously failed to launch a large-scale joint initiative, partly because of differences between evolutionary science and a literal interpretation of the Bible—a rift that dates back to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Those who met in Georgia, however, are expected to argue that the threat to life on Earth is too great to let the rift prevent them from working together to combat greenhouse emissions.

Speakers at the Wednesday announcement will include megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, who refused to take the leadership of Christian Coalition of America because the organization would not let him expand its agenda to include the environment and poverty.

Others are Harvard biologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson and NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who came under fire from the White House after a 2005 lecture in which he called for urgent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming.

“The evangelicals have a lot of clout on the conservative side of the political spectrum, and their voice would be a very welcome one,” said Jim Presswood of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Read more >>

While disagreement abounds on this topic, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) say that oil production can cause earthquakes, but not the kind reported in the news.

Some earthquakes, such as the 2004 quake that triggered a deadly tsunami in Sumatra, occur at plate boundaries where hard, rocky slabs slide against each other to release tremendous amounts of energy. Oil generally is found in permeable sediments that are soft and squishy, not in hard rock. When this squishy land moves, it releases a small amount of energy, which can lead to a “mini-seismic event”—one that is barely detected on the Richter scale.

Here’s how it works: With high-tech equipment, oil companies pinpoint oil-rich areas and use large drills to puncture the surface below the sea, sometimes as deep as 10,000 feet. As this pricey fluid gets sucked from the sediment pores, the surrounding rocks shift positions to fill in the newly vacated spaces. At a large scale, for example the volume displaced when millions of barrels of oil are produced, the land movement can actually cause a mini-seismic earthquake, said Robert Morton, a USGS coastal geologist.

Read more >>

The extraordinary amount of heat seething below Earth’s hard rocky crust could help supply the United States with a significant fraction of the electricity it will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact, scientists now claim.

An 18-member panel led by MIT has prepared the first study in some 30 years to take a new look at the largely ignored area of geothermal energy.

Geothermal plants essentially mine heat by using wells at times a mile or more deep. These wells tap into hot rock and connect them with flowing water, producing large amounts of steam and super-hot water that can drive turbines and run electricity generators at the surface.
 
Unlike conventional power plants that burn coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel is required. And unlike solar power, a geothermal plant draws energy night and day.

Geothermal research was very active in the 1970s and early 1980s. As oil prices declined in the mid-1980s, enthusiasm for alternative energy sources waned and funding for research on geothermal and other renewable energy was greatly reduced, making it difficult for the technology to advance.

“Now that energy concerns have resurfaced, an opportunity exists for the U.S. to pursue the enhanced geothermal system option aggressively to meet long-term national needs,” said panel head Jefferson Tester, a chemical engineer at MIT.

Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are increasingly expensive and dump carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Furthermore, oil and gas imports from foreign sources are not necessarily secure in the world’s shifting political climate.

The United States is the world’s biggest producer of geothermal energy. Nafi Toksöz, a geophysicist at MIT, noted that the electricity produced annually by geothermal plants now in use in California, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined.

However, existing U.S. plants are concentrated mostly at isolated regions in the West. There, hot rocks are closer to the surface, requiring less drilling and thus lowering costs. Even then, drilling must reach depths of 5,000 feet or more in the West, and much deeper in the eastern United States.

Still, the panel now estimates geothermal power could meet roughly 10 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2050. Their new study also finds the environmental impacts of geothermal development are markedly lower than conventional fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.

Tester and his colleagues emphasize that federally funded engineering research and development is still needed to lower risks and encourage investment by early adopters. The report also noted that meeting water requirements for geothermal plants may be an issue, particularly in arid regions. In addition, the potential for any seismic risks needs to be carefully monitored and managed.

Read more >>

Prince Charles, criticised for booking a trans-Atlantic flight to collect an environmental award, has cancelled a ski trip to Switzerland to reduce greenhouse gases, a palace source said on Saturday.

The decision not to take the annual holiday in Klosters was made some time ago and was part of the heir-to-throne’s commitment to reduce his “carbon footprint”, the source said.

Environment Minister David Miliband has questioned the need for the heir to the throne to fly to New York next week with a 20-strong entourage to collect the Global Environmental Citizen Prize from former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.

“Was it a particularly heavy award?,” Miliband told London’s Evening Standard newspaper. “A lot of business can be done by telephone and video link these days.”

Buckingham Palace defended the Prince’s trans-Atlantic trip, saying the two-day visit on January 27 and 28 was being made at the request of the Foreign Office and would include a number of other engagements.

