Oil Prices on the Rise

  • Stephen Schork says the rising prices are based more on investor momentum than anything else, and that there’s plenty of oil on the market.(Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration)

Oil and gasoline prices are going up this summer. Lester Graham reports, it appears the higher prices are not caused by lower supplies.

Transcript

The Energy Information Administration’s new short-term energy outlook says gasoline prices will average about $2.92 this summer– hitting $3.00 or more in some regions. That’s about 50-cents a gallon higher than last summer.

The outlook also predicts oil prices to average $82 a barrel this summer. But, oil already hit $86 a barrel this week.

Stephen Schork with The Schork Report says… the government projections were put together about a week ago… and didn’t really anticipate the investors driving prices up this week.

“So this rally that we are seeing and this upward buy is based more on investor momentum than it is on underlying fundamentals. There’s plenty of oil on the market right now.”

The government says prices should remain relatively stable but rising… although is notes uncertainty over crude oil price forecasts remains high.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Farmers Hit by Rising Gas Prices

Rising energy prices for natural gas have been hurting homeowners. Now, economists say 2006 is going to be a rough year for farmers as well. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:

Transcript

Rising energy prices for natural gas have been hurting homeowners. Now, economists say 2006
is going to be a rough year for farmers as well. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner
explains:


At the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention, agriculture economists predicted a 10 percent
drop in farmers’ income this year. Rising energy prices can affect a farmer’s ability to borrow
money, and they make nearly everything on a farm more expensive – fertilizer, fuel for
machinery and irrigation.


Keith Collins is chief economist for the USDA.


“As we look out to 2006, the general forecasts are for slightly higher diesel prices and for higher
natural gas prices which is the main component in nitrogen fertilizer, the most important fertilizer
that farmers use.”


Collins says to address the problem, the USDA is targeting grants and loans to energy production
and conservation projects in rural areas. The agency is also developing tools for producers to
evaluate and improve energy efficiency on their farms.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

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Farmland Increasing Worldwide

The amount of farmland is decreasing throughout the Midwest. But scientists say the amount of agricultural land is increasing worldwide… bringing additional challenges to U.S. farmers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Farmland is disappearing throughout the Midwest, but scientists
say the amount of agricultural land is increasing worldwide… bringing
additional challenges to U.S. farmers. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Researchers have used satellite data and statistics from
government agencies to determine that more than one-third of the
earth’s land is used for agricultural activity.


Scientist Navin Ramankutty is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He says urban sprawl may be gobbling up farmland in the Midwest,
but in places like South America, farms are replacing the rainforest.
Ramankutty says the change concerns U.S. soybean farmers.


“The U.S. still continues to be the largest soybean exporter in the world,
but Brazil’s catching up really fast. So, soybean farmers here in the
Midwest are concerned about whether/how their markets will change
in the future.”


But while the global growth in agriculture is feeding more people,
Ramankutty says there are downsides for the environment in terms of
more water pollution and loss of forests. So, he says his research
team is trying to weigh the tradeoffs, and make recommendations on
what might be the best locations for new farms.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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DRAWING UP AN ENERGY EFFICIENT MORTGAGE (Short Version)

  • A mortgage program through Fannie Mae can help people buy older homes and make them more energy efficient with one loan. (Photo by Lester Graham)

As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills,
one loan officer in the region is promoting energy efficiency when
people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills, one loan officer in the
region
is promoting energy efficiency when people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The government and government-chartered companies such as Fannie Mae offer Energy
Efficient Mortgages. But relatively few homeowners take advantage of them. Under the
program, new or existing homes are inspected and rated for energy efficiency. The
homeowners decide which energy-efficient improvements to do, and then roll the cost of
them into their mortgage.


Joel Wiese is a loan officer. He recently closed one of the few non-governmental
energy
efficient mortgages in the Great Lakes region.


“When you start looking at the total housing expense, utilities on top of the rest
of what
you’re doing, you’re basically going to spend less money than you normally would.
Because you’re reducing your utilities. Even though you’re increasing your mortgage
slightly, you’re reducing your utilities significantly. It’s a win-win.”


Wiese says there haven’t been more energy efficient mortgages in the region because
few
realtors, loan officers and lenders know how to use the program.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

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Outdoor Lab Forecasts Global Warming Effects

  • Mark Kubiske checks the valve that controls the flow of greenhouse gases to a stand of sugar maples, birch and aspen. (Photo by Jennifer Simonson)

Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:

Transcript

Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:


(sound of “quiet area”)


The north woods of the Great Lakes states are stands of millions of acres of pine, maple, birch, and aspen forests. It’s a perfect place to try to figure out how trees will react to the higher levels of ozone and carbon dioxide scientists expect in the future.


