Waste Not, Want Not...

How important, to care for our planet's resources and to use them well.  Here's an interesting article about a recycling plan in Norway.  And below that I posted a great article about McDonald's and their plans to phase out the use of foam beverage cups (they use billions of them each year).

Food Waste to Fuel Oslo's City Buses

OSLO, Norway, March 23, 2012 (ENS) - Stale bread, banana peels, coffee grounds and other food waste will be transformed into green fuel for Oslo's city buses starting next year. The Norwegian capital's new biogas plant will supply the fuel and also provide nutrient-rich biofertilizer for agriculture.
The plant will be able to process 50,000 tonnes of food waste annually, converting it to environment-friendly fuel for 135 municipal buses as well as enough biofertilizer for roughly 100 medium-sized local farms.
Biogas is a carbon dioxide-neutral fuel produced from biomass such as food waste, sewage sludge and manure.

Oslo city buses will soon run on biogas produced from food waste. (Photo by ekvator13)

Currently, 65 Oslo buses are powered by biogas produced from sludge from the city's sewage treatment plant. When the new biogas plant reaches its full capacity in 2013, the local bus company will have enough biogas for at least 200 buses.
"Running on biogas will reduce emissions from public transport, which means less airborne particulate matter and thus improved air quality in Oslo. What's more, the biogas buses run quietly," explains acting plant manager Anna-Karin Eriksson of the Oslo Municipality Waste-to-Energy Agency.
Biogas in buses means cleaner air and less noise for Oslo's 500,000 residents. Biogas not only helps to improve air quality, it is meant to be good business as well.
The new plant is slated to produce the energy equivalent of four million liters of diesel fuel annually. The plant is being constructed by the Norwegian company Cambi AS, which won the contract after intense competition with foreign companies.
For over 20 years, Cambi has been developing technology for converting biodegradable material into renewable energy. The biogas production processes were developed through long-term Norwegian research with funding from the Research Council of Norway.
The company has carried out a number of research projects that have received public funding from the Research Council and the former Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund, now part of Innovation Norway.
Cambi's Research Council funding was provided under the Large-scale Research Programme on Clean Energy for the Future. The company is also an industry partner in the Bioenergy Innovation Centre, one of Norway's 11 centers for environment-friendly energy research.
Oslo's new biogas plant will produce the biogas using a method known as thermal hydrolysis, whereby raw materials such as waste or sewage sludge are boiled under high temperature and high pressure. Cambi has worked out a hydrolysis process that yields substantially more biogas than conventional facilities.

Wojtech Sargalski (Photo courtesy Cambi)

Cambi spokesman Wojtech Sargalski says the contract is an important milestone for Cambi's growth in processing food waste with the patented thermal hydrolysis process. Although Cambi has 22 Cambi plants in operation worldwide and another three under construction, Sargalski said this deal is large even by international standards.
"We are delighted that Cambi has been awarded the largest biowaste contract in Scandinavia by the city of Oslo. The contract will certainly have a positive impact on Cambi's international performance in this sector, he said.
To date, the company has designed and delivered 28 plants for converting biodegradable material into renewable energy. Their plants are processing waste and sludge from a total of 23 million people in the United States, Australia, Chile, Japan, Dubai and many European countries.
Cambi has installed two plants for the treatment of household waste and industrial food waste - both in Norway.
The residue from the biogas production process may be used as liquid fertilizer with roughly the same nutrient content as compound fertilizer. The new plant, located north of Oslo, will supply both liquid and solid biofertilizer in addition to a liquid concentrate. "We've shown that biowaste has substantial value in itself and is well worth utilizing," said Per Lillebo, chair of Cambi ASA. "The fertilizer produced is a vital part of the biological cycle."

McDonald's 'Mainstreams' Sustainability, Tests Paper Cups to Replace Foam

OAK BROOK, Illinois, March 20, 2012 (ENS) - In response to a 2011 shareholder resolution filed by shareholder advocacy organization As You Sow, McDonald's Corporation confirmed that it is taking a step toward the possible phase-out of polystyrene foam beverage cups.
The company has notified As You Sow that, "McDonald's is currently testing a double-walled fiber hot cup, as the company continues to seek more environmentally sustainable solutions. The test is in approximately 2,000 restaurants in the U.S., primarily on the West Coast. The objective of this test is to assess customer acceptance, operational impact and overall performance."

