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Carbon dioxide goes into more products than we think. Sodas contain the pressurized gas, quick inflatable life jackets on planes contain CO2, it is used as a pesticide, dry cleaners use CO2 as an alternative to more toxic chemicals, CO2 is commonly used in the oil industry to force the oil to the surface and it is emitted by power plants. Unfortunately, carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, may have adverse effects on the environment while its absorption by the ocean has already changed oceanic environments.

With these concerns in mind, a group of retired Aerospace engineers formed Clean Energy Systems in Rancho Cordova, CA, with the goal of creating power without the release of adverse chemicals into the environment. Having worked at Aerojet Corporation, it is no surprise that these engineers integrate rocket engine technology into the design of the systems. CES has achieved the goal of converting coal to energy with almost full C02 capture.

In 1999 the group received a small grant to construct a small scale oxy-combustor able to produce 110 kWth. Since then, numerous designs have been implemented and more recently, CES has developed a 170MW gas generated system. CES explains that this system “will produce the drive gas for a nominal 50 MWe Zero-Emission Power Plant (ZEPP). Such a power plant will provide the electricity needs for approximately 50,000 homes using fossil fuels (natural gas or syngas derived from coal) and will emit no pollutants or the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, (CO2), to the atmosphere. With expected improvements in turbine performance, this same sized unit will produce up to 90 MWe.” This model will be tested in Bakersfield, CA during 2008.

The potential uses of oxy-fuel combustors are outlined on the CES site:
• Combustion technology that can use multiple opportunity fuels
• Zero-Emission Power Plants with full CO2 recovery
• Efficient, cost-effective technology for enhanced oil and gas recovery (EOR and EGR) and enhanced coal-bed methane (ECBM) recovery processes
• Peaking power plant technology that addresses reliability-must-run (RMR) requirements
• Capability to produce power and hydrogen for the “hydrogen economy”
• Improved efficiencies with advanced turbine designs

CES’s technology can be used in a variety of industries including power plants, grid reliability, desalination and coal or syngas power plants, just to mention a few. With potential to provide their oxy-fuel combustor to the very first zero emission power plant in the world CES is part of history in the making.

Believe it or not, with hundreds upon hundreds of entries – most of them lengthy diatribes filled with quantitative factoids – we have never posted a press release. Well everything comes in good time, and this is an interesting press release. Heat transfer and heat storage fluid indeed! This is the missing link, the central point, the integrative catalyst for a competitive alternative energy industry. This is energy storage and management at a level where thermal and electric are equally managed on one system. This is cheaper at macro and micro levels because systems are integrated and thermal-electric conversion is efficient. This is PVs cooled with fluid that harvests heat and routes it everywhere. See “Thermal Circulation Systems,” and “Redistributing Thermal Mass.”

The flower of innovation in full bloom. (Borago officinalis)

Well it isn’t just us, it’s them too, the U.S. Dept. of Energy, who want to know where the next generation designs are for building-scale or even city-scale (witness neighborhood thermal distribution systems using co-gen heat from coal plants in Denmark, for example) thermal systems. Harvesting, managing and storing energy at various scales using a thermal transfer fluid. Sweet. Where are the credible companies already innovating these crucial technologies – systems to perform building and neighborhood integrated thermal energy management? Here goes:

Funding Opportunity Announcement:

Advanced Heat Transfer Fluids and Novel Thermal Storage Concepts for Concentrating Solar Power Generation

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Program has released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled, “Advanced Heat Transfer Fluids and Novel Thermal Storage Concepts for Concentrating Solar Power Generation.” This FOA solicits proposals from industry and academia to take on key challenges related to this growing need in concentrating solar power (CSP). It will support research, development, and demonstration of novel thermal energy storage concepts and improved heat transfer fluids to further increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of promising CSP technologies.

About $60 million is expected to be available for new awards under this announcement during a project period of 3 to 4 years. DOE anticipates making 10 to 25 awards under this announcement, depending on the size of the awards. Awards will be made for both long-term research and development and near-term demonstrations, with awards ranging from $125,000 to $14,000,000, including cost-sharing.

The Solar Program considers CSP technologies to be the most attractive option for meeting utility-scale electricity needs in the U.S. Southwest. Currently, 350 megawatts of generating capacity are located in California’s Mojave Desert, with portions of this capacity generating electricity for more than the last 20 years (see Assessment of Potential Impact of Concentrating Solar Power for Electricity Generation (PDF 1.4 MB). Download Adobe Reader. CSP technology is currently in various stages of development or deployment throughout the U.S. Southwest, as well as in Spain, Israel, Africa, and the Middle East.

The current cost of energy for CSP plants is in the range of 13–17 cents per kilowatt-hour. The goal is to achieve cost-competitive power in intermediate power markets by 2015 and in carbon-constrained baseload power markets by 2020. Critical to achieving these goals is the development of inexpensive thermal storage.

Applications for this solicitation are due on or before Thursday, July 10, 2008. For more information on this FOA, visit the Financial Opportunities page or Grants.gov. The Funding Opportunity Number (FON) is DE-PS36-08GO98032.

The magnificant Great Blue Heron Could measured use of DDT still have saved the Heron, but also millions of human lives?

California’s magnificant Central Coast, home to the elusive North American Condor. Saving this precious species is one of environmentalism’s finest achievements.

We should all be scared, VERY scared. It seems as if every day a new “study” is reported somewhere in the national media showing a statistical association between diet, lifestyle, or environmental chemicals and some disease or disorder.

Do you eat the “wrong” foods such as red meat, hot dogs, french fries, coffee, alcohol, grilled meats, too much fat, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, or NOT eat enough vegetables?

Are you overweight, and don’t exercise enough? Do you use deodorants, mouthwash, nail polish, electric razors or blankets, cell phones? Do you live near power lines, use birth control pills or take hormone treatments, have some radon in your basement, breathe polluted air or second hand smoke?

Do you worry and fret about all these things after reading the terrifying results of some new study? Then for sure you will surely die from some form of cancer or heart disease sometime next week, probably from the stress and loss of sleep of worrying so much!

