Due to the fact that our current energy grid is roughly 51% coal-powered, electric cars and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) have taken some heat as being more polluting than their manufacturers claim, and as we get closer to the release of actual mass-market electric cars, the debate seems to get more intense. Although studies have shown that electric cars and PHEVs are cleaner than pure gas cars even when run off of mostly coal power, the debate still goes on—ad nauseum.

But from my perspective, that debate is a completely irrelevant smokescreen.

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Puff is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest.

Modern artists have often tackled environmental and ecological issues head on, such as through incorporating litter and refuse into sculptures, while other artists (such as photo, video and film artists) have sought to document industrial waste and/or have taken strong oppositional/advocacy stances in their works.

In recent years, many artists have sought to move beyond these “reactive”, commentary, and  documentary approaches and create objects and devices that serve practical purposes (if still a bit fanciful in appearance). One such artist/designer is Karolina Sobecka, whose car emissions monitoring device, ‘Puff’ , provides colorful feedback to the car owner on how “cleanly” (or efficiently) he/she is using/burning gasoline.

This author recently contacted Ms. Sobecka and asked her about this device (’Puff’) as well as her other designs, and her artistic/social/environmental goals.

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Overall, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels increased 29% between 2000 and 2008 and 41% from 1990-2008, and the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now at its highest in at least 2 million years, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The new report published this week by an international team of researchers who are part of the “Global Carbon Project” shows emissions trends through 2008 (including changes in emissions causes and in the amount of emissions remaining in the atmosphere) and brings up some major questions for the future as well.

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From the comment streams and emails I’ve been getting about recent posts, it is clear that many people believe things that are not actually true about the environmental profile of organic fertilizers.  I don’t mean to minimize the challenge we face when it comes to fertilizers, particularly nitrogen fertilizers.  They take energy to make, have the potential to generate the potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, and can lead to the pollution of ground and surface waters.  With a “rap-sheet” like that I understand why people are concerned, but there is a catch - without fertilizers we don’t eat much.

Still, there is a widespread belief that “Organic” fertilizers are the solution.  I’ve already blogged about why organic fertilizers are dramatically worse from a greenhouse gas point of view.  Today I want to talk about the water pollution issues and why “Organic” fertilizers are actually a much worse problem from that perspective as well.

Why Nitrogen Fertilizers Can Pollute

The reason that ALL nitrogen fertilizers (synthetic and Organic) are a water pollution threat is that they at some point convert to the nitrate ion (NO3-).  That particular form of nitrogen is very water soluble so the nitrate can move down into ground water or sideways into surface water.  The “Dead Zone” or “Hypoxia zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is driven in some large part by nitrate coming from farms.   There are ways to manage this issue, but first I need to talk about the fundemental challenge of crop fertilization.

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Rule #1: Resort to name calling/labeling
Rule #2: Never consider the other side’s motivation
Rule #3: Refer to rule 1 and 2.

I wish these folks were protesting the end result of the actual chain of events that will lead to their future joblessness, which is:
Decreasing demand for coal (due to health concerns for earthlings and earth)=lost jobs for coal miners=find another similar job to suit your skills=can’t because factory jobs have long been shipped overseas to skirt environmental regulations and to exploit cheaper labor=PICKET THAT!–picket lost middle class jobs, the shrinking middle class, and the growing disparity between the rich and poor!

These good people have a right to be angry–but not at the “Treehuggers” who want to put an end to our dependence on fossil fuels. Their hostility needs to be directed at the coal (throw in oil, plastic, and biotech) industry fat cats who have long made billions while poisoning the world (poisoning the world poisons those who live in said world).

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Combining the brilliance of nature with some top-notch engineering, these two scientists are on to something and getting the funding for it.

The researchers are breaking ground with this and looking to raise water monitoring to another level.

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Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

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Without pavement and parking lots we would still be traveling cross-country in Conestoga wagons on 6-inch deep ruts and be breathing lungfulls of dust every time a vehicle drove by at the Kwik-E-Mart. Needless to say, pavement is one of the many things that makes modern life possible.

But, like everything else in our modern life, the more advanced we get in our ability to collect and analyze data, the more we realize that the good stuff always seems to have its awful consequences too. It’s the same story with pavement.

