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Environmental Science and Conservation Discussion Thread.

09:32 / 12.06.07

This thread is intended to be a space where people can draw attention to, and comment on, new developments in the area of environmental science and conservation efforts. It is also intended to be a space where we can discuss the negative impacts that scientific "progress" has had on our planetary environment (and, let's face it, that is quite a lot).

I also think it is appropriate to use this thread to also discuss practical ways that we can help to minimise human impact on the environment, conserve energy, and aid efforts to protect endangered species.

As with the New Developments in... threads, I suggest that people don't just plop down a link and a single sentence and leave it at that. Give reasons why you found the link useful/ interesting/ inaccurate/ aggravating/ etc.

Some links:

Environmental Science wiki.

Endangered Species wiki.

Link to the red list of endangered animals.

Link to the energy saving trust site, handy hints on practical ways to conserve energy.

Some recent news articles relevant to the thread:

Forest management may lead to worse wildfires.

After forest fires in Oregon the area was replanted with commercially-viable conifers, and this may be causing the next fire to be worse as it provides a homogenous fuel supply for the fire. More trees are burnt, so more conifers are planted in their place, so the fires get worse and worse. It's an example of forest services having to prioritise financial concerns to the deteriment of the thing they're supposed to be protecting.

Europes seas already seriously damaged.

This news really pisses me off. The average person on the street doesn't seem to get just how bad the condition of the seas are at the moment. Just because the fish is still pouring into the shops everyone seems to think it's all fine and dandy out there. Meanwhile pro-whaling countries blame (!)whales(!) for the damage to fish stocks.

Lagrange's Nightmare

09:52 / 12.06.07

Just to add some general links before the discussion starts, for people looking for open access environmental journals two great ones are:

Ecology and Society (formely conservation ecology)

and the relatively new:

Environmental Research Letters

Potential other journals can be found here.

19:17 / 12.06.07

Conservation of endangered species has taken a real hit with the recent death of a panda reintroduced to the wild. Seems like he was killed due to territory issues, stuff that the animal could never have learned about being raised in captivity. This seems to indicate a definite failure in methods employed by conservationists, but the question raised is "what can be done instead?" Are there viable alternatives?

That whales are causing fish shortages (doubtlessly claimed by members of the IWC like Japan and several land-locked countries reportedly invested in by Japan) is an absolutely ludicrous claim. What whales, do they specify? Aren't a huge number of whales just filter feeders (right term?) that eat tonnes of zooplankton? It's true that by devouring the plankton, they're leaving some fish without food, but obviously not the extent that they're going to be left sans food).

Aaaand, just as I type this, here in Ireland, The Green Party have just got into power with the centre right Fianna Fáil Party. It's good news, but I find it amazing that a party all about conservation, green energy and environmental preservation (especially a party so vocally objective to Fianna Fáil's previous dealings with the environment) would hop into bed with each other. FF have been responsible for the routing of a motorway through an ancient historical site (Hill of Tara), the suppression of protestors against Shell's drilling for oil near residential areas of Galway, and of course, selling our oil reserves to Shell in the first place. It's a ridiculous situation, but one that just might be resolves if the GP get an Environmental ministerial position.

Anyway, hopefully this topic will live.

00:15 / 13.06.07

In the above-mentioned Oregon fires, it sounds very possible that leftover logging slash (debris) combined with densely planted, even-aged young conifers was to blame. In most logging operations, the valuable trunk wood is taken and all of the branch wood or defective trunk wood is left laying on the ground in tangled masses (I won't even get into the waste of that). Until recently, this debris was left where it lay, though more often now it is piled and burned on-site. This slash can stay around for a surprising amount of time. Leftovers from old logging operations have created long-term risks in reforested sites. This kind of ground fuel is much longer-burning than regular understory vegetation (all of this is very general, and not exclusively true, though, see below). Fires will more often burn around a snag than actually catch it on fire, where ground fuel piled around itself burns very well. This really depends on stand density, species composition, terrain, and environmental conditions. The supression of forest fires over the last century here has created an overfueled understory and unnatural stand density, with too many trees too close together. Regular fires in those forests adapted to them keep them more open and lower in ground fuels, as well as ladder fuels (those that carry fire up into crowns and canopies). It makes me sick when some idiot like Rush Limbaugh says "there are more trees now than there were 100 years ago". There are more stems in forested areas, true. Where you may have had five four-foot diameter trees you now have ten two-foot diameter trees and twenty more smaller trees beneath. Is that a fair comparison?
Some kind of forest management is necessary in many places because we have already screwed things up so much. But nobody wants to spend money to do selective thinning for forest health, because there's no real money to be made in delicately going in and removing mostly small trees and shrubs. And vast tracts of forest are now overstocked, drought-stricken, and bursting into flame. Avaricious timber companies will say that the forest needs to be thinned, but they only want the large stems. "Salvage" logging is mostly a criminal joke, as well. Just another excuse to get timber on the hoof.

