Month: July 2006

Hybrid Car Ownership Drives People Together

Some hybrid car owners are starting clubs to socialize and to learn how to squeeze even more miles per gallon out of their fuel-efficient vehicles. The number of hybrid owners is still small enough that the owners feel a little “special.” The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Some hybrid car owners are starting clubs to socialize and to learn
how to squeeze even more miles per gallon out of their fuel-efficient
vehicles. The number of hybrid owners is still small enough that the
owners feel a little “special.” The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Bradley Fons says he already thought about the environment a lot before he
purchased a used hybrid car three years ago. He bought a Honda Insight:


“…And I kind of figured out how to drive it to get the best mileage but there
was no support, no help out there at that point to assist me.”


Eventually, Fons found a group of hybrid owners who helped him answer
some questions about the car.


(Sound of group meeting)


But this year, with some help from his family, Fons has done one better: he’s
organized a hybrid owners club.


(Marie Fons) “…And put your name on one of these little things, for a door prize. I know, work, work, work, work, work. Here, you guys want to work on the
door prize thing?”


Bradley Fons’ wife, Marie, is helping about two dozen people check in. This
is the first meeting of the hybrid owners group. They get to know each
other by their name, their city, and the kind of hybrid they drive:


“I’m Kathy Moody from Racine and I have a ’05 Prius.”


“I’m Bill Vaness from Waukesha and I ride in my wife’s ’03 Prius (laughs).”


(Group member) “At least you’re honest.”


“My name is Sherrie Schneider, I’m from Bristol and I have an ’06 Civic. Picked it up about a month ago and I’m here to learn a lot ’cause I don’t know how to get the mileage you all
are getting but I’m going to learn (laughs).”


And so Bradley and Marie Fons go into teaching mode, offering encouragement and advice about how to get the most miles per gallon from the cars. The hybrid of gas engine and electric batteries usually cost more to buy more than similarly sized conventional cars. So the new owners are anxious about getting the best mileage possible.


Bradley Fons preaches patience. He says for new vehicles, owners have to work through
the car’s several thousand mile break-in period before they get the kind of gas
efficiency the cars can reach:


“So if you’re getting in the forties, ya know, high 40, mid 40, to low 50s in
a Prius and it’s new, don’t worry about it, ya know. It’ll come.”


Fons says some of these cars will get miles-per-gallon in the 60s and 70s. Then there are
the controversial people who’ve become what’s known as “hyper-milers,” getting 80 or 90
miles per gallon through various means that even the hyper-milers concede aren’t
completely safe.


Fons introduces Wayne Gerdes, who tells how to steer a hybrid
in the air draft right behind 18-wheel trucks:


“Hopefully you’ll understand that this close in, is this one car to one and a half second
back, that’s a dangerous area. I don’t recommend anybody doing it, but you’re gonna find
your fuel economy going through the roof on that.”


The hybrid owners club that the Fons family has organized also takes club
members out in hybrids for some lessons on the road:


“So we’ll go down, ya know, another set of streets.”


Bradley Fons sits in the front passenger seat of a Toyota hybrid. He’s
teaching a club member named Bill a driving method called the “pulse-and-
glide.” Basically, it involves only occasionally tapping the gas pedal and coasting
a lot, so that neither the car’s motor or electric battery system is operating much.


When pulse-and-glide is done right, a monitor on the dashboard reports a surge in
fuel efficiency. After some difficulty, Fons helps Bill get the hang of it:


“All right, foot totally off. Now just on a little, there you are. You’re in it, hold it,


(Bill) “Do you take your foot off when you’re in there, though?”


“No, you have to leave pressure on it. Boy, that was the longest glide you did (laughs)!”


It’s moments like these that make Bradley Fons glad he and his family are helping to
spread the hybrid car message. But Fons sees an opportunity for members of his club to
go outside the group and become pro-hybrid activists:


“Hoping dealers get more hybrid cars, working for candidates that push alternative fuels,
sustainable energy, anything that can be done…because at this point in time it hasn’t been
coming from the government. They’ve done some, but our group doesn’t feel they’ve done
enough.”


Fons says politicians should listen to hybrid owners and hybrid clubs, because they’re
offering part of the solution to America’s oil addiction.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

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Feasting on Backyard Weeds

  • Peter Gail holds his favorite weed: the spinach-like lamb's quarters.

