Environmental News, Articles & Information | Global Warming News | EcoWorld

We constantly hear about new ways to reuse and recycle waste, but not so often does our waste get the opportunity to play a direct role in creating new life. Such is the case, however, with the products about to be shipped from Fiberwood, a new company in Sacramento, California, that converts cardboard into mulch.

Material for hydroseeding often uses mulch manufactured from trash.

When we visited Fiberwood last week to talk with their CEO, Stuart Douglass, it was clear they were about to go into full scale production.

Mountains of shredded cardboard stood to one side of the cavernous space, with a completed line of equipment already in place on the other side.

This first line, explained Douglass, will take cardboard feedstock and grind it down to nearly powder, and at a rate of up to 100 tons per day, output this mulch into 50 pound bags ready for shipment.

The logic of this is clear – California is the entry point for billions of dollars worth of manufactured goods each month, and virtually all of them arrive in cardboard containers. This surplus cardboard can go into landfills, or it can be recycled. The sheer volume of this incoming cardboard means only mulch for hydroseeding provides demand at a scale that can keep up with this supply.

The process of “hydroseeding” is where mulch and water are mixed at a ratio of 75 pounds of mulch for every 100 gallons of water, and this slurry is sprayed onto land with seeds added to the mix. The type of seeds added depends on the use, but only a small fraction of total hydroseed use is for conventional landscaping. The product is also used for dust and erosion control at construction sites, as well as to quickly restore ground cover in areas where there have been forest fires. At about one ton of hydroseed per acre, enormous volumes of this product are required.

Another huge demand for hydromulch, without the seeds but with a bonding agent added, is to spray a thin layer over landfills each day, covering the raw waste. This practice, recently passed into law, is required in order to reduce smells from landfills. It is known as “alternate daily cover,” and given only a 1/4″ thick layer is required, it is much more cost effective for landfill operators who would otherwise be required to add 6″ of soil each day to the surface of their landfills.

Douglass is no stranger to turning waste products into useful materials. In 1992 he built his first plant to turn newspaper fiber into loose fill insulation, an operation he later sold to Louisiana Pacific. In 2003 Douglass applied for a new patent that will enable the company to make an all natural blanket insulation using cardboard and other cellulosic waste. Douglass plans to eventually add a manufacturing line at his current facility to produce this product. Because this product is far more fire resistant and mold resistant compared with fiberglass, there is already a great deal of interest in the product.

So the next time you see native plants rapidly repairing a landscape scarred by fire, know that the material used to efficiently reseed the area may well have come from the cardboard boxes that once protected your imported consumer product. It gives a whole new meaning to composting.

Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. “Scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.”

Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for dialogue and commentary on climate issues. With William R. Cotton, he is the co-author of Human Impacts on Weather and Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2007). And over the past summer he co-hosted a conference entitled “Land Use and Climate Change,” in Boulder, Colorado. While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a “global warming skeptic,” his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it. EcoWorld Editor Ed Ring recently caught up with Dr. Pielke, who had the following to say on the topic:

EcoWorld: How would you say that current conventional wisdom regarding climate change has gotten it wrong?

Pielke: In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don’t fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.

EcoWorld: What about experts’ predictions of rising sea levels, extreme weather, melting polar ice caps, and so on?

Pielke: Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated themselves to be skillful predictors of regional and local climate change and variability over multidecadal time scales. For example, in the case of sea ice, the models are consistent with the decrease in Arctic sea ice in recent years, but they cannot explain the multiyear increase in Antarctic sea ice (including a record level this year). With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society’s greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events – a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.

EcoWorld: But what about the northern icecap shrinking this September to possibly possibly its smallest size in history (exposing more than 1 million square miles of open water) or the comments of Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, regarding recent observations in Greenland (“We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea”)? Is something new and alarming happening?

Pielke: These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change. However, the climate is – and always will be – changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above. For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years (and, in fact, is cooler than it was in 1998). In addition, there are regions of the world where glaciers are advancing (such as New Zealand, parts of the Himalayas, and Norway). However, this information – which conflicts with the projections of the multi-decadal global climate models and the 2007 IPCC report – has been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.

