Pluto in Cap, the climate, ecology and environment topic

[Rad]

Malaria parasite drives infected mosquitos to aggressively pursue human blood

By David Ferguson
RawStory
Thursday, May 16, 2013 14:11 EDT

British researchers announced Wednesday that they have established that the malaria parasite makes the smell of human beings even more irresistible to mosquitos that feed on our blood. According to a paper published in the Public Library of Science’s PLOS One journal and reported by NPR, mosquitos that carry malaria are even more powerfully drawn to the smell of human prey than their uninfected fellows.

Entomologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine conducted an experiment in which mosquitos were given a choice whether to fly to a clean sock or a sock that had been worn for 20 hours by an adult male human. All of the mosquitos chose the dirty sock over the clean one, but the malaria-infected bugs landed on the fabric again and again, trying to bite and draw blood.

Mosquitos track humans through our scent. Human skin gives off more than 350 odor molecules, all of which combine to form an irresistible fragrance cocktail to hungry female mosquitos, who need human blood to nourish the larvae that will hatch from their eggs.

It would appear that infection with malaria, which is neither a virus nor bacteria, but a single-celled, blood borne parasite, drives the mosquitos to feed more often, thus allowing the disease a greater chance to spread via the mosquitos’ saliva.

Invasive parasites have been found to exert control over the behaviors of their hosts in several species. In ants, the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis invades the brain and compels the insects to climb to the highest point they can find, at which point the fungus explodes from their head in the form of a spore-casting mushroom, killing the ant, but scattering spores over the widest possible area.

The blood infection Toxoplasmosis gondii is believed to make rats crave the smell of cat urine, increasing their chances of being killed and eaten by cats. Toxo needs to complete the next phase of its development in the bloodstream of a cat, hence its influence over the rat’s normal fear of the smell of its natural predator.

Some scientists postulate that Toxo can exert control over some human behaviors as well, making them, too, less repelled by the smell of cat urine and giving rise to the so-called “crazy cat-lady effect.” Toxo can only make the jump from cats to humans during one phase of its development, however, which can only occur during a certain during in a cat’s first year of life.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria kills around 655,000 people worldwide every year, many of them children in Africa.

Health activists would presumably welcome new advances in malaria prevention since resistance to current treatments is growing in new malaria cases. The current main treatment for malaria, artemisinin, is requiring higher and higher doses to work and no new drugs or treatments appear to be in the pipeline for testing or further research.

[Rad]

Scientists prepare to explore the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, May 17, 2013 7:28 EDT

Scientists are to set off on a research expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on May 20. The patch is a huge mass of rubbish held in place by swirling underwater currents in the north-east of the Pacific Ocean. This build-up of marine debris is a danger to many marine mammals, birds and underwater ecosystems.

[Rad]

In America

Health officials: Feces found in almost 60 percent of public pools

By Arturo Garcia
RawStory
Thursday, May 16, 2013 23:03 EDT

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are advising swimmers at public pools nationwide to be extra careful, after finding that nearly 60 percent of pools in the Atlanta area tested positive for traces of fecal matter.

CBS News reported on Thursday that the CDC found the bacteria Escherichia coli — commonly known as E. coli — in 58 percent of indoor and outdoor pools in and around the Georgia city.

Though commonly associated with food, E. coli can also enter a pool if a swimmer has a “fecal incident” or does not shower enough before going into the pool. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria associated with ear infections and “hot tub rash,” was found in 59 percent of test samples. Researchers said this could be a sign of natural pool contamination on top of bacteria introduced by swimmers.

Though the study did not cover private pools or water parks, officials warned that it is likely the risk of contamination is likely not any lower at those types of establishments.

The tests also found much smaller instances of two other bacteria, Cryptosporidium and Giardia, that are also spread via feces. Swallowing Cryptosporidium can lead to an infection and consequently vomiting, nausea and fever, among other symptoms.

[Rad]

May 17, 2013

A Black Mound of Canadian Oil Waste Is Rising Over Detroit

By IAN AUSTEN
IHT

WINDSOR, Ontario — Assumption Park gives residents of this city lovely views of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit skyline. Lately they’ve been treated to another sight: a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the other side of the Detroit River.