All these studies are called epidemiological studies, which seek to find statistical correlations, mostly quite subtle, between diet, lifestyle, or environmental factors and disease. Real sciences, like chemistry and physics, seek to find cause and effect. Epidemiological studies supply only statistical links between this or that risk factor and some disease. Such studies almost never prove cause and effect, and they are subject to researcher bias and political agendas, poor design, confounding variables, bad data gathering and more. Unfortunately, most reporters who write articles on these studies are scientifically ignorant and simply parrot whatever the study authors say.

Author Mark Twain popularized the saying, “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. An even better quote is from the renowned epidemiologist Alvan Feinstein of Yale University who quoted that, “statistics are like a bikini bathing suit: what is revealed is interesting, but what is concealed is crucial.” Let’s look at the history of this field of study.

Epidemiology: “The study of the distribution of diseases in populations and of factors that influence the occurrence of disease.” Classical epidemiology was fathered by an Italian physician named Ramazzini. Around 1700, he started looking into the possibility that various diseases in patients might be connected to their occupations. For example, miners and chemical workers might have some lung disease because they are exposed to dust, various chemicals, or toxic metals over the course of their careers. Years later a London surgeon, Percivall Pott, noted that virtually everyone he treated for cancer of the scrotum was a chimney sweep. Hummm, he must have thought to himself. It’s a non-communicable disease, so I wonder if all that soot and coal tar they breathe and get all over them every day might be the cause. This was a monumental proof of concept!

Classical epidemiology is like police work. If there is an outbreak of some kind of stomach ailment in a number of people in a city who all seek medical treatment (they were up all night throwing up and sitting on the pot, maybe some even died), public health investigators would seek to determine what history all these sick people might have in common. If it turns out 95% of them ate at Joe’s diner within the last few days, odds are Joe was serving E. coli burgers or maybe Salmonella oysters. A simple test would confirm it.

A recent example is the incidence of a disease identified in 1976, later named “legionnaire’s” disease, which is a form of pneumonia unknown before then. Hundreds of men were affected, and 32 died. It was found that all of them had attended an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. Voila, they identified a bacterium living in the ventilation system of the hotel where the convention took place. That is classical epidemiology. Now let’s discuss a branch of epidemiology that uses “clinical trials” to try to find the facts about disease, cause, and prevention.

Probably the first “study” we now might loosely call a clinical trial occurred in 1753. Scurvy was a common illness among sailors at the time. James Lind, a surgeon in the British Royal Navy, wondered if perhaps it had something to do with the fact that sailors on long voyages ate almost no fresh fruits and vegetables. We now know that scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, but at the time the necessity of vitamins to our health was unknown. He tested his hypothesis by dividing a number of scurvy sailors into two groups, one of which was given fresh fruits (we now know to contain vitamin C) to eat, while the other group continued eating hardtack and rum. ALL the sailors sucking limes got over their illness, while ALL the sailors in the group that we now would call the no veggie “control” group still had scurvy. Eureka! From then on British sailors sucked on limes and stayed healthy, while those poor French and Spanish sailors stayed sick and lost lots of sea battles to the British.

Another classic example of an early clinical trial was conducted by Walter Reed, a U.S. army medical officer stationed in Cuba in the 1890s. Yellow fever was rampant at the time, and he wondered why it was only prevalent in tropical climates. His trial could never be done today for ethical reasons. He suspected mosquitoes might somehow be spreading the disease through their bites. He recruited a small number of healthy volunteers, half of whom deliberately were bitten by mosquitoes, while the other half were not bitten. Most of the poor guys with the bites came down with yellow fever, and one of them died! None of the bite free guys got the fever. That was definitive, whereas today various studies and trials are rarely so (with one famous exception that I discussed in my Ecoworld article entitled “Chemophobia”).

The following is a perfect example of how an epidemiological study should be conducted in order to give definitive results, NO question about the results, even if it wasn’t planned that way and would be considered unethical and way too expensive to conduct if it were. AND, this was a really BIG study.

Back in the 1960s, this study enrolled tens of millions of volunteers (the test group) who volunteered to inhale huge amounts of suspected carcinogens every day of their lives for at least 20 years, AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE! The same number of people who did not inhale the suspected carcinogens (the control group) was compared with the test group after 20-30 years to determine the rates of various cancers in the two groups. Absolutely unequivocal results showed that people in the test group had an increased incidence of various cancers and heart disease over the control group, and the most striking result was that people in the test group were about 15 times more likely to get lung cancer than people in the control group!

Thus we now know for sure that smoking can cause lung cancer and various other health problems. Now THAT was a really good epidemiological study! It is, however, not even conceivable to design and carry out such a clinical trial for ethical reasons: and in addition, the time and expense would be prohibitive. So let’s look at how those “study” authors do things today. The reader may have already figured out that I perceive most of the “studies” to be mostly what is often called “junk science.” I do not, however, believe real science is involved at all in most statistical studies, so I call them “bad (pretend) science” or BS for short. I won’t go into the statistical details and methods, but I will show many wonderful examples of famous BS. You can get the underlying methods by reading Steven Milloy’s “Science Without Sense” and “Junk Science Judo.”

Here are the “seven deadly sins” of epidemiology (epiBS from now on) as practiced today:

1) Have a political, health, or moral agenda and design (rig) your study in order to get the results you want. This applies to all sides of the political spectrum and official government agencies. Real scientific method is: put forth a hypothesis, then gather data to determine whether your hypothesis is correct or not. EpiBS method is: Have a mandated or acceptable conclusion in mind, then go select only the data that appear to support your already reached conclusion (see famous example below).

2) Assume that a statistical correlation that you found in your latest study between some disease or disorder and some exposure to some perceived risk factor is proof of a cause and effect relationship. EVEN if there is no apparent biological reason to think so, you can still think of some improbable rationalization for your results!

3) Data dredging: Don’t bother with any hypothesis prior to gathering your data, just ask a large group of people lots of questions about lifestyle, diet, drinking habits, ect., over a period of time. Feed the data into your computer statistics program and see if something correlates to something, who knows what you might find?

