When my kids were younger, they asked me why the ocean was blue. I would answer that the ocean mirrors the blue sky. However, I would not think much more about it, even though it is well-known that the oceans represent the most important source for atmospheric moisture. They also play an important role for many types of internal variations, such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Now a new study by Durack et al. (2012) has been published in Science that presents the relationship between the oceans and the atmosphere.

When it rains over the ocean, the salty ocean water gets diluted by fresh water from the clouds, whereas in regions with high evaporation and little rainfall, the evaporation takes away the water and leaves the salt behind in the ocean. If there is a systematic increase in rainfall over some regions and enhanced evaporation in others, then this ought to leave a fingerprint in form of reduced and increased salinity in the respective regions. This is exactly what Durack et al. (2012) have found.

This finding is consistent with earlier model-based suggestions that dry regions will become drier and wet regions will become wetter in response to warming (Giorgi et al., 2011). The Durack et al. (2012) study was based on surface salinity measurements from the ARGO floats combined with sparser historical data over a period of 50 years (Durack et al., 2010). They studied the changes in the spatial structure in terms of linear regression against time over the 50-year period. The change in salinity was consistent with the notion of a strengthening of the hydrological cycle by ~8%/°C.

They also compared their results with global climate model simulations (which involve coupled atmosphere-ocean models) as well as ocean model simulations (forced by atmospheric data). Ocean models use the laws of physics to describe how the ocean currents flow, the water masses mix, and how these processes affect temperature and salinity. The most important inputs to the ocean models are wind forcing, evaporation and rainfall.

The model results give a similar picture as the observations, albeit with an under-estimation of the hydrological cycle speed-up. By looking at projections for the future, the Durack et al. (2012) analysis points to a “substantial (16 to 24%) intensification of the global water cycle [that] will occur in a future 2°C to 3°C warmer world”.

The mean surface salinity of the world oceans. Source: http://serc.carleton.edu/eslabs/corals/4c.html

There is a sinister twist to these inferences. A warmer world is predicted to result in both increased rainfall intensity (mean precipitation estimated for the wet days only) as well as increased length of dry spells (Giorgi et al., 2011). Moreover, in a recent paper, I have together with two colleagues shown that the more extreme rainfall amounts closely follow the rainfall intensity (Benestad et al. (2012). From these results, it seems that we can expect more extremes in both floods and droughts.

Finally, the analysis by Durack et al. (2012) provides another fingerprint of a global warming. However, this finding aspect is not entirely new: the last IPCC report already concluded there is an enhancement of the hydrological cycle, based on observed ocean salinity changes. The method and the conclusion are therefore not new, but the new Argo data confirm earlier findings and strengthen previous observations: the global warming and changes to the hydrological cycle are closely entangeled.

References

1. P.J. Durack, S.E. Wijffels, and R.J. Matear, "Ocean Salinities Reveal Strong Global Water Cycle Intensification During 1950 to 2000", Science, vol. 336, 2012, pp. 455-458. DOI.
2. F. Giorgi, E. Im, E. Coppola, N.S. Diffenbaugh, X.J. Gao, L. Mariotti, and Y. Shi, "Higher Hydroclimatic Intensity with Global Warming", Journal of Climate, vol. 24, 2011, pp. 5309-5324. DOI.
3. P.J. Durack, and S.E. Wijffels, "Fifty-Year Trends in Global Ocean Salinities and Their Relationship to Broad-Scale Warming", Journal of Climate, vol. 23, 2010, pp. 4342-4362. DOI.
4. R.E. Benestad, D. Nychka, and L.O. Mearns, "Spatially and temporally consistent prediction of heavy precipitation from mean values", Nature Climate Change, 2012. DOI.

JR: It’s remarkable how warm it was globally in April considering that we were only just coming out of a double dip La Niña. If we don’t triple dip, we’ll set more temperature records soon. Indeed, NOAA models predict a good chance of an El Niño forming in the late summer, which would make it quite likely next year would be the hottest on record. As for April, you’ll note it was hot in the ‘wrong’ places again — over much of the tundra, which is a carbon time bomb.

UPDATE: Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, has arrived. Details here.

Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for April 2012. The most notable extremes were the warmth observed across Russia, the United States, Alaska, and parts of the Middle East and eastern Europe. There were no land areas with large-scale cold conditions of note. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) .

– Jeff Masters via Wunderground

April 2012 was the globe’s 5th warmest April on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). NASA rated April 2012 as the 4th warmest April on record. April 2012 global land temperatures were the 2nd warmest on record, and the Northern Hemisphere land surface temperature was 1.74°C (3.13°F) above the 20th century average, marking the warmest April since records began in 1880. Global ocean temperatures were the 11th warmest on record, and April 2012 was the 427th consecutive month with ocean temperatures warmer than the 20th century average.

The last time the ocean temperatures were below average was September 1976. The increase in global temperatures relative to average compared to March 2012 (16th warmest March on record) was due, in part, to warming waters in the Eastern Pacific, due to the La Niña event that ended in April. Global satellite-measured temperatures for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were 6th or 4th warmest in the 34-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH). April temperatures in the stratosphere were the 1st to 4th coldest on record. We expect cold temperatures there due to the greenhouse effect and to destruction of ozone due to CFC pollution. Northern Hemisphere snow cover during April was 4th smallest in the 46-year record.

Wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, has a comprehensive post on the notable weather events of April in his April 2012 Global Weather Extremes Summary. Notably, national heat records (for warmest April temperature on record) occurred in the United States (a tie), Germany, Austria, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Hungry, Croatia, Ukraine, and Slovakia as well as the cities of Moscow and Munich.

La Niña officially ends
According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC), La Niña conditions are no longer present in the equatorial Pacific, where sea surface temperatures were approximately average as of May 13. The threshold for a La Niña is for these temperatures to be 0.5°C below average or cooler. CPC forecasts that neutral conditions will persist though the summer, with a 41% chance of an El Niño event developing in time for the August – September – October peak of hurricane season. El Niño conditions tend to decrease Atlantic hurricane activity, by increasing wind shear over the tropical Atlantic.

Figure 2. Arctic sea ice extent in 2012 (blue line) compared to the average (thick grey line.) The record low year of 2007 (dashed green line) is also shown. Arctic sea ice was near average during April, but has fallen well below average during the first half of May. Image credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

April Arctic sea ice extent near average
Arctic sea ice extent was near average in April 2012, the 17th lowest (18th greatest) extent in the 35-year satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This was the largest April Arctic sea ice extent since 2001. However, ice in the Arctic is increasingly young, thin ice, which will make it easy for this year’s ice to melt away to near-record low levels this summer, if warmer than average weather occurs in the Arctic.

– Jeff Masters co-founded the Weather Underground in 1995 while working on his Ph.D. He flew with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. This piece was originally published at the WunderBlog and is reprinted with permission.

Ever been frustrated trying to make a reasoned, sensible, logical argument to a denier? There’s a reason why it is so difficult. Let’s take a look at the Dunning/Kruger effect. Have you ever noticed that often times the most incompetent people have the highest opinions of themselves, especially when debating? This video explains why. Filed under: [...]

by Adam James

Ever hear the one about the Icelandic geothermal systems engineer and the Kenyan project developer who walk into a bar? As interesting this meeting might be, it’s unlikely to happen anywhere but in a bad renewable energy joke. Or at a geothermal conference.

Enter the Clean Energy Solutions Center, a new website designed to make it easier for these kind of encounters to happen — helping spread valuable experience to emerging clean energy markets around the world.

Serving as a clearinghouse for clean energy information, the Solutions Center offers stakeholders a wide range of tools, including over 1,300 resources (reports, presentations, and models), webinars and online training, and sharing experiences.

The Solutions Center one of the eleven initiatives launched by the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and the UN Energy Mechanism. Boasting 10,000 users in over 150 countries, the clearinghouse seems to have corrected the mistakes of many of its predecessors by maintaining regularly updated files and offering interactive experiences with experts. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. With the launch of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative and the 21st Century Power Partnership, there is a serious need for a platform to connect interested parties and offer interdisciplinary solutions to problems with complex regional and geographic variables.

Playing Matchmaker to Reduce Emissions

A report, prepared by the Energy Information Agency for the most recent CEM meeting, shows that members represent 80 percent of global energy consumption, and two-thirds of the growth in demand in the next ten years. These countries could cut 29 Gt of CO2 by 2050 — equaling a 50 percent reduction from 2010 levels — by crafting national clean energy goals and engaging in international collaboration.

