Two weeks ago a massive algae bloom formed off the coast of Qingdao, China, and has now expanded to cover more than 150 square miles. The Chinese government has dispatched a response team consisting of 66 vessels, ten forklifts, and 168 people to collect the algae before it starts to decompose.

The bloom is a result of result of rising ocean temperatures and excess nitrogen in the water caused by industrial runoff, and can have devastating effects on local ecosystems if left unchecked. As the algae decomposes, it can strip oxygen from the water, suffocating local wildlife, and also releases noxious gases.

More than 4,000 tons of algae has been removed so far, but there is much more yet to remove. A similar bloom in the area in 2008 resulted in a staggering 170,000 tons of algae. By removing the algae before it decomposes, it can be processed into useful products such as biofertilizer or animal feed.

Another option that I haven’t seen presented yet, is to dry the algae to use as feedstock in making biochar. If the 2010 bloom ends up being anywhere close to the 2008 one, that is potentially a lot of biochar.

Guardian, via TreeHugger

In December Canada joined the Copenhagen deal on climate change, although very reluctantly. Many countries signed the deal, in itself a remarkable achievement, however none of it is actually legally binding.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Environment Minister Jim Prentice, pictured above, went on record saying Canada wants a “fair deal” for all parties involved, but due to the sad state we’ve let things slide into, it’s highly unlikely that a deal will exist any time soon that everyone involved will consider “fair”.

I applaud Mr. Harper for actually attending the climate conference, but in the end not a lot has been accomplished and it looks like it’s back to business as usual in Canada, at least for now.

A CIA program designed to study climate change by tracking Arctic ice and other visual indicators has been reactivated and is already providing shocking evidence of recent rapid ice loss, much to the dismay of climate change skeptics.

This program was operating throughout the Clinton years, but was shut down by the Bush administration. The program has strong backing from both the Director of the CIA as well as climate change scientists worldwide, but as usual, Fox News gets it all wrong and attempts to rile up the masses with misinformation. A recent segment on the “news” show ‘Fox & Friends’ alleged that the CIA was giving up on gathering intelligence on terrorist activities, to study icebergs, which is completely false. Treehugger.com has an excellent post covering this particular spectacle.

The program doesn’t involve re-tasking satellites to different orbits, or diverting any resources away from intelligence-gathering missions, it simply provides existing images of glaciers and sea ice to a group of scientists. In effect, images that were recorded over non-critical areas and were previously ignored and are now being studied again. It’s simply making better use of already available data.

A few of the preliminary images have been released and are available for public viewing at the Global Fiducials Library site. Hopefully the reactivation of this program by the CIA and the shocking evidence presented will put an end to people listening to the the utter nonsense being spewed by Fox News and other climate change skeptics.

On December 7th, world leaders and climate change experts will meet in Copenhagen for COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. This is regarded as some as the last best chance the world has to decide on an effective plan to reduce global carbon emissions.

“Let’s turn Copenhagen into Hopenhagen” is the call to action from website Hopenhagen.org,which has created a global petition urging world leaders to attend and support the COP15 conference, and to reach an agreement regarding carbon emissions and climate change.

From the website:

Hopenhagen is a movement, a moment and a chance at a new beginning. The hope that in Copenhagen this December – during the United Nations Climate Change Conference – we can build a better future for our planet and a more sustainable way of life. It is the hope that we can create a global community that will lead our leaders into making the right decisions. The promise that by solving our environmental crisis, we can solve our economic crisis at the same time.

Hopenhagen is change – and that change will be powered by all of us.

Join now, to show your support for a worldwide climate change treaty at COP15. We can do this.

Hopenhagen.org

A finalist in the Electrolux Design Lab 2009 competition, Czech designer Martin Miklica has the future in mind with his robotic creation ‘Le Petit Prince’, a robot designed to nurture Earth plants on the surface of Mars.

Looking quite like something straight out of Star Wars, ‘Le Petit Prince’ (Little Prince) is a robot designed to seek out optimal conditions and nutrients on the surface of Mars, and then grow an Earth plant inside it’s protective dome. Swarming over the Martian landscape, each robot has the ability to communicate with the other robots and transfer information about movement, location, and other sensor data, allowing each one to learn and improve it’s actions based on input from every other unit.