Detroit’s ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada’s oil sands boom.

And no one knows quite what to do about it, except Koch Carbon, which owns it.

The company is controlled by Charles and David Koch, wealthy industrialists who back a number of conservative and libertarian causes including activist groups that challenge the science behind climate change. The company sells the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste, usually overseas, where it is burned as fuel.

The coke comes from a refinery alongside the river owned by Marathon Petroleum, which has been there since 1930. But it began refining exports from the Canadian oil sands — and producing the waste that is sold to Koch — only in November.

“What is really, really disturbing to me is how some companies treat the city of Detroit as a dumping ground,” said Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan state representative for that part of Detroit. “Nobody knew this was going to happen.” Almost 56 percent of Canada’s oil production is from the petroleum-soaked oil sands of northern Alberta, more than 2,000 miles north.

An initial refining process known as coking, which releases the oil from the tarlike bitumen in the oil sands, also leaves the petroleum coke, of which Canada has 79.8 million tons stockpiled. Some is dumped in open-pit oil sands mines and tailing ponds in Alberta. Much is just piled up there.

Detroit’s pile will not be the only one. Canada’s efforts to sell more products derived from oil sands to the United States, which include transporting it through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, have pulled more coking south to American refineries, creating more waste product here.

Marathon Petroleum’s plant in Detroit processes 28,000 barrels a day of the oil sands bitumen.

Residents on both sides of the Detroit River are concerned that the coke mountain is both an environmental threat and an eyesore.

“Here’s a little bit of Alberta,” said Brian Masse, one of Windsor’s Parliament members. “For those that thought they were immune from the oil sands and the consequences of them, we’re now seeing up front and center that we’re not.”

Mr. Masse wants the International Joint Commission, the bilateral agency that governs the Great Lakes, to investigate the pile. Michigan’s state environmental regulatory agency has submitted a formal request to Detroit Bulk Storage, the company holding the material for Koch Carbon, to change its storage methods. Michigan politicians and environmental groups have also joined cause with Windsor residents. Paul Baltzer, a spokesman for Koch’s parent company, Koch Companies Public Sector, did not respond to questions about its storage or the ultimate destination of the petroleum coke.

Coke, which is mainly carbon, is an essential ingredient in steelmaking as well as producing the electrical anodes used to make aluminum.

While there is high demand from both those industries, the small grains and high sulfur content of this petroleum coke make it largely unusable for those purposes, said Kerry Satterthwaite, a petroleum coke analyst at Roskill Information Services, a commodities analysis company based in London.

“It is worse than a byproduct,” Ms. Satterthwaite said.“It’s a waste byproduct that is costly and inconvenient to store, but effectively costs nothing to produce.”

Murray Gray, the scientific director for the Center for Oil Sands Innovation at the University of Alberta, said that about two years ago, Alberta backed away from plans to use the petroleum coke as a fuel source, partly over concerns about greenhouse-gas emissions. Some of it is burned there, however, to power coking plants.

The Keystone XL pipeline will provide Gulf Coast refineries with a steady supply of diluted bitumen from the oil sands. The plants on the coast, like the coking refineries concentrated in California to deal with that state’s heavy crude oil, are positioned to ship the waste to China or Mexico, where it is burned as a fuel. California exports about 128,000 barrels of petroleum coke a day, mainly to China.

Tony McCallum, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, played down the impact of Keystone XL. “Most of the Canadian oil earmarked for the U.S. Gulf Coast is to replace declining heavy oil imports from Mexico and Venezuela that produces the same amount of petcoke, so it doesn’t create a new issue,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Much of the new coking investment has gone into refineries in the Midwest to allow them to take advantage of the oil sands. BP, the British energy company, is building what it describes as the second-largest coke refinery in Whiting, Ind. When completed, the unit will be able to process about 102,000 barrels of bitumen or other heavy oils a day.

And what about the leftover coke? The Environmental Protection Agency will no longer allow any new licenses permitting the burning of petroleum coke in the United States. But D. Mark Routt, a staff energy consultant at KBC Advanced Technologies in Houston, said that overseas companies saw it as a cheap alternative to low-grade coal. In China, it is used to generate electricity, adding to that country’s air-quality problems. There is also strong demand from India and Latin America for American petroleum coke, where it mainly fuels cement-making kilns.

