Regenerative organic agriculture could alleviate–or even reverse–the effects of climate change.

Could the way we grow food actually help minimize the impact of climate change? Science not only says yes—it suggests conscientious agriculture could reverse the effects of climate change as well.

The global system of growing food, including land-use, feed, fertilizer, transportation, refrigeration, processing, and waste—is responsible for an estimated 30-50% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions have been increasing by about 1% per year—a major problem for the environment.

The key may very well be organic growing practices, or regenerative agriculture. Rodale Institute’s white paper “Regenerative Agriculture and Climate Change” states that “recent data from farming systems and pasture trials around the globe show that we could sequester more than 100 percent of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices.” These practices involve maximizing carbon fixation—keeping the soil healthy by maintaining CO2 levels, in other words. Healthy soil can retain large quantities of water, prevent erosion, and help plants become more tolerant of extreme weather. Organic agriculture of this sort also uses 30-50% less fossil fuel than more industrial farms.

And regenerative organic agriculture isn’t anything new: humans have farmed in this way for generations, with proven results. The only new thing is the scientific validation that these practices can significantly impact the effect of climate change. Some of these studies are composed of more than thirty years of data, and new studies, such as the Tropical Farming Systems Trial (TFST) in Costa Rica, are bringing in thought-provoking results all the time.

While the ultimate goal should perhaps be decarbonizing the economy, there’s little chance of that occurring before an unacceptable level of warming gets locked in. That’s why interim steps such as working toward conscientious regenerative organic agriculture could make all the difference in minimizing climate change in the future.

power plant carbon emissions by 2030.

Early this week, the Obama administration unveiled historic environmental rules to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 30% by 2030. The rules, announced formally by the Environmental Protection Agency, are the first time any president has moved to regulate carbon pollution from power plants – the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change.

“For the sake of our families’ health and our kids’ future, we have a moral obligation to act on climate,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said. “When we do, we’ll turn risks on climate into business opportunity. We’ll spur innovation and investment, and we’ll build a world-leading clean energy economy.”

The proposed rules also would result in reductions in particle pollutions, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide by more than 25 percent, which EPA officials say would prevent in 6,600 premature deaths and 150,000 asthma attacks in children per year once fully implemented. The health improvements also would result in the avoidance of 490,000 missed work or school days, which the EPA says equals savings of $93 billion a year.

The proposal, although promoted fully by the president and Democratic leadership in Congress, ran into immediate opposition from business lobbies, Republicans in Congress and some Democrats facing tough election battles. The coal industry – which will be hit hardest by the new rules – said the regulations would hurt the economy and lead to power outages.

“If these rules are allowed to go into effect, the administration, for all intents and purposes, is creating America’s next energy crisis,” the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity said.

The problem is, the climate crisis will wipe us all out if we don’t do something big about it. What sort of world do we want our children to live in, or their children, or their children’s children? And for that matter, when does our planet just become completely unlivable? Will people believe that the time is right for a change then? No one ever said tackling a problem like climate change was going to be easy–it’s going to cost us a lot of money, effort, and yes, in some cases maybe even jobs (in many cases, it will actually create new jobs). But if we ignore it, or if we don’t do enough to combat it, the problem will only get worse. Isn’t the health of our planet more important than money? Than jobs? If we don’t figure something out, then someday money and jobs won’t matter anymore–because we’ll have completely destroyed our home, the place that allows us to live at all. It’s about time the U.S. got on board with climate change reform–especially since we’re one of the largest offenders. So bravo, Mr. Obama. Let’s just hope it’s not too late to make a difference.

Residents were protesting waste incinerators without proper emission filters.

Early this week, protests erupted in China over plans to build a waste incinerator in an eastern city where officials didn’t seek public approval before proceeding. The demonstrations have been running for more than two weeks and turned violent on Saturday, with hundreds of police descending on to the streets of Yuhang, close to the eastern tourist city of Hangzhou. Previous to this week, officials repeated in state media that they would seek public support for the incinerator, but recently have made dozens of arrests in Hangzhou, with at least 10 demonstrators and 29 policemen injured.

