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City-grown Air Pollution Is Tougher On Country Trees
(Cornell University, July 10, 2003)
A tree grows in Brooklyn -- despite big-city air pollutants. Meanwhile, identical trees planted downwind of city pollution grow only half as well -- a surprising finding that ecologists in a Cornell University-based study, reported in the current issue of Nature (July 10, 2003), attribute to an atmospheric-chemistry "footprint" that favors city trees. . . . "I know this sounds counterintuitive but it's true. City-grown pollution -- and ozone in particular -- is tougher on country trees," says Jillian W. Gregg, lead author of the Nature cover article, "Urbanization effects on tree growth in the vicinity of New York City." . . . For three consecutive growing seasons Gregg returned to the sites to plant cottonwoods, harvesting them to weigh their biomass and to perform other kinds of analyses. She controlled for differences in light, precipitation, season length and soil factors, making air quality the primary factor of concern. The experimental cottonwoods growing in Queens and the Bronx "breathed" the same pollutants as did other plants (and people) in the boroughs. So did cottonwoods along the H4udson and on Long Island. . . . Unexpectedly, the city trees thrived. As reported in Nature , "�urban plant biomass was double that of rural sites." . . . But in some areas of metropolitan New York City, as well as in other polluted cities, Gregg and her colleagues have found "footprints" of lower-than-expected ozone exposures. As Gregg explains the facts of atmospheric chemistry in the city, "Ozone is what we call a secondary pollutant. So while the primary precursors for ozone are emitted in the city, they must act in the presence of sunlight, over time, before ozone is formed. By then, the air mass has moved to rural environments." . . . Ironically, NO concentrations are very low in most rural areas, so ozone remains in the atmosphere there and plants' exposure period to the harmful gas is extended. (Although one-hour peak ozone exposures can be high in urban centers, exposure periods last longer in rural environments, resulting in higher cumulative exposures.) Trees and other plants growing within the lower cumulative ozone exposures of the urban-ozone footprints benefit from the NO scavenging reactions that reduce the ozone-exposure period. Trees growing in the purportedly clean rural areas aren't so lucky.

posted by Lorenzo 10:41 AM

 

Greenspan Ditches 'Green' for Natural Gas
(Chris Baltimore, Reuters, July 10, 2003)
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday said growing U.S. demand for natural gas to fuel factories and electricity plants may outweigh environmentalists' desire to preserve wilderness areas that contain energy reserves. . . . Commenting on the growing need for natural gas and the resulting environmental concerns, Greenspan said: "We've got to make those trade-offs. They are very difficult." . . . "It is essential that one recognizes what the cost in energy policy is if you restrict the access to certain areas" that contain natural gas reserves, he said. ... [Comment: Exactly! It is about time that the energy guzzling Americans begin to pay a fair price for the natrual resources they are using.] . . . "I would much prefer that we met domestic consumption with effectively North American production," Greenspan said. However, more LNG import terminals should be built as a back-up to U.S., Canadian and Mexican production, he said. . . . Some 14 LNG projects have been proposed for the U.S. market in recent months, including expansion of Georgia's Elba Island terminal and new facilities off Louisiana, Texas, California, the Bahamas and Mexico. . . . Three LNG terminals now exist in Cove Point, Maryland; Lake Charles, Louisiana; and outside Boston. . . . ChevronTexaco Corp. CVX.N , ConocoPhillips COP.N , Marathon Oil Corp. MRO.N , and Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM.N have announced plans to make LNG a bigger part of operations. . . . U.S. demand for natural gas is forecast to top 35 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) by 2025, a jump of 52 percent from this year.

posted by Lorenzo 10:07 AM

 

Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert
(The Independent, 3 July 2003)
In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire. . . . In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change. . . . The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole . . . "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples. . . . "New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing. . . . "New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years." . . . It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001. . . . The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.

posted by Lorenzo 5:30 PM