4) Don’t bother to verify any data you gather through questionnaires. Just assume nobody ever mis-remembers or lies about their lifestyle, diet, shoe size, or anything else you might have thought to ask about. Ask a subject how much alcohol they drink per day, and they understate the amount by 3 or 4 times at least. It’s like a wife asking her husband how much money he lost playing the slots at the casino.

5) Design studies that are fatally flawed from the beginning, but because you don’t know anything about the biochemistry involved (after all, you are either a medical guy or a statistician), you have no clue why you got the associations you did, but you believe it and publish it anyway.

6) If your study doesn’t find any association between, say, radon exposure and lung cancer, perform a meta-analysis combining the weak, statistically insignificant results of numerous studies by other researchers with your own, and you don’t even have to do a study of your own at all. It doesn’t matter how good or bad or even how similar in their design all those studies were (the old apples and oranges comparisons), combining them just might give a statistically significant correlation.

7) ALWAYS call the news media immediately after finding an association between, say, exposure to some hot issue chemical and some disease state. The reporters know absolutely nothing about how these studies are done and will uncritically report whatever you say. Your study will make big headlines tomorrow, and you will be quoted as saying, “the results are important, but more research is needed”. That translates into, “I need more grant money to continue to do BS.”

The most egregious example I will give of epiBS combines the deadly sins #1 and #6, and its results have had enormous implications on nanny state public policy. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) original mission was to establish rules and regulations meant to protect the environment, such as from air and water pollution. However, over the years mission creep occurred, and they now exist to protect public health. This gives them vastly more power to institute regulations that the agency was never originally intended to do.

In 1993, the EPA conducted a now infamous study that kicked off the anti-smoking crusade that continues today. At the time, more than 30 epidemiological studies from around the world had been conducted to see if the spouses of smokers were more likely to get lung cancer than spouses of non-smokers. None of them were definitive, perhaps showing a very weak correlation. Some of those studies actually suggested (also weakly) that exposure to second hand smoke, or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) might actually protect the spouse against getting lung cancer. This is a plausible biological process called “hormesis”, i.e., very low levels of exposure to a toxin can protect a person against high levels of exposure later.

The EPA has even admitted that the average annual exposure to ETS particles for a non-smoker is less than actively smoking one cigarette. Anyway, the EPA ignored those studies and selected only 11 studies to combine in a meta-analysis that they hoped would establish a statistically significant correlation between ETS and lung cancer in spouses of smokers. They also chose not to include in their meta-analysis any of some 30 available studies that were designed to determine if ETS in the workplace, as opposed to spouses of smokers, could be responsible for an increased risk of lung cancer in non-smokers so exposed. A large majority of those workplace studies found no statistically significant association between workplace ETS exposure and lung cancer risk. Is that why they did not include any of those studies in their meta-analysis?

The meta-analysis used by the EPA to analyse the effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS, or 2nd hand smoke) committed two of the cardinal sins of epidemiology. First, they selected only those studies that might show that ETS causes lung cancer. Thus they designed it to be a one-tailed test. That means you assume a priori that the test substance can only be bad, so you don’t include any data that might show the opposite of what you expect (or want) to see. Including all studies in their meta-analysis, even those that may indicate that ETS could possibly be beneficial, would make it a statistically acceptable two-tailed test.

The second cardinal sin of epidemiology they performed is that they used a confidence interval (CI) of 90%, instead of the gold standard 95%, in order to get a statistically significant result. What does that mean, a statistics-ignorant person might ask? At a 95% CI, your statistically significant results have a 1 in 20 probability of being due to pure chance (1/20 means p=.05 in stat language). All good epidemiological studies use the 0.05 CI. The EPA chose to use a CI of 0.1 (one in 10 chance of your results being false instead of a 1 in 20 chance) because they knew beforehand that their results would not be significant otherwise. In other words, they rigged the “study” to get the result they wanted, epiBS in its most flagrant form. They knew that smoking is bad for the health of smokers, but they couldn’t regulate smoking unless they could claim ETS could cause disease in innocent bystanders. This is perverting science because they believe, that for a worthy cause, the end justifies the means.

What, you still think ETS causes lung cancer in non-smokers? The EPA epiBS meta-analysis study was done in 1993. A study sponsored by the World Health Organization in 1998, which covered seven countries over seven years, showed no increase in cancer risk for spouses and co-workers of smokers. It was, however, another meta-analysis. I don’t like meta-analyses in general, even when there may be no political agenda involved as in the EPA study. So has there been one huge study done right, no meta-analysis BS? YES!

In 2003, a study published in the British Journal of Medicine found no relationship between exposure to passive smoke and mortality. It was a HUGE, very believable study. It spanned 39 years and included over 35,000 Californians. So why is such a really good study ignored in the media and the epiBS community? POLITICAL CORRECTNESS?

Disclaimer: I DON’T SMOKE, AND I AM VERY ANNOYED BY ETS, so don’t accuse me of loving tobacco companies. I agree with laws banning smoking in public buildings, transportation, and enclosed areas where one must go to do business.

About the Author: Dr. Wheeler earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970. As a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Berkeley, he did pioneering research on how one’s nutritional status and cancer are interrelated, and how our immune systems handle food bourn carcinogens. He published 25 research papers in peer reviewed scientific journals and gave numerous talks (and listened to many, many more) at various scientific meetings. He left the USDA to work for Nabisco in New Jersey as head of the food science research unit. Now retired, he writes brilliant articles for “ecoworld” pro bono. He is the resident contrarian for ecoworld.com.

What future will this young Indian inherit?

“Why only a boy? Are these not girls?” India Directorate of Family Welfare

“A child is another mouth to feed, but he will have two hands to work and bring in money for the family, especially as the parents grow older,”

…said Mrs. Asha Rane, explaining why it is often the poorest families who have the most children.

The world population in 1930 was about 2 billion; in the year 2000, around 6 billion; and in 2050, according to estimates from the U.N. Commission on Population and Development, it will hit 9 billion. 98 percent of this growth will be in the developing world, where resources are being consumed faster than they can be renewed – and India will be at the forefront of the crisis.

