Lake Effect Snow Tied to Global Warming?

A recent study shows a possible link between global warming and lake effect snow. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Annal has more:

Transcript

A recent study shows a possible link between global warming and lake
effect snow. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Annal has more:


The study was published in the Journal of Climate. When compared with the rest of the nation,
researchers found that the Great Lakes region had a significant increase in the amount of
snowfall.


Adam Burnett is an Associate Professor of Geography at Colgate University. He was the lead
researcher of the study. Burnett found that Warmer lake temperatures make ideal conditions for
lake effect snow.


“As cold air begins to blow across these warm lake surfaces that sets up the lake effect snow
processes. And the thinking is that perhaps global warming is being reflected by increases in the
thermal characteristics of the Great Lakes, which are then playing out in the Great Lake effect
snow.”


In the study, Burnett compared the snowfall from fifteen weather stations around the Great Lakes.
He examined records going back over seventy years. Syracuse, New York is one of the nations
snowiest cities. In terms of the amount of snowfall, it had five of it’s worst winters on record in
in the 1990’s, the warmest decade of the twentieth century.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Richard Annal.

Epa to Relax Sewage Treatment Rules?

Conservation groups are criticizing a move by the Environmental Protection Agency to relax sewage discharge rules. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, there’s disagreement about what impact the change would have on water quality and public health:

Transcript

Conservation groups are criticizing a move by the Environmental Protection Agency to relax sewage
discharge rules. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, there’s disagreement
about what impact the change would have on water quality and public health:


The EPA says during heavy rains, sewage plants can’t handle the excess wastewater. So it wants
to allow plants to divert some water from the second step in the treatment process. That’s the part
when microbes break down pathogens that can harm public health.


EPA officials say the process is safe. They say the partially treated sewage would be blended with
fully treated water. And they say it would have to meet water quality standards.


But Nancy Stoner with the Natural Resources Defense Council says those standards only protect
against bacteria – not viruses or parasites. She predicts the policy would have a serious impact on
public health.


More people will get diarrhea and vomiting, they’ll get respiratory illness. They may even get very
serious illnesses, like Hepatitis A, that are carried in sewage.”


The EPA says the practice is already widespread at many treatment plants. The agency will take
public comment on the proposal until early January.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Forecasting Monarch’s Future in Warmer World

Every winter, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from backyards in North America to nestle in trees in Mexico. The weather conditions in the mountains there are perfect for the insect. But scientists say climate change could spell disaster for the species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:

Transcript

Every winter, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from backyards in
North America to nestle in trees in Mexico. The weather conditions in the
mountains there are perfect for the insect. But scientists say climate change could
spell disaster for the species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has
this report:


The fir trees in central Mexico are ideal conditions for the monarch
butterflies of North America to spend the winter. The habitat there is cool
and dry.


“They are looking for a refrigerator.”


That’s Karen Oberhauser, a researcher at the University of Minnesota. She
Says the orange-and-black-speckled butterflies spend up to five months there
Before coming north again.


The new study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. It shows that the biggest threat to the monarch’s Mexican habitat
may be an increase in rainfall. She says that would cause the monarchs to freeze
to death.


“It’s worrisome to me that, in a sense, we humans are kind of conducting this huge experiment and
we don’t know the outcome.”


The long-term climate change could force monarchs to flutter off in search
Of new places to winter. She says if they fail, the results could mean the end
of a species.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby.

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Trashing Cell Phones After New Fcc Rules

Starting today, new Federal Communications Commission rules go into effect. Millions of cell phone users can keep their phone numbers if they switch companies. That means millions of old cell phones could be left behind. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Starting today (Monday, November 24th), new Federal Communications
Commission rules go into effect. Millions of cell phone users can keep
their phone numbers if they switch companies. That means millions of old
cell phones could be left behind. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Rebecca Williams has more:


Researchers who study cell phone use expect the rules to encourage people to
get new phones. When they do, most of those old phones will
end up in landfills and incinerators. It’s a problem because cell phones
contain toxins and heavy metals that can be released into the environment.


The wireless industry and others have started cell phone collection programs
in response. Eric Most is with Inform, Incorporated, an independent research group.
He studied the collection programs.


“These programs are definitely one potential solution to addressing wireless
waste, but one of the issues is that the small fraction of discarded phones
that these programs are recovering are merely being shifted from the U.S. to
countries that are even less equipped to handle them responsibly in end of
life.”


