GreenPlanets

A new record in solar cells

2007-08-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

A new record in solar cells
Posted by Michael Kanellos

The University of Delaware has inched up the record for solar cell efficiency with a new device that can convert 42.8 percent of the light that strikes it into electricity.

That beats the old record of 40.7 percent hit in December. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been funding research to get efficiency up to 50 percent.

The cell, created by Christina Honsberg and Allan Barnett of UD, splits incoming light into three buckets: high energy, low energy, and medium energy light. The light is then directed to different materials, which then extract electrons out of the photons that make up sunlight.

The device also has an optical concentrator, sort of like a lens that directs more sunlight to the solar cell than would occur naturally and thereby increasing efficiency.

Various materials (silicon, germanium, etc.) react differently to different parts of the solar spectrum. Crystalline solar cells, for instance, can currently convert 22 percent of light into electricity (without concentrators). The theoretical maximum is 29 percent sans concentration. Combining different materials into multi-junction cells or adding concentrators helps get around the limitations of the materials.

Multi-junction solar cells and concentrators, however, are expensive. The initial customers for devices like this will be the military. Possible applications include portable charging packs for soldiers.

Concentrators can often add girth to solar cells, but the UD device is a little less than a centimeter thick.

How To Shop Green

2007-08-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

How To Shop Green
Lauren Sherman, 07.31.07, 1:30 PM ET

Considering "going green"? You're probably not the only one.

Enter almost any grocery store and you're bound to find so-called green cleaning products next to traditional ones. Take Tide Cold Water detergent. Procter & Gamble claims it deep cleans clothes in cold water, cutting down on your energy use, not to mention your energy bill. Car buyers have plenty of environmentally friendly models from which to choose, and energy-efficient appliances get prominent placement on showroom floors.
Even retailers are getting in on the act. Sweden-based fashion emporium H&M introduced a green line in spring 2007, offering frocks and tops made with organic cotton. And Nike recently announced plans to make its footwear sustainable, vowing to adopt environmentally friendly production methods where possible.
But while an ever-growing range of "green" consumer products are finding their way into our homes, there is very little in the way of industry standard. One manufacturer's green product may have been produced in an entirely different manner than another's. As a result, experts say it's good to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism when choosing environmentally friendly products, and to rely on a select group of organizations monitoring the practices of certain industries.
Do Your Homework
Dig a bit and you'll likely come across the word "greenwashing." This, according to Julia Cosgrove, deputy editor of ReadyMade, a San Francisco-based magazine that focuses on do-it-yourself, sustainable projects, entails marketing a product as environmentally conscious without enough evidence that it really is.
"Much of what we're seeing now is just spin," she says. "When you look further, many of these companies are still making a big environmental footprint."
Translation: Even if a retailer offers clothes made with organic cotton, chances are they are being shipped via huge, gas-sucking airplanes.
Another example is vinyl. It is used in a great deal of vegan shoes, but the production of the material can create dioxin, a known carcinogen.
Clothing company Edun has experienced a case of greenwashing. Although some of its products are made of organic cotton, the company's main objective is to produce ethical (fairly traded, socially responsible)--not green--clothing. Although both concepts are positive, they certainly don't mean the same thing. Edun is an ethical clothing company, and although they take measures to protect the environment, they should not be categorized as green.
How to tell one from the other? Look to several watchdog organizations for a real education.
Digging Deeper
Netherlands-based Made-By tracks a garment's environmental footprint from the first thread on, and the International Forest Stewardship Alliance certifies wood-made products by ensuring that manufacturers collecting lumber are making the best use of forest resources, reducing damage and waste, and avoiding overconsumption and overharvesting. You can find a complete listing of their findings on www.fscus.org.
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) labeling system, Design For The Environment (DfE), ensures that the chemicals in DfE-certified products--like Earth Choice's new range of household cleaners--are environmentally preferable, which means such products are created with lower volatile organic compounds. High levels of these materials can damage soil and groundwater, and emit greenhouse gasses, contributing to global warming.
Kitchen appliances now possess one of the most widely recognized labels, EnergyStar, another EPA-run unit. These labels ensure an appliance meets energy-efficient guidelines set by the EPA and the Department of Energy. Criteria for each appliance differs and can be found on www.energystar.gov under the Products tab.
"It's a fairly well-known metric that will reduce your energy use and save you money," says Ron Jones, founder of Greenbuilder, a development, media and consulting firm dedicated to sustainable development and green building, of EnergyStar. Often, buying a new, energy-saving air conditioner will save you in the end since older models not only cost more to run but often don't work as well.
Whether you're buying one piece of green clothing or remodeling your entire home with energy-efficient appliances, Jones says it's important to note how your everyday activities affect the environment.
"If you start to look at a person in terms of their individual footprint, which includes their transportation habits, eating habits, clothing and housing, it starts to get very complex," he says. "Think through everything. Determine how it will affect your everyday living conditions, and your quality of life going forward."

Clothing

Government regulations: Items must be made of organic cotton, which is free of chemicals and pesticides. These are noted with a "Made With 100% Organic Cotton" label.

Industry regulations: There is no industry standard.

Environmentalist regulations: Several not-for-profit organizations have set their own standards. Made-by, a Netherlands-based group, tracks the environmental footprint of a garment from the first thread on. Find their research at www.made-by.nl.

Cleaning Products

Government regulations: The EPA's labeling system, Design For The Environment, ensures that the chemicals in DfE-certified products--like Earth Choice's new range of household cleaners--are environmentally preferable, which means the products are created with safer formulas, with lower volatile organic compounds. High levels of these materials can damage soil and groundwater, and emit greenhouse gasses, contributing to global warming.

Industry regulations: There is no industry standard.

Environmentalist regulations: Ecologo, an organization that regulates the sustainability of consumer products throughout North America, lists specific criteria for each type and approved products on www.environmentalchoice.com.

Appliances

Government regulations: The Energy Star initiative, an Environmental Protection Agency-run unit, provides manufacturers with energy-efficient guidelines set in conjunction with the Department of Energy. Criteria for each appliance differs and can be found on www.energystar.gov under the Products tab.

Industry regulations: No industry regulations.

Environmentalist regulations: Most environmentalists recommend using the Energy Star label as a guide. Web sites like Treehugger.com also provide insight and tips on purchasing energy-efficient appliances.

Automobiles

Government regulations: The U.S. Department of Energy lists on its Web site the fuel efficiency of every model car made since 2000. Automobile makers must also adhere to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, a fuel efficiency measure regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Industry regulations: Automobile owners/repairmen/dealerships must not only comply with Corporate Average Fuel Economy, listed on www.nhtsa.dot.gov, they must follow state and local laws as well.

Environmentalist regulations: The not-for-profit National Automotive Environmental Compliance Assistance Center lists information on its Web site to help you to determine whether or not your car complies with current regulations.

Beauty/Personal Hygiene Products

Government regulations: The FDA requires that these products list all ingredients on their packaging.

Industry regulations: There is no industry standard.

Environmentalist regulations: ECOCERT, a France-based control and certification organization, approves organic products across the world, adhering to local laws. Cosmetics certified by ECOCERT include Stella McCartney's CARE. line. You can find a list of criteria and an in-depth explanation of certification on www.ecocert.com.

Furniture

Government regulations: There are no government regulations.
Industry regulations: There is no industry standard, but the nonprofit HauteGREEN, a group that recognizes contemporary sustainable design, provides criteria for green furniture makers. This includes the use of recyclable/reusable/renewable materials, as well as raw materials from fairly traded or low impact sources. Find more information at www.hautegreen.com.
Environmentalist regulations: The International Forest Stewardship Alliance certifies products made from wood by ensuring that those collecting the lumber are making the best use of forest resources, reducing damage and waste, and avoiding overconsumption and overharvesting.

Houses

Government regulations: There is not one federal body regulating green building. However, several local and state municipalities are setting up individual regulations, and most rely on the Department of Energy's Web site for guidance.

Industry regulations: In 2005, The National Association of Home Builders published a list of green building guidelines that include: lot preparation and design, resource efficiency, as well as occupancy comfort and indoor environmental quality. In conjunction with the former, the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council also publishes a set of criteria for home builders.

Environmentalist regulations: Experts suggest using a combination of certifications to build a proper green home--starting with Energy Star and ensuring your wood has been certified by the International Forest Stewardship Alliance.

Top 10 Emerging Environmental Technologies

2007-08-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Emerging Environmental Technologies
livescience.com

Make Paper Obsolete

Imagine curling up on the couch with the morning paper and then using the same sheet of paper to read the latest novel by your favorite author. That's one possibility of electronic paper, a flexible display that looks very much like real paper but can be reused over and over. The display contains many tiny microcapsules filled with particles that carry electric charges bonded to a steel foil. Each microcapsule has white and black particles that are associated with either a positive or negative charge. Depending on which charge is applied; the black or white particles surface displaying different patterns. In the United States alone, more than 55 million newspapers are sold each weekday.

Bury The Bad Stuff

Carbon dioxide is the most prominent greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. According to the Energy Information Administration, by the year 2030 we will be emitting close to 8,000 million metric tons of CO2. Some experts say it's impossible to curb the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere and that we just have to find ways to dispose of the gas. One suggested method is to inject it into the ground before it gets a chance to reach the atmosphere. After the CO2 is separated from other emission gases, it can be buried in abandoned oil wells, saline reservoirs, and rocks. While this sounds great, scientists are not sure whether the injected gas will stay underground and what the long-term effects are, and the costs of separation and burying are still far too high to consider this technology as a practical short-term solution.

Let Plants and Microbes Clean Up After Us

Bioremediation uses microbes and plants to clean up contamination. Examples include the cleanup of nitrates in contaminated water with the help of microbes, and using plants to uptake arsenic from contaminated soil, in a process known as phytoremediation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has used it to clean up several sites. Often, native plant species can be used for site cleanup, which are advantageous because in most cases they don't require pesticides or watering. In other cases scientists are trying to genetically modify the plants to take up contaminants in their roots and transport it all the way to the leaves for easy harvesting.

Plant Your Roof

It's a wonder that this concept attributed to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of Seven Wonders of the World, didn't catch on sooner in the modern world. Legend has it that the roofs, balconies, and terraces of the royal palace of Babylon were turned into gardens by the king's order to cheer up one of his wives. Roof gardens help absorb heat, reduce the carbon dioxide impact by taking up Co2 and giving off oxygen, absorb storm water, and reduce summer air conditioning usage. Ultimately, the technique could lessen the "heat island" effect that occurs in urban centers. Butterflies and songbirds could also start frequenting urban garden roofs, and like the king's wife, could even cheer up the inhabitants of the building. Here, a green roof is tested at Penn State.

Harness Waves and Tides

The oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface. Waves contain an abundance of energy that could be directed to turbines, which can then turn this mechanical power into electrical. The obstacle to using this energy source has been the difficulty in harnessing it. Sometimes the waves are too small to generate sufficient power. The trick is to be able to store the energy when enough mechanical power is generated. New York City's East River is now in the process of becoming the test bed for six tide-powered turbines, and Portugal's reliance on waves in a new project is expected to produce enough power for more than 1,500 homes. Here, a buoy system capable of capturing the oceanï¿½s power in the form of offshore swells is illustrated by researchers at Oregon State University.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion

The biggest solar collector on Earth is our ocean mass. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the oceans absorb enough heat from the sun to equal the thermal energy contained in 250 billion barrels of oil each day. The U.S. consumes about 7.5 billion barrels a year. OTEC technologies convert the thermal energy contained in the oceans and turn it into electricity by using the temperature difference between the water's surface, which is heated, and the cold of the ocean's bottom. This difference in temperature can operate turbines that can drive generators. The major shortcoming of this technology is that it's still not efficient enough to be used as a major mechanism for generating power.

Sunny New Ideas

The sun's energy, which hits Earth in the form of photons, can be converted into electricity or heat. Solar collectorscome in many different forms and are already used successfully by energy companies and individual homeowners. The two widely known types of solar collectors are solar cells and solar thermal collectors. But researchers are pushing the limits to more efficiently convert this energy by concentrating solar power by using mirrors and parabolic dishes. Part of the challenge for employing solar power involves motivation and incentives from governments. In January, the state of California approved a comprehensive program that provides incentives toward solar development. Arizona, on the other hand, has ample sunshine but has not made solar energy a priority. In fact in some planned communities it is downright discouraged by strict rules of aesthetics.

The 'H' Power

Hydrogen fuel cell usage has been touted as a pollution-free alternative to using fossil fuels. They make water by combining hydrogen and oxygen. In the process, they generate electricity. The problem with fuel cells is obtaining the hydrogen. Molecules such as water and alcohol have to be processed to extract hydrogen to feed into a fuel cell. Some of these processes require the using other energy sources, which then defeat the advantages of this "clean" fuel. Most recently, scientists have come up with ways to power laptops and small devices with fuel cells, and some car companies are promising that soon we'll be seeing cars that emit nothing but clean water. The promise of a "hydrogen economy," however, is not one that all experts agree will ever be realized.

Remove the Salt

According to the United Nations, water supply shortages will affect billions of people by the middle of this century. Desalination, basically removing the salt and minerals out of seawater, is one way to provide potable water in parts of the world where supplies are limited. The problem with this technology is that it is expensive and uses a lot of energy. Scientists are working toward better processes where inexpensive fuels can heat and evaporate the water before running it through membranes with microscopic pores to increase efficiency.

Make Oil from Just about Anything

Any carbon-based waste, from turkey guts to used tires, can, by adding sufficient heat and pressure, be turned into oil through a process called thermo-depolymerization, This is very similar to how nature produces oil, but with this technology, the process is expedited by millions of years to achieve the same byproduct. Proponents of this technology claim that a ton of turkey waste can cough up about 600 pounds of petroleum.

Fuel cell technology to help clean up shipping

2007-08-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

The world's largest, longest, and tallest, transatlantic liner 'Queen Mary 2' leaves its dock at the Alstom shipyards in St Nazaire, western France, September 25, 2003. A group of north European companies aims to show how fuel cells can clean up ship engines, which now use filthy fuels such as oil refinery residues and can spew out hundreds of times more pollutants than automobiles. (Daniel Joubert/Reuters)

Fuel cell technology to help clean up shipping

By Wojciech MoskwaFri Aug 3, 9:29 AM ET

A group of north European companies aims to show how fuel cells can clean up ship engines, which now use filthy fuels such as oil refinery residues and can spew out hundreds of times more pollutants than automobiles.
The companies plan to install a clean fuel-cell engine aboard a supply ship in 2008 and believe that a large share of the marine world will follow suit within 25 years.
"Green" engines for ships will gain footing in the fiercely competitive global shipping industry, they say, as technology advances and relatively lax environmental norms toughen.
"Stricter regulations coupled with policies favoring green solutions will in future years more than compensate for the higher initial investment costs of fuel cells," Tomas Tronstad, who heads the cross-industry fuel cell project for Norwegian ship classifier Det Norske Veritas (DNV), told Reuters.
"We hope that in a decade there will be many similar projects around the world and in a quarter century a large part of the marine world could be on fuel cells," Tronstad said.
Iceland already plans to convert its entire fishing fleet to hydrogen fuel cell engines as part of its environmental drive.
The shipping industry says it is more green than other modes of transport considering the huge amount of trade that ships carry, although the heavy fuel used in shipping emits 700 times more sulphur dioxide than diesel exhausts from road vehicles.
DNV estimates that fuel cells -- which generate electric power from a chemical process instead of combustion like regular engines -- now cost about six times more than diesel generators.
But the technology can be up to 50 percent more efficient and much cleaner, helping to curb high costs of fuel and, as many expect in the future, the high costs of polluting.
When powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), as the first full-scale test model will be, carbon dioxide emissions are cut in half compared to diesel engines running on marine bunker fuel and sulphur and nitrogen oxide exhausts are nearly eliminated.
Fuel cells have no moving parts, slashing maintenance needs and making them inherently silent and vibration-free.
LIMITATIONS
Norwegian shipping group Eidesvik Offshofre ASA plans to install a 330 kW fuel cell system on an oilfield supply vessel next year. It will be one of several engines on the ship, all powered by LNG stored in refrigerated tanks on board.
LNG tanks take up precious onboard space and need to be filled relatively often -- about once per week according to Eidesvik -- limiting the ships' range to coastal waters of regions with developed LNG infrastructure.
"These engines will be best suited for short-route shipping and vessels with predictable operational patterns...such as oilfield supply vessels or ferries," said Kjell Sandaker, fuel cell project developer at Eidesvik.
The fuel cell will be built by MTU CFC Solutions, a unit of German engine maker Tognum. Finnish ship and industrial engine builder Wartsila and Norway-based consultant Vik-Sandvik are also taking part in the project.
LNG is preferred to hydrogen-fed fuel cells, whose only exhaust is heat and water, because of the problems in storing large amounts of hydrogen and high costs of producing it, the project says.
But Iceland's idea is to use its cheap thermal energy and hydropower to the produce hydrogen that would drive its fishing fleet, one of the world's biggest, and cut emissions.
Other options for ship-based fuel cells, said DNV, could be methanol or biofuels, which are liquids in normal temperatures and more readily available throughout the world than LNG.

The Wrong Fire

2007-07-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

The Wrong Fire

BY DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH
July 13, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/58374

It is astounding that with all the expensive proposals to combat global warming no one is discussing reducing global carbon emissions by putting out mine fires. Although putting out fires in America would not have a significant effect, putting out fires in China and India would.
So as the former vice president, Al Gore, organizes Live Earth concerts, as Congress ponders raising fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, and as Michigan's John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, proposes America's first carbon tax, uncontrolled Chinese coal mine fires are sending millions of tons of carbon into the air.
China loses between 100 and 200 million tons of coal a year — a significant fraction of its production of 2.26 billion tons — to mine fires, according to Holland's International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation. This results in carbon dioxide emissions in a range of between 560 and 1,120 million metric tons, equaling 50% to 100% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline.
It may well be less costly for us to put out the Chinese mine fires than to cut emissions at home.
Second to China is India, where mine fires burn between 3 and 10 million tons of coal annually, with emissions of 15 to 51 million metric tons. Emissions will only grow in the future as China and India expand production of coal to fuel their thriving economies.
As well as the harm done to the environment, mine fires impair access to useable coal in nearby mine seams. That loss of access exceeds in value the loss of the burned coal.
America has smaller mine fires in the coal regions of Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. Precise national estimates of wasted coal are unavailable, but experts agree that U.S. emissions are a fraction of those in China and India.
China and India are aware of the harm these fires are causing, not only globally, but also locally. The fires pollute air and water, and make vast swathes of land uninhabitable. They would welcome international assistance in putting them out.
Instead, Congress wants to impose billions of dollars of costs on consumers and American industries in order to reduce global warming. The energy bill making its way through Congress would substantially raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for cars and trucks, decimating the American automobile industry and increasing the unemployment rate in Michigan.
Another idea is cap-and-trade programs. Under these schemes, the government grants credits to favored industries, which then sell them to those who need to produce emissions. This system requires the correct allocation of credits and level of caps to be successful. In Europe, caps were set so high that emissions were not reduced significantly.
A carbon tax, proposed on July 8 by Mr. Dingell, is a more neutral way to reduce emissions. The tax would encourage Americans to reduce consumption of all fossil fuels — petroleum products, natural gas, coal and shale oil. Yet raising taxes is never popular, and few voters trust politicians to offset carbon taxes with reductions in income taxes.
Further, gases other than carbon contribute to global warming — so why stop at a carbon tax? Congress could copy New Zealand's new flatulence tax on sheep and cows, designed to reduce emissions of methane, another greenhouse gas. New Zealand's Treasury will collect $5 million a year.
Carbon offsets, often "feel-good" measures such as planting trees or cleaning the ocean, are an increasingly trendy way of reducing global carbon emissions. Vice President Gore, defending the size of his residence, said that he purchased carbon offsets, and Senator Clinton supports funding for new carbon sequestration technologies.
But the most efficient offset would be extinguishing international mine fires, and neither Mr. Gore nor Mrs. Clinton are proposing research for this. A Utah expert in mine fires, Steven Feldman, notes that most of the research in extinguishing mine fires is taking place not in America but in Holland and Germany.
For many years, workable technologies to put out long-burning mine fires were not available. Flooding, excavating, and flushing with wet sand and gravel were all ineffective. However, new techniques are being developed.
One technology was highlighted by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in a paper on using nitrogen enhanced foam to put out fires. The foam successfully extinguished a fire at Pinnacle Mine near Pineville, W. Va.
The method was developed by entrepreneurs, Mark Cummins and Lisa La-Fosse. Their firm, CAFSCO, hopes to use the technique to put out other fires, both in America and abroad.
Ms. LaFosse reports that the merit of nitrogen foam is that it contains no oxygen.
"Everything that has been tried before has failed to reach the critical areas of combustion near the irregular roof and into the cracks and crevices leading into nearby coal seams. Other types of foam that have been injected into the combustion area include large amounts of oxygen in the bubbles of the foam, which feed the fire and increase intensity."
We don't yet know definitively, despite much assertion, whether global warming is a man-made phenomenon or simply the product of lengthy climate cycles. But if we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, let's tackle the biggest culprits first — the mines burning out of control in China and India.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Prof may hold key to solve fuel crisis

2007-07-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

David Antonelli has partnered with Chrysler to research and develop a cheap way of storing hydrogen as fuel for vehicles. Antonelli is the first scientist in the Windsor area to embark on such a project. CREDIT: Ian Williams/Windsor Star

Prof may hold key to solve fuel crisis
Chrysler invests in hydrogen research

Sonja Puzic
Windsor Star
Saturday, July 07, 2007

David Antonelli has partnered with Chrysler to research and develop a cheap way of storing hydrogen as fuel for vehicles. Antonelli is the first scientist in the Windsor area to embark on such a project.
A University of Windsor chemistry professor may be holding the keys to hydrogen-powered vehicles of the future.
David Antonelli's breakthrough in hydrogen storage research is attracting worldwide attention -- and investment from Chrysler.
Antonelli recently signed a deal with the automaker that will give him $100,000 over two years to "optimize" a cheap way of storing hydrogen in fuel tanks at room temperature.
It's the first time Chrysler's fuel cell and hydrogen technologies branch has collaborated with a Windsor-area researcher.
The development of the so-called "hydrogen economy" has long been considered a promising answer to the world's energy shortages and environmental problems.
Many experts have argued that a global energy crisis is inevitable with the rising demand for oil. An alternative energy source must be abundant, cost-effective and renewable. Hydrogen power simply burns water and does not pollute.
Until recently, advanced fuel engineers have only been able to store hydrogen as a gas in massive tanks or as a liquid in high-pressure tubes at temperatures as low as -273 C. Both methods are expensive and impractical.
Antonelli has discovered a way of storing hydrogen cheaply and safely in low-pressure tanks by using a mixture of non-perishable titanium oxide powder and silica, a main component in most types of glass.
The material he's created can store large quantities of hydrogen fuel within its porous structure. Antonelli's first breakthrough was the use of titanium oxide powder and he's since discovered a way to bind hydrogen to the surface of the titanium and silica mixture.
"We found that there is a strong connection of hydrogen at room temperatures," Antonelli said. "It's a huge breakthrough."
Antonelli's work caught the attention of Tarek Abdel-Baset, a Chrysler project engineer who has been working on fuel cell and hydrogen technologies for the past four years.
"Three or four years ago, I set out on an all-Canadian mission to find out who is working on hydrogen storage," he said. "I found (Antonelli) just by doing an Internet search."
Abdel-Baset said he was immediately intrigued by Antonelli's progress.
"Right off the bat, I liked his approach because it was the kind of chemistry that hasn't been done before. He's got some encouraging results," he said.
"There is no material out there that's cheap enough and reliable enough that fits into a regular size gas tank. We don't have anything out there that gets us enough hydrogen on board. So we're looking for that magic material ... and we think that Dave's on to something."
American-born Antonelli, who was educated in Edmonton and did his post-doctoral work at Oxford and MIT, said his research is unique and has already made "a big splash" in the U.S., where he presented his findings at a few major conferences.
He's also been invited to speak to researchers in China about hydrogen storage and has submitted a paper to the prestigious Nature magazine.
"A lot of people work with hydrogen, but they don't have the connection with the auto industry," Abdel-Baset said. "That gives (Antonelli) a bit of a distinct advantage."
U.S. buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management's recent purchase of Chrysler from German-based DaimlerChrysler has not affected Antonelli's contract with the automaker.
"I think it makes (the deal) better," said Antonelli, who also did some research with General Motors.
"I think Chrysler will have more freedom now."
Mass production of viable hydrogen vehicles is considered anywhere between five and 20 years away.
In the meantime, the Canadian government has committed to spending $1.5 billion on green energy. Canadian producers of ethanol and other renewable fuels have said they expect a new federal strategy will put them on a level playing field with foreign competitors.

spuzic@thestar.canwest.com
© The Windsor Star 2007

Box makes biofuel from car fumes

2007-07-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

Box makes biofuel from car fumes
Michael Szabo
Reuters

Thursday, July 19, 2007

The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it. REUTERS/Graphic
CREDIT:
The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it. REUTERS/Graphic

QUEENSFERRY - The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it.
They have developed a box which they say can be fixed underneath a car in place of the exhaust to trap the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming -- including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide -- and emit mostly water vapor.
The captured gases can be processed to create a biofuel using genetically modified algae.
Dubbed "Greenbox," the technology developed by organic chemist Derek Palmer and engineers Ian Houston and John Jones could, they say, be used for cars, buses, lorries and eventually buildings and heavy industry, including power plants.
"We've managed to develop a way to successfully capture a majority of the emissions from the dirtiest motor we could find," Palmer, who has consulted for organizations including the World Health Organisation and GlaxoSmithKline, told Reuters.
The three, who stumbled across the idea while experimenting with carbon dioxide to help boost algae growth for fish farming, have set up a company called Maes Anturio Limited, which translates from Welsh as Field Adventure.
With the backing of their local member of parliament they are now seeking extra risk capital either from government or industry: the only emissions they are not sure their box can handle are those from aviation.
CAPTURE RATE
Although the box the men currently use for demonstration is about the size of a bar stool, they say they can build one small enough to replace a car exhaust that will last for a full tank of petrol.
The crucial aspect of the technology is that the carbon dioxide is captured and held in a secure state, said Houston. Other carbon capture technologies are much more cumbersome or energy-intensive, for example using miles of pipeline to transport the gas.
"The carbon dioxide, held in its safe, inert state, can be handled, transported and released into a controlled environment with ease and a minimal amount of energy required," Houston said at a demonstration using a diesel-powered generator at a certified UK Ministry of Transportation emissions test centre.
More than 130 tests carried out over two years at several testing centers have, the three say, yielded a capture rate between 85 and 95 percent. They showed the box to David Hansen, a Labour MP for Delyn, North Wales, who is now helping them.
"Based on the information, there is a clear reduction in emissions," Hansen told Reuters.
"As a result, I'm facilitating meetings with the appropriate UK government agencies, as we want to ensure that British ownership and manufacturing is maintained."
The men are also in contact with car-makers Toyota Motor Corp of Japan and General Motors Corp. of the United States. Houston said they have also received substantial offers from two unnamed Asian companies.
Both Toyota and General Motors declined to comment.
SECRETS
If the system takes off, drivers with a Greenbox would replace it when they fill up their cars and it would go to a bioreactor to be emptied.
Through a chemical reaction, the captured gases from the box would be fed to algae, which would then be crushed to produce a bio-oil. This extract can be converted to produce a biodiesel almost identical to normal diesel.
This biodiesel can be fed back into a diesel engine, the emptied Greenbox can be affixed to the car and the cycle can begin again.
The process also yields methane gas and fertilizer, both of which can be captured separately. The algae required to capture all of Britain's auto emissions would take up around 1,000 acres
The three estimate that 10 facilities could be built across the UK to handle the carbon dioxide from the nearly 30 million cars on British roads.
The inventors say they have spent nearly 170,000 pounds ($348,500) over two years developing the "three distinct technologies" involved and are hoping to secure more funding for health and safety testing.
Not surprisingly, the trio won't show anyone -- not even their wives -- what's inside the box.
After every demonstration they hide its individual components in various locations across North Wales and the technology is divided into three parts, with each inventor being custodian of one section.
"Our three minds hold the three keys and we can only unlock it together," said Houston.

© Reuters 2007

Skyscraper Farms

2007-07-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Dickson Despommier plans to grow crops inside city buildings.

Skyscraper Farms

Amy Feldman

Al Gore urges everyone to plant trees in An Inconvenient Truth. But where, asks Dickson Despommier, a 67-year-old microbiologist at Columbia University, can we plant them if, as scientists suggest, more and more of the world's forests will soon become farmland to support our explosive population growth? Nearly 41 percent of Earth's land is now used for agriculture, yet we're on the brink of vast population growth, from 6.7 billion people today to an estimated 9.2 billion by 2050, with the majority living in cities. The only way to make room for enough carbon-sequestering trees to reverse global warming, Despommier argues, is to change the way we farm. Radically. Despommier envisions blocks of vertical farms in the world's biggest cities, each structure 30 stories high, providing enough food and water for 50,000 people a year, with no waste. He is in discussions with potential investors to build the first prototype. Despommier also sits on the board of New York Sun Works, an eco-friendly engineering firm in Manhattan that in May demonstrated a similar—if much smaller—urban-farm concept on a floating barge.

Q: How did you come to the idea of putting a farm in a skyscraper? A: About eight years ago, I asked my students to come up with ideas on urban sustainability, and they proposed 13 acres of farmable land on the commercial rooftops of Manhattan. We figured out that it would feed just 2 percent of the city, so I said, "Let's take the 1,723 abandoned buildings in Manhattan, retrofit them and do hydroponics." Then I said, "OK, forget about money, space and time, and design a building that will feed and hydrate 50,000 people a year." I wanted individuals to eat 2,000 calories a day and drink water created by evapotranspiration.

Q: Meaning water from plants? A: Right. The condensation comes from the leaves, even though you put the water into the roots. If you had a vertical farm the size of a city block, the plants inside could produce enough water for roughly 50,000 people.

Q: Where would irrigation come from? A: The sewage. First you'd desludge it. Then you'd filter it through nonedible barrier plants and again through a tower of zebra mussels, the best filtering organism out there. After that, the water would be pristine.

Q: How many different kinds of fruits and vegetables would you grow inside the building? A: More than 100—strawberries, blueberries, even miniature banana plants. We got a list from NASA of produce that can be grown indoors. It turns out that NASA has a big hydroponics program, because there's no takeout on Mars—you can't send out for a pizza. Genetic engineering and artificial selection will also play an important role in vertical farming because there are a lot of plants, such as traditional corn, that we don't yet know how to grow indoors.

Q: How will this fight global warming? A: All the governmental reports say the same thing: The biggest polluter is agriculture. I love the look of a wheat field, but it's a huge trade-off to grow food outside the city—40.5 percent of the earth is used for agriculture. As the population grows, the demand for food goes up and more land is cleared for farming. Come up with an alternative to traditional agriculture, and you already have the strategy for sequestering carbon dioxide: planting trees.

Q: How much will all this cost? A: The first vertical farm could run into the billions of dollars. I envision state-of-the-art stuff: The plants will be placed in automated conveyer belts that move past stationary grow lights and automated nutrient-delivery systems. The first buildings would have to be subsidized, with energy incentives and tax incentives. We're talking about the equivalent of engineering a Saturn rocket.

Q: When could we see the first farm? A: With funding, there could be a prototype in 5 to 10 years. I hope I live to be 106 and see the skyline dotted with them.

Copyright © 2005 Popular Science

Greed is still better than 'green'

2007-07-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

Greed is still better than 'green'

People, people. By all means, care about the earth, but invest in the real world and make money. Here are 15 great stocks in dirty businesses like coal and mining that make the world run.

By Jon Markman

Now that we've got all the pious Earth Day documentaries, photo essays and public service announcements out of the way, it's time to get back to business.

And that means we need to talk about investing for the real world as it exists today, not as it might on some far-off date when all our modern conveniences are powered by love beads, sunshine and sugar beets rather than good old-fashioned oil, gas and coal.

My colleague Jim "Moonbeam" Jubak provided a fluffy-clouds-and-rainbows portfolio for environmental dreamers last week, which was great if you have a "Gore 2008" bumper sticker on your Prius. For everyone else, I'd like to return attention to the companies that provide the motive force behind the electronics, vehicles and water heaters that have lifted us above the darkness and despair of the Middle Ages -- and I don't just mean the '70s.

Call it a portfolio for Unearth Day.
A coal fix for electricity addicts
Right now, right here, just for starters, you just have to have some coal mining companies in your portfolio. Yeah, OK: Coal is stripped out of gorgeous Appalachian and Rocky mountains, it's filthy to handle, and its emissions blacken the sky. But look on the bright side: Nature, not man, made it a nearly perfect and highly economic fuel for power plants -- and it is plentiful in the United States. Natural gas is slowly gaining on coal as fuel for electricity utilities, but it's way behind and will remain so for decades.

If this disturbs you, perhaps you should try living without your espresso machine, Pilates DVDs or broadband connection for a few weeks. U.S. electricity demand is rising at the rate of 1.5% annually due to all our new plasma-screen TVs, corporate and personal Internet use, iPod chargers and cell-phone towers. Think of all the incremental extra demands you put on the power grid today versus 15 years ago, including your three home computers that are on day and night, and you realize the extent to which we have become electricity addicts.

Electricity doesn't come from the sky; it comes from coal, plain and simple, although hydroelectric dams, natural gas and nuclear fission lend a hand. Coal prices weakened last year as rising production and ample utility stockpiles provided too much supply in the market. But the supply-demand balance is improving for coal miners this year due to production declines of as much as 3.5%, according to federal regulators. The reason: Central Appalachia coal miners have closed a lot of high-cost mines while Wyoming-area coal miners slowed production to better meet railroads' capacity to move the rocks south to distribution networks. All the while, a worldwide boost in natural gas prices has made that cleaner fuel less economical.

So which coal miners should you buy? That's pretty easy to answer, as there are far fewer miners than there are oil and gas drillers. The low-cost leader in the United States is Peabody Energy (BTU, news, msgs), and it's also considered the best managed, with highly profitable operations in Australia that feed China directly. But smaller miners Westmoreland Coal (WLB, news, msgs), Arch Coal (ACI, news, msgs) and Foundation Coal (FCL, news, msgs) are also good choices, as is the Canadian trust Fording (FDG, news, msgs), which pays a juicy 9% dividend to boot. More diversified miners with major coal subsidiaries that I can strongly recommend are BHP Billiton (BHP, news, msgs) of Australia and Teck Cominco (TCK, news, msgs) of Canada. Pick one or two from the first group and one overseas, and you're covered.

Grab a shovel

Coal can't be dug out of the earth without a lot of big equipment, so in our Unearth Day portfolio we just have to have some major earthmoving machinery makers. The two most important U.S. supershovel makers are Joy Global (JOYG, news, msgs), which sports a $5 billion market capitalization, and Bucyrus International (BUCY, news, msgs), which is a fifth the size at $1 billion. They are both cheap, face expanding market opportunities overseas in China and Russia -- where equipment is hopelessly outdated and in need of updating -- and are run by experienced managers in Milwaukee. Buy either with a goal of at least a 20% profit over the next year.

For a foreign accent on the same idea, consider Finnish mining-equipment maker Metso Oyj (MX, news, msgs), which I first recommended a year ago in this column, "China's reality is both boom and gloom." It's up 50% since, but with earnings growing and global growth prospect intact, its valuation supports at least another 50% move higher.

To transport all that coal, you definitely need a railroad or two. My favorites -- Union Pacific (UNP, news, msgs) and CSX Corp. (CSX, news, msgs) -- are both up a ton this year, but since valuations are still in line and prospects are good, you can buy them on pullbacks to $107 and $43, respectively. And if you reflexively feel guilty about all the pollution you may be responsible for causing, then take a stake in ADA-ES (ADES, news, msgs), too. It provides specialty chemicals and systems to coal-fired power plants to help reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury. It's a very cheap, low-volume stock that can get to $25 to $31 over the next year or two, which would yield as much as 60%.

Build and bury

To build all the infrastructure for the power plants, coal distribution and pipelines, governments and utilities worldwide rely on heavy construction companies. Some of the largest and most experienced are Fluor (FLR, news, msgs) and Jacobs Engineering (JEC, news, msgs), but probably the most undervalued name in the group is Halliburton spinoff KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs). Right now, the stock is in a downtrend, so buy only above $22.50 or $23.50. For that foreign flair, again, look at Swedish-Swiss construction manager ABB Ltd. (ABB, news, msgs), which was also first recommended a year ago but still looks very cheap to me and can be bought on pullbacks.

Surely no Unearth Day portfolio would be complete without some asphalt to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, so lastly turn your attention to NuStar Energy (NS, news, msgs), which is structured as one of those master limited partnerships that I wrote about two weeks ago. Formerly known as Valero LP before being fully spun off from the refinery giant, NuStar is one of the largest independent operators of terminals and pipelines for the transportation of gasoline, diesel and ethanol, with 6,200 miles of pipeline and 35 million barrels of storage capacity. To serve the fertilizer industry, NuStar also has plans to expand its current 2,000-mile ammonia pipeline that runs from the Gulf coast of Mississippi to Nebraska and Indiana. And in an effort to become a major player in asphalt -- a neglected niche in the industry which its veteran chairman believes will become a premium product -- NuStar purchased two plants this month. Its chairman, a Valero founder and former CEO, put some of his own skin in the deal by buying $2 million worth of his company's shares on the open market on April 13 and March 29 at just a touch below the current price.