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard. There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard.
There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:


Peter Gail of Cleveland loves food. He’s got a lot of meat on his bones.


“Gee, you can’t get me to stop. I start eating this stuff and I can’t stop. It’s terrible, it’s terrible, it’s addictive (laughs).”


But his favorite foods grow right in his backyard, and probably yours. Gail is what’s
known as an ethno-botanist. He’s on a mission to teach more people about how to eat the
plants growing all around their houses. His latest converts are a troop of boy scouts:


“My grandson was one of the boys in this Boy Scout troop. And when I got over to his
house three days after we got back from scout camp, he grabbed the bag, the plastic bag
of weeds that his mother weeded out of the yard that day and dragged it over to me on the
patio and said find the edible plants in here and show me them.”


Gail says the yard becomes more exciting to most kids when they can sit down and
munch. His own love of the backyard snack started when he was just a boy. His family
faced some tough times. They were saved by a common weed known as lamb’s quarters.


“My dad died and left the family with no money. A friend told my mother we could live
off lamb’s quarters. For six months we went out and every day my brother and I would
gather the young tops of lamb’s quarters and then bring them into the house and my
mother would make them into every kind of spinach dish imaginable, until she learned
how to make a living. And then after that she still, we still liked the plant so we still ate it a lot.”


These days you could pay a lot for lamb’s quarters in a gourmet food store. They’re sold
as Belgium spinach. Or, Gail says, you could just take a quick look around your yard.


Today we’re walking around a backyard in suburban Cleveland. We find lamb’s quarters
at the base of a tree. Some say you can recognize the leaves because they look like the
hindquarters of a lamb. Gail thinks they look more like the silhouette of a Christmas tree:


“You’ll notice it has, when you’re looking down on it, it looks like somebody spilled a
little bit of talcum powder on the very top. It has that little dusting of white that is right on the top and on the underside of the leaves you see the same dusting, but taste one leaf, taste a leaf of that.”


And it does taste like spinach, but the USDA reports it’s even more nutritious than
Popeye’s favorite treat.


“It doesn’t take any cooking. It can be eaten raw, or it can be cooked. It will interfere, if you eat too much raw, with the assimilation of both iron and calcium, so you usually want to cook it. It makes a great addition to omelets, great cooked green, great quiches. Any recipe you use spinach in, you can use lamb’s quarters.”


There’s a lot more than just lamb’s quarters in the yard to eat. This time of year, Peter Gail also recommends sautiing the buds or petals from orange and yellow daylilies. He’s also a big fan of dandelions. He suggests looking for the young, tender leaves because they’re less bitter. Gail says he believes dandelions were brought to America by Italian
immigrants. They’re used in lots of Italian recipes:


“80 percent of the things we call weeds were vegetables brought here by immigrants.
That’s one of the reasons most of the things we call weeds in our backyards aren’t
indigenous plants. They aren’t plants that were from America. They’re plants that are
from Europe and Asia and from South America.”


Gail says over time those traditional foods escaped from gardens into the wild. After
World War II, things changed. Most people started buying food at the grocery store and foraging became unpopular. He says only the poor searched the yard for food:


“One by one, as generations went by, the kids didn’t learn as much the second generation,
the third generation they knew nothing. And by the time we reach where we are now,
almost everybody can walk right by the most nutritious plant going, the most commonly eaten
plant back in the 30s and 40s, and not even have a clue what it is.”


Gail is trying to change that. He wants people to become reacquainted with these plants
so we don’t recklessly destroy them. He travels around the country giving workshops,
taking people on neighborhood forages, and teaching cooking classes. Gail believes we
might need these plants again someday.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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Global Warming to Dry Up Wine Production?

Researchers say global warming could knock out premium
wine grape growing by the end of this century. The GLRC’s
Tamara Keith has this report:

Transcript

Researchers say global warming could knock out premium wine grape growing by the
end of this century. The GLRC’s Tamara Keith has this report:


The study uses climate modeling to predict what the weather will be like at the end of the
century in key wine growing regions like California’s famous Napa Valley. The answer:
it’s going to be hot. The number of very hot days will increase, making today’s top wine
growing regions unsuitable in the future.


According to the study, if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reduced, nationwide premium
wine production will drop 81 percent. Noah Diffenbaugh co-authored the study
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:


“The key point is that climate change could have dramatic impacts and that adaptation
will likely be required and that adaptation could be quite costly.”


Critics say climate models aren’t good enough yet to predict future agricultural
outcomes.