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Although images of giant coal-fired smokestacks and automobile tailpipes characterize greenhouse gas scenarios, a new report proposes a different way of thinking about it – product policy.  Products and packaging contribute 44% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and reduction plans are more likely to succeed if extended producer responsibility (EPR) is made a cornerstone of commerce and environmental policy, the report says.

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Lyngbya wollei, south shore Maumee Bay in Ohio, September 23, 2009.

Lake Erie, declared dead by the news media in the 1960s because of widespread, repulsive algae blooms, is once again marred, this time by both old and new causes. Some scientists and lake advocates worry that the unsightly algae is a warning of a lake once again in decline.

Tom Bridgeman, a lake scientist with the University of Toledo’s Lake Erie Center, said, “I’ve never seen the water as green as it was this year — and it’s not showing any signs of dying off yet. This is a growing problem.” Increased phosphorus runoff from farms and city streets, coupled with the feeding and excretion habits of non-native mussels introduced through ballast water, is believed to be associated with the resurgent blooms.

The western end of the lake has suffered from a surge in microsystis algae this summer. Bridgeman hypothesizes that in addition to phosphorus, underwater sediment shifts are culpable.

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Ganga, the holiest of holy rivers in the Indian sub-continent is also one of the most polluted rivers in the region. Last year, after much lobbying, Ganga was declared the National River of India owing to its religious as well as environmental significance. However, just that could never have been enough for cleaning a river on which millions of Rupees have already been spent.

Now, the Union Environment Minister of India Mr. Jairam Ramesh, who had previously unveiled the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), has put the NBRBA on a “mission mode” to clean the river by 2020. And his indicator for success is not clear blue waters but the return of the Gangetic dolphins that were once sighted in the river in plenty!

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Cruise ships lead the pack amongst the world’s top polluters in the transportation industry. If you’re a green-minded person who’s been dreaming of a tropical cruise this winter, but don’t want to lend your support to an industry that is a major polluter, you can reconsider because even cruise lines are trying to go green and do their part to reducing the world’s carbon emissions and overall waste pollution.

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The three summits of Mount Rainier: Liberty Cap, Columbia Crest,and Point Success (unaltered image)

Most of us would consider a trip to a state or national park to be a chance to get away from the pollution that plagues our cities. But it’s seldom easy to escape the effects of urban, industrial air pollution. Now, with a new art project called ECLIPSE, the web viewer or park visitor can see real time air quality data “imposed” on the otherwise scenic landscapes of our state and national parks.

ECLIPSE, based on an open source program, is the handiwork of artists Cary Peppermint and Leila Christine Nadir of EcoArtTech, and is a sponsored project of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its website turbulence.org.

So, how does it work? Just select a State/National park from a drop down menu, click the “apply AQI (air quality index) conditions” button, and ECLIPSE then performs two “data scraping” functions…if air quality data is available for that park, the program sorts through Flickr.com for images tagged with that particular park’s name, then, the program “corrupts” or alters the image to reflect air quality data (culled from the most recent AQI updates on the www.airnow.gov website) of the nearest, large city within a 65 mile radius.

The air quality rating system uses the following scale: good – fair – moderate – unhealthy – very unhealthy –hazardous*. The AQI rating is a measure of particulate matter in the atmosphere, based on a range of 0 – 500 parts per million, with “good” being 0 - 50 ppm, and “unhealthy” being 151 ppm or higher.

Airnow.gov maintains 300 monitoring stations in cities across the country. With the ECLIPSE program, the more pollution present in the atmosphere of the park’s nearest city, the more visually “corrupted” the image becomes. This alteration process utilizes various algorithms that affect color, saturation, and contrast, and, additionally, impose intermittent mirroring, deletion, or cropping functions on the image’s data file.

Air quality is determined by the presence of particulate matter in the lower atmosphere. Particulate matter is a complex mixture of moisture and small particles of dust, soot, soil, various acids (e.g., nitrogen or sulfur containing acids) and trace metals.

The artists’ website notes that, In 2008, the EPA’s own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council (CASAC) protested that the EPA was not upholding its mission to protect air quality standards according to
the scale.