Now for the unicorn chasers out there, I will throw you one idea for Unearth Day, too. Small-cap Darling International (DAR, news, msgs), which collects used cooking oils and animal fats from restaurants and refines them into tallow, grease and proteins for the soap, pet food, cosmetics, livestock and leather goods industries, and now for biofuels. Its veteran managers know they have a formerly neglected commodity that could become very valuable and are considering plans to build biodiesel refining facilities to take advantage. Darling is very cheap: At $7.30 a share, it is trading at around 16 times next year's estimated earnings per share despite growth well north of 25%.

As a skier, camper, cyclist and card-carrying Sierra Club member since the '70s, it doesn't give me any pleasure to make these observations. But it's valuable for investors to see the world as it really is, not as they wish it to be -- and after all, you can always tithe 25% of your profits to an environmental cause.

Unearth Day portfolio
Company name	Market cap	4/23/07 price

Peabody Energy (BTU, news, msgs)	$12.7 billion	48.22
Arch Coal (ACI, news, msgs)	$5.2 billion	36.5
Westmoreland Coal (WLB, news, msgs)	$217 million	24.07
Fording (FDG, news, msgs)	$3.5 billion	24.07
BHP Billiton (BHP, news, msgs)	$144 billion	49.04
Teck Cominco (TCK, news, msgs)	$16 billion	77.02
Joy Global (JOYG, news, msgs)	$5.4 billion	49.94
Bucyrus International (BUCY, news, msgs)	$1.9 billion	60.27
Metso Oyj (MX, news, msgs)	$7.9 billion	56.33
ABB Ltd. (ABB, news, msgs)	$40 billion	18.75
Union Pacific (UNP, news, msgs)	$31.5 billion	116.15
CSX Corp. (CSX, news, msgs)	$19 billion	44.72
ADA-ES (ADES, news, msgs)	$109 million	19.45
NuStar Energy (NS, news, msgs)	$3.2 billion	68.5
Darling International (DAR, news, msgs)	$607 million	7.52

Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning

2007-07-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning
By Dr. Henry I. Miller : 11 Jul 2007

From pre-school to planning funerals, green is in. Very in. But green policies and decisions need to be based on more than a vague desire to save the planet. The principles of the natural sciences and economics must play an essential role -- a part of policy-making that often eludes politicians. The latest examples are the federal government's efforts to reduce the United States's dependence on imported oil (now more than 60 percent) by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop, corn, to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

Good goal, bad policy. In fact, in the short- and medium-term, ethanol can do little to reduce the vast amount of oil that is imported, and the ethanol policy will have widespread and profound ripple effects on other commodity markets. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom, of course, and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand. But it is already proving to be an expensive and dangerous experiment for the rest of us.

The U.S. Senate is debating new legislation that would further expand corn ethanol production. A 2005 law already mandates production of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, about 5 percent of the projected gasoline use at that time. These biofuel goals are propped up by a generous federal subsidy -- via tax credits -- of 51 cents a gallon for blending ethanol into gasoline, and a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on most imported ethanol, to keep out cheap imports from Brazil. This latest bill is a prime example of the government's throwing good money after a bad idea, of ignoring science and economics in favor of politics, and of disdain for free markets.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15 percent of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) over the next 10 years, which would require almost a five-fold increase in mandatory biofuel use to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no other feasible, proven alternative. However, it is unlikely that American farmers will be able to meet such demands: Achieving the 15 percent goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40 percent of the world's corn supply. This would do more than create mere market distortions; the irresistible pressure to divert corn from food to fuel would create unprecedented turmoil.

Thus, it is no surprise that the price of corn has doubled in the past year — from $2 to $4 per bushel. We are already seeing upward pressure on food prices as the demand for ethanol boosts the demand for corn: Nationally, food prices were up 3.9 percent in April, compared to the same month a year earlier. Until the recent ethanol boom, more than 60 percent of the annual U.S. corn harvest was fed domestically to cattle, hogs and chickens, or used in food or beverages. Thousands of food items contain corn or corn byproducts. A spokesman for one of California's largest cattle ranches and feedlots noted that since the end of 2005, the company has experienced a 36 percent increase in the cost of feed, "which translates to an additional expense of $101 per head raised." Reflecting these trends, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has demanded an end both to government subsidies for ethanol and to the import tariff on foreign ethanol.

The poultry industry is also squawking. The National Chicken Council is demanding remedies from senators who represent the big southern poultry states, and the National Turkey Federation estimates that its feed costs have gone up nearly $600 million annually.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

These effects may be only a hint of things to come. Any sort of shock to corn yields, such as drought, unseasonably hot weather, pests or disease in the next few years could send food prices into the stratosphere. Even Gregory Page, the CEO of agribusiness giant Cargill, a major beneficiary of the ethanol boom, shares these fears, "We just have to be sure that the more-is-better mindset [regarding ethanol] doesn't get way out ahead of the capacity of the land to provide the fuel . . . What we would like to see is some thoughtfulness about what we will do if we have a weather calamity." Such concerns are more than theoretical: In 1970, a widespread outbreak of a fungus called southern corn leaf blight destroyed 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop, and in 1988, drought reduced U.S. corn yields by almost 30 percent.

Politicians like to say that ethanol is environmentally friendly, but these claims must be put into perspective. Although corn is a renewable resource, it has a far lower energy yield relative to the energy used to produce it -- what policy wonks call "net energy balance" -- than either biodiesel (such as soybean oil) or ethanol from many other plants.

Moreover, ethanol yields about 30 percent less energy per gallon than gasoline, so mileage per gallon in internal combustion engines drops off significantly. Finally, adding ethanol raises the price of blended fuel because it is more expensive to transport and handle. Lower-cost biomass ethanol — for example, from rice straw (a byproduct of harvesting rice) switchgrass, or other sources — would make far more economic sense.

Even in the most favorable of scenarios, large volumes of ethanol from biomass will not be commercially viable for many years, but we should not delay production unnecessarily by government policies that, by means of corn subsidies, discriminate in favor of corn-based ethanol. Government policies should stimulate innovation as broadly as possible, and let the marketplace determine winners and losers.

Recent issues of the journals Nature Biotechnology and Nature describe precisely the kinds of advances that should be permitted to compete with corn-derived ethanol on a level playing field. Researchers at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Oklahoma report in the former journal the genetic engineering of a new variety of alfalfa that contains less lignin, the substance that imparts mechanical strength to plant stems and woody tissue, than conventional alfalfa and that is, therefore, a better crop for ethanol production. Because the new variant is defective in biosynthesis of lignin, it is more susceptible to digestion by the enzymes used to convert plant material into the sugars from which ethanol is produced; some of the engineered varieties of alfalfa yield almost double the amount of sugar that is available from conventional alfalfa. This approach has dual advantages: It promises to reduce the costs and increase the yield of ethanol production from alfalfa, as well as to reduce the need for environmentally damaging acid in the biofuel refining process.

A research team at the University of Wisconsin described a catalytic process that converts the simple sugar fructose -- which can be obtained directly from biomass or derived from glucose, another simple sugar -- into 2,5-dimethylfuran. The advantage therein is that compared with ethanol, the only renewable liquid fuel currently produced in large quantities, 2,5-dimethylfuran has an energy density -- the amount of energy stored per unit mass -- 40 percent higher and is also less volatile; and because it is insoluble in water, it is easier to obtain in pure form.

American legislators and policymakers seem oblivious to the scientific and economic realities of ethanol production. Brazil and other major sugarcane-producing nations enjoy significant advantages over the U.S. in producing ethanol, including ample agricultural land, warm climates amenable to vast sugarcane plantations, and on-site distilleries that can process cane immediately after harvest. At current world prices for sugar and corn, Brazilian ethanol production would remain competitive even if oil prices were to drop below $30 per barrel, but U.S. corn-based ethanol plants would be losing money at forty-dollar oil, even with the subsidy. Thus, in the absence of cost-effective, domestically available sources for producing ethanol, rather than using corn it would make far more sense to import ethanol from Brazil and other countries that can produce it efficiently — and also to remove the 54 cents-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol imports.

Another important strategy would be to encourage a more prominent role for nuclear power, which consumes no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. Good news on that front is that with electricity demand projected to soar more than 40 percent by 2030 -- not including the potential demand from greater availability of plug-in hybrids and other forms of electric cars -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for as many as 11 new units this year, and for as many as 28 by the end of 2009.

Our politicians may be drunk with the prospect of corn-derived ethanol, but if we don't adopt policies based on science and sound economics, it is consumers around the world who will suffer from the hangover.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994; his most recent book is "The Frankenfood Myth." Colin A. Carter is a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California at Davis.

New Ethanol Plants to Be Fueled by Cow Manure

2007-07-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

New Ethanol Plants to Be Fueled by Cow Manure
Scott Norris
for National Geographic News
August 18, 2006

While a cheap alternative to gasoline may be pie in the sky, ethanol producers in cattle country will soon be reaping the energy rewards of pies on the ground.

Ethanol production plants fueled by cow manure are under construction in Hereford, Texas, and Mead, Nebraska.

The new facilities may have a big impact on the growing debate over the value of ethanol—a liquid fuel distilled from food starches such as corn—as a supplement or alternative to gasoline.

Critics have long argued that traditional ethanol production consumes nearly as much fossil fuel energy as it saves, once all the energy costs of growing and processing corn are factored in.

(Read "Ethanol Not So Green After All?" [July 2006].)

But in Hereford, a cattle town in the Texas Panhandle (Texas map), Dallas-based Panda Ethanol is building a production facility driven by the area's most abundant and least appreciated resource: manure.

The new plant is expected to extract methane from 1 billion pounds (453,000 metric tons) of manure—the product of about 500,000 cows—to generate 100 million gallons (378 million liters) of ethanol, plus ash by-product, each year.

Methane derived from the manure will be burned to generate the steam necessary for processing corn into ethanol.

"We thought it made a lot of sense to use a renewable fuel to create a renewable fuel," said Panda CEO Todd Carter.

"There are literally mountains of manure in the Hereford area."

Cows Crack Corn

By mining those mountains for energy, the Panda facility is expected to save the equivalent of a thousand barrels of oil a day that would otherwise be required to fuel ethanol production.

The manure will come free of charge, courtesy of local feedlot operators for whom waste disposal is a difficult and costly necessity. The Hereford plant will begin operating in the second half of 2007.

Panda has plans to build similar facilities in Haskell County, Kansas, and Yuma, Colorado.

In Mead, Nebraska, a small town of about 600 people 30 miles west of Omaha (Nebraska map), E3 Biofuels is taking the idea of cow power a step further.

Their new facility, set to begin operation in October, will integrate cattle and ethanol production in a highly efficient "closed loop" system.

The E3 operation is smaller than the Panda facilities. Built around an existing feedlot, 30,000 head of cattle will provide the energy needed to produce 24 million gallons (91 million liters) of ethanol a year.

Cattle will be kept in long, covered enclosures with slotted floors, and manure falling through will be pumped directly into the processing facility.

E3 CEO Dennis Langley says collecting the manure immediately eliminates the common problem of water pollution caused by manure left standing in feedlots or spread across farmland.

The process also prevents the atmospheric release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from manure left to slowly decompose.

While Panda relies on an incineration process, E3's manure will be broken down inside an oxygen-free "digester," yielding methane fuel and an ammonia by-product that can be sold as fertilizer.

The energy generated will be used to convert locally grown corn into ethanol and wet distillers' grain, a protein-rich by-product that is fed back to the cattle on site.

Langley says the three-part combination of feedlot, methane generator, and fuel processor will allow the company to make ethanol at less cost and with far better energy return than traditional methods.

"The normal process is, you put one BTU [a unit of energy] in and get two BTU out," Langley said.

"What we do is radical. We put one BTU in and get 46.7 BTU out."

What that means, he continues, is that "producing 1 gallon [3.8 liters] of our ethanol is like producing 23 gallons [87 liters] of traditional ethanol or 15 gallons [57 liters] of gasoline."

Fueling Controversy

With gas prices high and the future of world oil production uncertain, interest in alternative fuels is surging.

But ethanol, a fuel now widely used in Brazil, has been the subject of an often polarized debate in the U.S.

The controversy has been playing out recently both in science journals and on energy blog sites such as The Oil Drum.

Proponents like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla argue that ethanol can replace gasoline, while opponents counter that not enough agricultural land exists to meet more than a fraction of the country's energy needs.

Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel is an ethanol skeptic and co-author of a study finding that corn ethanol typically costs more energy to produce than it provides.

Pimentel says manure-fueled production does represent an improvement over traditional methods.

"It probably would make [the net energy balance] slightly positive," Pimentel said, though he remains skeptical about the efficiency claims of E3 Biofuels.

"If you omit some of the inputs, you can make it look good. I'd like to see all the data," he added.

But another outspoken ethanol critic, oil industry analyst and blogger Robert Rapier, has endorsed the E3 Biofuels approach, calling it "responsible ethanol."

The 2005 energy bill approved last summer by U.S. President George W. Bush included a controversial mandate for increased ethanol production, and many new facilities are now being built.

Once the Mead facility is up and running, E3's Langley hopes to see small-scale, integrated cattle-ethanol operations spread across the rural Midwest, bringing both environmental and economic benefits.

"We want to build three to five new plants in 2007 and every year thereafter," Langley said.

Pathogen Work at Texas A&M Suspended

2007-07-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

Pathogen Work at Texas A&M Suspended
By Jocelyn Kaiser
ScienceNOW Daily News
2 July 2007

In an unprecedented step, federal officials have suspended all research on dangerous pathogens known as select agents at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in College Station after the school failed to report two cases of exposure last year.
The incidents involved the bacteria that cause brucellosis and Q fever, livestock diseases that can infect humans and are on the federal list of potential bioweapons. These pathogens are studied in highly secure labs with oversight by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The first exposure at TAMU occurred in February 2006, when a lab worker cleaning a chamber containing brucella bacteria in a biosafety level-3 lab developed brucellosis; she recovered after treatment with antibiotics (Science, 20 April, p. 353). One month later, three other workers tested positive for antibodies to Coxiella burnetii, the bacterium that causes Q fever, but didn't become sick. The brucella exposure and details of the Q fever incident first became public in April and June of this year through documents obtained by Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a watchdog group in Austin.

TAMU admitted to CDC in April it had failed to report both incidents, but after visiting the campus, CDC inspectors weren't satisfied. In a 30 June letter, the agency told the university that research on select agents must be halted immediately while CDC conducts a "comprehensive review" to see if TAMU meets standards for handling select agents. If the university can't comply, its select agent work could be shut down and transferred to other labs, the letter says. According to CDC spokesperson Von Roebuck, this is the first time all of a university's select agent work has been suspended. The school could also face fines.

TAMU interim president Eddie J. Davis said in a statement that "we take this matter very seriously and are committed to taking all appropriate steps to ensure that we are in full compliance" with federal rules. He told reporters today that TAMU didn't think the Q fever exposures needed to be reported to CDC because the workers did not develop clinical symptoms. "There was no requirement that it be reported," he said. He also said two of the people were likely exposed before they joined the TAMU lab. Five labs with 120 workers have been shut down, he said. In addition, the principal investigator on the brucella project was suspended from the lab about a month ago.

The university is in the running for a major new agricultural biosecurity lab, the $450 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The Department of Homeland Security expects to announce a short list of potential sites for the lab this month. But Hammond of the Sunshine Project suggests TAMU's prospects aren't looking so good now. And if the university makes the list, he asks, "What does that say about the safety and security of these facilities?"

Related site
TAMU documents on the exposures and CDC's letter (pdf) provided by The Sunshine Project

Charting Greed for All Things Green

2007-07-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

Charting Greed for All Things Green
By Michael Balter
ScienceNOW Daily News
2 July 2007

Humans are leaving a heavy mark on Earth, but it's not just climate change. A new study shows that in addition to overfishing and other resource extraction, humans are also hogging nearly a quarter of the planet's yearly production of plant life. The findings suggest that humans are endangering Earth's biodiversity and call into question a leading strategy for slowing global warming--the use of biofuels to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
In recent years, scientists have made numerous attempts to determine how much vegetation, or "biomass," is appropriated by humans. Past estimates have varied widely, however, according to the models used and the data available to plug into them. A team led by Helmut Haberl, an ecologist at the University of Klagenfurt in Klagenfurt, Austria, has taken another crack at the question using a larger number of updated databases and taking into account the effects of land use by humans on overall plant growth. Haberl and his co-workers took the latest available statistics on agricultural production, forestry, and human-caused soil degradation, and mapped them.

The analysis showed that in 2000, humans used up to 23.8% of that year's biomass production, the team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Of this total impact, the researchers found, 78% was due to agriculture and 22% to forestry, human-caused fires, and other activities. The team also found marked variations in human use of plant life around the world. Southern Asians topped the charts, appropriating about 63% of their area's vegetation, mostly due to more intense agricultural practices. North Americans used 22% and central Asians only about 12%. The authors warn that measures to increase the consumption of biofuels produced from agricultural and forestry products "need to be considered carefully," because they could double the amount of biomass used by humans and put even more pressure on other species trying to get their share of the Earth's plants.

Nathan Moore, an earth scientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, says that the team's analysis is "sound" and its results are "quite alarming." Christopher Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, agrees. The new estimate, he says, "is based on a conservative interpretation of the best available information." Field adds that "one species is appropriating about a quarter of the productive activity of all the world's lands. With millions of species sharing the leftovers, it is hard to know how many will be squeezed out of the game." Field also agrees with the Haberl team's concerns about biofuel use. "There simply isn't enough [biomass production] for us to solve the energy challenge of the 21st century with biofuels."

Our Biotech Future

2007-06-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

Our Biotech Future
By Freeman Dyson
1.
It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology. Two facts about the coming century are agreed on by almost everyone. Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare.

These facts raise an interesting question. Will the domestication of high technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers and GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology? I believe that the answer to this question is yes. Here I am bold enough to make a definite prediction. I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.

I see a close analogy between John von Neumann's blinkered vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because he liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.

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I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colors appeared in pet stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest indoor flower show in the world, where flower breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego excels in lizards and snakes. The main problem for a grandparent visiting the reptile show with a grandchild is to get the grandchild out of the building without actually buying a snake.

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Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and lizards and snakes to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs and cats will have their kits too.

Domesticated biotechnology, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace those that monoculture farming and deforestation have destroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture.

Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but a great many will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora. The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others. The dangers of biotechnology are real and serious.

If domestication of biotechnology is the wave of the future, five important questions need to be answered. First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the appropriate limits that our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally? I do not attempt to answer these questions here. I leave it to our children and grandchildren to supply the answers.

2.
A New Biology for a New Century

Carl Woese is the world's greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy, the classification and understanding of microbes. He explored the ancestry of microbes by tracing the similarities and differences between their genomes. He discovered the large-scale structure of the tree of life, with all living creatures descended from three primordial branches. Before Woese, the tree of life had two main branches called prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the prokaryotes composed of cells without nuclei and the eukaryotes composed of cells with nuclei. All kinds of plants and animals, including humans, belonged to the eukaryote branch. The prokaryote branch contained only microbes. Woese discovered, by studying the anatomy of microbes in detail, that there are two fundamentally different kinds of prokaryotes, which he called bacteria and archea. So he constructed a new tree of life with three branches, bacteria, archea, and eukaryotes. Most of the well-known microbes are bacteria. The archea were at first supposed to be rare and confined to extreme environments such as hot springs, but they are now known to be abundant and widely distributed over the planet. Woese recently published two provocative and illuminating articles with the titles "A New Biology for a New Century" and (together with Nigel Goldenfeld) "Biology's Next Revolution."[*]

Woese's main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, with its assumption that biological processes can be understood by studying genes and molecules. What is needed instead is a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organization. Aside from his main theme, he raises another important question. When did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of noninterbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life. When we compare genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures, we find evidence of numerous transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time.

Whatever Carl Woese writes, even in a speculative vein, needs to be taken seriously. In his "New Biology" article, he is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. Evolution could be rapid, as new chemical devices could be evolved simultaneously by cells of different kinds working in parallel and then reassembled in a single cell by horizontal gene transfer.

But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species of bacteria—and the first species of any kind—reserving their intellectual property for their own private use. With their superior efficiency, the bacteria continued to prosper and to evolve separately, while the rest of the community continued its communal life. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became the ancestor of the archea. Some time after that, a third cell separated itself and became the ancestor of the eukaryotes. And so it went on, until nothing was left of the community and all life was divided into species. The Darwinian interlude had begun.

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The Darwinian interlude has lasted for two or three billion years. It probably slowed down the pace of evolution considerably. The basic biochemical machinery of life had evolved rapidly during the few hundreds of millions of years of the pre-Darwinian era, and changed very little in the next two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species, once established, evolve very little. With rare exceptions, Darwinian evolution requires established species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.

Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over. It was an interlude between two periods of horizontal gene transfer. The epoch of Darwinian evolution based on competition between species ended about ten thousand years ago, when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the main driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence which we call globalization. And now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species other than our own will no longer exist, and the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented.

I would like to borrow Carl Woese's vision of the future of biology and extend it to the whole of science. Here is his metaphor for the future of science:

Imagine a child playing in a woodland stream, poking a stick into an eddy in the flowing current, thereby disrupting it. But the eddy quickly reforms. The child disperses it again. Again it reforms, and the fascinating game goes on. There you have it! Organisms are resilient patterns in a turbulent flow—patterns in an energy flow.... It is becoming increasingly clear that to understand living systems in any deep sense, we must come to see them not materialistically, as machines, but as stable, complex, dynamic organization.
This picture of living creatures, as patterns of organization rather than collections of molecules, applies not only to bees and bacteria, butterflies and rain forests, but also to sand dunes and snowflakes, thunderstorms and hurricanes. The nonliving universe is as diverse and as dynamic as the living universe, and is also dominated by patterns of organization that are not yet understood. The reductionist physics and the reductionist molecular biology of the twentieth century will continue to be important in the twenty-first century, but they will not be dominant. The big problems, the evolution of the universe as a whole, the origin of life, the nature of human consciousness, and the evolution of the earth's climate, cannot be understood by reducing them to elementary particles and molecules. New ways of thinking and new ways of organizing large databases will be needed.

3.
Green Technology

The domestication of biotechnology in everyday life may also be helpful in solving practical economic and environmental problems. Once a new generation of children has grown up, as familiar with biotech games as our grandchildren are now with computer games, biotechnology will no longer seem weird and alien. In the era of Open Source biology, the magic of genes will be available to anyone with the skill and imagination to use it. The way will be open for biotechnology to move into the mainstream of economic development, to help us solve some of our urgent social problems and ameliorate the human condition all over the earth. Open Source biology could be a powerful tool, giving us access to cheap and abundant solar energy.

A plant is a creature that uses the energy of sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide and other simple chemicals into roots and leaves and flowers. To live, it needs to collect sunlight. But it uses sunlight with low efficiency. The most efficient crop plants, such as sugarcane or maize, convert about 1 percent of the sunlight that falls onto them into chemical energy. Artificial solar collectors made of silicon can do much better. Silicon solar cells can convert sunlight into electrical energy with 15 percent efficiency, and electrical energy can be converted into chemical energy without much loss. We can imagine that in the future, when we have mastered the art of genetically engineering plants, we may breed new crop plants that have leaves made of silicon, converting sunlight into chemical energy with ten times the efficiency of natural plants. These artificial crop plants would reduce the area of land needed for biomass production by a factor of ten. They would allow solar energy to be used on a massive scale without taking up too much land. They would look like natural plants except that their leaves would be black, the color of silicon, instead of green, the color of chlorophyll. The question I am asking is, how long will it take us to grow plants with silicon leaves?

If the natural evolution of plants had been driven by the need for high efficiency of utilization of sunlight, then the leaves of all plants would have been black. Black leaves would absorb sunlight more efficiently than leaves of any other color. Obviously plant evolution was driven by other needs, and in particular by the need for protection against overheating. For a plant growing in a hot climate, it is advantageous to reflect as much as possible of the sunlight that is not used for growth. There is plenty of sunlight, and it is not important to use it with maximum efficiency. The plants have evolved with chlorophyll in their leaves to absorb the useful red and blue components of sunlight and to reflect the green. That is why it is reasonable for plants in tropical climates to be green. But this logic does not explain why plants in cold climates where sunlight is scarce are also green. We could imagine that in a place like Iceland, overheating would not be a problem, and plants with black leaves using sunlight more efficiently would have an evolutionary advantage. For some reason which we do not understand, natural plants with black leaves never appeared. Why not? Perhaps we shall not understand why nature did not travel this route until we have traveled it ourselves.

After we have explored this route to the end, when we have created new forests of black-leaved plants that can use sunlight ten times more efficiently than natural plants, we shall be confronted by a new set of environmental problems. Who shall be allowed to grow the black-leaved plants? Will black-leaved plants remain an artificially maintained cultivar, or will they invade and permanently change the natural ecology? What shall we do with the silicon trash that these plants leave behind them? Shall we be able to design a whole ecology of silicon-eating microbes and fungi and earthworms to keep the black-leaved plants in balance with the rest of nature and to recycle their silicon? The twenty-first century will bring us powerful new tools of genetic engineering with which to manipulate our farms and forests. With the new tools will come new questions and new responsibilities.

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Rural poverty is one of the great evils of the modern world. The lack of jobs and economic opportunities in villages drives millions of people to migrate from villages into overcrowded cities. The continuing migration causes immense social and environmental problems in the major cities of poor countries. The effects of poverty are most visible in the cities, but the causes of poverty lie mostly in the villages. What the world needs is a technology that directly attacks the problem of rural poverty by creating wealth and jobs in the villages. A technology that creates industries and careers in villages would give the villagers a practical alternative to migration. It would give them a chance to survive and prosper without uprooting themselves.

The shifting balance of wealth and population between villages and cities is one of the main themes of human history over the last ten thousand years. The shift from villages to cities is strongly coupled with a shift from one kind of technology to another. I find it convenient to call the two kinds of technology green and gray. The adjective "green" has been appropriated and abused by various political movements, especially in Europe, so I need to explain clearly what I have in mind when I speak of green and gray. Green technology is based on biology, gray technology on physics and chemistry.

Roughly speaking, green technology is the technology that gave birth to village communities ten thousand years ago, starting from the domestication of plants and animals, the invention of agriculture, the breeding of goats and sheep and horses and cows and pigs, the manufacture of textiles and cheese and wine. Gray technology is the technology that gave birth to cities and empires five thousand years later, starting from the forging of bronze and iron, the invention of wheeled vehicles and paved roads, the building of ships and war chariots, the manufacture of swords and guns and bombs. Gray technology also produced the steel plows, tractors, reapers, and processing plants that made agriculture more productive and transferred much of the resulting wealth from village-based farmers to city-based corporations.

For the first five of the ten thousand years of human civilization, wealth and power belonged to villages with green technology, and for the second five thousand years wealth and power belonged to cities with gray technology. Beginning about five hundred years ago, gray technology became increasingly dominant, as we learned to build machines that used power from wind and water and steam and electricity. In the last hundred years, wealth and power were even more heavily concentrated in cities as gray technology raced ahead. As cities became richer, rural poverty deepened.

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This sketch of the last ten thousand years of human history puts the problem of rural poverty into a new perspective. If rural poverty is a consequence of the unbalanced growth of gray technology, it is possible that a shift in the balance back from gray to green might cause rural poverty to disappear. That is my dream. During the last fifty years we have seen explosive progress in the scientific understanding of the basic processes of life, and in the last twenty years this new understanding has given rise to explosive growth of green technology. The new green technology allows us to breed new varieties of animals and plants as our ancestors did ten thousand years ago, but now a hundred times faster. It now takes us a decade instead of a millennium to create new crop plants, such as the herbicide-resistant varieties of maize and soybean that allow weeds to be controlled without plowing and greatly reduce the erosion of topsoil by wind and rain. Guided by a precise understanding of genes and genomes instead of by trial and error, we can within a few years modify plants so as to give them improved yield, improved nutritive value, and improved resistance to pests and diseases.

Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs. The way will then be open for green technology to do more cheaply and more cleanly many of the things that gray technology can do, and also to do many things that gray technology has failed to do. Green technology could replace most of our existing chemical industries and a large part of our mining and manufacturing industries. Genetically engineered earthworms could extract common metals such as aluminum and titanium from clay, and genetically engineered seaweed could extract magnesium or gold from seawater. Green technology could also achieve more extensive recycling of waste products and worn-out machines, with great benefit to the environment. An economic system based on green technology could come much closer to the goal of sustainability, using sunlight instead of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. New species of termite could be engineered to chew up derelict automobiles instead of houses, and new species of tree could be engineered to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into liquid fuels instead of cellulose.

Before genetically modified termites and trees can be allowed to help solve our economic and environmental problems, great arguments will rage over the possible damage they may do. Many of the people who call themselves green are passionately opposed to green technology. But in the end, if the technology is developed carefully and deployed with sensitivity to human feelings, it is likely to be accepted by most of the people who will be affected by it, just as the equally unnatural and unfamiliar green technologies of milking cows and plowing soils and fermenting grapes were accepted by our ancestors long ago. I am not saying that the political acceptance of green technology will be quick or easy. I say only that green technology has enormous promise for preserving the balance of nature on this planet as well as for relieving human misery. Future generations of people raised from childhood with biotech toys and games will probably accept it more easily than we do. Nobody can predict how long it may take to try out the new technology in a thousand different ways and measure its costs and benefits.

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What has this dream of a resurgent green technology to do with the problem of rural poverty? In the past, green technology has always been rural, based in farms and villages rather than in cities. In the future it will pervade cities as well as countryside, factories as well as forests. It will not be entirely rural. But it will still have a large rural component. After all, the cloning of Dolly occurred in a rural animal-breeding station in Scotland, not in an urban laboratory in Silicon Valley. Green technology will use land and sunlight as its primary sources of raw materials and energy. Land and sunlight cannot be concentrated in cities but are spread more or less evenly over the planet. When industries and technologies are based on land and sunlight, they will bring employment and wealth to rural populations.

In a country like India with a large rural population, bringing wealth to the villages means bringing jobs other than farming. Most of the villagers must cease to be subsistance farmers and become shopkeepers or schoolteachers or bankers or engineers or poets. In the end the villages must become gentrified, as they are today in England, with the old farm workers' cottages converted into garages, and the few remaining farmers converted into highly skilled professionals. It is fortunate that sunlight is most abundant in tropical countries, where a large fraction of the world's people live and where rural poverty is most acute. Since sunlight is distributed more equitably than coal and oil, green technology can be a great equalizer, helping to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries.

My book The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (1999) describes a vision of green technology enriching villages all over the world and halting the migration from villages to megacities. The three components of the vision are all essential: the sun to provide energy where it is needed, the genome to provide plants that can convert sunlight into chemical fuels cheaply and efficiently, the Internet to end the intellectual and economic isolation of rural populations. With all three components in place, every village in Africa could enjoy its fair share of the blessings of civilization. People who prefer to live in cities would still be free to move from villages to cities, but they would not be compelled to move by economic necessity.

Notes
[*] See Carl Woese, "A New Biology for a New Century," in Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, June 2004; and Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, "Biology's Next Revolution," Nature, January 25, 2007. A slightly expanded version of the Nature article is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0702015v1.

U.S. Is Creating 3 Centers for Research on Biofuels

2007-06-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

U.S. Is Creating 3 Centers for Research on Biofuels
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: June 26, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 25 — The Energy Department is creating three bioenergy research centers to find new ways to turn plants into fuel.

The three centers, which the department described as three start-up companies with $125 million each in capital, will be in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Madison, Wis.; and near Berkeley, Calif. They will involve numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies. The goal of the centers, which are to be announced on Tuesday, is to bring new technologies to market within five years.

The new approach supports President Bush’s goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.

The bioenergy centers will focus on finding naturally occurring microbes that can break down lignin, a component of plants and trees, to give access to the material inside, called cellulose. The cellulose can be converted into ethanol or other liquid fuels, like butanol and biodiesel, said Raymond L. Orbach, the under secretary for science at the Energy Department.

Today, companies trying to commercialize cellulosic ethanol use heat and acids, an expensive process.

They have focused on the cellulose itself, which is made up of six-carbon sugars, the kind that is found in grains that have been turned into fermented products like beer for thousands of years, and of five-carbon sugars, which cannot be fermented by ordinary means. These are bound together tightly, and must be loosened by biological processes.

“There has been tremendous progress,” Dr. Orbach said. “But if you don’t fix the front end, the back end isn’t going be very efficient.”

The centers will also work on creating new crops that produce lignin that is easier to deal with, he said.

Ethanol is increasingly used as a gasoline substitute, but that has driven up the price of corn. “There’s a lot of biomass in our country that has nothing to do with corn or any other food,” Dr. Orbach said in an interview. One such plentiful plant often mentioned is switch grass.

In another area, the department announced Monday that it would help establish laboratories in Texas and Massachusetts to test designs for wind turbine blades up to 300 feet long, about twice the length of blades now in common use. The size of wind turbines in use has tripled in the last five years and could triple again, but this would require blades of lighter materials that are three times the length of the longest blade that can be reliably tested now in this country, said Andrew Karsner, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The two announcements are part of a highly public campaign by the Bush administration to stress its commitment to renewable energy.

One of the new bioenergy centers will be led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, an Energy Department lab in Tennessee. Participants include another lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colo.; the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; the University of Georgia, Athens, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

A Great Lakes center, in Madison, Wis., will be led by the University of Wisconsin, and will include Michigan State University, East Lansing; the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash.; the Lucigen Corporation, Middleton, Wis.; the University of Florida, Gainesville; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Illinois State University, Normal; and Iowa State University, Ames.

The third, the Joint Bioenergy Institute, will be led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and will include Sandia National Laboratories; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Davis; and Stanford. Dr. Orbach said that the centers’ geographic diversity would help researchers examine a wide range of plants.

The centers, each to be financed by $25 million a year, are supposed to be fully operational by the fiscal year beginning Sept. 1, 2009.

Shifting Gears, GM Now Sees Green

2007-05-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Shifting Gears, GM Now Sees Green

Push for Fuel-Saving Technology
Includes Building the Volt, an Electric Car

By NEAL E. BOUDETTE

Five years ago, General Motors Corp. gave the world the Hummer H2, a vehicle so fuel-thirsty that GM took advantage of a federal loophole that allowed the company not to publish its estimated mileage.

Today, the No. 1 U.S. auto maker by sales, usually the most conservative of Detroit's Big Three, has assigned hundreds of engineers and millions of dollars to an effort to become the greenest company in the auto industry.

FUEL GAUGE

• The Effort: GM is investing significantly in fuel-efficient alternatives to current car engines.

• The Image: The car maker fears losing sales due to consumer perceptions that it makes gas guzzlers.

• The Risk: GM seeks a "halo" product that will burnish its overall reputation, but it isn't clear whether its efforts will result in a marketable technology.

Engineering teams at GM's technical center in Warren, Mich., are scrambling to turn a recently unveiled electric concept car into a production vehicle within three to four years. This month, GM kicked off a drive to hire 400 technical experts to work on fuel-saving technology and other innovations, and became the first auto maker to sign up for a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, which are blamed for global warming.

This year, GM's research labs are scheduled to turn its hydrogen fuel-cell technology over to an engineering group that prepares new powertrains for commercial launch, a sign of increased determination to put hydrogen-powered vehicles on the road.

GM executives acknowledge it is unclear whether these advanced-technology vehicles will ever come to market, much less generate a profit. The auto maker, as with companies in others industries, has concluded it can no longer wait and see how the public debate on global warming and the world economy's increasing thirst for oil plays out. A big consideration in this change: GM fears it will sell fewer cars if consumers associate it with gas guzzlers.

"We have to have people think we are part of the solution, not part of the problem," said Lawrence Burns, GM's vice president for research and development and global planning. The rush to produce its electric vehicle, known as the Chevrolet Volt, is in large part an effort to show consumers that "we get it" on climate change, Mr. Burns said. "It's not just words. It's deeds."

GM declined to disclose its spending on these new technologies, but people inside and outside the company said it appears to be devoting significant resources to the effort.

GM is working to restructure its unprofitable North American auto operations and recently lost the mantle of the world's No. 1 auto maker by output to Toyota Motor Corp., maker of the Prius gasoline-electric hybrid, which can go about 50 miles on gallon of gas. Efforts by the Detroit company and its rivals to revamp their operations and offer more fuel-efficient vehicles come amid rapid changes in the social and political climate driven by worries about oil and the environment. That is forcing U.S. auto makers to apply a different kind of calculus to green technology -- a shift that over time could change what Detroit offers Americans to drive.

Producing new types of vehicles such as hybrids and electric cars could ease the pressure to boost gas mileage requirements. One proposal in Washington would increase the mileage target to as much as 35 miles a gallon by 2020, a 40% increase from current levels. Auto makers argue that would force them to redesign vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines and delay efforts to produce new types of vehicles.