Human Impacts on Weather and Climate, by Roger Pielke, Sr., and William R. Cotton Cambridge University Press

EcoWorld: What role have alterations in land use played in climate change?

Pielke: Changes in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in weather and hydrology are major drivers of long-term regional and global climate patterns – yet the 2007 IPCC Statement for Policymakers largely ignores their importance (despite extensive documentation in research literature). Along with the diverse influences of aerosols on climate, land use effects (caused, for example, by deforestation, desertification, and conversion of land to farming) may be at least as important in altering the weather as the changes in climate patterns associated with the radiative effect of carbon dioxide and other well-mixed greenhouse gases. Moreover, land use and land cover changes will continue to exert an important influence on the Earth’s climate for the next century.

The reason for this is that even if the globally averaged surface temperature change over time ends up being close to zero in response to land use and land cover change and variability, the regional changes in surface temperature, precipitation, and other climate metrics could be as large as or larger than those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases. Moreover, people and ecosystems experience the effects of environmental change regionally, not as global averaged values. Thus, the issue of a “discernable human influence on global climate” misses the obvious, in that we have been altering climate by land use and land cover change ever since humans began large-scale alterations of the land surface.

EcoWorld: What were the main conclusions to come out of your recent conference focusing on the land use changes that affect the Earth’s climate?

Pielke: This meeting reconfirmed the first order role of land management as a climate forcing mechanism. These findings supported the conclusions of the 2005 National Research Council report “Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties,” which identified land use change as having a major effect on climate. Unfortunately, the role of land surface processes was underreported in the body of the IPCC report and was essentially ignored in the IPCC Statement for Policymakers.

EcoWorld: Sticking with land use changes: Do you think that tropical forests create a thermostatic effect that moderates extreme weather? And following on that, do you think tropical deforestation could be as significant a driver in climate change as anthropogenic CO2?

Pielke: Tropical deforestation clearly has an effect on both regional and global climate that is at least as important as the radiative effect of adding CO2. When forests are removed, not only does the climate system lose the biodiversity and other benefits of that environment, the vegetation loses its ability to dynamically respond in ways that reduce extreme weather fluctuations. For example, when trees access deeper water through their roots, the resulting transpiration of water vapor into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) can help ameliorate dry conditions when the large-scale weather pattern is one of drought.

EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans’ impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug’s benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug’s developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

EcoWorld: How effective are current climate computer models in helping us understand global climate trends?

Pielke: Using global climate models to improve our understanding of how the system works represents a valuable application of such tools, but the term sensitivity study should be used to characterize these assessments. In sensitivity studies, a subset of the forcings and/or feedback of the climate system are perturbed to examine their response. Since the computer model of the climate system is incomplete (meaning it doesn’t include all of the important feedbacks and forcings), what the IPCC is really doing is conducting a sensitivity study.

The IPCC reports, however, inaccurately present their assessment as a “projection” – one that’s widely interpreted by policymakers and others as being able to skillfully forecast the future state of the climate system. But even one of the IPCC’s leading authors, Kevin Trenberth, has gone on record reminding people of the limitations of the models used in its projections. Says Trenberth, “There are no predictions by IPCC & and there never have been.” He further states, “None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”

Indeed, says Trenberth, “The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another, and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle.”

Thus, as clarified even by one of the key IPCC contributors (who has a vested interest in the acceptance of the 2007 IPCC report), current climate models clearly cannot accurately model observed real-world changes in climate. Global model results projected out decades into the future should never be interpreted as skillful forecasts. Instead, they should be interpreted as sensitivity studies on limited variables. When authors of research papers use definitive words (such as “will occur”) and display model output with specific time periods in the future, they are misleading policymakers and other people who use this information.

EcoWorld: What policies should be considered to deal with climate change? Is reducing CO2 emissions part of the solution?