*Note that U.S. air quality ratings are different than Canada’s AQ rating system, for example. The U.S. system has more gradations of air quality in which “moderate” in the U.S. system is rated as “unhealthy”  on the Canadian scale. The site offers a visual comparison of air quality ratings between the US and Canadian indexes.

Bicycle & Pedestrian Bridges

Normally, bikes can go over the main bridge with cars — notice the colored roadway signifying that cars need to watch out for bicyclists and let them take the road as they enter from their lanes. However, when the bridge is up due to boats passing underneath, there are higher bridges on both sides for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Image Credits 1 & 2: Zachary Shahan

Bike Intersections

Bike Boxes

There are colored boxes at several intersections for bicyclists, giving them priority, keeping them safe, and giving them greater prestige — 1st class.

Roundabouts

The Netherlands has A LOT of roundabouts, and in Gronigen they also contain lanes for bicyclists.

All Bikes Go On Green

Instead of giving green lights to bicyclists and cars going in the same direction at the same time, all the bike lights are green at the same time (while all the automobile lights are red). It works quite well and I never saw a crash while I was living there (approximately 5 months).

This one below is in the center of the city center (downtown) — essentially, the main intersection in the city. Here you can see one delivery truck, about ten bicyclists and a few pedestrians, quite a normal situation. At rush hour, you really have to sit there and wait sometimes for an opening in the bike traffic. With cars instead of bikes, though, the wait would probably be ten times longer.

Bike Speed Bumps Before Dangerous Intersections & Driveways

Bike Only Entrances

Well, bikes and small scooters.

Bike Buttons to Trigger the Lights

Image Credits 1-16: Zachary Shahan

Bike Only Roads or Off-Road Paths

Out towards the suburbs.

Going under busy roads.

This one with speed bumps and a guy in a wheel chair as well (not uncommon, actually).

The path in the background of this picture used to be a road for cars, but was transformed into a bicycle/pedestrian path going through a fairly large and beautiful park. It gives a more direct connection between a main university area of the city and the city center to bicyclists and pedestrians rather than cars.

This is at the entrance to a bicycle path.

If the bike paths aren’t completely separate from the road, they are often separated by large medians, planters or parked cars.

Sometimes they are even above the level of the road.

Going through (or, actually, on the edge of) more parkland between the university and the city center.

As far as you need to go…

In the Country

There are great bike paths out into the country. Even many people living out in the country or at the edge of the city near the country use bicycles.

This is on the edge of a small bedroom community sort of out in the country. Many people still biked into the city from here, and you can see they still have the colored bike lanes!

Image Credits 1-6, 8-14, 16-19: Zachary Shahan
Image Credit 7: Janis Andins
Image Credit 15: Ladd Schiess

Bike Parking

Endless Bike Parking at the Train Station & Double-Decker Parking

You can’t capture this on camera at all because much further than you can see there are more bicycles. But here is a small glimpse.

Bike Parking or Bike Suicide?

Not sure what’s going on here. It looks like some people parked their bikes in a strange way or a cleaning person needed to move them to clean the ground or the bikes are hanging themselves.

Secure Bike Parking

Image Credits 1-2, 7-8, 10-12, 14, 16-17: Zachary Shahan
Image Credits 3-6: Janis Andins
Image Credit 9: VirtualErn via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 13: Harry-Harms via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 15: Harry-Harms via flickr under a CC license

Babies & Kids on Bikes

Image Credits 1-3, 6-8: Zachary Shahan
Image Credits 4-5: Jennifer Lee

Learning to Bike

There is a lot of public art in the city, and a handful of it is of bicyclists. This is a great piece of a child learning to ride a bicycle.

Image Credit: Ladd Schiess

Student City

This is not just one long line of student bicyclists going to school that I luckily caught one morning. There was line after line like this for ages during the “rush hour” to school every morning. I actually lived right above the main (only) road going between the city and the main part of the university (on a corner edge of the city) and it hit me one day that it was such a quiet road (with just the sounds of broken bikes — many are in the Netherlands — going ‘click click’ or bike bells going ‘ding ding’ as bicyclists passed each other). It was such a nice street to live on, but if that were car traffic it would be horrible because of the noise and air pollution. It made me realize the great importance of how bicycling reduces noise pollution as well as more well-known environmental pollution.

bikes may end up on the bottom of the canal after a long night at the pub

bikes may turn into birds

Image Credit 1: Zachary Shahan
Image Credit 2: Akbar Simonse via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: Margriet PR via flickr under a CC license

City Center

Image Credits 1-5: Zachary Shahan

Bike Lanes Nearly as Big as the Road

Image Credit: Zachary Shahan

Freight Bicycles

Image Credit: jurjen_nl via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Bikes & Sheep

Hope you enjoyed this great bicycle city photo tour. To keep yourself updated on the next five photo tours, keep your eye on EcoWorldly or even subscribe to its feed or email list. Have something extra to add? Comment below!