Rane, who was a professor at the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, now sees the effects of this phenomenon first-hand at the Hamara Club, a project which helps children living on the street in Mumbai. Understanding how and why poverty leads to increasing population is essential to curbing, or at least slowing, the tide.

Currently at 1.1 billion people, India is not far behind China’s 1.3 billion; and, because of China’s well-known government policy of one child per family, its population has stabilized and is expected to level off soon. According to the U.N., India’s population in 2050 will have overtaken China at around 1.6 billion, to claim the ominous title of the most populous nation on earth.

What are the causes? Aside from the aforementioned reasoning of more children helping the family survive, one major factor has been the increased life expectancy in India. In 1947, when India gained independence from British rule, the average life expectancy was only 33 years. Now, thanks to improved standards of living and healthcare, that number is in the mid-60′s.

As life expectancy increased, the birth rate has been falling– but not fast enough to make up the difference. India was the first country in the world to launch a national family planning program, which has had success. The total fertility rate has declined by more than 40 percent since the 1960′s, and today the average number of children per woman is around three.

“Big family: Problems all the way” (left), “Small family: Happiness all the way” (right). India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

The current approach focuses on improving women’s educational, social and economic opportunities – statistics show that as their status in these realms improves, their family size declines naturally.

This positive message is in part an effort to make up for a backlash against the harsher messages of the family planning program in the 70′s. At that time, the government declared a population “state of emergency,” which implemented forced sterilizations in the country’s poorest regions and even rewarded medical workers who performed the most operations. This led to a conception, especially among women, that birth control was synonymous with sterilization – an all-or-nothing decision that they then chose to forgo entirely.

Current aspects of the family planning program include financial incentives for families, and their children’s educations, when they do get sterilized. Birth control pills are incredibly cheap and easy to obtain, especially in comparison to supposedly “developed” nations’ policies– in India the cheapest brands cost about 8 rupees (appx. $ 0.20) per month at any pharmacy, with no prescription necessary and no questions asked.

Another key issue targeted by Indian public awareness campaigns is favoritism for male children, a value deeply ingrained and interwoven with the cultural structure. Traditionally, when girls get married, they first of all must offer a dowry, and secondly they go to live with and care for their new husband and his parents.

It is not unusual for a poor family to spend their entire life savings on their daughter’s dowry and extravagant wedding (which is also their burden). Then, unless the girl’s parents have a son as well, they are left with no one to take care of them in their old age. Thus the desire for boys drives couples to either keep having children if their first or second children are girls, abort female babies or even commit infanticide.

This preference for males has resulted in women being outnumbered by men in India by 32 million, according to the U.N. While the implications of this discrepancy are still largely unknown, it is not likely to benefit women or make them “more valuable,” as the law of supply and demand might imply.

Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the Washington, D.C.-based International Center for Research on Women, says that evidence suggests the opposite– that if the sex ratio imbalance worsens, so will conditions for women. She said that it forces women to marry at a younger age, if less women are available. She also predicts that there will be a greater entrenchment of the dominance of men, because there will be fewer women to speak up, and show that they are valuable. And raising the status of women is essential to lowering the fertility rate.

In ancient India, women enjoyed power and freedom in the family, marketplace, government and even scripture – for every god in Hinduism there is a goddess. But a thousand years of invasions and occupations by outside forces led to women being secluded in the home, and excluded from community and even family decisions. Superstitions and cultural mores continued to reinforce practices that had lost their usefulness. But outdated thinking has changed widely in urban areas.

“For a healthy family, wait three years before your second child.” Family Planning Services Agency

“Birthrates are declining primarily because of improved access to modern contraception,” said Rao Gupta. “Also because of improvements in women’s status globally, and by that I mean improvements in educational status, access to economic opportunities, and a new perception of women’s role in society. Many Indian women have employment and hold the highest positions in industry and government. Indeed, we’ve had an Indian prime minister who was a woman.”

“Yet the reality is that the majority of young Indian women are very disempowered. They have a much lower status with regard to education and literacy, with regard to income and economic opportunities, with regard to access to health care and health-care services. Women, especially young women, have very little control over reproductive decision-making for themselves.”

Often, especially in poorer, more traditional families in India, the husband’s family has as much or more to say about how many children a couple should have and how fast they should have them than the husband and wife themselves. Since the burden of raising and caring for children is borne primarily by women, Rao Gupta says, given free choice, they almost always will choose smaller families than society will for them.

The status of women, however, has improved and continues to change as India changes– the economic boom, technological advances, and the increased mobilization of society has altered in many cases the entire family structure. Joined families, a household consisting of parents, their sons and their sons’ wives and children, are becoming less common, and nuclear families are on the rise.

More and more, two incomes are necessary or desired, so women are working outside the home. And, in a nuclear family, although there are certainly disadvantages to this development, the in-laws’ influence, or pressure to have more children, is less than in a joined family. And without grandparents and aunts and uncles in the home to help care for the children, especially if both parents are working, it is simply not feasible to have a large number of children.

India has a quota for women in government– it is currently 33 percent for local government bodies, and bills have been repeatedly introduced to make that number 50 percent locally and nationally as well, although they have not been passed.

It is now illegal to demand a dowry for marriage (although giving gifts is legal). It is illegal for a doctor or medical worker to reveal the sex of a baby from a sonography report, although it is still done.

Women’s employment is increasing more quickly than any other group in India, which is key to raising their status. Goverment investment in girls’ education (secondary as well as primary) has also been shown to cause a chain reaction of positive results. An educated woman is statistically more likely to earn an income, have less children and provide those children with better nutrition and health care. This outcome benefits the family, community, and eventually the world.

The numbers, however, are not slowing down fast enough. To support a population of 1.6 billion in 2050, India would have to dramatically increaase agricultural production– but there is no way to increase the amount of available fresh water, which is already in short demand.

Montek Singh Ahluwali, deputy chairman of India’s influential Planning Commission, argues that India can eventually provide such a population.

India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

“Resources at the moment are very sub-optimally used. I think it’s possible to manage that kind of population provided there is a systemic change in how we deal with resources which are becoming scarce. The scope for increased efficiency is very large. That’s the nature of the development challenge that India faces.”