A big part of GM's problem is that it is stuck with an image as a maker of primarily big trucks and sport-utility vehicles. By 2005, GM's top executives and members of its board were convinced it could get sales moving again in part by turning around its reputation on fuel economy and the environment.

"We saw how quickly the mantle of environmental leadership had been seized by Toyota because of the Prius," GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said in an interview. "The board knew that if Toyota continued unchallenged [as the industry's technological leader], then this would sooner or later doom our sales."

Finding a way to get on the right side of the global-warming and oil-consumption issues won't be easy. Two hybrid SUVs are due late this year with a system that GM believes has advantages over Toyota's hybrid technology. But GM only expects to sell a few thousand, while Toyota is counting on selling 250,000 hybrid vehicles in the U.S. this year, including 160,000 Priuses.

To differentiate its strategy, GM decided to develop vehicles and technologies that don't require petroleum-based fuels. That led to a campaign to promote ethanol. By early last year, Mr. Lutz and others had concluded GM had to do come up with a much more dramatic idea for addressing global warming and oil consumption -- a environmental "halo" vehicle, such as the Prius, that would cast a glow over GM's entire product line.

In a presentation to GM top executives, Mr. Burns suggested the company needed to create the automotive equivalent of Apple Inc.'s iPod music player, a product so alluring that it knocks all other competitors for a loop. Mr. Burns wanted to do this by forging ahead with a fuel-cell vehicle, a pet project of his. Mr. Lutz advocated building an electric car, noting battery makers had made strides in lithium-ion compounds that held promise for automobiles.

One day late in the winter, Jon Lauckner, head of development for front-wheel drive vehicles, pulled out a fountain pen to sketch out for Mr. Lutz an idea that had been kicking around among GM engineers in Warren.

They could build a compact car, with a huge T-shaped battery pack in the middle with enough power for about forty miles of travel, Mr. Lutz recalled Mr. Lauckner saying. In the front, Mr. Lauckner put a small engine, not to drive the wheels but to serve as a generator to recharge the battery. GM estimates the vehicle could go 150 miles on a gallon of gas. Because it emits so little tailpipe exhaust, producing the vehicle could give GM valuable credits if a U.S. emission cap-and-trade system is ever put in place.

Other top executives got on board with the idea, and the car was called the Volt. Mr. Burns endorsed it when it was clear a version could eventually be built with fuel cells rather than a gasoline engine recharging the battery .

In a speech in Los Angeles in November, Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner outlined GM's vision to field an array of electric, hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles, saying the company wanted to "reinvent" the automobile after 100 years of relying on the internal-combustion engine. Two months later, GM unveiled its Volt concept at the Detroit auto show.

Some of GM's toughest environmental critics found themselves cheering for the company. "The Volt really hit the mark in terms of what people want to see from GM," said Walter McManus, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute.

GM is working with three battery suppliers in hopes of developing the Volt's most crucial component. Even though it has no guarantee the batteries will be available, GM decided to have its engineers start designing the other parts of the car and the manufacturing processes to produce them -- a big risk for a company that is coming off a $2 billion loss in 2006.

Write to Neal E. Boudette at neal.boudette@wsj.com

Beyond Kyoto

2007-05-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

Beyond Kyoto
By John Browne
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004

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Summary: Global warming is real and needs to be addressed now. Rather than bash or mourn the defunct Kyoto Protocol, we should start taking the small steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions today that can make a big difference down the road. The private sector already understands this, and its efforts will be crucial in improving fossil fuel efficiency and developing alternative sources of energy. To harness business potential, however, governments in the developed world must create incentives, improve scientific research, and forge international partnerships.
Lord Browne of Madingley is Group Chief Executive of BP plc.

THE CARBON CHALLENGE

In 1997, more than 180 countries gathered in Kyoto, Japan, in search of a coordinated international response to global warming. The provisional agreement they reached appeared to mark a significant step forward. But the Kyoto Protocol is coming unraveled. Despite nearly a decade of effort, it may not even enter into force as a binding instrument. Canada, Japan, and the European Union -- the most enthusiastic advocates of the Kyoto process -- are not on track to meet their commitments. And the United States has withdrawn from the agreement entirely. Those concerned with the sustainability of the earth's climate could be forgiven for feeling depressed.

Clear-eyed realism is essential. But dismay, however understandable, is a mistaken reaction. There is scope for a different and more positive view of the last seven years and of the future. First, it has become obvious that Kyoto was simply the starting point of a very long endeavor -- comparable, perhaps, to the meetings in 1946 at which a group of 23 countries agreed to reduce tariffs. Those meetings set in motion a process that led to the establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1948, which, in turn, led to the creation of the World Trade Organization in the mid-1990s. Second, we have improved, if still imperfect, knowledge of the challenges and uncertainties that climate change presents, as well as a better understanding of the time scales involved. Third, many countries and companies have had experience reducing emissions and have proved that such reductions can be achieved without destroying competitiveness or jobs. Fourth, science and technology have advanced on multiple fronts. And finally, public awareness of the issue has grown -- not just in the developed world but all around the globe.

Seven years after the Kyoto meeting, it is becoming clear that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a soluble problem, and that the mechanisms for delivering the solutions are within reach. In that spirit of cautious optimism, it is time to move beyond the current Kyoto debate.

KNOWNS AND UNKNOWNS

Before considering new approaches, it is necessary to distill some basic facts from the voluminous, complex, and incomplete scientific work on global warming.

Global temperatures have risen by about 0.6 degrees Celsius since the nineteenth century. Other measures of climate bolster the theory that the world is getting warmer: satellite measurements suggest that spring arrives about a week earlier now than in the late 1970s, for example, and records show that migratory birds fly to higher latitudes earlier in the season and stay later. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- by far the most authoritative body of scientists working on this issue -- humans are probably not responsible for all the measured warming. But the trend is undoubtedly due in large part to substantial increases in carbon dioxide emissions from human activity. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the average concentration of carbon dioxide -- a so-called greenhouse gas -- in the world's atmosphere has risen from some 280 parts per million (ppm) to around 370 ppm. Burning fossil fuels account for about three-quarters of human emissions, with deforestation and changes in land use (mainly in the tropics) accounting for the rest.

There are two main reasons why it has been hard for societies to tackle climate change. First, carbon dioxide has a very long life span: it exists for hundreds of years in the atmosphere, making this a multigenerational issue. Second, reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be done only on a truly global basis, since emissions mix throughout the atmosphere much quicker than individual processes can limit their impact.

Beyond these known facts, the picture becomes murkier. For instance, nobody knows how rapidly emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will rise in the future. That outcome depends on the pace of global economic growth and on the impact of technology on the ways society generates and deploys useful energy. Equally, it is impossible to determine precisely how the climate will respond as greenhouse gases accumulate to ever-higher concentrations in the atmosphere. The brightness and altitude of clouds, for example, determine whether warming is amplified or diminished, yet it is not known how exactly climate change will affect cloud patterns. Nor is it known how the world's carbon cycle will respond. A warmer climate might make the planet greener -- which would mean more carbon dioxide would be sucked from the atmosphere. Alternatively, climate change might impose such severe stress on the biosphere that nature's processes for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would become less efficient than normal.

The most recent IPCC assessment, published in 2001, concludes that if no precautionary action is taken, carbon dioxide concentrations will rise by 2050 to between 450 and 550 ppm and will continue to increase throughout the twenty-first century. The IPCC estimates that temperatures will rise by between 0.5 degrees Celsius and 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, with an increase of 1.4 degrees to 5.8 degrees possible by 2100.

One of the most likely effects of global warming is a rise in sea level, as glaciers melt and warmer water expands in the oceans. The best projections suggest seas of between 5 centimeters and 32 centimeters higher by 2050; the outer limit projected for 2100 approaches one meter. These numbers seem small, but coastlines are shallow slopes, not firm walls, so a rise in water levels of just tens of centimeters would erase kilometers of wetlands and beaches.

Industrialized countries will probably be able to handle rising water levels, at least in the next few decades. London and cities in the Netherlands, for example, already have defenses to hold back surging seas. And farmers in wealthy countries can respond to changes in climate by adjusting irrigation and varying the crops they plant, in many cases with government financial support. But the developing world, home to four-fifths of humanity, is likely to fare considerably worse on both fronts. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been displaced by periodic flooding in Bangladesh, and subsistence farmers -- who are far less adaptive than their richer counterparts -- are already struggling at the climatic margin.

The most dramatic scenarios, although unlikely, would have grave consequences for humanity and ecosystems. Rapid changes in climate could upset the circulation of the North Atlantic, for example -- which, ironically, would cause much colder regional temperatures in northern Europe by weakening the heat-rich Gulf Stream. The Amazon rain forest could deplete dramatically due to drying in the atmosphere, in turn releasing huge volumes of carbon that is stored in trees. And an accelerated rise in sea level from melting ice in Antarctica could occur. These uncertain consequences do not lead to crisp timetables for policy. But they mean that precaution and improvements in measurement and learning will be crucial.

A sober strategy would ensure that any increase in the world's temperature is limited to between 2 or 3 degrees Celsius above the current level in the long run. Focused on that goal, a growing number of governments and experts have concluded that policy should aim to stabilize concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the range from 500 to 550 ppm over the next century, which is less than twice the pre-industrial level.

On the basis of known technology, the cost of meeting this goal would be high. But the track record of technological progress in other fields indicates an enormous potential for costs to fall as new ideas are developed and applied. In the energy industry, for example, the costs of deep-water oil and gas development have fallen by a factor of three over the last 15 years, dramatically extending the frontier of commercial activity. There is no reason to think that research and development in the area of benign energy systems would be less successful. Predicting where that success might come will not be easy -- but that means progress must be made on multiple fronts.

Many people believe that the 500-550 ppm goal would help avoid the worst calamities. But we must recognize this assessment for what it is: a judgment informed by current knowledge, rather than a confirmed conclusion to the story. Taking that judgment as the starting point, the two figures on the following page reveal the magnitude of the task ahead. Figure 1 shows an anticipated projection for emissions from industrialized and developing countries -- a "business as usual" pathway that reflects the normal improvements in efficiency, the shift away from carbon-heavy fuels such as coal to carbon-light natural gas, and the expected increase in use of zero-carbon energy sources such as nuclear and wind power. Figure 2 shows the total world emissions from that business-as-usual pathway along with a "path to future stability" -- an optimistic but realistic projection of what it will take to stabilize the atmosphere at 500-550 ppm by around 2100. The large gray shaded area is the difference: the wedge of emissions that must be avoided.

Almost every sensible analysis of the effort needed to stabilize carbon dioxide concentration arrives at a hump-shaped trajectory like the path to future stability in Figure 2. In other words, the long-term target of 500-550 ppm is reachable even if levels of emissions continue to rise in the short term -- as long as emissions start declining thereafter. (Emissions must be progressively curtailed beyond a certain point because previously emitted carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.) The implication of Figure 2 is that we still have time to take measured steps. But if we are to avoid having to make dramatic and economically destructive decisions in the future, we must act soon.

EFFICIENCY AND TRANSFORMATION

Both the exact level of the peak in global carbon dioxide emissions over time and the subsequent decline are unknown. We can safely assume, however, that emissions from developing countries will keep rising as economic activity and incomes grow, as shown in Figure 1. This means that leadership must come from the industrialized world.

In the short term, the developed world can use energy much more efficiently and profitably. With a clear impetus for change, business could put new technologies and services to use: cautiously at first, but more aggressively as the best systems are identified and put into practice with the normal turnover of capital.

Business has already found that it is possible to reduce emissions from its operations. Counterintuitively, BP found that it was able to reach its initial target of reducing emissions by 10 percent below its 1990 levels without cost. Indeed, the company added around $650 million of shareholder value, because the bulk of the reductions came from the elimination of leaks and waste. Other firms -- such as electricity generator Entergy, car manufacturer Toyota, and mining giant Rio Tinto -- are having similar experiences. The overwhelming message from these experiments is that efficiency can both pay dividends and reduce emissions.

Yet reducing emissions by the gray area in Figure 2 -- a reduction that amounts to around 25 billion tons per year in 2050 -- will require more than just efficiency improvements. Given the world's rising demand for energy, we must also transform the energy system itself, making fuller use of low-carbon fuels as well as carbon-free energy systems. Paradigm shifts must occur across the economy: transportation accounts for 20 percent of total emissions, industry contributes another 20 percent, the domestic and commercial sectors emit around 25 percent, and power-generation accounts for another 35 percent. A wide-ranging set of policies is thus called for.

In power generation, options include switching from coal to less-carbon-intensive natural gas. For example, 400 new gas plants, each generating 1,000 megawatts, would reduce emissions by one billion tons per year. Such a reduction would be difficult within the parameters of today's electricity systems -- 400,000 megawatts is roughly equal to all of China's electric power capacity, or half the installed capacity in the United States. Zero-carbon fuels would also help reduce emissions. If 200,000 megawatts of coal-generated power were to be replaced with nuclear power, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by one billion tons per year. Progress on the nuclear front will demand investment in new technologies, as well as a viable plan for locating reactors that ensures that radioactive materials are kept out of the environment and beyond terrorists' reach.

Coal, too, could be made carbon-free, using advanced power plants that gasify the fuel and then generate power while stripping away the carbon for sequestration underground. Coal gasification could become a huge growth industry. China is among the top investors in this technology, not just because these plants are much cleaner, but also because they could be keystones in a program to synthesize clean liquid fuels for transportation needs.

More efficient buildings would also result in large energy savings, since over one-third of today's energy is used indoors. Given that electrification is a central feature of industrial and postindustrial societies, innovators must tap the potential for ultra-efficient electrical appliances. Investment in a digitally controlled power grid could aid this effort by allowing major appliances to "talk" directly with power generators so that the whole system operates closer to its optimum potential. Such a "smart grid" would reduce losses in electricity transmission while also allowing fuller use of waste heat from power generators in factories and homes.

There are efficiency savings to be made in transportation too. Given the massive advantages of gasoline over rival fuels -- both in terms of its power density and its ease of storage -- transport is unlikely to switch to new fuels in the near future. More promising approaches will focus on making transportation more efficient, while meeting the ever-stricter limits on other emissions that cause air pollution. For example, running 600 million diesel or gasoline cars at 60 miles per gallon (mpg) instead of 30 mpg would result in a billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide per year. Advanced ultra-efficient diesel engines, meanwhile, are so clean that even the strictest regulatory body in the world -- the California Air Resources Board -- is taking a second look. Advanced techniques for gasoline injection also hold promise, as do hybrid electric-gasoline cars already on the road. Such vehicles have the potential to get more than twice the mileage per gallon of their conventional counterparts. Given the increasing consumer demand for speed and flexibility in air travel, policymakers should also focus on the opportunities for cutting emissions from aircraft.

All of these efforts will require major investments. Some will also require new infrastructures. But we must begin to build and test such systems. Only with evidence from actual experience can we decide how best to direct our efforts.

DOWN TO BUSINESS

The role of business is to transform possibilities into reality. And that means being practical, undertaking focused research, and testing the different possibilities in real commercial markets. The energy business is now global, which offers a tremendous advantage: international companies access knowledge around the world and apply it quickly throughout their operations.

But the business sector cannot succeed in isolation. Harnessing business potential requires fair and credible incentives to drive the process of innovation and change. In responding to global warming, that role must fall to the government. Neither prescriptive regulations nor fiscal interventions designed to collect revenue rather than to alter behavior provide the answer. Rather, governments must identify meaningful objectives and encourage the business sector to attain them by using its knowledge of technology, markets, and consumer preferences.

Recent experience suggests that emissions trading regimes -- whereby government sets a binding cap on total emissions, dividing the total into "emission credits" that are given to those who emit carbon dioxide -- are the best policy for encouraging business. Policymakers (notably in the United States) have demonstrated that it is possible to design such systems for other pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, thereby harnessing the power of innovation and the flexibility of the market to protect the environment, while avoiding crippling costs. The same insights should apply to carbon dioxide. A well-designed trading regime would include a strictly enforced cap, which would make carbon dioxide emission credits scarcer (and thus more valuable) and would thereby increase the incentive for business to control emissions. Such a system would also allow firms and households the flexibility to apply resources where they have the greatest impact, which is essential, because the best measures for controlling carbon dioxide are hard to anticipate with precision and are widely dispersed across the economy. And a credible emission trading system would create incentives to invest in radical new technologies, the kind that will be crucial in building a carbon-free energy system in the future.

Emissions trading systems need not be identical in every country, nor be applied universally from day one. The political reality is that we are unlikely to see the sudden emergence of a single regime; in scope and ambition, that would be comparable to the emergence of a single global currency. Instead, progress is much more likely to come through the gradual process of knitting together diverse national and regional efforts on the basis of their track records of experience and achievement. The key task today is to find practices that will lead to a system that will enable today's diverse and fragmented reduction efforts to be valued on a common basis. The history of trade liberalization over the second half of the twentieth century shows that gradualism can yield impressive results.

At present, the nascent European emission trading system -- which will start running on a trial basis in 2005 -- is the most advanced example. Built on sound monitoring and verification policies, the system is the centerpiece of the European effort to implement the commitments adopted at Kyoto. Yet there are still hurdles to be cleared if it is to be fully operational by 2008, as planned. The process for allocating emission credits is not yet complete. And the system will cover only about 40 percent of Europe's emissions as it stands -- mainly those from industry. The potential for extending the scope of the trading base is indeed considerable, not least through the incorporation of effective incentives that will reward businesses whose investments reduce emissions outside Europe, such as in Russia and the emerging market economies of Asia -- where large and relatively low-cost reductions of emissions are possible.

Markets are emerging in other regions as well. The Chicago Climate Exchange, opened in December 2003, involves 19 North American entities that have agreed to reduce their emissions by one percent per year over four years. Canada may yet create a market for carbon dioxide as it aims to meet the Kyoto targets. And U.S. states have become laboratories for innovation and change. For example, Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire are adopting rules that will spur the creation of market-based emission trading systems. Voluntary systems for measuring emissions -- such as one being crafted in California -- may also provide further foundations for emission trading. There is a strong argument for linking these efforts. U.S. policymakers should also consider establishing a transatlantic partnership to work toward a common market-based trading system.

Offering positive incentives is one key contribution that government can make to stimulate business. Another is organizing research. It is crucial to extend our understanding of the science of climate change: monitoring key variables with sufficient precision to understand both natural variability and the climate's response to human activity. A key target of such work must be to understand the precise connection between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in climate. Such research must also advance our knowledge of available choices: with the clock ticking, we cannot wait for definite answers before we take action.

Government intervention must take other forms too. Transforming the energy system will require new technologies with risks that will be too high (and benefits too remote) for private firms to provide all the needed investment. This is one area in which the United States, with its outstanding technical capacity, should take a leadership role. Innovation will require an across-the-board infusion of resources for basic science and technology, as well as the development of a portfolio of key demonstration projects. The priorities for such work might include photovoltaic cells (which convert sunlight into electricity), fission reactor technology, energy from biomass, and the use of hydrogen.

Given the costs and risks involved in such investment, governments with common interests and common views of the future have every incentive to combine their efforts and resources. Fortunately, there are many precedents of international partnerships in innovation -- from high-energy physics to astronomy and nuclear fusion. The global warming challenge is different, in that it involves not only basic science but also the application of novel techniques through products that must withstand the test of competition. But that is why the program of research and development work should involve collaboration not just between different countries but also between governments and business.

There are examples of such collaborative work already underway. In November 2003, a ministerial-level meeting held in Washington, D.C., began the process of building international partnerships for research on the potential of the hydrogen economy. The United States has already pledged $1.7 billion over the next five years for work in this area. A similar collaboration -- the International Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum -- is built around the concept of capturing carbon and storing it geologically. Again, this scheme complements programs in the United States, such as FutureGen, a $1 billion public-private partnership to promote emissions-free coal-fired electricity and hydrogen production. These research efforts are a good start, but they must go hand-in-hand with the creation of credible caps on emissions and trading systems, which will create the incentives to transform the energy system.

DEVELOPING SOLUTIONS

It would be morally wrong and politically futile to expect countries struggling to achieve basic levels of development to abandon their aspirations to grow and to improve their people's living standards. But it would be equally wrong to ignore the fact that by 2025, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from developing countries are likely to exceed those from the member states of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Instead of being daunted by the scale of this challenge, policymakers must recognize the scale of the opportunity: developing countries have the potential to leapfrog the developed world's process of industrialization, thereby providing an enormous opportunity to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions.

So far, most international efforts to engage developing countries have focused on the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) -- a scheme that would encourage investment by awarding emission credits for the quantity of emission reductions flowing from a particular project. In principle, the CDM was a good idea. In practice, it has become tangled in red tape and has required governments and investors to do the impossible: estimate the level of emissions that would have occurred in the absence of a project and then to calculate the marginal effect of their actions. The only projects that can meet this test are small and discrete: a steel mill that uses sustainably grown wood instead of coal for coke, for example, or a tiny hydroelectric dam that averts the need to build a coal-fired power plant. Such efforts are important, but they are hardly the stuff of radical transformation.

There is no neat, off-the-shelf solution for engaging the developing world. But there are encouraging signs of the process of economic development acting as a force for modernization. In China and India, infrastructure necessary to substitute natural gas for coal is already being put in place. And in many of the oil-producing regions of the world, the spread of international technology is making it possible to capture and reinject the natural gas that is often associated with oil, rather than venting or flaring it into the atmosphere. Efforts to change the incentives that govern land use in the developing world are also encouraging. From the Congo Basin to the Amazon and the forests of Southeast Asia, practical partnerships of governments, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses are showing the way. Small amounts of money and skillfully designed incentives are stemming the tide of deforestation by creating a stake in protecting the forests.

These and other efforts reflect the determination of publics, governments, and business to transcend the harsh and unacceptable trade-off between the desire to improve living standards and allow people the freedom to use energy for heat, light, and mobility on the one hand, and the desire for a clean environment on the other.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The appropriate response to the faltering Kyoto Protocol is neither dismay nor fatalism. A complete international agreement on a subject of such complexity and uncertainty is still a long way off. But as those who championed the cause of liberal trade found after that first meeting in 1946, great causes acquire lives of their own. Consolidated political agreements often follow, rather than lead, the realities on the ground.

Taking small steps never feels entirely satisfactory. Nor does taking action without complete scientific knowledge. But certainty and perfection have never figured prominently in the story of human progress. Business, in particular, is accustomed to making decisions in conditions of considerable uncertainty, applying its experience and skills to areas of activity where much is unknown. That is why it will have a vital role in meeting the challenge of climate change -- and why the contribution it is already making is so encouraging.

ALTERED OCEANS

2007-05-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

PART ONE
ALTERED OCEANS
A Primeval Tide of Toxins
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2006

MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA -- The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the last decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn't eat solid food for a week. Others made an even more painful mistake, neglecting to wash the residue from their hands before relieving themselves over the sides of their boats.

For a time, embarrassment kept them from talking publicly about their condition. When they finally did speak up, authorities dismissed their complaints — until a bucket of the hairy weed made it to the University of Queensland's marine botany lab.

Samples placed in a drying oven gave off fumes so strong that professors and students ran out of the building and into the street, choking and coughing.

Scientist Judith O'Neil put a tiny sample under a microscope and peered at the long black filaments. Consulting a botanical reference, she identified the weed as a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago.

O'Neil, a biological oceanographer, was familiar with these ancient life forms, but had never seen this particular kind before. What was it doing in Moreton Bay? Why was it so toxic? Why was it growing so fast?

The venomous weed, known to scientists as Lyngbya majuscula, has appeared in at least a dozen other places around the globe. It is one of many symptoms of a virulent pox on the world's oceans.

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen — fertilizer, essentially — than all natural processes on land. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria.

At the same time, overfishing and destruction of wetlands have diminished the competing sea life and natural buffers that once held the microbes and weeds in check.

The consequences are evident worldwide.

Off the coast of Sweden each summer, blooms of cyanobacteria turn the Baltic Sea into a stinking, yellow-brown slush that locals call "rhubarb soup." Dead fish bob in the surf. If people get too close, their eyes burn and they have trouble breathing.

On the southern coast of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, high tide leaves piles of green-brown algae that smell so foul condominium owners have hired a tractor driver to scrape them off the beach every morning.

On Florida's Gulf Coast, residents complain that harmful algae blooms have become bigger, more frequent and longer-lasting. Toxins from these red tides have killed hundreds of sea mammals and caused emergency rooms to fill up with coastal residents suffering respiratory distress.

North of Venice, Italy, a sticky mixture of algae and bacteria collects on the Adriatic Sea in spring and summer. This white mucus washes ashore, fouling beaches, or congeals into submerged blobs, some bigger than a person.

Along the Spanish coast, jellyfish swarm so thick that nets are strung to protect swimmers from their sting.

Organisms such as the fireweed that torments the fishermen of Moreton Bay have been around for eons. They emerged from the primordial ooze and came to dominate ancient oceans that were mostly lifeless. Over time, higher forms of life gained supremacy. Now they are under siege.

Like other scientists, Jeremy Jackson, 63, was slow to perceive this latest shift in the biological order. He has spent a good part of his professional life underwater. Though he had seen firsthand that ocean habitats were deteriorating, he believed in the resilience of the seas, in their inexhaustible capacity to heal themselves.

Then came the hurricane season of 1980. A Category 5 storm ripped through waters off the north coast of Jamaica, where Jackson had been studying corals since the late 1960s. A majestic stand of staghorn corals, known as "the Haystacks," was turned into rubble.

Scientists gathered from around the world to examine the damage. They wrote a paper predicting that the corals would rebound quickly, as they had for thousands of years.

"We were the best ecologists, working on what was the best-studied coral reef in the world, and we got it 100% wrong," Jackson recalled.

The vividly colored reef, which had nurtured a wealth of fish species, never recovered.

"Why did I get it wrong?" Jackson asked. He now sees that the quiet creep of environmental decay, occurring largely unnoticed over many years, had drastically altered the ocean.

As tourist resorts sprouted along the Jamaican coast, sewage, fertilizer and other nutrients washed into the sea. Overfishing removed most of the grazing fish that kept algae under control. Warmer waters encouraged bacterial growth and further stressed the corals.

For a time, these changes were masked by algae-eating sea urchins. But when disease greatly reduced their numbers, the reef was left defenseless. The corals were soon smothered by a carpet of algae and bacteria. Today, the reef is largely a boneyard of coral skeletons.

Many of the same forces have wiped out 80% of the corals in the Caribbean, despoiled two-thirds of the estuaries in the United States and destroyed 75% of California's kelp forests, once prime habitat for fish.

Jackson uses a homespun analogy to illustrate what is happening. The world's 6 billion inhabitants, he says, have failed to follow a homeowner's rule of thumb: Be careful what you dump in the swimming pool, and make sure the filter is working.

"We're pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution," Jackson said, "a half-billion years ago when the oceans were ruled by jellyfish and bacteria."

The 55-foot commercial trawler working the Georgia coast sagged under the burden of a hefty catch. The cables pinged and groaned as if about to snap.

Working the power winch, ropes and pulleys, Grovea Simpson hoisted the net and its dripping catch over the rear deck. With a tug on the trip-rope, the bulging sack unleashed its massive load.

Plop. Splat. Whoosh. About 2,000 pounds of cannonball jellyfish slopped onto the deck. The jiggling, cantaloupe-size blobs ricocheted around the stern and slid down an opening into the boat's ice-filled hold.

The deck was streaked with purple-brown contrails of slimy residue; a stinging, ammonia-like odor filled the air.

"That's the smell of money," Simpson said, all smiles at the haul. "Jellyballs are thick today. Seven cents a pound. Yes, sir, we're making money."

Simpson would never eat a jellyfish. But shrimp have grown scarce in these waters after decades of intensive trawling. So during the winter months when jellyfish swarm, he makes his living catching what he used to consider a messy nuisance clogging his nets.

It's simple math. He can spend a week at sea scraping the ocean bottom for shrimp and be lucky to pocket $600 after paying for fuel, food, wages for crew and the boat owner's cut.

Or, in a few hours of trawling for jellyfish, he can fill up the hold, be back in port the same day and clear twice as much. The jellyfish are processed at the dock in Darien, Ga., and exported to China and Japan, where spicy jellyfish salad and soup are delicacies.

"Easy money," Simpson said. "They get so thick you can walk on them."

Jellyfish populations are growing because they can. The fish that used to compete with them for food have become scarce because of overfishing. The sea turtles that once preyed on them are nearly gone. And the plankton they love to eat are growing explosively.

As their traditional catch declines, fishermen around the world now haul in 450,000 tons of jellyfish per year, more than twice as much as a decade ago.

This is a logical step in a process that Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia, calls "fishing down the food web." Fishermen first went after the largest and most popular fish, such as tuna, swordfish, cod and grouper. When those stocks were depleted, they pursued other prey, often smaller and lower on the food chain.

"We are eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton," Pauly said.

In California waters, for instance, three of the top five commercial catches are not even fish. They are squid, crabs and sea urchins.

This is what remains of California's historic fishing industry, once known for the sardine fishery attached to Monterey's Cannery Row and the world's largest tuna fleet, based in San Diego, which brought American kitchens StarKist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea.

Overfishing began centuries ago but accelerated dramatically after World War II, when new technologies armed industrial fleets with sonar, satellite data and global positioning systems, allowing them to track schools of fish and find their most remote habitats.

The result is that the population of big fish has declined by 90% over the last 50 years.

It's reached the point that the world's fishermen, though more numerous, working harder and sailing farther than ever, are catching fewer fish. The global catch has been declining since the late 1980s, an analysis by Pauly and colleague Reg Watson showed.

The reduction isn't readily apparent in the fish markets of wealthy countries, where people are willing to pay high prices for exotic fare from distant oceans — slimeheads caught off New Zealand and marketed as orange roughy, or Patagonian toothfish, renamed Chilean sea bass. Now, both of those fish are becoming scarce.

Fish farming also exacts a toll. To feed the farmed stocks, menhaden, sardines and anchovies are harvested in great quantities, ground up and processed into pellets.

Dense schools of these small fish once swam the world's estuaries and coastal waters, inhaling plankton like swarming clouds of silvery vacuum cleaners. Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary, used to be clear, its waters filtered every three days by piles of oysters so numerous that their reefs posed a hazard to navigation. All this has changed.

There and in many other places, bacteria and algae run wild in the absence of the many mouths that once ate them. As the depletion of fish allows the lowest forms of life to run rampant, said Pauly, it is "transforming the oceans into a microbial soup."

Jellyfish are flourishing in the soup, demonstrating their ability to adapt to wholesale changes — including the growing human appetite for them. Jellyfish have been around, after all, at least 500 million years, longer than most marine animals.

In the Black Sea, an Atlantic comb jelly carried in the ballast water of a ship from the East Coast of the United States took over waters saturated with farm runoff. Free of predators, the jellies gorged on plankton and fish larvae, depleting the fisheries on which the Russian and Turkish fleets depend. The plague subsided only with the accidental importation of another predatory jellyfish that ate the comb jellies.

Federal scientists tallied a tenfold increase in jellies in the Bering Sea in the 1990s. They were so thick off the Alaskan Peninsula that fishermen nicknamed it the Slime Bank. Researchers have found teeming swarms of jellyfish off Georges Bank in New England and the coast of Namibia, in the fiords of Norway and in the Gulf of Mexico. Also proliferating is the giant nomurai found off Japan, a jellyfish the size of a washing machine.

Most jellies are smaller than a fist, but their sheer numbers have gummed up fishing nets, forced the shutdown of power plants by clogging intake pipes, stranded cruise liners and disrupted operations of the world's largest aircraft carrier, the Ronald Reagan.

Of the 2,000 or so identified jellyfish species, only about 10 are commercially harvested. The largest fisheries are off China and other Asian nations. New ones are springing up in Australia, the United States, England, Namibia, Turkey and Canada as fishermen look for ways to stay in business.

Pauly, 60, predicts that future generations will see nothing odd or unappetizing about a plateful of these gelatinous blobs.

"My kids," Pauly said, "will tell their children: Eat your jellyfish."

The dark water spun to the surface like an undersea cyclone. From 80 feet below, the swirling mixture of partially treated sewage spewed from a 5-foot-wide pipe off the coast of Hollywood, Fla., dubbed the "poop chute" by divers and fishermen.

Fish swarmed at the mouth — blue tangs and chubs competing for particles in the wastewater.

Marine ecologist Brian Lapointe and research assistant Rex "Chip" Baumberger, wearing wetsuits and breathing air from scuba tanks, swam to the base of the murky funnel cloud to collect samples. The effluent meets state and federal standards but is still rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients.

By Lapointe's calculations, every day about a billion gallons of sewage in South Florida are pumped offshore or into underground aquifers that seep into the ocean. The wastewater feeds a green tide of algae and bacteria that is helping to wipe out the remnants of Florida's 220 miles of coral, the world's third largest barrier reef.

In addition, fertilizer washes off sugar cane fields, livestock compounds and citrus farms into Florida Bay.

"You can see the murky green water, the green pea soup loaded with organic matter," said Lapointe, a marine biologist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Fla. "All that stuff feeds the algae and bacterial diseases that are attacking corals."

Government officials thought they were helping in the early 1990s when they released fresh water that had been held back by dikes and pumps for years. They were responding to the recommendations of scientists who, at the time, blamed the decline of ocean habitats on hypersalinity — excessively salty seawater.

The fresh water, laced with farm runoff rich in nitrogen and other nutrients, turned Florida's gin-clear waters cloudy. Seaweed grew fat and bushy.

It was a fatal blow for many struggling corals, delicate animals that evolved to thrive in clear, nutrient-poor saltwater. So many have been lost that federal officials in May added what were once the two most dominant types — elkhorn and staghorn corals — to the list of species threatened with extinction. Officials estimate that 97% of them are gone.

Sewage and farm runoff kill corals in various ways.

Algae blooms deny them sunlight essential for their survival.

The nutrients in sewage and fertilizer make bacteria grow wildly atop corals, consuming oxygen and suffocating the animals within.

A strain of bacteria found in human intestines, Serratia marcescens, has been linked to white pox disease, one of a host of infectious ailments that have swept through coral reefs in the Florida Keys and elsewhere.

The germ appears to come from leaky septic tanks, cesspits and other sources of sewage that have multiplied as the Keys have grown from a collection of fishing villages to a stretch of bustling communities with 80,000 year-round residents and 4 million visitors a year.

Scientists discovered the link by knocking on doors of Keys residents, asking to use their bathrooms. They flushed bacteria marked with tracers down toilets and found them in nearby ocean waters in as little as three hours.

Nearly everything in the Keys seems to be sprouting green growths, even an underwater sculpture known as Christ of the Abyss, placed in the waters off Key Largo in the mid-1960s as an attraction for divers and snorkelers. Dive-shop operators scrub the bronze statue with wire brushes from time to time, but they have trouble keeping up with the growth.

Lapointe began monitoring algae at Looe Key in 1982. He picked the spot, a 90-minute drive south of Key Largo, because its clear waters, colorful reef and abundance of fish made it a favorite site for scuba divers. Today, the corals are in ruins, smothered by mats of algae.

Although coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, they are home to at least 2 million species, or about 25% of all marine life. They provide nurseries for fish and protect oceanfront homes from waves and storm surges.

Looe Key was once a sandy shoal fringed by coral. The Key has now slipped below the water's surface, a disappearing act likely to be repeated elsewhere in these waters as pounding waves breach dying reefs. Scientists predict that the Keys ultimately will have to be surrounded by sea walls as ocean levels rise.

With a gentle kick of his fins through murky green water, Lapointe maneuvered around a coral mound that resembled the intricate, folded pattern of a brain. Except that this brain was being eroded by the coralline equivalent of flesh-eating disease.

"It rips my heart out," Lapointe said. "It's like coming home and seeing burglars have ransacked your house, and everything you cherished is gone."

The ancient seas contained large areas with little or no oxygen — anoxic and hypoxic zones that could never have supported sea life as we know it. It was a time when bacteria and jellyfish ruled.

Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, has spent most of her career peering into waters that resemble those of the distant past.

On research dives off the Louisiana coast, she has seen cottony white bacteria coating the seafloor. The sulfurous smell of rotten eggs, from a gas produced by the microbes, has seeped into her mask. The bottom is littered with the ghostly silhouettes of dead crabs, sea stars and other animals.

The cause of death is decaying algae. Fed by millions of tons of fertilizer, human and animal waste, and other farm runoff racing down the Mississippi River, tiny marine plants run riot, die and drift to the bottom. Bacteria then take over. In the process of breaking down the plant matter, they suck the oxygen out of seawater, leaving little or none for fish or other marine life.

Years ago, Rabalais popularized a term for this broad area off the Louisiana coast: the "dead zone." In fact, dead zones aren't really dead. They are teeming with life — most of it bacteria and other ancient creatures that evolved in an ocean without oxygen and that need little to survive.

"There are tons and tons of bacteria that live in dead zones," Rabalais said. "You see this white snot-looking stuff all over the bottom."

Other primitive life thrives too. A few worms do well, and jellyfish feast on the banquet of algae and microbes.

The dead zone off Louisiana, the second largest after one in the Baltic Sea, is a testament to the unintended consequences of manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer on a giant scale to support American agriculture. The runoff from Midwestern farms is part of a slurry of wastewater that flows down the Mississippi, which drains 40% of the continental United States.