For the GLRC, I’m Tamara Keith.

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New Research Center for Ballast Treatment

Foreign, invasive species often get into US waters by
hitching a ride in the ballast water of ocean going ships. Now,
a new research center will work to stop the spread of these invasive species. The research center hopes to develop new treatment systems aimed at catching the critters before they get out. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:

Transcript

Foreign, invasive species often get into U.S. waters by hitching a ride in the ballast water
of ocean-going ships. Now, a new research center will work to stop the spread of these
invasive species. The research center hopes to develop new treatment systems aimed at
catching the critters before they get out. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:


The new research center will be built on the edge of the Duluth-Superior port in
Wisconsin. It’ll include storage tanks to represent ballast tanks on freighters. Researchers can introduce exotic species into the tanks, and test various treatments
designed to kill the pests.


Duluth port director Adolph Ojard says currently, ships are exchanging ballast water in
the ocean before entering U.S. ports:


“We have found that it is effective, but we want to be more effective, and the only way
we can do that is to develop full treatment systems on board the ship.”


Systems to be tested include filters, centrifuges, ultra-violet light, and chemicals. Ojard says it’s likely a combination of treatments will be most effective. He says
researchers will be looking for systems that can work in both older and newer ships.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Study Finds Ethanol Not Efficient Enough

The ag industry, some politicians and now automakers
are pushing the idea that ethanol made from corn will help reduce reliance on foreign oil. But another study further indicates that
corn ethanol is not the best solution. The GLRC’s Lester
Graham reports:

Transcript

The ag industry, some politicians and now automakers are pushing the idea that ethanol
made from corn will help reduce reliance on foreign oil. But, another study further
indicates that corn ethanol is not the best solution. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:


Despite the huge push for corn ethanol, a new study adds to the growing body of
evidence that indicates ethanol from corn is not a viable answer to replace gasoline. New
research from the University of Minnesota has been published by the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences. It shows that ethanol from corn only yields 25
percent more energy than it takes to produce it.


The study also found greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution improvements were
only slight using corn ethanol, a bit better using soy diesel. But, the researchers say even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to bio-fuels instead of food would only
meet 12 percent of the demand for gasoline and six percent of the demand for diesel.


The researchers conclude that other more woody plants and wood by-products could
provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits than food-based bio-fuels.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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Dioxin Standards Delayed?

After the release of a new report, the Environmental
Protection Agency is one step closer to developing new standards
for dioxin exposure. But as the GLRC’s Mark Brush reports,
some scientists say the standards have been delayed by the Bush Administration:

Transcript

After the release of a new report, the Environmental Protection Agency is one step closer
to developing new standards for dioxin exposure. But as the GLRC’s Mark Brush
reports, some scientists say the standards have been delayed by the Bush Administration:


The EPA decided to reassess the standards for dioxin exposure 15 years ago. That was
after scientists found that dioxin can alter human cells. The EPA spent nine more years
researching the chemical. And in 2000, the EPA released a draft of the new standards,
but the Bush Administration wanted more research.


Boston University’s Richard Clapp reviewed the EPA’s draft report in 2000:


“And it was, I thought, very complete and very accurate up to that point. And it was at
that point that we got a new Administration and the decision was made that this needs to
be reviewed yet again by the National Academy of Sciences.”


The authors of this new NAS report say their findings shouldn’t get in the way of
finalizing the EPA’s new dioxin standards.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

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WIND ENERGY SWEEPING AWAY WILDLIFE? (Short Version)

Wind energy is among the fastest growing sources of new electricity generation. Now, scientists are looking at ways to make
wind turbines safer for birds and bats. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:

Transcript

Wind energy is among the fastest growing sources of new electricity generation. Now,
scientists are looking at ways to make wind turbines safer for birds and bats. The
GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:


A study published last year by the Government Accountability Office says wind farms
have had little impact so far on birds and bats, but the study says that could change as
more wind farms go up. The question is how to minimize the risk.


Alex Hoar is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:


“Not all turbines cause a problem. There are turbines around that had bird
problems. There are lots of turbines that don’t. And we’re trying to learn why.”


Hoar says scientists know a lot about migration patterns for both birds and bats. But they
haven’t tracked the animals’ behavior while they’re in the air. Scientists are now using
thermal imaging and radar to study flight patterns in detail, and Bowling Green State
University in Ohio recently won a one million dollar grant to study the impact of smaller
turbines on wildlife.