With Earth’s biosphere deteriorating and the population swelling, more than a few people are looking to our red neighbor as a possible new home for Humanity. I’ve written about the concept of terraforming Mars before, but the idea of using a single robot to nurture each plant is quite unique. There are some pretty big obstacles to overcome if this idea is to work, primarily the sheer number of robots it would require to produce any measurable effect on the Martian atmosphere.

I believe a more realistic goal would be to have robots seek out nutrients and water and bring them to a central location, where a greenhouse structure was constructed. Long term, however, in order to truly change the Martian environment to be suitable for humans, the atmosphere must be thickened considerably and then have it’s composition changed completely, as well as a thick organic soil layer built so plants can grow on the surface, and not just in greenhouse domes.

With both current and forseeable technology it’s not feasible to move any more than a tiny fraction of the Earth’s population to another planet, so every effort should be made to fix the damage to our own planet, and look to Mars only as a next step in our exploration of space, not a replacement for Earth.

Electrolux Design Lab 2009 via Treehugger

Scientists at the University of Manchester have conducted a study looking at the effect global warming will have on our major cities, and say a modest increase in the number of urban parks and street trees could offset decades of predicted temperature rises. The study has calculated that a mere 10% increase in the amount of green space in cities would reduce average urban surface temperatures by as much as 4°C.

This 4°C drop in temperature, which is equivalent to the average predicted rise through global warming by the 2080s, is caused by the cooling effect of water as it evaporates into the air from leaves and vegetation through a process called transpiration.

Green spaces collect and retain water much better than concrete, and as the water evaporates from the leaves of plants and trees the surrounding air is cooled. This process, called transpiration, is similar to the human cooling effect of perspiration.

“Urban areas can be up to 12°C warmer than more rural surroundings due to the heat given off by buildings, roads and traffic, as well as reduced evaporative cooling, in what is commonly referred to as an ‘urban heat island’,” said Dr Roland Ennos, who worked on the project with Professor John Handley and Dr Susannah Gill in the School of Environment and Development.

“We discovered that a modest increase of 10% green space reduced surface temperatures in the urban environment by 4°C, which would overcome temperature rises caused by global warming over the next 75 years, effectively ‘climate proofing’ our cities.

“Such a reduction has important implications for human comfort and health within urban areas and opportunities need to be taken to increase green space cover wherever structural changes are occurring within urban areas, as well as planting street trees or developing green roofs.”

Increased green spaces in urban areas would have multiple other benefits, such as increased rainwater retention and carbon capture. Currently most of the rainwater that falls on urban areas is lost as “run-off” through storm drains, which increases the city’s sewage treatment load as well as increasing the need for irrigation. A 10% increase in green space will only have a minimal impact on precipitation capture however, as the overall climate model predicts that towards the end of this century, our summers will be hotter and drier but winters are expected to be wetter. This results in insufficient water during the time of the year when the plants need it the most, which leads to reduced transpiration; effectively cancelling out that benefit of the green spaces. Winters, on the other hand, are expected to become much wetter, producing an excess of precipitation when the trees are unable to use it to their best advantage. In order to maximize the benefits of green spaces, cities would require an infrastructure to store water in winter months to irrigate the green spaces in warmer months. Given the advantages of the cooling effects of the green spaces as well as the air purification benefits, the cost of updating urban infrastructure becomes very minimal.

Additionally, buildings could divert greywater to irrigate green roofs and nearby green spaces, which would lessen the need for city water piping changes, and provide an additional source of nutrients to the plants.

Source: Built Environment, University of Manchester

This is the final part of a series on the obstacles to be overcome in the process of terraforming Mars for human colonization. The previous articles covered thickening the Martian atmosphere, warming it to comfortable levels and transforming it into breathable air. This section will cover the details of building structures on Mars, as part of creating a self-sustaining human colony there.

It can be assumed that some humans would be on Mars for most of the terraforming process, following the orbital bombardment stage. Initially, the planetary engineers and early colonists would live in their spacecraft and in prefab habitation modules brought from Earth, but soon construction would need to begin on permanent Mars structures. Since there are no forests existing yet on Mars to harvest, nor any cement factories, structures would need to be constructed with the available material. On Mars, rocks and dirt are plentiful, and similar materials have been used for building on Earth for thosands of years. Examples of this construction includes caves, stacked & mortared stone, adobe and rammed earth. More modern examples include cast stabilized earth, earthbag structures and excavated underground spaces. Let’s begin by looking at the basics of each of these systems.