Waste incinerators without proper emission filters can release the carcinogen dioxin, said Wu Yixiu, head of environmental group Greenpeace’s toxics campaign in East Asia. Several neighbors of the Hangzhou site cited that risk and noted that incinerators in Germany were required to filter out the toxin. Following large protests in March against a proposed paraxylene plant in the city of Maoming, officials said they would not proceed with facilities if public resistance remained high.

China’s fast growing cities produce around 160 million tons of domestic waste each year, according to domestic reports, and the country is planning around 300 such incinerators within the next three years as part of a “Great Leap Forward in garbage incineration”. For years, China witnesses tens of thousands of so-called “mass incidents” which have recently been linked to several environmental issues. In March, Li Keqiang, the prime minister, vowed to “declare war” on pollution and said his country would turn its back on “inefficient and blind development.”

Climate Change

We live in a world where people love to have their cake and eat it, too. We want a clean house without having to clean. We want to be, but we don’t want to do. We want to stop global warming and climate change, but we don’t want to change our daily habits. We want to avoid things like climate-change induced natural disasters, but we aren’t willing to put in the work to prevent it.

There is hope, yes, but time is running short. We’re at the point where convincing people to live greener and be nicer to the environment has to come with a dire warning of impending doom. It sounds a bit melodramatic, yes, but it’s true.
And now scientists have one more thing you can add to your dire warning speech: the fact that the occurrence of “super” El Niños is likely to double as our planet continues to warm. El Niño refers to an unusually warm water pattern that stretches across the eastern equatorial Pacific every 3-7 years. And every once in a while, we see a bigger one, such as the super El Niño of 1997-1998 and one in 1982-1983. With these super El Niños often comes a slough of other weather-related debauchery like heavy rains, landslides, wildfires, and more. In 1997-98, there were an estimated 23,000 deaths worldwide and $35-$40 billion in damage attributed to El Niño.

Whereas now the likelihood of a super El Niño is one every twenty years or so, as the planet warms that number will change to one every ten years. El Niños will still occur on about the same schedule, but more of them will be abnormally strong.

The study that predicted these changes was conducted by Wenjun Cai and a team of researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia. The findings were published in Nature Climate Change.

incinerators

Are we the only ones “out there”? This question and many like it have been asked for years, with no concrete answers available. But as scientists delve further into deep space and discover distant galaxies, the most likely answer seems to be coming more and more into focus: no.

Because, really, how can we be the only intelligent beings in such a vast universe? In recent years, scientists have discovered that “super-Earths,” or other, slightly larger, earth-like terrestrial planets, are far more common than originally thought.

“Super-Earths are expected to have deep oceans that will overflow their basins and inundate the entire surface, but we show this logic to be flawed,” said Nicholas Cowan, a researcher involved in a new study, Water Cycling Between Ocean and Mantle: Super-Earths Need Not Be Waterworlds. “Terrestrial planets have significant amounts of water in their interior. Super-Earths are likely to have shallow oceans to go along with their shallow ocean basins.”

Conventional wisdom has dictated that super-Earths would likely be waterworlds, with their surfaces completely covered in water. But Abbott and Cowan challenge this logic, presenting a new model that shows there could, in fact, be more earthlike planets out there than previously believed.

The study, co-written by Cowan and Doran Abbott, will be published on January 20th in the Astrophysical Journal. According to Abbott’s and Cowan’s model, these planets could store significant amounts of water in their mantles, allowing them to go from being “waterworlds” to having a combination of continents and oceans. This combination of characteristics would likely create a much more stable planet environment, not dissimilar to Earth’s.

