Global Warming to Increase Indidents of Kidney Stones

The Chicago Tribune reports that incidence of kindey stones will rise dramatically over the next four decades—up to 2.2 million new cases a year—due to global warming. It is well known that poor hydration can lead to the painful stones forming, and global warming will likely lead to people sweating more, and thus developing more kidney stones.

Fortunately, the solution to the problem is fairly simple... drink more water. Unfortunately, even people currently at risk fail to heed this advice and end up getting kidney stones now.

I've never had kidney stones, but they run in my family so it's probably a matter of time. A friend of mine also got kidney stones—while she was pregnant—and says that the kidney stones were worse than giving birth. So I don't know about you, but I'm going to keep hydrating as well as I can and hopefully avoid getting them. I'm not a big fan of pain.

Russian Arctic Researchers Evacuate Shrinking Ice Flow

Russian scientists are evacuating the North Pole-35 research station, built on an ice floe to study the arctic, because the ice it is built on is rapidly melting. When the station was established ten months ago, the ice floe was 1.5 miles by 2.5 miles in size. Today it is roughly 1,000 feet by 2,000 feet—less than two percent its size last September.

Russia uses Arctic research stations, such as North Pole-23, to monitor the environment as well as to study Arctic plant and animal life. The researchers had originally planned to end their expedition in August, but advanced warming and ice melt have forced them to cut their research short.

Ice Melting Faster Than Expected

Scientific American has an interesting article about the accelerating rate of ice lost in the arctic and antarctic. It seems we've warmed the air and sea enough now that ice in Antarctica is melting, even though it's currently the middle of winter there.

Ice near the poles, especially on the western Antarctic Peninsula, as melting faster than any climate scientists or advanced climate models predicted, suggesting the possibility that global warming alarmists have not been over-hyping the situation, but possibly the opposite.

As the floating ice shelves break up and drift out to sea, the massive glacial ice on land becomes free to flow toward the water. According to Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, within a year or two of an ice shelf breaking up, glaciers that it previously held back could be moving toward the ocean up to four times faster than when the ice shelf was in place. That could (and most likely will) result in more ice flowing into the oceans at a faster rate than expected, and that will raise sea levels.

Another suggestion that we have perhaps underestimated the effects of warming on our ice, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center has warned that the North Pole could be free of ice in the summer—not in forty years, as previously predicted, but as early as this year.

The Fight Against Global Warming Will Be Expensive

Fighting global warming is going to be expensive. I think we all knew that, but now a new study from the International Energy Association illustrates just exactly how expensive.

In order to reduce green house gases in the atmosphere fifty percent by 2050, the world needs to invest some $45 trillion, build 1400 nuclear power plants, and vastly expand wind power initiatives. The report outlines two scenarios: one that reduces greenhouse gases to the same levels as 2005 and one that reduces them to half that level. The results also assume an average 3.3% global economic growth rate through 2050.

The second scenario, trying to reach half the levels of 2005, would require that 35 coal-fired and 20 gas-fired power plants be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology every year between 2010 and 2050. In addition, to keep up with increasing demand, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants and 17,000 new wind turbines every year during the same period. We'd also have to find a way to reduce the carbon intensity—the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy—of our transportation sectors.

Failure to act, the IEA says, will result in doubling of energy demand and a 130% increase in CO₂ emissions by 2050.

Obesity Promotes Global Warming...?

As if those of us who are overweight needed another reason to feel bad about that fact, it seems that we're also helping cause global warming. How?

According to an article quoted by John Tierney over at the New York Times the obese population consumes 18% more calories than the general population. And because we weigh more, it takes more energy to transport us in vehicles. Thus global warming.

That's all I'm going to write about that for now. I have to go do some sit-ups....

Global Warming "Is Three Times Faster Than Worst Predictions"

An article in the UK's Independent newspaper highlights our difficulties in predicting global warming:

...emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast - and the seas are rising twice as rapidly - as had been predicted.

Not good news, and something we absolutely need to do something about, in spite of what NASA Administrator Mike Griffin seems to think.

Another Simple Step to Help the Environment

Thanks to this Reuters article, I've read about another very simple step you can take to help fight global warming. It was pretty obvious when I read about it, but sometimes the obvious things are the things we take most for granted.

The suggestion was to put less water in your kettle. Any time you're trying to boil water for anything (like, say, making tea or boiling pasta), you use energy to boil that water. The amount of energy is directly proportional to the volume of water you are trying to heat. So, if you use less water, it takes less heat to make it boil.

Again, it seems pretty obvious, but it's something I hadn't thought of. I don't make pasta very often (I'm on a diet and trying to lose about 30 more pounds), but when I do, from now on, I'll use less water to do it.

51 Things: No Left Turn

Number 45 on TIME Magazine's list of 51 Things We Can Do to only make right turns while driving. It sounds strange at first, but when you think about it, it starts to make sense. How much time do you spend sitting at green lights waiting for your chance to turn left? While you sit idling, your car is burning fuel, which wastes your money and contributes wasteful carbon to the global warming problem.

According to TIME, in 2004, UPS announced that its drivers would avoid making left turns. In metro New York, UPS has reduced CO2 emissions by 1,000 metric tons since January. Today 83% of UPS facilities are heading in the right direction; within two years, the policy will be adopted nationwide.