The same forces at work in the mouth of the Mississippi have helped create 150 dead zones around the world, including parts of the Chesapeake Bay and waters off the Oregon and Washington coasts.

About half of the Earth's landscape has been altered by deforestation, farming and development, which has increased the volume of runoff and nutrient-rich sediment.

Most of the planet's salt marshes and mangrove forests, which serve as a filter between land and sea, have vanished with coastal development. Half of the world's population lives in coastal regions, which add an average of 2,000 homes each day.

Global warming adds to the stress. A reduced snowpack from higher temperatures is accelerating river discharges and thus plankton blooms. The oceans have warmed slightly — 1 degree on average in the last century. Warmer waters speed microbial growth.

Robert Diaz, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has been tracking the spread of low-oxygen zones. He has determined that the number is nearly doubling every decade, fed by a worldwide cascade of nutrients — or as he puts it, energy. We stoke the ocean with energy streaming off the land, he said, and with no clear pathways up the food chain, this energy fuels an explosion of microbial growth.

These microbes have been barely noticeable for millions of years, tucked away like the pilot light on a gas stove.

"Now," Diaz said, "the stove has been turned on."

In Australia, fishermen noticed the fireweed around the time much of Moreton Bay started turning a dirty, tea-water brown after every rain. The wild growth smothered the bay's northern sea-grass beds, once full of fish and shellfish, under a blanket a yard thick.

The older, bottom layers of weed turned grayish-white and started to decay. Bacteria, feeding on the rot, sucked all of the oxygen from beneath this woolly layer at night. Most sea life swam or scuttled away; some suffocated. Fishermen's catches plummeted.

Most disturbing were the rashes, an outbreak often met with scoffs from local authorities.

After suffering painful skin lesions, fisherman Greg Savige took a sealed bag of the weed in 2000 to Barry Carbon, then director-general of the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency. He warned Carbon to be careful with it, as it was "toxic stuff." Carbon replied that he knew all about cyanobacteria from western Australian waters and that there was nothing to worry about.

Then he opened the bag and held it close to his face for a sniff.

"It was like smearing hot mustard on the lips," the chastened official recalled.

Aboriginal fishermen had spotted the weed in small patches years earlier, but it had moved into new parts of the bay and was growing like never before.

Each spring, Lyngbya bursts forth from spores on the seafloor and spreads in dark green-and-black dreadlocks. It flourishes for months before retreating into the muck. Scientists say it produces more than 100 toxins, probably as a defense mechanism.

At its peak in summer, the weed now covers as much as 30 square miles of Moreton Bay, an estuary roughly the size of San Francisco Bay. In one seven-week period, its expansion was measured at about 100 square meters a minute — a football field in an hour.

William Dennison, then director of the University of Queensland botany lab, couldn't believe it at first.

"We checked this 20 times. It was mind-boggling. It was like 'The Blob,' " Dennison said, recalling the 1950s horror movie about an alien life form that consumed everything in its path.

Suspecting that nutrients from partially treated sewage might be the culprit, another Queensland University scientist, Peter Bell, collected some wastewater and put it in a beaker with a pinch of Lyngbya. The weed bloomed happily.

As Brisbane and the surrounding area became the fastest growing region in Australia, millions of gallons of partially treated sewage gushed from 30 wastewater treatment plants into the bay and its tributary rivers.

Officials upgraded the sewage plants to remove nitrogen from the wastewater, but it did not stop the growth of the infernal weed.

Researchers began looking for other sources of Lyngbya's nutrients, and are now investigating whether iron and possibly phosphorous are being freed from soil as forests of eucalyptus and other native trees are cleared for farming and development.

"We know the human factor is responsible. We just have to figure out what it is," Dennison said.

Recently, Lyngbya has appeared up the coast from Moreton Bay, on the Great Barrier Reef, where helicopters bring tourists to a heart-shaped coral outcropping. When the helicopters depart, seabirds roost on the landing platform, fertilizing the reef with their droppings. Lyngbya now beards the surrounding corals.

"Lyngbya has lots of tricks," said scientist Judith O'Neil. "That's why it's been around for 3 billion years."

It can pull nitrogen out of the air and make its own fertilizer. It uses a different spectrum of sunlight than algae do, so it can thrive even in murky waters. Perhaps its most diabolical trick is its ability to feed on itself. When it dies and decays, it releases its own nitrogen and phosphorous into the water, spurring another generation of growth.

"Once it gets going, it's able to sustain itself," O'Neil said.

Ron Johnstone, a University of Queensland researcher, recently experienced Lyngbya's fire. He was studying whether iron and phosphorous in bay sediments contribute to the blooms, and he accidentally came in contact with bits of the weed. He broke out in rashes and boils, and needed a cortisone shot to ease the inflammation.

"It covered my whole chest and neck," he said. "We've just ordered complete containment suits so we can roll in it."

Fishermen say they cannot afford such pricey equipment. Nor would it be practical. For some, the only solution is to turn away from the sea.

Lifelong fisherman Mike Tanner, 50, stays off the water at least four months each year to avoid contact with the weed. It's an agreement he struck with his wife, who was appalled by his blisters and worried about the long-term health consequences.

"When he came home with rash all over his body," Sandra Tanner said, "I said, 'No, you are not going.' We didn't know what was happening to him."

Tanner, a burly, bearded man, is frustrated that he cannot help provide for his family. Gloves and other waterproof gear failed to protect him.

"It's like acid," Tanner said. "I couldn't believe it. It kept pulling the skin off."

Before the Lyngbya outbreak, 40 commercial shrimp trawlers and crab boats worked these waters. Now there are six, and several of them sit idle during fireweed blooms.

"It's the only thing that can beat us," Greg Savige said. "Wind is nothing. Waves, nothing. It's the only thing that can make us stop work. When you've got sores and the skin peels away, what are you going to do?"

Times staff writer Usha Lee McFarling contributed to this report.

Resources

More information about endangered oceans is available at these educational and governmental websites:

http://scripps.ucsd.edu

http://cmbc.ucsd.edu/

http://www.hboi.edu/

http://www.initrogen.org/

http://www.millenniumassessment.org

http://www.epa.gov/owow/estuaries/guidance/

http://www.hboi.edu/

http://www.initrogen.org/

http://www.seaaroundus.org

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PART TWO
ALTERED OCEANS
Sentinels Under Attack
Toxic algae that poison the brain have caused strandings and mass die-offs of marine mammals — barometers of the sea's health.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
July 31, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- After the last patient of the day walked out the front of Raytel Medical Imaging clinic, veterinarian Frances Gulland slipped an oversized animal crate through the back door.

Inside was a California sea lion. The animal was emaciated, disoriented and suffering from seizures.

A female with silky, caramel-colored fur, wide-set eyes and long whiskers, she was named Neuschwander, after the lifeguard who had found her six weeks earlier, comatose and trembling under a pier at Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo.

Taken to the Marine Mammal Center near Sausalito, Neuschwander showed signs of recovery at first. Her eyes began to clear and focus. She frolicked in the small pool in her chain-link enclosure and wolfed down mackerel at feedings. Then she relapsed.

She quit eating and lost 40 pounds. Her sunken eyes darted around, as if tracking a phantom just outside the cage. Her head bobbed and weaved in erratic figure eights.

Neuschwander was loaded into a crate at the nonprofit center, the world's busiest hospital dedicated to the care of wild marine mammals, and trucked across the Golden Gate Bridge. Gulland, the center's director of veterinary science, wanted to scan Neuschwander's brain at the imaging clinic.

After sedating the sea lion, Gulland and four assistants lifted the animal onto a gurney. They inserted a breathing tube into her throat and rolled the gurney into the great thrumming MRI machine.

Gulland, an upbeat, 46-year-old native of Britain, took a last look at Neuschwander as the machine closed around her. She hoped the sea lion could be saved.

Neuschwander was exhibiting the classic symptoms of domoic acid poisoning, a condition that scrambles the brains of marine mammals and causes them to wash ashore in California as predictably as the spring tides.

They pick up the acid by eating anchovies and sardines that have fed on toxic algae. Although the algae have been around for eons, they have bloomed with extraordinary intensity along the Pacific coast for the last eight years.

The blooms are part of a worldwide pattern of oceanic changes that scientists attribute to warming waters, excessive fishing, and a torrent of nutrients unleashed by farming, deforestation and urban development.

The explosion of harmful algae has caused toxins to move through the food chain and concentrate in the dietary staples of marine mammals.

For the last 25 years, the federal government has tracked a steady upswing in beach strandings and mass die-offs of whales, dolphins and other ocean mammals on U.S. coasts.

More than 14,000 seals, sea lions and dolphins have landed sick or dead along the California shoreline in the last decade. So have more than 650 gray whales along the West Coast.

In Maine two years ago, 800 harbor seals, all adults with no obvious injuries, washed up dead, and in Florida the carcasses of hundreds of manatees have been found in mangrove forests and on beaches.

The surge in mortality has coincided with what Florida wildlife pathologist Greg Bossart calls a "pandemic" of algae and bacteria. Although some of the deaths defy easy explanation, telltale biotoxins have turned up in urine, blood, brains and other tissue.

Sometimes the toxins kill animals outright, such as the manatees found dead in Florida, blood streaming from their noses.

In other cases, they kill slowly by promoting tumor growth or compromising immune systems, leaving marine mammals vulnerable to parasites, viruses or bacteria. Scientists believe the episodic die-offs of bottlenose dolphins along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts that began in the late 1980s may stem from toxic algae that weaken the animals and enable a virus related to canine distemper to attack the lungs and brain.

Sea turtles in Hawaii have been found with fist-sized tumors growing out of their eyes and mouths and behind their flippers. Scientists say the growths are the result of a papilloma virus and an ancient microorganism called Lyngbya majuscula, which appears as a hairy weed that has been spreading in tropical and subtropical waters. The tumors doom the turtles by inhibiting their ability to see, eat or swim.

As they watch the oceans disgorge more dead and dying creatures, scientists have come to a disquieting realization: The proliferation of algae, bacteria and other microbes is making the oceans less hospitable to advanced forms of life — those animals most like humans.

"Marine mammals share our waters, eat some of the food we eat and get some of the same diseases we get," said Paul Sandifer, chief scientist for the Oceans and Human Health Initiative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"If environmental conditions are not good for these sentinels of the sea, you can believe it won't be good for us either," Sandifer said. "What we allow to flow into the sea will come back to bite us. You can bet on it."

Marine algae, or phytoplankton, occur naturally and make up the first link in the oceanic food chain. A quart of seawater typically contains hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton and millions of bacteria, viruses and protozoans, all in concentrations that keep each other in check.

That equilibrium can be upset when certain types of algae overwhelm their competitors. The change is most pronounced in coastal waters, and scientists believe it is tied to nutrient pollution from a variety of human activities.

Toxic algae thrive on the same elements that turn lawns green and make crops grow — nitrogen, phosphorus and iron.

California, the nation's most populous state with more than 36 million people, sends billions of gallons of partially treated human waste into the ocean every day. Sewage treatment cuts down on disease-causing bacteria but does little to remove nutrients.

Seasonal rains carry enormous loads of urban and agricultural runoff into the ocean, much of it down drainage canals and rivers from the dairies, orchards and farms that make California the nation's largest agricultural producer.

The destruction of coastal wetlands, which filter nitrogen and other nutrients, also plays a role, as does over-harvesting of shellfish and sardines, menhaden and other algae-eating fish.

Climate change is another factor. Warmer seawater speeds up microbial growth and allows aggressive algae and bacteria to move into areas once too cold for them. Commercial ships can help the spread, transporting the algae in ballast water.

The type of algae that poisoned Neuschwander began blooming riotously in California waters in 1998.

It has the tongue-twisting name Pseudo-nitzschia (SUE-doh NICH-e-yah). A fraction of the thickness of a human hair, this javelin-shaped, single-cell organism slides through seawater on a coating of mucus and churns out domoic acid, a neurotoxin.

Pseudo-nitzschia blooms all along the West Coast, especially around bays and estuaries fed by major rivers. Unlike some other toxic blooms, which are often called red tides, these aren't visible because their greenish-brown coloring blends into the seawater.

Researchers studying Pseudo-nitzschia off the mouth of the Mississippi River have unearthed evidence in the seafloor that agricultural runoff from the nation's heartland triggers the outbreaks.

Scrutinizing core samples from five locations in the Gulf of Mexico, they found thick layers of microscopic silica shells of Pseudo-nitzschia that coincided with a deposit of nitrates and sediment that had flowed down the Mississippi.

The evidence is preserved in strata that resemble a layer cake. It shows that Pseudo-nitzschia didn't proliferate until the 1950s, when grain farmers began widespread use of chemical fertilizers.

In contrast to the Mississippi Delta, such telltale clues cannot be seen in marine sediments off the Pacific coast because the seafloor is constantly being churned up.

As a result, West Coast scientists have been looking for chemical signatures that would directly link river discharges to the toxic blooms.

For the last three years, USC researchers David A. Caron and Astrid Schnetzer have focused on a "hot zone" of Pseudo-nitzschia spanning 155 square miles of coastal waters off the mouths of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers.

The researchers are still looking for the link. But one thing is clear, said Caron, a biological oceanographer: "There is a big dose of nutrients."

Knowing about the effects of domoic acid, scientists wonder whether algae blooms explain the freakish behavior of coastal wildlife observed periodically over the years.

Some speculate that Pseudo-nitzschia caused the onslaught of crazed seabirds near Capitola, Calif., in 1961 that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds." Hitchcock, who was living in nearby Scotts Valley, read a newspaper story about sooty shearwaters "wailing and crying like babies," crashing into streetlights and windows, nipping at people and vomiting up anchovies.

In 1998, sailors in Monterey Bay began bumping into dark objects in the water. They thought they were floating logs. They weren't. They were the bodies of sea lions.

That year, more than 400 washed ashore, dead or dying, victims of neurotoxic poisoning.

California's five marine mammal rehabilitation centers were overwhelmed. Every year since, they have been crowded with sea lions trembling with seizures.

This spring, the Marine Mammal Care Center at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro was often as busy as an inner-city emergency room. Ailing sea lions were packed into chain-link cages. Rescue workers kept bringing in new patients in pickup trucks. The animals needed injections of anti-seizure medicine or had to be hooked up to saline drips to flush the neurotoxin from their systems.

On one typical day, listless sea lions were flopped on their sides, flippers tucked in, too exhausted to lift their heads. One was agitated, head weaving to and fro, grunting and snorting. Another chewed obsessively on a flipper.

All were females found comatose or acting strangely on the beach. Many were pregnant and had seizures just after giving birth.

"A California sea lion has as warm and strong of a maternal instinct with a newborn as you can see in any animal," said Robert DeLong, a government ecologist who has studied sea lions in their Channel Islands rookeries for 35 years.

Domoic acid can destroy that maternal bond.

Sea lions suffering from neurotoxic poisoning usually show no interest in their young. Some that previously cared for their pups shun them after suffering seizures or even attack them when they try to suckle.

"I came in one day and pieces of the pup were everywhere," said Jennifer Collins, a veterinarian who worked at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro. "We initially thought someone had broken in and macerated one of the animals. Then we pieced it together and realized that a mother had done it to her own pup."

Scientists first became aware of domoic acid and its toxicity in 1987, when three people died and at least 100 others were sickened after eating contaminated mussels from Prince Edward Island in Canada. Nineteen people were hospitalized with seizures, comas and unstable blood pressure.

Many of the patients never recovered gaps in their memory, lending this malady a new name: amnesic shellfish poisoning. An examination of brain tissue from the three people who died showed severe loss of nerve cells, mostly in the hippocampus, a part of the temporal lobe that resembles a seahorse and plays a key role in memory and navigation.

Reported cases of the illness are rare in North America because health authorities closely monitor shellfish for toxins and because such seafood makes up a tiny fraction of most people's diets. But for animals that consume little else, domoic acid is a recurring danger.

The acid mimics a neurotransmitter, overstimulating neurons that retain memory. The acid prompts nerve cells to fire continuously until they swell and die.

During spring and summer, when Pseudo-nitzschia blooms off the California coast, male sea lions don't eat. They are too busy guarding their breeding territory on the Channel Islands, where females mate soon after delivering pups.

The females, in contrast, are ravenous feeders while pregnant and while nursing. They gorge on anchovies and sardines that have fed on toxic algae. Domoic acid doesn't appear to affect the fish, but sea lions eat anchovies in such quantities that they accumulate a toxic load.

Frances Gulland and other researchers have been collecting miscarried sea lion fetuses and stillborn pups on San Miguel Island. To their surprise, domoic acid has turned up in the urine of these pups.

The neurotoxin is typically flushed from an animal in about four hours. But Gulland found that domoic acid can penetrate the placenta, bathing a developing fetus in the neurotoxin for days.

California sea lions have a keen sense of direction. Although their habitat ranges from British Columbia to Baja California, they return to the same breeding beaches on the same islands year after year.

But after attaching satellite transmitters to the animals, Gulland and other researchers found that many victims of domoic acid poisoning — even those that appeared fully recovered — lost their way.

Some swam hundreds of miles out to sea and were never seen again, bizarre behavior for creatures that spend their lives in coastal waters.

Others washed up again on beaches, too addled to make it on their own. One swam in tight circles up the Salinas River.

Neuschwander was one of those who could not find their bearings.

After spending a month at the Marine Mammal Center near Sausalito last summer, the sea lion was eating voraciously and seemed so vigorous that Gulland thought she was ready to fend for herself again. She was released back into the ocean in San Mateo County.

A week later, Neuschwander was found stranded again. This time, she was more than 100 miles inland from her natural home along the coast. She had traveled up rivers and drainage canals and ended up on a hillside near Sacramento International Airport.

She had an enormous gash running from her chest to her back, possibly from a run-in with a barbed-wire fence. She snapped at anyone who came close.

Back at the Marine Mammal Center, Neuschwander wouldn't eat and began weaving her head again in endless figure eights.

Gulland and her staff shaved a wide band of fur off the sea lion's head, attached a dozen electrodes and hooked them to an electroencephalogram to measure brain activity. The needle jumped up and down, a sign that Neuschwander was continuing to have seizures, though there were no visible tremors.

"The damage to the hippocampuses will help trigger seizures, and further seizures will cause further cell damage," Gulland said. "You get into this whole vicious cycle."

So Neuschwander was driven across San Francisco Bay and put into the MRI machine at Raytel Medical Imaging, a clinic near UC San Francisco Medical Center. After the magnets whirled, a computer screen displayed cross-section images of her brain.

Dr. Jerome A. Barakos, a clinical professor and director of neuro-imaging at the clinic, appeared in his white coat. He was there to interpret the 250 images that spooled out of the machine.

"The anatomy of a sea lion is not too dissimilar to the human anatomy," Barakos said. He confirmed Gulland's fear. On the right side of Neuschwander's brain, the hippocampus was severely atrophied. It looked less like a seahorse than like a withered tail.

Gulland paced around the lab, then pulled aside one of her assistants, Michelle Caudle.

"So do we euthanize her? Do we take her home and see how she does?" Gulland asked.

The two women shifted uncomfortably, arms folded across their chests. They talked about how the animal was losing weight and drifting in and out of delirium.

At 140 pounds, Neuschwander was 60 to 80 pounds lighter than a healthy adult female.

Caudle recalled how she wouldn't eat the "happy fish," laced with sedatives, that sea lions normally gulp down. Neuschwander shredded it, then spat it out.

"She looks terrible," Gulland said. "I didn't realize how thin she was. I mean, how much do we make her go through?"

Gulland got a faraway look in her eyes. Her face drooped.

"I'm OK with it," Caudle said.

"I am too. That's why we do it, right?"

To end the suffering.

Gulland blinked back tears. She took a deep breath and rejoined the group to announce the decision.

The team took five vials of blood for future studies. Then Gulland filled an enormous syringe with clear pink liquid, pressed the plunger and shot 15 ccs of sodium pentobarbitone, an overdose of the anesthetic, into a neck vein.

Neuschwander let out one last, rasping breath.

Gulland laid her hands on the sea lion's body. The heart fluttered for a long two minutes.

Then it stopped.

Times staff writer Usha Lee McFarling contributed to this report.

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PART THREE
ALTERED OCEANS
Dark Tides, Ill Winds
With sickening regularity, toxic algae blooms are invading coastal waters. They kill sea life and send poisons ashore on the breeze, forcing residents to flee.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
August 1, 2006

LITTLE GASPARILLA ISLAND, FLA. -- All Susan Leydon has to do is stick her head outside and take a deep breath of sea air. She can tell if her 10-year-old son is about to get sick. If she coughs or feels a tickle in the back of her throat, she lays down the law: No playing on the beach. No, not even in the yard. Come back inside. Now.

The Leydons thought they found paradise a decade ago when they moved from Massachusetts to this narrow barrier island, reachable only by boat, with gentle surf, no paved roads and balmy air that feels like velvet on the skin.

Now, they fear that the sea has turned on them. The dread takes hold whenever purplish-red algae stain the crystal waters of Florida's Gulf Coast. The blooms send waves of stinking dead fish ashore and insult every nostril on the island with something worse.

The algae produce an arsenal of toxins carried ashore by the sea breeze.

"I have to pull my shirt up and over my mouth or I'll be coughing and hacking," said Leydon, 42, a trim, energetic mother of three who walks the beach every morning.

Her husband, Richard, a 46-year-old building contractor, said the wind off the gulf can make him feel like he's spent too much time in an overchlorinated pool. His chest tightens and he grows short of breath. His throat feels scratchy, his eyes burn, and his head throbs.

Their symptoms are mild compared with those of their son, also named Richard. He suffers from asthma and recurring sinus infections. When the toxic breeze blows, he keeps himself — and his parents — up all night, coughing until he vomits.

If the airborne assault goes on for more than a few days, it becomes a community-wide affliction. At homeowners' meetings, many people wear face masks.

On weekends, the Leydons escape inland. They drive three hours to Orlando so their son can play outside without getting sick. They go to a Walt Disney World resort with water slides, machine-generated currents and an imported white sand beach.

"It's a shame to leave this beautiful place and go to a water park," Richard Leydon said. "But we don't have much choice. We have to get away from it."

Harmful algae blooms have occurred for ages. Some scientists theorize that a toxic bloom inspired the biblical passage in Exodus: " … all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank, so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt."

What was once a freak of nature has become commonplace. These outbreaks, often called red tides, are occurring more often worldwide, showing up in new places, lasting longer and intensifying.

They are distress signals from an unhealthy ocean. Overfishing, destruction of wetlands, industrial pollution and climate change have made the seas inhospitable for fish and more advanced forms of life and freed the lowliest — algae and bacteria — to flourish.

A scientific consensus is emerging that commercial agriculture and coastal development, in particular, promote the spread of harmful algae. They generate runoff rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients that sustain these microscopic aquatic plants. In essence, researchers say, modern society is force-feeding the oceans with the basic ingredients of Miracle-Gro.

Yet there is debate among Florida scientists over the precise causes of local outbreaks. Red tides date back at least 150 years, before the state became one of the nation's most populous. Some scientists say their increased intensity is part of a natural cycle.

People who have spent many years on Little Gasparilla Island and in other Florida Gulf Coast communities say red tides used to show up once in a decade. Now, they occur almost every year and persist for months.

Red tide announced its arrival this summer by dumping dead tarpon and goliath grouper on the beaches. Soon after, coastal residents were coughing and sneezing.

The previous bloom, which ended in mid-February, peppered Florida's western coast with its fiery breath for 13 months, stubbornly refusing to dissipate despite three hurricanes.

The culprit is a microorganism known as Karenia brevis. Each Karenia cell is a poison factory pumping out toxins collectively known as brevetoxin.

During red tides, they can be absorbed into the food chain by scallops, oysters and other popular seafood and can cause neurotoxic shellfish poisoning. The effects range from gastrointestinal illness to seizures, loss of muscle control and unconsciousness.

Brevetoxin also gets into the air. It collects on the surface of bubbles and concentrates in sea foam and on dead fish.

When the bubbles burst, brevetoxin is flung into the air and carried by the wind. If inhaled, most particles lodge in the nose and throat, but some are drawn deep into the lungs. People don't have to set foot in the ocean or even on the beach to experience a red tide. It comes to them.

Most of those affected feel as if they have a cold or an allergy. But researchers reported last year that red tides coincided with outbreaks of severe respiratory ailments.

They compared emergency admissions at Sarasota Memorial Hospital during three months of red tide with the same period a year later, when there was no toxic algae.

During the red tide, admissions for pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, sinus infections and similar afflictions rose 54%. No such increase was reported inland.

"You can tell when it's a bad red tide," said Dr. Brian Garby, the hospital's chief of emergency medicine. "The waiting room is filled with people coughing and they don't know why."

Most alarming was a 19% increase in cases of pneumonia, a leading cause of death among the elderly.

Brevetoxin doesn't cause those maladies directly. Instead, researchers believe, it makes people vulnerable by inflaming their sinuses and suppressing their immune systems, allowing bacteria and viruses to flourish.

Boxy air filters stationed around Sarasota have detected the wind-borne neurotoxin three miles from the coast, said Barbara Kirkpatrick, a researcher at Mote Marine Laboratory, a private research institute in the city. "The public health message has been, 'If you leave the beach, you'll be OK.' Now we know better. People who are window shopping or eating in outdoor restaurants are still being exposed to the toxins."

Hundreds of visitors from the Midwest and New England have posted questions and complaints on websites, seeking to learn why, after a short beach vacation on the west coast of Florida, they suffered weeks of coughing, bronchial infections, dizziness, lethargy and other symptoms.

Researchers are hearing a growing number of complaints about neurological symptoms.

Ruth DeLynn, a 79-year-old retired biologist and volunteer curator at Mote Marine Laboratory, was hospitalized for five days last year with respiratory distress during a particularly virulent red tide. DeLynn also experienced numbness and a burning sensation in her legs that made it difficult to walk. She and her doctor believe the toxin triggered a resurgence of peripheral neuropathy that had been dormant for 15 years.

"If this is going to continue this way," said DeLynn, who lives on a barrier island near Sarasota, "I'm thinking of moving inland."

Neurological symptoms usually flare only with high levels of exposure, said Dr. Lora Fleming, a University of Miami epidemiologist and physician. "It's all about dose."

Fleming isn't persuaded that people on the beach can inhale enough to suffer serious neurological effects, but she thinks surfers may be more vulnerable.

John Purdy, a former Manatee County lifeguard, was paddling his surfboard over a wave last fall when some sea foam lifted off the water and into his mouth just as he was gulping for air.

"I felt like I inhaled a garbage bag," said Purdy, 33, a former high school swimming champion. "It locked up my lungs and throat like a paralysis." The seconds ticked by. "I was thinking, 'Is this the way it's going to end?' "

Eventually, he managed to sneak in a little air. It was like sucking through a cocktail straw. He made his way to shore but didn't feel much better until emergency medical technicians hooked him up to oxygen. "It was the closest thing I've had to a near-death experience," he said.

Unlike surfers, marine mammals can't seek refuge on land. Last year's red tide took the lives of at least 88 manatees, some weighing more than a ton. Hundreds of these massive sea cows have succumbed during outbreaks in previous years.

Greg Bossart, a veterinarian and pathologist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, dissected the tissue of manatees and determined that many died from inhaling brevetoxin-laden air just above the ocean's surface. The result was a cascade of nerve and tissue damage that filled their lungs with blood.

"The manatees are gassed to death," Bossart said. "They die of toxic shock."

Bossart considers the manatee a sentinel for human health, or, as he puts it: "Florida's 2,000-pound canary. We've opened a Pandora's box of health issues."

The oceans are awash in microscopic algae, or plankton. But of the thousands of different kinds, only about 100 produce toxins.

About 60,000 people in the United States are poisoned each year by algae blooms. Most get sick by eating fish and shellfish that concentrate neurotoxins from the vast quantities of algae they consume.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 2% to 10% of all cases are reported to health authorities — usually those that involve numbness, paralysis, coma or other severe symptoms. Cases of nausea, cramping and diarrhea tend to go unreported.

Estimates of algae-related illness don't include the many thousands of people in Florida and other Gulf Coast states who suffer from inhaling airborne brevetoxin.

Nearly every coastal region has outbreaks of harmful algae or bacteria.

For the second summer in a row, shellfish beds in New England are being closed because of toxic algae that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. These blooms that typically begin in the Gulf of Maine were rare until the 1970s. Now, they appear almost every year, often spreading down the coast as far as Cape Cod.

California and other West Coast states periodically have banned shellfish harvesting because of toxic algae, including Pseudo-nitzschia, which wasn't identified until 1987. That was when it killed three people who ate contaminated mussels in Montreal. Since then, it has left California's coastline littered with dead and dying marine mammals and seabirds.

Marine biotoxins are among the most potent biological poisons ever discovered. Saxitoxin, which causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, is listed among chemical agents banned under a United Nations compact on weapons of mass destruction. As with other algae-produced neurotoxins, there is no known antidote.

People help spread harmful algae by fertilizing them with sewage and farm runoff, transporting them in the ballast water of ships, dredging harbors or warming seawater through climate change.

Patricia M. Glibert, a marine scientist at the University of Maryland, has found that the worldwide spread of paralytic shellfish poisoning has closely tracked the expanding use of urea, a nitrogen fertilizer.

Glibert estimated that fertilizer use will rise 50% this decade "in parts of the world that are already saturated with nitrogen and frequently plagued by harmful blooms."

Donald Anderson and colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts traced the origin of a strain of algae responsible for a 1998 outbreak of paralytic shellfish poisoning on France's Mediterranean coast. Analyzing DNA and shipping records, they concluded that it hitched a ride from Japan in the belly of a ship.

Disturbance of the seafloor by dredging is believed to help promote the growth of algae that cause ciguatera fish poisoning. About a million people a year show signs of ciguatera poisoning — such as gastrointestinal distress, numbness, weakness, vertigo and coma — after eating fish from tropical waters.

Cruise ship passengers who ate raw oysters from Alaskan shellfish beds became violently ill two years ago in an outbreak that medical researchers tied to the bacterial pathogen Vibrio, common in the Gulf of Mexico. Researchers realized the strain had moved 600 miles farther north than ever before, as Alaskan waters warmed above the 59-degree threshold that limited the bacterium's range.

A University of Miami marine biologist, Larry E. Brand, examined water samples dating to 1954 and found that outbreaks of Karenia brevis off Florida's Gulf Coast are getting stronger, lasting longer and spreading farther.

"When you look at it statistically, red tides are 10 times more abundant than they were 50 years ago," Brand said. Once, "the peak time was in the fall…. Now we have blooms continuing on and lasting into the winter and spring."

The highest concentrations of algae, he said, were along heavily developed shorelines and around the mouths of rivers that disgorge nutrient-laden waters from sugar-cane fields and sediment from phosphate mines.

Brand said that was no coincidence. It reflects "a huge increase in sewage, runoff from lawns and golf courses, mining and agriculture," he said.

State officials say Brand may be misinterpreting the water samples. Cynthia Heil, a senior state scientist, said the data do not support the conclusion that pollution from agriculture or development spawns red tides, although she said it may intensify or prolong the outbreaks.

Heil said there is compelling evidence of blooms that originate out at sea, far from coastal concentrations of man-made pollutants.

She and a team of university scientists in Florida have published a study theorizing that iron-rich dust from Africa's Sahara Desert drifts across the Atlantic and triggers a natural process that stimulates harmful algae blooms off Florida's Gulf Coast.

"The timing sure matches up with blooms," Heil said. "We know it has to contribute to enriching seawater with iron and nitrogen."

A television suspended from the ceiling at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota plays a public service announcement sponsored by state and federal agencies, offering hints for dealing with red tide.

"If you are going to the beach for a short trip, go to your local drugstore and buy a face mask, like the ones painters wear," the narrator says. "But remember, these masks are only effective for a short time.

"People with asthma should also be sure to take their inhalers to the beach and use them as prescribed. If your inhaler is not providing relief, seek immediate medical attention."

Tourist officials point out that red tides come and go and vary in intensity, and that the airborne toxins don't trigger health problems unless there is an onshore breeze. Beachgoers on one stretch of coast can get a heavy dose, while others a few miles away aren't affected.

Last fall's red tide was one of the worst on record.

Tourists bailed out of hotels and motels, said Dianne Manspeaker, manager of the Gulf Surf Resort Motel in Nokomis. "People come to check in and say, 'I can't stay here, I can't breathe.' "

Manspeaker is sympathetic to tourists who feel ill and refunds their money. She lives inland, and when the wind blows brevetoxin onshore, she stays home and tends to business by phone. "If I have to be here," she said, "I wear a mask."

A few miles up the coast, Sarasota County lifeguard Mike Zanane listened to a familiar chorus of coughs, throat-clearing, sneezes and nose-blowing from hundreds of beachgoers.

It was a typical day at the beach during red tide, Zanane said. The die-hards lie in the sun and cough all day. They won't leave. Nor will they venture into the surf, and Zanane doesn't blame them.

"Sometimes," he said, "you go out there and you feel like you've been Maced."

Red tides have become a staple of the daily reports on surf conditions posted on the lifeguard tower. The sign read: "Some Red Tide = Coughs. Sneezes. Dead Fishes." A few extra words were scribbled in chalk in the margin: "Can't do anything about [it]."

Not that people haven't tried.

In one experiment, researchers from Mote Marine Laboratory sprayed a slurry of clay onto the murky water in an effort to smother and sink the offending organisms. Another experiment in the works would sterilize algae patches with injections of ozone. Such remedies can be problematic. Not only do they kill the harmful algae, they wipe out every living thing in the vicinity.

Jim Patterson, a past mayor of Longboat Key next to Sarasota, would have been satisfied just to rid the beach of the stench of dead fish.

A retired Army general, Patterson took the fight to the fish. He hired a boat and crew and set out to chop up the carcasses with a fish shredder before they could reach the shore.

The results were disappointing for Patterson and his nonprofit group, Solutions To Avoid Red Tide. Instead of whole fish, Longboat Key was littered with decaying fish chunks.

Buddy Gaines invited a visitor to look out at the Gulf of Mexico from his oceanfront house built on stilts on Little Gasparilla Island. "You can see why we love it here," the retired filmmaker said. "It's a shame we cannot go outside."

Gaines and his wife, Laurie, don't let their dogs — a pair of Hungarian vizslas — outside either. Not during the bloom of a red tide. It's a costly lesson the couple learned a couple of years ago.

Their younger dog, Olivia, was a gregarious puppy who loved to frolic in the sand, splash in the warm surf and follow joggers down the beach.

One morning, after eating a few small fish that had washed up, she arrived home staggering and stumbling. By the time the Gaineses got her to a vet, Olivia couldn't see. She was vomiting and convulsing.

"It was heartbreaking to watch," Laurie Gaines said. "We didn't think she was going to live."

Veterinarian Amanda Schell didn't know what to make of the symptoms.

"Did she eat rat poison?" the vet asked. "Did she get into antifreeze?"

Schell ran blood tests, looking for West Nile virus and canine distemper. Finding no clear answers, she sent the couple to a specialist in Tampa.

The next day, local veterinarians treated 16 dogs — all twitching, vomiting and suffering from seizures. One died.

Buddy and Laurie Gaines embarked on a monthlong odyssey to save Olivia that took them to clinics, animal hospitals and finally Tufts University's veterinary school in North Grafton, Mass. The couple camped in the parking lot in their motor home while Olivia was cared for inside.

"Sometimes I think I'm the biggest fool in the family to have spent $22,000 on this dog," said Buddy Gaines, 70, sitting on his couch with Olivia. "I had to take out a second mortgage. But I don't care. I love this dog."

Olivia, now 3 years old, appears fully recovered, except for her incessant drooling. Veterinarians suspect it's a sign of residual neurological damage.

A half-mile down the beach, Susan and Richard Leydon were keeping their dog, a sheltie, inside, along with their son, Richard. The air conditioner was going full blast.

Richard's bedroom is at the seaward side of the house with a picture window overlooking the gulf. "I have the best room," he announced.

It's the best room until the wind begins to blow hard off the ocean. Then it's the first to get dosed with toxin-laden air, coming through the cracks and electrical outlets. It leaves a vague metallic taste on the back of the tongue.

The family has taken to wearing surgical masks on windy red tide nights. It's not enough to keep Richard from coughing. His parents also move him into a room on the other side of the house.

Richard has spent nearly his entire life on the island and was among the first residents to develop symptoms. His most common ailment is a dry cough, which he says makes him sound like a barking seal.

The airborne irritants have also triggered recurring sinus infections and asthma. On a few occasions, during intense and prolonged red tides, Richard has been diagnosed with bronchitis and even pneumonia, which kept him out of school for more than a month.

The Leydons said they have consulted with specialists and spent thousands of dollars on tests trying to figure out if something other than red tide was making their son sick. Doctors couldn't pinpoint anything.

The couple worry about the price their son is paying for their decision to move to Florida.

"Is Richard is going to have lung scarring and long-term problems?" his father asked. "I need to know."

The conversation in the Leydon household focused on two topics, as it often does during red tide outbreaks. One was where to flee for the weekend. The other was whether they should move, for good.

"Do we have to sell our house because paradise is killing us?" Susan Leydon asked.

