Being a vanguard is a melancholy experience from time to time, particularly when political allies of the environmental community campaign on the notion of saving American jobs and fighting the climate crisis simultaneously by embracing clean coal technology. Since I have affirmed very clearly that there is no such thing as clean coal, I went through about 6 months of relying essentially on my own convictions while candidates in the American political system spouted their guff.

Now, the election is a distant memory for most and we are left with reality. Clean coal is a myth. Could it become reality some day? Environmentalists can argue the point. My take on it is simple: in order for coal to be clean, we don’t merely have to scrub our smokestacks. We must mine, process and transport coal with no environmental impact. Can that be done? Yes, I suppose that it can but under those restrictions, coal loses its economic edge over renewable resources.

So, when Al Gore’s fine organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, unveiled its new initiative last month, ThisIsReality.org, I grinned like the Cheshire Cat. The first commercial on ThisIsReality.org does a very effective job of explaining how clean coal technology looks and I encourage you to visit the website today. After you have watched the commercial, be sure to join the mailing list. ThisIsReality.org is a most welcome ally to my mission to convince the world of the absence of clean coal technology.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

As you stow your holiday decorations and resume normal life for the new year, have you considered recycling your greeting cards? Year after year, the ability of the recycling industry to convert the assorted materials which we discard into useful alternatives grows.

They have a fairly good handle on most types of metal in the waste stream as well as polystyrene, paperboard, moderate to heavy plastic and newsprint. One area which remains largely unaddressed is writing paper and its cousin, long-grain paper for printers. Indeed, each year billions of tons of such products enter the waste stream as single-use garbage and end up in landfills.

Correcting this deficiency is a big job and many players in the recycling industry make great strides on a regular basis. Even if they perfect the technology, though, gaining broad consumer participation will be a task equal to or greater than solving the technical issues. A key way of accomplishing this task, though, will be to focus people on the pounds of paper they receive every week in the mail.

As the world moves closer and closer to a paperless existence, it’s easy for us to forget that millions upon millions of trees are felled each year in order to provide fiber for paper production. Those trees will do us much more good remaining in the ground where they can sequester carbon, regulate local temperatures, reduce atmospheric wind sheer, purify water and house wildlife.

The good news is that most of us now receive less mail so it’s easier for us to think about recycling it and Earth Class Mail is a novel service for American addresses which can help us do just that. For roughly the same cost as renting a conventional box at your local post office, Earth Class mail will scan all of your inbound post and make it available to you via the Internet. And then recycle it. Nifty, huh?

Because Earth Class Mail charges by the piece, it will be important for you to reduce the volume of junk mail which you receive. There are several services which will contact advertisers for you directly and place your address on the do not mail list which they are required by federal law to maintain and I recommend GreenDimes.com as a convenient option with a low annual fee of just $20.

Working directly with a local recycling center which can process the weights and colors typical of documents which travel by post, Earth Class Mail ranks high on my list of firms which are part of the solution.

To learn more, visit

EarthClassMail.com

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In early December, I had the profound honor and privilege of representing the Sierra Club of Florida at the Hurricane Science for Safety Leadership Forum, which took place at Walt Disney World. The event was the quarterly fruition of a movement begun roughly a decade ago by a fine organization called FLASH, the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes. If you live in an area which is targeted by hurricanes or other wind storms with any regularity, I exhort you to visit flash.org today and learn more about preparedness.

The Hurricane Science for Safety Leadership Forum was a convocation of dozens of the brightest minds in climatology, meteorology, risk management, urban planning and other disciplines and I left with my head throbbing from the dozens of insights I gleaned. Indeed, while my main purpose was to represent the Sierra Club in order to be certain that a strong environmental voice was present, after the very first plenary session, several people made the effort to approach me and express gratitude for my presence and I knew that I had found a unique conference.