Using this “water storage” method, Cowan says, “We can put 80 times more water on a super-Earth and still have its surface look like earth.” He continues, “These massive planets have enormous seafloor pressure, and this force pushes water into the mantle.”

http://quietkinetic.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/super-earths-far-more-common-than-originally-thought-researchers-say/

the streets of the Royal Trails neighborhood were lined with new large tan bins, two per household. Two trailers loaded with dozens of bulky containers drove off as four workers delivered the new recycling and trash carts last week to Lake residents..

lRelated Read Lauren Ritchie’s columnsNewsRead Lauren Ritchie’s columnsSee all relatedí

The process has been a longtime coming. After dumping a controversial contract that used a garbage incinerator, county officials decided to change to a “1-1-1” collection system. The new 7-year contract offers residents in unincorporated Lake an option of three different-sized trash and recycling carts — 95, 65 and 35 gallons — at no additional cost.

Homeowners will receive a 95-gallon cart for trash and a 65-gallon cart for recyclables. The once-a-week trash, once-a-week recycling and once-a-week yard-waste pickup collection begins Oct. 6.

Skip McCall, Lake’s solid waste division manager, said the transition process has been smooth sailing so far, although some residents were concerned about the cart sizes.

incinerator

“You can mix the sizes of your carts,” he said. “We try to make it as user-friendly as possible.”

He said he encourages residents to test the new carts for a few weeks before opting to change the sizes.

“Trash is a very sensitive topic to talk about,” he said. “We try to give the residents options so we’re not telling them, ‘this is what you have to have.'”

The new garbage and recycling carts will be collected with trucks equipped with an automated arm, which will save money by cutting the number of workers needed per truck from three to one, McCall said. He said officials hope to increase the county’s recycling rate from 8 percent to about 25 percent during the first year.

“Our recycling percentage is very low within this county. A lot of that is attributed to everything in the past, having to go to the incinerator,” McCall said. “The more we’re able to recycle, that means our disposal cost at the landfill is going to be less.”

Last year, county commissioners voted in favor of hauling trash to a Sumter landfill operated by ACMS Inc. over continuing with the Okahumpka incinerator, which was used since 1988 and required the county to supply 163,000 tons of garbage a year. Commissioner Leslie Campione argued against the change, saying the county could have saved money with other options, including sticking with incinerator owner Covanta Energy, which proposed a $25 million recycling facility.

Officials started issuing the new trash and recycling carts in August to the 67,040 residential units affected and held 24 community meetings to inform residents of the changes. Residents may switch trash and recycling cart sizes at no charge through April 1. Extra garbage carts are available for $60 and the additional disposal cost will be charged to homeowners’ tax bills.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/lake/os-lk-new-garbage-carts-lake-county-20140927-story.html

The primary factors considered in the design and construction of a modified De-Montfort type intermittent incinerator for combusting medical wastes were the waste types, fuel, chimney size, and flue gas residence time. The design analysis was based on flue gas flow rate of 0.13 m3/s, maximum primary chamber temperature of 870 °C and minimum ambient temperature of 27 °C. The total flue gas residence time of 6.9 s was achieved for the three chamber system of 0.9 m3 total volume. The medical wastes generated from the four medical facilities in Ga East District (Ghana) consisted of infectious sharp objects, syringes, wound dressings and gloves; which were incinerated at a throughput of 80 kg/day with destruction efficiency of 98.47 %, using fuelwood as primary fuel. The natural convection thermo-fluid flow was controlled by ambient wind speed of ~ 3.8 ms-1, at temperature of 31.5 °C. The primary combustion chamber temperature attained was ~ 516 °C, while the third chamber temperature reached 760 °C, which ensured complete combustion of the wastes with reduced particulate matter emissions. At optimum operating capacity of 0.6 m3, up to 4 cycles of incineration were done in a day, each cycle lasting about 80 minutes.

HEREFORDSHIRE Council is standing by the incinerator plan pitched as the future for the county’s waste despite double blows against the project this week – as reported by the Hereford Times.

Support for the incinerator for reiterated at a meeting of the council this morning in responses to two questions from councillors.