“I’m not making a value statement, but it comes down to emission controls,” Mr. Routt said. “Other people don’t seem to have a problem, which is why it is going to Mexico, which is why it is going to China.”

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” he said. One of the world’s largest dealers of petroleum coke is the Oxbow Corporation, which sells about 11 million tons of fuel-grade coke a year. It is owned by William I. Koch, a brother of David and Charles.

Lorne Stockman, who recently published a study on petroleum coke for the environmental group Oil Change International, says, “It’s really the dirtiest residue from the dirtiest oil on earth,” he said.

Rhonda Anderson, an organizing representative of the Sierra Club in Detroit, said that the mountain’s rise took her group by surprise, but it had one benefit.

“Those piles kind of hit us upside to the head,” she said. “But it also triggered a kind of relationship between Canada and the United States that’s allowed us to work together.”

[Rad]

South Korea May Launch World’s Most Ambitious Cap And Trade Market

CleanTechnica
May 19, 2013
Silvio Marcacci

With roughly 18 months until launch, South Korea appears ready to create the world’s most ambitious cap and trade market, with the highest global price on carbon.

These findings jump from a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) white paper analyzing how potential market designs could affect the nation’s carbon price and market efficiency, and are a reminder that global cap and trade could still be integral to combating climate change.

South Korea’s government is finalizing system design, set to launch in January 2015, but BNEF predicts it could ultimately cover 70% of national emissions and reach $90 per ton of carbon.

Ambitious Goals Would Force Tough Cuts

Criticism of the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) centers on if it actually forces industry to cut pollution, but that won’t be the case in South Korea. “If the government implements the scheme without any changes, it will have major implications for Korean companies,” said Richard Chatterton of BNEF.

Over 450 entities participate in the country’s existing greenhouse gas inventory, covering more than 60% of South Korea’s emissions. These entities are all large-scale emitters, and submit annual emissions and energy consumption data to the government, which then sets reduction targets for the subsequent year.

BNEF’s projections assume the same entities would be covered by the ETS, and are based on South Korea’s emissions reductions target of 30% below current trends by 2020. This goal will require a 19% reduction from 2010 levels, and compared to Australia’s 14% and the EU’s 5% reduction target, make the Korean system without equal.

In order to meet its goal, BNEF predicts South Korea would need to cut its emissions by 836 million tons (Mt) of carbon relative to business-as-usual between 2015 and 2020.

Demand for emission reductions would thus rise to 200 million metric tons per year (Mt/yr) by 2020 – almost double demand projected for the EU ETS, even though South Korea’s program is only 20% its size.
But Reducing Those Emissions Won’t Be Easy

However, BNEF expects South Korea will face challenges meeting these goals. The proposed system design restricts the use of carbon offsets to 28% of reduction requirements up to 2020, and starting in 2021 only offsets from domestic projects would be eligible for polluters.

This tight offset market means South Korea’s ETS could be painful for the country’s industrial sector as they’re forced to buy permits or cut emissions. 598Mt of emissions reductions – nearly 75% of total cuts – will need to come from the industrial and power sector, meaning the cost of electricity and manufactured goods would rise.

Further complicating matters, South Korea’s industrial sector is already fairly energy efficient as a result of historically high energy prices, exposure to international fuel price shocks, and national investment in energy efficiency programs.

Clean Energy Is A Clear Solution…But Not Short-Term

So if offsets are going to be at a premium, and much of the country’s energy efficiency potential has already been realized, where will South Korea’s emissions reductions come from? The clearest solution, as in most cases, is cutting coal-fired electricity generation.

BNEF sees the power sector offering the most abatement opportunities both short and long term. Short-term, the white paper estimates South Korea could reduce emissions in 2020 by up to 64Mt/yr by substituting natural gas for coal-fired power. This assumes natural gas generation utilization capacity rises from current projections of 27% in 2020 to 70%

South Korea has traditionally relied upon imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), but tight supply and volatile price swings lead BNEF to predict electricity generation will shift toward higher-efficiency fossil fuel or renewable generation, and overall energy efficiency measures will rise outside of the industrial sector.