I could fill my posts here on Keyboard Culture for the entire first half of 2009 with all of the material presented at the forum but what left the most lasting impression on me was that of the profound difference in damage to property caused by category 4 and category 5 hurricanes versus category 3. I already knew that global warming has a significant impact on this question but now, thanks to the brilliant presentation of Dr. Amanda Staudt of the National Wildlife Federation, I have a PowerPoint presentation to share with you.

In my next post, I will provide the presentation file to you and the context in which the frightening data on her slides should be consumed.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale measures local peak gust velocities of wind in meters per second. A relatively weak, category 1 hurricane has wind gusts of around 30 meters per second. Major hurricanes, which I refer to as killers, begin at around 50 meters per second and run off the Saffir-Simpson scale at 100 meters per second.

If ever you have watched live news coverage of a hurricane as it approached land fall, you may have noticed that meteorologists always raise warnings about staying out of harm’s way but seem to twitch whenever discussing storms which are category 3 or above. Why is this? As Dr. Amanda Staudt of the National Wildlife Federation shared with attendees of the Hurricane Science for Safety Leadership Forum, increases in wind speed between category 3 and 4 equal roughly 10% but the reality of materials science is that such an increase equals a 50% increase in property damage.

In other words, movement between categories on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is linear but increases in property damage from major storms are logarithmic.

How does this horrible news relate to global warming? Thanks to the brilliant work of Professor Kerry Emmanuel of the tropical meteorology group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we know that there is a direct correlation between sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic basin and the wind speed of hurricanes. Indeed, Professor Emmanuel has plotted a graph of the power dissipation index of hurricanes in relation to sea surface temperatures going back more than 40 years and the linkage is clear.

Pages 5, 6 and 7 of Dr. Staudt’s presentation are the most compelling but I encourage you to read the whole thing. Dr. Staudt was gracious enough to grant me access to her file and it is linked here.

I have stated very clearly here on Keyboard Culture that global warming exacerbates the formation and strengthening of hurricanes but admit that a modicum of dissent within the scientific community exists regarding this connection. What no longer is open to debate in the hallowed halls of atmospheric science is the correlation between sea surface temperatures and general hurricane strength. What we also know for sure is that, measured globally, the increases in mean temperatures which we are causing through the reckless burning of fossil fuels carry water temperature right along with them. The connection of A to B to C is sadly all too easy.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Friendly rivalries can be healthy. We see examples of this fact in athletics, from intramural sports in the public school system right up to the Olympic Games which pit the best of the best from around the world. What we have not seen with any scope or consistency thus far in the new millennium, though, is a friendly rivalry between cities in their quest to become greener.

In the United States, there are dozens of cities which justifiably tout their green credentials and I have enjoyed hearing several of their presentations during my work representing the Sierra Club at various conferences, such as I explained in my previous post. However, I have yet to hear friendly jibes between municipalities over who is greener.

The European Green Capital initiative is changing the game, so to speak. A wonderful competition consisting of literally dozens of cities throughout Europe, the European Green Capital initiative has lit the flame within municipal, regional and national governments on the old continent all striving for the right to claim the title of Greenest of them All.

This competition has grown into a wonderful trend which I commend and next time, I will share with you the exciting details of the American counterpart to European Green Capital, called Green Cities. To learn more about the European Green Capital initiative, please visit

EuropeanGreenCapital.eu

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

For some time now, I’ve been telling you about the United We Stand Expo and how it is a very gratifying successor to the Green Earth Expo. Well, while Jim Griffin and I cannot claim direct responsibility for the germination of an entire national initiative toward green living and green commerce such as the one called Green Cities, we take it as no small coincidence that the very first Green Cities conference will take place at the same venue as and on the anniversary of the Green Earth Expo.

That’s right! The inaugural Green Cities conference will take place at the Orange County Convention Center in May of this year. Wow! I’m sure that you can understand why I am so enthusiastic about this event.

Well, my enthusiasm doesn’t stop there, either. The Green Cities Conference will assemble key sponsors and thought leaders from around the United States along with vital international players and one of the top themes will be the Triple Bottom Line of Sustainability!