Ahluwali may be looking at the glass as half full, but the empty half depends on the increased efficiency of primarily government agencies– which sounds to many like a contradiction in terms.

It also always seems to be under debate in India to barr individuals with more than 3 or 4 children from entering politics as a public example. This idea, however, has not been put into law, and probably won’t be. The poster child, or rather anti-poster child, for this cause is Lalu Prasad Yadav, a member of Parliament and the Minister of Railways. He has nine children, which he claims is a personal protest against the forced sterilizations of the 1970′s. For those familiar with the economic and population trends in India, it comes as no surprise that Mr. Yadav hails from, and was formerly Chief Minister of, the state of Bihar.

In Bihar, which literally means, “the land where Buddha walked,” the average number of children per woman is more than four, and the life expectancy less than 60 years. Contraceptive usage is less than half of the national average, and only 35 percent of women have heard of HIV/AIDS, compared with 57 percent nationally. According to the the National Family Survey of 2006, only 17 percent of the women in Bihar had access to three rounds of antenatal care before their last child was born. What will happen to these little buddhas? For the poorest 20 percent of Indian children, the chances of survival is worse than in Bangladesh or Vietnam.

Yet, in Southern states like Maharastra, income and literacy rates are high and fertility is low– about 2 children per woman, balancing out the poorer, more rural states to the North like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar and pulling the national average fertility rate down to 3. One of the most essential issues to be addressed is the discrepancy between these different states and regions of India.

According to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2007 report on the state of the world population, 2008 will be the year that the global urban population outnumbers the rural half of the world for the first time, at 3.3 billion. And, by 2030, this number is expected to reach almost 5 billion. The urban population of Africa and Asia will double in less than a generation. This unprecedented shift to the cities, large and small, could enhance development, create opportunities and accelerate sustainability– or it could deepen poverty exponentially, and accelerate environmental degradation.

The outcome will depend largely on the management of the migration by governments, city planners and social agencies– most of the newcomers will be poor, and demographically young. They often have little choice but to live in city slums, which have higher fertility rates, higher rates of disease due to poor sanitation and water, and higher casualty rates in natural disasters.

“Tying the tubes of women is now simple. Laparoscopy is the newest method. The hospital releases you quickly. The scar is very light. This service is available at hospitals and health centers.” India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

It is not necessarily, however, a gloomy prognosis: historically, the urbanization of countries generally leads to development and a higher standard of living, as we see in the Southern states of India.

Identifying populations at risk, planning infrastructure and housing policies, orienting furure urban expansion, and generating early-warning indicators about rapidly growing population growth in particular areas are all tools that can help policy-makers manage the changes ahead.

One aspect of urban planning that must not be forgotten in the rush is open space and vegetation. While cities may benefit humans economically, it is important to remember that living in such close quarters with one another, and away from greenery and natural landscapes, is not natural for us.

The hardness, grey color and anonynmity of cities often leads to a loss of a feeling of commumity and friendliness; this contributes to lonliness, depression and to the higher crime and homicide rates in urban areas. The shift to the city is often a move away from extended family members to begin with; migrants find themselves suddenly in a harsh and unfriendly environment.

Public spaces like walkways and parks are often the only leisure the poor can afford to enjoy, and they are crucial to a sense of well-being in cities. Everyone is welcome in open public spaces; they are key to keeping the peace and benefitting the whole.

While the increasing population is a reality that must be planned for and managed, there is a recent theory among economists and the media that India’s booming population is not a problem at all, but a “demographic dividend” that will pay off for everyone.

Many developed nations’ birth rates have stabilized, and some are even negative, like Japan and Italy. They are increasingly facing a greying of their workforces, and will have shortages of workers in the future. Even China’s stabilazation will ultimately result in a workforce crunch within 25-30 years, as the current workers grow older. Only India is projected to still be a “young” country at that time, with the majority of its population in the working age. So, the logic goes, India will be in a position to both attract jobs and export workers to the “old” countries.

While the theory certainly has some truth to it, the demographic dividend that is earned will not amount to much when the human and environmental cost of such a large population is taken into consideration. The population issue has been pushed so hard by the Indian government for so long that it feels refreshing, especially to the media, to hear that there might be a flip side to it. Imagine being nagged for years that smoking is bad for your health. If you find an article that says it might increase hand-eye coordination, you might make a copy for everyone you know. But that won’t stop you from getting cancer.

While other countries may export jobs, they are not likely to export water, land, clean air or forests. If there are some positive side effects to India’s booming population, that’s great. But that doesn’t make the disease any less deadly. We have to keep nagging, keep trying to shake each other awake. Because in the end, while some suits may reap a dividend, it is the children who will pay the price.

Additional EcoWorld Features on India:

- India’s Water Consciousness

- India’s Solar Power

- Nuclear Power in India

- Technology & Sunlight, India’s Green Future

- India’s Biodiesel Scene

- India’s Water Future

- India’s Energy Future

- Clean the Ganges

A wheel-motor series hybrid is indeed coming up from Volvo, but don’t hold your breath. Apparently something very big could be in the wings, some sort of next generation hybrid or e-flex technology, making the announcement of the “Recharge” concept car – a wheel-motor series hybrid – not the biggest story Volvo intends to break this year. And with that titillating tidbit, back to Volvo’s car of the future, the car that Science Officer Ichiro Sugioka, based at Volvo’s think tank in Southern California, says “will be probably coming out in ten years at the earliest.” He said the series hybrid using in-wheel motors was “definitely not our next hybrid,” and “we like to keep the surprise.”

With a prototype car already operating in Sweden, using a C30 body, the most interesting revelation that came out of our lengthy conversation today was how far in-wheel motors have advanced, and the advantages using them imparts to the overall vehicle design.

VOLVO’S WHEEL MOTOR SERIES HYBRID CONCEPT CAR

Balances the grid, buys, sells and stores electricity. Not just a car, but your very own micro-utility company.