Caves were the first housing for humans, as this shelter solution was as simple as finding a hole to live in. Natural caves, if any exist on Mars, would be a suitable initial shelter for some aspects of Martan colonization. They likely wouldn’t be suitable for most of the structures needed as it would be limited in location, size and ease of access. Underground habitation is a desirable option however, so excavation of artificial caverns will likely be used more than natural caverns.

Excavation of underground spaces is very common on Earth, both with humans and many animals. Underground construction has many benefits such as a more stable temperature, very secure and stable surroundings, and protection from solar radiation and micrometeorites. On Earth human underground construction is accomplished with large equipment that digs holes, explosives that break up rock, and conveyance systems to remove the debris. This would be a little more difficult on Mars, so a different approach would be required. Since protection from above is the goal, simply digging a hole wouldn’t be sufficient. Spaces would need to be created as tunnels that were expanded to form caverns. The logical choice for this is a mining device called a roadheader. A roadheader consists of a treaded body with an extending boom that sweeps across a rock face with a cutter head. Large roadheaders are capable of removing about 40 cubic meters of rock before moving the base forwards. Recent advancements in mining technology have produced automated roadheaders, capable of selectively cutting rock faces to extract valuable ore while ignoring the rest of the rock. While mining for metals would definitely be a useful practice on Mars, the biggest benefit of this technology would be creating underground spaces automatically. Once a suitable area was selected, deep penetrating radar or acoustic sounding could be used to produce a 3D model of the underground area being studied. A computer model would then be created that would contain the desired space, and the robotic devices would set to work excavating the space. Since there are no conventional fuels on Mars, the equipment would need to be powered electrically, with power derived from solar sources. Nuclear power would also be a possible option for the automated equipment, but there are several serious issues associated with transporting the equipment to Mars as well as maintaining it once there. With solar electric equipment, excavation would continue as long as sunlight was hittting the solar generators, and could continue each day until the project was finished. Since automated roadheaders don’t need a warm oxygen-rich atmosphere to operate in, this could start fairly early on during the terraforming process so when humans were ready to move to Mars, an incredible amount of space would be ready to use. Periodic maintenance would be required on the equipment to replace cutting heads, but it may be possible to eliminate the cutter heads completely. If advances in nanotechnology continue at their expected pace it may be possible to use nanomachines to break down the rock at the molecular level, seemingly melting it away as if it were butter touched with a hot iron. Whatever method is used to excavate caverns, there will be a tremendous amount of waste material produced, in the form of dust and rocks. This is actually an advantage, because this material can be used to build surface structures.

Surface structures are the most common type of structure used by humans, because they’re easy to construct, easy to access once built, and provide access to natural light and air. Since the initial structures on Mars will be designed to protect against the planet’s air, access to light and ease of construction are the positive points. The structures need to be airtight, so right away stacked stone is ruled out as a possible construction method. Even with mortar, this would be difficult to automate due to the irregularities with the stones. The next option used on Earth is stacked adobe bricks, which was the first attempt at making synthetic stones. Adobe bricks are essentially sun-dried blocks of sand and clay, and perform very well in warm dy climates. Adobe blocks have excellent thermal mass, meaning they resist quick changes in temperature by storing heat during warm times and releasing it slowly during cooler times. On a daily cycle on Earth adobe houses stay cool during the day and warm at night because by the time the blocks start heating up during the day, the sun has already gone down and the blocks begin cooling down again by releasing heat. This would be an advantage on Mars due to the large temperature swings the planet experiences. As the atmosphere thickened and warmed, this would become much less of an issue but would always serve as a means to regulate heat passively, thus saving energy.
Formed blocks is the evolved version of adobe blocks, and has the advantage of a more uniform shape and size. In 1952 a device was invented called a Cinva Ram that allows for the rapid creation of compressed blocks of soil which are strong enough to be used for multi-level buildings. This process involves putting a measured amount of material into a block maker and then applying sufficient pressure to compress it to a block. This process could be automated as well, resulting in colony infrastructure being built slowly by machines while the planet was still being terraformed. With human operators, a Cinva Ram can produce up to 1,000 blocks per day. By automating this process the output could be increased. With automated block creation and construction running every day for several years, entire cities could be built ready to be inhabited once the planet was ready. By siting these block makers near excavation sites, the excavation waste could be pulverized to provide much of the block material. This isn’t the only use for this excavated material, similar material is being used to quickly build structures on Earth using the “superadobe” or earth-bag process.