Image Credit: janGlas via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Blue-green algae blooms on Minnesota lakes are linked to a dog death and illnesses, and apparently caused by runoff pollution.

The death of a dog after it frolicked in a Minnesota lake plagued with blue-green algae was a sad coda for a late summer in the state. Although no necropsy was done, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said  “the circumstances and manner of death were consistent with exposure to algal toxins.” He added that the MPCA had received reports of several other sick dogs likely exposed to the algae.

Compounding the sadness, the dog that died after exposure in Fox Lake, a black Lab named Sady, was a wedding gift to the dog’s owners from a friend and soldier killed in Iraq.

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The large-scale Organic dairy cooperative, “Organic Valley” has just sunk to a new low in the practice of “I will market against my farmer neighbors by stoking consumer’s fears.” They announced that they have launched an on-line calculator that is supposed to show you how much pesticide and fertilizer use is avoided when you buy their products.  The news release essentially boils down to the message, “buy our products or you will probably die!”  It also essentially accuses the 97.5% of us who don’t buy Organic of destroying the planet.

When talking about pesticides the press report says: “For adults, exposure through diet has been linked to infertility, Parkinson’s, testicular cancer, birth defects and much more. More than one million children in America age five and under ingest at least 15 pesticides daily. Early exposures are suspected in the sharp rise in health problems including autism, obesity, asthma, brain cancer and other childhood cancers.”  This broad-brush assertion is misleading on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start.  I’m not saying that there have never been any health issues with any pesticide anywhere, but we also have sufficient food in part because of pesticides.  Though many people don’t know it, there are pesticides used on organic crops as well.  Actually, the EPA has done a very good job of regulating pesticide use over the years so that people don’t need to be frightened about their food.

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While carbon capture and sequestration technology remains controversial, studies to delve deeper into it are ongoing in hopes of presenting one way to alleviate emission levels. A team from MIT has been studying a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technique called pressurized oxy-fuel combustion. This process converts the carbon dioxide emissions of a power plant into a pressurized liquid stream meant to be pumped underground. Team leader Ahmed Ghoniem of MIT claims that his team is the only one conducting an academic study of “pressurized combustion system for carbon dioxide capture.”

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Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electricity provider, has secured $70.5 million in stimulus funds to expand an innovative project that turns carbon dioxide emissions from a coal power plant into biofuel using algae. While part of the funds will be used to scale up the algae processing portion, some of the funds will also be used to investigate the potential benefits of turning the coal into a gas prior to burning it for power.

The concept of creating two products — electricity and fuel — from the same process is known as cogeneration. In this case, the cogeneration also helps to reduce environmental pollution. It’s an idea that has been gathering support as a way to make coal less polluting while finding an additional revenue source to pay for the pollution control itself. In fact, a while back I reported on a similar pilot project in Oregon.

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This post consists of a few lines and a link to what’s happened since some of my recent posts where there has been significant action. Each item is identified and linked by the date and title of the original post.

July 2009 - Sable Antelope - One Sold for $ 385 000 and Giant Species Rediscovered in Angola.

Three more Giant Sable Antelopes, have been sighted in Angola. This brings to six the number of this rare species, which was feared to have become extinct, that have been sited in the last few weeks.

July 2009 - Mauling of Baboon by “Fighting Dogs”, Reopens the Cape Peninsular Baboon Debate

Two men were attacked by Pit Bulls in Ocean View ,the same Township in Ocean View this week, prompting a warning from welfare group TEARS.

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A century ago the Seine, which flows from the north of France, through Paris to the English Channel, hosted a large flourishing population of Atlantic salmon. The salmon migrated from the sea to their freshwater birth place to reproduce from December to June every year.

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