A criticism of in-wheel motors is that their centrifugal inertia due to the weight of the motors makes handling the car difficult. But PML Flightlink, a maker of in-wheel motors, has supplied modular in-wheel motor-generator components that Volvo engineers have pieced into a unit that delivers, for the first time according to Sugioka, “enough torque to deliver normal performance but still fit into the rim of a normal tire.” Up till now, vehicle electric motors required reduction units to achieve sufficient torque for starting and accelerating. This motor’s powerful 1,000 newton-meters of torque allows much higher regeneration efficiency as well as braking ability. And in turn, the superb regenerative braking of the motors makes it possible to replace the entire disk brake assembly with much lighter ring brakes.

The weight in the wheel-motors is further offset because the wheel bearing housing has been replaced by the motor casing, and a lot of the suspension components are combined into the wheel motors. Using lighter rims and lighter tires also reduces wheel weight. And, of course, with motors possessing this much torque, the otherwise mandatory reduction gear is eliminated, further reducing weight and also improving drive-train efficiency. Sugioka acknowledged “there is validity to the weight issues,” but clearly didn’t think they were insurmountable.

Volvo has a lot of experience with series hybrids, having first tested series hybrid prototypes back in the 1990′s. But in ten years, along with having wheel motors and series hybrid technology, cars will be really, really smart. In ten years cars will function as decentralized electricity storage units living on the grid, leveling demand, buffering surge, storing intermittant surpluses such as wind energy, when they aren’t being driven around. “We have to talk with all the stakeholders,” said Sugioka, “we need to get the utilities engaged to reinvent the business model for cars in general.”

Another interesting spec discussed today was the dedicated generator, which is charged onboard by a standard 1.6 liter four-cylinder gasoline engine. The generator is also built using components from PML Flightlink. Sugioka stated the 50 kilowatt generator was so small and flat, it could be placed directly behind the standard gasoline engine and would take up considerably less space and weight than the transmission which is removed. On gasoline only, the prototype gets 44 miles to the gallon.

It’s all about efficiency. A young Elephant Seal – spring equinox, 2008 Piedras Blancas, California

“My responsibility is on things that are pretty far away,” said Sugioka, which means his team is spending a lot of time on wheel-motors and not a lot on batteries. The prototype is currently using an oversized battery pack that is located in the car’s truck, for testing purposes. And even with the heavier battery pack, this car is sipping 200 watt-hours per mile, or 5.0 miles to the kilowatt-hour. The battery is spec’d at 12 kilowatt-hours of usable storage, hence a 100% battery range of up to 60 miles.

As for zero to sixty and top speed, the prototype has artificial limits – the engineers want to keep the motors cool until they’ve completed a power management system. The intelligence of cars is a revolution happening at the same time as the greening of cars. The smart electric vehicle will be a working, self-sufficient vendor for the owner, collecting money from utilities for storage and buffering services, as well as from buying energy low and selling it high. Eventually smart cars will greatly help level utility rates. Smart cars will respond to wireless commands, and automatically customize the driver experience per operator.

Every day brings us closer to freeway capable personal transportation appliances that are smarter, cleaner, and greener than ever, as we see new innovations from in-wheel motors to the e-flex platform, and Volvo, known for some of the safest cars in the world, has been preparing for the electric age for a very long time. Surely we are at the tipping point of the next automotive revolution, that the wheel-motor series hybrid announcement by Volvo just this January, given the car on the street could be ten years away, might just be some sort of marketing dept. derived head fake, a diversionary tactic, so nobody will scoop the new vehicle they are about to unveil…

Who will be first to deliver a full-sized, affordable all electric car to consumers? One company quietly emerging as a strong contender for this distinction is Miles Electric Vehicles, based in Santa Monica, California.

The full-sized, freeway capable XS500, Available late 2009 from Miles Electric Vehicles. (Photo: Miles EV)

Through 2007 this company, founded in 2004, has delivered over 500 low speed (25 MPH, range up to 50 miles), full size vehicles and trucks to fleets, primarily for use on campuses and bases.

Customers include the University of California, the US Navy, the City of Chicago, Cal Poly, the US Air Force, and others. Their production, based in China, has expanded this year, and they are on track to deliver another 2,000 low speed vehicles by the end of 2008. But what’s coming will be available to consumers, and you’ll be able to drive it on the freeway.

The Miles XS500, which they expect to be offering for sale to consumers by late 2009, is a full sized, four door, highway speed sedan. It is designed to travel 80+ MPH for 120+ miles on a single charge. The all electric car uses lithium ion iron phosphate batteries manufactured by their partner Lishen Battery Co. located in Tianjin, China, and Miles expects to sell these vehicles for under $40,000.

The battery packs for the XS500 are designed to deliver 125,000 to 150,000 miles before requiring replacement. They are expected to require 4-6 hours to charge at home using 220 volt current, and store up to 25 kilowatt-hours.

When I asked Miles spokesperson Kara Saltness earlier today if Miles had a prototype of the XS500, she not only said yes, but told me she had been a passenger in the car during full speed testing on the Santa Monica Freeway. She stated there were two additional prototypes they would be testing within the next few months.

Miles Rubin, a wealthy and successful entrepreneur who has a long-standing concern for energy independence, funded this company himself until earlier this year, when the Angeleno Group put in a $15M equity investment. Miles Electric Vehicles hasn’t been in the spotlight much, but they appear to be as likely to deliver the first affordable full-sized, freeway capable all-electric car as anyone.

There is an inevitable conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, and balancing these necessities is never easy. But as environmental regulations continue to increase in scope and degree, there are also new and improved tools for companies to use to monitor and report their performance.

For 15 years, ESS (Environmental Support Solutions), based in Tempe, Arizona, with offices all over the US as well as in China and Canada, has pioneered offering automated and integrated solutions to, among other things, environmental compliance. In recent years, as software has migrated online and become more powerful and affordable, ESS has attracted the attention of very large companies who are still using cumbersome legacy systems to manage their environmental compliance. These systems are often hard to migrate onto an online platform, they are harder to update as regulations evolve, and they are very hard to integrate. ESS has become a must-have solution for these large companies that are using aging, disconnected systems to manage more environmental regulations than ever.

Dow Chemical Co. has over 200 US facilities.