The Solutions Center addresses both of these objectives in a pragmatic way. By sharing information on various national policies and supporting data, policymakers can develop strategies for their countries or regions to reflect the newest developments and network with experts. This lays the foundation for increased collaboration at the international level as stakeholders have a forum to make connections and participate in larger efforts.

Three Ways the Solutions Center Can Make a Difference

The IEA report urges ministers to commit to “national actions that aim to appropriately reflect the true cost of energy production and consumption,” follow through on the 2009 G20 commitments to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, step up energy efficiency, and invest much more in research and development. While the report concludes that we are not currently on track to achieve needed emissions reductions, there are some encouraging takeaways:

• Renewable power has had a 13 percent annual growth over the last ten years — with 2011 showing global investment in new renewable power plants ($240 billion) outpacing fossil fuel plants ($219 billion) for the first time.
• Over 80 countries have renewable energy policies in place; including feed-in-tariffs, tradeable green certificates, tenders, tax incentives, and grants.

If the Clean Energy Solutions Center works as planned, it could help spread that success further.

For example, solar PV has grown tremendously — 40 percent between 2000 and 2011 alone. However, this has been focused in Germany, Italy, the U.S., and Japan. Regions with high solar potential like Africa and Asia need to scale up their use of this technology as well. The Solutions Center can help bridge informational gaps by offering cost-free resources to policymakers in these regions to encourage technology transfer and best practices.

Additionally, those 80 countries with renewable energy policies need to be able to adapt to changing market conditions. As the IEA report notes: “These policies must… be designed to effectively keep pace with technology cost reductions, to keep policy costs to governments moderate and maintain investor confidence, all while helping renewables compete.” The Solutions Center can help policymakers keep a pulse on what other governments and regions are doing, while tracking changes in the economics of different technologies.

The Clean Energy Solutions Center is the right idea at the right time — and has the potential to be a very powerful tool for policymakers.

Adam James is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.

A cyber-penny for your thoughts.

Related Post:

• Cartoonist Tom Toles slams GOP denial: “They have turned their faces away from climate change in a way that is simply and utterly unforgivable.”

p/pPSTRONGVietnam is in record heat again/strong/pbr / Pby Hong Hoang, 350.org Vietnam/pbr / PThe year 2010 was the world’s warmest year on record, when the temperature in Vietnam also reached a record level. In the capital city of Hanoi, the outside temperature in June 2010 sometimes went up to 44-45oC (111-113oF)./pbr / PAnd in April and early May this year, the Vietnamese people experienced the record heat again. People in many cities and provinces coped with the worst heat, totally unusual for early summer. Highest temperatures were recorded in many provinces in North and Central Vietnam (Lao Cai, Cao Bang, Hoa Binh, Bac Kan, Nghe An…), which broke all the previous records made in these provinces for the last 30-60 years. Although the announced temperatures were around 40-41oC (104-105.8oF), the actual outside temperatures usually went up to 45-46oC (113-114.8oF), because the heat was added up by the blazing sun rays, the gas emission, an other factors related to urban heat island./pbr / PIMG title="" alt=339 src="/en/sites/all/files/imagecache/Large_500_pixels_wide/wysiwyg_imageupload/16229/46oc_in_quang_tri_ctuoitre.com_.vn__0.jpg" //pbr / Pnbsp;The fierce heat could be the main reason that caused dozens of forest fires throughout Vietnam in the past month. The worst one was the fire in Hai Van Special Use Forest in Central Vietnam on 2 May, that burned down 100 hectares of primitive forests and plantation forests. With more similar heat waves expected to come from now until July, many forests are in high risk to catch fire./pbr / PIMG title="" alt=337 src="/en/sites/all/files/imagecache/Large_500_pixels_wide/wysiwyg_imageupload/16229/hcmc_dot_tree_planting.jpg" //pbr / PFighting hard with the horrible heat, volunteers of 350.org in Ho Chi Minh City decided to do anything to cool the city down. As part of Connect the Dots campaign, they took on the mission to plant 1.000 trees in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City, where people do not only suffer from the heat, but also from the frequent inundations caused by high tides, that have constantly made new height records for the past 4 years, which was determined by the local meteorologists to be the consequence of the sea level rise. In addition to that, the volunteers will also help the local residents to reinforce the dykes that were broken during the recent floods, and clear up water hyacinth along the river branches that go around the villages, which will help to ensure easier water flows and therefore prevent the water from overflowing into the houses./pbr / PIMG title="" alt=336 src="/en/sites/all/files/imagecache/Large_500_pixels_wide/wysiwyg_imageupload/16229/stop_climate_change_dot_in_planting_area.jpg" //pbr / P“I was born and grew up in this city and I love it,” said Mai Khanh Vo, volunteernbsp; leader of Connect the Dots HCMC. “We are all aware that global climate change has something to do with the recent weather extremes. For the first time in my life, I experience a bad storm that attacked HCMC in early April, which according to scientists was a very unusual for this season and for this region. I have friends from various provinces, and they all tell me about the unusual weather events that recently caused damages to their families. And even in HCMC, the most developed city of Vietnam, we have to live with tide-caused inundations every month. While we cannot do anything to immediately stop the floods, we can do something to reduce the impacts, and to prevent the water from going up even higher in the future.”/pbr / Pnbsp;/pbr / PFor more information please contact Hong Hoang A href="http://www.350.org/%2526#109;#97;#105;#108;#116;#111;#58;#104;#111;#110;#103;#64;#51;#53;#48;#46;#111;#114;#103;"#104;#111;#110;#103;#64;#51;#53;#48;#46;#111;#114;#103;/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?a=XF9yxO8fJWc:6yycjWp8OBA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?a=XF9yxO8fJWc:6yycjWp8OBA:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?a=XF9yxO8fJWc:6yycjWp8OBA:I9og5sOYxJI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/350org/~4/XF9yxO8fJWc" height="1" width="1"/

pDear friends,/p pstrongA week ago we launched a hard-hitting new campaign at 350.org: an all-out push to end fossil fuel subsidies in the United States.nbsp;/strong/p pWell, that campaign has caught fire. Thousands of people are signing on every day -- strongtake a minute to add your name:nbsp;a href="http://act.350.org/sign/subsidies/"www.350.org/subsidies/a/strong/p pInstead of telling you all the details about fossil fuel subsidies, I thought I’d share a few numbers that really make the case:/p piframe height="357" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.350.org/images/subsidy-counter-expanded.html" style="height:357px;width:421px;border:0 none;overflow:hidden;" width="421"/iframe/p pnbsp;/p pWatching that bottom number tick up with every passing second is pretty outrageous, but there’s good news: we now have an opening to end these taxpayer handouts to corporate polluters. A new poll revealed that strong70% of Americans — including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — support ending fossil fuel subsidies./strong/p pIf you think it’s time we stopped giving billions of dollars to the companies that are polluting our air, super-heating our planet, and distorting our democracy, strongthe most important thing you can do is a href="http://act.350.org/sign/subsidies/"sign on today/a and spread the word./strong/p pMore soon,/p pJamie Henn for the 350.org Team/p pP.S. To help this campaign keep growing, can you forward on this email and a href="https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=111707862250788amp;link=http%3A%2F%2Fact.350.org%2Fsign%2Fsubsidies%2Famp;picture=https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fs3.350.org%2Fimages%2FCycleOfWaste-tn.jpgamp;name=It%E2%80%99s+time.+Support+the+bill+to+end+fossil+fuel+subsidies.amp;description=Senator+Bernie+Sanders+and+Rep.+Keith+Ellison+just+introduced+a+bill+to+end+ALL+fossil+fuel+subsidies.+Let%E2%80%99s+give+them+the+support+they+need+to+pass+it+and+end+this+wasteful%2C+dangerous+spending.amp;redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.350.org%2FFBredirect"share the campaign on Facebook?/a/p hr / pMORE LINKS AND INFO/p pDo Americans support or oppose subsidies for fossil fuels? | nbsp;Yale Project on Climate Change Communication a href="http://go.350.org/KqKbfH"go.350.org/KqKbfH/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?a=XkZr1Tc9m-A:7teRDDv7LCA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?a=XkZr1Tc9m-A:7teRDDv7LCA:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?a=XkZr1Tc9m-A:7teRDDv7LCA:I9og5sOYxJI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/350org?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/350org/~4/XkZr1Tc9m-A" height="1" width="1"/