Times staff writer Usha Lee McFarling contributed to this report.

*
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PART FOUR
ALTERED OCEANS
Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas
On Midway Atoll, 40% of albatross chicks die, their bellies full of trash. Swirling masses of drifting debris pollute remote beaches and snare wildlife.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
August 2, 2006

MIDWAY ATOLL -- The albatross chick jumped to its feet, eyes alert and focused. At 5 months, it stood 18 inches tall and was fully feathered except for the fuzz that fringed its head.

All attitude, the chick straightened up and clacked its beak at a visitor, then rocked back and dangled webbed feet in the air to cool them in the afternoon breeze.

The next afternoon, the chick ignored passersby. The bird was flopped on its belly, its legs splayed awkwardly. Its wings drooped in the hot sun. A few hours later, the chick was dead.

John Klavitter, a wildlife biologist, turned the bird over and cut it open with a knife. Probing its innards with a gloved hand, he pulled out a yellowish sac — its stomach.

Out tumbled a collection of red, blue and orange bottle caps, a black spray nozzle, part of a green comb, a white golf tee and a clump of tiny dark squid beaks ensnared in a tangle of fishing line.

"This is pretty typical," said Klavitter, who is stationed at the atoll for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We often find cigarette lighters, bucket handles, toothbrushes, syringes, toy soldiers — anything made out of plastic."

It's all part of a tide of plastic debris that has spread throughout the world's oceans, posing a lethal hazard to wildlife, even here, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest city.

Midway, an atoll halfway between North America and Japan, has no industrial centers, no fast-food joints with overflowing trash cans, and only a few dozen people.

Its isolation would seem to make it an ideal rookery for seabirds, especially Laysan albatross, which lay their eggs and hatch their young here each winter. For their first six months of life, the chicks depend entirely on their parents for nourishment. The adults forage at sea and bring back high-calorie takeout: a slurry of partly digested squid and flying-fish eggs.

As they scour the ocean surface for this sustenance, albatross encounter vast expanses of floating junk. They pick up all manner of plastic debris, mistaking it for food.

As a result, the regurgitated payload flowing down their chicks' gullets now includes Lego blocks, clothespins, fishing lures and other pieces of plastic that can perforate the stomach or block the gizzard or esophagus. The sheer volume of plastic inside a chick can leave little room for food and liquid.

Of the 500,000 albatross chicks born here each year, about 200,000 die, mostly from dehydration or starvation. A two-year study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showed that chicks that died from those causes had twice as much plastic in their stomachs as those that died for other reasons.

The atoll is littered with decomposing remains, grisly wreaths of feathers and bone surrounding colorful piles of bottle caps, plastic dinosaurs, checkers, highlighter pens, perfume bottles, fishing line and small Styrofoam balls. Klavitter has calculated that albatross feed their chicks about 5 tons of plastic a year at Midway.

Albatross fly hundreds of miles in their search for food for their young. Their flight paths from Midway often take them over what is perhaps the world's largest dump: a slowly rotating mass of trash-laden water about twice the size of Texas.

This is known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, part of a system of currents called the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Located halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii, the garbage patch is an area of slack winds and sluggish currents where flotsam collects from around the Pacific, much like foam piling up in the calm center of a hot tub.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been studying the clockwise swirl of plastic debris so long, he talks about it as if he were tracking a beast.

"It moves around like a big animal without a leash," said Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer in Seattle and leading expert on currents and marine debris. "When it gets close to an island, the garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic."

Some oceanic trash washes ashore at Midway — laundry baskets, television tubes, beach sandals, soccer balls and other discards.

Nearly 90% of floating marine litter is plastic — supple, durable materials such as polyethylene and polypropylene, Styrofoam, nylon and saran.

About four-fifths of marine trash comes from land, swept by wind or washed by rain off highways and city streets, down streams and rivers, and out to sea.

The rest comes from ships. Much of it consists of synthetic floats and other gear that is jettisoned illegally to avoid the cost of proper disposal in port.

In addition, thousands of cargo containers fall overboard in stormy seas each year, spilling their contents. One ship heading from Los Angeles to Tacoma, Wash., disgorged 33,000 blue-and-white Nike basketball shoes in 2002. Other loads lost at sea include 34,000 hockey gloves and 29,000 yellow rubber ducks and other bathtub toys.

The debris can spin for decades in one of a dozen or more gigantic gyres around the globe, only to be spat out and carried by currents to distant lands. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of the oceans. About 70% will eventually sink.

Albatross are by no means the only victims. An estimated 1 million seabirds choke or get tangled in plastic nets or other debris every year. About 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, other marine mammals and sea turtles suffer the same fate.

The amount of plastic in the oceans has risen sharply since the 1950s. Studies show a tenfold increase every decade in some places. Scientists expect the trend to continue, given the popularity of disposable plastic containers. The average American used 223 pounds of plastic in 2001. The plastics industry expects per-capita usage to increase to 326 pounds by the end of the decade.

The qualities that make plastics so useful are precisely what cause them to persist as trash.

Derived from petroleum, plastics eventually break down into carbon dioxide and water from exposure to heat and the sun's ultraviolet rays.

On land, the process can take decades, even centuries. At sea, it takes even longer, said Anthony L. Andrady, a polymer chemist at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina who studies marine debris. Seawater keeps plastics cool while algae, barnacles and other marine growth block ultraviolet rays.

"Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," Andrady said, "because there is no effective mechanism to break it down."

Oceanographers have counted on beachcombers around the world to help them plot the course of plastic flotsam as it circumnavigates the globe. Ebbesmeyer has found that some debris gets hung up for decades in gyres before being spun out into different currents, flung ashore or picked up by animals.

A piece of plastic found in an albatross stomach last year bore a serial number that was traced to a World War II seaplane shot down in 1944. Computer models re-creating the object's odyssey showed it spent a decade in a gyre known as the Western Garbage Patch, just south of Japan, and then drifted 6,000 miles to the Eastern Garbage Patch off the West Coast of the U.S., where it spun in circles for the next 50 years.

The Hawaiian archipelago, which stretches from the Big Island of Hawaii westward for 1,500 miles to Kure Atoll, acts like 19 unevenly spaced teeth of a giant comb, snagging debris drifting around the Pacific. Most of the archipelago's atolls are awash in plastic junk, as are some beaches on the main islands.

Native Hawaiians, seeking wood for dugout canoes, used to go to Kamilo Beach at the southernmost tip of the Big Island to collect enormous logs that had drifted from the Pacific Northwest. Now, locals like Noni Sanford pick through the debris for novelties to enter in a trash-art show in Hilo every fall.

Sanford, 58, a free-spirited great-grandmother with long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, once won second place for a mobile fashioned out of fishing line, floats and a colorful palette of plastic toothbrushes.

As a lifelong beachcomber, she is fascinated and horrified by the transformation of Kamilo Beach since she first set foot there in 1959. She was searching for driftwood with her father, a sculptor.

She remembers seeing a few tires back then. Now, plastic debris litters the crescent-shaped beach for more than a mile.

"This is nothing," Sanford said, stepping over a pile of twisted lines and nets. "This used to be 8 and 10 feet high. Of course, that was three or four cleanups ago."

Sanford and her husband, Ron, have joined in regular cleanup efforts, organized most recently by Bill Gilmartin, a retired wildlife biologist who studied monk seals.

"The rule is, don't pick up anything smaller than your fist," Gilmartin told a team of volunteers. "Otherwise, it'll take forever. We'll never be done."

Noni Sanford reached down, scooped up a handful of beach sand and let it trickle through her fingers. Most of the grainy mix was bits and pieces of plastic. The beach itself, it seemed, was turning into plastic.

Cleanup efforts in Hawaii and elsewhere have focused on "ghost nets," tangles of abandoned fishing lines, nets and traps that snare and kill marine life.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dispatches scuba divers every year to cut tons of these deathtraps off Hawaiian coral reefs. It's dangerous and costly work. In July 2005, a 145-foot charter vessel brought in to haul away nets ran aground on the reef at Pearl and Hermes Atoll, about 100 miles from Midway. The ship was lost. The Coast Guard flew the 23 divers and crew 1,200 miles back to Honolulu.

If it were easier to find them, it would make sense to round up the medusas of nets and synthetic lines at sea before they snagged on coral reefs and endangered monk seals and other coastal wildlife.

But the Pacific spans millions of square miles, and even the debris circulating in the Eastern and Western garbage patches is often diffuse and hard to see, bobbing just below the surface.

Connecting the two patches is a ribbon of oceanic highway that stretches 6,000 miles, an extension of Japan's Kuroshio Current heading east. Oceanographers call this the Subtropical Convergence Zone, where the cold, green, heavier waters from the north slide under the warm, blue waters of the south.

A team of scientists working on NOAA's GhostNet Detection Project suspected that flotsam collected along this line, making it an ideal place to concentrate cleanups. Yet they couldn't be sure. They needed to see it.

The team got its chance last year, after persuading NOAA to lend them an instrument-packed, four-engine reconnaissance plane often deployed to study hurricanes. Wearing life jackets while flying 1,000 feet above the ocean's surface, observers were positioned at windows to spot nets and floats. They were to call out each sighting over the plane's intercom. Others were poised to jot down the location of each sighting.

"When we got into it, we couldn't write fast enough," said Tim Veenstra, an Alaskan pilot and private researcher working with government scientists. The meandering line of buoys, nets, life rings, buckets and other castoffs stretched for hundreds and hundreds of miles — until the airplane had to turn back.

"It was sort of a bittersweet feeling," Veenstra said. "Sweet in the fact that what we had postulated was proven true. Bitter in the fact that there was actually that much debris floating around."

Tuna fishermen have long known about the convergence zone and the debris. They know that fish like to congregate beneath anything that floats.

Off the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii, recreational fishermen like Guy Enriques will race miles offshore to fish beneath the flotsam.

It's important to get close to the trash, but not too close, Enriques explained, or the nets and lines will wrap around a boat's propeller.

He said the best fishing was around what looked like an enormous metal garage door floating just below the water's surface. Even some charter boat skippers learned of that one, Enriques recalled, and took fishermen there day after day, until it vanished.

But it wasn't a garage door. He and other fishermen were looking at the top of an 8-by-40-foot cargo container that fell off a ship. Such containers can float for as long as nine months. Until they sink, they are the bane of sailors in fiberglass boats who watch for them like icebergs on the high seas.

Charles Moore, a member of the Hancock Oil family, was on his way home from the Los Angeles-to-Hawaii Transpacific Yacht Race in 1997 when he took a shortcut through the Eastern Garbage Patch. It's a place that sailors usually avoid because it lacks wind.

As he motored through on his 50-foot catamaran, Moore was startled by what he saw thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

The experience changed Moore's life, turning him from an adventurer into a self-taught scientist and environmental activist.

Two years later, he returned to the garbage patch with a volunteer crew to survey its contents. He knew he would collect plenty of plastic bags, bottle caps, nets and floats.

He didn't expect what turned up in a special net, one with a tight mesh for collecting plankton, the bottom link in the oceanic food chain. Instead of plankton, it was choked with a colorful array of tiny plastic fragments.

"It blew my mind," Moore said. "We are filling up the oceans with this confetti stuff, and nobody cares."

Over the last decade, Moore, 59, who lives in a waterfront home in Long Beach, has spent his own money and some from a family foundation on a quest to track the plume of plastic so he can figure out how to stop it.

On a cloudless spring day, Moore waded up to his knees into the Los Angeles River in Long Beach wearing shorts, sandals and a white hard hat. He was tethered to a volunteer standing on the dry riverbank, in case he slipped on the slick concrete channel.

The Los Angeles River carries enough trash each year to fill the Rose Bowl two stories high, and despite efforts to corral some of it near the river mouth, most slips through to the ocean.

Moore adjusted a trawlnet to collect trash flowing downriver. At Moore's signal, a crane operator lifted the net out of the water. Volunteers swarmed around the trawlnet, extracted the contents and loaded them into more than a dozen jars.

The jars were filled with plastic pellets the size and shape of pills. They come in all colors and are the raw material for a vast array of plastic products, from trash bags to medical devices.

About 100 billion pounds of pellets are produced every year and shipped to Los Angeles and other manufacturing centers. Huge numbers are spilled on the ground and swept by rainfall into gutters; down storm drains, creeks and rivers; and into the ocean.

From his river sampling, Moore estimated that 236 million pellets washed down the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers in three days' time. Also known as "nurdles" or mermaid tears, they are the most widely seen plastic debris around the world. They have washed ashore as far away as Antarctica.

The pellets, like most types of plastic, are sponges for oily toxic chemicals that don't readily dissolve in water, such as the pesticide DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Some pellets have been found to contain concentrations of these pollutants 1 million times greater than the levels found in surrounding water.

As they absorb toxic chemicals, they become poison pills. Wildlife researchers have found the pellets, which resemble fish eggs, in the bellies of fish, sea turtles, seabirds and marine mammals.

Over time, plastic can break down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually turning to powder and entering the ocean in microscopic fragments. Some plastic starts out as tiny particles, such as the abrasives in cleaning products that are washed down the sink, through sewage systems and out to sea.

The chemical components of plastics and common additives can harm animals and humans. Studies have linked the hormone-mimicking phthalates, used to soften plastic, to reduced testosterone and fertility in laboratory animals, and to subtle changes in the genitals of baby boys. Another additive, bisphenol A, used to make lightweight, heat-resistant baby bottles and microwave cookware, has been linked to prostate cancer.

Moore has tried, without success, to get manufacturers to improve their efforts to clean up spills of pellets that wash off lots and into storm drains. He considers beach cleanups a waste of time, except to raise public awareness of the problem. In his view, the cleanup has to start at the source — many miles inland.

To make that point, Moore tromped through rail yards in Vernon and La Mirada. On the side of a rail car a faded decal read "Operation Clean Sweep." It had three check boxes:

"Keep Plastics Off Ground.

"Close and Lock Caps When Outlets Not in Use.

"Pick Up All Spills."

Beneath the sign was a cone-shaped pile of pellets, as white as freshly fallen snow. Moore shuffled his sandaled feet through another drift nearby.

"This is a plastic sand dune," he said. "It's very slippery, very roly-poly. What makes them so good for the factory makes them good for getting into the ocean."

Times staff writer Usha Lee McFarling contributed to this report.
===================================================================

PART FIVE
ALTERED OCEANS
A Chemical Imbalance
Growing seawater acidity threatens to wipe out coral, fish and other crucial species worldwide.
By Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writer
August 3, 2006

As she stared down into a wide-mouthed plastic jar aboard the R/V Discoverer, Victoria Fabry peered into the future.

The marine snails she was studying — graceful creatures with wing-like feet that help them glide through the water — had started to dissolve.

Fabry was taken aback. The button-sized snails, called pteropods, are hardy animals that swirl in dense patches in some of the world's coldest seas. In 20 years of studying the snails, a vital ingredient in the polar food supply, the marine biologist from Cal State San Marcos had never seen such damage.

In a brief experiment aboard the federal research vessel plowing through rough Alaskan seas, the pteropods were sealed in jars. The carbon dioxide they exhaled made the water inside more acidic. Though slight, this change in water chemistry ravaged the snails' translucent shells. After 36 hours, they were pitted and covered with white spots.

The one-liter jars of seawater were a microcosm of change now occurring invisibly throughout the world's vast, open seas.

As industrial activity pumps massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment, more of the gas is being absorbed by the oceans. As a result, seawater is becoming more acidic, and a variety of sea creatures await the same dismal fate as Fabry's pteropods.

The greenhouse gas, best known for accumulating in the atmosphere and heating the planet, is entering the ocean at a rate of nearly 1 million tons per hour — 10 times the natural rate.

Scientists report that the seas are more acidic today than they have been in at least 650,000 years. At the current rate of increase, ocean acidity is expected, by the end of this century, to be 2 1/2 times what it was before the Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago. Such a change would devastate many species of fish and other animals that have thrived in chemically stable seawater for millions of years.

Less likely to be harmed are algae, bacteria and other primitive forms of life that are already proliferating at the expense of fish, marine mammals and corals.

In a matter of decades, the world's remaining coral reefs could be too brittle to withstand pounding waves. Shells could become too fragile to protect their occupants. By the end of the century, much of the polar ocean is expected to be as acidified as the water that did such damage to the pteropods aboard the Discoverer.

Some marine biologists predict that altered acid levels will disrupt fisheries by melting away the bottom rungs of the food chain — tiny planktonic plants and animals that provide the basic nutrition for all living things in the sea.

Fabry, who recently testified on the issue before the U.S. Senate, told policymakers that the effects on marine life could be "direct and profound."

"The potential is there to have a devastating impact," Fabry said, "for the oceans to be very, very different in the near future than they are today."

The oceans have been a natural sponge for carbon dioxide from time immemorial. Especially after calamities such as asteroid strikes, they have acted as a global safety valve, soaking up excess CO2 and preventing catastrophic overheating of the planet.

If not for the oceans, the Earth would have warmed by 2 degrees instead of 1 over the last century, scientists say. Glaciers would be disappearing faster than they are, droughts would be more widespread and rising sea levels would be more pronounced.

When carbon dioxide is added to the ocean gradually, it does little harm. Some of it is taken up during photosynthesis by microscopic plants called phytoplankton. Some of it is used by microorganisms to build shells. After their inhabitants die, the empty shells rain down on the seafloor in a kind of biological snow. The famed white cliffs of Dover are made of this material.

Today, however, the addition of carbon dioxide to the seas is anything but gradual.

Scientists estimate that nearly 500 billion tons of the gas have been absorbed by the oceans since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That is more than a fourth of all the CO2 that humanity has emitted into the atmosphere. Eventually, 80% of all human-generated carbon dioxide is expected to find its way into the sea.

Carbon dioxide moves freely between air and sea in a process known as molecular diffusion. The exchange occurs in a film of water at the surface. Carbon dioxide travels wherever concentrations are lowest. If levels in the atmosphere are high, the gas goes into the ocean. If they are higher in the sea, as they have been for much of the past, the gas leaves the water and enters the air.

If not for the CO2 pumped into the skies in the last century, more of the gas would leave the sea than would enter it.

"We have reversed that direction," said Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean chemistry and carbon dioxide at the Carnegie Institution's department of global ecology, based at Stanford University.

When carbon dioxide mixes with seawater, it creates carbonic acid, the weak acid in carbonated drinks.

Increased acidity reduces the abundance of the right chemical forms of a mineral called calcium carbonate, which corals and other sea animals need to build shells and skeletons. It also slows the growth of the animals within those shells.

Even slightly acidified seawater is toxic to the eggs and larvae of some fish species. In others, including amberjack and halibut, it can cause heart attacks, experiments show. Acidified waters also tend to asphyxiate animals that require a lot of oxygen, such as fast-swimming squid.

The pH scale, a measure of how acidic or alkaline a substance is, ranges from 1 to 14, with 7 being neutral. The lower the pH, the greater the acidity. Each number represents a tenfold change in acidity or alkalinity.

For more than a decade, teams led by Richard Feely, a chemical oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, have traveled from Antarctica to the Aleutian Islands, taking tens of thousands of water samples to gauge how the ocean's acidity is changing.

By comparing these measurements to past levels of carbon dioxide preserved in ice cores, the researchers determined that the average pH of the ocean surface has declined since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution by 0.1 units, from 8.16 to 8.05.

Geological records show that such a change has not occurred in 650,000 years, Feely said.

In April, Feely returned from a cruise to the North Pacific, where he took pH measurements at locations the team first sampled in 1991. This time, Feely's group found that the average pH in surface waters had dropped an additional 0.025 units in 15 years — a relatively large change for such a short time.

The measurements confirm those taken in the 1990s and indicate that forecasts of increased acidity are on target, Feely said.

If CO2 emissions continue at their current pace, the pH of the ocean is expected to dip to 7.9 or lower by the end of the century — a 150% change.

The last time ocean chemistry underwent such a radical transformation, Caldeira said, "was when the dinosaurs went extinct."

Until recently, the ocean was seen as a potential reservoir for greenhouse gases. Scientists explored the possibility that carbon dioxide could be trapped in smokestacks, compressed into a gooey liquid and piped directly into the deep sea.

Then the results of Jim Barry's experiments started trickling in.

A biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Barry wanted to know what would happen to sea creatures in the vicinity of a large dose of carbon dioxide.

He anchored a set of small plastic rings onto the seafloor to create an enclosure and sent a robot down to squirt liquid carbon dioxide into the surrounding water. Then he waited to see what would happen to animals in the enclosures and those that happened to swim through the CO2 cloud.

Sea stars, sea cucumbers and sea urchins died immediately. Eighty percent of animals within three feet of the carbon dioxide died. Animals 15 feet away also perished in large numbers.

"When they were adjacent to the CO2 plume, pretty much, it killed everything," Barry said.

Experiments in Germany, Norway and Japan produced similar results. The evidence persuaded the U.S. Department of Energy, which had spent $22 million on such research, including Barry's, to pull the plug . Instead, the department will study the possibility of storing carbon dioxide in the ground and on decreasing emissions at their source.

Scientists say the acidification of the oceans won't be arrested unless the output of CO2 from factories, power plants and automobiles is substantially reduced. Even now, the problem may be irreversible.

"One thing we know for certain is it's not going to be a good thing for the ocean," Barry said. "We just don't know how bad it will be."

Scientists predict the effect will be felt first in the polar oceans and at lower depths, because cold water absorbs more carbon dioxide than warm water. One area of immediate concern is the Bering Sea and other waters around Alaska, home to half of the commercial U.S. fish and shellfish catch.

Because of acidification, waters in the Bering Sea about 280 feet down are running short of the materials that corals and other animals need to grow shells and skeletons. These chemical building blocks are normally abundant at such depths. In coming decades, the impoverished zone is expected to reach closer to the surface. A great quantity of sea life would then be affected.

"I'm getting nervous about that," Feely said.

The first victims of acidification are likely to be cold-water corals that provide food, shelter and reproductive grounds for hundreds of species, including commercially valuable ones such as sea bass, snapper, ocean perch and rock shrimp.

By the end of the century, 70% of cold-water corals will be exposed to waters stripped of the chemicals required for sturdy skeletons, said John Guinotte, an expert on corals at the nonprofit Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue, Wash.

"I liken it to osteoporosis in humans," Guinotte said. "You just can't build a strong structure without the right materials."

Cold-water corals, which thrive in waters as deep as three miles, were discovered only two decades ago. They harbor sponges, which show promise as powerful anti-cancer and antiviral agents; the AIDS drug AZT was formulated using clues from a coral sponge. Scientists fear that these unique ecosystems may be obliterated before they can be fully utilized or appreciated.

Tropical corals will not be affected as quickly because they live in warmer waters that do not absorb as much carbon dioxide. But in 100 years, large tropical reefs — called rain forests of the sea because of their biodiversity — may survive only in patches near the equator.

"Twenty-five percent of all species in the ocean live part of their life cycle on coral reefs. We're afraid we're going to lose these habitats and these species," said Chris Langdon, a coral expert at the University of Miami who has conducted experiments showing that corals grow more slowly when exposed to acidified waters.

Warm-water corals are already dying at high rates as global warming heats oceans and causes corals to "bleach" — lose or expel the symbiotic algae that provide vivid color and nutrients necessary for survival. Pollution, trampling by tourists and dynamiting by fishermen also take a devastating toll. An estimated 20% of the world's corals have disappeared since 1980.

"Corals are getting squeezed from both ends," said Joanie Kleypas, a marine ecologist and coral expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

The question for scientists is whether living things will adapt to acidification. Will some animals migrate to warmer waters that don't lose shell-building minerals as quickly? Will some survive despite the new chemistry? Will complex marine food chains be harmed?

One laboratory experiment showed that a strain of shelled plankton thrived in higher CO2 conditions. But most research has shown that shelled animals and corals stop growing or are damaged.

"We put a lot of faith in the idea that organisms can adapt," Kleypas said, "but organisms have probably not evolved to handle these big changes."

The best analogy to what is occurring today is in the fossil records of a 55-million-year-old event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when the Earth underwent one of the most abrupt and extreme global warming events in history.

The average temperature of the planet rose 9 degrees because of an increase in greenhouse gases. Balmy 70-degree days were common in the Arctic. The sudden warming shifted entire ecosystems to higher and cooler latitudes and drove myriad ocean species to extinction.

Geologists agree that a great warming occurred as a result of greenhouse gases, but until recently were uncertain about the volume of gas involved or how much the acidity of the oceans changed.

James Zachos, a paleo-oceanographer at UC Santa Cruz, made an important discovery in 2003 by drilling into seabed sediments more than two miles beneath the ocean's surface. This muck contains layers of microscopic plankton shells. Their chemical composition reveals what ocean conditions were like when they formed.

Zachos' international team analyzed sediments from a series of cores taken from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean 750 miles west of Namibia. At the bottom of the cores, the team found normal sediments, rich in calcium carbonate from shells — the sign of a healthy ocean.

But higher up, at a point in geologic history when the last major global warming event occurred, the whitish, carbonate-rich ooze gave way to a dark red clay layer free of shells. That condition, the researchers concluded, was caused by a highly acidified ocean. This state of affairs lasted for 40,000 or 50,000 years. It took 60,000 years before the ocean recovered and the sediments appeared normal again.

In a paper published last year in the journal Science, Zachos' team concluded that only a massive release of carbon dioxide could have caused both extreme warming and acidification of ocean waters.

Zachos estimated that 4.5 trillion tons of carbon entered the atmosphere to trigger the event.

It could take modern civilization just 300 years to unleash the same quantity of carbon, according to a variety of projections by researchers.

"This will be a much greater shock," Zachos said. "The change in modern surface ocean pH will be much more extreme than it was 55 million years ago."

Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this report.

Alternative energy market lures controversy and venture capitalists

2007-05-20T09:07:00.001-07:00

Alternative energy market lures controversy and venture capitalists

John Sterlicchi
Monday May 14, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A soya bean field in Springfield, Illinois.

A surprising splash of red ink from a leading US maker of ethanol fuel, along with a research report warning of a potential dotcom-type bubble, has rocked confidence in the burgeoning cleantech market.

The jolt comes at a time when venture capitalists are practically falling over themselves to invest in cleantech startups, no doubt reminiscing for the days when companies like Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon first floated their shares and gave them exit strategies they have been only able to dream about since the bubble burst.

Article continues

In the first quarter of this year US venture capitalists invested $264m (£133m) into 23 cleantech deals, a 41% increase in dollar value over the fourth quarter of 2006, according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

The report, based on data by Thomson Financial, shows that while the 2006 US investment in cleantech of $1.5bn in was only slightly bigger than a blip in the overall total of $26bn, it is growing "exponentially" said Emily Mendell, the vice president of strategic affairs at the NVCA.

According to Lux Research, which has just completed a comprehensive report on the sector, "the warning signs of a bubble are flashing in the energy technology segment, where initial public offering values and venture capital deployments more than doubled last year – setting the stage for a boom and bust".

Lux reported around 930 startups in global solar energy and biofuels arena and that some 200 of them have received some venture capital money.

The $1.5bn figure MoneyTree reported was only $623m in 2005.

Says Michael Holman, a senior analyst at Lux: "I think from looking at the sheer amount of money that is being invested right now we have to think that a lot of that money is now chasing after some opportunities it wouldn't be in a more sober climate."

Later stage institutional investors have also been caught up in the hype. Lux reported that in the energy segment where IPO value rose from $1.6bn in 2005 to $4.1bn in 2006. Most of those companies came public either on London's Aim market or in Frankfurt, because there are less stringent revenue milestones that the US Nasdaq exchange.

However, one ethanol company that chose the Nasdaq disappointed investors this month by reporting a loss when Wall Street analysts were confidently predicting another profitable quarter.

That company is VeraSun Energy, which is the number two producer of ethanol in the US after giant Archer Daniels. It reported a loss of $312,000 on revenues of $144.5m when analysts thought it would better last year's corresponding quarterly profit of $2.7m. Those results sent its share price plummeting 15% to $16.72 , well below its IPO figure of $20. It also dragged down the share prices of Archer Daniels and others in the sector.

Mr Holman is quick to point out that the public has not bought in on the hype as have venture capitalists and consequently many alternative fuels stock prices are not outperforming the market.

"The herd mentality has begun to take over in the venture capital community and there is probably some not very wise money that is flowing into the ethanol segment in particular," he said.

Even before those VeraSun financials came out, Lehman Brothers was also questioning the viability of ethanol suppliers, saying the US just did not have the infrastructure to digest the amount of fuel being manufactured.

VeraSun blamed its travails on the high cost of corn – a situation that may be alleviated when a massive planting of subsidised corn by US farmers is ready for harvest. But experts like Mr Holman believe the future lies not in fuel made from corn or sugar but from cellulose-based farm waste such as corn kennel, wheat and barley straw. Leaves and stalks of plants can also be used as the source of ethanol.

Unperturbed by the hullabaloo about the viability of ethanol or the possibility of a "cleantech bubble" is America's most prominent venture capitalist in the renewable energy space, Vinod Khosla, whose firm has invested in 25 start-ups. Those companies include three that use corn or sugar and four that use cellulosic waste to produce ethanol as well as others that are looking for alternative energy sources using wind, solar and water.

Khosla won't say how much he has invested – estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars - but he believes the rewards will be high and that they will come sooner rather than later: "I suspect most of these (investments) will be public offerings and I expect to see IPOs in months not years. This area is really going to heat up."

He admits there is a possibility of a bubble as "every market that is attractive goes through high expectations".

Nonetheless he is delighted that more venture capitalists are investing and professes to welcome the competition for investment opportunities: "I am encouraging more people to come into this business because I think it will help us switch away from fossil fuels and that's a good thing. And the more experiments that we try the more likely we are to succeed."

He attributes the bad press ethanol is getting to misinformation being supplied by the big oil companies. Those companies have a lot to lose and have launched a massive PR campaign to discredit new technologies, he claimed. Big Oil is "doing what the tobacco companies did when they tried to fight the notion that smoking caused cancer."

Congress is choking on corn-based fuel.

2007-05-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

Ethanol's Bitter Taste
Congress is choking on corn-based fuel.

BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, May 18, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

It was a scant two years ago that Georgia's Saxby Chambliss voted with 73 other giddy senators for an energy bill that required the nation to use 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Georgia's farmers loved corn-based ethanol; Georgia's agri-businesses loved corn-based ethanol; and all that meant that then-Agriculture Committee Chairman Chambliss loved corn-based ethanol, too.

Earlier this year, Mr. Chambliss introduced a bill calling for even greater ethanol use, though with one striking difference: The bill caps the amount of that fuel that can come from corn. Turns out Georgia's chicken farmers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's pork producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's dairy industry hates corn-based ethanol; Georgia's food producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's hunters hate corn-based ethanol. And all that means Mr. Chambliss has had to find a new biofuels religion.

The shine is off corn ethanol, and oh, what a comedown it has been. It was only in January that President Bush was calling for a yet a bijillion more gallons of the wonder-stuff in his State of the Union address, and Iowa's Chuck Grassley was practically doing the Macarena in his seat. And why shouldn't Mr. Grassley and fellow ethanol handmaidens have boogied? They'd forced their first mandate through Congress, corn farmers were rolling in dough, billions in taxpayer dollars were spurring dozens of new ethanol plants--and here was the commander-in-chief calling for yet more yellow dollars. All in the name of national security, too!

Corn ethanol seemed unstoppable, but a remarkable thing happened on the road from Des Moines. Just as the smart people warned, the government's decision to play energy market God and forcibly divert huge amounts of corn stocks into ethanol has played havoc with key sectors of the economy. Corn prices have nearly doubled, which means livestock owners can't afford to feed their animals, and food and drink manufacturers are struggling to buy corn and corn syrup. Environmentalists are sour over new stresses on farmland; international aid groups are moaning that the U.S. is cutting back its charitable food giving, and many of these folks are taking out their anger on Congress.

Call it a case study in how a powerful lobby can overplay its hand. While many members are still publicly touting corn ethanol, privately they are quietly backing away from another round of corn-mania. The most extraordinary sign was the Senate Energy Committee's recent ethanol bill, hailed by Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici as "bipartisan" legislation for more "homegrown fuels." What the committee didn't mention in its press release was that it had built the legislation around Mr. Chambliss's cap on corn ethanol (at 15 billion gallons), and that the rest of the 32 billion-gallon-a-year mandate would have to come from other (still imaginary) sources, say switchgrass. The bill passed 20-3.

It's taken politicians a while to catch on to these anti-ethanol vibes, but they've now got the picture. At an agriculture conference in Indianapolis last fall, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson spoke, delivering their usual fare about how ethanol was the greatest thing since sliced corn bread. They expected warm applause; in the past the entire ag community united around helping their brother corn farmers make a buck. But now that ethanol is literally taking food from their beasts' mouths, much of that community has grown less friendly. According to one attendee, Messrs. Daniels, Johanns and Johnson were later slammed with snippy ethanol questions from angry livestock owners, much to their dazed surprise. Word is that even the presidential candidates--who usually can say no wrong about ethanol while touring the Midwest--are having to be more selective about where they make their remarks.

Things are even hotter in Washington, where lobbying groups are firming up their positions against corn ethanol. The hugely influential National Cattlemen's Beef Association has gone so far as to outline a series of public demands, including an end to any government tax credits (subsidies) for ethanol and an axe to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade--a first. Maybe ethanol really is a miracle fuel. In any event, expect the ethanol call to get harder for Plains state senators such as Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan.

The National Turkey Federation estimates its feed costs have gone up nearly $600 million annually and is surely letting loose on members from turkey states such as Minnesota and Missouri. The National Chicken Council, which represents companies that produce, process and market chickens, has been hitting the southern political caucus, putting pressure on senators from big poultry states such as Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama. Chicken giant Tyson's, the second largest employer in Arkansas (after Wal-Mart), even felt the need to warn about the effect of rising corn prices on its business in its first quarter earnings statement. Food and drink manufacturers, which rely heavily on corn and corn syrup for their products, are also making the Washington rounds. The Grocery Manufacturers Association this week called for Congress to undertake a study before it imposed a bigger ethanol mandate. Soft-drink companies such as Coca-Cola (of Mr. Chambliss's Georgia) are also up in arms.

From the other side, green groups are grousing about the environmental consequences of intensive corn farming. International aid organizations are complaining that ethanol is raising the overall cost of food and diverting grain from poor countries. Ducks Unlimited, part of Washington's "hooks and bullets" conservation lobby, sported a recent article in its magazine complaining that farmers are taking idle land out of conservation programs--land currently home to ducks--and using it for corn farming again.

All this pressure is beginning to hit home. Ethanol isn't going away anytime soon; you can't unring a bill. But senators are said to be readying amendments to offer to the new ethanol bill that would use triggers or waivers to further water down the corn element. Turns out there are huge economic consequences to Congress micromanaging energy policy, and all to aid its campaign donors in agribusiness. A lesson the U.S. is now learning the hard way.

Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, based in Washington. Her column appears Fridays.

Alternative Energy ETF Paints Market Green

2007-05-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

Investor's Business Daily
Alternative Energy ETF Paints Market Green
Thursday May 10, 7:00 pm ET
Jesse Emspak

Alternative energy has come into its own with exchange traded funds.

This week Van Eck Global launched Market Vectors-Global Alternative Energy ETF (NYSE:GEX - News) on the New York Stock Exchange.

The ETF tracks the price and yield performance of the Ardour Global Index (Extra Liquid) . The index, published by Ardour Global Indexes, is designed as a benchmark for the global alternative energy industry.

To get in the index, a company must receive half its revenue from alternative energy or related technologies.

It also has to be in one of five industry groups: alternative energy sources, distributed generation, environmental technologies related to alternative energy, energy efficiency or enabling technologies.

The index includes companies both inside and outside the U.S.

Among the U.S. companies in the index are International Rectifier (NYSE:IRF - News), which makes up 4.61% of assets.

Suntech Power Holdings (NYSE:STP - News) is second at 4.32%.

Bush Administration

Alexander Karsner, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy, says the introduction of the ETFs is a measure of investor confidence in the sector.

Karsner added that the administration sees an exclusive focus on capping emissions as counterproductive. "You can't depend on one silver bullet," he said.

Instead, the investment in new technologies can be one of several strategies.

Joseph LaCorte, a managing member of S-Network, a New York-based consulting firm specializing in the development of indexes, says the index is designed to avoid being too expansive in its definition of alternative energy companies.

Other ETFs

"You could have GE in there, as they run one of the biggest solar panel plants in the world," LaCorte said. "But I don't think they get a lot of revenue from that."

S-Network was one of the firms that developed the index for Ardour.

Ardour, in turn, went to Van Eck Global because of the firm's background in hard assets.

The firm offers four other ETFs: Environmental Services ETF (AMEX:EVX - News), Gold Miners ETF (AMEX:GDX - News), Russia ETF (NYSE:RSX - News) and Steel ETF (AMEX:SLX - News).

Adam Phillips, director of ETF sales at Van Eck, says the Russia ETF tends to track a lot of energy and heavy industry stocks.

The ETFs were all rolled out over the past year. The Russia ETF was the most recent; it started trading April 30. The ETFs represented a total of $671.9 million at the end of March.