At their annual “ESS-Expo” held earlier this month in Phoenix, ESS recognized the achievements of some of their top customers who have saved significant time and money by adopting ESS solutions.

Their stories are illustrative of how state of the art information technology such as the software ESS offers can enable companies to manage and report on more environmental regulations than ever, for less money than before.

The Dow Chemical Company, for example, one of the world’s leading producers of plastics, chemicals, and agricultural products, with 46,000 employees operating in more than 175 countries, needed to replace multiple legacy environmental reporting systems with a single robust reporting system across 200 U.S. facilities. The new system had to be interoperable with existing corporate enterprise systems. They chose ESS products to monitor and report on their emissions, chemical inventory, waste streams and water quality, and over a three year period implemented a full transition.

The result was they preserved their license to operate in 200 facilities at 35 manufacturing sites, and have already eliminated over $2 million in redundant legacy reporting systems, with additional savings to come. The new system improved reporting efficiency and accuracy by allowing all the US sites to use a common reporting process.

Other large companies were recognized by ESS for implementing ESS solutions that resulted in similar savings across the enterprise. For example, in 2007, Alcoa Inc. – the world’s leading aluminum manufacturer – selected ESS’ Essential Suite software to serve as its unified platform for sustainability management throughout the company’s global operations. That decision was based in part on the company’s 2006 success using one module, Essential Air, to save over $100,000 on Title V compliance at its Tennessee Operations Location, the biggest aluminum production facility in North America. This software greatly streamlines the process of identifying and tracking compliance requirements, auditable work processes and associated compliance activities. Employees can also use the software to track deviations from compliance task requirements so corrective actions can be managed within the same system.

Before the company implemented the new ESS modules, compliance requirements and tasks were tracked via written audit reports, whereas the ESS products make their completion tracking data, recurring task and e-mail notifications, and accurate, up-to-date reports easily accessible within seconds.

Delta Airlines operates at over 100 US airports.

Another large company who has benefit from ESS software is Delta Airlines, who flies to more destinations around the world – 481 locations in 105 countries – than any other air carrier.

Delta’s previous environmental management information system (EMIS) had performance issues – entering a simple piece of data would often take 10 or 15 minutes – but upgrading it to the company’s new server platform was not cost effective.

Delta operates hundreds of airplanes worldwide and each of them is rebuilt every five years at the company’s Technical Operations Center in Atlanta. Aircraft maintenance and rebuilding uses many hazardous chemicals. Delta’s corporate headquarters team in Atlanta also needs to assure environmental compliance at 100 airports across the United States where the airline operates. The Delta team at each airport location, or “outstation”, is responsible for tracking hazardous chemicals and hazardous waste, filing reports to regulatory agencies and other duties.

By transitioning from legacy software solutions (and even manual systems) to ESS software, Delta is able to maintain its commitment to environmental compliance while reducing the time spent on paper processes and employee management. Data storage is permanent and readily accessed; no longer left in fragile paper files or archives. As a result, the immediate exchange of information has allowed Delta’s EMIS to be much less vulnerable to employee turnover and data loss.

We can debate to what extent environmental regulations are going to need to spread further into every aspect of our industry and infrastructure. But it is undeniable there are vital areas where we need to maintain and improve the quality of our land, air and water. As we continue to make progress towards building a sustainable civilization, ESS software helps the biggest industries on earth manage these challenges in an efficient and accurate manner. ESS is another example of how the information revolution is enabling the green revolution.

Alcohol has played a major part in human history: Celebrations are synonymous with alcohol; religious ceremonies involve paying tribute with a sip of wine; alcohol fends off infection; many foods just would not be the same without a dash of Cabernet.

Ethanol has also played a role as a fuel source. Lamps were fueled by ethanol in the early 1800′s while certain Ford models were developed to run on the liquid in the early 1900s. The popularity of ethanol as a fuel dwindled with time, but has made a comeback in recent years.

Ethanol, also known as grain or drinking alcohol, is produced through the fairly simple process of fermentation where micro-organisms like yeast digest the sugars in plants to ethanol.

Lignol Biofuel, a Canadian Bio-fuel company that recently commercialized a unique ‘cellulose to ethanol’ technology, plans to take advantage of the renewable fuel demands. Their website states that “12% of the US corn crop is used to produce fuel ethanol. Increasing demand is expected to drive that figure to nearly 30% by 2012. New technologies are required to produce ethanol from biomass cellulose rather than from the fermentation of valuable grains. The company’s technology and know-how has positioned the company as one of the world’s most promising “Cellulose to Ethanol” solutions.”

Corn grain is the most common starch used to make ethanol in the U.S., but lignol is unique in the sense that it has found ways to convert both softwood and hardwood species to bio-fuel. Initially, Lignol plans on processing wood-chips and available cellulose feed-stocks (such as corn), but may find even more efficient alternatives in the near future.

Lignol is taking a variety of steps to insure success. For example, “Lignol is also considering several strategic investment opportunities in energy related projects, which have synergies with its bio-refining technology. Examples of such projects include: electric power projects, ethanol projects with access to cellulose feed-stocks and pulp mill conversions to alternative energy opportunities.”

There are many benefits associated with ethanol production: For example, Valuable bi-products from the fermentation process include carbon dioxide and distillers wet-grains used for animal feed.

Ethanol also has the advantage of blending with gasoline without an issue. In fact, it is even advantages in small amounts (less than 10%) since the addition of ethanol reduces toxic emissions from vehicles and keeps cars running smoother without the use of octane enhancers. One of the more attractive qualities is that ethanol is readily bio-degradable. The non-toxic liquid breaks down when spilled.

Companies invested in the popularity of bio-fuels, like Lignol, are bound to be successful.

According to SolarBuzz.com, solar modules of 125 watts (peak) or higher are selling for about $4.80 per watt. To make a long story short, that price is still way too expensive to compete with regular utility-produced electricity. If you want to install a photovoltaic system on your home or business, expect a price tag, after labor and balance of plant is accounted for along with the modules, of at least $7.50 per watt.