So plan your routes ahead of time to avoid making left turns. You could save yourself some money and do your part to fight global warming at the same time.

51 Things: Plant a Fence

Number 26 on TIME Magazine's list of 51 Things We Can Do to fight global warming now is to plant a bamboo fence. Bamboo makes an attractive fence, and it consumes more carbon than many other plants when allowed to grow.

Most homeowners have to restrict its growth, lest it get out of control. Do this, however, and you reduce bamboo's capacity as a carbon sink. Only large-scale plantings, which absorb CO2 faster than they release it, can favorably tip the scales.

Planting a fence also saves on the carbon production that would have gone into manufacturing a fence from wood, metal, or plastic.

If you have a homeowners' association, make sure you check with them before planting your fence.

51 Things: Let Employees Work Close to Home

Number 13 on TIME Magazine's list of 51 Things We Can Do to fight global warming now is to let your employees work closer to home. Gene Mullins, a software developer in Seattle, created a program that helps firms slash the time employees spend driving by matching them with work closer to home.

By spending less time driving, employees use less fuel (and spend less time commuting). Using less fuel saves the employees some money and reduces the amount of pollutants going into the atmosphere.

Of course, an even better solution is to let employees work from home, and that's exactly what the Federal government is considering.

51 Things: Cozy Up to Your Water Heater

Number 21 on TIME Magazine's list of 51 Things We Can Do to fight global warming now is one of the simplest: wrap your water heater with a thermal blanket.

The cost? $10-20. The benefit? Your water heater will lose less heat over time, lowering your bill for electricity or gas (depending on your type of water heater), lowering your bills and your household carbon emissions (approximately 250 lbs. of CO2 per year).

For the price, I plan to do this for my apartment. There's not much I can think of that will have this much effect for such a small, one-time price.

Do Your Part to Fight Global Warming

I stumbled today on a website, Carbonfund.org, that offers information and action steps for reducing your personal or family carbon footprint. In addition, the site runs a carbon offset service whereby you can pay (donate) money to Carbonfund.org to offset your personal or family carbon footprint.

The money donated is used by Carbonfund.org on offset programs such as helping support alternative energy programs and buying (and retiring) carbon offsets on global and regional trading markets. When you make your contribution to their program, you get a choice of how you want your donation to be spent, including options such as alternative energy, energy efficiency, and re-forestation.

Improving the environment starts with individuals like you and me, and making a donation to Carbonfund.org is an excellent first step. In addition, Time Magazine has a list of 51 things you can do to personally help in the fight against global warming. I'm going to be highlighting some of the ones I find more interesting over the next week or two, so stay tuned here.

Rosetta@home Branches Out

The Rosetta@home project (which I blogged about in December) has branched out from its original mission of predicting protein structures. David Baker reports in the Rosetta blog that they are working on a way to convert carbon dioxide into simple sugars using enzymes computationally engineered using Rosetta@home.

David writes:

Graduate student Justin Siegal and postdoc Eric Althoff have come up with a very clever new reaction cycle using new enzymes we would collectively engineer that in total carries out the following reaction:

2C02 + 2e- + H20 -> C2O3H2 + O2

the product is a simple sugar that could be used in a variety of ways, and the removal of C02 from the atmosphere would be great for countering global warming. A nice thing about this compared to current ideas of forming inorganic carbonate compounds is that it requires no other inputs. However, it does require electrons, and hence a source of energy. We are currently assessing the energy requirements of this process and comparing them to those of other proposed carbon sequestration mechanisms.

Branson Creates $25 Million Global Warming Prize

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has announced a $25 million prize for the first group to come up with a way of removing one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years -- with $5 million of the prize being paid at the start and the remaining $20 million at the end.

The prize will initially only be open for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges including Branson, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, British ex-diplomat Crispin Tickell, U.S. climate scientist James Hansen, Briton James Lovelock and Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery.

Branson also reiterated a pledge he made in September to invest $3 billion toward fighting global warming, saying he would commit all profits from his travel companies over the next 10 years. As part of that pledge, he launched a new Virgin Fuels business, which will invest up to $400 million in green energy projects over the next three years.

Project Profile: ClimatePrediction.Net

This week's project profile is for ClimatePrediction.net, a massive project to model and forecast weather in the 21st Century.

The software, like the other projects profiled so far, operates on the BOINC platform for distributed computing. The ClimatePrediction.net system uses the unused background cycles of its members' computers to simulate a large number of possible climate scenarios to determine how each individual variable affects the overall climate picture.

These simulations are then studied individually and merged together into one and tweaked as additional data becomes available. The more data runs that are performed, the more accurate the models will become.

Accurate prediction of climate change could be vital on both the short- and long-term scales. For example, more precise climate modeling could have shown that Hurricane Katrina would strike New Orleans, rather than the predicted path that showed it striking Texas. Advanced warning could have led to better evacuation and preparation and given people an expectation of the damage before it happened.

Similarly, in the long-term time scale, climate change predictions can give us better understanding of potential warming effects such as rising ocean levels, increased storm activity, etc.

If you're interested in participating in this type of science project, you can download the software here.