LaCorte says there are no immediate plans for more ETFs in the near future, and there are none in registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Two Cheers for the President's Brazilian Ethanol Initiative

2007-05-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

Two Cheers for the President's Brazilian Ethanol Initiative
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.
WebMemo #1401

During his March 2007 tour of Latin America, President Bush pursued bilateral and regional strategies to enhance energy security by expanding sugar cane ethanol production and trade. Brazil and the United States agreed to develop common biofuel standards and to cooperate on research and technology transfer. The President also emphasized facilitating private investment to expand production and consumption of ethanol as the clean alternative fuel in the United States, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. This may go a long way toward stemming Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's anti-American oil alliance on the continent. Good energy policy makes good geopolitics.

But President Bush stopped short. He refused to waive a punitive and discriminatory 54 cent tariff on the importation of ethanol into the United States. This tariff violates the principles of free trade and works against the Administration's goal of energy security for the United States. Thus, only two cheers for the U.S.–Brazil ethanol initiative.

Market Geopolitics

Promoting economically viable alternative energy sources to alleviate energy dependence is an idea whose time has come. The 9/11 attacks, systemic instability in the Middle East, and high oil prices all drive the point home. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 set out a consumption mandate of 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012. Rapidly increasing demand for ethanol surpassed the target of 4 billion gallons consumed in 2006. Demand also outpaced supply in 2006, necessitating imports totaling 653 million gallons, mostly from Brazil and the Caribbean.

New Goals. In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush ambitiously called for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. gasoline consumption by 2017. He also called on the U.S. energy industry to consume 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels (largely ethanol) by that same year. This implies a seven-fold increase in ethanol production, which is all but impossible due to limited land availability in the U.S. and demand for corn as an animal feedstock. Thus, Brazil, the world's largest exporter of ethanol, is crucial to making up the deficit.

Less than two months after his State of the Union address, the President visited Latin America, championing an increase in biofuels cooperation between the U.S. and Brazil. In this, he was likely encouraged by his brother Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and now co-chairman of the Intra-American Ethanol Commission. The two other co-chairmen are Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and Roberto Rodrigues, former Minister of Agriculture of Brazil.

The memorandum of understanding signed in Sao Paolo may well be the first building block of a biofuels alliance that could provide an alternative to the anti-American oil-and-gas, quasi-socialist alliance that is emerging between Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Venezuela is spreading its influence throughout the region by supporting the nationalization of energy assets and providing subsidized energy to poor countries. Chavez is also promoting the PetroCaribe initiative, which facilitates the sale of discounted oil to Caribbean nations. In order to embarrass the U.S. government, Chavez also sells subsidized heating oil to the states of Massachusetts and Maine.

By emphasizing the importance of involving Central American and Caribbean countries in the ethanol equation, the United States has an opportunity to boost new industries in these nations. Jamaica, which was the first nation to sign a bilateral agreement with Venezuela under the PetroCaribe pact, is also Brazil's leading choice as an intermediate destination for the refinement of ethanol destined for the United States.

Beyond that, increased ethanol production and trade in the Western hemisphere and beyond will send a strong signal to oil producing countries and their cartel, OPEC: Stop driving prices up by regulating production, or else your customers will buy more ethanol to satisfy their fuel needs.

Protectionism. Frustrating progress, however, are the protectionist domestic politics and trade policies of the United States. Ethanol from corn enjoys a 51 cent per gallon federal tax credit, while imported sugar cane ethanol is punished with an import duty of 54 cents per gallon and an ad valorem tariff of 2.5 percent. But Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) member states may export ethanol produced from at least 50 percent agricultural feedstock to the U.S. free of duty. If the local feedstock content is lower, limitations apply on the quantity of duty-free ethanol imports—the greater of 60 million gallons or 7 percent of the U.S. domestic ethanol market.

Brazilian sugar cane ethanol costs 25 percent less to make than its U.S. corn counterpart. Despite the tariffs, the U.S. remained the primary destination for Brazilian ethanol in 2006. This was recognized by Senator Richard Lugar (R–IN), who welcomed the new U.S.–Brazilian cooperation as a move to improve the U.S. image in Latin America and increase energy security: "All possibilities for growth in bio-fuels production must be explored to decrease our ‘oil addiction.'"

Competition for ethanol is emerging quickly in the global market. As Japan prepares to mandate three percent ethanol content for its gasoline, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation announced a deal to provide Brazil's Petrobras with $8 billion to increase its production of ethanol. As a result, Japan is projected to absorb close to 90 percent of Brazil's exports.

Expanding the Ethanol Alliance

While in San Paolo, the President refused to remove the trade-distorting sugar cane ethanol tariff. Nevertheless, the National Farmers Union and Renewable Fuels Association criticized him for these first signs of ethanol cooperation. Senators Chuck Grassley (R–IA) and John Thune (R–SD) criticized the agreement with Brazil, calling for subsidized and ephemeral energy "independence" instead of realistic energy security based on cooperation with a large, stable democracy in Latin America.

Protectionism on the domestic front should not become a stumbling block on the road to energy security and regional stability—the issues President Bush was attempting to address with the new ethanol alliance with Brazil. Therefore, the Bush Administration should:

* Eliminate the tariffs and quotas on sugar-cane ethanol before 2009. The White House should lead the way, in cooperation with the Department of Energy, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Agriculture. This is crucial to convince Brazil and other countries contemplating expanding ethanol production that the United States can provide a reliable market for their ethanol exports. Market-distorting U.S. policies will only hinder the development of ethanol as a global, competitive commodity. With today's technologies, domestic producers of corn-based ethanol will be unable to meet the goals envisaged by the President in his 2007 State of the Union speech. Ethanol importation will be necessary.
* Develop codes and standards for ethanol. This should be accomplished by the U.S. and Brazilian ethanol manufacturers, with the American and Brazilian Departments of Energy leading implementation on the government side. Standardization of ethanol by the world's two largest producing countries will help ethanol become a globally traded commodity, just like oil. This would further entice companies around the world to produce ethanol.
* Expand cooperation on technology transfer between U.S. and Brazilian companies. The U.S. possesses significant technological know-how and the financial resources that will be crucial to the expansion of ethanol production worldwide. With U.S. cooperation, other Latin American countries, including Peru and Colombia, African countries, India, and Thailand could boost their ethanol production significantly.
* Involve Central American and the Caribbean countries in the International Biofuels Forum to send a clear signal to these nations that there is a potential for them to play an important role in the global ethanol market.

Conclusion

President Bush deserves praise for taking an important first step to develop cooperation with Brazil on ethanol. This will benefit U.S. energy security and America's stature in the Western hemisphere, as well as send a message to the truculent leader of Venezuela. Still, there is room for improving the ethanol situation by waiving the tariffs on sugar cane ethanol from Brazil.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

The Ethanol Mandate Should Not Be Expanded

2007-05-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

The Ethanol Mandate Should Not Be Expanded
by Ben Lieberman
Backgrounder #2020

The new ethanol mandate is perhaps the most disappointing program in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Since taking effect in 2006, this measure has increased energy and food prices while doing little to reduce oil imports or improve the environment.

Based on this track record, the Administration and Congress should now be debating the repeal of this ill-advised and anti-consumer measure. Instead, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush proposed greatly expanding the mandate.[1] Regrettably, this may be one of the few energy policy ideas upon which he and Congress can agree.

Any effort to increase the ethanol mandate is misguided because it would exacerbate the problems created by the current requirements without appreciably reducing oil imports or protecting the environment.

Bad News for Consumers

The 2005 energy bill mandated that 4 billion gallons of renewable fuel (mostly corn-based ethanol) must be added to the gasoline supply in 2006. That amount rises to 4.7 billion gallons for 2007 and 7.5 billion in 2012. These targets represent a large percentage increase in ethanol use but are still only a small fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline that the U.S. currently uses every year.[2]

This mandate comes on top of other pro-ethanol provisions, most notably a 51 cent per gallon tax credit. Other incentives include payments to corn farmers and subsidies for small ethanol producers. These add up to $5.1 billion to $6.8 billion per year—roughly $1.00 per gallon of ethanol.[3] Thanks in part to these incentives, current ethanol use is above the mandated levels, but without any government interference, the ethanol market would be considerably smaller. The domestic ethanol industry also benefits from tariffs limiting ethanol imports, mostly of sugar-derived ethanol from Brazil, which is produced more efficiently than ethanol from corn.

While a boon to Midwestern corn farmers and big ethanol producers like Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has been bad news for the driving public. Ethanol usually costs more than gasoline, so adding it to gasoline increases fuel prices at the pump.[4]

Ordinary vehicles can use gasoline blends containing up to 10 percent ethanol, and specially modified vehicles can use fuel that is up to 85 percent ethanol. However, ethanol lowers fuel economy because a gallon of ethanol has only two-thirds of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline.[5] Difficulties in transporting it to markets far from the Midwest and other logistical problems add further to the price of ethanol in several regions.

Ethanol use at current levels has also led to skyrocketing corn prices as the available supply is split between food and fuel uses. This has led to higher prices for corn products and things such as corn-fed meat.[6] The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that the ethanol mandate will continue to apply upward pressure on food prices in the coming years.[7] Even the price of tortillas, the dietary staple of many low-income Mexicans, has been affected.[8]

No Appreciable Improvement in Energy Security

Beyond costs, the claimed benefits of ethanol use have not materialized. For one thing, it does not reduce oil imports as much as promised, partially because a gallon of ethanol can do the work of (and therefore replace) only two-thirds of a gallon of gasoline. In addition:

*
A significant amount of petroleum-based products is used in growing corn, such as the diesel fuel for tractors and harvesters;[9]
*
Certain components of gasoline must be removed before adding ethanol to prevent the overall blend from violating environmental requirements under Clean Air Act provisions, which are applicable in many parts of the country; and
*
Transporting ethanol requires more energy than transporting gasoline because ethanol transported by pipeline (the most energy-efficient means of transport) becomes contaminated by moisture along the way. Instead, ethanol is shipped via petroleum-using trucks, barges, and railroads.

The current ethanol mandate will supplant only 1.1 percent of petroleum imports by 2012, without taking into account the petroleum inputs in ethanol production and use.[10] Once these inputs are taken into account, that figure falls by half to about 0.5 percent, according to one analysis.[11] Others suggest a somewhat higher percentage, but still in the very low single digits.[12] In any event, the energy security gains from ethanol use are minute, especially in relation to its costs.

Overrated Environmental Benefits

The claimed environmental benefits of ethanol are also suspect. Although promoted as a means of reducing vehicular emissions that contribute to smog, ethanol is a mixed bag. It lowers some types of pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, but increases others, such as the evaporative emissions that contribute to smog.[13] The fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation required for corn farming in some areas also have negative environmental impacts.[14] These impacts will only worsen if forests are cleared or marginal lands are planted to expand corn acreage to meet increasing demand.[15]

The President has touted the benefits of ethanol in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which are linked to global warming.[16] Carbon dioxide is a natural constituent of the atmosphere, but it is also the byproduct of the combustion of fossil fuels, including gasoline. By some measures, using ethanol in vehicles results in fewer carbon dioxide emissions than an equivalent amount of gasoline. However, after taking into account the carbon dioxide emitted from ethanol production, the reduction in emissions is modest.[17]

Overall, the costs of the ethanol mandate are substantial, while the benefits are small at best. The only real winners are the direct beneficiaries of this special-interest program, mainly corn farmers and ethanol producers.

Expanding the Mandate: Making a Bad Idea Worse

Despite the mandate’s shortcomings, the President has announced that he wants to increase it nearly fivefold to 35 billion gallons by 2017.[18] Several bills in Congress would set similarly ambitious goals.[19]

Of course, a higher ethanol mandate would sup¬plant somewhat more than 1.1 percent of imported oil, but the current mandate is proving costly enough. Raising the targets would only intensify the problems. In fact, dedicating the entire U.S. corn crop to ethanol, which would be prohibitively costly, would probably not meet the expanded ethanol goals.[20] This means that substantial new sources of ethanol would be needed.

One free-market policy could increase ethanol supplies in the U.S.: Eliminating tariffs and regulatory barriers to ethanol imports would expand access to global sources, thereby lowering prices.[21] Predictably, such proposals have provoked strong opposition from the domestic corn lobby. In any event, the small volume of ethanol available on the global market would still leave the U.S. far short of the 35 billion gallon target.

For these reasons, the President has also promised more money for research into cellulosic ethanol, which is made from wood chips, grasses, agricultural waste, or other plant materials. The President has expressed confidence that these additional means of producing ethanol can supplement the corn-based variety and meet the 35 billion gallon target in a cost-effective manner.

However, cellulosic ethanol is far from economically viable at this point,[22] and this kind of federally directed alternative energy research program has a poor track record.[23] Usually, the money is wasted on boondoggles like the Carter-era Synfuels program—an expensive federal program to make motor fuels from coal and other sources that was a complete failure—while diverting resources away from more useful avenues of research and development. If past experience with Washington’s attempts to choose alternative energy winners and losers is any guide, cellulosic ethanol will fall considerably short of the current hype.

What Congress and the Administration Should Do

Instead of trying to pick alternative energy winners and losers, Congress and the Administration should:

*
Seriously consider repealing the ethanol mandate instead of expanding it, and
*
Eliminate tariff and regulatory barriers to ethanol imports.

Creating a 35 billion gallon ethanol mandate in the hope that technological breakthroughs will help to meet it is not responsible policy. Given the serious problems with the much smaller current mandate, this is the last thing the federal government should be expanding.
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

[1] The White House, "Twenty in Ten: Strengthening America’s Energy Security," January 24, 2007, at www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2007/initiatives/energy.html (March 26, 2007).

[2] Brent D. Yacobucci, "Fuel Ethanol: Background and Public Policy Issues," Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, updated October 19, 2006, pp. 5–6, at http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/76323.pdf (March 26, 2007).

[3] Doug Koplow, "Biofuels—At What Cost?" International Institute for Sustainable Development, October 2006, pp. 56–61, at www.globalsubsidies.org/IMG/pdf/biofuels_subsidies_us.pdf (March 26, 2007).

[4] Yacobucci, "Fuel Ethanol: Background and Public Policy Issues," pp. 10–12.

[5] U.S. Department of Energy, Annual Energy Outlook 2007, p. 59.

[6] Keith Collins, Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture, statement before the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, U.S. Senate, January 10, 2007, pp. 10–11, at www.usda.gov/oce/newsroom/congressional_testimony/ Collins_011007.pdf (March 26, 2007), andIan Swanson, "Ethanol Divides Corn, Livestock Interests," The Hill, February 8, 2007, at http://thehill.com/business--lobby/ethanol-divides-corn-livestock-interests-2007-02-08.html (March 26, 2007).

[7] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Projections to 2016, February 2007, pp. 20–26, at www.ers.usda.gov/publications/oce071/oce20071.pdf (March 26, 2007).

[8] Manuel Roig-Franzia, "A Culinary and Cultural Staple in Crisis: Mexico Grapples with Soaring Prices for Corn—and Tortillas," The Washington Post, January 27, 2007, p. A1, at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601896_pf.html (March 26, 2007).

[9] When non-petroleum energy inputs, especially the coal and natural gas used at ethanol production facilities, are also taken into account, the overall net energy balance for ethanol is only slightly positive. In other words, it takes nearly as much energy to make ethanol as it provides. See Global Insight, "Winners and Losers of Ethanol Mandates: Agricultural Producers, US Consumers, US Security," June 2005, pp. 20–34, and Dennis Avery, "Biofuels, Food, or Wildlife?—The Massive Land Costs of U.S. Ethanol," Competitive Enterprise Institute Issue Analysis, September 21, 2006, p. 6, at www.cei.org/pdf/5532.pdf (March 26, 2007). By some accounts, ethanol is a net energy loser. See David Pimentel, "Ethanol Fuels: Energy Balance, Economics, and Environmental Impacts Are Negative," Natural Resources Research, Vol. 12, No. 2 (June 2003), pp. 127–134.

[10] Global Insight, "Winners and Losers of Ethanol Mandates," pp. 28–34, and U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, "Renewable Fuels Legislation Impact Analysis," July 2005, pp. 4–5, at http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/service/s606_s650_analysis.pdf (March 26, 2007).

[11] Global Insight, "Winners and Losers of Ethanol Mandates," p. 29.

[12] International Energy Agency, "Biofuels for Transport: An International Perspective," April 2004, pp. 51–66, at www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2004/biofuels2004.pdf (March 26, 2007), and Alexander E. Farrell, Richard J. Plevin, Brian T. Turner, Andrew D. Jones, Michael O’Hare, and Daniel M. Kammen, "Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals," Science, Vol. 311, No. 5760 (January 27, 2006), pp. 506–509.

[13] National Research Council, Ozone-Forming Potential of Reformulated Gasoline, 1999, pp. 4–10.

[14] Jason Hill, Erik Nelson, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, and Douglas Tiffany, "Environmental, Economic, and Energetic Costs and Benefits of Biodiesel and Ethanol Biofuels," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 103, No. 30 (July 25, 2006), pp. 11206–11210, at www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0604600103v1 (March 26, 2007).

[15] Avery, "Biofuels, Food, or Wildlife?" pp. 10–11.

[16] The White House, "Twenty in Ten."

[17] Farrell et al., "Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals," and Hill et al., "Environmental, Economic, and Energetic Costs and Benefits of Biodiesel and Ethanol Biofuels."

[18] The White House, "Fact Sheet: Strengthening America’s Energy Security and Improving the Environment," January 24, 2007, at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070124-5.html (March 26, 2007).

[19] See Biofuels Security Act of 2007, S. 23, 110th Cong., 1st Sess., § 101.

[20] Hill et al., "Environmental, Economic, and Energetic Costs and Benefits of Biodiesel and Ethanol Biofuels," p. 11208.

[21] Ben Lieberman, "Let the Ethanol Imports Flow," Business Week, June 5, 2006, p. 136, at www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_23/b3987128.htm (March 26, 2007).

[22] Avery, "Biofuels, Food, or Wildlife?" pp. 14–17; Dave Juday, "Synfuels II: The Ethanol Numbers Don’t Add Up," The Weekly Standard, November 13, 2006;Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren, "The Ethanol Boondoggle," The Milken Institute Review, 1st Quarter 2007, p. 27; andU.S. Department of Energy, Annual Energy Outlook 2007, p. 58.

[23] Thomas H. Lee, Ben C. Ball, Jr., and Richard D. Tabors, Energy Aftermath (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1990), pp. 167: "In summary, the experience of the 1970s and 1980s taught us that if a technology is commercially viable, then government support is not needed; and if a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support will make it so." See alsoJerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren, "Soft Energy Versus Hard Facts: Powering the 21st Century," in Ron Bailey, ed., Earth Report 2000 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999), pp. 146–147.

Gas OPEC: A Stealthy Cartel Emerges

2007-05-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

Gas OPEC: A Stealthy Cartel Emerges
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.
WebMemo #1423

Steadily and stealthily, a natural gas cartel is emerging. The Gas Exporting Countries' Forum is the brainchild of some of the world's least democratic countries—Iran, Qatar, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela—and it took a step toward emergence at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, on April 9.[1] The cartel is led by those who stand to benefit most from its future geopolitical muscle: Russia and Iran, and specifically President Vladimir Putin and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The United States should create a global coalition of energy consumers to oppose oil and gas cartels and to bring market principles to the natural gas industry. The U.S. should also liberalize its own regulations to allow energy exploration in the Arctic, in the Rocky Mountains, and along the Pacific and Atlantic Continental shelves.

Russia's Global Gas Strategy

Moscow is playing a complex and sophisticated game, one that is likely to maximize its advantages as the leading gas producer with the largest reserves on the planet.

First, Russia's approach is gradualist. Moscow has never been openly enthusiastic about a gas cartel but has waited for an opportunity to launch one. Viktor Khristenko, Russia's Vice Premier in charge of energy, rejected the idea just days before President Putin called a gas OPEC "an interesting idea" during his February 2007 visit to Qatar. This past week, however, in Doha, Khristenko said, "We have not, do not have, and will not have the goal of organizing an alliance against anyone."

The message in the Russian media after the summit was that no documents were signed to create a gas cartel—a useful message for Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas monopoly. But careful examination of the official announcement and media reports reveals that there is reason for concern.

Second, Russia's approach is stealthy. Instead of announcing the cartel prematurely, and spooking consumer countries, it is quietly putting the component parts into place. In Doha, Russia initiated the creation of a "High Level Group" that will "research" the pricing of gas and develop methodologies using commonly accepted gas pricing models. Conveniently, Russia will staff this group.

Third, Russia is able to appear reasonable. The immediate price-regulating function of the emerging cartel is supported by those Latin American countries that want to dispense with market principles in the gas trade: Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina. With Iran and Venezuela (supported by Bolivia and Argentina) applying their OPEC-honed instincts to gas and demanding price regulation, Russia can afford to stand aside and let others do the talking. Nevertheless, an unnamed "high ranking member of the Russian delegation" to Doha told RIA Novosti that "as the gas market undergoes globalization, certainly such an organization [a gas cartel] will appear and is necessary."

Fourth, and most importantly, a cartel by any other name is still a cartel. Members of the GECF agreed to discuss dividing up the consumer markets between them, particularly in Europe, where Russia and Algeria are major players. For example, if Russia agrees not to challenge Algeria's position in Spain, Algeria will steer clear of Germany. This will clearly challenge the European Union's energy liberalization and gas deregulation policy, which is scheduled to take effect on July 1.

The group members plan to "reach strategic understandings" on export volumes, schedules of deliveries, and the construction of new pipelines. They also plan to jointly explore and develop gas fields and coordinate start-ups and production schedules. To continue their work, members will gather for their next annual meeting in Moscow and plan to create a permanent secretariat. Despite protestations to the contrary, this has all the characteristics of a cartel in the making.

Not Tomorrow

Oil is a global commodity, but natural gas is not. When it is piped, prices are set as far as 15 to 20 years in advance through long-term contracts. However, liquid natural gas (LNG) is rapidly becoming a worldwide commodity.

By 2010, LNG's share of the world's total gas consumption will double. Thus, price gouging through production quota manipulation may come faster than many experts expect if the GECF becomes a new OPEC and if consumer nations do not unite and flex their muscle. Moreover, Russia and Iran are interested in increasing their geopolitical leverage against the EU in areas which often have little to do with energy.

Major gas producers share another characteristic. Qatar, Turkmenistan, Brunei, and Venezuela, to name just a few, have one feature in common: a democracy deficit. Just like OPEC, the gas cartel will be a formidable global force that can be used to oppose, challenge, and possibly weaken market-based democracies through high prices and wealth transfer. Such a cartel may cut deals with similarly undemocratic large-scale consumers, while forcing the West to pay full price.

Coordinated Global Action Needed

The Bush Administration barely reacted to the Doha meeting. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R–FL), Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to the Secretary of State that the establishment of a gas OPEC would be a "major and long-term threat to the world energy supply" which the U.S. should "vigorously oppose." Officials express grave concern, but only in private.

As the case of OPEC demonstrates, closing markets to competition, promoting national oil companies (NOCs), and limiting production through a quota system results in limited supply and higher oil prices. Gas, in the long run, will not be different. The United States should open its vast natural gas resources on- and off- shore to further exploration and production and encourage its neighbors in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean to do the same.

Finally, the Bush Administration must develop a clear global policy to limit cartelization of the gas markets. Specifically, the U.S. should work with the European Union member states, Japan, China, India, and other countries to prevent the cartelization of the gas sector. This can be accomplished through cooperation in the International Energy Agency, which China and India should be invited to join, and by applying anti-trust legislation worldwide against state-owned companies that are actively involved in cartel-like behavior in energy markets. The U.S. should also work closely with those within GCEF who oppose Russian–Iranian domination. These include Azerbaijan, Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway. The National Security Council and the National Economic Council should take the lead in developing this policy. Unless buyer solidarity is translated into action, energy consumers and economic growth will suffer worldwide.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

[1] The forum was created in 2001 by Algeria, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, and Turkmenistan.

The Water Resources Development Act of 2007: A Pork Fest for Wealthy Beach-Front Property Owners

2007-05-16T16:13:00.001-07:00

The Water Resources Development Act of 2007: A Pork Fest for Wealthy Beach-Front Property Owners
by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
WebMemo #1458

On April 19, 2007, the House passed the pork-laden Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (H.R. 1495) and sent it to the Senate, where it has acquired additional earmarks. Some of these earmarks would require the Army Corps of Engineers to finance a series of costly projects that benefit the rich and influential who can afford a lobbyist with access to Members of Congress and committee staff.

Notwithstanding continuing concern over the flood protection afforded storm-vulnerable cities like New Orleans, Galveston, Miami, and Biloxi, as well as the need to rebuild and strengthen existing but inadequate flood protection systems, this Congress appears intent on diverting taxpayer dollars from core responsibilities to water-sports and other low-priority schemes. Indicative of this bill's misplaced spending priorities is the authorization of more money for one of Representative Don Young's (R–AK) infamous Bridges to Nowhere (Section 4005).

To its credit, the Bush Administration's recent Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) warns of the wasteful spending included in the bill and the inclusion of many projects outside the three main missions of the Corps. The SAP states that "the Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1495 in its current form."[1] Specifically, the Administration expressed concern about spending proposals targeted to wastewater and drinking water infrastructure projects—heretofore a state and local responsibility—and "a costly commitment to periodic nourishment of sand beaches." The Corps' beach replenishment program reflects a trickle-up economic policy designed to transfer the tax dollars of ordinary Americans to protect the vacation homes and seasonal businesses of the well-to-do.[2]

As has been the case in most years, the Corps budget is fully earmarked, and many of the included projects focus on its core missions of inland navigation and flood control and protection. While many of these projects have been subject to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis to ensure that the estimated value of their benefits exceeds their costs, other projects in the bill instead reflect the influence of privileged constituencies and their lobbyists working on retainer. Among the many questionable earmarks included in the bill are:

* Funding for a study on the impact on navigation of the proposed Knik Arm Bridge (renamed "Don Young's Way" in SAFTEA-LU) at Cook Inlet in Alaska (Section 4005);
* Riverfront development to enhance recreation in Perth Amboy, New Jersey (Section 4048);
* Ecosystem restoration of the Walla Walla River Basin in Washington (Section 4063);
* Water supply projects in Wilke County and Yadkinville, North Carolina, and Abilene, Texas (Sections 4058, 4059 and 4077);
* Authorization of $5,300,000 for the construction of Lake Lanier Olympic Center in Georgia (Section 5061); and
* Authorization of $65,000,000 for a Lido Key Beach, Florida, replenishment project (Section 3036).

Several other beach replenishment projects have been added to Section 1001 of H.R. 1495, including:

* $21,000,000 for Imperial Beach, California, beach replenishment;
* $101,000, 000 for beach replenishment at Ocean City, Sea Isle City, and contiguous New Jersey seashore resorts;
* $59,000,000 for central New Jersey seashore beach replenishment;
* $122,000,000 for beach replenishment in northern New Jersey; and
* $10,600,000 for beach replenishment on Pawley's Island, South Carolina.

Behind the diversion of taxpayer money from essential flood safety programs to geographically and seasonally limited recreation activities like the Corps' beach replenishment program is a trade association—the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA)—that represents seaside resorts. Also involved are lobbying firms that specialize in obtaining resort-oriented earmarks, among which is Marlowe & Co., a firm that also represents the ASBPA and serves as a contact on the Association's press release.

As noted in an earlier Heritage report,[3] Marlowe & Co. (headquartered at 1776 K Street, NW, in Washington, D.C.) is one of the leading beach earmark acquisition firms. Lobbying reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate included many contracts between Marlowe and dozens of beach resort communities seeking money from the Corps for "beach nourishment" projects, among them Pawley's Island, South Carolina, and Imperial Beach, California, both of which would receive earmarks from H.R. 1495. Each town paid Marlowe & Co. $20,000 for services rendered during the first half of 2006.[4] Should Congress go forward and give Pawley's Island the $10.6 million Marlowe has requested for it, the town will have received a remarkable return on its retainer: $10.60 of taxpayer money for every two pennies it paid Marlowe.

Other reports filed with the Senate indicate that Marlowe & Co. also represents (among its many other clients) Virginia Beach, Virginia; St. Augustine Point, Florida; Cape May Point, New Jersey; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It further reports that the ASBPA paid almost $10,000 for similar services, including advocacy before the Office and Management and Budget "to ensure that shore protection is not a low budget priority."

In a 2004 interview with The Hill, firm owner Howard Marlowe bragged: "We know beaches!" The article went on to note that the company earned more than $700,000 in 2003 and estimates that it has won more that $100 million in beach projects since it has been in the business.[5]

Even more revealing was information that Marlowe & Co. had posted on its Web site until 2005, which promoted its services by providing prospective clients with its success stories. For its beach nourishment practice, the firm once provided 14 pages listing the 170 beach earmarks it had secured for its clients between 1998 and 2005. Although its Web site no longer provides any details on the congressional favors it receives—visitors to the site are urged to contact the firm directly for details about its successes—the 2005 list is still available at the original URL.[6]

Assuming that Marlowe was describing his company's success accurately, one has to wonder exactly how his firm was allowed to participate so intimately in the congressional budgeting, authorizing, and appropriations processes. Indeed, as these and other earmarks suggest, and as the lobbyists' own promotional materials imply, Congress and the congressional committees responsible for water resources and the Army Corps of Engineers have effectively privatized some portion of the congressional budget process to the K Street lobbying firms and appear to have allowed them wide latitude in selecting what projects are included in the legislation.

Once a bill is passed and signed into law, the money for the project is guaranteed, and the Members of Congress who endorsed the project respond by issuing press releases bragging about the money they have brought back to the district, while the lobbyists involved brag to current and prospective clients about the money that they have obtained for their paying clients.

Although the beach resort people represent only one of many factions attempting to divert Army Corps of Engineers money to their personal benefit, they do offer a useful case study of how the growing influence of today's lobbying and advocacy profession can lead to policies that undermine the safety and security of the American people. Much of the responsible policy focus has been on how best to use the federal resources available to secure from danger many of the nation's key metropolitan areas and crowded commercial centers, but the ASBPA uses what political clout it has to divert those resources to recreation and the protection of seasonal vacation homes and businesses.

When President Bush presented his FY 2008 budget with its focus on core safety responsibilities, the President of the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association—Harry Simmons, Mayor of Caswell Beach, North Carolina—responded in language reminiscent of "surfer-speak": "This budget request for 2008 is nothing short of a wipe-out for our nation's coastal communities."[7] Marlowe's Web site provides a table comparing the President's beach spending plans with what an unidentified source suggests might be needed. Whereas the President proposes $54 million in beach work, the unidentified source claims that $280 million is needed, some of which need-based funding would be directed to Marlowe clients as per lobbying reports filed with the United States Senate.[8]

In defense of its urgent demands for more spending, Mr. Simmons provided a helpful ecology lesson to the readers of his press release:

This budget is bad for beaches. Replenishing beaches by adding sand to the system protects coastal habitat by replacing the sand that marine life needs to live. Without sand on a beach, sea turtles, birds, plants and other forms of marine wildlife won't have an ecological infrastructure in place.[9]

There you have it: No earmarks, No sand! While we do not know for certain the President's views on "turtles, birds, plants and other forms of marine life," we do know that his budget priorities focus on a life form missing from Mr. Simmons's complaint: people. And we know from sad experience that incompetence in Washington's oversight of, and resource allocation for, the Army Corps of Engineers contributed to the disaster in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina passed by on August 29, 2005.

How much of that disaster was due to the diversion of resources that Mr. Simmons and others continue to urge is something worthy of a more detailed examination to ensure that another New Orleans–type disaster never happens again.[10] Until then, these low-priority projects should be stripped from H.R. 1495. If they are not, the President should give serious consideration to vetoing any bill that includes them.

Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

[1] Senator Barbara Boxer, "Statement of Administration Policy, H.R. 1495—Water Resources Development Act of 2007," May 11, 2007.

[2] For a more detailed analysis of misplaced Corps priorities, see Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., "The Army Corps of Engineers: Reallocating Its Spending to Offset Replacement Costs in New Orleans," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1892, November 4, 2005.

[3]Ibid.

[4] All lobbying reports are available at http://sopr.senate.gov.

[5] Jim Snyder, "Marlowe & Co.: ‘We Know Beaches' Howard Marlowe Is K Street's Man on the Waterfront," The Hill, July 6, 2004, at www.hillnews.com/business/070604_profile.aspx (October 24, 2005).

[6] The original list for these earmarks—"Summary of the Federal Coastal Accomplishments of Marlowe & Company," revised June 2005—can still be found at www.marloweco.com/files/MCo_coastal_
accomplishments_(2).pdf (May 13, 2007).

[7] American Shore & Beach Preservation Association, "Opportunities to Protect Coastal Communities Eroding in the Administration's FY 2008 Budget Request," February 5, 2006.

[8] Table, "FY '08 Beach Projects and Studies," at www.marloweco.com/files/Beach_Funding_Table_08
_NEW.pdf.

[9] American Shore & Beach Preservation Association, "Opportunities to Protect Coastal Communities Eroding in the Administration's FY 2008 Budget Request."

[10] For an excellent review of congressional diversions of resources away from levees, see Michael Grunwald, "Money Flowed to Questionable Projects: State Still Leads in Army Corps Spending, But Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods," The Washington Post, September 8, 2005, p. A1, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005
/09/07/AR2005090702462.html (October 24, 2005).

The National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency

2007-05-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

The National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.
Heritage Lecture #1021

(Delivered March 22, 2007)

The United States is the largest oil importer in the world, bringing in 13.5 million barrels per day (mbd), which accounts for 63.5 percent of total U.S. daily consumption (20.6 mbd).[1] Oil from the Middle East--specifically, the Persian Gulf--accounts for 20 percent of U.S. oil imports, and this dependence is growing. By 2017, the U.S. will be importing approximately 68 percent of its oil needs. Oil consumption represents 40 percent of America's energy needs, primarily used in ground and air transportation. The dependence of the U.S. and the global economy on oil is growing, which can have dire consequences for the economic well-being of the United States, our national security, and the American way of life.

Securing the stability of our oil supply to the best extent possible in cooperation with traditional U.S. allies, while bringing on board the emerging major oil consumers, such as India and China, should be the key diplomatic strategy for the intermediate term. At the same time, the U.S. needs to deter those, from Tehran to Caracas, who are seeking to harm and destabilize the world energy supply chain.

Working with suppliers and consumers to expand the transparency of, and international access to, existing oil supply by international oil companies, is a policy for the longer term. Vast U.S. domestic oil and gas reserves cannot and should not be outside of the reach of our consumers and our energy corporations. Expanding our energy mix to include non-traditional oil sources, such as oil sands, oil shale, deep off-shore oil, and heavy crude is another important component in diversifying supply, as is producing more transportation fuel from coal and "gas-to-liquids." Finally, encouraging investment and innovation in truly competitive alternative fuels and technologies, from sugar cane ethanol to plug-in hybrids--which will eventually compete with and possibly replace the current 19th century automotive technology--may be the best long-term answer for enhancing our energy security in the 21st century.

Securing the U.S. Energy Supply

The security and availability of global energy resources directly affects the U.S. economy. U.S. policies should enhance the security, stability, and economic development and the rule of law in oil-producing countries to ensure that energy resources remain readily available, ample, affordable, and safe--for everyone's benefit.

In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said, "[W]e have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."[2] Recognizing the problem is laudable; however, relatively little has been done to solve it. There is a broad consensus in America, from the President to the man on the street, that the current situation is detrimental to the country's economic health.

The world, both developed and developing, is dependent on unstable or otherwise inhospitable regions for its oil supply. This social and political instability characterizes all of the major oil provinces: the Middle East, Venezuela, and Africa. Russia presents a separate set of issues which will be dealt with below. Dealing with security and political factors limiting the development of oil and gas production needs to be a high priority for any Administration--Republican or Democrat. This is particularly challenging because there are so many moving parts in this complex system.

One of the most important avenues for dealing with the oil shortage is through conservation. Another is developing substitute and alternative fuels, such as ethanol, methanol, and gas-to-liquid. Higher oil prices are likely to dictate new engine and car designs that will work more efficiently and/ or run on different fuels. The plug-in hybrids and other technological breakthroughs may eventually wean the world from the internal combustion engine and oil dependence. However, such technological and structural transformations are, like many things, likely to take longer than many expect, are certain to require massive investments, and are beyond the scope of this testimony.

For the near term, let us focus on the principal avenues of securing our oil supply, which include:

*
Deterring anti-status quo players, such as Iran, Venezuela, and the global radical Islamist movement with its terrorist organizations;
*
Cooperating with local governments to enhance the protection of critical shipping choke points, such as the Suez Canal, the Bosporus, Bab-el-Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, etc., and developing contingency plans for sea-borne terrorism/piracy aimed at tanker ships;
*
Boosting an international coalition of oil consumers by bringing aboard India, China and other major emerging markets, such as Brazil and Turkey; and
*
Securing open access and a level playing field for international oil companies and national oil companies. Specifically, consumer countries should make as their top foreign policy priorities openness of investment regimes; stable, predictable, and transparent energy regulatory systems based on the rule of law in producing countries; and fighting corruption.

The Middle East

The Middle East's Persian Gulf is the richest and most important oil province in the world. Forty percent of the daily shipment of oil passes through the Gulf. Approximately 20 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Gulf.