As you likely have noted, my tag line as your global warming expert here on Keyboard Culture is Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line. I don’t take credit for the inclusion of this essential theme in the Green Cities conference but sure am glad to see it baked into the themes of the event.

Needless to say, I will be at the inaugural Green Cities conference in May and hope that you can join me. You can read all of the details and grab the early bird registration discount at

GreenCities.com

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

A Meteorological Yoyo

It is official. The year 2008 was among the warmest and coldest on record.

How’s that?

The Wyoming avalanches were part of a barrage of winter weather which struck nearly half of the continental United States in December, dropping huge quantities of snow and ice on dozens of cities and, sadly, killing a great many people. The record quantities of frozen precipitation were preceded by record rainfall in other places, which left horrible flooding in the nation’s midsection. Each storm occurred within mere days of the next.

When I traveled to Maine for my sister’s wedding, which was ushered in by several feet of gorgeous snow powder, my flight both ways nearly was canceled because of separate blizzards. However, as soon as the second storm ended, New York City, which had been buried in snow right before Christmas, saw its daytime temperatures shoot up to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and then plummet for New Year’s Eve with wind chill factors near zero.

These huge, unseasonable swings in temperature are the partial result of global warming, as the atmosphere attempts to compensate for disruptions in its temperature regulating mechanisms. They also are how we can say that 2008 was among the warmest and coldest years on record. It was the coldest since the turn of the new millennium but, despite the aforementioned record snow storms and blizzards, was among the warmest in history when measured as a function of global mean temperature.

So, as you ponder the question of just how much snow Mother Nature can send to any particular spot during a given winter season, remember that the atmospheric systems which create snow no longer work as reliably as before because we have bent their cogs and chipped their flywheels. Even if we begin repairs today, which effectively would be impossible on such short notice, every revolution of those mechanisms will lead to further degradation. It is a sad reality which is as predictable as the dawn.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Dr. James Hansen of NASA is the top climatologist on the payroll of the United States. I told you about him in July and he continues to do great work.

To help us usher in the new year as well as to contextualize his personal and professional views on how the climate crisis must be addressed by the Obama administration, on December 31, Dr. Hansen published a fabulous letter on the next steps for the government of the United States to take as it combats global warming. His musings and prose are so compelling that I have determined that the letter truly is Dr. Hansen’s version of an encyclical.

I could spend a dozen posts explaining the power contained within the letter’s eight pages (including the preamble) but prefer to share it with you without my own commentary. I’ll just say this: everyone who cares about the future of this planet must read it.

James Hansen Global Warming Letter – December 31, 2008

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In October of 2007, I wrote about the importance of sustainability in our determination of the best biofuels to replace fossil fuels. The transportation fuels industry has heard me and the rest of the environmental community because they already have moved into second generation biofuels, with a plant called jatropha leading the pack.

Biodiesel for bus and truck fleets continues to make sense for several reasons, with the fact that it includes a significant element of recycling at the top of the list. However, even if we omit buses and trucks from the dozens of engine types in use today, there are a great many which need to be weaned off fossil fuels.

Terrestrial transportation is the easiest of the paradigms to address in this regard because in large geographical areas, the fuels safely can be limited to a temperature range of well under 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The same cannot be said of aviation fuels. Moreover, aviation fuels carry much higher performance standards than gasoline and, of course, geography becomes an enemy when attempting to move the world’s commercial aviation fleet to biofuels all at once.

It is for these reasons that I ardently embrace offsets for air travelers. Moreover, I endorse the offsets from CarbonFund.org because they have the option of radiative forcing. However, offsets are not a solution. They merely are a part of the interim steps which everyone must take in order to begin to reverse the damage of climate change. Ultimately, we need to move fully to hydrogen for all of our energy needs and biofuels can be a vital step in that direction.

Next time, I will tell you how jatropha oil is being used in aviation.