div class=field field-type-filefield field-field-bimage div class=field-items div class=field-item odd div class=filefield-fileimg class=filefield-icon field-icon-image-jpeg alt=image/jpeg icon src=http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/all/modules/filefield/icons/image-x-generic.png /a href=http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/blogimages/20090217-army-solar-panel.jpg type=image/jpeg; length=3229220090217-army-solar-panel.jpg/a/div /div /div /div pRepublicans on the span class=capsU.S./span House Armed Services Committee have decided that the militaryrsquo;s push for clean, renewable energy has gone far enough, and have proposed for next yearrsquo;s budget that the Pentagon not spend a dime on renewable energy sources that cost more than traditional dirty energy.br / br / This news comes on the heels of the a href=http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/republican-navy-biofuel/Navyrsquo;s announcement of their new ldquo;Great Green Fleet,rdquo;/a which features an aircraft carrier and strike group that are all a href=http://energyboom.com/biofuels/military-testing-algae-fuel-sourcepowered by renewable, cleaner energy sources/a.br / br / The shift in policy came from the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by California Republican Howard ldquo;Buckrdquo; McKeon. Republicans on the committee complain that the fuel being used for the ldquo;green fleetrdquo; and other military renewable energy projects is too costly, and contend that the military should never spend more on a renewable energy source that is more costly than traditionalnbsp;petroleum./p pa href=http://www.desmogblog.com/house-republicans-attempt-nix-military-s-clean-energy-initiatives target=_blankread more/a/p

The green building sector is expanding rapidly post-recession. Will there be enough workers to fill demand?

This may come as a big surprise: The U.S. commercial construction sector is facing a shortage of skilled workers.

After a period of steep decline in commercial construction stemming from the 2008 financial crisis — forcing mass layoffs throughout the industry — that seems like an absurd notion. But activity is picking back up.

By 2015, non-residential construction is projected to grow 73 percent compared to 2011, increasing demand for skilled workers.

With nearly half of all nonresidential activity by 2015 set to be “green,” workers with experience in energy efficiency, water efficiency, responsible site management, air quality, and green building certification will be the highest in demand. That’s according to a survey of industry companies conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction.

The boom in the green building space is good news. But will there be enough people to fulfill market needs?

The McGraw-Hill survey shows that companies fear a shortage of potential employees with in-demand skills over the coming years. The shortage will be caused by three main factors: A wave of retiring baby boomers; a decline in workers with experience due to mass layoffs after the recession; and a thinning pipeline of students.

More than 85 percent of engineering & design firms, and more than 90 percent of general contractors say it will be difficult to find skilled employees to meet the boom in demand for green projects. In October, McGraw-Hill reported that 35 percent of workers have green jobs in the sector; by 2014, 45 percent will have green jobs.

In order to find employees with new skills, meet demand for greener buildings, and make their businesses more competitive, McGraw-Hill urges companies to start building a plan immediately:

If an organization does not already have a green strategy, it needs to develop one. With green projects and green jobs already accounting for one third of the market and still growing, in order to stay competitive, all involved in the industry need to their approach to green, including finding green skilled workers, capitalizing on existing green enterprise and their internal green experts and emphasizing additional green training.

The companies surveyed agreed. According to McGraw-Hill, 71 percent of firms say having certified/accredited employees help increase competitiveness; 68 percent say having green certified employees will help them expand business.

In January, the Obama Administration came under fire because green jobs training programs supported by the stimulus were not placing workers at expected rates. Those criticisms were based upon a flawed report from the Inspector General that didn’t take into account “incumbent” workers or people currently in training programs.

Those problems aside, many of the worker placement programs didn’t ramp up like many supporters hoped. But this industry survey shows why a commitment to green workforce training is so important.

Elsewhere on the blog, we are still hearing that “CO2 is good for Plants”. Meanwhile, here in the reality based community…. Windsor Star, May 5:  A catastrophic freeze has wiped out about 80 per cent of Ontario’s apple crop and has the fruit industry looking at losses already estimated at more than $100 million. “This [...]

by Ruy Teixeira

Given today’s economic problems, you’d think the public would be in a surly mood about environmental protection, seeing it as a secondary and perhaps conflicting priority to jobs and economic growth. That’s certainly what conservatives are hoping as they continue to push their environment-wrecking agenda.

Turns out, though, the public didn’t get the memo. In the recently released poll from Yale University’s and George Mason University’s climate change communication programs, 58 percent of poll respondents said that protecting the environment improves economic growth and creates new jobs. Just 17 percent thought environmental protection hurts growth and jobs, and 25 percent thought there was no effect.

In the same poll, when asked to choose directly which was more important—environmental protection or economic growth—the public decisively favored protecting the environment 62 percent to 38 percent when there is a conflict between the two goals.

So no, the bad economy has not turned the public off to environmental protection. Conservatives, if they are wise, will factor that into their political calculations.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. This is a CAP cross-post.

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by Jackie Weidman and Daniel J. Weiss

Last year, the House Republican majority cast 191 votes to weaken safeguards for our air, land, water, and climate. Their efforts to shred these protections continued yesterday when the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed two bills that would block protections from air pollution while allowing more oil drilling — all under the guise of “lowering gas prices.”

Both bills passed the committee on mostly party line votes.

The first bill was the Gasoline Regulations Act of 2012, H.R. 4771, sponsored by Energy and Power Subcommittee Chair Ed Whitfield (R-KY). This bill would eliminate the bipartisan mandate under the Clean Air Act that the Environmental Protection Agency set health standards for ozone (or smog) pollution based only on the best medicine and science. Instead, for the first time ever under this bill, the cost of pollution reduction would determine how much health protection to require. In other words, air pollution that triggers asthma attacks and respiratory diseases would only be reduced if the polluters could afford it.

In addition, the bill would require endless study of other possible pollution reduction requirements, using “paralysis by analysis” to block additional health protections. H.R. 4771 would slash these safeguards even though “more than 40 percent of people in the U.S. still live in areas where air pollution threatens their health,” according to the American Lung Association.

The committee also passed the Strategic Energy Production Act, H.R. 4480, authored by Rep. Cory Gardener (R-CO).  This bill would force increased drilling on public lands any time reserve oil is released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR was designed to supply oil in case of a supply disruption, though President George H. W. Bush and the 104th Congress under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) sold reserve oil in anticipation of a disruption that did not occur, and to reduce the federal budget deficit, respectively.

This bill might inhibit the president from selling reserve oil in the wake of supply disruption, but it does nothing to lower oil prices since they are set on a world market and controlled by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel.

In fact, the Associated Press analyzed 35 years of domestic oil production and gasoline price data and determined that there is “no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.”

During the debate on these bills, Ranking Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA) reminded committee members that even witnesses called by Republicans understood that this legislation would not reduce gasoline prices.  He noted that “every expert at our hearings on gas prices, including the Republican’s own witnesses – told us that gasoline prices are driven by world oil prices.”

Not surprisingly, the members who support these bills took millions of dollars from the oil and gas industry. The Energy and Commerce Committee members received almost $10.5 million in lifetime campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Over 75 percent of these dollars – $7.7 million – have gone to 31 of the 33 committee Republicans. On average, Republican committee members received three times the contributions from the oil and gas industry than Democrats in the 2011-2012 election cycle.

This legislation is the beginning of a summer campaign to promote fossil fuels and tear down public health protection. On Wednesday, the House Natural Resources Committee passed three bills to encourage oil and gas drilling on public lands — even while more than half of onshore and offshore leases for the oil industry sit idle.

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced a series of “jobs and energy tours” that members will be conducting in their districts during next week’s recess. McCarthy also warned that more anti-public health bills will be coming onto the House floor in June.

As we continue to see house Republicans fulfilling Big Oil’s wish list, it begs the question: are our elected officials making decisions in Americans’ best interest, or are they letting Big Oil call the shots?

Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Daniel J. Weiss is Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/36279?ns=guardianpageName=France+plans+to+revive+EU+carbon+tariff%3AArticle%3A1747607ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Environment%2CFrance%2CWorld+news%2CEurope+%28News%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEmissions+trading+%28Environment%29%2CCarbon+tax+%28environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CClimate+Change%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Livingc6=Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric+Simon+for+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.euractiv.com%2Fen%2Fclimate-environment%22%3EEurActiv%3C%2Fa%3E%2C+part+of+the+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fenvironment%2Fnetwork%22+title%3D%22Guardian+Environment+Network%22%3EGuardian+Environment+Network%3C%2Fa%3Ec7=12-May-18c8=1747607c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=Guardian+Environment+Network+%28series%29c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FFrance" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Minister of Industrial Renewal weighs up long-standing idea of carbon tax on goods imported from outside Europe/ppArnaud Montebourg, the newly-appointed French minister for "industrial revival" who has built a reputation for his fierce attacks against globalisation, has promised to revive old plans by Nicolas Sarkzoy for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders, an idea previously rejected as protectionist among France's European partners./pp"We must demand reciprocity," Montebourg told French public television during his a href="http://www.francetv.fr/info/montebourg-notre-responsabilite-est-de-reorienter-la-commande-publique-vers-nos-pme_96159.html"first interview as minister/a, saying he will revive plans for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders to protect local industry from unfair competition./pp"This is an external tax," he explained when asked whether this would mean imposing tariffs on products imported from China, where industries are not subject to CO2 emission limits./ppThe plan was "already on the agenda of the European Commission," Montebourg claimed./ppBrussels indeed floated the idea in 2008 when it presented its climate change and energy package of legislation. Joseacute; Manuel Barroso, Commission president, said China and other exporting countries with lax climate policies could be forced to buy EU pollution permits if they want to trade with Europe./ppBut the idea gained few supporters. a href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-change/britain-us-arms-eu-carbon-tax/article-169790"UK officials immediately responded/a saying they would fight any move to impose a 'carbon tax' on imports from non-EU countries./ppa href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/italy-joins-french-calls-for-eu-carbon-tariff-news-450643"Only Italy/a has officially supported the idea while Germany, a href="http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-change/france-germany-call-eu-border-tax-co2/article-185580"which had initially backed it/a, later showed hesitation overa href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/france-renew-calls-eu-carbon-tariff-news-290621"nbsp;fears it could lead to a trade war/a that would damage its export-dependent economy. Matthias Machnig, a former German environment minister, famously called the French idea "a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/24/us-germany-tariffs-idUSTRE56N1RJ20090724"eco imperialism/a"./ppThe Commission since retracted its plans, with Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht taking a firm position against carbon tariffs on the grounds that it a href="http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-environment/eu-trade-chief-designate-rejects-carbon-border-tariffs/article-188796"could trigger a trade war with China/a, a concern echoed by the EU's climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard./ppThe idea, in fact, is hardly new. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozynbsp;campaigned for safeguards to prevent industries from relocating abroad due to the EU's stringent climate rules, a href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-change/sarkozy-renews-pressure-co2-border-tax/article-185387"calling for a CO2 border tariff in 2009/a, ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit./ppSweden, which held the rotating EU presidency at the time, rejected the idea, saying it would undermine Europe's negotiating position in Copenhagen./ppa href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/france-details-plans-carbon-inclusion-mechanism-news-494220"France tried pushing the issue back on the agenda after the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit/a, arguing that the measure could be used only as a last resort and serve as a lever to force emerging economies like China, India and Brazil back on the negotiating table./ppIn a rare move, the French Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels circulated a detailed a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sites/all/euractiv/files/climat%20-%20MIC%20-%20version%20anglaise%20%282%29.pdf"briefing note/anbsp;explaining how the system would work./ppRebranded the 'carbon inclusion mechanism', the schemenbsp;would require importers of goods manufactured outside Europe to buy pollution permits from the EU's emissions trading scheme for carbon dioxide (EU-ETS)./ppEmerging economies would be offered a partnership covering industrial sectors such as steelmaking, aluminium and cement which suffer the most from foreign competition linked to the EU's environmental rules. Those that sign up to the agreement would win access to low-carbon technologies and an exemption from the ETS. Those that do not would have to pay for the equivalent EU pollution permits./ppTo prove the proposal is not intended as a protectionist measure, Paris even said the money could be reserved to fund low-carbon technologies in developing countries./ppWhether Montebourg will prove more successful than Sarkozy in pushing those ideas at the EU level remains to be seen./ppIn his TV interview, the newly-appointed minister expressed confidence that mind sets were changing in Europe following the financial and sovereign debt crises./ppThe European Commission indeed seemly bowed to French pressure, when it a href="http://www.euractiv.com/innovation-enterprise/brussels-seeks-reciprocity-trade-deals-news-511665"tabled plans earlier this year requesting "reciprocity" in trade deals/a with foreign nations such as China./pp"The European Union will have to revise its totally liberal doctrine which is to say that it is forbidden to favour local industry," Montebourg said./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/france"France/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news"Europe/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/emissionstrading"Emissions trading/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-tax"Carbon tax/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

by Elaine Gallagher, via Rocky Mountain Institute

Where does your energy come from? Although I live in Colorado now, I grew up in East Tennessee, where many people still assume their power is fairly clean, dominated by 90-year-old hydroelectric plants. In truth, more than 50 percent of my family’s electricity was generated from coal, and still is. I didn’t think about it much.

What price are we paying for energy apathy? What price will our children pay? As a child, I watched coal-seamed mountaintops disappear in the face of an energy crisis. Potentially potable water now goes to the highest bidders for gas and oil extraction, despite recording-breaking drought. Last month marked the second anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and the Gulf Coast ecology and economy are slowly recovering. Deforestation, now contributing more to greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, is increasing in previously protected areas as a result of oil and gas exploration and extraction.

n an age of anthropogenic deforestation and wetlands loss, with only about 61 trees per capita on Earth, can we really afford to pay the price that this industry demands? Can we guarantee that our descendants will inherit a thriving planet? A recent survey says that only 24 percent of Americans are knowledgeable about energy. We know more about Kim Kardashian than about the energy that directly affects us, whether we want to or not.

To overcome energy apathy, the best remedy is knowledge. Understand the evolution of energy and its path from conservation of limited natural fuels such as whale oil, to the height of conspicuous consumption throughout the industrial age, to the innovation of 21st century clean energy, and finally to efficiency—beautifully engineered systems, buildings, cities, and machines.

Efficiency is yet a relatively untapped energy source—often forgotten in the face of shiny solar arrays and wind farms. RMI’s research for Reinventing Fire reveals $5 trillion (with twelve zeros) in U.S. energy efficiency savings sitting on the table waiting to be claimed—more if we can move more quickly toward efficiency. That’s $3,205 per person in today’s dollars unrealized—a high fiscal price to pay for energy apathy and just the tip of the iceberg.

We can choose not to pay that price.

Energy efficiency is a powerful economic driver in the face of a slow recovery. It has the potential to generate many jobs in a struggling construction sector. Deep energy retrofits increase property values and revitalize neighborhoods, because this requires a comprehensive approach to reducing energy while improving the owner and occupant experience. Efficiency drives research and innovation, resulting in new technologies with potential for increased American manufacturing and continuous job creation.

Well-engineered, efficient buildings, cities, and systems reflect the highest evolution of energy. They are beautiful and simple, often emulating nature’s own processes and improving quality of life. Energy efficiency isn’t only about high-tech air conditioners; it’s not just batteries and electrons. It is manifested in living and work spaces turned to the outdoors, walkable cities, bike paths that keep us connected physically and culturally, eating fresh and delicious regional foods, daylight pouring into a workplace where ideas bloom like the trees that shade the building.

Some say energy efficiency isn’t sexy, so it’s a hard sell. I think it’s very exciting, and it’s why I come to work every day. It carries tremendous potential for good things, including the potential to cure the world of energy apathy.

Elaine Gallagher is a Senior Consultant with Rocky Mountain Institute. This piece was originally published at RMI’s Solutions Blog and was reprinted with permission.

Research via the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization

Devastating extreme rain events are part of a growing trend in the Midwest, according to a new report looking at 50 years of storm data.

Over the last five decades, the types of deluges that washed out towns in Iowa, forced the Army Corps of Engineers to intentionally blow up levees to save Cairo, Illinois, and sent the Missouri River over its banks for hundreds of miles, have been increasing, according to analysis by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Big storms, leading to big floods, are occurring with increasing frequency in the Midwest, with incidences of the most severe downpours doubling over the last half century. The report’s lead author, Stephen Saunders, explained that “a threshold may have been crossed”:

“Global studies already show that human-caused climate change is driving more extreme precipitation, and now we’ve documented how great the increase has been in the Midwest and linked the extreme storms to flooding in the region.