Currently, the security and stability of Middle East oil is threatened by ongoing conflicts in Iraq; an aggressive and nuclear Iran; and radical Islamist movements, with their terrorist arms, whose goals include toppling regimes throughout the Gulf, including the swing producer of oil, Saudi Arabia.

Islamist movements, nurtured to a great extent by oil revenues from Gulf states, aim to eventually create a global Islamic empire--the Caliphate. These movements ultimately strive to subjugate and convert non-Islamic countries to their brand of Islam. This is a very long-term project, and ultimately, it will hopefully be a futile one. However, in the meantime, the existence and the goals of these movements pose an immediate threat to the security of some of the most crucial sectors of the world oil supply.

Sellers' Market. Today's global oil market is operating without the benefit of additional production capacity or significant strategic petroleum reserves beyond the U.S. reserves. The Saudi spare capacity has deteriorated over the past decade by one-half, from 3-4 mbd to 1-1.5 mbd. To make matters worse, some experts question reserve estimates provided by national oil companies in the Gulf and elsewhere, as these numbers are not independently audited. Without a clear understanding of how much oil is available, the world may be up for more nasty surprises.

Terrorist attacks that have been carried out to date on the oil infrastructure have clearly caught oil producers unprepared. For example, al-Qaeda's February 24, 2005, attack on the Aramco facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, sent shock waves through the world's financial markets. On the same day, the price of oil on international markets jumped nearly $2 per barrel, despite the attack's complete failure (the terrorists and two security guards were killed.)[3]

Most analysts agree that the February attack, an additional attempt on March 28, 2005, and a 9/11-style assault in April 2007, all of which were successfully averted, were merely trial runs in a much longer campaign designed to disrupt the global economy in general, and the oil and gas industry in particular.[4] As the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks demonstrated, al-Qaeda tends to return to the scene of the crime, so another strike on Abqaiq and other oil targets is likely.

Both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have repeatedly called for attacks on key Western economic targets, especially energy sources.[5] In a tape aired by Al-Jazeera in February 2006, Zawahiri said:

I call on the mujahideen to concentrate their attacks on Muslims' stolen oil, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam while most of what they leave is seized by the thieves who rule our countries.[6]

The unfortunate reality is that the Middle East remains the strategic center of gravity of the global oil market--a position that is not likely to change in the medium term. As long as radical Islamists, China, Russia, India, and Europe continue the struggle for the world's limited oil supply, the region will remain unstable. If the U.S. is to protect itself from these economic and political threats, it must use all the tools at its disposal to protect energy assets around the globe, while decreasing the world's dependence on Middle Eastern oil as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Oil as a Weapon. Many Arab leaders understand the dynamic of the world's oil dependence. For example, as early as 1990, the late Yassir Arafat said:

When the North Sea oil dries up in 1991, the United States will want to buy Arab petroleum. And when the American oil fields themselves run dry and oil consumption in the United States increases, the American need for the Arabs will grow greater and greater.[7]

This observation has not been lost on the current generation of politicians and terrorist leaders. However, bin Laden and Zawahiri are not satisfied with the unwieldy weapons of oil boycotts and buying political influence in the West. Instead, they are clearly zeroing in on the oil-rich kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf as their principal targets. They also appear increasingly interested in attacking the entire global oil industry, from wells to wheels.

The failed February 2005 strike and the prevented March 2005 attack on Abqaiq, mentioned earlier, were not the first times that al-Qaeda has targeted energy assets in the region. In October 2002, al-Qaeda attacked the Limbourg, a French oil tanker, off the coast of Yemen with a suicide boat filled with explosives. In 2002, American and Saudi intelligence agencies uncovered a plot by al-Qaeda sympathizers inside Saudi Aramco to destroy key Saudi oil facilities. In 2003-2004, al-Qaeda attacked the Saudi port of Yanbu and murdered five Western engineers working there.[8]

Some analysts have warned that a carefully targeted terrorist attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia could reduce Saudi oil production to 4 million barrels per day or less for up to three months, which would have disastrous results for the global economy.

Iran

The leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran is engaged in operational planning to intercept the flow of oil in the Gulf. Despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's earnest and ongoing attempt to project the image of an irrational leader of what international relations theorists have called a "crazy state," many analysts have yet to recognize fully the dire ramifications of Iran's professed intention to develop a nuclear weapons program.

If diplomacy fails, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons will leave the U.S. and its allies with few choices, all of them unpalatable.

In June 2006, Iran's oil minister cautioned, "If the country's interests are attacked, we will use all our capabilities, and oil is one of them." Perhaps most alarming are the remarks of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the same month: "If the Americans make a wrong move toward Iran, the shipment of energy will definitely face danger, and the Americans would not be able to protect energy supply in the region."

The economic consequences of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities to the world energy market would likely be significant, if not disastrous. Immediately following military action, according to a Turkish assessment, uncertainty about Iran's ability to sustain oil production at the current level of 4 mbd could drive oil prices above $80 per barrel.[9] If Iran retaliated and escalated by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, which would merely require placing anti-ship mines in the strait,[10] the temporary loss of more that 15 million barrels of oil to the international market could drive oil prices above $83 per barrel, the historic height of the 1970s (adjusted for inflation).[11] In fact, a recent Heritage Foundation war game and economic study speculated that oil prices could go as high as $120/barrel for a limited time.

On the other hand, Iran's aspirations in the region are far-reaching. Allowing Iran to join the nuclear club introduces the possibility of Iranian interference throughout the Middle East, especially given Iran's proximity to so many of the world's largest oil fields. The large Iranian military, if amply supplied by Russia and China, would be in a position to dominate the Persian Gulf under a nuclear umbrella, particularly if U.S. ground forces were pinned down in Iraq.

Currently, Iran enjoys the support of some Shi'a forces in Iraq, especially Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and in the Shi'ite-populated Ash Sharqiyah (Eastern) Province of Saudi Arabia. This could facilitate a pro-Iranian Shi'a takeover of some of the largest oil fields in the world. In a worst-case scenario, a nuclear Iran could threaten the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. If this were to happen, the Islamic Republic could quickly secure a sizable part of the world's oil supply, bringing the nuclear-armed militant Iran close to a virtual monopoly over the world's energy market.

Iran's Dangerous Arsenal. Since the 1990s, Iran has been upgrading its military with a host of new weapons from China, Russia, and North Korea, as well as with weapons manufactured domestically.

Today, Iran boasts an arsenal of Iranian-built missiles based on Russian and Chinese designs that are difficult to counter both before and after launch. Of particular concern are reports that Iran has purchased the SS-N-22 Moskit/Sunburn anti-ship missile. The supersonic Sunburn is specifically designed "to reduce the target's time to deploy self-defense weapons" and "to strike ships with the Aegis command and weapon control system and the SM-2 surface-to-air missile."[12] Iran is also well stocked with older Chinese HY-1 Seersucker and HY-2 Silkworm missiles and the more modern C-802 anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM)--designs that Iran has successfully adapted into their own Ra'ad ad Noor ASCMs.

Iran has a large supply of anti-ship mines, including modern mines that are far superior to the simple World War I-style contact mines that Iran used in the 1980s. They include the Chinese-designed EM-52 "rocket" mine, which remains stationary on the sea floor and fires a homing rocket when a ship passes overhead. In the deep waters in the Strait of Hormuz, such a weapon could destroy ships entering or exiting the Persian Gulf. According to one expert, Iran "can deploy mines or torpedoes from its Kilo-class submarines, which would be effectively immune to detection when running silent and remaining stationary on a shallow bottom just outside the Strait of Hormuz."[13] Iran could also deploy mines by helicopter or small boats disguised as fishing vessels.

Mines are only one of a host of potential Iranian threats to shipping in the Persian Gulf. The naval commandos of Iran's Revolutionary Guards are trained to attack using fast attack boats, mini-submarines, and even jet skis. The Revolutionary Guards also have underwater demolition teams that are trained to attack offshore oil platforms and other facilities. Finally, Tehran could use its extensive terrorist network in the region to sabotage oil pipelines and other infrastructure or to strike oil tankers in port or at sea.

Consequences of a Supply Disruption in the Persian Gulf. With supplies growing and the price of oil falling, there has been a shortsighted tendency to underplay the threat posed by a major disruption in the Persian Gulf.

Although oil prices fell precipitously after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, it is important to remember that global energy needs are much different today from what they were during the 1980s. Oil production is at record levels, but global demand has increased significantly, especially in the past 15 years. Under today's conditions, the slightest disruption could drive oil prices back up toward historic levels.

The U.S. Deterrent?

U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf could quickly establish superiority over Iran's conventional ground, air, and naval forces in any crisis, but Iranian mobile missiles, mines, commando attacks, unconventional warfare, and terrorist sabotage would pose more persistent threats that would be much harder to neutralize. The United States and its allies could eventually defeat Iranian attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz. Yet Iran could intensely threaten Gulf shipping for short periods, deter commercial ships from entering the Gulf, drive up insurance rates for Gulf shipping, and boost world oil prices on nervous markets.

The Bush Administration is already maintaining a strong U.S. and allied naval presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington should also encourage its NATO allies, Japan, India, and Australia, to deploy their naval forces periodically to the region. The Pentagon should conduct naval, air, and ground exercises with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates-- particularly in the areas of minesweeping, port security, and missile defense--to demonstrate the capability and resolve to defeat potential Iranian threats. In particular, the U.S. Navy's mine warfare capability is potentially inadequate and under-prepared for the increasingly sophisticated arsenal that Iran can deploy. The U.S. should further upgrade its naval capabilities, including minesweeping and anti-ship missile defense. Washington should also encourage the GCC countries to invest in their own naval minesweeping capabilities.

The Bush Administration should work with allies to develop contingency plans. The U.S. should encourage other nations to develop or increase their emergency oil reserves. Washington should also encourage Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers to stockpile materials and equipment needed to rapidly repair damaged oil infrastructure and build new oil pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Any such efforts would take time to complete, which is why it is imperative to begin now.

Beyond these crisis-specific guidelines, it is crucial that the U.S. follow through with these particular measures:

*
Boost efforts to roll back Iran's subversive ideological, terrorist, and military threats;
*
Diversify the geographic sources of U.S. energy imports;
*
Diversify the energy basket by expanding the domestic production of oil and gas, including drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and off-shore, along both the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelves, and in the Gulf of Mexico;
*
Expand extraction from market-based, non-traditional oil sources such as oil sands (tar sands), oil shale, and super-heavy oil; expand gas-to-liquid fuel production;
*
Encourage expanded methanol and ethanol production and imports based on market principles; and
*
Waive punitive importation tariffs on sugar cane ethanol.

Russiaand Eurasia

Since coming to power in 2000, President Vladimir Putin and his entourage have doggedly pursued policies aimed at concentrating the huge oil and gas assets of the Russian Federation and its pipeline in the hands of the state. State prosecutors used tax evasion charges to take over the YUKOS oil company, which has had its highest market valuation--in excess of $43 billion. Other oil companies are now merging with government-controlled entities, albeit less violently. Russia is using state-owned energy assets as tools of its foreign policy to make its neighbors in the former Soviet Union and Europe more pliable. It is also actively seeking to prevent or pre-empt pipeline routes from the Caspian to the West that bypass Russia.

The natural gas sector is also at risk. These days Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Qatar, and Algeria are reportedly pursuing the creation of a "natural gas OPEC," an important strategic development in energy markets in view of projections that liquid natural gas (LNG) will quadruple its trading volume in the next 15-20 years or sooner.

Three major Eurasian energy developments in the month of March made Washington policymakers jittery. First, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany announced that his country would prefer Gazprom's Russian gas pumped via Turkey to the much-lauded, but much delayed NABUCCO project. The NABUCCO pipeline, spearheaded by the Austrians, was supposed to bring up to 30 billion cubic meters of gas from the Caspian to Europe through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Austria.

Second, Russia, Bulgaria, and Greece signed an agreement to construct a Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline to bypass the Turkish-controlled Bosporus Strait, a dangerous oil transport chokepoint. The project, which some call "the Orthodox Pipeline," will neutralize Turkey's control of the vital oil artery, and reduce the liability that could occur as a result of a catastrophic event, such as a tanker fire or an explosion in the middle of the populous (14 million people) city of Istanbul. The Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline will have a 51 percent majority control of three Russian government companies--Transneft, Gazpromneft, and Rosneft--with the remaining 49 percent split between Bulgaria and Greece.

On March 6, 2007, Vagit Alekperov, chairman of LUKoil, announced that his company and Gazpromneft would create a joint venture to develop future projects, which would be 51 percent controlled by Gazpromneft--another step down the path of creeping nationalization.

Finally, British Petroleum hinted that its Russian partner, TNK, may sell out its share in the TNK-BP joint venture to a Russian state-owned company. At the same time, Russia is developing plans to build the second Bosporus bypass from a port on the Black Sea such as Samsun, or Trabzon, to the Mediterranean.

These strategic moves, which took place in just one month, clearly indicate that the Russian state is pursuing a comprehensive strategy that masterfully integrates geopolitics and geo-economics.

On the geo-economic side, Russia aims at pre-empting Caspian oil and gas from being transported to world markets through countries and pipelines which Russia does not control. Moscow viewed the Western-controlled Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Erzurum gas pipeline with a jaundiced eye. Now it is dead-set upon preventing the creation of trans-Caspian arteries--from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan--to enhance the viability of either or both.

Thus, from Moscow's perspective pumping Russian gas via the Blue Stream pipeline across the Black Sea to Turkey, and then through connectors to Greece, Italy, and possibly via Bulgaria and Romania to Hungary, makes a lot of sense. This would preclude or delay the construction of a trans-Caspian gas pipeline that would transport Turkmenistani or Kazakhstani gas.

Pumping more oil to the Mediterranean via the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline, or in the future, the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline, which will be supplied with Kazakh oil, through the port of Novorossiisk makes sense as well, denying Kazakhstan a viable trans-Caspian pipeline option to connect to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

These proposed sea-pipeline routes are going to be problematic: Tanker loading and unloading of crude in the trans-Black Sea leg, or extending the gas route under the Black Sea and via Turkey and Southern Europe make these pipelines very expensive and environmentally challenging. By selecting these routes, Russia clearly chooses strategy over economics.

Russian strategic goals are to prevent countries on its borders from becoming pro-American. By locating pipelines and gas storage facilities in Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, Russia connects them to Moscow by "ties that bind"--pipelines. Oil projects tend to leak not just crude, but cash.

The elites in these countries have reportedly personally benefited from Russian energy developments to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The opaque Russian-Ukrainian gas marketing venture Rosukrenergo, former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder's chairmanship of Nordstream, Turkish ministers' bribe scandals connected to the Russian Blue Stream gas pipeline, and other scandals prove this point.

The best strategy, wrote the great Chinese general Sun Tzu in the third century B.C., is to win a war without firing a single shot. This also includes, according to Sun Tzu, penetration and subversion of the enemy camp. To paraphrase another great strategic theorist, the Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, foreign policy is the continuation of war by other means, at least in the view of some retired Russian colonels and generals who call the shots in the Kremlin.

Thus, there is no better way to "win the war" than to maximize geopolitical clout without firing a shot--and making money as you go. Russia is attempting to do so by building and extending a network of politically influential pipelines to adjacent countries. As the result, a Russian-influenced cordon sanitaire appears along its borders.

When it comes to oil and gas strategy, the Kremlin is in a league of its own. This is like watching a chess grand master playing multidimensional chess with oil and gas fields and pipelines over decades. Middle Eastern rulers would do well to attend this master class.

The Bush Administration should be taking some diplomatic steps to oppose this Russian gambit. It is already conducting consultations with the European Union to coordinate energy policy. Washington wants to raise awareness of Russia's energy strategy and condition Moscow's access to downstream operations in Europe on Western companies' access to Russian upstream energy resources.

However, the EU, including its Brussels apparatus, is split, since Germany is already deferential to Russia's energy interests. German companies such as E.ON are in partnerships with Gazprom to develop gas fields and downstream operations in Russia and Europe. It is also possible that the U.S. State Department may intervene with Bucharest to prevent a proposed Gazprom pipeline from Turkey from crossing Romanian territory. Clearly, the two small U.S. military bases in Romania and Bulgaria and the proposed missile defense base and radar in the Czech Republic and Poland are not going to stop Russian expansion. Pipelines are much more effective tools of foreign policy than missiles.

Economic Freedom and the
Oil-producing Countries

Many oil fields around the world are headed for depletion. National statistics are unreliable at best, or classified at worst, and national oil companies control up to 80 percent of oil and natural gas reserves. The main problem of oil shortages today is not lack of reserves in the ground, but lack of access above ground.

Over-regulation and a Poor Investment Environment. Laws requiring the government to own and/or control significant shares in oil ventures are common in many oil-producing countries. Overregulation and economic nationalism prevent international oil companies from owning mineral rights, while weak rule of law and insufficient protection of property rights in many oil-rich regions make multibillion-dollar investments too risky.

In many oil-producing countries, arbitrary laws, failing and corrupt legal systems, selective taxation, conflicting legal codes, and government failure to enforce contracts have created a murky investment environment. Nationalization has a particularly chilling effect. Venezuela destroyed tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value. Russia frightened many investors away by breaking up its major oil company, YUKOS; pushing Shell out of the Sakhalin Island project; and suing British Petroleum's Russian partner TNK for $790 million in back taxes. Saudi Arabia abandoned its much-touted privatization of natural gas production.

Two-thirds of the world's oil reserves are concentrated in the increasingly unstable Middle East and are controlled by members of the quasi-monopolistic Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).[14] Over the years, OPEC has been quick to cut supply and slow to increase production, bringing oil prices to today's high levels.[15] Most OPEC member countries and other oil producers have high levels of government economic regulation and corruption, as documented in the Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.[16] Thus, consumers are effectively paying two premiums on oil--one for security and one for suppliers' economic inefficiency and monopolistic behavior.

The U.S. needs to develop a comprehensive strategy to change the oil investment climate. Such a strategy should involve the Departments of State, Energy, and Treasury and be coordinated by the National Security Council.

Consumer countries, including the G-8 and major oil consumers, especially China and India, should join the G-8 to coordinate positions of the buyers' club. Consumers should use diplomatic and economic means to pressure OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers to liberalize their foreign investment laws, break up state monopolies, and phase out undue government intervention.

Efforts to promote such policies through international financial organizations such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development should be increased. Economic assistance should emphasize economic freedom in potential recipients, including a liberal investment climate similar to Millennium Challenge Account requirements.

In many countries, lending institutions are weak, and excessive taxation diverts oil revenues before appropriate investments for future development are made. This limits the funds available to develop new fields and tempers the profit motive to expand production. These anti-business barriers have hindered investors from expanding oil and natural gas supplies, even in the face of surging demand. Oil buyers must coordinate policies to reduce these barriers.

Arms and vital equipment sales should be conditioned on improving the investment climate in the energy sector. The U.S. should also condition accession to the World Trade Organization on policy changes that facilitate foreign investment.

The U.S. State Department and Departments of Energy and Commerce, as well as international financial organizations such as the World Bank, should champion property rights protection to enhance access to resources and prevent expropriation, unrestricted and fair competition, free markets, business and governance transparency, and political accountability. If applied, these principles will allow a significant increase of oil supply. Specifically, the U.S. should seek full access for international oil companies to mineral rights in OPEC and non-OPEC countries, including the development of oil fields and energy transportation infrastructure. The U.S. also should make the privatization of national oil companies and economic liberalization one of the pillars of the G-8 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development foreign and energy security policy.

Conclusion

Energy independence, defined as competitive local production of all the energy we need, remains a mirage. It is energy security that we need to accomplish, in which abundant and affordable energy supply is within reach of all Americans. Recognizing the inherent, systemic, and long-term instability of the global oil markets is the first step in addressing the problem the U.S. is facing.
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. This testimony was delivered March 22, 2007, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

[1] U.S. Department of Energy, International Energy Administration, "U.S. Weekly Petroleum Products Product Supplied," at http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wrpupus2w.htm (March 31, 2006).

[2] George W. Bush, "State of the Union Address by the President," January 31, 2006, at www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006 (March 5, 2006).

[3] Aljazeera.net, "Al-Qaida Says It Hit Saudi Oil Facility," February 25, 2006, at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A429E32C-D484-424E-9C58-D9E287580817.htm (March 6, 2006).

[4] Stratfor, "Saudi Arabia: Abqaiq Attack Thwarted," March 29, 2006, at www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?selected=Situation%20Reports&sitrep=1&id=264105 (March 31, 2006). See also, "Saudi Arabia Nabs 40 Terror Suspects," Kuwait Times, March 31, 2006, at www.kuwaittimes.net/Navariednews.asp?dismode=article&artid=829180313 (March 31, 2006).

[5] "‘Bin Laden' Tape Urges Oil Attack," BBC News, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4101021.stm (March 29, 2006). See also Agence France-Presse, "Bin Laden Threat Drives Oil to Four-Month High," The Taipei Times, January 21, 2006, p. 12, at www.taipeitimes.com/News/worldbiz/archives/2006/01/21/2003290110 (March 5, 2006).

[6] "Bin Laden War on West Just Starting: Deputy," The Age (Melbourne, Australia), December 8, 2005, at www.theage.com.au/news/world/bin-laden-war-on-west-just-starting-deputy/2005/12/07/1133829660913.html (March 29, 2006).

[7] Mitchell G. Bard, "Middle East Policy and Oil," Jewish Virtual Library, at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usoil.html (March 29, 2006).

[8] Saudi–U.S. Relations Information Service, "Gunmen Attack in Yanbu," Special Report No. 3, May 3, 2004, at www.saudi-us-relations.org/newsletter2004/saudi-relations-interest-05-03.html (March 5, 2006).

[9] Anadolu News Agency, "Iran Warns of Excessive Oil Prices," Zaman (Istanbul), February 14, 2006, at www.zaman.com/?bl=hotnews&alt=&trh=20060214&hn=29790 (March 6, 2006).

[10] Kenneth R. Timmerman, "Iran Readies Plan to Close Strait of Hormuz," Newsmax.com, March 1, 2006, at www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/28/181730.shtml?s=lh (March 6, 2006).

[11] Hong Kong Trade Development Council, "Reassessing the Impacts of Higher Oil Prices," tdctrade.com, August 1, 2005, at www.tdctrade.com/econforum/boc/boc050801.htm (March 6, 2006).

[12] XREFGlobalSecurity.org, "Moskit SS-N-22 Sunburn," at www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/moskit.htm (May 9, 2007).

[13] Michael Knights, "Deterrence by Punishment Could Offer Last Resort Options for Iran," Jane's Intelligence Review, March 20, 2006.

[14] The 11 OPEC members are Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.

[15] Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., and William Schirano, "Congress Should Lift OPEC's Immunity," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 777, June 27, 2005, at www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm777.cfm.

[16] For example, in terms of economic freedom, Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria were ranked 156th, 152nd, and 146th out of 157 countries, respectively. See Marc A. Miles, Kim R. Holmes, and Mary Anastasia O'Grady, 2006 Index of Economic Freedom (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation and Dow Jones & Company, Inc., 2006), at www.heritage.org/index.

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor

2007-05-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor
By C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007
Summary: Thanks to high oil prices and hefty subsidies, corn-based ethanol is now all the rage in the United States. But it takes so much supply to keep ethanol production going that the price of corn -- and those of other food staples -- is shooting up around the world. To stop this trend, and prevent even more people from going hungry, Washington must conserve more and diversify ethanol's production inputs.

C. Ford Runge is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law and Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. Benjamin Senauer is Professor of Applied Economics and Co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota.

THE ETHANOL BUBBLE

In 1974, as the United States was reeling from the oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Congress took the first of many legislative steps to promote ethanol made from corn as an alternative fuel. On April 18, 1977, amid mounting calls for energy independence, President Jimmy Carter donned his cardigan sweater and appeared on television to tell Americans that balancing energy demands with available domestic resources would be an effort the "moral equivalent of war." The gradual phaseout of lead in the 1970s and 1980s provided an additional boost to the fledgling ethanol industry. (Lead, a toxic substance, is a performance enhancer when added to gasoline, and it was partly replaced by ethanol.) A series of tax breaks and subsidies also helped. In spite of these measures, with each passing year the United States became more dependent on imported petroleum, and ethanol remained marginal at best.

Now, thanks to a combination of high oil prices and even more generous government subsidies, corn-based ethanol has become the rage. There were 110 ethanol refineries in operation in the United States at the end of 2006, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Many were being expanded, and another 73 were under construction. When these projects are completed, by the end of 2008, the United States' ethanol production capacity will reach an estimated 11.4 billion gallons per year. In his latest State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called on the country to produce 35 billion gallons of renewable fuel a year by 2017, nearly five times the level currently mandated.

The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States. In 2005, global ethanol production was 9.66 billion gallons, of which Brazil produced 45.2 percent (from sugar cane) and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Global production of biodiesel (most of it in Europe), made from oilseeds, was almost one billion gallons.

The industry's growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce ethanol. According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of U.S. domestic corn supplies within a few years. Ethanol demand will bring 2007 inventories of corn to their lowest levels since 1995 (a drought year), even though 2006 yielded the third-largest corn crop on record. Iowa may soon become a net corn importer.

The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.

This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, who will be hit with a double shock if both food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world. Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global poverty and food security.

THE OIL AND BIOFUEL ECONOMY

In the United States and other large economies, the ethanol industry is artificially buoyed by government subsidies, minimum production levels, and tax credits. High oil prices over the past few years have made ethanol naturally competitive, but the U.S. government continues to heavily subsidize corn farmers and ethanol producers. Direct corn subsidies equaled $8.9 billion in 2005. Although these payments will fall in 2006 and 2007 because of high corn prices, they may soon be dwarfed by the panoply of tax credits, grants, and government loans included in energy legislation passed in 2005 and in a pending farm bill designed to support ethanol producers. The federal government already grants ethanol blenders a tax allowance of 51 cents per gallon of ethanol they make, and many states pay out additional subsidies.

Consumption of ethanol in the United States was expected to reach over 6 billion gallons in 2006. (Consumption of biodiesel was expected to be about 250 million gallons.) In 2005, the U.S. government mandated the use of 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2012; in early 2007, 37 governors proposed raising that figure to 12 billion gallons by 2010; and last January, President Bush raised it further, to 35 billion gallons by 2017. Six billion gallons of ethanol are needed every year to replace the fuel additive known as MTBE, which is being phased out due to its polluting effects on ground water.

The European Commission is using legislative measures and directives to promote biodiesel, produced mainly in Europe, made from rapeseeds and sunflower seeds. In 2005, the European Union produced 890 million gallons of biodiesel, over 80 percent of the world's total. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy also promotes the production of ethanol from a combination of sugar beets and wheat with direct and indirect subsidies. Brussels aims to have 5.75 percent of motor fuel consumed in the European Union come from biofuels by 2010 and 10 percent by 2020.

Brazil, which currently produces approximately the same amount of ethanol as the United States, derives almost all of it from sugar cane. Like the United States, Brazil began its quest for alternative energy in the mid-1970s. The government has offered incentives, set technical standards, and invested in supporting technologies and market promotion. It has mandated that all diesel contain two percent biodiesel by 2008 and five percent biodiesel by 2013. It has also required that the auto industry produce engines that can use biofuels and has developed wide-ranging industrial and land-use strategies to promote them. Other countries are also jumping on the biofuel bandwagon. In Southeast Asia, vast areas of tropical forest are being cleared and burned to plant oil palms destined for conversion to biodiesel.

This trend has strong momentum. Despite a recent decline, many experts expect the price of crude oil to remain high in the long term. Demand for petroleum continues to increase faster than supplies, and new sources of oil are often expensive to exploit or located in politically risky areas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's latest projections, global energy consumption will rise by 71 percent between 2003 and 2030, with demand from developing countries, notably China and India, surpassing that from members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development by 2015. The result will be sustained upward pressure on oil prices, which will allow ethanol and biodiesel producers to pay much higher premiums for corn and oilseeds than was conceivable just a few years ago. The higher oil prices go, the higher ethanol prices can go while remaining competitive -- and the more ethanol producers can pay for corn. If oil reaches $80 per barrel, ethanol producers could afford to pay well over $5 per bushel for corn.

With the price of raw materials at such highs, the biofuel craze would place significant stress on other parts of the agricultural sector. In fact, it already does. In the United States, the growth of the biofuel industry has triggered increases not only in the prices of corn, oilseeds, and other grains but also in the prices of seemingly unrelated crops and products. The use of land to grow corn to feed the ethanol maw is reducing the acreage devoted to other crops. Food processors who use crops such as peas and sweet corn have been forced to pay higher prices to keep their supplies secure -- costs that will eventually be passed on to consumers. Rising feed prices are also hitting the livestock and poultry industries. According to Vernon Eidman, a professor emeritus of agribusiness management at the University of Minnesota, higher feed costs have caused returns to fall sharply, especially in the poultry and swine sectors. If returns continue to drop, production will decline, and the prices for chicken, turkey, pork, milk, and eggs will rise. A number of Iowa's pork producers could go out of business in the next few years as they are forced to compete with ethanol plants for corn supplies.

Proponents of corn-based ethanol argue that acreage and yields can be increased to satisfy the rising demand for ethanol. But U.S. corn yields have been rising by a little less than two percent annually over the last ten years, and even a doubling of those gains could not meet current demand. As more acres are planted with corn, land will have to be pulled from other crops or environmentally fragile areas, such as those protected by the Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program.

In addition to these fundamental forces, speculative pressures have created what might be called a "biofuel mania": prices are rising because many buyers think they will. Hedge funds are making huge bets on corn and the bull market unleashed by ethanol. The biofuel mania is commandeering grain stocks with a disregard for the obvious consequences. It seems to unite powerful forces, including motorists' enthusiasm for large, fuel-inefficient vehicles and guilt over the ecological consequences of petroleum-based fuels. But even as ethanol has created opportunities for huge profits for agribusiness, speculators, and some farmers, it has upset the traditional flows of commodities and the patterns of trade and consumption both inside and outside of the agricultural sector.

This craze will create a different problem if oil prices decline because of, say, a slowdown in the global economy. With oil at $30 a barrel, producing ethanol would no longer be profitable unless corn sold for less than $2 a bushel, and that would spell a return to the bad old days of low prices for U.S. farmers. Undercapitalized ethanol plants would be at risk, and farmer-owned cooperatives would be especially vulnerable. Calls for subsidies, mandates, and tax breaks would become even more shrill than they are now: there would be clamoring for a massive bailout of an overinvested industry. At that point, the major investments that have been made in biofuels would start to look like a failed gamble. On the other hand, if oil prices hover around $55-$60, ethanol producers could pay from $3.65 to $4.54 for a bushel of corn and manage to make a normal 12 percent profit.

Whatever happens in the oil market, the drive for energy independence, which has been the basic justification for huge investments in and subsidies for ethanol production, has already made the industry dependent on high oil prices.

CORNUCOPIA

One root of the problem is that the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies. Corn has become the prime raw material even though biofuels could be made efficiently from a variety of other sources, such as grasses and wood chips, if the government funded the necessary research and development. But in the United States, at least, corn and soybeans have been used as primary inputs for many years thanks in large part to the lobbying efforts of corn and soybean growers and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), the biggest ethanol producer in the U.S. market.

Since the late 1960s, ADM positioned itself as the "supermarket to the world" and aimed to create value from bulk commodities by transforming them into processed products that command heftier prices. In the 1970s, ADM started making ethanol and other products resulting from the wet-milling of corn, such as high fructose corn syrup. It quickly grew from a minor player in the feed market to a global powerhouse. By 1980, ADM's ethanol production had reached 175 million gallons per year, and high fructose corn syrup had become a ubiquitous sweetening agent in processed foods. In 2006, ADM was the largest producer of ethanol in the United States: it made more than 1.07 billion gallons, over four times more than its nearest rival, VeraSun Energy. In early 2006, it announced plans to increase its capital investment in ethanol from $700 million to $1.2 billion in 2008 and increase production by 47 percent, or close to 500 million gallons, by 2009.

ADM owes much of its growth to political connections, especially to key legislators who can earmark special subsidies for its products. Vice President Hubert Humphrey advanced many such measures when he served as a senator from Minnesota. Senator Bob Dole (R-Kans.) advocated tirelessly for the company during his long career. As the conservative critic James Bovard noted over a decade ago, nearly half of ADM's profits have come from products that the U.S. government has either subsidized or protected.

Partly as a result of such government support, ethanol (and to a lesser extent biodiesel) is now a major fixture of the United States' agricultural and energy sectors. In addition to the federal government's 51-cents-per-gallon tax credit for ethanol, smaller producers get a 10-cents-per-gallon tax reduction on the first 15 million gallons they produce. There is also the "renewable fuel standard," a mandatory level of nonfossil fuel to be used in motor vehicles, which has set off a political bidding war. Despite already high government subsidies, Congress is considering lavishing more money on biofuels. Legislation related to the 2007 farm bill introduced by Representative Ron Kind (D-Wis.) calls for raising loan guarantees for ethanol producers from $200 million to $2 billion. Advocates of corn-based ethanol have rationalized subsidies by pointing out that greater ethanol demand pushes up corn prices and brings down subsidies to corn growers.

The ethanol industry has also become a theater of protectionism in U.S. trade policy. Unlike oil imports, which come into the country duty-free, most ethanol currently imported into the United States carries a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff, partly because cheaper ethanol from countries such as Brazil threatens U.S. producers. (Brazilian sugar cane can be converted to ethanol more efficiently than can U.S. corn.) The Caribbean Basin Initiative could undermine this protection: Brazilian ethanol can already be shipped duty-free to CBI countries, such as Costa Rica, El Salvador, or Jamaica, and the agreement allows it to go duty-free from there to the United States. But ethanol supporters in Congress are pushing for additional legislation to limit those imports. Such government measures shield the industry from competition despite the damaging repercussions for consumers.

STARVING THE HUNGRY

Biofuels may have even more devastating effects in the rest of the world, especially on the prices of basic foods. If oil prices remain high -- which is likely -- the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuel boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum. The risk extends to a large part of the developing world: in 2005, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, most of the 82 low-income countries with food deficits were also net oil importers.

Even major oil exporters that use their petrodollars to purchase food imports, such as Mexico, cannot escape the consequences of the hikes in food prices. In late 2006, the price of tortilla flour in Mexico, which gets 80 percent of its corn imports from the United States, doubled thanks partly to a rise in U.S. corn prices from $2.80 to $4.20 a bushel over the previous several months. (Prices rose even though tortillas are made mainly from Mexican-grown white corn because industrial users of the imported yellow corn, which is used for animal feed and processed foods, started buying the cheaper white variety.) The price surge was exacerbated by speculation and hoarding. With about half of Mexico's 107 million people living in poverty and relying on tortillas as a main source of calories, the public outcry was fierce. In January 2007, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, was forced to cap the prices of corn products.

The International Food Policy Research Institute, in Washington, D.C., has produced sobering estimates of the potential global impact of the rising demand for biofuels. Mark Rosegrant, an IFPRI division director, and his colleagues project that given continued high oil prices, the rapid increase in global biofuel production will push global corn prices up by 20 percent by 2010 and 41 percent by 2020. The prices of oilseeds, including soybeans, rapeseeds, and sunflower seeds, are projected to rise by 26 percent by 2010 and 76 percent by 2020, and wheat prices by 11 percent by 2010 and 30 percent by 2020. In the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where cassava is a staple, its price is expected to increase by 33 percent by 2010 and 135 percent by 2020. The projected price increases may be mitigated if crop yields increase substantially or ethanol production based on other raw materials (such as trees and grasses) becomes commercially viable. But unless biofuel policies change significantly, neither development is likely.

The production of cassava-based ethanol may pose an especially grave threat to the food security of the world's poor. Cassava, a tropical potato-like tuber also known as manioc, provides one-third of the caloric needs of the population in sub-Saharan Africa and is the primary staple for over 200 million of Africa's poorest people. In many tropical countries, it is the food people turn to when they cannot afford anything else. It also serves as an important reserve when other crops fail because it can grow in poor soils and dry conditions and can be left in the ground to be harvested as needed.

Thanks to its high-starch content, cassava is also an excellent source of ethanol. As the technology for converting it to fuel improves, many countries -- including China, Nigeria, and Thailand -- are considering using more of the crop to that end. If peasant farmers in developing countries could become suppliers for the emerging industry, they would benefit from the increased income. But the history of industrial demand for agricultural crops in these countries suggests that large producers will be the main beneficiaries. The likely result of a boom in cassava-based ethanol production is that an increasing number of poor people will struggle even more to feed themselves.

Participants in the 1996 World Food Summit set out to cut the number of chronically hungry people in the world -- people who do not eat enough calories regularly to be healthy and active -- from 823 million in 1990 to about 400 million by 2015. The Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2000 vowed to halve the proportion of the world's chronically underfed population from 16 percent in 1990 to eight percent in 2015. Realistically, however, resorting to biofuels is likely to exacerbate world hunger. Several studies by economists at the World Bank and elsewhere suggest that caloric consumption among the world's poor declines by about half of one percent whenever the average prices of all major food staples increase by one percent. When one staple becomes more expensive, people try to replace it with a cheaper one, but if the prices of nearly all staples go up, they are left with no alternative.