Pielke: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can only serve as a useful “environmental currency” as long as it provides the benefits needed to reduce the risk to critical environmental and social resources. As such, it needs to be part of a win-win strategy that provides a diversity of benefits. With energy efficiency and energy independence, for example, everyone benefits. As the “currency” for these benefits, however, greenhouse gas emission reduction represents an unnecessarily blunt instrument if there are more effective ways to reduce the risks to societal and environmental resources. Moreover, greenhouse gas policies can produce serious unintended negative consequences such as an increase in carcinogenic emissions when biodiesel is used, or reductions in biodiversity and alterations in climate when land management practices convert large areas to biofuels.

Greenhouse gas emission reductions, relative to other environmental currencies, should be evaluated with respect to their ability to reduce risk to essential social and environmental resources. In this framework, greenhouse emission reductions are only useful if they provide real benefit to those resources. Thus, if a policy made for other reasons also happens to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you clearly have a win-win situation. The current focus on using reductions in CO2 emissions as the primary currency for achieving benefits to society and the environment, however, clearly represents a very flawed approach.

Well thanks to small quantities of dihydrogen monoxide, otherwise known as H2O, being injected into the hot mixture, it is now possible to mix asphalt at a dramatically lower temperature. When I spoke with Don Brock, CEO of Astec Industries, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of equipment used to make asphalt, he said this new innovation was like “a green tsunami.”

A plant using Astec equipment in Tennessee Astec’s asphalt recycling technology will save the USA 90 million barrels of oil per year.

Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Astec has already sold equipment for 60 asphalt plants that will use this new technology, with 20 already on stream as operating plants.

Up till now, typical “roller asphalt,” used in most roads, which is a mixture of 5% heavy oil and 95% crushed rock, had to be mixed at 330 degrees fahrenheit. At lower temperatures the mixture would not be viscous enough to properly mix.

Astec’s equipment can now mix concrete at 270 degrees, crucially below the 285 degree boiling point. By achieving sufficient viscosity at 270 degrees, far less emissions occur because the asphalt mixture isn’t boiling. It also requires less energy. This is a breakthrough.

We aren’t talking small quantities here. Each year, 750 million tons of asphalt is poured and rolled in the USA, about 90% of it to resurface existing roads. Brock explained that their new technology to mix asphalt at a lower temperature, combined with their new equipment that can grind and recycle more of the asphalt from old roads will increase the amount of old asphalt that can be reused in new roads from today’s 15% to 50%. The amount of oil that would be saved in this manner in the USA each year, according to Brock, was equivalent to one week of imported oil – about 90 million barrels.

Astec’s technology to up the recycled content of new roads from 15% to 50% will also save about 250 million tons of rock each year. Every year in the USA about 3.0 billion tons of rock are quarried, about 10 tons per person per year. About 25% of that is used for asphalt, 25% for concrete, and the rest is used for base rock under buildings, canals, embankments and roadbed. We expect technology to deliver solutions to huge environmental and resource challenges – in Astec’s case, it’s happening already, and on a very huge scale.

Discussions about technology enabled conservation rarely deal with something as fundamental as asphalt. But Astec’s new products demonstrate that even – or especially – in areas as basic as how we build our roads, immediate and huge environmental and economic advantages are still to be won. Given that Astec is the world leader in manufacturing tools to recycle, mix and lay asphalt, with these new technologies already rapidly coming on stream, their innovations are as fine an example of the greentech revolution as any.

Whether you think it will stop climate change, reverse the acidification of the ocean, or help nations achieve energy independence, the political momentum to raise the price of fossil fuel appears unstoppable.

With that as a given, then, the current debate should focus on what mechanism should be used, how much the price should be raised, and how the resulting funds should be allocated—all of which boil down to choices between practical environmentalism and emotional environmentalism, head vs. heart.

If we’re to adhere to Nobel laureate Al Gore’s “pledge,” for example, we must stop burning coal within 20 years — this despite the fact that coal is the cheapest and most abundant fossil fuel on Earth, that nearly 25% of all energy produced on the planet comes from coal, and that the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts coal’s use will increase by 74% between now and 2030 (mostly in countries like China, which will do whatever their economic interests dictate, despite anything the IPCC has to say about the matter). It would take huge price increases to price coal out of existence within 20 years, and it would require the cooperation of every major nation on earth—tough challenges.

