Four new solar powered irrigation systems were developed by a team consisting of Chile’s National Energy Commission along with Chile’s Agriculture Ministry and a regional government. Each system has a generator that can produce up to 500 Watts of energy.  When there is not a need for irrigation, the energy produced by the solar power systems goes back into the general electricity grid.

Link to original article

From the MIT News Office (via Mark Thoma), econ prof Bob Pindyck is interviewed about the two candidates' energy policies. An excerpt:

Q: Would either candidate's energy proposals make much impact on energy costs in the short term?

A: Neither of the candidate's plans would have any impact. The one exception would be McCain's proposal to eliminate tariffs on the importation of Brazilian ethanol. It would immediately reduce the cost of ethanol.

Q: How so?

A: We have a tariff on imported ethanol from Brazil, which is made from sugar cane. Ethanol here is usually made from corn. Sugar cane ethanol is about eight times more efficient than that made from corn. By removing the tariff, Brazilian ethanol becomes cheaper and will make ethanol-gasoline blends cheaper.

The favorite sentence of the Pigou Club:

Look, what are going to be needed ultimately is a tax on carbon and a tax on gasoline -- a large one.

The company attributed today's announcement to the continued imbalance in supply and demand in the U.S. chicken industry, which has led to market prices for breast meat that are unusually weak for the peak summer grilling season. Market pricing for breast meat is currently at $1.33 per pound, well below the prior five-year average for August of approximately $1.63 per pound, and significantly below the average price of more than $1.80 just four years ago.

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CSA is a partnership of mutual commitment between a farm and a community of supporters which provides a direct link between the production and consumption of food. Supporters cover a farm's yearly operating budget by purchasing a share of the season's harvest. CSA members make a commitment to support the farm throughout the season, and assume the costs, risks and bounty of growing food along with the farmer or grower. Members help pay for seeds, fertilizer, water, equipment maintenance, labor, etc. In return, the farm provides, to the best of its ability, a healthy supply of seasonal fresh produce throughout the growing season. Becoming a member creates a responsible relationship between people and the food they eat, the land on which it is grown and those who grow it.

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• Ethanol and the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
  

peakoil.com -> in.reuters.com, appgopo.org.uk (pdf) :

The looming peak in world oil production will set back international development and threatens to hinder efforts to make poverty history, a report by a group of UK lawmakers said. "The deepening energy crisis has the potential to make poverty a permanent state for a growing number of people, undoing the development efforts of a generation," the report released on Monday [21 Jul 2008] said. "Communities across the globe are more vulnerable than ever, living in an unsustainable present and facing an uncertain future."

A rally in oil prices, which hit a record $147.27 a barrel earlier this month, is leading to more interest in peak oil. The 20-member parliamentary group, chaired by lawmaker John Hemming, was formed in 2007. Its report refers to warnings that peak oil is likely to occur "before 2015" and the current jump in oil prices is "a prelude to even more severe increases in the next decade." Its recommendations include the formation of an energy security working group and funding to boost local food production and energy security.

- Seeing how the UK's North Sea crude oil production has already peaked and has been in decline since 1999, and how the UK is turning out to be a permanent oil importer, and now has to resort to opening a giant gas pipeline from Norway, it is not surprising that the British have a rather keen interest in Peak Oil.

From a peakoiler's point of view, it is rather similar to the Australian case where they were not very much aware of the issues surrounding Peak Oil until Australia's own oil production peaked, and it was then announced by their government that they were running out of oil. To paraphrase early peakoiler Jay Hanson, people are unable to think about something until either they have experienced it first hand, or they have undergone extensive study to learn more about it *before* they experience it.

Peakoilers like myself fit into the latter group - people are always surprised when they hear that I am not from the oil & gas industry, and that I am just an "interested party" working in IT. There are basically two ways to spread awareness to people who do not live in countries with rapidly declining oil production - you could call it the carrot and stick approach. First, one could tell them it's a profitable hobby, which from my own experience can be quite true, and second, one could just wait for crude oil prices to start another record-breaking run, and say, "I told you so."

Myself, I have been doing both, going around telling people how I have hedged 100% of my petrol bills so I am no longer affected by the vagaries of rising or falling petrol prices. And, as far back as 2004, when oil prices were only in the $30's, I have been telling people, "I told you so."