Most says ideally, the industry should be responsible for the entire life
cycle of the phones. But he says right now, it’s still better to donate old
phones to a collection program than toss them in the trash.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Bicyclists Peddle Curbside Recycling

Many cities throughout the Midwest enjoy the benefit of curbside recycling in their towns. But for some areas curbside recycling just hasn’t taken root. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King says those towns might want to follow the lead of two creative bicyclists from her city. Are they nuts? Or are they on to something?:

Transcript

Many cities throughout the Midwest/Great Lakes States enjoy the benefit of curbside recycling in
their towns. But for some areas, curbside recycling just hasn’t taken root. Great Lakes Radio
Consortium commentator Julia King says those towns might want to follow the lead of two creative
bicyclists from her city. Are they nuts? Or are they on to something?


According to a U.S. Department of Transportation Study, nearly a quarter of all Americans rode a
bike at least once during the past year. Most of the nearly 21 million people in this country who
hopped on a bike did so for fun. In other words, we view our bikes more like toys than tools.


But two guys in Northern Indiana are trying to change that. Some people are locking up their
bicycles for the season, tucking them away in garages and sheds. Tom Benevento and Brian
Krushwitz are pumping up their tires and oiling their chains, preparing to put their bikes to use.


Borrowing from a project in Ames, Iowa, called “Bikes at Work,” the men will twice a month lead
a small crew of cyclists through a Goshen, Indiana neighborhood collecting recyclables. But these
are no ordinary bikes. These are bikes equipped with trailers that can pull up to three hundred
pounds of material. And these guys aren’t just recycling – they’re also providing paid work for a
couple of financially struggling residents.


Here’s how it works: In a town with no curbside recycling, volunteer organizers Benevento and
Krushwitz easily found twenty families to pay $5 a month each for the no diesel pick-up service.
The families put their stuff in a container, the crew comes by and straps all the full containers on
the bike trailer, leaves empties in their place, then deposits the glass-plastic-paper-etc. at the nearest
recycling site.


According to Krushwitz, it only takes about 2 1/2 hours each month. It’s not a lot of work, but the
work pays twice the hourly minimum wage. With expansion and tweaking, this could bring real
salaries to people who need them. And those salaries would be generated with a positive
environmental impact.


Benevento started the project because he wanted to demonstrate that old problems can be solved in
new ways. His passion is bikes, but he also relished the opportunity to create work for the poor in
his small community. He wanted to tangibly express his belief that social justice is a key
component of sustainability.


Ultimately, these are the sorts of innovations that stretch the imagination. Some will no doubt laugh
at using so much human power when a big truck would do. Others will say riding a bike in January
doesn’t sound innovative; it sounds crazy.


But naysayers should remember that every solution doesn’t work in every community. Bike-
powered recycling might not work in Anchorage Alaska, but it just might in any number of other
cities across the country. Every good problem-solver knows all ideas are with exploring.


Moving the bicycle beyond a recreational toy is an idea worth exploring.


Julia King lives, writes, and watches from her window as her
recycling gets picked up in Goshen, Indiana. She comes to us by way of the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

Related Links

Fuel Cell Generator Gets Mixed Reviews

A Midwest company is producing a generator it says will revolutionize the way large electric consumers get power. While the company is hailing the generator as the next big thing, it is getting mixed reviews from industry analysts and environmentalists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

A Midwest Company is producing a generator it says will revolutionize the way large electric
consumers get power. While the company is hailing the generator as the next big thing, it is getting
mixed reviews from industry analysts and environmentalists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Jonathan Ahl reports:


(sound OF the fuel cell)


Engineer Steve Brown is showing off a generator that can be the primary power source for an entire
hospital, prison, factory complex, or any other multi building facility. It’s a 250-kilowatt fuel cell
generator that’s as big as a one-car garage. It’s currently running at Caterpillar’s Research Center
just outside of Peoria, Illinois. The generator works by extracting the hydrogen from natural gas
and converting it into electricity. Brown says the only emissions from the unit are heat, water, and
carbon dioxide. He says the unit can also use that heat for other purposes, making a generator that
is up to ninety percent efficient:


“That means ninety percent of the heat, the potential heat in the natural gas has been converted into
useful energy and only ten percent is exhausted to the atmosphere. That’s sexy. It is, compared to
the typical internal combustion engine is in the high teens. And all the rest goes to waste and just
heats up the atmosphere.”


Brown says this unit can eliminate large electric consumers’ need to be hooked up to the power
grid. Peoria, Illinois based Caterpillar and Danbury, Connecticut based Fuel Cell Energy
Incorporated are manufacturing the generators. They say there is a growing market for reliable
power. They also say the generators are better for the environment than coal or oil fired power
plants. John Leitman is the president of Fuel Cell Energy:


“The fuel cell here generates electricity just like a large battery, except with a fuel cell, you can keep
feeding it fuel and air and it will keep generating electricity, very cleanly.”


