Clean natural gas? Not so fast, study says

Switching from burning coal to natural gas won't have an appreciable effect on global warming, at least not in the next few decades, a study suggests.

In fact, cutting worldwide coal burning by half and using natural gas instead would increase global temperatures over the next four decades by about one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, according to Tom Wigley, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Strictly speaking, coal produces more global-warming gas per unit of energy than natural gas. But the tradeoff is complicated by the types of greenhouse gases and other pollutants associated with each of these carbon-based fossil fuels.

"From the CO2 perspective, gas is cleaner, but from the climate perspective, it gets complicated," said Wigley.

Coal burning is notoriously dirty, producing sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, soot and ash, as well as other pollutants. None are too good for humans or the planet, but the sulfates can act to block incoming solar radiation, with a slight cooling effect. (Before anyone proposes burning more high-sulfur coal, the net effect of burning coal is still warming).

Meanwhile, "clean" natural gas, touted by the industry and T. Boone Pickens, can be a mess to produce. An unknown amount of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas with far more heat-trapping potential than carbon dioxide -- leaks in the process of producing natural gas.

Even assuming there is no leakage -- unlikely, most would agree -- the switch analyzed by Wigley would still add to Earth's overall average temperature through about 2050. After that, temperatures would fall, but only by a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. If a substantial amount of methane leaks, the warming trend will last until 2140, he found.

Bear in mind, the most widely reviewed studies predict a global average temperature rise of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 under current fossil-fuel consumption rates.

Keystone pipeline backers use anti-Saudi message for oil sands

To the list of all the reasons why backers of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast want it to be built, add now the welfare of Saudi Arabian women.

The pipeline, which would bring oil from Alberta’s oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries, is awaiting a federal permit. In the meantime, critics and backers of the pipeline have ginned up their public relations machines to influence the administration’s thinking.

Most supporters of the pipeline say it will create jobs in the U.S. and bring in oil from a friendly democratic state, rather than from a foreign autocracy. Lately, the Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada began running a 30-second ad from a group called Ethical Oil, which argues that buying Canadian oil is a better political choice for Americans than importing oil from Saudi Arabia.

Over a soundtrack of doom drums, a woman’s voice says North Americans bought 400 million barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia. “We bankrolled a state that doesn’t allow women to drive, doesn’t allow them to leave their homes or work without their male guardian’s permission,” the ad continues.

“Why are we paying their bills and funding their oppression?” The music suddenly shifts to violins and singing that sounds something like the Vienna Boys’ Choir. “Today there is a better way,” the narrator says. “Ethical oil from Canada’s oil sands.”

Ethical Oil, according to its website, is a Canadian venture that began “as a blog created by Alykhan Velshi to promote the ideas in Ezra Levant’s bestselling book Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands.”

Velshi and Levant are conservative activists, the latter gaining some notoriety for accusing George Soros of collaborating with Nazis.

One stated goal of the Ethical Oil blog is to rebut “inaccurate and unfair criticisms of the oilsands,” the website says. Those “Myths & Lies,” the website says, include concerns about the impact on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions, from extracting oil.

Oil from the sands isn’t developed through conventional drilling. It's mined as a mix of bitumen, sand and clay, accessed by stripping away boreal forests and polluting waters, say environmentalists and some scientists.

Extracting and refining bitumen also releases more greenhouse gases into the air than conventional oil production. Opposition to the project stems from the damage oil sands mining has done so far, and the potential damage it could do should the pipeline leak into a major aquifer it would wend through in Nebraska.

Why the ad is airing in Canada is unclear, when the decision to build the pipeline will be made in the U.S.

The Oprah Winfrey Network could not be reached to find out if such ads would air in the U.S.

The Obama administration is expected to render its decision on Keystone XL before the end of the year.

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-- Neela Banerjee, in Washington

Photo: An oil sands mining operation in Alberta, Canada. Credit: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times.

Oregon joins fight against shark finning

Oregon is joining a national effort to end the shark fin trade.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber signed bill HB 2838 Thursday, banning the sale, trade and possession of shark fins. The fins are often cut from a live shark, which is then tossed back in the ocean to bleed to death, drown or be attacked by other predators.

Oregon’s bill joins similar legislation in Hawaii and Washington. A California measure passed the Assembly in June, but has yet to clear the Senate. President Obama signed federal legislation tightening a ban on shark finning in U.S. waters earlier this year.