See also :

1. Peak Oil - The pressure mounts
2. North Sea gas drying up faster than hoped
3. UK oil production continues to decline
4. Over 20 UK MPs and Lords form parliamentary peak oil group

This year's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to be the largest on record and growing U.S. corn production is a primary cause of the worsening conditions, federal and state scientists said Tuesday. (Source)

• Ethanol and the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
  
• Ethanol's Effect on the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
  

Deforestation is not only unabated, it’s accelerating around the globe. The problem is growing bigger, yet it is also becoming more concentrated.

Just how concentrated has the problem become? Previously Brazil was thought to account for 27% of worldwide deforestation - per the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Now it is understood to be a whopping 48%.

This news comes from a new study in the 7/8/08 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Matthew Hansen - as reported by Mongabay.

Put another way:

…Brazil accounts for nearly half of global deforestation, nearly four times that of the next highest country, Indonesia, which makes up about an eighth of worldwide forest clearing.

A corollary of sorts being that African deforestation may not be as critical as once thought:

“Africa, although a center of widespread, low-intensity selective logging, contributes only 5.4 percent to the estimated loss of humid tropical forest cover. This result reflects the absence of current agro-industrial scale clearing in humid tropical Africa.”

Interestingly this greater concentration has the benefit of potentially making the problem more manageable.

Matthew Hansen says:

…the geographic concentration of deforestation, coupled with the shift from subsistence-driven to enterprise-deforestation forest clearing, may hold unexpected benefits for conservation: it may be easier for environmental groups to target their campaigns on major forest-destroying corporations and industries.

A sliver of good news to be leveraged for sure.

Previously the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provide the authoritative analysis on deforestation. But its data was largely based on individual countries self-reporting. And the new estimates?

…produced by analysis of a combination of satellite imagery from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat programs. The researchers say the integrated methodology offers a more accurate way to track change in forest cover.

A bit of detail on the newly revealed concentrations:

…55 percent of total tropical humid forest clearing occurs within only 6 percent of the biome area, indicating the existence of deforestation “hotspots,” especially for Brazil and Indonesia where rates of forest loss — 3.6 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively — far exceed regional deforestation rates (1.2 percent for the rest of Latin America, 2.7 percent for the rest of Asia).

Other hotspots revealed:

“Latin American hotspots include northern Guatemala, eastern Bolivia, and eastern Paraguay. As a percentage of year-2000 forest cover, Paraguay features the highest areal proportion of change hotspots, indicating an advanced, nearly complete forest clearing dynamic…”

And:

“…Riau province in Sumatra has the highest indicated change within Indonesia. Hot spots of clearing are present in every state of Malaysia, and clearing in Cambodia along its border with Thailand is among the highest of indicated change hot spots…”

What does the future hold?

“The pattern of deforestation in the humid tropics for the current decade indicates concentrated areas with high rates of deforestation in Latin America and southeast Asia,” study co-author Ruth DeFries, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geography and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, told mongabay.com. “With skyrocketing demand for biofuels and agricultural commodities, we can expect that deforestation in the future will be increasingly driven by large-scale industrial agriculture rather than small-scale landholders.”

Deforestation like coal is top-shelf climate villain. And as new coal power plant construction must be stopped so must we also stop rainforest based industrial agriculture.

Let’s capitalize on the sliver of good news. To find out more about what you can do to help, large and small, visit:

• Rainforest Action Network
• Rainforest Alliance
• Rainforest Coalition
• Greenpeace - USA - Forests
• Sign EU Greenpeace Petition - (per Juliette’s comment)
• Fair Trade Resource Network
• Adopt an acre of rainforest.
• And for all things rainforest, I encourage you to visit Mongabay’s Rainforest Page.

Pushed from center stage by the expected record arctic ice and permafrost melt, tropical rain forest destruction has been elbowing it’s way back through the smoke and into view.

Papua New Guinea’s rain forests disappearing faster than thought is one such look:

Previously, the article states, the forest loss was estimated at 139,000 hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. But now?

Using satellite images to reveal changes in forest cover between 1972 and 2002…Papua New Guinea (PNG) lost more than 5 million hectares of forest over the past three decades…Worse, deforestation rates may be accelerating, with the pace of forest clearing reaching 362,000 hectares (895,000 acres) per year in 2001. The study warns that at current rates 53 percent of the country’s forests could be lost or seriously degraded by 2021.

That’s an enormous increase.