(sound of beeping fence gate)


The first thing you notice at Aspen Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Project – Aspen FACE for short – is two huge tanks inside the fenced in enclosure. Each one is bigger than an 18-wheel tanker truck. They’re full of carbon dioxide… CO2. So much CO2 is used in this experiment, the tanks are filled twice a day.


(sound of filling tanks)


If you looked at the site from an airplane, you’d see 12 circular tree stands surrounded by 30 foot high pipes. Those pipes pour CO2 or ozone gases or both into the air surrounding birch, sugar maple, and aspen trees. The scientists know that greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere have been increasing. They believe two centuries of industrial pollution has contributed to the problem. And they expect the CO2 and ozone levels to double by the end of this century. They’re raising the level of greenhouse gasses in different mixes to see what the predicted levels will do to forests.


This open air project is different than previous experiments. David Karnosky is with Michigan Tech. He’s the Project Manager for Aspen FACE. He says before these kinds of projects, they just tested trees inside places like greenhouses.


“We needed to get out of those chambers. We needed to have a more realistic, real world sort of situation where we had multiple trees. We wanted real intact forest communities. We didn’t want to have just a small number of trees inside of a chamber.”


The United States Department of Energy launched this experiment in Wisconsin’s northwoods seven years ago. Karnosky says they’re learning how the trees react to the higher CO2 levels, and that could shape the future of the world’s timber industry.


“Who will be the winners? Who will be the losers? Will aspen or birch or sugar maple? In northern Wisconsin here we’ve got probably 40 million acres of those species mixes. What’s going to happen under elevated CO2 in the next 100 years? Will these forests remain as they are?”


(sound of driving on gravel)


Driving to one of the experimental circles, we pull up to a ring of trees. Mark Kubiske is one of the two full-time on-site researchers.


“Now this particular ring is an elevated CO2 plot. CO2 is delivered through this copper pipe. It runs to that fan, there’s a large fan right on the end of that gray building.”


The scientists have found that trees in the CO2 circles grow 30 percent faster than trees without the gas.


“The trees are larger in diameter, they’re straight, they have lots of leaf area, they just look very healthy. That is just in tremendous contrast to the ozone ring. We’ll go up around the corner and look at one.”


Nearby another circle of trees is not doing nearly as well. The trees are skinny, twisted not as tall as the other sites. Higher ozone levels are hurting the trees.


At the sites where pipes emit both ozone and CO2, the tree growth seems normal – except for some stunted maple trees. The leaves of the aspen and birch take in much of the CO2, convert it to sugar which goes to its roots, eventually becoming a natural part of the soil. That suggests forests may help alleviate gases that cause global warming. The Project Director, David Karnosky says CO2 and ozone appear to cancel each other out. But he says it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. Ultimately, he says governments will be able to look at this glimpse into the future and try to come up with emissions policies that help.


“The whole issue of the Kyoto protocol, our government not signing off on that. There’s been some relaxing of the feelings from what I’ve seen from the President’s report now that they’re beginning to realize that elevated CO2 is having an impact on global warming and could be impacting our plant communities.”


Karnosky says it’s possible that besides reducing emissions, governments might determine that planting more trees might be very helpful in reducing greenhouse gasses worldwide.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

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Region’s Forest Cover Growing

  • Forestland along the shore of Lake Superior. According to a new report, the amount of forests in the Great Lakes basin is increasing, but the researchers have yet to determine the quality of these forests. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Great Lakes National Program Office)

This week, researchers, government agencies, industry, and environmental groups are meeting in Toronto to try to assess the overall environmental health of the Great Lakes. The gathering is known as the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports, the group says there’s good news about the amount of forestland in the region:

Transcript

This week, researchers, government agencies, industry, and environmental
groups are meeting in Toronto to try to assess the overall environmental
health of the Great Lakes. The gathering is known as the State of the Lakes
Ecosystem Conference. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush
reports, the group says there’s good news about the amount of forestland in
the region:


The report prepared for this year’s conference says there is more forestland
in the Great Lakes Basin when comparing recent data to data collected more than
a decade ago. The report’s authors say forestland now covers a little over half
of the basin’s total land.


Constance Carpenter is with the U.S. Forest Service. She helped develop the report.
She says forests are crucial to maintaining the environmental health of the Lakes.


“They do a lot of things in terms of water quality. They’re able to provide conditions
that really contribute to watershed health in terms of, you know, moderating flood peaks,
storing water, filtering pollutants, transforming chemicals, all those things.”


Carpenter says one of the reasons forestland is increasing is because fewer people are
farming. She says as people leave behind fields and pasturelands, those lands often
convert back to forestland. The authors caution that their data did not look at whether
these forests are near lakes and streams, where their influence on the overall health of
the Lakes is greatest.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

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