HUNDREDS OF DEAD YOUNG PENGUINS WASHING UP ON BRAZIL'S SHORES

McClatchy Newspapers - The discovery of hundreds of young penguins washing up along the Brazilian shoreline over the past month has sparked a scientific mystery over what may have led the birds thousands of miles astray.

The so-called Magellanic penguins began appearing in late June. Many of them dead or barely alive, they arrived on beaches all over south-eastern Brazil about 2,500 miles from their native southern Patagonia. Some of the penguins have since been spotted as far north as the warm-water beaches of the Brazilian state of Bahia, another 600 miles up the Atlantic coast.

Although the penguins regularly migrate up to southern Brazil in search of food, the sheer quantity of penguins washing up farther away than normal has prompted worries that human activity may be throwing off the animals' migratory cycle.

"The penguin population is intimately linked to their supplies of food, so this suggests something is happening to the population of fish they eat," said biologist Marcelo Bertellotti at the National Patagonic Center in Puerto Madryn, Argentina.

"It appears the penguins are not finding fish where they normally do, and one reason could be that warming waters and climate change have impacted the fish population."

BIOFUEL FROM WASTE

TREE HUGGER - Edmonton, Canada is in the process of building a waste-to-ethanol plant. Now, Reno, Nevada will be getting in on the act. The facility in question will be built by Fulcrum BioEnergy and is expected to begin operating in 2010. Taking municipal sold waste and converting it to ethanol, the Sierra BioFuels plant will produce approximately 10.5 million gallons of biofuel per year, from 90,000 tons of material that otherwise would have been disposed of in landfills. The plant, located ten miles east of Reno, will cost $120 million to build, with construction starting later this year.

ECO CLIPS

Think Progress Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior energy adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and a lobbyist for Koch Industries, lied to MSNBC's David Schuster, claiming, "We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn't spill a drop." She said: "When Senator McCain opposed lifting the ban in the past, it was because there were concerns about environmental capability. Like, could we do this and still maintain a pristine environmental um uh climate and and area around the drilling? And basically, what we've seen is the technology has progressed to the point where we could do that. We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn't spill a drop." . . . The hurricanes, unsurprisingly, caused 124 offshore spills and hundreds more onshore.

Metafficient A great example of rainwater harvesting can be found at the Langston Brown Community Center and High School in Arlington, Virginia. The community center has two 24-foot-tall 11,000-gallon cisterns that store rainwater. The tank at the front of the school is covered with panels, and fits seamlessly into the overall design of the building. The building captures 280,000 gallons of water a year. Regrettably, the rainwater is only used for onsite irrigation, sidewalk washing, and other non-potable uses. However, the center does have waterless urinals which result in a 23% reduction in potable water use.

SCHOOL SYSTEM CONSIDERS FOUR DAY WEEK

Tree Hugger - There’s a school district in Virginia committed to studying the idea of a 4 day school week as energy costs climb. A practice which would mean less time on the road for school buses along with lower heating bills and CO2 emissions because the schools heat supply could be shut down for a three day weekend. Not to mention the need for one less set of school lunches to be shipped and prepared, along with one less daily commute for school personnel. All of which would most certainly cut both energy usage and CO2 as well. . . And there are plenty of reasons why the savings might not add up as well, particularly as the cost of day care for most parents would increase significantly as schools often serve a dual role for working parents in an age when two incomes is usually a necessity. And what may be a saving to the school district on energy bills and CO2 emissions may simply be transferred to those same parents as well. With the costs of running a school system currently spread over the entire population, it’s more than possible that those same costs will simply be redistributed to those with young children who often least can afford the increase.

FLOATING WIND TURBINES COULD GIVE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY A BOOST

Guardian, UK A British company is poised to construct the world's first floating wind turbine, in a move that could herald a new generation of cheaper, less problematic wind energy. Blue H, a firm registered in the UK but based in Holland, aims to anchor its prototype device 12 miles off the coast of southern Italy later this month.

The company is one of several racing to build commercial-scale floating wind turbines that sit in deep water far from land. These turbines benefit from more powerful winds and avoid many of the issues that afflict existing wind farms.

Neal Bastick, head of Blue H, said the Italian prototype would be "virtually invisible" from the shore, and that the company plans to build a full scale floating 90 megawatt wind farm in the region. Blue H also wants to build them off Scotland and the northeast US.

Bastick said the floating windmills would be more economic to install than existing offshore turbines, which sit on fixed foundations in the seabed. They could minimize problems with planning, as well as having less impact on shipping, military radar and coastal seabird populations. Electricity would be sent ashore using undersea cables.

SAUDIS SEND MIXED MESSAGES ABOUT THEIR OIL SUPPLY

We have received this note from a reader with extensive experience - both governmental and scholarly - in the field of energy:

Recently and whatever their intentions, the Saudis have been sending mixed messages about their future crude-oil production.

(1] In March, the King said that discoveries of new reservoirs of crude oil must be reserved for future generations.

[2] In June, Oil & Gas Journal tabulated Saudi projects recently completed or close to completion which would add more than four million barrels per day to Saudi capacity. [ No mention of the rates of decline for reservoirs already in production. ]

[3] The same report stated that production from these projects will peak in 2008 or 2010. In other words, production will begin to decline very soon after the projects are completed. This is very strange. Do these projects represent acts of desperation?

[4] In June, Saudi officials announced a national goal of increasing capacity to 12.5 million barrels, with the possibility of 15 million barrels later on, "if necessary" to meet world demand. This is from a current level reported as 9.5 million barrels.