MPs have already turned the heat on the incinerator, criticising the near  £90 million paid to the PFI project so far  without the facility being built.

The Commons public accounts committee questioned the basis of  government grant funding for the incinerator and its future in a sector where technology is continually evolving.

A report from the council’s external auditors Grant Thornton found that cabinet members did not get the detail  of why officers – rather than consultants – saw an incinerator as the future with a relevant appraisal recommending cabinet support lacking detail and clarity.  .

Grant Thornton has said it cannot now conclude its 2013-14 audit of the council or issue the council with its audit certificate until it has “completed consideration”  of specific issues raised around the incinerator plan.
The energy from waste incinerator at Hartlebury, Worcestershire, is integral to a joint 25 year waste disposal contract with West Mercia Waste signed by Herefordshire Council and Worcestershire County Council.

An initial capital cost for the project is reported to be more than £160 million, but opponents claim ongoing maintenance will at least double this over the 25 years  while the cost using PFI funding could triple.

In February, Herefordshire Council passed a 2014-15 budget committing the council to paying £40m for the  incinerator at Hartlebury, Worcestershire, over three years.

A budget strategy estimated council borrowing as increasing by £50.8 million over 2014/15, pushing the overall debt up to £218.2 million, including £11 million borrowed over the year for the incinerator.

At full council this morning, Cllr Glenda Powell asked for “assurance to members and taxpayers” as to the plant’s future effectiveness.

Cllr Harry Bramer, cabinet member for contracts and assets, stood by a financial and options appraisal put to Cabinet in December last year supporting EfW) as the most “cost effective and viable solution” for the county’s waste over 25 years

Cllr Liz Harvey referenced her questioning “confidence” in capital borrowing for the incinerator at the council’s budget setting meeting in February.

Then, Cllr Bramer said confidence in capital borrowing as a best value option came from analysis and appraisals  in both the joint waste management strategy and a cabinet report completed in accordance with relevant government guidance.

This morning, Cllr Harvey raised the findings of the public accounts committee , specifically the conclusion that the Department for environment, food and rural affairs made decisions on waste projects focused on the need to meet EU targets without regard to the impact on local authorities.

Cllr Bramer said the council “does not disagree” with the findings quoted but cited the findings as focused on DEFRA’s oversight of PFI contracts.

It was, said Cllr Bramer, a matter for DEFRA to respond to the committee’s findings rather than either of the two councils.

The committee found PFI contracts of  25-30 years are “inappropriate” for the waste sector where technology is continually evolving with the amount of waste in  hard to predict.

Funding agreements for early PFI waste deals were “poorly drafted”  by the then Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR)  and “too lax” in requiring payments for key assets that had not been built.

As such, the committee found that the funding agreement signed with Herefordshire and Worcestershire councils highlighted the “shortcomings” of early PFI projects, with payments to the council aligned with payment made by the councils to the contractor.

Grant payments started as soon as the councils started to pay the contractor, with the government, through either the DETR or its successor the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),  legally committed to making grant payments ever since.

In December 1998, the DETR signed a funding agreement with Herefordshire Council and Worcestershire County Council for £143 million and the payment of related grants started shortly after.

The terms of the original funding agreements did not allow central government to stop payment or alter the payment terms in the event that key capital assets were not delivered.

Since its creation in 2001, DEFRA  has had responsibility for overseeing these grants and did not review the agreements until 2011.

Terms with Herefordshire and Worcestershire councils were not successfully renegotiated until 2013, resulting in a £30 million cut in total funding.

The process of renegotiation was time-consuming. In the case, of the Herefordshire and Worcestershire DEFRA confirmed to the committee that it took them six months to approve the new funding approach the councils were proposing.

With contractor apparently unwilling to fund the incinerator, the councils were left considering using the rate income generated from the populations of both counties to cover the cost of the contract.

At the end of the 2013-14 financial year, both councils had received nearly £90 million for an incinerator plant that had still to be built

http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/11498537.Council_stands_by_under_fire_incinerator/