Making the complex process of evaluating a photovoltaic system a little easier. (Photo: Clean Power Finance)

At prices like this, consumers will not widely adopt photovoltaic solutions without tax incentives and rebates. And by the time you have finished calculating the after-tax, multi-year return on investment, you will have a pretty big spreadsheet, and watch out if you dropped a digit somewhere.

This is where Clean Power Finance comes into the picture. Serving both consumers as well as contractors, they offer tools to streamline the process of analysing an investment in photovoltaic energy. For a monthly fee, a photovoltaic contractor accesses a secure online platform to manage leads, make estimates, generate proposals, provide return on investment scenarios, and process financing applications.

“We quickly realized there was a lack of modern tools available on the dealer side,” said Joseph Brakohiapa, CEO of San Francisco based Clean Power Finance. “Most other contractor tools [in other sectors] are well established and aren’t necessarily as complex,” said Brakohiapa, “in the solar energy world there is still a tendency for the customer to really know the details.”

Small wonder. In California, for example, if a commercial customer buys a photovoltaic system, they will be entitled (at least this year) to a 30% federal and state tax credit, plus accelerated depreciation that can allow as much as 60% of the system to get written off in the first year – but watch out – the depreciation base is reduced by 50% of the tax credit. They will also get rebates from the local utility company – but the rebate amounts vary. They may be eligible for “renewable energy credits,” (read the law closely here) which they may be able to sell through brokers for a price that varies, depending on who you ask, between $10 and $50 per megawatt-hour. And of course to calculate utility bill savings they will need to determine how much energy the system will produce, and check that amount by hour of the day and time of year and compare that to the utility rates they expect will apply during all of those various times. Crucially, they will also have to estimate how fast utility rates will increase over the course of the system’s life. Have fun.

“We have built into our model all of the utility rates, and monitor the rate changes of all the major utilities across the US,” said Brakohiapa. “We have in our database all of the certified solar products and all of their output specifications.” Nearly all of the variables that might affect a financial return on a photovoltaic investment are taken into account by Clean Power Finance’s model, making the process far easier for a dealer who wants to efficiently produce several presentations to prospective customers, and normalizing the process for the customer who can perform analysis and do what-ifs on the same 3rd party platform.

Clean Power Finance also works with over 150 financial institutions around the US, offering various forms of financing including leasing and borrowing, and the more complex purchase power agreement financing that very large installations often negotiate. Eventually, Brakohiapa hopes Clean Power Finance can expand their services into other industry verticals such as rooftop solar thermal. When we spoke earlier today, we agreed that next generation rooftop solar thermal arrays – which have been around forever and are ubiquitous in more primitive incarnations all over the world – are just waiting for some new technologies and innovators to bring them back into the mainstream. Clean Power Finance was founded in 2006, they are privately funded, and they have approximately 15 employees.

On the U.K. based website The Independent, their science section published a report on March 19th entitled “Dams: Deep Trouble.” Below this ominous title, the tag line read “Are vast dams around the world masking the full extent of sea level rise?”

The story goes on to state “over the past 50 years, new dams and reservoirs have held back some 10,800 cubic kilometers of water, which would have been enough to raise global sea levels by about 30mm.” We crunched the numbers and came in at 32mm, and while the 10,800 km3 of water in reservoirs seems a bit high, let’s go with it. But the implication – that we’ve stopped building dams and therefore we’ll see a sea level rise of somewhat more than an inch – is underwhelming.

The Independent can be commended for noting other factors that may have been equally significant, such as draining of wetlands and aquifer depletion. But the 800 pound gorilla is deforestation, alluded to in the Independent’s article, but the focus of this post.

Rabbits will find the tall grass. (Photo: EcoWorld)

We believe if there is climate change – which is manifested regionally and consists of three only indirectly related phenomena; drought, extreme weather, and global warming – it is the result of deforestation far more than the result of human CO2 emissions. And with respect to deforestation and sea level rise, it is clear that deforestation, at least theoretically, has had a far more dramatic impact on sea level rise than construction of large reservoirs.

There is an extremely interesting website called “Ten Billion Acres,” that advocates “reforesting planet earth for the sake of human survival.” They take the position, with detailed arguments that are at the very least thought provoking, that “were there enough Trees in the equation, Climate Change would not be occurring other than that which would be normal for the Earth’s and Oceans’ cycles during this Era.” “Ten Billion Acres” refers to the amount of deforestation experienced on earth in the last 500 years – accelerated in the last 150 years. We’ve verified these numbers – ten billion acres is approximately 15 million square miles or 40 million square kilometers – so how much land-based water was lost when these trees were cut down?

It is shockingly difficult to get online data on the water content of trees, but thanks to Google Books, there is a 1896 study available that documents the water content of a variety of representative species of trees through the cycle of seasons. The study is entitled “On the variation of water content in trees,” by James Barkley Pollock of the University of Wisconson. And it is clear from the data presented that the water content of trees is at least 50%, averaged across all trees and all seasons.

If you assume, for a global average, a forest has one tree for every five square meters, and that each tree has 10 cubic meters of mass (you can roll that around, this average assumes a rather dense forest of rather small trees, but overall these are probably somewhat conservative assumptions), then with a 50% water content, land based water that’s been lost to the oceans through deforestation would total 40,000 cubic kilometers, 4x the water volume sequestered in large reservoirs. And this number is grossly understated, since trees also sequester water underground as well as play a crucial role in replenishing aquifers. So why aren’t sea levels much higher?

At the least, these calculations indicate we still understand very little regarding the global hydrologic cycle. The volume of subsurface water, and the impact of depleting these aquifers still requires significant investigations. Our conclusion is that once again, the emphasis on CO2, or reservoirs for that matter, is misplaced. We should be figuring out how to increase forest canopy, particularly in the tropics where deforestation has the most significant impact on rainfall, aquifer health, climate, and global atmospheric quality. And we should be figuring out how to restore positive inflow to every aquifer on earth, where negative drawdowns have been grossly unsustainable ever since the invention of the mechanized pump.

Related Links:
Hydraulic Redistribution
Ogalalla Aquifer (Wikipedia)
CO2 & Global Warming
Aquabirds & Aquabuoys