For the GLRC, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Wind Energy Sweeping Away Wildlife?

  • A single wind turbine can change air currents, creating dangerous winds for birds and other airborne wildlife. (Photo by Michael Tyas)

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity in the United States. For some environmentalists, that’s
good news. Wind turbines don’t spew smoke into the air. There’s no nuclear by-product. But there is an environmental risk. To see it, you have to view the wind turbines through the eyes of a bird.
The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:

Transcript

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity in the United States.
For some environmentalists, that’s good news. Wind turbines don’t spew smoke into the
air. There’s no nuclear byproduct. But there is an environmental risk. To see it, you
have to view the wind turbines through the eyes of a bird. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer
has more:


Chandler Robbins has spent a lot of time studying how birds kill themselves. He says he
would go out on windy nights to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He’d
stand at the bottom of the 555 foot tall obelisk and watch the birds at the top:


“Just as they get to the tower, they just go around the edge of it and bang, the turbulence
from the winds going around the tower, sweeps those birds against the tower, and they’re
killed.”


Speaking at a conference, Robbins tells the crowd he once watched more than 500 birds
slam into the monument in one night, and that monument is standing still. Now imagine
wind turbines, some of them about as tall as the Washington Monument, with spinning
blades that reach nearly a football field in diameter.


Alex Hoar is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says a single turbine can now
change air currents for three acres around the turbine itself:


“So, if you put up a hundred turbines, the blades are sweeping 300 acres. So, that’s a large
space. And what we don’t know is when are birds and bats at risk.”


We don’t know because no one has really studied it. Both Alex Hoar and Chandler
Robbins say scientists know a lot about where birds take off and where they land. They
know about migration patterns, but they don’t know about what birds do, or where they
go while they’re in the air.


So, with more wind farms being built across the country, it’s not clear what affect they
might have on bird populations, but some suspect it won’t be good. Peter Kailing works
with an environmental consulting company. He recently did an environmental impact
study for a new 47 hundred acre commercial wind farm in Michigan. He says scientists
can learn a lot from the wind farms that have already been built. He says the ones that
have done the most damage to wildlife have a few things in common:


“The turbine was in a narrow valley, or a mountain-pass, or on the edge of a large
water body with steep wooded cover that was used by migrating songbirds, there’s almost
always a topographical association.”


Weather also plays a role. Peter Kailing and others say that birds tend to avoid cloud
banks by flying under them. That could put them in the path of turbine blades. So, one
way to limit damage would be to shut the turbines down on cloudy days.


Chandler Robbins says better technology could also limit damage. He says turbine blades
could be equipped with sensors:


“If a bird or a bat collided with that blade, it would set up enough vibration so that the
blade could be feathered temporarily to avoid other birds striking until the immediate
problem is over.”


Feathering essentially means that you twist the angle of the blade so that wind passes
over it, rather than pushing the blade into a spin. That way, birds aren’t sucked into it.
It’s basically the turbine’s braking system. Some say you don’t even need a sensor on the
turbine. They say engineers could monitor radar and thermal imaging. That would tell
them if any migrating birds are in the area, and if they are, feather the blades.


Of course, the absolute safest solution in the short term might be just to stop building
wind farms, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks that’s a good idea.
Most seem to realize that any way of making electricity will have some impact on the
environment. The question is what can be done with each of them to minimize the risk.
With wind energy, that work is just getting started.


For the GLRC, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Firewood Fuels Ash Borer Problem

  • A live adult emerald ash borer. (Photo by Jodie Ellis, Purdue University)

If you’re packing up the car for a camping trip, you can’t
leave without the marshmallows and duct tape and bug spray, but
in more and more places, you can’t take firewood with you. That’s because government officials are worried about a destructive beetle
that people are spreading by moving firewood. The GLRC’s
Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

If you’re packing up the car for a camping trip, you can’t leave without the
marshmallows and duct tape and bug spray, but in more and more places, you
can’t take firewood with you. That’s because government officials are
worried about a destructive beetle that people are spreading by moving
firewood. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:


(Sound of RV humming)


Butch Sloan can’t imagine camping without a fire:


“Sitting back and watching the wood burn and kinda dreaming about old times
or whatever, you know? That’s part of your camping. Yeah, you gotta have
your camp fire!”