Adding insult to injury - the good news as reported last Thursday in Malaysia:

PM: No clearing of forests for oil palm plantations

Abdullah, who is also Finance Minister, said the existing oil palm plantations were enough to cater to current demands and there was no need for the opening of new plantations at the moment.

Fast forward THREE DAYS:

Sarawak to open more land for oil palm

Sarawak will continue to open up more land for oil palm plantations, Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said here yesterday.
He said this would not go against the prime minister’s directive on the clearing of land for oil palm plantation as it did not apply to the state.

Oh well, so much for Malaysia lending a hand.

As so often it seems with the climate change story, the narrative turns from bad to worse and this chapter is no exception, as we turn toward the Amazon.

It’s tough to complete with the destructive capacity of the permafrost melt, but the Amazon is making up for it in it’s willy-nilly approach to climate destruction. This recent article by Rhett Butler at environment 360 sets the scene:

Historically, the Amazon has proven resilient to climate change, human disturbance by pre-Colombian populations, and even periods of fire and extreme drought during millennial El-Niño-like events. Yet the present onslaught of forces affecting the Amazon is unprecedented. Never before has the region experienced the simultaneous impact of large-scale forest loss and degradation, fragmentation, fires, and global warming. Many scientists and conservationists are deeply worried, not only because of the loss of biodiversity that accompanies destruction of the forest, but also because the cutting and torching of this vast repository of carbon will further heat up a planet already warming at an alarming pace.

What are the numbers?

Brazilian satellite data from late 2007 show a marked increase in the number of fires and deforestation in the key soy and cattle-producing states of Pará and Mato Grosso. Both experienced increases in forest loss of 50 percent or more over the same period in 2006, coupled with a large jump in burning — in the case of Mato Grosso, a spike of more than 100 percent. The 123,000 fires detected across the Brazilian Amazon by the Terra and AQUA satellites are the most since such measurements began in 2003. Deforestation in the last five months of 2007 was expected to exceed 7,000 square kilometers, an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island.

Yes, the drivers of ethanol, soy and cattle are well documented, but as is our habit, we tempt much worse:

As demand for biofuels continues to grow, there is a very real possibility that oil palm could become a dominant crop in the Amazon — an ominous development considering that the planting of oil palm plantations has been the driving force behind the recent destruction of huge areas of rain forest in Indonesia and Malaysia. Scientists estimate that Brazil has 2.3 million square kilometers of forest land suitable for oil palm, equal to the forested areas conducive to soy and sugar production combined.

The bottom line doesn’t get much lower:

Writing in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B earlier this year, Daniel Nepstad and colleagues predicted that 55 percent of Amazon forests will be “cleared, logged, damaged by drought, or burned” in the next 20 years if deforestation, forest fires, and climate trends continue apace. The damage will release 15 to 26 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, adding to a feedback cycle that will worsen both warming and forest degradation in the region. Nepstad says this scenario is a conservative one — forest loss and emissions could be far worse.

It’s worth repeating: 15 to 26 billion tons of carbon by 2028 - from the Amazon alone. (That’s the equivalent of 55 to 95 billion tons of CO2.)

Nepstad is saying this is conservative - it could be “far worse”. Will we see the conservative estimate? Or worse? Or far worse realized? (Hint: remember our climate change story - so far, bad to worse.)

But let’s not throw hope under the bus - in the Abstract Dan Nepstad states:

Several important trends could prevent a near-term dieback. As fire-sensitive investments accumulate in the landscape, property holders use less fire and invest more in fire control. Commodity markets are demanding higher environmental performance from farmers and cattle ranchers. Protected areas have been established in the pathway of expanding agricultural frontiers. Finally, emerging carbon market incentives for reductions in deforestation could support these trends.

Putting some numbers to this, Managing Forests for Climate Change Mitigation by Josep Canadell and Michael Raupach in the June 13th issue of Science (sub. req’d) - conveniently referenced in this Mongabay article.

The article summarizes:

Noting that 13 million hectares of forest are felled each year, releasing 1.5 billion tons of carbon, Canadell and Raupach write that reducing deforestation rates by 50 percent by 2050 and stopping deforestation when countries reach 50 percent of their current forested area would avoid emissions equivalent to 50 billion tons of carbon.

Then quoting Canadell and Raupach:

“This ‘50:50:50:50? estimate shows that even with continuing deforestation over the next 40 years, the mitigation potential is large, in addition to protecting the sink capacity of forest for continued removal of atmospheric CO2.”

Yes, the mitigation potential is large but is our inertia larger still?

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