Leitman says the generator will also be easily convertible to a pure hydrogen power generation unit
if that technology becomes available. But some environmentalists are not as excited about the
generators potential. Chris Johnson is a spokesman for the Illinois Public Interest Research Group,
a public policy advocacy group that focuses on the environment. He says fuel cell power
generators are a step in the right direction. But he says since this generator uses natural gas instead
of pure hydrogen to create electricity, it’s not a long-term answer to the nation’s energy problems:


“In other words, we’re sort of losing energy. It’s becoming less efficient, and in that sense we are
also having more CO-2 emissions in the long run. Also with natural gas emitting heat and CO-2,
Carbon dioxide is a huge cause of global warming.”


Johnson does concede that fuel cells are better for the environment than coal- and oil-based power
plants. But he also says fuel cells will not reach their full potential until they run off more basic
forms of hydrogen. The generators are also meeting some skepticism from the power generation
industry.


“I think fuel cells are everyone’s Holy Grail of engine power.”


Mike Osenga is the publisher of Diesel Progress Magazine, an engine and power generation trade
publication. He says such generators show promise, but also have a lot to prove:


“There hasn’t been long term testing, a lot of the engineering still needs to be done, and it’s still a
technology that has to prove itself, but it certainly seems to have some potential compared to some
of the other technologies people are considering.”


Osenga says the other issue is money. Using such a generator costs at least three cents more per
kilowatt-hour than taking the power from the local utility company. But Caterpillar and Fuel Cell
Energy are hoping customers will think the cost is worth it to have a more reliable power source.
Rich Thompson is a group president at Caterpillar. He says in light of the major blackout this past
summer, the industry is moving toward what he calls distributed power generation.


“A term you are going to hear more and more frequently, because distributed generation is the key
answer and the rapid answer to strengthening our national grid. And that is going to happen
following the northeast blackout.”


Thompson also says Caterpillar is lobbying Congress to give the company tax subsidies that other
cleaner power providers receive. That could make the fuel cell generators almost even in cost with
traditional utility power.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

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Fish Diet Down in Diporeia Die-Off

  • This tiny crustacean is a favorite food item for Great Lakes fish. Scientists are trying to figure out why it's disappearing. (Photo courtesy of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab)

One of the basic building blocks of the Great Lakes food chain is disappearing. The bottom of the lakes used to be teeming with tiny crustaceans known as Diporeia. But their numbers are declining, and in wide stretches they’re just simply gone. Commercial fishers are beginning to see the effect on fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has an update:

Transcript

One of the basic building blocks of the Great Lakes food chain is disappearing. The bottom of the lakes used to be teeming with tiny crustaceans known as Diporeia. But their numbers are declining, and in wide stretches they’re just simply gone. Commercial fishers are beginning to see the effect on fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has an update:


Diporeia is a quarter-inch long shrimp-like creature that
lives in the sediment at the bottom of most of the Great
Lakes. Just about every fish at some time in its life
relies on diporeia for food. Those that don’t, eat the
fish that eat diporeia. Researchers used to find 10,000
of these animals in a square yard of sediment. Today the researchers are disturbed because they’re
taking up samples and finding only hundreds in a square yard and
sometimes finding none, not one.


But this isn’t simply scientific curiosity for
biologists. It has economic impact. Mark Gaden is with the
Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He says this is
beginning to affect commercially harvested fish.


“There’s a very deep concern about the impact of
the loss of diporeia on the white fish diet.”


Gaden says the commercial fishers starting noticing that
the white fish looked different. Their body weight just
wasn’t what they were used to seeing.


Tom Spaulding is one of the partners in Gauthier &
Spaulding Fisheries in Michigan. They fish on Lake Huron.
He says white fish there aren’t getting enough to eat.


“Well, some of them definitely look skinny alright. And the other ones, they’re a longer fish, but
they just don’t have the body weight they should for a fish
that length. So, it’s got to be food-related, their
natural food, that diporeia shrimp. You see what I mean?”


And it’s not just the commercial fishers on Lake Huron.
It’s happening everywhere except Lake Superior. The Great
Lakes Fisheries Commission’s Mark Gaden says it’s got a lot
of fishers worried.


“Anytime, though, where you have something like
diporeia which is something that’s critical in the food web
and you see drastic, drastic declines in it and we’re not
quite sure why this is taking place, it’s cause for serious
concern.”


The commercial fishing industry is looking to the
researchers. The researchers have been working on this
problem for years. So, what’s causing it?


“Well, that’s what I’m struggling with. There’s
a lot of conflicting evidence.”


Tom Nalepa is a research biologist at the Great Lakes
Environmental Research Lab. He says it’s possible that the
invasive species the zebra mussel might be eating most of
the diporeia’s food.


“It lives on the bottom, but it needs that fresh
material that drops down right at the sediment surface.
And, this is exactly the same materials that zebra mussels
are filtering out. So, logically, it’s a food problem, but
the confusing thing about it is that the animals are not
showing any signs of starvation. They’re relatively
healthy, yet the population is dying off down to zero.”


The researchers continue to try to figure out exactly
what’s going on. But, if the zebra mussel is the culprit
in the die-off of the diporeia, the scientists say there’s
nothing that can be done about it. It’ll mean a huge
change in the natural balance of the Great Lakes. The
commercial fishers such as Tom Spaulding say they’re
hopeful that the white fish will find something else to eat.
They hope it’s just a matter of time. But, in the
Meanwhile, Spaulding says it’s not just white fish that are
being affected. It’s the fish that sport fishers like to
catch too.


“We’re seeing skinny lake trout out there.
We’re seeing other species too that are suffering because
the food chain, the food they’re after is low. But, it’s
not just a white fish problem in the Great Lakes right
now. And the finger seems to be pointing to the zebra
mussel, so, it’s a serious problem as far as changing the
whole ecosystem out there that we see.”


This might be only the latest economic damage caused by the
zebra mussel since it stowed away in a cargo ship in the
early 1980s. The mussel has cost industry because it clogs
intake pipes. It’s damaged the native mussel populations.
And the long-term damage to the environment of the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi River system where it’s also
spread is not yet clear.


One thing is clear – Any savings realized because of those cheap goods on that cargo ship,
can’t possibly offset the cost to the economy because of the zebra mussels that ship carried in its
ballast water.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Birdwatching Brings Big Bucks

A new study finds the economic impact of birders is significant. Birdwatchers spend billions of dollars across the nation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new study finds the economic impact of birders is significant. Bird watchers spend billions of
dollars across the nation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Bird watching might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about dollars spent
on outdoor recreational activities. But, because so many people birdwatch – 46-million – the
economic impact is substantial.


According to a first-of-its-kind report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2001 bird
watchers spent 32-billion dollars on gear such as binoculars, travel, food and big-ticket items such
as canoes, cabins and off-road vehicles – all to watch birds. The government says that generates
85-billion dollars in overall economic output.


In determining who was actually a birdwatcher, the report did not count people visiting zoos or
those who just noticed birds while visiting the beach. To be considered a birdwatcher in the
economic report, only people who took a trip for the purpose of watching birds or those who
closely observe or try to identify birds around their house were counted.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Sewer Overflows to Get Green Light?

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to relax sewage discharge rules. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, there’s disagreement about what impact those changes would have on water quality:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to relax sewage discharge rules. As the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, there’s disagreement about what impact those changes
would have on water quality:


The change would make legal a practice that’s already common at many wastewater treatment
plants. Partially-treated sewage is released when plants get overloaded, during heavy rains, for
example. The wastewater is blended with cleaner water, disinfected, and discharged.


Officials with the EPA say “blending” is a safe way for plants to avoid sewage backups in
people’s homes.


But Laurel O’Sullivan of the Lake Michigan Federation says the policy could have severe
consequences for public health in the Great Lakes region, where many sewer systems are old and
in need of more capacity.


“And the blending policy basically gives a pass to these sewer systems, in terms of trying to have
to upgrade their system’s capacity.”


O’Sullivan says the policy could result in a repeat of incidents such as a 1993 sewer overflow in
Milwaukee. The city’s water supply was contaminated by a parasite that killed more than a hundred
people.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Building Green Pays Dividends

A new study finds that building “green” is better for the bottom line than originally thought. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports this is the first study to compile economic data from green buildings across the nation:

Transcript

A new study finds that building “green” is better for the bottom line than originally thought. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports this is the first study to compile
economic data from green buildings across the nation:


This study was funded by several California state agencies, but looks at a couple hundred
buildings across the nation that were designed to be environmentally friendly. Gregory Kats is
the principal author of the study. He says because the buildings are more efficient, they save
money in areas such as maintenance costs and energy usage.


“The net benefits are, over a twenty year period, about ten times larger than the additional cost.
So, it represents a substantial opportunity for building investors to have higher financial returns
and create buildings that are more comfortable, higher performance, better for the environment,
healthier work and living environments.”


Kats says that means public officials such as school board members can justify on economic
grounds alone, building “green” buildings, and at the same time know that they’re healthier for
the kids in the classroom.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.