But environmentalists accused the prince, renowned for his green leanings, of skating on thin ice.

“It’s the equivalent of turning up to an Oxfam award in a stretch limo,” said a spokesman for the Plane Stupid anti-flights campaign group. “It’s a bad joke.”

Prince Charles said last year he would include a measure of how his activities affected the environment in his next annual accounts, due this summer.

He also vowed to cut his carbon emissions by abandoning chartered planes and trains in favour of scheduled services.

Read more >>

James Spann is used to covering storms.  Not being in the middle of one.

But the ABC 33/40 meteorologist finds himself at the center of the global-warming controversy after the Internet site The Drudge Report posted a link to comments Spann made on his weather blog Thursday night.

“Everything kind of exploded,” Spann said Friday. “Writing stuff like that is something I always do, but when Drudge links to it, it just brings the world to you all of a sudden.”

All that controversy is over a cyber-disagreement Spann has with a climate scientist from The Weather Channel.

In essence, Spann does not believe that human activity is contributing to global warming and contends that “billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon.” Spann received so much traffic on his site that it was temporarily shut down Thursday night, he said.

“We have never been shut down with traffic before,” he said. “During tornado outbreaks and hurricanes, we’ve been close, but we’ve never had a total shutdown or crash like this. It’s kind of unprecedented.”

Then the FOX News Network called and asked him to appear on “Hannity & Colmes.” And CNN Headline News, which wanted to book him for “Glenn Beck.” Spann said he is scheduled to appear on both of those shows Monday night.

What pressed all of those hot buttons was Spann’s response to comments made by the Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen on a blog she posted Dec. 21.

On that post, titled “Junk Controversy, Not Junk Science,” Cullen supported the theory that increases in levels of gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere have led to global warming, and she challenged meteorologists who say it is the result of cyclical weather patterns.

“If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the (American Meteorological Society) shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval,” Cullen wrote.

Spann fired off his response in a blog he posted before his 6 p.m. weather forecast Thursday on ABC 33/40. It was picked up by The Drudge Report three hours later.

“Well, well,” Spann wrote on his blog. “Some `climate expert’ on `The Weather Channel’ wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent `global warming’ is a natural process. So much for `tolerance,’ huh?

“I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. … I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global-warming hype. I know there are a few out there, but I can’t find them.”

Cullen, who was not available for comment Friday afternoon, has since posted a follow-up blog item in which she wrote that she did not want to stifle the debate over global warming.

“I’ve read all your comments saying I want to silence meteorologists who are skeptical of the science of global warming,” she wrote. “That is not true. …

“Many of you have accused me and The Weather Channel of taking a political position on global warming. That is not our intention.”

300 and counting:

As of late Friday afternoon, Spann reported more than 300 responses to his comments on his blog, which can be found at www.jamesspann.com.

About 80 percent of those supported what he wrote, Spann said. Of the opposing 20 percent, some were “as nasty as when I have to cut off `General Hospital’ for a tornado warning.”

Among those posts:

“Stand your ground, James. That’s why your `whole team,’ however many of us there are, love you. How ridiculous to want to revoke something that you have EARNED.”

“Way to go, James! I always thought you were a man of character, and this proves it once again.”

“Taking away AMS certification may be a little severe, but on the other hand, clearly anyone who refuses to believe that humans have any affect on the weather is no one anyone should listen to about anything.”

“James, the only reason to watch TWC (The Weather Channel) is to see if Jim Cantore will finally get taken out by a sheet of wind-borne corrugated metal. Count me as a scientist who believes that global warming is caused by hot air in Congress and overheated printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”

Spann said he just wants “an open marketplace of ideas” about global warming and would like to engage in a debate on the subject with Cullen.

“She suggested that anybody that didn’t agree with her, that our AMS certification should be taken away,” Spann said. “That was my biggest problem with it.

“I welcome opposing viewpoints,” he added. “The only way I can learn is by reading what other people think and believe, but I just don’t think pride and arrogance has a place in science.”

Third-party view:

NBC 13 meteorologist Jerry Tracey was unaware Friday afternoon of the battle of the blogs between Cullen and Spann. But he said there was not enough evidence yet to support or dismiss the claim that humanity is to blame for global warming.

“Yes, it’s an important topic, and yes, we need to learn more about it,” Tracey said. “But no, we do not yet know enough to say definitely that there is a significant impact toward global warming occurring because of man-made activities.

“Last weekend was so warm here and people tried to explain that based on global warning,” he said. “There’s just nothing to that. It was warm because of the weather pattern.”

Read more >>