In fact, BNEF predicts the ETS will feed into South Korea’s renewable portfolio standard to expand demand and boost renewable generation to 55 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2020 – a 700% increase from 2010.

Toward A Global Carbon Market Via South Korea

But the best way for South Korean polluters to comply with the ambitious reduction goals may not be within its borders – BNEF recommends linking to other functional carbon markets with an abundance of low-cost abatement options.

Two other mature markets will be operating in 2015 when South Korea’s system launches: the EU-Australian, and California-Quebec linked programs. BNEF predicts EU-Australian allowance prices will be below $40 per ton, and California-Quebec around $50 per ton in 2020.

Linking to these two systems would benefit all parties. South Korea’s ETS will create demand four times greater than California’s system, and 60% higher than the EU-Australia scheme. Thus, South Korea reduces abatement prices by accessing cheaper permits from other systems, while boosting demand and whittling away surplus permit supply in other carbon markets.

Perhaps most promising in this equation, BNEF’s estimates don’t even consider China’s fledgling market. Seven regional pilot programs began rolling out this year, and they will cover up to 1 billion tons of emissions by 2015 before the country launches its own national system in 2020. Remember China is by far the planet’s biggest emitter of carbon.

Oh Wait, Industry May Have Its Day

Of course, these rosy scenarios hinge on the ETS unfolding as originally proposed, and that’s far from a certainty. South Korea’s government is consulting with large emitters this month, and they have called for many revisions to loosen the strict allowance, offset, and reduction policies.

The ETS “Master Plan” is due to be published in December 2013, and it will provide the legal basis for emissions reductions until 2018.

So South Korea, it’s decision time. Stay on your ambitious path, and cut emissions 30% while helping create a truly global carbon market. Or, water down the system proposal, and watch your national emissions climb 28% by 2020, according to BNEF – no pressure.
Silvio Marcacci (163 Posts)

Silvio is Principal at Marcacci Communications, a full-service clean energy public relations company based in Washington, D.C.

[Rad]

Study: Climate change slowed over last decade but may speed up again

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, May 19, 2013 17:17 EDT

A global warming “pause” over the past decade may invalidate the harshest climate change predictions for the next 50 to 100 years, a study said Sunday — though levels remain in the danger zone.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, an international team of climate scientists said a slower rate of warming increase observed from 2000 to 2009 suggested a “lower range of values” to be taken into account by policy makers.

While the last decade was the hottest since records began in 1880, the rate of increase showed a stabilisation despite ever-rising levels of Earth-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Scientists have alternatively explained the flatter curve by oceanic heat capture, a decline in solar activity or an increase in volcanic aerosols that reflect the Sun’s rays.

Because of the hiatus, warming in the next 50 to 100 years “is likely to lie within the range of current climate models, but not at the high end of this range,” said Alexander Otto of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, co-author of the new study.

Otto and his team used up-to-date data on temperatures and levels of solar radiation trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, to make new projections for climate warming.

The United Nations is targeting a global average maximum temperature rise of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on pre-industrial levels, for what scientists believe would be manageable climate change.

In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a report of the temperature rising by as much as 6.4 degrees C in the worst emissions scenario.

Study co-author Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich said data ruling out the most extreme scenarios for near-term warming was clearly welcome news.

“But even if the response is at the low end of the current range of uncertainty, we are still looking at warming well over the two-degree goal that countries have agreed upon.”

To meet the two-degree goal, countries are negotiating curbs to emissions of Earth-warming greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel burning.

Only last week, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere breached a threshold of 400 parts per million — a level never experienced by humans and considered the absolute maximum for the two-degree target to remain within reach.

Many scientists believe that on current trends, Earth is set for warming much higher than the two-degree target.

Commenting on the publication, University of New South Wales climate researcher Steven Sherwood said the conclusions “need to be taken with a large grain of salt until we see what happens to the oceans over the coming years.”

The authors had partly based their finding on a higher-than-expected absorption of heat by the world’s oceans, he said, but other research has suggested this storage may reverse due to natural phenomena such as El Nino.