In addition to region-wide trends, the report presents trends in the eight Midwestern states.  For the worst storms (three inches or more of rain in 24 hours) from 1961-2011, the report outlines the following state-level trends:  Indiana (+160 percent); Wisconsin (+203 percent); Missouri (+81 percent); Michigan (+180 percent); Minnesota (+104 percent); Illinois (+83 percent); Ohio (+40 percent); and Iowa (+32 percent).

Key findings include:

• Since 1961, the Midwest has had an increasing number of large storms.  The largest of storms, those of three inches or more of precipitation in a single day, increased the most, with their annual frequency having increased by 103 percent over the roughly half century period through 2011. For storms of at least two inches but less than three inches in a day, the trend was a 81 percent increase; for storms of one to two inches, a 34 percent increase. Smaller storms did not have a significant increase.

• The rates of increase for all large storms accelerated over time, with the last analyzed decade, 2001-2010, showing the greatest jumps. For the largest storms, in 2001-2010 there were 52 percent more storms per year than in the baseline period.

• The frequency of extreme storms has increased so much in recent years that the first 12 years of this century included seven of the nine top years (since 1961) for the most extreme storms in the Midwest.

• With more frequent extreme storms, the average return period between two such storms has become shorter. In 1961-1970, extreme storms averaged once every 3.8 years at an individual location in the Midwest. That is two to four times more frequent than a major hurricane making landfall at a typical location along the U.S. coast from North Carolina to Texas. By 2001-2010, the average return period for Midwestern extreme storms at a single location was down to 2.2 years—or four to eight times more frequent than landfalling major hurricanes.

The report also presents new evidence linking extreme storms in the Midwest to major floods, the region’s most costly regularly occurring natural disasters.

The new analysis shows that the two worst years in the Midwest for storms of three inches or more per day were 2008 and 1993, the years with the Midwest’s worst floods in some 80 years, which caused $16 billion and $33 billion in damages and rank,  among the nation’s worst natural disasters. The report presents new evidence linking the 2008 flooding to extreme storms, showing that in areas with the worst flooding 48 percent of the local precipitation came from extreme storms.

In 2010, which ranked fourth among years in regional extreme-storm frequency, Iowa alone had $1 billion in agricultural losses from extreme storms. In 2011, which ranked fifth, Midwestern flooding caused $2 billion in damages. This shows how the Midwest is increasingly vulnerable to flooding if extreme precipitation continues to increase with human-caused climate change, as scientists consistently project will happen.

This research brief was originally published at the Rocky Mountain Climate Institute.

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/49659?ns=guardianpageName=Flash+floods+are+on+the+rise%2C+while+the+budget+to+tackle+them+sinks+%7C+Bo%3AArticle%3A1747479ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Flooding+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CNatural+disasters+and+extreme+weather+%28News%29%2CUK+news%2CEnvironment%2CWorld+news%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CScience%2CLondon+School+of+Economics%2CPhotography+%28Art+and+design%29%2CMeteorologyc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CHigher+Education%2CCharities%2CPhotographyc6=Bob+Wardc7=12-May-18c8=1747479c9=Articlec10=Blogpostc11=Environmentc13=c25=Environment+blogc30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FFlooding" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"The Environment Agency has warned the UK to expect more floods but its advice seems to be falling on deaf ears/ppA moving a href="http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/world-stages-london/drowning-world" title=""new exhibition of photographs at Somerset House/a shows the human impact of flooding around the world over the past five years and provides an insight into how climate change may already be disrupting lives and livelihoods./ppThe images from major flooding events in the UK, Pakistan, Australia and Thailand feature victims and survivors as they cope with the inundation of their homes and the aftermath. The photographer, Gideon Mendel, a href="http://gideonmendel.com/drowningworld/" title=""says his intention is "to depict them as individuals/a, not as nameless statistics". He adds: "Coming from disparate parts of the world, their faces show us their linked vulnerability despite the vast differences in their lives and circumstances."/ppOne of the most striking exhibits shows Margaret Clegg standing knee-deep in water in the living room of her house in Toll Bar, Doncaster, which was flooded when the River Don overtopped its banks in June 2007, following a record downpour./ppIt is not clear to what extent, if any, climate change contributed to the occurrence or intensity of the summer 2007 floods in England and Northern Ireland, which cost the UK economy more than £3bn. A single extreme weather event cannot be definitely attributed to climate change, the influence of which can only be detected and measured through the analysis of statistical trends looking back over many decades. That means we will not be certain for many years to come about how flood risk is being affected./ppWe know from basic physics that a warmer atmosphere can become more humid and holds more water vapour, theoretically increasing by about 7% for every extra centigrade degree. As a result climate change is expected to increase the intensity of the water cycle in many parts of the world, causing both more droughts and more floods./ppa href="http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87933filetype=pdf" title=""An analysis/a of UK weather trends between 1961 and 2006, during which the average temperature increased by about one centigrade degree, indicated that although our winters have not become significantly wetter, the number and severity of heavy rainfall events has increased. Meanwhile, summers have become drier and heavy summer downpours have decreased in all parts of the UK, except in north-east England, where some of the 2007 flooding occurred, and north Scotland./ppClimate change is expected to increase the risk of flooding in many parts of the UK. a href="http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87868filetype=pdf" title=""Projections published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2009/a suggested that, under a "medium emissions scenario", overall winter precipitation should be higher in the 2080s, while summer rainfall should generally be lower, particularly in the south./ppThe UK climate change risk assessment, a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13698-climate-risk-assessment.pdf" title=""published by Defra earlier this year/a, calculated that these potential trends mean the annual damage from coastal and river flooding in England and Wales could increase from about £1.2bn today a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=CCRAfortheFloodsandCoastalErosionSector.pdf" title=""to as much as £12bn/a in the worst case scenario over the next 80 years./ppSuch an increase in the risk of damage would have major consequences, not least in terms of the affordability and availability of flood insurance for homes and businesses. Indeed, a crisis is already approaching, with a href="http://www.abi.org.uk/Media/Releases/2012/01/FROM_ABERCONWY_TO_YORK_BOSTON_TO_WINDSOR__ABI_HIGHLIGHTS_THE_SERIOUS_FLOOD_RISK_FACING_COMMUNITIES_IN_ENGLAND_AND_WALES.aspx" title=""insurers warning/a that from next year they may not continue to offer cover for 200,000 high-risk properties, exposed to a greater than 1 in 75 annual risk of flooding./ppUnder a href="http://www.abi.org.uk/content/contentfilemanager.aspx?contentid=24982" title=""an arrangement dating from 2000/a, insurance companies have subsidised flood cover for those in high-risk properties in return for greater government investment in coastal and river defences./ppAt present, the Environment Agency is responsible for building and maintaining these defences. The agency has told the government it needs to increase its annual flood risk management budget by 9% by 2014-15. However, the a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubacc/1659/165903.htm" title=""House of Commons public accounts committee has highlighted/a government plans to reduce the agency's flood risk funding by 10% over this period, and to shift more responsibility on to local authorities, even though their overall budgets are shrinking./ppPerhaps even more worrying is the neglect of the risk of flash flooding, caused by heavy downpours from often very localised storms that can inundate poorly drained areas, particularly in cities. Of the six million properties in the UK that are currently exposed to some degree of flood risk, four million are threatened by surface water flooding./ppYet when the a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13698-climate-risk-assessment.pdf" title=""climate change risk assessment/a, upon which the government is basing its national adaptation plan, was published earlier this year, scientists warned that it was flawed because it had neglected possible future changes in flash flooding and other important threats./ppThe assessment a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=CCRAfortheFloodsandCoastalErosionSector.pdf" title=""stated/a: "Whilst the number of properties at risk from surface water flooding is similar to the number at risk from tidal and river flooding, suitable information for analysis were not available at the time of writing this report."/ppIn his official review of the assessment, Prof Martin Parry of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=Peerreviewercomments.pdf" title=""expressed/a "concern that the risks identified do not necessarily represent the full range of potential risks, and the metrics were selected not on the basis of importance but on the availability of evidence". However, Defra ignored his advice, surprisingly admitting that "the risks provided in this report are not intended to be a full range of risks"./ppThis lack of attention to flash flooding could make it much more difficult to implement an important part of the government's national planning policy framework, a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/2116950.pdf" title=""which states/a that local plans "should apply a sequential, risk-based approach to the location of development to avoid where possible flood risk to people and property and manage any residual risk, taking account of the impacts of climate change"./ppThe likely increase in the risk of flooding is just one of the many ways in which unmitigated climate change will significantly affect homes and businesses, and will create larger societal and economic costs for the UK. These serious long-term impacts are often overlooked by those who complain about the cost of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to limit the future impacts of climate change, yet they are just as important./pp/pp• Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham" title=""Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment/a at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The a href="http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/world-stages-london/drowning-world" title=""Drowning World/a exhibition is showing at Somerset House until 5 June./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/flooding"Flooding/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/natural-disasters"Natural disasters and extreme weather/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/londonschoolofeconomics"London School of Economics and Political Science/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography"Photography/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/meteorology"Meteorology/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bob-ward"Bob Ward/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post other links below.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday signed into law the nation’s first ban on a hotly debated natural gas drilling technique that involves blasting chemical-laced water deep into the ground. [Associated Press]

Shumlin said the increased amounts of natural gas obtainable through hydraulic fracturing were not worth the risk to drinking water supplies.