[5] Now comes Business Week and says that Saudi production of crude oil will peak in 2010 at only 12 million barrels per day. Moreover, this level can only be sustained for short periods of time. The sustainable level will peak at 10.4 million barrels. The source of this information is said to be Saudi sources who are both reliable and have access to statistics for individual reservoirs.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the most important news is that which has not been reported. After five decades of official optimism, of portraying Saudi Arabia as the cornucopia of crude oil, there is no longer any certainty nor even a coherent party line about its future capacity. And without Saudi Arabia as the cornucopia, the illusion of oil forever has been shattered forever.

Of the 80 plus countries with significant crude-oil production, 63 admit that theirs is in permanent decline, including Mexico, the North Sea countries and the USA. Meanwhile, expansion of production in Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Russia is on hold for political reasons, while the Saudis say that Iran and Nigeria cannot expand in any case.

With so many errors, omissions and bald-faced lies in oil statistics, I still doubt that we can pinpoint the year of the peak in world crude-oil production. But more than ever, we can be sure that it is coming and coming sooner than a lot of people think.

WORLD'S FORESTS THREATENED BY POPULATION GROWTH

New Scientist Two reports [say] that booming demand for food, fuel and wood as the world's population surges from 6 to 9 billion will put unprecedented and unsustainable demand on the world's remaining wooded ecosystems.

"Arguably, we are on the verge of the last great global land grab," says Andy White, co-author of Seeing People Through the Trees, one of the two reports which are both published by Rights and Resources Initiative, a US organization.

White's report said that unless agricultural productivity rises sharply, new land equivalent in size to 12 times the area of Germany will have to be cultivated for crops to meet food and biofuel demand by 2030.

Virtually all of it is likely to be in developing countries, principally land that is currently forested.

"Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers," says White. "It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."

The second report, From Exclusion to Ownership, notes that governments still claim ownership of most forests in developing countries, but says they have done little to ensure the rights and tenure of forest dwellers.

It says people whose main source of livelihood is the forests were usually the best custodians of the forests and their biodiversity.

ECO CLIPS

Physorg As unwelcome as they are, higher gasoline prices do come with a plus side – fewer deaths from car accidents, says a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. . . . If gas remains at $4 a gallon or higher for a year or more, traffic deaths could drop by more than 1,000 per month nationwide, said Michael Morrisey, Ph.D., director of UAB’s Lister Hill Center for Health Policy and a co-author on the new findings. "It is remarkable to think that a percent change in gas prices can equal lives saved, which is what our data show," Morrisey said. "For every 10 percent rise in gas prices, fatalities are reduced by 2.3 percent. The effects are even more dramatic for teen drivers."

Scientific Blogging Millions of pounds of lead used in hunting, fishing and shooting sports wind up in the environment each year and can threaten or kill wildlife, according to a new scientific report. Lead is a metal with no known beneficial role in biological systems, and its use in gasoline, paint, pesticides, and solder in food cans has nearly been eliminated. Although lead shot was banned for waterfowl hunting in 1991, its use in ammunition for upland hunting, shooting sports, and in fishing tackle remains common. While noting that more information is needed on some aspects of the impact of lead on wildlife, the authors said that numerous studies already documented adverse effects to wildlife, especially water birds and scavenging species, like hawks and eagles. Lead exposure from ingested lead shot, bullets, and fishing sinkers also has been reported in reptiles, and studies near shooting ranges have shown evidence of lead poisoning in small mammals.

ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF CONTINUES TO BREAK UP IN WINTER

MSNBC New satellite images show that an Antarctic ice shelf continues to disintegrate - and even more surprising is that it's happening during the Southern Hemisphere's winter.

Experts warned last March, at the end of the Antarctic summer, that the Wilkins Ice Shelf was disintegrating more quickly, but they expected that the winter cold would put the trend in a temporary deep freeze.

At 6,000 square miles in size, Wilkins "is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last 50 years," David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement released by the European Space Agency as it revealed the satellite images late Thursday.

SMART HOUSE TO GO WITH YOUR SMART CAR

We Make Money Not Art - Richard Horden asked his architecture students at both the Technical University of Munich and the Tokyo Institute of Technology to produce designs for a 2.65m [8.6 feet] cubed living space. Their Micro-Compact Home is a lightweight, transportable minimal dwelling inspired by Japanese tea houses, the Smart car and first class air travel. Prototype units will now be used to create a village on the Technical University of Munich campus.

The homes, each costing around E50,000, will be constructed in a factory as complete cubes and transported to the site where they will be craned onto an aluminum triangular-shaped sub-frame. The cube will "touch the ground lightly" and allow nature to flow beneath the structure unimpeded.

The homes’ layout is divided into distinct zones. A compact area for the shower and WC, with the kitchen separated by a sliding door. On the central axis is the entrance and kitchen circulation area, which also serves as seating for up to five people round a sunken dining area. An overhead double bed can be folded up out of the way while the dining area can be tranformed into a second sleeping space.

The dwelling integrates state-of-the-art technology including a sound system, flat screen TV, and temperature controls. It requires no furniture and all storage space is cleverly concealed and integrated into the dwelling.

Horden anticipates that the units will only have a life cycle of five to 10 years and he hopes that the construction materials will be recycled or re-used.

NEW SOLAR COLLECTORS WOULD USE WINDOWS INSTEAD OF PANELS

Scientific Blogging Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that. The work involves the creation of a novel 'solar concentrator.' "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.

As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says.

Because the system is simple to manufacture, the team believes that it could be implemented within three years-even added onto existing solar-panel systems to increase their efficiency by 50 percent for minimal additional cost. That, in turn, would substantially reduce the cost of solar electricity.