“With the global trade in shark fins pushing sharks toward extinction, it will take strong actions such as this to prevent us from making irreversible changes to our ocean ecosystems,” said Whit Sheard, senior advisor for Oceana, a maritime conservation organization. “The bipartisan support for this bill once again demonstrates that support for healthy oceans is a non-partisan issue.”

Finning is illegal in the waters of the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia and several other countries, although it is still common in international waters. It is illegal for U.S. fishing boats to dock with shark fins on board unless they are attached to the carcass, but fins are imported to the U.S. from countries with less stringent protections.

Huge new boreal forest preserve in Manitoba

 

 
Efforts to combat climate change and diminishing wildlands have increasingly focused on the vast belt of northern forest that rings the globe south of the Arctic. The boreal forest is a vast repository of stored carbon and, in much of northern Canada, a pristine region populated by wolves and caribou along rivers still teeming with fish.

The forest in Canada's Manitoba province has been under threat in recent years by expanding hydropower development. A major new electrical transmission line has been sought through the wild woodlands east of Lake Winnipeg, a plan many indigenous residents say would threaten a region they have called home for thousands of years.

Now the government of Manitoba has granted permanent legal protection to nearly 2 million acres -- an area the size of Yellowstone National Park -- on the ancestral lands of the Poplar River First Nation people.

The "Asatiwisipe Aki Management Plan" is being celebrated by conservation groups across Canada and the United States, which see it as a crucial step toward protecting the boreal forest not only for the people of the Poplar River and the wildlife there, but as a hedge against a warming planet.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said the Poplar River reserve, about 250 miles north of Winnipeg, is  part of a larger, 10-million-acre area being proposed for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"This is really important for us, because we do think it's a priceless world asset, and you only get one chance to do it right," Selinger said in an interview.

"What's unique about it is not only do the First Nations still occupy it, but it's intact. There's a complete ecosystem that generates clean water, oxygen; there's a huge storage of peat that's one of the most effective ways to store carbon dioxide."

Planning for the area was led by the Poplar River First Nation, which will now oversee its preservation and limited development. Other First Nation groups are preparing land-use plans for surrounding tracts that are part of the World Heritage Site proposal, but they have not yet advanced so far in the regulatory process.

Sustainable agriculture can help conquer hunger, UN says

Industrial-style farming, often known as the "green revolution," has been widely credited with saving perhaps 1 billion people from starvation by boosting the yield of grain crops in India, China, Pakistan, Mexico and other countries.

But the green revolution, which relies on intensive use of water, fertilizer, pesticides and energy, has come at a cost, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says. The FAO tally of such costs include anemic soils, depleted water supplies, diminished biodiversity, resilient pests, super weeds and polluted air, water and soil.

Now the U.N. agency, tasked with solving world hunger, has thrown its support behind wider use of "sustainable agriculture" in the developing world. It has issued a new primer, "Save and Grow," specifically targeting the 2.5 billion people who scratch out a living on small farms throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The big idea? That humanity cannot just rely on intensified ag practices that require ever more powerful pesticides, fertilizers and genetically designed seeds to feed the world's burgeoning population. Experts predict farmers will need to double production to feed a global population that will add more than 2 billion more people by midcentury.

"In order to grow, agriculture must learn to save," the FAO reports. That means preserving soil's natural fertility by minimizing ploughing, and recycling crop waste to enrich the earth. It means smarter, integrated way of managing pests, rotating crops, and greater precision in the use of fertilizer and drip irrigation, the book authors say.

Some studies show that farmers can get bumper crops if they follow these practices and, at the same time, save water, energy and other costs.

To be sure, the developing world's farmers get mixed messages about how to coax more from their small plots of land. It remains to be seen how far the FAO's new advice can reach into the most remote places.

Yet "Save and Grow," available in six languages, already has lined up the endorsement of a key agricultural scientist in India.

M.S. Swaminathan, who joined with American agronomist Norman Borlaug to bring the green revolution to India, offered this blurb on the FAO website:  "This book shows how we can launch an 'evergreen' revolution, leading to increases in productivity in perpetuity, without ecological harm."

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Photo: Farmworkers harvest rice paddy in India. Credit: Bikas Das / Associated Press

 

 

Mattel, under siege, promises new rain forest packaging policy

Toy maker Mattel, under siege by environmental critics, announced Friday that it would develop a new policy to make its packaging suppliers “commit to sustainable forestry management practices.”

Greenpeace, which launched a global campaign against Mattel this week, called the announcement “encouraging” but added, “They’re not out of the woods yet. The document still needs to be written."