10:29 / 15.06.07

My friend's a forester and he was saying very similar stuff, it's treated largely as a giant slow growing cash crop rather than a forest.

I find it amazing that a party all about conservation, green energy and environmental preservation () would hop into bed with each other.

I don't, greens will ally with virtually anyone to get into power and have some sort of impact, because they're desperate, because the situation is so urgent. Until people are actually dying of thirst themselves, they will happily bimble on spraying drinking water onto their garden and throwing toxins into the water table. Then when they *are* dying of thirst they freak out and demand to know why something wasn't done earlier, get a gun and steal water from their neighbours.

10:40 / 10.07.07

Can the world discuss the environmental impact of cow farts without giggling like schoolchildren?

Well...can it?

The Guardian article I've linked to above is talking about different ways to reduce the amount of methane produced by cattle. The less controversial option would involve altering the diet of the cows and restricting their feeding times, possibly combined with a plant-derived drug. Although, crazed defiler of nature that I am, I can envisage genetic modification of the gut flora to permanently do what the pill is supposed to (convert methane to glucose).

Of course, it could also be argued that this should be a prime motivator for the world to massively reduce the levels of farmed ruminants in the world. Us wealthy Westerners can live without so much steak and chips...I guess.

13:50 / 11.07.07

Reducing the amount of beef people eat would be only good, surely? Better for their health, better for deforestation, better for methane, better for transport, better for land management... definitely better than engineering special gut flora so Big Macs can remain under a pound while the sky burns.
I remember finding out when I was six (1981) that you can live off a field of crops, or feed the crops to animals and eat the animals but it takes ten fields. I thought, why don't environmentalists go vegetarian? What's their excuse? Turns out, their excuse is 'But I like steak'. Lame.

Soy vs. Meat= "Meat production took more land (6 to 17 times as much), water (4.4 to 26 times), fossil fuels (6 to 20 times), and biocides (a lumped-together category of pesticides and chemicals used in processing -- 6 times as much). In fact, meat lost in every category. When processing and transport is factored in to the equation, the difference becomes less extreme, but it's still there. Meat-based diets use about twice as many environmental resources as soy-based diets"

There's lots of things the cow industry can do -
In general, implementing certain management practices can address greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector. The strategies involve management practices that would:
-Reduce emissions (e.g. improve feeding efficiency or manure management)
-Remove emissions (e.g. increase carbon in soils, pastures or trees)
-Replace fossil fuels (e.g. use renewable energy)
...but for me the obvious answer is LESS COWS. If people ate meat once or twice a week instead of several times a day, we could abolish factory farming, free up vast tracts of arable land, massively reduce methane production and improve everybody's health.
Any arguments for keeping beef production at this artificially unsustainably high level anyone? Except it makes money for McDonalds, and people like steak?

13:57 / 11.07.07

definitely better than engineering special gut flora so Big Macs can remain under a pound while the sky burns.

Where's your vision? If my future empire looks like a McApokolips full of gene-modded cattle then so shall it be!

I have started coming round to the idea of making massive cuts to the amount of meat I consume in recent months.

Implementing changes in diet, feeding patterns, and food source would be infinitely better and easier to do than genengineering animals (I just feel like I'm not doing my job on Barb if I don't suggest perverting nature every now and then).

09:56 / 12.07.07

This recent report suggests that we might not have to engineer special bacteria to stop cows farting, rather just use the bacteria kangaroos have. That said, there's no guarantee that they will thrive in cows' or sheep stomachs, and it does smack a little of a quick fix that doesn't address the issue of deforestation for grazing land, for example.

11:58 / 12.07.07

Sun not responsible for climate change shocker!
"The new study... overturns claims by climate sceptics who say that the planet's climate has long fluctuated and that current warming is just part of that natural cycle - the result of variation in the sun's output and not greenhouse gas emissions."

I was going to complain about the pointlessness of it, as everybody knows it's our fault, but then I saw the comments on the article. First comment? I quote;
"What about the FACT that the sun is growing in size and that the Earth is being pulled closer to the sun by its gravitational pull?"