That’s why trying to precipitously phase out coal rather than simply clean the emissions from it while making an orderly transition to alternative fuels represents a policy agenda that’s deeply flawed. Accept for a moment that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of global warming and that global warming is going to become a serious problem for humanity. If these assumptions are true, there’s little we can do at this point. As Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, has said, “The inertia of the system that we have is such that climate change would continue for decades and centuries even if we were to stabilize the concentrations that are causing this problem today, which means that adaptation is inevitable.”

So think about this instead: If the funds collected through taxes and carbon offset payments assessed on CO2 emissions were used to adapt to the effects of global warming rather than to attempt to eliminate global warming altogether, the amount spent would equal a fraction of what it would cost to halt global warming. The Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg in his 2007 book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming calculated the costs of mitigating global warming and came up with a premise that’s hard to challenge: Pouring money collected from a carbon tax into the development of the economies of the equatorial nations would make these nations wealthier—and in turn enable them to afford to mitigate the negative impacts of global warming.

High-tech entrepreneurs who are hoping to fund their companies through carbon taxes now have a vested interest in global warming—and suddenly public policy rather than product superiority has become the key to success. These entrepreneurs, after all, don’t stand to benefit if policymakers determine that a tax of just $2 per ton of carbon will fund economic development throughout the world and enable everyone, everywhere to adapt to global warming. These high-tech entrepreneurs should remember their roots: Silicon Valley did not change the world by fomenting or condoning irrational panic and feeding at the tax trough; it did so by innovating and providing superior products that responded to real customer needs.

Another issue to debate as we contemplate raising the price of energy is whether the source of that increase should take the form of a tax or be based on a “cap and trade” mechanism. With cap and trade, energy producers that emit CO2 are required to spend a designated amount per ton to finance projects that facilitate CO2 absorption. This means that if you were to operate a coal-fired power station, for example, you’d pay to plant hundreds of square miles of forest. But there are huge problems with cap and trade: As it turns out, exactly what constitutes a CO2 “offset” is grossly subjective. European CO2 offset credits, for example, created a market for biofuel imported from the tropics that in turn unleashed a devastating wave of ongoing rainforest destruction to grow oil palms and other fuel crops. Tropical deforestation to grow biofuel is a global catastrophe and has probably contributed as much to climate change as CO2 from fossil fuels ever will.

Environmentalism is multifaceted: There’s what one might call practical environmentalism, which supports policies designed to eliminate pollution and other toxic hazards as well as to preserve and protect reasonable amounts of wilderness and endangered species, and then there’s emotional environmentalism. Occupying the latter category are many of today’s environmentalists. Overly driven by ideology and emotion, they’re well meaning but fanatical, and they engage in an unwittingly cynical and synergistic dance with all kinds of powerful forces with hidden agendas.

To wit: Restricting energy production enriches the cartels that produce and sell most energy (since prices and profits go up). Declaring nearly all land to be protected “open space” makes housing prices skyrocket (thereby raising property taxes and building fees, and enriching public sector entities). And cap-and-trade schemes enrich not only traders on Wall Street but also every private company (or cash-strapped public entity) who can sell (to public sector regulators and environmentalist nonprofits tasked with vetting these plans) a project to produce an “offset” and collect a fee.

Environmental organizations enjoy tax-free status. They also employ litigious attorneys who tie economic development and private entrepreneurship up in knots: For these folks, the growing alarm over global warming represents the best financial windfall they’ve ever witnessed. Environmentalism, as we’ve seen, delivers huge benefits. But when it goes too far—as it often does—the costs are staggering.

Green-tech entrepreneurs need to decide what version of environmentalism they want to believe in—practical or emotional, market driven or government mandated. Hopefully they’ll embrace the same rules that made the Silicon Valley great, winning in the competitive market with solutions people choose to buy, and not through lobbying, litigation, and government subsidies. If rationality and market competition are left intact, the global economy and the global environment will both be better off as we manage the transition to clean and renewable energy.