The announcement was the latest effort by the world’s largest toy company to contain any damage to its popular Barbie and Ken doll brands, as it was deluged by emails from critics around the world.

Mattel acknowledged receiving 83,000 emails, although Greenpeace said 200,000 had been sent from its servers as of midday Friday.

Greenpeace this week released a report, "Toying with Extinction," including laboratory analyses of packaging for Barbie dolls and other toys containing fiber from Indonesian rain forests. The group also unveiled documents tracing the supply chain from Mattel to Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), a Singapore company that has clear-cut vast swaths of the archipelago’s wildlife-rich forests.

In the first three days of the campaign, more than 700,000 people had viewed Greenpeace’s spoof videos of Ken breaking up with Barbie after watching her slaughter orangutans and tigers in “a shoot in some rain forest.” The video is translated into 18 languages.

El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel did not name a date for adopting its new policy but said, “In addition to addressing current concerns about packaging sourcing, Mattel’s policy will also cover other wood-based products in its toy lines, such as paper, books and accessories.”

Mattel to investigate suppliers for links to rain forest destruction

Mattel Inc., the world’s biggest toy company, said it would direct its suppliers to stop buying wood pulp from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), an Indonesian-Chinese company that has clear-cut vast swaths of Indonesia’s rain forest.

As a global Greenpeace campaign against Mattel gained traction, the El Segundo-based company posted a statement on its Facebook page late Wednesday saying, “Mattel does not support deforestation nor does it contract directly with Sinar Mas/APP. We purchase packaging materials from a variety of suppliers and it is not the normal course of business to dictate where suppliers source materials.”

However, in an effort to contain any damage from the assault on its popular Barbie and Ken doll brands, the company added, “That said, we have directed our packaging suppliers to stop sourcing pulp from Sinar Mas/APP as we investigate the deforestation allegations. Additionally, we have asked our packaging suppliers to clarify how they are addressing the broader issue in their own supply chains.”

APP is a subsidiary of Singapore-based Sinar Mas, a conglomerate of more than 100 companies controlled by the Indonesian-Chinese family of Eka Tjipta Widjaja, a politically connected billionaire.

Greenpeace, one of the world’s biggest environmental groups, launched a broad campaign against Mattel on Tuesday, hanging massive banners at the company’s California headquarters and in London’s Picadilly Circus. It posted spoof videos in 18 languages on YouTube, in which an animated Ken doll watches Barbie slaughtering tigers and orangutans, as a narrator asks, “Did you ever think of Barbie as a serial killer?”

As of Thursday morning, the videos had garnered more than 510,000 views, including more than 150,000 for the Spanish language version.

On Tuesday, as the protest at its headquarters was underway, Mattel cut off all commenting on Barbie’s Facebook page but allowed critics to post on its corporate Facebook page. “We are allowing for dialogue in comments and on the Mattel wall,” spokeswoman Jules Andres said in an email. “We delete posts that have profanity or inappropriate content.”

Greenpeace versus Mattel: A social media battle over rain forest [UPDATED]

The battle between Mattel, the world’s biggest toy company, and Greenpeace, one of the world’s largest environmental groups, moved into a social media combat phase Wednesday as more than 180,000 people viewed a spoof video of Ken breaking up with Barbie over rain forest destruction. The video, featured on various nations' Greenpeace sites as well as on YouTube, was translated into 18 languages.

The video was part of a sophisticated global campaign mounted against the El Segundo company for allegedly using packaging derived from Indonesian rain forests to wrap its Barbie and Ken dolls and other toys.

Greenpeace, which has 2.8 million members and offices in 41 countries, is counting on social media to carry its message. Its website enables visitors to send a letter to Mattel's CEO and share campaign information on Twitter and Facebook with a few clicks of a mouse.

When activists Tuesday began posting critical messages on Barbie’s Facebook fan page, which has 2.2 million followers, Mattel shut down commenting on the page and deleted any mention of rain forests. No new comments since Monday were visible on the page as of late Wednesday.

On Twitter, as Greenpeace protesters were unfurling a giant banner from the roof of Mattel headquarters, the company tweeted from @BarbieStyle (53,400 followers): “After a 7-year break, I really need to update summer pictures of me and Ken! Collecting seashells on the beach to decorate a picture frame.” Since then: radio silence on a feed that normally features ten or more tweets a day.

Meanwhile, anyone searching for @barbie on Twitter would see such tweets as this one: “Yes, I participated in #Deforestation...how else am I supposed to heat the "Dream House"? #Barbie.”