In the coming generation or two, “drinking water will be more valuable than oil or natural gas,” Shumlin said.

“Human beings survived for thousands and thousands of years without oil and without natural gas,” he said. “We have never known humanity or life on this plant to survive without clean water.”

Apple plans to power its main data center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding environmental concerns about the rapid expansion of high-consuming computer server farms. [Guardian]

An advocacy group blasted Clear Channel Thursday for rejecting an advertisement aimed at countering a controversial Heartland Institute climate change billboard. [The Hill]

Texas saw a 13 percent increase in the amount of energy generated by renewable sources in 2011, according to a new report by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator for about 85 percent of the state. [CleanTechnica]

Japan’s domestic shipments of solar cells and modules surged 38 percent to 392 megawatts in the first three months of this year, the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association said today. [Bloomberg]

p style="text-align: justify;"strong/strongClimate change is debated in letters to the editor of hometown newspapers all over the world. nbsp; In the Las Cruces, New Mexico, Sun-News, one reader recently cited "a 1996 paper by Kiegwin (sic) in Science which showed that, despite the present having a COsub2 /subconcentration of 388 PPM, the present temperature is cooler than the average of the last 3,000 years, and that it was considerably warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Holocene climate Optimum.rdquo;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; A few months later another reader asserted that ldquo;Keigwin, Science, 1996, shows present temperatures arenrsquo;t much different from the 3,000 year mean.rdquo;/p p style="text-align: justify;"Did the Keigwin paper really say that?nbsp; And how is it that two non-scientists from a mid-sized New Mexico city would be so confident that a scientific paper published a decade-and-a-half earlier supports their belief that the world was warmer during Medieval times?nbsp;/p p style="text-align: justify;"First, letrsquo;s review Keigwin (1996).nbsp;nbsp; The title ldquo;The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Seardquo; might provide the first clue that it isnrsquo;t about global temperatures, but about one location on Earth:nbsp; the Sargasso Sea.nbsp; What Keigwin did was to use oxygen isotope measurements in plankton skeletons from sediment cores as a proxy to reconstruct the sea surface temperature (SST) of the past 3000 years.nbsp; nbsp;The cores were collected in 1990, and were divided into 50- to 100-year segments.nbsp; In the absence of mixing or bioturbation from below, the mid-point of the most recent 50-year thick sample, whose value would represent the most recent paleotemperature, would be 1965.nbsp; In a perfect world, the bottom of the segment would date to 1940.nbsp; However, sediments in the real world are never completely undisturbed.nbsp; It is very likely that the most recent segment contained shells from the early 1900s or even from the previous century.nbsp; That means the last paleotemperature is really an average that probably includes values from before automobiles and light bulbs were invented./p p style="text-align: justify;"Keigwin published a graph, as Figure 4b (K4B), of his best estimate of the resulting time series.nbsp;/p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_sst.gif" alt="" width="570" height="275" //p !--more-- p style="text-align: justify;"He also included several years of modern instrumental measurements at hydrographic station ldquo;Srdquo; in Bermuda, starting in 1954.nbsp; The modern year-to-year temperatures fluctuate significantly, but the mean is well above the 23deg;C average of the entire proxy record./p p style="text-align: justify;"It is unlikely that the Las Cruces letter-writers ever read this paper, or they would have known it wasnrsquo;t about global temperatures.nbsp; It is highly cited in the contrarian literature as evidence against human-caused global warming, and turns up in many blogs and editorials without reference to the Sargasso Sea.nbsp; How did this happen?/p p style="text-align: justify;"The misuse appears to have started in the late 1990s, when Arthur P. Robinson of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM) started the so-called ldquo;Oregon Petitionrdquo; to collect signatures of people opposed to the Kyoto Protocol.nbsp; With his son Zachary and two associates from the conservative George C. Marshall pressure group (Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon), he self-published a paper called ldquo;Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxiderdquo; designed to look like a peer-reviewed article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US). nbsp;It was mailed out with the petition to many thousands of engineers, dentists, veterinarians, and even some scientists.nbsp; In January, 1998 it appeared in a periodical published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a political advocacy organization with a stated mission to ldquo;fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine.rdquo;nbsp; The executive director of AAPS is also member of Robinsonrsquo;s OISM.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; In it was their Figure 2, a modified version of Keigwinrsquo;s K4B.nbsp;nbsp;/p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_mco.gif" alt="" width="570" height="348" //p p style="text-align: justify;"Robinson and coauthors made several changes in representation and labeling.nbsp; First they inverted the axes so time runs from left to right, but they were unaware that when paleoclimate data are plotted ldquo;years before presentrdquo;nbsp; means ldquo;years before 1950rdquo; so their data is shifted by about 50 years.nbsp;nbsp; Second, they removed the data from hydrographic station ldquo;Srdquo; which showed that recent temperatures are above the long-term average.nbsp; Third, they neglected to label it as being a record for the Sargasso Sea.nbsp; Fourth, they called it a global temperature in the text, saying, ldquo;For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering. As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years.rdquo;/p p style="text-align: justify;"This paper became the basis for statements in two influential Wall Street Journal opinion pieces.nbsp; The first, in 1997, was by Robinson and his son Zachary, called ldquo;Science Has Spoken: nbsp;Global Warming Is a Myth.rdquo;nbsp; They stated,/p blockquote pemDuring the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today. One of the two coldest periods, known as the Little Ice Age, occurred 300 years ago. Atmospheric temperatures have been rising from that low for the past 300 years, but remain below the 3,000-year average. /em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"The second editorial, with son Noah, was called ldquo;Global Warming is 300-Year-Old News.rdquo;nbsp; In that one, they stated that ldquo;Earth temperatures are now near the 3,000-year average and clearly not unusual.rdquo;nbsp; Their Oregon Petition figure was re-drafted with different temperature units, but the time scale was still wrong, and the current thermometer measurements were still missing.nbsp; Despite the misrepresentation in the text as ldquo;Earth temperaturesrdquo; the graph this time was labeled ldquo;Temperature of the Sargasso Sea from 1000 BC to 1975 AD.rdquo;nbsp; The source of the year 1975 as the endpoint is unclear and did not come from Keigwinrsquo;s paper./p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_sargasso.gif" alt="" width="350" height="470" //p p style="text-align: justify;"This Wall Street Journal version of the graph appears to have become the emnew/em ldquo;primary sourcerdquo; for those who argue that temperatures are actually lower now than they were in the past.nbsp; Award winning editorial cartoonist John Trever redrew it for an ironic dig at climate scientists who claim otherwise (includingmdash;with true ironymdash;Lloyd Keigwin, the original author of the figure)./p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_toon.gif" alt="" width="570" height="411" //p p style="text-align: justify;"In 2004, I was asked by my management to review the original sources of these claims, and I wrote several messages to Arthur Robinson asking for some clarifications.nbsp;nbsp; Because I was planning to write a report, I wanted to give him the courtesy of responding with any clarifications or corrections.nbsp; Among other questions, I included the following,/p blockquote pemI'm wondering what is your basis for the statement, "During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today." (Robinson amp; Robinson, The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 4, 1997).nbsp; I've seen this quoted by others (often without attribution) but it looks like you were the first to say it./em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"Robinson responded,/p blockquote pemI note that the Sargaso (sic) Sea curve shows five earlier periods where the temperature was above the mean and therefore warmer than today. This is probably the source of the statement./em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"Significantly, business advocate Raymond Keatingmdash;in testimony to House Small Business Committee (June 4, 1998)mdash;said, ldquo;During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today.rdquo;/p p style="text-align: justify;"I proceeded to ask Robinson some more difficult questions,/p blockquote pemI can see that your Figure 2 was taken directly from the 1996 Keigwin paper, but with the post-1954 instrumental "Station S" SST data removed.nbsp; Was there a reason you took the directly measured temperature off?nbsp; What method did you use to calculate the 23 C mean?nbsp; Did you derive it from the original Keigwin data or was that simply an estimate to the nearest degree?