In a study of global food security we conducted in 2003, we projected that given the rates of economic and population growth, the number of hungry people throughout the world would decline by 23 percent, to about 625 million, by 2025, so long as agricultural productivity improved enough to keep the relative price of food constant. But if, all other things being equal, the prices of staple foods increased because of demand for biofuels, as the IFPRI projections suggest they will, the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods. That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025 -- 600 million more than previously predicted.

The world's poorest people already spend 50 to 80 percent of their total household income on food. For the many among them who are landless laborers or rural subsistence farmers, large increases in the prices of staple foods will mean malnutrition and hunger. Some of them will tumble over the edge of subsistence into outright starvation, and many more will die from a multitude of hunger-related diseases.

THE GRASS IS GREENER

And for what? Limited environmental benefits at best. Although it is important to think of ways to develop renewable energy, one should also carefully examine the eager claims that biofuels are "green." Ethanol and biodiesel are often viewed as environmentally friendly because they are plant-based rather than petroleum-based. In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use. Thinking of ethanol as a green alternative to fossil fuels reinforces the chimera of energy independence and of decoupling the interests of the United States from an increasingly troubled Middle East.

Should corn and soybeans be used as fuel crops at all? Soybeans and especially corn are row crops that contribute to soil erosion and water pollution and require large amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, and fuel to grow, harvest, and dry. They are the major cause of nitrogen runoff -- the harmful leakage of nitrogen from fields when it rains -- of the type that has created the so-called dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an ocean area the size of New Jersey that has so little oxygen it can barely support life. In the United States, corn and soybeans are typically planted in rotation, because soybeans add nitrogen to the soil, which corn needs to grow. But as corn increasingly displaces soybeans as a main source of ethanol, it will be cropped continuously, which will require major increases in nitrogen fertilizer and aggravate the nitrogen runoff problem.

Nor is corn-based ethanol very fuel efficient. Debates over the "net energy balance" of biofuels and gasoline -- the ratio between the energy they produce and the energy needed to produce them -- have raged for decades. For now, corn-based ethanol appears to be favored over gasoline, and biodiesel over petroleum diesel -- but not by much. Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have calculated that the net energy ratio of gasoline is 0.81, a result that implies an input larger than the output. Corn-based ethanol has a ratio that ranges between 1.25 and 1.35, which is better than breaking even. Petroleum diesel has an energy ratio of 0.83, compared with that of biodiesel made from soybean oil, which ranges from 1.93 to 3.21. (Biodiesel produced from other fats and oils, such as restaurant grease, may be more energy efficient.)

Similar results emerge when biofuels are compared with gasoline using other indices of environmental impact, such as greenhouse gas emissions. The full cycle of the production and use of corn-based ethanol releases less greenhouse gases than does that of gasoline, but only by 12 to 26 percent. The production and use of biodiesel emits 41 to 78 percent less such gases than do the production and use of petroleum-based diesel fuels.

Another point of comparison is greenhouse gas emissions per mile driven, which takes account of relative fuel efficiency. Using gasoline blends with 10 percent corn-based ethanol instead of pure gasoline lowers emissions by 2 percent. If the blend is 85 percent ethanol (which only flexible-fuel vehicles can run on), greenhouse gas emissions fall further: by 23 percent if the ethanol is corn-based and by 64 percent if it is cellulose-based. Likewise, diesel containing 2 percent biodiesel emits 1.6 percent less greenhouse gases than does petroleum diesel, whereas blends with 20 percent biodiesel emit 16 percent less, and pure biodiesel (also for use only in special vehicles) emits 78 percent less. On the other hand, biodiesel can increase emissions of nitrogen oxide, which contributes to air pollution. In short, the "green" virtues of ethanol and biodiesel are modest when these fuels are made from corn and soybeans, which are energy-intensive, highly polluting row crops.

The benefits of biofuels are greater when plants other than corn or oils from sources other than soybeans are used. Ethanol made entirely from cellulose (which is found in trees, grasses, and other plants) has an energy ratio between 5 and 6 and emits 82 to 85 percent less greenhouse gases than does gasoline. As corn grows scarcer and more expensive, many are betting that the ethanol industry will increasingly turn to grasses, trees, and residues from field crops, such as wheat and rice straw and cornstalks. Grasses and trees can be grown on land poorly suited to food crops or in climates hostile to corn and soybeans. Recent breakthroughs in enzyme and gasification technologies have made it easier to break down cellulose in woody plants and straw. Field experiments suggest that grassland perennials could become a promising source of biofuel in the future.

For now, however, the costs of harvesting, transporting, and converting such plant matters are high, which means that cellulose-based ethanol is not yet commercially viable when compared with the economies of scale of current corn-based production. One ethanol-plant manager in the Midwest has calculated that fueling an ethanol plant with switchgrass, a much-discussed alternative, would require delivering a semitrailer truckload of the grass every six minutes, 24 hours a day. The logistical difficulties and the costs of converting cellulose into fuel, combined with the subsidies and politics currently favoring the use of corn and soybeans, make it unrealistic to expect cellulose-based ethanol to become a solution within the next decade. Until it is, relying more on sugar cane to produce ethanol in tropical countries would be more efficient than using corn and would not involve using a staple food.

The future can be brighter if the right steps are taken now. Limiting U.S. dependence on fossil fuels requires a comprehensive energy-conservation program. Rather than promoting more mandates, tax breaks, and subsidies for biofuels, the U.S. government should make a major commitment to substantially increasing energy efficiency in vehicles, homes, and factories; promoting alternative sources of energy, such as solar and wind power; and investing in research to improve agricultural productivity and raise the efficiency of fuels derived from cellulose. Washington's fixation on corn-based ethanol has distorted the national agenda and diverted its attention from developing a broad and balanced strategy. In March, the U.S. Energy Department announced that it would invest up to $385 million in six biorefineries designed to convert cellulose into ethanol. That is a promising step in the right direction.

www.foreignaffairs.org is copyright 2002--2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved.

Bisphenol A, common in plastic and canned goods, is dividing industry and science

2007-05-12T10:42:00.001-07:00

Health controversy
'Inherently toxic' chemical faces its future
Bisphenol A, common in plastic and canned goods, is dividing industry and science, writes MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
April 7, 2007
Bisphenol A is ingested by practically everyone in Canada who eats canned foods or drinks from a can or hard plastic water bottles.
Now a controversy is raging over the safety of widespread public exposure to the chemical, which is known to act like a synthetic female sex hormone.
At the heart of the intense debate over bisphenol A is that it challenges the main tenet of modern toxicology, the idea that the dose makes the poison, a principle credited to the 15th-century Swiss alchemist Theophrastus Paracelsus.
Under this principle, a two-pack-a-day smoker is more at risk of cancer than a one-pack-a-day user, and the belief that rising doses make a substance more dangerous is the basis of all government regulations that seek to set safe exposures for harmful chemicals.
More Stories
'Inherently toxic' chemical faces its future
TURNING FARMING ON ITS EAR
It seems obvious that a high dose of a poison would be more dangerous than a lower one, but bisphenol A is creating a stir because it doesn't follow this seemingly common-sense rule. Researchers say this oddity results from the fact that bisphenol A isn't a conventional harmful agent, such as cigarette smoke, but behaves in the unconventional way typical of hormones, where even vanishingly small exposures can be harmful.
This is why some environmentalists and scientists contend that bisphenol A, which leaches in trace amounts from food and beverage packaging, is among the scariest manufactured substances in use, an eerie modern version of the vaunted lead water pipes by which ancient Romans were unknowingly poisoned.
Extrapolating from the results of animal experiments, they suspect bisphenol A has its fingerprints all over the unexplained human health trends emerging in recent decades hinting at something going haywire with sex hormones, including the early onset of puberty, declining sperm counts, and the huge increase in breast and prostate cancer, among other ailments.
But manufacturers -- which include some of the world's biggest chemical companies -- insist bisphenol A is harmless and say those claiming otherwise have it wrong.
Welcome to the heated controversy over bisphenol A.
Derived from petroleum, bisphenol A is the chief ingredient in polycarbonate, the rigid, translucent hard plastic used in water bottles and many baby bottles. It's also used to make the resins that line most tin cans, dental sealants, car parts, microwaveable plastics, sports helmets and CDs.
Environment Canada and Health Canada last year selected it as one of 200 substances that a preliminary review deemed possibly dangerous and in need of thorough safety assessments. The 200 were culled as the most worrisome chemicals from among about 23,000 substances in use in the 1980s and grandfathered from detailed safety studies when Canada adopted its first modern pollution laws.
Government scientists classified bisphenol A as "inherently toxic," and companies making it will be challenged by the assessment to prove that continued use is safe.
The assessment is expected to begin next month and provide a glimpse into one of the biggest public-health and scientific controversies in the world.
Some researchers with close-up views of bisphenol A are so shocked by its ability to skew development in their laboratory animals, even at among the lowest doses ever used in experiments, they aren't waiting for the government to ban it. In their personal lives, they can't run away from products containing it fast enough. "I would love to see it banished off the face of the Earth," Dr. Patricia Hunt, a Washington State University geneticist, said.
She began ditching her bisphenol-A-containing products after discovering that mere traces of the chemical were able to scramble the eggs of her lab mice. In humans, similar damage would lead to miscarriages and birth defects, such as Down syndrome. "I thought, 'Oh my God,' " she said. "I'm going to throw out every piece of plastic in my kitchen."
Although it has been known, since a search for estrogenic drugs in the 1930s, to act like a sex hormone, bisphenol A has recently emerged as one extremely odd compound, perhaps the most unusual in widespread use. Research has found that it seems to turn modern toxicology on its head by being more dangerous at very low exposures than at high ones, a finding that is focusing attention on the possible health repercussions of the relatively small amounts leaching from consumer products.
Bisphenol A also has a bizarre pattern of research results, with the funding source of a study the best predictor of whether scientists find it harmful or safe. All major industry studies into bisphenol A's safety, and they number about a dozen, haven't found anything worrisome in low-dose exposures.
However, about 90 per cent of studies by independent researchers over the past decade, numbering about 150, have found adverse effects, ranging from enlarged prostates to abnormal breast tissue growth.
Bisphenol A has been used in increasing amounts since the 1950s in food and beverage containers because it doesn't impart a plastic-like taste, although traces leach out. Plastics that use it are often identified by an industry triangle symbol and the number seven.
Because it is one of the highest-volume manufactured chemicals in the world and used in so many consumer products, bisphenol A exposure in Canadians is likely to be pervasive.
Urine testing in the United States suggests that about 95 per cent of the population have been exposed, and Ottawa began a survey in March to see if a similar figure applies to Canadians, a reasonable prospect given that the same products are used in both countries. Testing elsewhere in the world has also found it present in human blood, as well as in placentas and fetal cord blood.
Manufacturers say that exposures are nothing to worry about, contending that the amounts getting into people from what they eat and drink aren't of any consequence.
"We know that human exposure to BPA is extraordinarily low, well below levels that have been shown to be safe," said Steven Hentges, spokesman for bisphenol A at the American Plastics Council, which comments on the health controversy over the chemical for four of the five North American manufacturers, GE Plastics, Sunoco Inc., Bayer AG, and Dow Chemical Co. The other producer is Hexion Specialty Chemicals.
He dismisses disease trends showing increasing numbers of hormonally linked ailments rising in tandem with bisphenol A use as "only a statistical association at best" that in no way implicates the industry's product. "You could co-relate those same disease trends with TV watching or coffee drinking or anything you want," he said.
While some companies insist that bisphenol A is harmless, others are just as adamant that it's among the biggest health hazards to which Canadians are unwittingly and routinely exposed.
For Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto group that tracks the exposure of Canadians to pollutants, bisphenol A is the worst substance among the 200 Ottawa suspects may be dangerous. "I think bisphenol A is top of my list, even though there are others that I hate a lot," he said.
The group is so convinced the evidence already shows bisphenol A is a health hazard, it doesn't want Ottawa to wait until the assessment is finished, which could take years, to ban it, particularly in food contact uses. In March, after U.S. environmental groups found the chemical leaching from plastic baby bottles and into canned food, Environmental Defence asked the federal government to end its use, a step that if taken would make Canada the first country in the world to do so.
"If getting this chemical out of those products isn't priority No. 1, I don't know what is," says Mr. Smith, who in his personal life isn't waiting for Ottawa to act. With his five-month-old son's health in mind, he rid his home of bisphenol-A-containing baby bottles as a safety precaution.
Currently, there are no regulations limiting bisphenol A leakage from consumer products. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency doesn't monitor canned goods or bottled water for its presence and Health Canada set a provisional exposure standard in 1999, just as the controversy over its health effects was beginning. Like the chemical industry, it has long insisted that the amounts people ingest aren't harmful.
However, there have been more than a dozen studies in laboratory animals since 1999 finding adverse effects from bisphenol A at levels below Canada's standard. One study, done in 2005, found the chemical able to change breast tissue in ways that predispose them to cancer at a dose 1,000 times lower than Canada's limit.
In living things, hormones latch onto receptors in cells, turning vital biological processes on or off much like a switch controls a light. When cells are exposed to low doses of hormones, whatever activity they control is stimulated, but at higher doses these receptors are overwhelmed and stop their activity. That is why a hormonally active compound may have one effect at a low dose and no effect at a higher exposure.
"At low doses hormones stimulate their own receptors," said Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri biologist and leading academic expert on bisphenol A. "At higher doses, they inhibit their responses."
Within the plastics industry, the idea that small amounts of bisphenol A are dangerous, perhaps more worrisome than larger amounts, isn't dismissed outright, but viewed as a something still at the stage of a hypothesis in need of further proof to be validated, Mr. Hentges said.
But Dr. vom Saal, pointing to the many studies finding harm, said the industry's position "is really stunning because you have this huge independent scientific literature showing adverse effects at stunningly low doses."
Low doses come into play because hormones are active at minute, parts per trillion concentrations. (A part per trillion is the scientific equivalent of practically nothing, roughly equal to a grain of salt in a large swimming pool.) Surveys of how much bisphenol A comes out of cans and bottles into food have found parts per billion amounts, raising concerns that diet could cause exposures similar to natural hormone levels.
Like many scientists who've found health impacts from bisphenol A, Dr. vom Saal is personally so nervous about its safety that he doesn't eat canned food or use polycarbonate beverage containers any more. "We've done everything possible to try to limit our exposure to this," he said.
Dr. vom Saal helped make one of the earliest discoveries about low doses of bisphenol A, finding in 1997 that traces fed to mice caused a 30-per-cent increase in prostate size.
He's also tried to figure out why industry studies don't find the results that seem so readily apparent in the laboratories of academic scientists.
Dr. vom Saal contends that many industry experiments are flawed. In one case, he says a study funded by the plastics council and including researchers from GE, Dow, and Bayer, found no effects from low doses of bisphenol A, but used a strain of rats he says are hundreds of times less sensitive to estrogenic drugs than humans. The same study failed to use test animals that would have detected that the rats were relatively impervious to sex hormones.
The rats, known as the CD Sprague-Dawley variety, are produced by Charles River Laboratories Inc., of Wilmington, Mass., which said in a written statement that the "scientific literature is unclear and inconsistent" over whether the animals "are less estrogen sensitive than other outbred rat stocks."
Mr. Hentges defended the industry's research, saying it followed approved international guidelines and used a well regarded rat variety. He said a follow-up study using mice also failed to find adverse effects and included a test for estrogen sensitivity. Any suggestions that industry work is flawed "is just plain wrong," he said.
The contradictory findings on bisphenol A have produced a picayune scientific tit for tat between the industry and its critics on almost every aspect of each other's research. For instance, Mr. Hentges claims some academic studies are useless as predictors for human health effects because they used pumps to inject bisphenol A into animals, while human exposure is mainly oral through food.
But scientists counter that their work replicates better what occurs during fetal development, a time when most animals are uniquely sensitive to dangerous substances.
The industry says that when humans consume bisphenol A, most is converted in the gut into a form that isn't dangerous, although those worried about the substance say not all of it is dealt with in this way and diet is constantly replenishing exposures.
There are also disagreements over how potent a hormone mimic bisphenol A is. The industry calls it a weak estrogen because it is thousands of times less effective on some cell receptors. However, it is similar in strength on receptors on the surface of cells crucial for many biological functions.
Dr. vom Saal dismisses this controversy over the relative estrogenic strength of bisphenol A as mere hair splitting. "This is like saying, well Arnold Schwarzenegger is weak, relative to Superman," he said.
To date, international regulatory bodies, most recently the European Food Safety Authority in an assessment issued this year, have given the benefit of the doubt to the industry on these disputes.
Mr. Smith thinks the scientific debate over bisphenol A is part of a broad pattern that emerges whenever industries are threatened by new findings of harm from their products.
Similar disputes have occurred over smoking and cancer, the hazards of lead paint and global warming. But he said that waiting for all scientific disputes to be resolved could be disastrous, when human health is at stake.
"If we wait for absolute certainty, there is a very strong chance that a lot of people will be harmed."
Already, there have been a small number of scientific papers linking exposures to human health outcomes, such as miscarriages (women with miscarriages were found to have three times higher levels of bisphenol A than other women) and ovarian dysfunction, although the industry disputes the findings.
In March, the first U.S. class action lawsuit alleging harm from bisphenol A was launched, against five makers of baby bottles. It was filed in Los Angeles shortly after a U.S. environmental group found the hormone mimic leaching from the bottles when they are heated, something many parents do to formula or milk.
Coincidentally, one big industry player is getting out of the bisphenol A business. This year, GE announced it wanted to sell its plastic business, but the company says the sale has nothing to do with the health controversy.
Peter O'Toole, a spokesman, said the plastics business isn't growing as rapidly as other GE operations and "doesn't seem to be fitting in the current business model." He classifies any litigation risks with bisphenol A as "speculation. There have been risk assessments done on bisphenol A and there has never been evidence shown that it's harmful to human beings," he said.
Dr. vom Saal, for his part, expects that companies associated with bisphenol A will be the next tobacco industry, mired in expensive health litigation in U.S. courts. "This is a train wreck that is absolutely coming," he said.
But Mr. Hentges dismisses views that bisphenol A is about to be derailed. "He has some very unusual views," he said of Dr. vom Saal.

Some commonly asked Bisphenol A questions

Q: What is bisphenol A ?

A: It's a chemical derived from petroleum that is used to make polycarbonate plastic and resins. It's one of the highest volume chemicals in production and used to make such everyday products as clear plastic water bottles and the linings of tin cans. Small amounts of the chemical are leaching from products into people and it is believed almost every Canadian has some exposure to it.

Q: Why is it controversial?

A: Bisphenol A has been known since the 1930s to act like a synthetic estrogen. Some researchers are worried that the chemical, which has been used in increasing amounts since the 1950s, could be a factor in the unexplained rise in illnesses like breast and prostate cancer that are associated with hormones. Animal experiments by independent researchers using low doses like those people get from products have linked bisphenol A to these kinds of health concerns. Industry testing has been unable to duplicate these findings. The industry calls research suggesting bisphenol A is harmful at low doses a hypothesis.

Q: Why is bisphenol A in the spotlight in Canada?

A: The federal government, after looking at 23,000 chemicals in use, selected bisphenol A as one of 200 that might be dangerous and in need of in-depth safety reviews. The review of bisphenol A is expected to begin next month.

Q: Does Canada have standards for bisphenol A exposure from products?

A: There are no standards for leakage from products. There is a provisional health standard for exposure to bisphenol A, but it was set in 1999 and may be outdated. Recent research has found harmful effects in animals at exposures below the Health Canada limit, in one case at doses 1,000 times lower. Some environmentalists want the chemical banned, or at least restricted from any food or beverage contact uses.

Q: Is bisphenol A the only synthetic chemical in use with hormonal properties?

A: There are dozens of other substances in use that could be hormone disruptors. If Canada accepts that bisphenol A is harmful at low doses, it will likely lead to pressure to investigate a host of other chemicals.
Health effects of bisphenol A in animal tests
Bisphenol A has been able to cause adverse effects in laboratory animal experiments at very low doses. These effects were not detected in high dose tests. Many of the adverse effects have been detected at or below the amounts people are exposed to when they ingest traces of the chemical from canned foods and other sources.
Dose (in micrograms/kg of body weight per day) Effects (measured in studies of laboratory animals) Date of study

0.025 Permanent changes to genital track 2005
0.025 Changes in breast tissue that predispose cells to hormones and carcinogens 2005
1.5 2 30 per cent increase in prostate weight 1997
to 2.4 Signs of early puberty 2002
to 2.4 Decline in testicular testosterone 2004
to 2.5 Breast cells predisposed to cancer 2006
to 10 Prostate cells more sensitive to hormones and cancer 2006
to 10 Insulin resistance 2006
to 10 Decreased maternal behaviour 2002
13 ESTIMATED HUMAN EXPOSURE FROM DIET 2003
20 Damage to eggs and chromosomes 2003
25 HEALTH CANADA PROVISIONAL HUMAN EXPOSURE LIMIT 1999
30 hyperactivity 2004
30 reversal of normal sex difference in brain structure 2001
50 U.S. HUMAN EXPOSURE LIMIT, thought to have a thousand-fold margin of safety 1998

SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP
HUMAN EXPOSURE ESTIMATE FROM THE EUROPEAN FOOD SAFETY AUTHORITY
I would love to see it banished off the face of the earth.
DR. PATRICIA HUNT, A WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY GENETICIST
We know that human exposure to BPA is extraordinarily low, well below levels that have been shown to be safe.
STEVEN HENTGES, SPOKESMAN FOR BISPHENOL A AT THE AMERICAN PLASTICS COUNCIL
This is a train wreck that is absolutely coming.
FREDERICK VOM SAAL, A UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BIOLOGIST AND LEADING ACADEMIC EXPERT ON BISPHENOL A
I think bisphenol A is top of my list, even though there are others that I hate a lot.
RICK SMITH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE
There have been risk assessments done on bisphenol A and there has never been evidence shown that it's harmful to human beings.
PETER O'TOOLE, SPOKESMAN FOR GE

Canadian Agriculture

2007-05-12T10:37:00.001-07:00

TURNING FARMING ON ITS EAR
Farmers are forgoing crop rotation and land conservation to profit from the soaring demand for corn to produce ethanol. What was once agricultural is becoming industrial
SHAWN MCCARTHY AND RICHARD BLACKWELL
April 7, 2007
Like smart farmers everywhere, Iowa corn grower Wendell Williams leavens his good times with a pinch of pragmatism, knowing that the most promising crop can be ruined by a pounding hail storm or a blistering drought.
But he's finding it hard to resist the excitement of the ethanol frenzy that is gripping the U.S. corn belt.
Mr. Williams produces corn and soybeans on an 800-acre farm in northwestern Iowa, just below the Minnesota border. As he does every year, he plans to rotate his crop this spring, planting half corn and half soybeans, resisting the trend to increase corn production.
The 59-year-old is just enjoying the blue sky days. Prices are up -- he's getting 30 per cent more for his corn than he did last year -- his land values are soaring, and there is no end in sight to the demand for corn to make ethanol, which U.S. state and federal governments are heavily promoting as a key means to cut reliance on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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TURNING FARMING ON ITS EAR
"All too often in agriculture, the surprises that come your way are negative surprises; this happens to be a positive one," Mr. Williams says in a telephone interview.
"And there is certainly cautious optimism among my friends."
Many of his neighbours, he adds, have thrown caution to the wind as they race to get corn seed in the ground. Many are opting to go all corn where previously they would have rotated to soybeans, or plant on marginal land that would have been set aside for conservation.
The ethanol boom is Iowa is akin to the oil boom in Alberta, and is dramatically altering the farm economy of the Midwest. To a lesser extent, the boom is also being felt in Canada, where corn farmers in Ontario and Quebec see a new and growing market for their products.
In Iowa, plants are sprouting up like corn stalks in a hot summer. Mr. Williams has two ethanol plants within 50 kilometres of his farm, with two more under construction. If all the ethanol plants planned for Iowa are built, they would consume the equivalent of last year's entire corn crop in the state.
Like Albertans who see an overheating economy with their oil boom, Iowans worry about the huge increase of trucks on their roads, about the refineries' voracious appetite for water leading to the depletion of ground water, about an influx of out-of-state workers, and about the overall upheaval in their traditional farm economies.
Mr. Williams has spent his career selling to the local elevators, which have marketed the corn to poultry farms in Arkansas and pig farms in Oklahoma. With four ethanol plants nearby, he expects he'll sell his crop directly to the fuel producers, as will many of his neighbours.
"We're starting to hear some genuine distress from poultry and swine producers," he said. Some are actually cutting back production because feed costs are so high.
"This whole ethanol boom has just turned everything on its ear in agriculture," said Mike Duffy, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. He said the state's agricultural economy is essentially being transformed into an industrial one. "What I liken it to is a giant gong and somebody has whacked the gong with a giant hammer, and it's reverberating and where it's going to end up, we don't know."
Egged on by government cheerleaders -- with U.S. President George W. Bush as squad captain -- and supported by generous subsidies, producers from farm co-ops to multinationals such as Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. are rushing to build more ethanol capacity.
Mr. Bush has set a goal of eliminating 75 per cent of oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. Currently, the United States imports almost two million barrels of oil a day from there. The plan calls for increasing U.S. demand for renewable motor fuels to 35 billion gallons by 2017, a fivefold increase from the 2012 renewable standard and 25 per cent of current U.S. gasoline demand.
The entire U.S. corn crop could supply ethanol for only 12 per cent of U.S. gasoline demand, or about half of the 35-billion-gallon target. Governments in the United States and Canada are funding the development of cellulosic ethanol, which can be produced from switchgrass, wood chips and other biomass. In Western Canada, ethanol producers use wheat as a feed stock.
In 2000, ethanol demand accounted for just 6 per cent of the U.S. corn crop, to produce 1.6 billion gallons. That has risen to 20 per cent of the crop last year, to produce five billion gallons. And most observers expect the industry to meet the 2012 target of 7.5 billion gallons as early as next year, as ethanol producers soak up more than a quarter of the U.S. corn crop.
But just as farmers started dreaming of riches, some of the hot air was let out of the corn-ethanol balloon this week.
A week ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that U.S. farmers planned to plant 15 per cent more acres of corn this year than they did in 2006 -- the 90.5 million acres of planned planting would be the largest since 1944 when farmers were yielding far fewer bushels per acre.
While markets were expecting some increase, the huge jump took traders by surprise and corn prices fell this week.
At the Chicago Board of Trade, corn futures had climbed to $4.50 (U.S.) a bushel in early March from $2.60 last fall. After the USDA announcement, futures tumbled to $3.50 before regaining some of that loss, and closed the week at $3.66.
Still, a price of $3.50 a bushel is considerably better than the average price of $2.50 over the past several years, when U.S. farmers were relying on generous federal subsidies and taking land out of rotation.
Mr. Williams said the price drop should serve as a warning to corn farmers who may be suffering from what former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan once termed "irrational exuberance." But he hasn't seen any evidence that the retreat on futures markets has dimmed farmers' enthusiasm to plant as much as they can.
"I've been to a lot of meetings where people think the golden goose has landed in our backyard and is going to live there forever and ever and ever, and is going to keep shelling out golden eggs," he said.
"And I keep telling people, you know, that goose may be there temporarily. You best pick those eggs up and take very good care of them."
He expects a 20-per-cent boost to his income this year as a result of rising prices, but noted that the gains are being eroded by higher costs for land rental, fertilizer and seeds.
As well as providing a nice boost to farmers' incomes, the ethanol craze has ignited a boom in land prices in the farm belt.
Sam Kain, a broker with Farmers National Bank in West Des Moines, said the increase in corn prices "all tends to get bid back into land prices." He noted that farmers are increasingly reluctant to dedicate land to a federal conservation program, even though they get paid to take their acres out of rotation. "But with current prices, people are not [renewing] some of those contracts," he said.
Prof. Duffy does a regular survey of farm land prices in Iowa, and found that they shot up 12 per cent in the second half of 2006. He expects land prices to climb another 15 per cent this year.
"I don't see anything over the next three to five years that is going to slow this down," he said.
Certainly, the higher corn prices will eliminate some of the more marginal plans for ethanol plants. A typical rule of thumb is that, even with generous subsidies, ethanol producers need corn prices below $4 a bushel and oil prices above $50 a barrel to make production viable.
But Ron Lamberty, vice-president of the Renewable Fuels Association, said the producers are adopting modern hedging techniques to protect themselves from sharp increases in corn prices and from a prolonged slump in gasoline prices.
As well, the ethanol refineries don't use the entire corn kernel, but only the starch and sugars. They then sell as cattle feed the residual proteins known as distillers dried grain, the value of which rises as corn prices climb.
Canada's largest ethanol producer, Toronto-based GreenField Ethanol, said higher corn prices will not deter its expansion plans. GreenField currently operates two plants in Ontario and recently commissioned one in Varennes, Que. It is also building two plants in Ontario.
GreenField president Bob Gallant said corn costs represent 60 to 70 per cent of the cost of ethanol production. So the price rise "is clearly painful, there is no doubt about that." But he said his company has successfully hedged its corn costs.
Like their U.S. counterparts, Canadian farmers are enjoying the boom in prices, but worry that the frenzy will lead to corn oversupply, which in turn will push down prices.
Tom Wilson, who grows corn just south of Sarnia, Ont., knows that just a few months of great weather could result in a bumper crop in North America's corn-growing regions, and if that happens prices will likely tumble despite the ethanol euphoria. This week's retreat could turn into a rout, he worries.
"A month ago everything was rosy in the corn world, they were talking of $7 corn," Mr. Wilson said. Now, "anybody who was sitting back waiting for the high price of corn has lost a lot of money."
Mr. Wilson has boosted his corn planting -- it's up to about 600 acres from 500 last year -- but that's mainly because conditions for one of his other crops, winter wheat, have not been good. He, like other farmers in the region, stick to a careful rotation of crops, and piling everything into corn just isn't going to happen, even with better prices.
Still, higher corn prices have injected some optimism into the Canadian agricultural scene.
For one thing, farm real estate is moving again, said Jim Platts, a salesman at O'Rourke Real Estate in Ridgetown, Ont., and that action is clearly linked to rising corn prices.
Activity in farm sales is definitely higher this year than in the past two years, Mr. Platts said, but most of the buying is local, "with farmers in the area picking up adjacent land. Properties that have been sitting for a year or so, that needed to be sold for financial reasons, are being picked up."
But one factor that keeps Canadian farmers from getting carried away with corn is that, unlike their U.S. counterparts, they won't get subsidies if the price falls. The U.S. corn subsidy program, worth about $9-billion a year in recent years, is being challenged by Canada at the World Trade Organization, but the value of the subsidy is expected to fall as a result of rising prices.
Mr. Wilson argues that Ottawa is neglecting farmers and favouring ethanol producers with a support program, announced in last month's budget, that pays 10 cents a litre to ethanol producers.
"The Canadian and Ontario governments are heavy on this ethanol bandwagon," he said. "All they want to do is build ethanol plants and get ethanol in cars. Then why don't they pay us to grow corn like they do in the States? To the American farmer, it doesn't bother them at all if the price of corn drops. If the price is low, they'll get their profits out of the government."
Ryan Brown, general manager of the Ontario Corn Producers Association, says that if Ottawa isn't careful, its pro-ethanol policy could just mean more U.S. corn is imported for ethanol production, because U.S. subsidies will make it cheaper than what Canada can produce.
In the end, farmers such as Mr. Brown aren't doing a lot of complaining about the ethanol-induced corn boom; it's just that they're not expecting to get rich quick.
"There's been excellent pricing over the last six months for guys to take advantage of opportunities that haven't been there over the last couple of years," he said. "But keep in mind they're digging out of two to three years of a heck of a hole they've been in."

Snapshot
The majority of Canada's corn is planted in Ontario and Quebec, with most of it used for animal feed.

National production
Total: 9.5 million metric tonnes (2005-06)

Ontario: 61% (5.8 million)
Quebec: 37% (3.5 million)
Rest of Canada: 2% (0.2 million)
How it's used in Canada
Total use: 10.9 million metric tonnes
(Difference from production is made up by imports)
Animal feed: 80% (8.7 million)
Seed: 0.1% (0.01 million)
Human/ industrial: 20% (2.2 million)

The ethanol revolution
The great debate
Does ethanol deliver energy savings and environmental benefits when it is mixed with gasoline? The preponderance of recent studies using a life cycle analysis of the two fuels suggests that it does.
The U.S. Department of Energy calculates the full life cycle of ethanol versus gasoline, and concludes that a BTU of ethanol consumes 63 per cent of the fossil energy as a BTU of gasoline. The department reports that, on a per-gallon basis, corn-based ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 18 to 28 per cent compared with a gallon of gasoline.
Skeptics argue that those studies use selective data to achieve a predetermined result. David Pimentel, professor of agriculture and ecology at Cornell University, has calculated that corn-based ethanol requires 29 per cent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
The industry has argued Mr. Pimentel used old data for the calculations.

114 = The number of ethanol refineries in the United States.
21.9 billion = The number of litres produced there annually.
87 = The number of additional plants under construction, or expansion.
8 = The number of ethanol refineries in Canada
650 million = The number of litres of produced here annually

Field of dreams
Playing the corn market
Both farmers and ethanol producers use hedging techniques to reduce the risk of price swings, primarily by entering into long-term contracts. (At any time, as much as a quarter of Ontario's expected corn crop is presold.)
But the tone of the market is set on the Chicago Board of Trade futures market.Commercial traders dominate the CBOT market, buying and selling contracts of 5,000 bushels of corn, based on monthly delivery at a Chicago terminal. But investors -- hedge funds, pension funds and other money managers -- represent a growing presence.
One recent entry into the market is the indexed fund, which are increasingly investing in commodity futures to hedge the equity and bond markets.
As a result, the volumes of trading in corn futures shot up 67 per cent in the first quarter of this year from the same period last year.

How to invest
Individual investors looking to jump on the bandwagon have limited options, unless they can tackle the futures markets. The best bet may be to look at public companies with exposure to the corn or ethanol businesses.
Agricultural conglomerate Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. is the biggest producer of ethanol in the United States. Several smaller producers are also publicly traded, including VeraSun Energy Corp., Pacific Ethanol Inc. and Aventine Renewable Energy Inc. Monsanto Co. is also a good bet on corn and ethanol, since it is the biggest producer of corn seed in the United States.
In Canada, it's harder to directly connect investments with the sector. GreenField Ethanol Inc. has said it plans to go public but hasn't yet done so. Suncor Energy Inc. has an ethanol factory near Sarnia, Ont., but that operation is just a tiny fraction of its overall energy business.

TEXT: SHAWN McCARTHY/RICHARD BLACKWELL

===========================
CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH

Canada's odd low gravity a relic of the ice age
DAWN WALTON

May 11, 2007

CALGARY -- For years, scientists have known that compared with the rest of the world, Canada is a low-gravity area - although nowhere close to the zero-G phenomenon of space travel - but now, researchers have discovered that this country's peculiar gravitational field is even more pronounced in two northerly regions.
While most of this country was blanketed by 3.2 kilometres of ice and snow 20,000 years ago (which is more than likely the culprit for Canada's overall low pull of gravity), two areas on either side of Hudson Bay, each covering land up to half the size of Quebec, were buried under an additional 500 metres of ancient ice.
Using satellites to measure minute variations in the Earth's gravity, researchers have mapped out what Canada's topography looked like underneath the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which vanished 10,000 years ago.
The two northern pieces of real estate have not rebounded from years of being weighed down by so much ice, according to a report in today's issue of the Journal Science. If the compressed ground were to return to its pre-ice-age levels, the gravity would return to the levels in the rest of Canada.
TURNING FARMING ON ITS EAR
"I looked at the screen at this image and it gave me goose bumps," recalled study co-author Jerry Mitrovica, a geophysicist at the University of Toronto, "You're seeing the image of the remnants of the ice age."
The low-gravity environment on the moon made walking a challenge for astronauts and reduced them instantly to perhaps one-sixth their weight on Earth.
These homegrown spots of low gravity in Canada are not nearly that pronounced, but their detection does settle a long-running debate about what the ice that once covered Canada looked like. Some have argued that it was one massive dome like a tennis bubble covering the country. Others have suggested there was more than one bulge.
"What this picture suggests is that there was definitely at least these two domes that are continuing to cause this change in gravity that we see," said study co-author Mark Tamisiea, a research associate with the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool, which is linked to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The findings are crucial for future climate change research, according to the authors. They also add to the modern-day understanding of global warming.
In 2002, NASA and the German Aerospace Center launched a pair of satellites to circle the planet from 500 kilometres above to map changes in mass and gravity. These so-called Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment or Grace satellites collected data on ice sheets and glaciers over the next four years for a variety of researchers.
A pair of University of Colorado researchers discovered, for example, that Greenland, which is home to 10 per cent of all the ice on Earth, was losing between 150 and 250 cubic kilometres of ice a year, enough to push the world's oceans up by 0.5 millimetres annually.
If all of that ice disappears, experts say, sea levels would rise by six metres or more. But that's something that could take centuries.
The satellites not only can measure changes in the weight of ice, but detect regions with the greatest loss, according to Michael Watkins, a Grace project scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The satellites found that the Earth's crust over Canada has not completed what scientists call the "post-glacial rebound." Now, it's clear that the ice age is still affecting the planet.