Argh. What about the FACT that you are a fucking idiot?

19:23 / 12.07.07

I had no idea my broke student diet (which contains far less meat than I'm used to) actually helped the environment. Thank you, Barbelith.

08:25 / 03.10.07

I've had a bit of a look around the old web, but can't find anything about this little nugget of conservation. I wonder if one of you knows anything about it?

If you don't have a lot of stuff in your freezer, does filling the empty drawers with scrunched up newspaper actually help conserve energy at all?

An enquiring mind wants to know.

jentacular dreams

09:12 / 03.10.07

I reckon so. You expend energy cooling down the paper (which I think has a specific heat capacity roughly double that of air), but then you don't get as much air exchange on each subsequent opening of the freezer. So probably yes, unless you're only doing it for a short time (maybe a week or so), in which case, maybe or no. Ultimately I think it all depends on how often you open your freezer, and how much free room there is in the freezer before and after the papering.

13:28 / 03.10.07

Yeah, I've heard that the most energy your fridge expends is in recooling air that circulates in every time you open the damn door - less air = less work.

This comes not from conservation science but a manual on appliance repairs.

13:52 / 03.10.07

Sometimes the better place to go for actual info. Cheers all.

Closed for Business Time

13:00 / 12.10.07

As many of you undoubtedly know built structures like factories, houses and offices are where the bulk of electricity consumption takes place. Less known is the fact that cement production is responsible for more than 5% of CO2 production. A rough estimate has it that 1 metric tonne of cement produces the equivalent amount of CO2. One solution to this is geopolymers. Read more about them here.

Also this article from today's Guardian.

16:06 / 12.10.07

That geopolymer site is clocking out on me. Hmm.

Does sound fascinating, though.

Closed for Business Time

16:08 / 12.10.07

Hm. Works fine for me. Also this site is good.

Closed for Business Time

16:17 / 12.10.07

You'll like this grant:

From the Journal of the American Ceramic Society:

Microstructural Evidence of Reconstituted Limestone Blocks in the Great Pyramids of Egypt

M. W. Barsoum, A. Ganguly and G. Hug

Abstract:
How the Great Pyramids of Giza were built has remained an enduring mystery. In the mid-1980s, Davidovits proposed that the pyramids were cast in situ using granular limestone aggregate and an alkali alumino-silicate-based binder. Hard evidence for this idea, however, remained elusive. Using primarily scanning and transmission electron microscopy, we compared a number of pyramid limestone samples with six different limestone samples from their vicinity. The pyramid samples contained microconstituents (μc's) with appreciable amounts of Si in combination with elements, such as Ca and Mg, in ratios that do not exist in any of the potential limestone sources. The intimate proximity of the μc's suggests that at some time these elements had been together in a solution. Furthermore, between the natural limestone aggregates, the μc's with chemistries reminiscent of calcite and dolomite—not known to hydrate in nature—were hydrated. The ubiquity of Si and the presence of submicron silica-based spheres in some of the micrographs strongly suggest that the solution was basic. Transmission electron microscope confirmed that some of these Si-containing μc's were either amorphous or nanocrystalline, which is consistent with a relatively rapid precipitation reaction. The sophistication and endurance of this ancient concrete technology is simply astounding.

~~~

In essence, they're saying that some of the pyramids were built with geopolymer concrete.

18:53 / 15.10.07

Evil scientist, the government also seems to think freezers full of newspapers are a good idea. I however am most impressed that your freezer isn't already filled to bursting with random food from years ago like everyone elses I know.

jentacular dreams

19:43 / 15.10.07

I hear it used to be chock full with the heads of his enemies, but a blown fuse and a summer day conspired to necessitate a cleanout.

11:08 / 18.10.07

I however am most impressed that your freezer isn't already filled to bursting with random food from years ago like everyone elses I know.

If it helps there are countless rogue peas and bits of sweetcorn living a frugal nomadic existence in there.

I'm gonna stuff me a freezer when I get home!

12:37 / 31.01.08

Watch the skies!

Heather bombs to combat bog degradation.

Sounds like a damn good idea. But these kind of attempts are reliant on the plants actually taking seed. Which, given the overall degradation of the bogs in question, might be difficult.

But anything which will reverse bogs looking like the description below has to be a good thing.

Bleaklow is, in parts, dry as southern Europe, and gullies 4m deep cross the moor.