/em/p pemYou incorrectly represented the graph as global temperature.nbsp; You stated, "For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering (11). As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years."/em/p pemI plan to include these observations in my final writeup.nbsp; If you care to respond, I would be happy to include your comments./em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"To which Robinson replied,/p blockquote pemRegarding the world data. We clearly labeled this data location. Since virtually all other available dats (sic) from other locations (see Soon and Baliunas) is similar, providing this example was entirely ethical. /em/p pemIt is too bad your employers could not find an objective scientist for this task. I will not be providing any additional comments, since I am quite sure they would not be presented in their enirety (sic) to your employers, any more than will those I have already written. You are clearly devoted to lifting selected things from their context./em/p pemDo not waste your time with additional email. It will be shunted to the unopened file here./em/p pemAR/em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"For the record, I provided all his responses to my management in their entirety./p p style="text-align: justify;"The most recent chapter of this story began when the periodical of the AAPS re-published an edited and colorized version of the paper in 2007 under a different author rotation (Baliunas was removed, and son Zachary was replaced by son Noah).nbsp; Perhaps because of my 2004 criticisms, an instrumental data point was added for year 2006, and the mean temperature was shifted./p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_mco2.gif" alt="" width="570" height="406" //p p style="text-align: justify;"The paper explained the source of the 2006 temperature thusly, ldquo;A value of 0.25 deg;C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.rdquo;nbsp;/p p style="text-align: justify;"Unable to reproduce this temperature with the data I had, I wrote to Willie Soon in 2010 and asked for the source of the data.nbsp; He cordially responded and sent me the table, telling me,/p blockquote pemhellip;also about the most recent point at "2006"---sorry that I could not be more certain, but I am sure Noah has carefully included this updated SST series from station S that Dr. Keigwin sent me around July of 2007 (which as you can see from the file name was obtained by Dr. Ruth Curry of WHOI)./em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"Graphing the Station S data with their data point for 2006 (blue) demonstrates that the 2006 is about a degree too low in Robinson et al. (2007)./p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_2006.gif" alt="" width="570" height="396" //p p style="text-align: justify;"If they had plotted the data they had, the way they said they did, it would have looked like this:/p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_2006b.gif" alt="" width="570" height="279" //p p style="text-align: justify;"On Nov. 2, 2010, I presented this to a large audience at the Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting in Denver.nbsp; Always wanting to give others the benefit of the doubt, I wrote to Noah Robinson several times at his OISM address.nbsp; On Oct. 23, 2010 I wrote:/p blockquote pemWillie amp; Noah,/em/p pemAttached is a draft of a couple slides I plan to present, which strongly suggest that your team fabricated the 2006 data point to hide the increase in Sargasso Sea surface temperature./em/p pemYou plotted your 2006 point too low by more than a degree C.nbsp; If this was an honest arithmetic mistake or silly drafting error, now would be the time to explain it and correct it.nbsp; If you let me know before my presentation, I will be happy to include your explanation./em/p pemBest regards, br //em/p pemMark Boslough/em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"I did not get a response./p p style="text-align: justify;"The Heartland Institute, a fossil-fuel-funded political pressure group, reprinted a distorted version the latest OISM the graph in their advocacy report, ldquo;Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climaterdquo; (S. Fred Singer, editor).nbsp; This was published for an organization called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), and was sent to American members of Congress and other policy makers.nbsp;/p p style="text-align: justify;"img src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3000yr_mco3.gif" alt="" width="570" height="266" //p p style="text-align: justify;"In 2011, I submitted an abstract, coauthored by Lloyd Keigwin, to the Third Santa Fe Conference on Global and Regional Climate Change, so that we could present these findings.nbsp; According to the conference summary, it was ldquo;to focus on climate change and variability from observational and modeling perspectives.rdquo;nbsp; The chair of the conference, Petr Chylek is affiliated with one of the sponsors (Los Alamos National Laboratory) as well as the Heartland Institute (as a ldquo;Heartland Expertrdquo;).nbsp; With many speakers affiliated with the Heartland Institute (it turned out to be at least nine) it seemed like a good opportunity to provide feedback.nbsp; Unfortunately, Keigwin and I received a rejection letter from Chylek, who told us,/p blockquote pemThis Conference is not a suitable forum for type of presentations described in submitted abstract. We would accept a paper that spoke to the science, the measurements, the interpretation, but not simply an attempted refutation of someone else's assertions (especially when made in unpublished reports and blog site)./em/p /blockquote p style="text-align: justify;"This was a puzzling rejection given that the ldquo;unpublished reportrdquo; was the NIPCC document released by the Heartland Institute, which is widely cited by the many Heartland-affiliated speakers invited by Chylek./p p style="text-align: justify;"Nevertheless, I was able to have a conversation with Fred Singer, the editor of the NIPCC report, about the Sargasso Sea graph.nbsp; At first, he told me that I should take it up with Robinson, but ultimately he assured me that it would be corrected in the next edition of the NIPCC. nbsp;He also revealed that he had been the one who had sent Keigwinrsquo;s paper to Robinson in the first place, back in the lsquo;90s./p p style="text-align: justify;"In a final attempt to get my feedback directly to the Heartland Institute before writing this guest post, I offered in April, 2012 to give a presentation at their annual meeting in Chicago in May.nbsp;nbsp; My offer was rejected by Heartlandrsquo;s Director of Communications, Jim Lakely, who told me in no uncertain terms, ldquo;you will not be getting an invitation to speak.rdquo;/p p style="text-align: justify;"I look forward to their response to this article./p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/752?ns=guardianpageName=Will+3D+printers+make+food+sustainable%3F%3AArticle%3A1747274ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Environment%2CFood+%28impact+of+production+on+environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CTravel+and+transport+environmental+impactc5=Climate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CFood+and+Drinkc6=Andrew+Purvis+for+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forumforthefuture.org.uk%2Fgreenfutures%2F%22%3EGreen+Futures%3C%2Fa%3E%2C+part+of+the+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fenvironment%2Fseries%2Fguardian-environment-network%22%3EGuardian+Environment+Network%3C%2Fa%3Ec7=12-May-18c8=1747274c9=Articlec10=Featurec11=Environmentc13=Guardian+Environment+Network+%28series%29c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FFood" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Andrew Purvis investigates whether 3D printers, artificial meat and GM can reduce food's future environmental footprint/ppBefore the end of the year, if Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University gets his way, the world's first test-tube burger will be flame-grilled by Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in Bray and served to a celebrity guest. Meals at this restaurant don't come cheap, but this one will be the climax of a euro;250,000 research project ndash; and a milestone in Post's quest to find new ways of feeding the world, without destroying the planet./ppHis petri-dish patty will be made from a mixture of fat and cow muscle grown from stem cells in a culture of foetal calf serum (that's blood plasma without the clotting agents) ndash; a technology trialled in February. It may sound less appetising than a Big Mac ndash; but it could bring huge environmental benefits. Producing beef this way results in a 96% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to rearing animals, and uses 45% of the energy, 1% of the land and 4% of the water associated with conventional beef production./ppMeanwhile, at Cornell University in New York, PhD candidate Jeffrey Lipton has developed a 3D food printer that lays down liquid versions of foods, dot by dot and layer by layer, to build up edible meals. "So far we have printed everything from chocolate, cheese and hummus to scallops, turkey and celery", he says. At present, the technology uses liquid or melted versions of conventionally produced ingredients, but the aim is to create a range of 'food inks' made from hydrocolloids ndash; substances that form gels with water. Homaru Cantu, a chef who has used the printer to make sushi, thinks this could have big implications for sustainability, not least because there would be no prepping of fresh ingredients, and therefore no food waste. "Imagine", he says, "being able to grow, cook or prepare foods without the negative industrial impact ndash; from fertilisers to packaging. The production chain for food would nearly be eliminated."/ppIt's a brave new world of scientific endeavour, but are these technologies sustainable? Will they deliver food that is better for us, produced at lower cost to the environment, and distributed more efficiently or traded more equitably? As Western-style diets become more popular in growing economies, can they help us meet demand without further depleting our resources? And on a practical note, can they be scaled up in an affordable way ndash; enough to make a real difference?