Source: www.jatropha.org Author: Photo by R. K. Henning

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In addition to abundance and global standardization, the main reason that kerosene is the only aviation fuel which the major airlines use is that it performs well in very harsh conditions. Think about it: during long, high-altitude flights, the temperature in and around the wing of an aircraft can drop nearly to 100 degrees below zero! However, even in such circumstances, the fuel must ignite and combust in much the same way and at the same high temperature as when the plane is on the ground.

That is no easy feat and certainly is out of the question for petroleum diesel fuel.

Needless to say then, as the aviation industry has received greater and greater demands to lower its carbon footprint and escape the monopolistic tyranny of OPEC as its fuel supplier, the pace at which it experiments with biofuels has grown. It now appears that jatropha oil may be the answer.

As applied to biofuels, the triple bottom line of sustainability demands that the source materials not just be organic but that their use not damage the environment or the prosperity of agricultural workers. Corn-based and sugar-based ethanol often fail that test because they are nearly impossible to grow under those restrictions. Moreover, corn-based and sugar-based ethanol assist with weaning us off fossil fuels but really don’t reduce carbon loading over gasoline on a gallon-by-gallon basis.

Jatropha is quite different. Here are the key distinctions:

1) In most places, it is considered a weed, meaning that it can be grown alongside existing crops rather than in place of them.

2) Its seed is inedible. Hence, growers never face that quandary of growing it as a feed stock rather than for fuel.

3) It grows very effectively on land which is unsuitable for feed crops, opening up billions of acres of land to agriculture which currently do not fit the definition of arable.

4) In many places, jatropha can be harvested at any time, leaving peak times free for farmers to continue bringing in their feed crops.

5) The carbon loading of jatropha is roughly half that of corn or sugar, making it a true improvement over gasoline.

6) The oxygen density of processed jatropha oil can be minimized, making the fuel suitable for high-altitude jet engines, which neither ethanol nor petroleum-based gasoline ever will achieve.

7) Hence, it can be used in jet aircraft with no mechanical modifications.

I trust, then, that you grasp why I am so enthusiastic about jatropha oil, especially its potential role in commercial aviation as a replacement for kerosene. In the third installment of this series, I will tell you about Air New Zealand’s impressive and historic first flight with sustainable jatropha which took place last month.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Air New Zealand is an intriguing airline. It spans the wall of niche markets and broad commercialization like few others. Fortunately, this intriguing combination made it possible for the ownership and senior management of the company to take a leadership role in reducing its environmental impact, not just through recycling, fleet optimization and route optimization but now, a commitment to researching and implementing biofuels in its fleet.

Replacing kerosene as the global standard for jet fuel is a difficult nut to crack, it you’ll pardon the pun, because kerosene does the job very well. It is reliable. It performs well. Everyone understands it. All the aircraft and jet engine manufacturers specify it in their operating guidelines. The list goes on. First generation biofuels have none of these merits. Thanks to the work of Air New Zealand and its project partners, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and UOP, jatropha oil does.

Jet engines burn kerosene with no tailpipe. In other words, there’s no easy way to attach an emissions system to the engine in order to reduce the pollution as we do with buses, cars and trucks. So, the only practical way of cutting the contribution to global warming of aviation is to change the fuel. Up until the year 2008, no one thought that it was possible. Visionary aviation leaders such as Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and Rob Fyfe of Air New Zealand have taken it upon themselves to make jatropha oil a reality.

So, on December 30, one engine of an Air New Zealand 747 jumbo jet underwent a comprehensive test flight fueled by 50% jatropha oil and 50% conventional kerosene. The results were very encouraging. The plane underwent multiple maneuvers during the flight, including climb, cruise, acceleration/deceleration, approach/missed approach, descent and, of course, landing. The history of the flight has less to do with the existence of the flight than of the source of the jatropha fuel. It is sustainable!

Air New Zealand’s commitment to the jatropha project is based on the triple bottom line of sustainability, so that the airline doesn’t merely replace one fuel with another but it converts to one which it knows can be grown and harvested in harmony with nature for decades to come and without impacting the world’s food supply. That, more than any other reason, is why I love jatropha and I commend Air New Zealand for this important leap into a new era of cleaner aviation.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler