welcome

Scientists have discovered that exposure to a common pollutant may make people more likely to experience severe symptoms from swine flu—and it’s a pollutant emitted in large quantities by coal-burning power

plants and other industrial facilities.

The culprit is arsenic, a highly poisonous semi-metal which, according to a new study by researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Dartmouth Medical School, compromises a person’s ability to mount an immune response to the H1N1 swine flu virus. 

Most disturbingly, the study—published last month in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives—found that arsenic can weaken the immune response to swine flu even in the low-level exposure levels that  are commonly found in contaminated drinking water.

When normal people or mice are infected with the flu, they immediately develop an immune response where immune cells rush to the lungs and produce chemicals to battle the infection, the researchers explain. But in mice who over the course of five weeks had ingested 100 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in their drinking water, the immune response to H1N1 infection was initially weak. When the response finally did kick in days later, it often overwhelmed the animal.

“There was a massive infiltration of immune cells to the lungs and a massive inflammatory response, which led to bleeding and damage in the lung,” explains MBL senior scientist and report co-author Joshua Hamilton. The animals exposed to the arsenic were more likely to die from the infection than their counterparts who were not exposed.

The currently federal standard for arsenic in drinking water is 10 ppb, but levels in drinking water in some parts of the country routinely exceed that. A 2005 analysis of contaminants in drinking water by the Environmental Working Group found that the average arsenic levels in water supplied by at least 144 systems in Texas and 11 systems in Florida exceeded that standard—in some cases at levels approaching those given to the experimental mice.

For example, average arsenic levels in water from the Bruni Rural Water Supply Commission in Webb County, Texas were 90.87 ppb. Levels of over 100 ppb were also documented in the drinking water in Jim Hogg County, Texas.  

When Hamilton and his colleagues heard about the recent H1N1 outbreak, they were struck by the fact that there are high arsenic levels in well water in many parts of Mexico. That includes Veracruz, where news reports placed the first case of H1N1 swine flu, though there are now questions about that time line since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta more recently reported that the virus likely started circulating among the Mexican people as early as the fall of 2008.

No link has been established between any specific case of swine flu and arsenic exposure, “but it’s an intriguing notion that this may have contributed,” Hamilton says.

The coal power-arsenic connection

Arsenic has been linked to cancers of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver and prostate as well as fetal malformations. Earlier research by Hamilton and colleagues found that arsenic also disrupts the endocrine system that controls the release of hormones.

There are many parts of the United States where groundwater naturally contains high arsenic levels, including large swaths of Texas and Florida; click here for a map from the U.S. Geological Survey. If tests show that your water has high levels of arsenic, the Natural Resources Defense Council recommends purchasing filters certified by NSF International to remove it.

But arsenic is also released into the environment through industrial pollution. Across the United States, there are more than 700 toxic waste sites overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program where arsenic is a contaminant of concern. There are also scores of industrial facilities that routinely release arsenic and arsenic compounds to the air and water or dump it into surface impoundments like the one that collapsed last December at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant in Roane County, Tenn., according to the EPA’s online Toxics Release Inventory. All of these create potential exposure pathways for people.

Of the top 25 industrial emitters of arsenic and arsenic compounds via point-source air emissions (that is, releases through confined streams like smokestacks) in 2007, 22 were coal-fired electric power plants, according to the most recent TRI data available. The big arsenic air polluters are concentrated in the South, with 10 of the top 25 arsenic-emitting facilities located in the region.

In the Southern states, the biggest emitters of arsenic and arsenic compounds to the air were the Southern Company’s Bowen plant in Bartow County, Ga. and Progress Energy’s Roxboro plant in Person County, N.C., each of which released 2,200 pounds of arsenic to the air in 2007 alone. Besides coal-fired power plants, the other big arsenic emitters were copper refineries in Texas and Utah and a glass plant in Kentucky. Click here for a chart showing the top 25 point-source air emitters, their location and the amounts released.

Industrial facilities—and particularly coal-fired power plants—are also dumping large quantities of arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters such as streams and rivers. Of the top 25 emitters of arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters in 2007, 22 were coal-fired power plants. The facilities dumping arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters are again concentrated in the South, with 16 of the top 25 arsenic water polluters located in the region. Arsenic pollution of waterways is a particular concern since the pollutant concentrates up the food chain, which can render fish unsafe to eat.