McDonald's foam cups will be replaced with paper in 2,000 test restaurants.(Photo courtesy McDonald's)

The 2,000 test restaurants represent nearly 15 percent of McDonald's restaurants in the United States.
The shareholder proposal, which asked the company to assess the environmental impacts of different kinds of beverage containers and to develop packaging recycling goals, received the support of nearly 30 percent of total company shares voted, a high result for an environmental issue proposal, and the highest vote to date for any As You Sow proposal on container recycling.
"This is a great first step for McDonald's and we hope it will lead to a permanent switch to paper cups in all of its restaurants," said Conrad MacKerron, As You Sow's senior program director. "Given the company's history of using high levels of recycled content in other food packaging, we hope that it follows suit with its cups, and also establishes a robust recycling program for post-consumer waste left in its restaurants."
In 1990 McDonald's began to phase out foam-based clamshell food containers amid concerns that petroleum-based food packaging persists in the environment for hundreds of years. Over the next decade, McDonald's eliminated more than 300 million pounds of packaging and reduced restaurant waste by 30 percent, saving an estimated $6 million per year. However, the company continued to use billions of foam-based beverage cups.
Styrene, used to make polystyrene, has been listed as a possible carcinogen by both the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program. Several epidemiologic studies suggest an association between occupational styrene exposure and an increased risk of leukemia and lymphoma.
Polystyrene cups are not commonly recycled. Foam particles are among the most common items found by environmental groups leading beach cleanups. Carried through storm drains to the ocean, foam containers break down into small indigestible pellets which animals perceive as food, resulting in the death of birds and fish. Due to such concerns, more than 50 cities in California and 100 cities in the U.S. have banned or restricted the use of polystyrene food packaging.
In December, McDonald's Corporation released its 2011 Sustainability Scorecard and reinforced its commitment to "mainstreaming sustainability for customers through the company's actions and collaboration with suppliers, experts and the food industry as a whole."
"We will continue to mainstream sustainability into our day-to-day business, bring value to the communities we serve, and value to our company through efficiencies, innovations and consumer relevance," said Bob Langert, McDonald's global vice president of sustainability.
For example, McDonald's has made a commitment to sourcing all of its food and packaging from sustainable sources over time.
In addition, all fish for McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwich is wild caught, and currently 99 percent is sourced from fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.
On February 13, McDonald's announced that it will require its U.S. pork suppliers to outline their plans to phase out the use of sow gestation stalls, a move supported by The Humane Society of the United States.

Sows in gestation stalls (Photo by spiltbeans13)

"McDonald's believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future. There are alternatives that we think are better for the welfare of sows," said Dan Gorsky, senior vice president of McDonald's North America Supply Chain Management.
"McDonald's wants to see the end of sow confinement in gestation stalls in our supply chain. We are beginning an assessment with our U.S. suppliers to determine how to build on the work already underway to reach that goal. In May, after receiving our suppliers' plans, we'll share results from the assessment and our next steps."
"The HSUS has been a long-time advocate for ending the use of gestation crates, and McDonald's announcement is important and promising," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. "All animals deserve humane treatment, including farm animals, and it's just wrong to immobilize animals for their whole lives in crates barely larger than their bodies."
McDonald's actions are backed by leading independent animal welfare experts, including renowned scientist Dr. Temple Grandin. "Moving from gestation stalls to better alternatives will improve the welfare of sows and I'm pleased to see McDonald's working with its suppliers toward that end. It takes a thorough plan to address the training of animal handlers, proper feeding systems, and the significant financial investment and logistics involved with such a big change," said Dr. Grandin.
Gorsky said, "We are pleased to see a number of our U.S. suppliers adopting commercially viable alternatives. For example, Smithfield Foods and Cargill have made significant progress in this area. We applaud these, and future efforts."

One Year Later...

