Articles by Maywa Montenegro

Still a Great Wall to progress

On the heels of Bush's bluster of the week, China today released its first comprehensive plan for climate change. But as the NY Times reports, it too isn't much to sing about. Said Ma Kai, head of China's National Development and Reform Commission:

Our general stance is that China will not commit to any quantified emissions reduction targets, but that does not mean we will not assume responsibilities in responding to climate change.

Thus, the plan calls for improving energy efficiency, but doesn't include any hard caps on carbon emissions.

This is pretty scary news, since by now we all know that no matter what the rest of the world does, we sink or swim with the decisions of China, and in the near future, India. On one hand, it's hard to blame China for protecting its booming economic growth -- after all, per capita, China still consumes only a fraction of the energy we do. On the other hand, the rationale seems myopic at best. Said Ma:

The ramifications of limiting the development of developing countries would be even more serious than those from climate change.

But with experts predicting vast numbers of climate refugees from the Yellow River basin due to shrinking glaciers, a sharp decline in arable land, and consequent overcrowding of the cities (with no food to eat), it's hard to imagine what that "more serious" would look like.

A new solution from a plasma physicist

We've already thoroughly debunked geoengineering strategies like launching mirrors into space, seeding the oceans with extra iron, and loading the atmosphere with ray-repelling aerosols. But this idea, posed by a scientist last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, though still a long shot, is actually pretty ingenious.

Alfred Wong, a plasma physicist at UCLA, says that we might be able to use Earth's natural magnetic field as a giant conveyor belt to catapult excess carbon dioxide into outer space. The CO2 must be ionized first, which Dr. Wong proposes could be done with lasers (generating less emissions than the process would remove).

Once they are there, Dr Wong expects the incoming stream of charged particles that cause auroras to deliver the bonus that will make the whole thing work, by dumping some of their energy into the spiralling as well. This should happen through a process called stochastic resonance: the spiralling molecules get preferential treatment, so to speak, because they stand out in what is otherwise an environment of random movements.

Blocks himself admits that the project is still in the incubator stage, and has a long way to go to be viable, but thinks it could be workable. Just don't tell the neighbors.

… but doesn’t let governments off the hook

So I'm a sucker. I can't walk by a newsstand where a magazine features a pair of innocent green cotyledons sprouting from a bed of industrial factories. It's this week's issue of The Economist, and what's inside the "Cleaning Up" issue is as alluring as the cover.

Although I've only just skimmed, the articles look promising, and they're all freely available online. Here's the rundown:

• "Cleaning up: How business is starting to tackle climate change, and how governments need to help"
• "Everybody's green now: How America's big businesses got environmentalism"
• "Trading thin air: The carbon market is working, but not bringing forth as much innovation as had been hoped"
• "Irrational Incandescence: People can't be bothered to make easy energy savings"
• "Fairfield vs. the valley: Two competing models for the clean-energy business"
• "Sunlit uplands: Wind and solar power are flourishing, thanks to subsidies"
• "Boom: As security and climate concerns rise, nuclear power may be coming back"
• "Dirty king coal: Scrubbing carbon from coal-fired power stations is possible but pricey"
• "The drive for low emissions: Car and fuel companies are investing in clean transport"
• "The final cut: Business can do it, with governments' help"
• Audio interview: "A discussion with Emma Duncan, Deputy Editor of The Economist"

Pesticide efficacy is decreasing

If you've ever colored Easter eggs -- I mean the old-fashioned way, with food-coloring, not with those plastic wraparounds -- then you know that when you mess up, you have two options: rinse them off with some white vinegar and start over, or forge ahead, layer even more color on top, and hope that something presentable emerges.

Okay, so that metaphor's a bit of a stretch, but that's what came to mind when I read, earlier this week, that scientists at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, have engineered a new category of transgenic crops. The new plants -- which include broad-leafed greens such as soybeans, tomatoes, and tobacco -- harbor a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to an herbicide called dicamba.

"But we have Roundup!" you cry. "Why do we need anything else?" Well, because Roundup (active ingredient: a chemical called glyphosate) isn't working as flawlessly as it used to. According to the story in Science (sorry, subscription only), 24 percent of farmers in the northern Midwest and 29 percent in the South say they have glycophate-resistant (GR) weeds. Crop scientists in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia report GR grasses popping up too.