In the South, the biggest dumper of arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters in 2007 was Dominion Power’s Chesterfield power plant in Chesterfield County, Va. at 4,500 pounds. It was closely followed by the TVA’s Johnsonville plant in Humphreys County, Tenn. at 4,200 pounds and TVA’s Widows Creek plant in Jackson County, Ala. at 3,900 pounds. In fourth place was TVA’s Kingston plant, which dumped 2,700 pounds of arsenic and arsenic compounds into nearby waterways in 2007. Click here for a chart showing the top 25 emitters of arsenic to surface waters.

The failure of the Kingston plant’s coal ash impoundment also released significant quantities of arsenic into the environment. An analysis of water samples taken downstream of the spill and released earlier this year showed elevated levels exceeding standards set to protect humans from dangerous concentrations of pollution, with arsenic levels more than double acute toxicity levels. The tests, which were sponsored by the Environmental Integrity Project and United Mountain Defense, also found widely fluctuating arsenic levels in the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers, with some 37 times higher than safe drinking water standards.

Catastrophic failures like the one at the Kingston plant are not the only ways coal ash impoundments are contaminating the environment with arsenic. For example, high levels of the chemical were recently discovered in water and sediment samples collected downstream of Progress Energy’s coal-fired power plant near Asheville, N.C., raising concerns that arsenic contamination from unlined coal ash impoundments is seeping into the environment. In addition, a 2007 assessment by the EPA documented coal ash waste dumping sites around the country associated with arsenic contamination.

Enormous quantities of arsenic are currently being dumped into these unlined and poorly regulated surface impoundments at coal-fired power plants across the country. An EPA analysis found people living near these coal ash dump sites have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from drinking water contaminated by arsenic, and evidence has surfaced since then suggesting the risk may be even higher.

Of the 25 surface impoundments where the greatest quantities of arsenic and arsenic compounds were dumped in 2007, 17 were at coal-fired plants; of those 17 plants, 12 are located in the South, as shown in the chart here. Note that TVA’s Kingston plant doesn’t even make the list of the top 25 facilities; the 44,000 pounds of arsenic and arsenic compounds it dumped into its surface impoundment in 2007 put it at number 27 on the list.

The fight for tougher coal waste regulation

In the U.S. to date, the swine flu virus has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused at least 27 deaths, according to the CDC. This week the World Health Organization said it was getting close to declaring a pandemic as the virus has infected more than 26,500 people in 73 countries, while researchers warn that the current outbreak may be only a “dress rehearsal” for a wider pandemic to come.

Many questions still remain about the virus. For example, last month we reported that scientists working to understand the genetic makeup of the current H1N1 strain linked it to a virus behind a 1998 swine flu outbreak at an industrial hog farm in eastern North Carolina. But Dr. Barrett Slenning, an epidemiologist at N.C. State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, points out that subsequent laboratory research suggests the 1998 virus was not a direct predecessor to the current H1N1, with recent genetic analyses showing greater similarities to flu strains from Asia.

“It all points to the importance of human health, animal health, and environmental health workers needing to come together,” says Slenning. “You cannot protect one without protecting the others.”

And when it comes to protecting ourselves from the worst effects of swine flu, it might also help to exercise precaution by reducing our exposure to arsenic—which ultimately means cleaning up dirty coal plants and carefully regulating their toxic waste.

But that won’t be easy. While environmental advocates have been pressing hard for enforceable federal standards governing disposal of coal ash waste in the wake of last December’s Kingston disaster, some in Washington are working to protect the dirty and dangerous status quo—despite new research suggesting that regulations to require safer storage of coal ash waste will likely produce far more benefits than costs.

This week, for example, congressional allies of electric utilities have been circulating “Dear Colleague” letters that oppose regulating coal ash as hazardous waste, instead calling only for federal “guidelines” for coal ash disposal rather than enforceable standards. The letters are based on the notion disproved by the Kingston spill that the current patchwork of state regulations is adequate for protecting the environment and public health.

Leading the effort to gather signatories are Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Rep. Tim Holden (D-Pa.). Among the lawmakers from the South who have signed the letter opposing tough federal standards so far are Reps. Marion Berry (D-Ark.), Travis Childers (D-Miss.), John Fleming (R-La.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Jerry Moran (D-Va.), Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.).

In response, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project—which has taken a lead role in pressing for better regulation of coal ash—is urging concerned citizens to call their representatives in Congress and ask them not to sign the letter. Instead, says EIP, lawmakers should support consistent and enforceable regulations of arsenic-contaminated coal ash waste to better protect their constituents’ health.

Carl Mortished, World Business Editor

China will not make a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, putting in jeopardy the prospects for a global pact on climate change.

Officials from Beijing told a UN conference in Bonn yesterday that China would increase its emissions to develop its economy rather than sign up to mandatory cuts.

The refusal is a setback for President Obama’s efforts to drum up support for an agreement at Copenhagen in December on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. As argument erupted between rich and poor nations at the Bonn talks, Yvo de Boer, the UN climate change chief, said that a worldwide pact to prevent global warming was “physically impossible”.

Hopes that Copenhagen might deliver tougher carbon reduction targets were dashed further when Japan failed to make a significant commitment to reduce emissions. Taro Aso, the Japanese Prime Minister, said on Wednesday that Japan would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent by 2020 from levels in 2005. The Japanese commitment is a mere 2 per cent improvement on its commitment under Kyoto.

Responding to the Japanese proposal, the UN chief made no attempt to hide his disappointment. “For the first time in my two and a half years in this job, I don’t know what to say,” he said. “We’re still a long way from the ambitious emission reduction scenarios that are a beacon for the world.” The Chinese rejection of cuts emerged after talks in Beijing between Todd Stern, the US climate change envoy, and the Chinese Government, in which Mr Stern appears to have backed down from earlier calls that China make a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions.

Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that China was still a developing country and its priority was to develop its economy, alleviate poverty and raise living standards. “Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in emissions, so it is not possible for China to accept a binding or compulsory target,” he said.

The climate negotiations have been dogged by debate over which nations should take primary responsibility for cutting carbon emissions from the fuels such as coal and oil.

The Bush Administration had insisted that it would not agree to mandatory cuts as long as developing nations increased emissions. The Obama Administration has taken a softer line, accepting that China and India could not be expected to make equal commitments to developed economies. However, Mr Stern recently said: “They do need to take significant national actions that they commit to internationally, that they quantify and that are ambitious.”

The ancient forests of Central Asia gave the world apples, apricots and walnuts. Now they are under threat

In Biblical legend, it grew in the Garden of Eden. In reality, it grew wild in Kazakhstan. And now the world's original apple tree, the progenitor of all our modern apple varieties, is threatened with extinction.

People in Kyrgyzstan gather the annual walnut harvest. In the past 50 years, 90 per cent of the forests of Central Asia have been destroyed

It is one of nearly 50 trees, including the original apricot and the original walnut, which have become endangered in a belt of forests in Central Asia – a region home to more than 300 wild fruit and nut species, including, plum, cherry, and many other important food trees from which domesticated varieties are thought to descend.

In the past 50 years an estimated 90 per cent of these forests have been destroyed, and a new survey has pinpointed the threat to the very existence of many of the wild tree species they contain. The Red List of Trees of Central Asia identifies 44 tree species in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as threatened with extinction.

Notable among them is Kazakhstan's wild apple, Malus sieversii, which scientists from the University of Oxford have recently judged to be the genetic progenitor of all domestic apples in cultivation today. (The name of Kazakhstan's former capital city is Almaty, which means "Father of Apples".)

It is thought that as the wild apples were domesticated and bred, they gradually spread westwards down the Silk Road, the great trading highway for camel caravans which linked Asia to the Middle East and ultimately Europe, and that this process was repeated with other fruits and nuts. It happened with the wild apricot, Armeniaca vulgaris, from which all the current varieties of apricot stem – 6,000-year-old apricot seeds have been discovered during archaeological excavations in the region – and the wild walnut, Juglans regia. Both of these species are now to be found on the Red List.

According to the British conservation charity Fauna & Flora International (FFI), which has drawn up the list in collaboration with Botanic Gardens Conservation International, "these fruit and nut forests have been described as a biological Eden, and have long held an important role in human culture".

The Red List identifies over-exploitation, human development, pests and diseases, overgrazing, desertification and fires as the main threats to the trees and forests in the region, while a lack of financial resources and infrastructure since the break-up of the Soviet Union has also had a negative impact.

"Central Asia's forests are a vital storehouse for wild fruit and nut trees," said Antonia Eastwood, the Red List lead author. "If we lose the genetic diversity these forests contain, the future security of these foods could be jeopardised, especially in the face of unknown changes in global climate."

Owing to the often fragmented, mountainous geography of the landscape, the genetic diversity these plants display is exceptionally high, and could prove vital in the development of new disease-resistant or climate-tolerant fruit varieties. FFI is already working in Kyrgyzstan to save and restore one of the most highly threatened apple species identified in the report, the Niedzwetzky apple (Malus niedzwetzkyana), as part of its Global Trees Campaign. Only 111 individuals of this tree are known to survive in Kyrgyzstan and the species features on the Red List as "endangered" – the second highest category of threat.

FFI is also working with local communities and government forest services in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to encourage sustainable use and more effective protection for forest resources, including providing training for community groups and grants for eco-friendly small businesses to assist local livelihoods.

To build on this work, a new collaborative project is being launched in Kyrgyzstan this year, led by Professor Adrian Newton of Bournemouth University, which will conduct research on threatened trees, provide training to Kyrgyz scientists and involve local communities in forest use planning.

High and dry In the United States, when people say “eat your veggies,” they are essentially urging you to take a bite out of California—or, more to the point, take a a big swig of its increasingly scarce water supply.

How much do we rely on California for fruits and veg? With its rich soils, variety of microclimates, long growing season, and huge geographical footprint, California should be a major ag producer—certainly a regional food-production hub for the southwest. But its sheer dominance of U.S. fruit and veg production (numbers from the the California Department of Food and Agriculture (PDF)) is dizzying.

The state produces 99 percent of the artichokes consumed in the U.S., half of asparagus , a fifth of cabbage, two-thirds of carrots, 86 percent of cauliflower, 93 percent of broccoli, and 95 percent of celery. Leafy greens? California’s got the market corned: 90 percent of the leaf lettuce we consume, along with and 83 percent of Romaine lettuce and 83 percent of fresh spinach, come from the big state on the left side of the map. Cali also cranks out a third of total fresh tomatoes consumed in the U.S. - and 95 percent of ones destined for cans and other processing purposes.

As for fruit, I get that 86 percent of lemons and a quarter of oranges come from there; its sunny climate makes it perfect for citrus, and these fruits store relatively well. Ninety percent of avaocados? Fine. But 84 percent of peaches? Eighty-six percent of fresh strawberries?

We in the other 49 states can do better. And will probably have to, soon. California’s most ag-centric counties, mostly clustered in the fertile Central Valley, are also its most heavily irrigated. And the Central Valley is locked in a three-year drought that shows no sign of easing up.  From NPR:

California is in its third year of drought, and many farmers in the state’s crop-rich Central Valley are looking at dusty fields, or worse, are cutting down their orchards before the trees die.

Hardest hit is Westlands, the biggest irrigated region in the country, where much of the nation’s fruit, nuts and produce come from. This year, farmers have been told they are getting only a small fraction of the water they need.

On top of the drought, farmers are also feeling a water pinch from another source. The area’s farms have for years relied on a generous flow of water from a vast estuary called the Delta, where two big rivers meet in the center of the valley. But by sucking water out of the Delta before it reaches the ocean, Central Valley farmers are placing massive pressure on the coastal ecosystem Remember, they’re doing it to grow us our veggies—meaning that we veggie eaters are implicated in the damage being wrought. 

Evidently, the lack of fresh water—along with pollution and the introduction of invasive species—has triggered population collapse for the delta smelt, the fish at the bottom of the ecoystem’s food chain. Take away the smelt, and other, higher-on-the-food-chain species decline, too. Here is the Center for Biological Diversity:

This smelt’s catastrophic decline is a warning that we may lose other native Delta fish that have fallen to alarmingly low levels as well, such as longfin smelt, salmon, and sturgeon. In fact, the delta smelt is only one of 12 of the original 29 indigenous Delta fish species that have been eliminated entirely from the area or that are threatened with extinction.

To stem the collapse of the smelt, a federal judge has ruled that much more water must flow into the Delta—just as the Valley’s farmers face a drought.

Meanwhile, water diversion isn’t the only way industrial agriculture affects this once-highly productive ecosytem. Get this:

The Delta habitat for delta smelt is polluted with often-lethal concentrations of herbicides and pesticides discharged and transported from California’s Central Valley into the fish’s estuary home. Toxic pulses of pesticides have been documented in the Delta during critical stages in fish development, and pesticides have been implicated in the recent collapse of the delta smelt population.