Estimated to be the costliest natural disaster in history (to date), the Great East Japan Earthquake took place one year ago.  Japan has been dealing with direct quake damage, multiple nuclear meltdowns, tsunami damage, approximately 15,000 fatalities, and social upheaval as a result of the thousands of displaced and evacuated citizens.

Say a prayer today for them all, giving thanks for the many blessings we have received.

Here's a link to a superb series of articles in Scientific American about the multifaceted disaster:
Scientific American - Japan Disaster

Jobs in Geoscience

So...you think our study of geology is pointless? Think again my friends.  Check out this article regarding upcoming jobs in the geosciences.  Teaching, petroleum exploration, coal, environmental aspects, etc.

Americans, Geoscience Jobs Can Be Yours

By Andrew Alden, About.com Guide February 23, 2012

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The American Geosciences Institute or AGI keeps track of the work situation for people in the geo-professions. Recently AGI issued its latest such report, "Status of the Geoscience Workforce 2011" (you can download a large sample of it here or buy the whole thing for $10 here). The job prospects are very good in this country as people retire and as openings continue to grow. Over the next eight years, AGI estimates, something around 200,000 geoscience jobs will need to be filled, and American institutions are nowhere near able to meet the need for degreed graduates.
I don't have to tell you how important geoscience is to civilization, especially sustainable civilization. When it comes to learning how to live on the planet we have, geoscientists do a world of good. But I should probably point out that any graduate in the STEM disciplines (this year's buzzword meaning Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) can have a great career by adding a "geo-" to their specialty—because geology is the mother of all sciences.
The Geological Society of America has just issued two position statements related to this issue. "The Importance of Teaching Earth Science" is a detailed set of recommendations for getting geology into the curriculum in meaningful ways all the way through the K–12 educational system. It has a recommendation that I take to heart: "The Geological Society of America encourages its members [that's me] to . . . engage in communicating Earth science to the public, including local schools." The second statement, Expanding and Improving Geoscience in Higher Education," is for the next level of educators. Given recent events like Hurrican Katrina, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, more and more of us know the value of geoscientists: "These issues challenge our technology and infrastructure and require solutions by integrated teams that rely on highly educated geoscientists." It's a reason for all science faculty, not just geology professors, to speak up for geoscience in their colleges.
I hope to encourage young people to take up geoscience, and I serve them and their parents with sound basic material. But I—and they—need an unbroken chain of education and training between student and jobholder. Please add your help on the way.
Resources
Jobs in Geology
Teacher Resources
What Is Geology?
Women in Geology

From Nothing to Nothing???

Continuing our "out there" series, here's an interesting article from the NY Times.  We, as Roman Catholics, of course must beware of the removal of God from the "equation."

OUT THERE

There’s More to Nothing Than We Knew

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

MULTIVERSE PROPONENT  The cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: February 20, 2012

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Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?

Excerpt: "A Universe From Nothing."

Enlarge This Image

Elwood H. Smith

It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.

Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by thecosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation. The book, “A Universe From Nothing,” is a best seller and follows recent popular tomes like “God Is Not Great,” by the late Christopher Hitchens; “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins; and “The Grand Design,” by the British cosmologistStephen Hawking (with Leonard Mlodinow), which generated headlines two years ago with its assertion that physicists do not need God to account for the universe.

Dr. Krauss is a pint-size spark plug of erudition and ambition, who often seems to be jetting off in several directions at once on more missions than can be listed on a business card. Among other things he is Foundation Professor and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University.

And he knows his universe. In 1995, he and Michael S. Turner of the University of Chicago made waves by arguing that many of the paradoxes regarding cosmology could be resolved if a large portion of the cosmos resided in the form of a hitherto-undiscovered energy, known then as the cosmological constant. Three years later astronomers discovered that the expansion of the universe was being accelerated by some “dark energy” that behaves exactly like the cosmological constant.

Dr. Krauss is also a prolific author of popular science books, including “The Physics of Star Trek.” And he has been an outspoken critic of attempts to introduce creationist ideas and to censor the teaching of evolution in schools and textbooks.