Earth-bag construction is a method where bags or tubes, commonly made of woven polypropylene, are filled with dirt, small rocks, or other finely ground material and coiled to produce dome shapes. As each layer is laid down, it is compressed to compact the material inside. This building method was developed by architect Nader Khalili at the Cal-Earth Institute and would be ideally suited to Mars structures as the materials required are lightweight and strong, and require only the addition of compactable particulate matter. Domes are a very strong structure and could be buried to provide further protection from the Martian climate. Many shapes can be produced with this method, including vaults and corridors. A stabilized plaster would be created from the fine soil to cover the walls and produce a useable interior and exterior finish.

The last two remaining options for basic construction are rammed soil-cement and cast soil-cement. The concepts are similar in that they both involve a soil mixture being put into forms to create walls but that is where the similarities end. The rammed soil method is a very old technique, in fact the Great Wall of China was constructed with this process. The technique mimics the natural process of sedimentation and produces very strong monolithic structures. Soil is mixed with a small amount of water and often cement as a stabilizer and shovelled into the forms. Traditionally the process used workers with weights on the end of poles to hand tamp the soil mixture; in modern construction pneumatic tampers are used to speed up the process. Cast earth is a newer technique which uses a slurry of soil, water and a gypsum mixture that is poured into wall forms to dry and harden. The cast soil requires a gypsum mixture to stabilize the slurry that is formulated based on the soil used, so this would be harder to utilize initially on Mars. Once the climate was habitable enough for humans to work outside for extended periods of time however, cast and rammed soil would be excellent options for building structures that required shapes other than domes or vaults. Once mining commenced and metals were produced, more traditional buildings could eventually be constructed.

The entire terraforming process should take around a century, during which time technological advances on Earth would be occurring in the areas of energy production, nanotechnology, food production and every other aspect of our society. Regardless of the details of how a Martian colony would operate, one thing is certain; a new method of timekeeping would need to be established that was capable of relating to events and times on both planets. A standard interplanetary calendar would address this issue, and allow for Terrans and Martians to have a standard timekeeping format that could be referenced in addition to the planet specific time periods, the same as we can convert currencies or temperatures.

Many of the sustainable practices being developed here on Earth would be implemented on Mars because there are very little resources there. Every part of the colony would need to be carefully planned to account for this, but this would serve as an opportunity to create a completely new model of human civilization, doing things right from the very start. To me, that is a very exciting proposition.

We’ve known for a long time that exposure to light enhances both performance and alertness in humans, but little was known about the neurological basis for these effects. Now, researchers have begun to identify how light affects our cognitive functions, determining why we perform better with natural light.

The research was conducted at the University of Surrey and involved exposing subjects to various forms of light and imaging their brains while they perform cognitive tests. From the article:

Our brain does not use light only to form images of the world. Ambient light levels are detected by our nervous system and, without forming any image, profoundly influence our brain function and various aspects of our physiology, including circadian rhythms, hormone release, and heart rate. These responses are induced by a special non-image-forming (NIF) brain system, which researchers have begun to characterize in animal models. In human studies, much work has focused on the effects of nighttime light exposure, but little is known about daytime responses to light. Especially mysterious are the neural correlates of these responses, and their temporal dynamics. Such issues are of significant interest given that daytime sleepiness is a major source of complaint in modern society and has considerable socio-economic implications.

This is the reason that students perform better in green schools, and is also a very strong incentive for more buildings to make use of natural light sources – they’re not just saving energy, they can make you more alert and productive as well.

How exposure to daylight affects brain, enhances responses – What’s Next in Health

A simulation done by the Environmental Working Group shows that people can lower their pesticide exposure by 90 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead. Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to nearly 20 pesticides per day, on average. Eating the 12 least contaminated will expose a person to a fraction over 2 pesticides per day.