So let’s review. Our nation’s fruit-and-vegetable basket is extremely vulnerable to drought—and as a matter of course is wiping out a once-vibrant coastal ecosystem. Moreover, after produce is harvested there, it gets hauled in gas-guzzling refrigerated trucks to points across the continent—often right past farmland perfectly suited to fruit and veg production.

At one point, it must have seemed hyper-efficient to concentrate the great bulk of U.S. veggie production in a few fertile California counties. Now it looks reckless.

Here’s a not-even-half-baked plan for remedying the situation. Let’s slap a small but nontrivial tax on produce from water-poor California counties. Let’s apply it at the wholesale level—letting big players like Wal-Mart, Sysco Foods, and McDonald’s deal with it. Half of the proceeds go to grants to farmers in those counties, to help them transition to less water-intensive systems. The other half goes to a fund to help rebuild local and regional food and veg production across the nation. Say, by funding farm-to-school programs? Discuss.

Farming biofuels produces nitrous oxide. This is bad for climate change

MANY people consider the wider use of biofuels a promising way of reducing the amount of surplus carbon dioxide (CO2) being pumped into the air by the world’s mechanised transport. The theory is that plants such as sugar cane, maize (corn, to Americans), oilseed rape and wheat take up CO2 during their growth, so burning fuels made from them should have no net effect on the amount of that gas in the atmosphere. Biofuels, therefore, should not contribute to global warming.

Theory, though, does not always translate into practice, and just as governments have committed themselves to the greater use of biofuels (see table), questions are being raised about how green this form of energy really is. The latest come from a report produced by a team of scientists working on behalf of the International Council for Science (ICSU), a Paris-based federation of scientific associations from around the world.

The ICSU report concludes that, so far, the production of biofuels has aggravated rather than ameliorated global warming. In particular, it supports some controversial findings published in 2007 by Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. Dr Crutzen concluded that most analyses had underestimated the importance to global warming of a gas called nitrous oxide (N2O) by a factor of between three and five. The amount of this gas released by farming biofuel crops such as maize and rape probably negates by itself any advantage offered by reduced emissions of CO2.

Although N2O is not common in the Earth’s atmosphere, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and it hangs around longer. The upshot is that, over the course of a century, its ability to warm the planet is almost 300 times that of an equivalent mass of CO2. Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology at Cornell University who was involved in writing the ICSU report, said that although the methods used by Dr Crutzen could be criticised, his fundamental conclusions were correct.

N2O is made by bacteria that live in soil and water and, these days, their raw material is often the nitrogen-rich fertiliser that modern farming requires. Since the 1960s the amount of fertiliser used by farmers has increased sixfold, and not all of that extra nitrogen ends up in their crops. Maize, in particular, is described by experts in the field as a “nitrogen-leaky” plant because it has shallow roots and takes up nitrogen for only a few months of the year. This would make maize (which is one of the main sources of biofuel) a particularly bad contributor to global N2O emissions.

But it is not just biofuels that are to blame. The ICSU report suggests N2O emissions in general are probably more important than had been realised. Previous studies, including those by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-appointed body of experts, may have miscalculated their significance—and according to Adrian Williams of Cranfield University, in Britain, even the IPCC’s approach suggests that the global-warming potential of most of Britain’s annual crops is dominated by N2O emissions.

The broader issue, therefore, is the extent to which humanity has hijacked the “nitrogen cycle”, as the passage of that gas into and out of the atmosphere is known, for its own use. Alan Townsend, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of those trying to calculate the extent of this change. What seems certain is that the nitrogen cycle is changing faster and more profoundly than the carbon cycle, which has attracted much more attention.

This week Dr Townsend, and others involved in something called the International Nitrogen Initiative, are meeting in Paris to try to organise an international assessment of what is going on. This would do for nitrogen what the IPCC has done for carbon. To some, worries about nitrogen will doubtless seem to be no more than the latest environmental bandwagon. But the case of biofuels shows that without proper consideration of all greenhouse gases, not just CO2, it is too easy to rush headlong into expensive methods of mitigation that actually make things worse.

rivately-owned New Zealand businesses score poorly compared to overseas counterparts in their willingness to spend money on environmentally-friendly practices that hurt the bottom line.