The new book grew out of a talk he gave in 2009 that got more than a million hits on YouTube.

The point of the book, Dr. Krauss, a self-described nonbeliever, writes at the outset, is not to try to make people lose their faith, but to illuminate how modern science has changed the meaning of nothingness from a vague philosophical concept to something we can almost put under a lab microscope.

How well you think he succeeds might depend on how far you yourself want to go down the rabbit hole of nonbeing. Why, for example, should we assume that nothingness is more natural than somethingness? Indeed, you might ask why it is that we think there is something here at all. The total energy of the universe might actually be zero, according to the strange bookkeeping of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, as Dr. Krauss points out. “The universe,” Alan H. Guth, a physicist at M.I.T., likes to say, “might be the ultimate free lunch.” Even space and time themselves might be a kind of holographic illusion, string theorists say.

You might think to dispute this by kicking a rock, but remember that both the rock and your foot are mostly empty space, prevented from intermingling by electric fields.

Dr. Krauss delineates three different kinds of nothingness. First is what may have passed muster as nothing with the ancient Greeks: empty space. But we now know that even empty space is filled with energy, vibrating with electromagnetic fields and so-called virtual particles dancing in and out of existence on borrowed energy courtesy of the randomness that characterizes reality on the smallest scales, according to the rules of quantum theory.

Second is nothing, without even space and time. Following a similar quantum logic, theorists have proposed that whole universes, little bubbles of space-time, could pop into existence, like bubbles in boiling water, out of this nothing.

There is a deeper nothing in which even the laws of physics are absent. Where do the laws come from? Are they born with the universe, or is the universe born in accordance with them? Here Dr. Krauss, unhappily in my view, resorts to the newest and most controversial toy in the cosmologist’s toolbox: the multiverse, a nearly infinite assemblage of universes, each with its own randomly determined rules, particles and forces, that represent solutions to the basic equations of string theory — the alleged theory of everything, or perhaps, as wags say, anything.

Within this landscape of possibilities, almost anything goes.

But even the multiverse is not totally lawless, as Dr. Krauss acknowledged. We are not quite there yet. At the very least, there would still be the string equations and those quantum principles that undergird them. Is quantum randomness the secret of existence?

“Maybe in the true eternal multiverse there are truly no laws,” Dr. Krauss said in an e-mail. “Maybe indeed randomness is all there is and everything that can happen happens somewhere.”

It would be silly to think that we won’t have better answers and better questions 50 or 100 years from now, but for the moment this is the story science can tell. If you find it bleak, that is your problem. “The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not,” Dr. Krauss writes.

It gets worse.

If nothing is our past, it could also be our future. As the universe, driven by dark energy — that is to say, the negative pressure of nothing — expands faster and faster, the galaxies will become invisible, and all the energy and information will be sucked out of the cosmos. The universe will revert to nothingness.

Nothing to nothing.

One day it’s all going to seem like a dream.

But who is or was the dreamer?

Antimatter and Dark Matter

Check out this fascinating article at National Geographic regarding the role of antimatter and/or dark energy/matter.

It's "out there."  Welcome to cosmology!

NatGeo Antimatter Expansion Article

Where's the Snow??

Here's a fascinating observation regarding the dearth of snow in the US so far this year.  Europe, on the other hand, is in the grips of the coldest weather in decades.  Some countries suspended shipping on the Danube River due to heavy river ice.  That river is the main commercial waterway in Europe.

NASA Earth Observatory Article

Recent (geologically) Death Valley Eruption

Here's an interesting article from National Geographic regarding the estimated age of a large crater in Death Valley.

Death Valley's Big Bang: Volcano "Potentially Active"

Ubehebe Crater's last eruption much more recent than thought.

Dusk light reveals rock layers in Death Valley National Park's Ubebe Crater.

Photograph by Pete Ryan, National Geographic

Richard A. Lovett

for National Geographic News

Published January 25, 2012

A volcano in Death Valley National Park might be more dangerous than previously thought, a new study says.

(See "'Sleeping' Volcanoes Can Wake Up Faster Than Thought.")