Sloan’s been coming to this Michigan campground from his home in Ohio for 20
years now. For the past few years, it’s been illegal for anyone to move
hardwood firewood over the state line. There can be steep fines if you’re
caught.


That’s because of the emerald ash borer. It’s an invader from Asia that’s
killing millions of ash trees in the upper Midwest. Moving just one piece
of infested firewood can start a new outbreak. Beetles can emerge from the
wood and fly to healthy ash trees.


Butch Sloan says he brings wood from construction sites or buys firewood at
the campground instead:


“As far as trying to bring regular firewood across the state lines, the fines
are just too high. I don’t want to take a chance on it, you know? We bring
the two by fours and stuff like that, and that’s good fire, good cooking, you
know!”


But there are plenty of campers who ignore the laws and bring firewood with
them. That’s why states such as Michigan and Ohio are setting up
checkpoints along highways. They’re trying to catch people sneaking
firewood out of infested areas.


(Sound of traffic)


Here on a two lane country road in Northwest Ohio, every car and truck is
being stopped. State workers ask the drivers if they’ve got firewood.


“If we do find someone that has brought firewood with them, we ask them to
pull into a parking lot and at that point we begin to interview them to find
out where the firewood came from.”


Stephanie Jaqua is a crew leader with the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
She says a lot of the people they catch don’t understand the quarantine
laws. But she says others don’t think they’re part of the problem:


“We have had people in the past say there’s no ash in the back of my truck, you know,
there’s no way I’m transporting emerald ash borer, and then you get to the
bottom and there are four pieces of ash in the bottom.”


Jaqua says that’s why the laws are written the way they are. It’s illegal
to move any hardwood firewood out of quarantined areas, not just ash wood.
Jaqua says the best thing campers can do is buy firewood where they camp and
burn it all up at the site.


A lot of campers say the firewood rules are annoying, but the rules have
changed everything for some people.


Jim Albring owns Lumber Jacks Quality Firewood. His business is in
Michigan, just a mile and a half from Ohio. He says before the ash borer
arrived, most of his customers were in Ohio. Then, suddenly, he couldn’t
move firewood across the state line.


“It was profitable and we were increasing by 25-30% a year until the ash
borer hit. And now we’ve dropped uh, boy, I don’t even know. I don’t really
look at the figures too much any more because it’s disheartening.”


Albring says at first, he could only sell to people a few miles away in
Michigan, so his customer base totally dropped out. He says these days,
people from Ohio still drive up and try to buy firewood from him.


“If we know or we’re suspicious it’s going back to Ohio, we tell them how
heavy the fines are and then they usually back off right away and they don’t
try to get it.”


That’s the problem with trying to stop the destructive insect from spreading
across the country. Even government officials admit there’s no way to stop
every single person from moving firewood.


Patricia Lockwood directs ash borer policy for Michigan:


“I think it’s going to be extremely difficult and we’ve known that from day
one, to stop it. What we have always agreed on is we’re buying ourselves
time. What we’re looking for is time so that the science can catch up.”


And researchers are scrambling to find something that will stop the ash
borer, a natural predator or a perfect pesticide. But scientists say
states have to contain the infestations in the meantime.


That means there’s a lot of pressure on campers and hunters to change their
habits. Tossing some wood in the back of the truck on the way up north used
to be pretty harmless. Now it’s changing entire landscapes, as millions of
trees get wiped out by the beetle.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Governor Blocks Great Lakes Water Diversion

The governor of Michigan is blocking a request by a town in
Wisconsin to pump water from Lake Michigan. The GLRC’s Sarah
Hulett reports:

Transcript

The governor of Michigan is blocking a request by a town in
Wisconsin to pump water from Lake Michigan. The GLRC’s Sarah
Hulett reports:


Under federal law right now, any one of the eight Great Lakes
governors can veto a proposed water withdrawal, but a
proposed agreement between the eight states would allow
communities that straddle the boundary that defines the Great
Lakes basin to draw water from the lakes.


The town of New Berlin, Wisconsin sits on the boundary. It’s
asking for permission to draw water from Lake Michigan for the
half of the city that sits outside the basin, but Governor Granholm
of Michigan says she won’t consider the request.


Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Spokesman Bob
McCann says he realizes one town won’t drain the lake:


“But a thousand such proposals coming in may do that. So the question is,
where do you draw the line?”


Michigan’s governor says until that new multi-state agreement is
ratified, it’s important not to set a bad precedent.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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