New Zealand businesses ranked 34th out of 36 economies surveyed, just below Russia, according to the Grant Thornton International Business Report.

Only 35 percent of businesses said they would introduce environmentally friendly practices if they were to have a negative impact on the bottom line, Grant Thornton New Zealand said today.

Another 53 percent said they would not introduce such practices and 13 percent did not know.

In contrast, in Australia 55 percent of businesses surveyed said they would introduce the environmentally friendly practices, while 36 percent said no and 9 percent did not know.

That put Australia in 15th place on the global league table.

Grant Thornton New Zealand spokesman Peter Sherwin said the result made this country's environmental image somewhat fragile, although the major exporters might have a different stance to smaller companies.

"What this result is reflecting is the view of the average medium-sized New Zealand business as against the corporates. It is the sort of pragmatism that privately-held companies tend to adopt," he said.

"It could be said to be something of a reality check. This is middle New Zealand talking."

It could also reinforce the Government's more cautious approach to embracing climate-change actions and financial imposts, Mr Sherwin said.

When asked how environmentally-friendly the respondents considered the business community in this country to be, the New Zealand businesses registered a positive balance of 34 percent.

That was equal with Brazil in 17th place, although still down on Australia, which had a positive balance of 45 percent and was in 12th place.

That could possibly validate the feeling that the wider business community thought big exporters or corporates were doing their bit to be environmentally friendly, Mr Sherwin said.

That was even if the medium-sized businesses themselves were not keen on such practices because of the potential to damage profits.

In New Zealand 150 medium-sized businesses, each employing between 10 and 150 people, are surveyed for the Grant Thornton report.

NZPA

Marlborough organic winery Seresin has ditched the tractor in favour of ex-trotter Stewart tending the rows of vines.

ON THE TROT: Stewart, a 22-year-old former trotter, tows the organic sprayer between the vines at Seresin winery in Marlborough.

Although it's not a new concept, viticulturalist Colin Ross says it's not a backward step either. Instead it's part of the many eco-initiatives Seresin has taken down the biodynamic and organic path since 1994.

But was it cheaper to run a horse than a tractor? "Yes and no," Mr Ross said. Maintenance and fuel costs were saved but, in a typically mechanised industry, it was difficult to find staff to care for the animals.

But Stewart was as fast and efficient as a tractor and had less impact on the ground between the vines.

"There is a totally different feeling in the land when you are not using a tractor, and you are using animals. I don't know how to translate that across to the bottom line."

The 22-year-old former trotter tows the vineyard's sprayer, which uses seaweed and compost "teas" instead of chemicals.

"I'd challenge any farmer to go and find a 22-year-old tractor they are still using," Mr Ross said.

General manager MJ Loza said Seresin had to make a profit, but the organic approach, initiated by owner and renowned cinematographer Michael Seresin, started as an "ethical, philosophical, cultural thing".

Fifteen years after setting up, the natural production processes on the property were "a given" and managers had to make the business work from there. The advantages were that the methods made better wine and olive oil, and gave the operation a unique perspective, Mr Loza said.

Other bio-innovation included employing an organic apprentice, which emphasised the mainstream opportunity for young horticulturalists and viticulturalists to specialise in organic production, Mr Ross said.

Two cows also grazed the property and produced 160 kilograms of manure a week, which went into Seresin's "cow pat pits" for fertiliser. "The great story is the byproduct is 40 litres of organic milk."

The Dutch city's eco-friendly infrastructure has new power hookups for electric cars, solar panels and household wind turbines.

On the streets of Amsterdam last week, major changes were afoot. The first of 1,200 households installed an energy-saving system from IBM and Cisco aimed at cutting electricity costs. Others were given fresh access to financing from Dutch banks ING and Rabobank to buy everything from energy-saving light bulbs to ultra-efficient roof insulation. And on Utrechtsestraat, a major shopping avenue in the center of the Dutch capital, solar-powered panels on local bus stops were installed to transform the road into a "Climate Street" piloting clean technology.

The projects are Amsterdam's first steps toward making its infrastructure more eco-friendly. Other projects are expected to follow soon. They include 300 power hookups around the city to recharge electric cars, solar panels that will be installed on Amsterdam's historic 17th century townhouses, and infrastructure upgrades that will allow households to sell energy they generate from small-scale wind turbines or solar panels back to the city's electricity grid for a profit.