The @Barbie site is not company-sponsored and had only 1,412 followers as of midday Wednesday.  Presumably, it was set up by a fan, or by a spoofer, since posts before the Greenpeace protest were along the lines of: “Every man I date seems to think I'm impressed by fake jewelry.”

Greenpeace campaign targets Mattel

Activists rappelled down the face of the 15-story El Segundo headquarters of Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, on Tuesday and hung a giant banner of a frowning Ken doll look-alike with the message: “Barbie, it's over. I don’t date girls that are into deforestation.” The protest marked the launch of a global campaign by Greenpeace against Mattel in connection with paper packaging allegedly derived from Indonesian rain forests.

El Segundo police arrested eight protesters, including a woman dressed as Barbie in pink and blue Spandex, who was driving a bright pink bulldozer half a block from the scene. Fire trucks descended on the area, as it was cordoned off, and Mattel employees crowded around the windows, taking photos with cellphones.

The theatrics were only window dressing for what promised to be an all-out assault on one of the nation’s iconic brands as it geared up for a sales campaign centered on a reunion between its Barbie and Ken dolls.

“Barbie’s dirty secret is that her packaging is made from the rain forests of Indonesia,” said Rolf Skar, senior forest campaigner for Greenpeace USA. “Mattel has shown no due diligence. It buys paper without asking where it’s coming from.”

In recent years, Greenpeace, with 2.8 million members and offices in 41 countries, has waged successful campaigns against multinational corporations such as McDonald’s, Kimberly Clark, McDonald’s, Nestle, Unilever and Burger King concerning links to deforestation in their supply chains.

On Tuesday, the company issued a statement saying, “Playing responsibly has long been an important part of Mattel’s business practices. … We have been in communication with Greenpeace on a variety of papersourcing issues. We are surprised and disappointed that they have taken this inflammatory approach. … We will continue to assess our paper sourcing and packaging improvements as we move forward.”

Indonesia’s rain forest, the third largest in the world after the Amazon and the Congo, is home to orangutans, tigers, elephants, clouded leopards and scores of other endangered plants and animals. In the last half-century, about 40% of the country’s forests have been cleared, mainly for palm oil plantations and pulp and paper operations. Despite a partial moratorium announced last month, Indonesian government plans suggest, by some accounts, that nearly half of the remaining natural forest could be cut in the next two decades.

Amazon rainforest: Proposed law threatens to cripple preservation efforts

Driven by powerful agribusiness interests, a bill is moving through the Brazilian Congress that could cripple the decades-long effort to protect the Amazon rainforest.

The bill would change Brazil’s 1965 Forest Code, which requires that Amazon landowners preserve 80% of their property as forest, and allow states to set the minimum amount of forested land. Soybean farmers and ranchers, responding to high global commodity prices, are considered to hold more sway in state governments.

The legislation would also lift the Forest Code’s strict limits on logging near waterways and on mountain slopes. It would grant amnesty for illegal deforestation that occurred in protected areas before July 2008 — allowing vast swaths of the rainforest to be cleared and farmed. That, according to 10 former Brazilian environment ministers who oppose the legislation, would  open the door to more illegal logging.

The bill passed the Chamber of Deputies last week. A struggle is expected in the Senate, but, according to Mongabay.com, a website that tracks forest issues, it is likely to pass. Dilma Rousseff,  Brazil’s newly elected president, has said she opposes amnesty for illegal logging and has the power to veto parts of the measure.

The Amazon rainforest stores massive amounts of carbon, which, if released, would make a major contribution to changing the global climate. According to a 2010 World Bank study, a 20% reduction in forest cover, combined with droughts, fires and climate change, could cause a dramatic dieback of the Amazon, converting large areas to savannah.

Tropical forest scientist Thomas Lovejoy, who chaired the bank’s scientific panel, said the study “indicates a tipping point in the South and Southeast Amazon of 20% -- it is currently at 18%. What is needed is reforestation to lower risk of dieback, rather than promoting more deforestation."

Lovejoy, who has led research projects in Brazilian forests for four decades, said the new legislation “is driven by short-term interests and ignores the rainfall benefits provided by the Amazon for agro-industry and hydropower.”

Brazilian farm groups have praised the legislation, saying it would lead to increased exports and boost the nation's economy.  Aldo Rebelo, the bill’s chief sponsor and a leader of Brazil’s communist party, has cast it as a boon to small, poverty stricken landowners. “If some of these international institutions could, they would remove our people from here because there are many things that interest them, a lot of water, land and minerals,” he said in a recent speech attacking foreign enviornmental groups.