12 Most Contaminated – Buy These Organic

• Apples
• Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Cherries
• Imported Grapes
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Potatoes
• Red Raspberries
• Spinach
• Strawberries

12 Least Contaminated

• Asparagus
• Avocados
• Bananas
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Corn (sweet)
• Kiwi
• Mangos
• Onions
• Papaya
• Pineapples
• Peas (sweet)

Many of the most contaminated plants are ones that can be grown at home, insluding bell peppers, strawberries and potatoes. These could also be grown in a hydroponic greenhouse locally, eliminating the need to import these items from countries that use pesticides. The report also addresses the question about washing produce; while it may reduce some surface residue, there is no significant effect from washing as the samples used in the tests were washed and/or peeled prior to testing.

Pesticides in produce – via FoodNews

Light pollution is a real problem in our cities and towns characterized by a reduction in the visibility of the night sky, but few people realize the implications of this. Light pollution is misdirected or misused light, from sources such as public lighting and office building lights. Light pollution doesn’t just hide the beautiful night sky from us, it’s actually a side effect from a very serious issue, one that could be fixed with the right technology.

I grew up in a small town, and moved to Toronto for school when I was 20. One of the first things I noticed when I moved here was that I couldn’t see most of the night sky anymore, because it was so brightly lit from the city lights.
Many people believe that stargazers are the only people affected by light pollution, but this isn’t the case. One of the most well known issues surrounding light pollution is the death of birds as they fly into brightly lit windows at night. Other issues are raised about safety; street lights that are too bright can blind a person to the attacker hiding in the shadows, or glare from windows can reduce a drivers visibility and could cause an accident. The biggest problem however, is the root of the issue: wasted light.
BBC News recently wrote an article on this subject, as did environmental design blog Inhabitat.com. One of the most serious problem with the wasted light is that the light is produced with electricity, which means wasted resources and wasted money. Inhabitat puts it very succinctly:

To put the problem in perspective, estimates place the cost to the US in the neighborhood of $5,000,000,000-$10,000,000,000 annually. That’s $5-10 Billion dollars with a capital “B”. This is not the sum total of all outdoor lighting, this is just that portion of outdoor lighting that is so misdirected as to light up the night sky. This is an incredible sum of money to simply waste, and yet that’s exactly what we do year after year. In fact, the problem is actually increasing in magnitude and cost.

Imagine if this money were redirected to address environmental or social issues! Almost all of the environmental issues facing us could be invested in, with absolutely no reduction in any other funding because this money is being paid already. And, the night skies would be visible again.
The question is, how can this be accomplished? The answer, is to use ’smart’ technology for our lighting as the current technology and implementation is pretty dumb. Light pollution isn’t caused by all nighttime lighting, it’s caused by misused or wasteful lighting.

One of the problems with our lighting is improper placement and direction of outdoor lighting, there is no functional reason for a light fixture to be shining light upwards if there is nothing but sky to illuminate. A perfect example of this is stadiums; many have just as many lights pointing upwards as they do on the playing field. More common though, are street lights and other public safety lights. The best way to solve this problem is with better lighting design. Inhabitat’s article specifically mentions ‘full cutoff’ street lamps, which direct a beam of light downwards to a specific area, without shining light up into the sky. The benefit of this is reduced light pollution, but also reduced operating costs and energy requirements because it’s able to light the intended area without also unintentionally lighting up surrounding areas. There are several other things that can be done to further improve on this: utilize solar powered street lights, as well as wireless controls that use timers to determine when the lights come on based on ambient light levels. In addition to this, street lights could be fitted with motion sensors to determine when there are people or vehicles nearby that would require additional light. With sensors and variable output lights, public lights would be able to maintain a safety level of light output and increase their light output only as needed.

The other main source of light pollution is from office buildings that leave their lights on all the time. Whatever the intended reason, this practice results in a tremendous amount of wasted energy and the related environmental impacts. The same technology mentioned for the street lights would also work for office buildings, which would automate the process of switching lights off and on depending on ambient light levels and building occupancy. Like a thermostat the sensors would adjust the lighting to whatever output was required to meet the set lighting level, and would reduce the lighting to the code-required safety level when the area was unoccupied. This could result in an energy savings of up to 75%.
Light pollution is costing us money, energy, and the beauty of the night sky… but by using smart technology to change our habits for nighttime lighting, we can save money, be good to the environment, and see the stars – without giving up all of the pretty city lights.