Amsterdam's recent green energy move comes as governments worldwide set aside billions of dollars to create "smart cities" that mix renewable energy projects and stiffer efficiency rules to cut overall carbon dioxide footprints. Other cities have shown interest in the idea, but so far Amsterdam remains the world leader, aiming to complete its first-round investments by 2012. That makes it one of the most ambitious adopters of the smart city concept, which has attracted attention from global policymakers hoping to glean lessons from Amsterdam's green experiment.

More Efficient Households

All told, the municipality, energy outfits, and private companies are expected to invest more than €1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) in Amsterdam's smart city programs over the next three years. That includes a €300 million ($420 million) investment by local electricity network operator Alliander in "smart grid" technology that uses network sensors and improved domestic energy monitoring to trim electricity use.

Also part of the plan: up to €200 million ($280 million) to be spent by local housing cooperatives on boosting household energy efficiency, and €300 million from companies including Philips and Dutch utility Nuon to be invested in other energy-efficient technology. "We're in the right place at the right time," says Ger Baron, senior project manager at the Amsterdam Innovation Motor, a public-private joint venture that is overseeing the project.

The focus on cutting cities' emissions could have a big impact on the battle against global warming. As of 2006, more people now live in urban areas than in the countryside, and the sprawl surrounding megacities such as Mumbai and São Paulo is only likely to increase. Consulting firm Accenture reckons cities produce almost two-thirds of total global carbon dioxide emissions through a combination of car fumes, household energy use, and industrial manufacturing. In the coming years, policy shifts from the US and elsewhere will put even more pressure on controlling carbon output. "Until now, there's been an under-emphasis on what cities can do to cut emissions," says Mark Spelman, Accenture's global head of strategy.

That's why Accenture has teamed up with utilities in North America, Europe, and Asia to figure out the best way to reduce cities' carbon dioxide emissions. In the first project-a $100 million venture in Boulder, Colo., led by Xcel Energy -- some 60,000 households will be connected to a smart electric grid by this summer. In early trials, energy usage per household has fallen by as much as 50 percent thanks to real-time network monitoring by utilities and the installation of smart meters that let customers adjust their energy consumption by time of day or other factors. Over the next four months, Accenture expects to announce similar projects with up to three major European cities.

In Amsterdam, city planners already are on the case. Dutch grid operator Alliander, which is 30 percent owned by the province that includes Amsterdam, will spend €100 million ($139 million) annually until 2016 to upgrade its entire network to a smart grid. That will include installing new meters in homes that detail consumer energy use and relay the data back to utilities. By 2011, says Paulus Agterberg, Alliander's director of strategy and innovation, almost all of Amsterdam will be on a smart grid. "You have to spend your money (on infrastructure) in the right way," he adds.

Remote Energy Management

As the city's energy infrastructure gets a face-lift, local policymakers also are devising ways to maximize the new smart grid. By early next year, Amsterdam's planners expect to create a "virtual power plant," or infrastructure upgrades that will let households sell excess energy generated from domestic solar panels, wind turbines, and biomass plants back to the city for a profit. All told, the plan could add 200 megawatts of renewable energy, roughly the size of a large wind farm, to Amsterdam's electricity generation.

"The idea is to create household or neighborhood renewable power plants," says Maikel van Verseveld, an Accenture partner in Amsterdam who's participating in the project.

With the first programs up and running, attention now focuses on the next round of smart city upgrades. Central to the plans are 300 charging points across the city for electric cars. The first one already has been installed, with the remaining hookups-set to be placed in local parking lots and other public spaces-on track to be ready by mid 2010. AIM's Baron says Amsterdam also is in discussions with a large European mobile-phone manufacturer and software provider to develop technology that would allow people to control their household electricity usage remotely. That could allow consumers to switch appliances on and off while on the go. "The future is remote energy management," Baron adds.

Amsterdam's plans are ambitious, but they do come with a hefty price tag. According to estimates, it will cost $438 per household over 15 years to install smart grid technology alone. Additional outlays, particularly costs of up to $280 million needed to make the city's homes more energy-efficient, could be a tough sell for consumers already suffering in the economic downturn.

Yet by converting Amsterdam into a smart city, local planners expect to bolster the economy through public and private investment, as well as cut emissions by 40 percent by 2025. Says AIM's Baron: "The aim is to create innovation."