A mile and a half wide (2.4 kilometers) and 600 feet (180 meters) deep,California's Ubehebe Crater came explosively into being long ago when rising magma hit water. (Video: Volcanoes 101.)

The bomblike steam eruption produced a mushroom cloud that, as it collapsed, sent rocky debris flowing out sideways at 200 miles an hour (320 kilometers an hour) to a distance of a few kilometers, according to a geologic analysis of rock deposits at the site, study co-author Brent Geohring said.

The question is, when?

Scientists had assumed the explosion occurred comfortably in the past, most likely several thousand years ago, when the Death Valley area was wetter.

The explosive mixing of magma and water, they thought, could be explained by the presence of lakes that have long since disappeared.

The new study, though, suggests the massive blast occurred more recently, when Death Valley was very much as it is today—which could mean that conditions are still ripe for an eruption.

(Related: "Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells.")

"Very Young" Volcano

In 2008 Goehring, then with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and study co-author Peri Sasnett, then a Columbia undergrad, visited Death Valley on a geology field trip.

The two got to wondering exactly how old Ubehebe (YOU-bee-hee-bee) Crater really is. "It looks very young," Goehring said.

With permission from the Park Service, they collected samples from the crater for lab analysis. The specimens in question, he added, aren't lava, but are instead rocks from surface layers that were blown out of the crater by the explosion.

The samples, they discovered, contain rare isotopes created when rocks are bombarded by cosmic rays. Because this radiation doesn't penetrate deeply into the Earth, the isotopes can reveal how long a rock has been on the surface.

"We weren't dating the formation of the rock itself," Goehring emphasized—but rather the date when the rock had been thrust from the depths.

"We were literally atom counting," he said. "These [isotopes] are only produced at 10 to 15 atoms per year in a gram of rock. So they're at very, very low concentrations."

The Awkward Years

The study backed up the scientists' hunch that Ubehebe Crater was a relative newborn.

Rather than being several thousand years old, it and nearby smaller craters appear to have been the result of a series of explosions, the largest and most recent of which was 800 years ago.

The dating method "is very cool," said Kelly Russell, a volcanologist from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was not part of the study team.

"To be able to date young volcanic events that precisely is something we're always seeking to do," Russell said. "That's the awkward period—these prehistoric events that are very young."

(Pictures: What Drives Death Valley's Roving Rocks?)

Conditions Right for Eruption?

According to the new data, the eruption was recent enough to suggest that the area might become volcanically active again.

"A volcano that young has to be considered potentially active," Russell said. And if there's still water around, he added, there is the potential for another explosion.

Goehring believes that it's quite likely that enough water still exists. The 800-year-old explosion, he said, came at a time when Death Valley was even drier than today, he noted.

If fact, he said, "there's actually water underneath the crater today. There are springs nearby."

Nor does it take a gargantuan of water to create a giant eruption. "You need about a hundred Olympic-size swimming pools to generate enough steam to [produce] Ubehebe Crater," Goehring said.

Beyond that volume, in fact, the water could actually damp down a potential explosion. "You get the highest degree of explosivity with sort of a sweet spot, mixing water to magma," Russell said.

As for the other main ingredient—magma—there's no telling when some could begin rising toward the surface, and the groundwater.

(Related: "Under Yellowstone, Magma Pocket 20 Percent Larger Than Thought.")

Luckily, though, the popular tourist attraction probably won't explode without warning.

"You would expect to see some hydrothermal activity and seismic activity, much like you do at Mount St. Helens," Goehring said. (See pictures of the Mount St. Helens volcano before and after its 1980 blast.)

National Park Service education specialist Stephanie Kyriazis agrees. "Right now, we're not planning to issue an orange alert or anything like that," Kyriazis said in a statement.

If the Ubehebe volcano were to explode, however, the eruption would be spectacular—and hot—if the ancient mushroom cloud is any indication.

The rock "probably would have been a few hundred degrees C," study co-author Goehring said. "It wouldn't have been molten, but it would have been quite hot.

"It would be fun to see," he added, "But I wouldn't want to be nearby."

The Death Valley volcano study was published January 18 in the journalGeophysical Research Letters.