/pp"Technologically, it will be possible to replace all conventional meat production with cultured meat", says Hanna Tuomisto, the Oxford University researcher who analysed the environmental benefits of Post's method. "However, there are political, funding and regulatory issues. Livestock farmers don't like it because it threatens their jobs, but we're not going to get rid of all conventional production overnight. Global demand for meat is rising all the time, so this cultured meat might help satisfy only that additional demand."/ppDr Lipton's food printer could also go global; he believes it will become as commonplace in kitchens as the food mixer. Kathy Groves, a consultant microscopist at a href="http://www.leatherheadfood.com/"Leatherhead Food Research/a in Surrey, can see the appeal. "It would save us an awful lot of hassle in product innovation, manufacture and troubleshooting", she says. "It's efficient, and you get a consistent product ndash; but food is nicely variable, that's the point, so I'm not sure it will take off./ppIn her view, the advance most relevant to sustainable development is nanotechnology ndash; using tiny particles, less than a billionth of a metre across, to engineer everything from packaging and agrochemicals to health foods. In Germany, the RD firm a href="http://www.aquanova.de/"Aquanova/a has developed a nano-based carrier system, called NovaSOL, for introducing nutrients into foods and drinks in a way that makes them more absorbable. Chemical company a href="http://www.basf.co.uk/ecp1/UK_Ireland/en/"BASF/a is doing the same with lycopene from tomatoes, known to combat cancer. In Australia, 'micro-encapsulation' ndash; surrounding tiny particles or droplets with a coating ndash; has been used to mask the taste and odour of tuna fish oil added to the 'UP' bread range sold by brand Tip Top, boosting omega-3 intake./ppBut where nanotechnology has the biggest potential, Groves reckons, isn't in nutritional benefits, but in 'smart' packaging that promises to cut food waste. The packaging changes colour when food deteriorates, taking the guesswork out of shelf life. Smarter still is a label with an invisible X printed in a nano-silver compound. "When food, especially meat, starts to deteriorate due to microbial activity, hydrogen sulphide is released", says Dr Qasim Chaudhry, Principal Research Scientist at the Food and Environment Research Agency. "This reacts with silver and the X becomes visible." The a href="http://www.wrap.org.uk/"Waste and Resources Action Programme/a (WRAP) estimates that 800,000 tonnes of food, worth pound;2 billion, is thrown away in Britain each year in the mistaken belief that it has gone off. Smart labelling could prevent that./ppEqually promising are nano-formulated pesticides and fertilisers which could, paradoxically, reduce pollution. Nano-sized particles have a much larger surface area, per weight equivalent, than conventional materials, making then more reactive. "You need less, and a smaller amount [of agrochemical] can cover a much larger area", Chaudhry says. Similarly, nano-sized additives in animal feed could improve the absorption of mineral supplements such as copper and zinc, meaning less would be excreted to pollute land and water./ppOne drawback is uncertainty over safety. "Relatively little is known about the way nanomaterials behave when ingested as food", says Dr Sandy Lawrie, Head of Novel Foods at the Food Standards Agency. "Nano-forms of a given substance may behave differently to other, larger forms of the same thing." Before products could be marketed in the EU, they would have to undergo a thorough safety assessment on a case-by-case basis ndash; though materials in packaging, which do not migrate into food, would be treated more leniently./ppAnother drawback is the likelihood of public opposition, as with genetic modification (GM). Research carried out by the Food Standards Agency in 2010-11 showed that people are more accepting of nano-foods with a clear health benefit than they are of applications such as improving texture or flavour, which they see as trivial./ppHowever, it is the tried and tested methods of plant genetics and husbandry, practised over centuries, which have paid most dividends for the environment. At the a href="http://www.niab.com/"National Institute of Agricultural Botany/a (NIAB), trait identification work and 'pre-breeding' (incorporating those traits into new breeding materials) have produced a wheat variety that flowers earlier in the year. This means grain takes root when there is moisture around ndash; a boon in drier, warmer climates, and potentially in Britain, too, where drought could spell disaster for farmers this summer./ppTrials conducted with the a href="http://www.jic.ac.uk/corporate/index.htm"John Innes Centre/a in Norwich have shown the benefits. "They are significant", says Ros Lloyd of NIAB, "delivering yield increases of up to 33% in southern Europe" ndash; with a corresponding decrease in GHG emissions per tonne. Since the 1960s, wheat yields have risen from 1,400kg to 6,000kg per hectare, even without GM. "It's very important," Lloyd says, "that we improve awareness among policy-makers, researchers, agri-food businesses and consumers of the enormous benefits on offer from harnessing [through innovative breeding programmes] the genetic potential of plants."/ppCertainly, no innovative approach to the future of our food will reach any scale without successful campaigns to engage everyone from policy-makers to consumers. For Dan Crossley, an expert on sustainable food systems at Forum for the Future, the risk is that some technologies erode the value of food and make people even more disconnected from their dinner. "We shouldn't underestimate the power of vibrant food cultures", he says. "I'm very open to the idea that some of our ingredients might come from Petri dishes or printers in the future, but I'd shy away from believing these sorts of technologies will solve our global food crisis on their own. That's why I'd like to see technology used to emreconnect/em people with what they eat."/ppThis is exactly what Ed Dowding has set out to do with a href="http://www.sustaination.co.uk/"Sustaination/a ndash; a web and smartphone platform that puts producers in touch with local buyers. To his mind, "If lots of change is necessary, the one thing everyone is going to need is information." Dowding's idea is to build up a network of growers, distributors and community centres based on a local hub model. "We have a browsable map", he explains, "so you can see not only who a business trades with, but who [their] connections trade with as well."/ppThe efficiency gains will be impressive, with more food going where it's wanted, and less waste all along the supply chain. Add open sourcing (so that people can share their top finds), live status updates ('I'm cropping 20kg of peppers this week, at pound;1 a kilo') and fair market prices ndash; based on data, not guesswork ndash; and it's a potent tool for getting fresh, locally grown food on the shelf and the table. Which may well be one of the most appetising items on our future menu./ph2Try these at home/h2pAnyone who's failed to keep a basil plant alive by a kitchen window will know the challenges of indoor gardening. Urban homes just don't seem well suited to growing food, but two low-tech, yet innovative, ideas aim to solve that problem.br / br /a href="http://www.windowfarms.org/"Windowfarms/a, which raised $250,000 on a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/windowfarms/learn-to-grow-and-share-with-new-windowfarms"Kickstarter/a, is a hydroponic system you can install at home. Plants are stacked vertically by windows in recycled plastic bottles, while a pump circulates nutrients directly to their roots, which are suspended in clay. The system is automated, and so your basil faces much better odds of becoming pesto.br / br /Windowfarms kits are available to buy from $99, but plans to help you build your own are also freely available. That's because Windowfarms is also an experiment in open-source research and development.br / br /Dubbed 'RD-I-Y', the Windowfarms design evolves through versions, which feature contributions from a community of more than 28,000 globally. Much like software, this crowd-sourced approach rapidly increases the rate at which the design improves through innovation and testing.br / br /The community itself is self-organising, and encourages testing of others' ideas. As Britta Riley, Founder of Windowfarms, says in her talk to the TEDx Manhattan conference: "In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else's idea than it is to be just the idea guy."br / br /That said, being 'the idea guys' hasn't gone badly for former UC Berkley students Alex Velez and Nikhil Arora, who developed a way to grow (edible) mushrooms from waste coffee grounds. Their business, a href="http://www.backtotheroots.com/"Back to the Roots/a, collects waste from coffee shops and then sells kits to grow these mushrooms at home. Each $20 kit can produce up to one and a half pounds of gourmet mushrooms.br / br /The secondary waste created by producing these kits ndash; a mix of coffee grounds and mushroom roots ndash; has value of its own, as Velez and Arora discovered when they tried to give away their increasing piles of it on Craigslist. On quizzing recipients on their need for this 'waste', Back to the Roots discovered it could be used as a high-quality soil enhancer, so they now sell that, too. One source of 'waste' has become two valuable products. strongndash; Michael Ashcroft/strong/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/food"Food/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/travel-and-transport"Travel and transport/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pThe government should do more to help green industries boost economic growth, says foreign minister in letter to prime minister/pbr/p style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p