Scott is a reporter in BusinessWeek's London bureau.

This man in The Netherlands is combining farming and science to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as generate extra revenue from these livestock.

He uses the waste from 2,700 pigs at Sterksel Research Centre to produce electricity.

SOUNDBITE: (Dutch) John Horrevorts, Manager of Praktijkcentrum Pig Farm: "At this moment we are producing enough electricity at our bio-gas installation for 1,500 households and for that we are using all the pig muck from our farm. So in total we produce about five-thousand mega watts a year."

The farm uses the electricity it needs, and feeds the rest into the national grid, for which the government pays up to $238 US dollars per megawatt as a green energy subsidy.

United Nations scientists say farming and forestry account for more than 30 percent of the greenhouse gases that are gradually heating the Earth.

Much of that pollution comes from cattle, sheep and pigs that belch or excrete methane, a heat-trapping gas more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the most common global warming gas.

One way to deal with the problem is to make use of it and burn it.

The waste from the pigs at Sterksel Research Centre drops through slats in the floor.

The slurry is then channeled into three, four-thousand cubic meter tanks, mixed into a thick paste with other organic waste, and then broken down by bacteria.

The gas is then siphoned off into a generator to produce electricity.

Together with four other commercial farms, the group reportedly saves 40-thousand tons of carbon emissions per year, which can be sold as credits for nearly $7 US dollars per ton to offset carbon emissions.

Though operating expenses for the biogas plant are considerable, the combination of electricity savings, power production and carbon credits makes it profitable.

SOUNDBITE: (Dutch) John Horrevorts, Manager of Praktijkcentrum Pig Farm: "I expect that this technique will excel in the coming three years. The technology used is becoming more and more advanced and efficient and because of that it is getting easier for a farmer to use it on his farm."

About 50 commercial biogas plants are operating on farms across the Netherlands, and the practice is spreading across industrial livestock farms around the world.

June 17, 2009: The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.

At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.

Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.

Above: A helioseismic map of the solar interior. Tilted red-yellow bands trace solar jet streams. Black contours denote sunspot activity. When the jet streams reach a critical latitude around 22 degrees, sunspot activity intensifies. [larger image] [more graphics]

Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the next solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10 degree range in latitude compared to only two years for the previous solar cycle.

The jet stream is now, finally, reaching the critical latitude, heralding a return of solar activity in the months and years ahead.

"It is exciting to see", says Hill, "that just as this sluggish stream reaches the usual active latitude of 22 degrees, a year late, we finally begin to see new groups of sunspots emerging."

The current solar minimum has been so long and deep, it prompted some scientists to speculate that the sun might enter a long period with no sunspot activity at all, akin to the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century. This new result dispells those concerns. The sun's internal magnetic dynamo is still operating, and the sunspot cycle is not "broken."

Because it flows beneath the surface of the sun, the jet stream is not directly visible. Hill and Howe tracked its hidden motions via helioseismology. Shifting masses inside the sun send pressure waves rippling through the stellar interior. So-called "p modes" (p for pressure) bounce around the interior and cause the sun to ring like an enormous bell. By studying the vibrations of the sun's surface, it is possible to figure out what is happening inside. Similar techniques are used by geologists to map the interior of our planet.

In this case, researchers combined data from GONG and SOHO. GONG, short for "Global Oscillation Network Group," is an NSO-led network of telescopes that measures solar vibrations from various locations around Earth. SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, makes similar measurements from space.

"This is an important discovery," says Dean Pesnell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It shows how flows inside the sun are tied to the creation of sunspots and how jet streams can affect the timing of the solar cycle."

There is, however, much more to learn.

"We still don't understand exactly how jet streams trigger sunspot production," says Pesnell. "Nor do we fully understand how the jet streams themselves are generated."

To solve these mysteries, and others, NASA plans to launch the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) later this year. SDO is equipped with sophisticated helioseismology sensors that will allow it to probe the solar interior better than ever before.

Right: An artist's concept of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. [more]

"The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on SDO will improve our understanding of these jet streams and other internal flows by providing full disk images at ever-increasing depths in the sun," says Pesnell.

Continued tracking and study of solar jet streams could help researchers do something unprecedented--accurately predict the unfolding of future solar cycles. Stay tuned for that!

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA