Marc Baldo, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (left) and Shalom Goffri, postdoc in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (right) hold examples of organic solar concentrators. (Photo by Donna Coveney at MIT, courtesy of NSF)
Some researchers say they’ve found a way to make every window
in a building gather solar energy. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Some researchers say they’ve found a way to make every window
in a building gather solar energy. Lester Graham reports:
MIT engineers say they can coat plastic or glass to redirect sunlight to the edges of a
window – to solar cells.
Instead of using a whole panel of expensive solar cells, the cells could just be aligned
just along the edges. The system could be used for solar panels, or could be used as
windows on tall glass paneled buildings.
Marc Baldo is the team leader at MIT.
“We think that this is a very practical and simple technology. It just relies on simple
coating processes. We have to develop techniques to, you know, manufacture and
integrate solar cells on the edges. But we’re optimistic that this might be useful within,
sort of, two to three year time frame.”
The researchers outlined their findings in the journal, Science. They say the focused
light at the edges really increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell.
A new report says the Great Lakes are being threatened by toxic algae growth. The blue-green algae is reappearing despite efforts in the 1970’s to combat the problem. The GLRC’s Laleah Fernandez reports:
Transcript
A new report says the Great Lakes are being threatened by toxic algae
growth. The blue-green algae is reappearing despite efforts in the
1970’s to combat the problem. The GLRC’s Laleah Fernandez reports:
Environmental groups say phosphorus pollution is causing the growth of
blue-green algae, which can kill fish and plants in the lakes. Phosphorus gets in the lakes
when lawn or farm fertilizers run off into waterways and because dishwashing detergent
still contains phosphates.
Hugh McDiarmid is with the Michigan Environmental Council, which released
the report. He says invasive species, such as zebra mussels, also promote
the growth of the toxic algae:
“They filter the water and make it clearer, which would seem on the surface
to be a good thing, but allows sunlight to reach deeper into the water
column and allows algae, therefore, to grow much deeper in the water than it
had before the mussels arrived.”
McDiarmid says shallow lakes such as Lakes Erie and St. Clair are especially
vulnerable because the algae on the bottom of the lakes is closer to sunlight.
The University of Maryland's solar powered house, designed to resemble the path of the sun across the sky, contrasts with the older architecture of the Smithsonian Museum.
(Photo by Stefano Paltera/Solar Decathlon)
18 teams from around the world are competing this week
in a solar home competition in Washington, D.C. Each team competes
to see who can build the most aesthetic and livable solar home.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Guerra reports:
Transcript
Eighteen teams from around the world are competing this week in a solar home
competition in Washington, D.C. Each team competes to see who can build the
most aesthetic and livable solar home. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Jennifer Guerra reports:
Richard King is the director of the Solar Decathlon
Competition in the nation’s capital. We called him on his cell phone as he
was wandering around the National Mall checking out the different houses.
We asked him why he thought solar homes have a future in the housing market.
“You see gas prices are going up, natural gas prices are going up. We call
that volatility in the supply market. Solar energy doesn’t have that. Yes,
you have to buy a collector that you put on your house, but from then, on for the
next twenty years, you don’t have to worry about the price of energy going up
because the sunlight is free.”
Free and limitless, as King points out, and the houses being put up on
the mall try to show how they take advantage of that energy and still look
like something you’d want to live in. As King wandered around the solar
village, he stopped at the University of Michigan’s house.
“Michigan just got their end caps on, and now we finally see what it looks
like. We were all wondering what they had up their sleeve, so it’s pretty
neat.”
Before the University of Michigan team shipped their house to D.C., we
dropped by the School of Architecture. They were just putting the finishing
touches on their entry.
(Sound of talking)
That’s John Beeson, the project manager of the Michigan Solar House
project. It’s called Mi-So for short. They had to be creative to make sure
their entry was dependent on the sun for energy.
“This is a solar contest, so we are very limited in terms of what we can do for energy production. We can’t even convert kinetic energy, somebody bouncing on something, into electrical energy. We’re very limited.”
The house has to be totally off the grid, which means lots of large
batteries and thin, photovoltaic panels, neither of which make for an
aesthetically pleasing house. And in the world of architecture, if it doesn’t look good from the outside, no one’s going to care if its energy efficient.
“Most consumers today aren’t gonna buy something just because it’s sustainable.”
Lee Devore is the Michigan team’s operations manager.
“But if you have two apples, and they’re identical, and their cost is
roughly the same, if one is more sustainable than the other, it’s that extra
thing, but the thing they’re really concerned about is that it’s still a beautiful
thing to possess.”
Back on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Solar Decathlon
Competition director Richard King says in this contest, beauty’s as
important as sustainability.
“In the 70’s, we just stuck solar collectors on the roofs in all kinds of
directions and one of the barriers are a lot of people didn’t like that up there on
their roof. So we’ve employed these schools of architecture to design very
beautiful-looking buildings with solar integrated in to actually
prove that solar energy works.”
So to make Michigan’s solar house stand out as the belle at the D.C.
National Mall, John Beeson says the team turned to Michgan’s most noted
industry, the automakers, for tips.
BEESON: “People like taking their cars and tricking them out, and the house is the same thing, you
just don’t know you’re doing it, every time you move into it. So why not make the architecture built that way, so that people can change it and affect it the way they want. So for us, there would just be panelized construction. We would just put these panels up, I’m done with this sink, this mirror combination. I’m gonna take it down and sell it on Ebay.”
GUERRA: “Are people ready for this?”
BEESON: “We hope. If not, it’ll be a good exploratory example of it on the
National Mall for people to go see.”
Even after a winning team’s been picked, the challenges aren’t over. It’s one thing to build a solar prototype for the competition, it’s another to
take that prototype and turn it into homebuilding that can be mass-produced
for less waste and lower costs. Once that happens, we might just see solar
homes popping up in new neighborhoods.
Great Lakes researchers are looking for volunteers to help search for an invasive aquatic plant that can choke out native vegetation, and make it tough to fish or boat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Great Lakes researchers are looking for volunteers to help search for an invasive aquatic
plant that can choke out native vegetation, and make it tough to fish or boat. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Universities and Sea Grant programs throughout the region want people to search bays
and inland lakes for a non-native plant called hydrilla. It’s been found in waterways in
southern states and on the East Coast. Researchers want to make sure hydrilla doesn’t
gain a foothold in the Great Lakes.
Howard Wandell is an inland lakes specialist at Michigan State University. He says
hydrilla forms a net of vines at the surface of the water.
“It’s difficult to motorboat through and obviously trying to cast fishing lures through it is
very difficult if not impossible. And of course then just the idea of even trying to swim
in it, people are very repulsed by the idea of trying to go out and try to recreate in this
tangled mass of vegetation.”
Wandell says hydrilla also blocks sunlight, which can kill native water plants.
When people drink a tall glass of milk, they seldom think of how much energy it takes to produce the milk they consume. (Photo by Adrian
Becerra)
A dairy farmer who got tired of shipping his milk to far away dairies is now processing it on the farm. By not trucking it away, he’s reducing the amount of energy used to produce milk and giving local customers different kinds of dairy products. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Transcript
A dairy farmer who got tired of shipping his milk to far away dairies is now processing it on the farm. By not trucking it away, he’s reducing the amount of energy used to produce milk and giving local customers different kinds of dairy products. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
(sound of glass clinking)
Recycled glass bottles are banging around inside a giant dish washer.
“Bottles just are put in here in rows and they go through a soap tank for 3 to 4 minutes and they come through a few rinse cycles and a chlorine rinse, down the belt down to the filler.”
After they’re washed, the bottles are filled with milk and capped. Crates of fat-free, 2 percent, whole and chocolate milk are stacked into a cooler.
Sally and George Shetler set up this bottling plant on their farm 5 years ago. They say for a pretty small investment, they’re reaping more profits. They’re also saving energy because they don’t ship their milk somewhere else for processing. Their 38 cows are just a few feet away in their barn, so the milk’s journey from cows udders to containers is short.
George Shetler used to just sell his raw milk to a company that would pump it out of his tank and into their truck. But he says – like milk everywhere – the first trip was only the beginning of a long trip for his cows’ milk.
“Now some of the larger dairies, it goes through one or two transfer stations where it’s transferred from one truck to another truck to another truck to a milk plant. I’ve got a cousin that used to drive for a milk company out west where he was hauling milk from New Mexico up to North Dakota for processing then some of it goes from North Dakota to Wisconsin for processing.”
And so a lot of fuel is wasted getting the milk from cow to jug. George Shetler says he’s also saving energy at the beginning of the process. Instead of trucking in grain, or burning fuel to plant and harvest grain to feed the cows, he’s letting his cows eat grass.
Brian Halweil is with the WorldWatch Institute in Washington DC. He has written a book on local agriculture called “Eat Here.” He says the grass-fed cows require less energy to produce milk than do cows on modern farms.
“The feed that the cows eat needs to be brought in, driven in, which consumes a lot of energy, the production of that grain takes a lot of energy, there’s water pumping and cleaning that’s associated with factory farmed dairy cows and in contrast to that the grass-fed farms essentially runs on sunlight.”
Sunlight is the only energy grass needs to grow. But despite all the savings in energy costs, the Shetlers’ milk is more expensive. That’s because the huge system in place to distribute milk works on economies of scale. The big dairies can balance production and distribution. Milk reaches just the right place at the right time in the right amount. The dairies also get huge government subsidies to keep the price of milk lower.
“It’s kind of a fake price that we pay in the supermarket.”
Brian Halweil says that the price should not be the only reason to buy a locally produced gallon. Burning extra diesel fuel and gasoline should also be considered.
“It’s a price that doesn’t include the cost of shipping, that doesn’t include all the pollution associated with that shipping and it doesn’t include all the health and environmental and social impact of factory-raised animals versus a local grass-fed dairy.”
And many people would rather buy the milk from cows that don’t receive as much antibiotic medicines and hormone injections that make the cows produce more milk.
Inside their pasteurizing vat the milk is heated to a lower temperature. This allows some of the enzymes to stay alive, which some people believe is healthier. One customer says she comes to the store right on the farm because she wants to connect with the people and animals that make what she drinks.
“It’s much better. That’s all I can say. It’s wonderful milk.”
And many of the customers who buy the locally-produced milk from nearby stores say they prefer it. Just like farmers markets, local dairy products are becoming popular. Environmentalists believe that’s good for the local economy and for saving fuel.
Most of us are using 125-year-old technology to light our homes. 95-percent of the energy used by a light bulb is heat. Only five-percent actually is used to produce light. (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of American History, gift of the Department of Engineering, Princeton University, 1961)
Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient… and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy… not less. As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs… and starts at the beginning:
Transcript
Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient, and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy, not less. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs and starts at the beginning:
We’re getting a behind the scenes look at a pretty significant historical artifact. Marc Gruether is pulling back a plastic tarpaulin that covers a row of file cabinets.
Gruether: “We are in one of the storage areas in the Henry Ford Museum. And drawer eleven has this light bulb in it which I will very carefully remove. It’s certainly one of the oldest Edison light bulbs that’s in existence. This is one of the lamps that was used in the December 1879 demonstration at Menlo Park.”
Graham: “Now, looking at it, I can see that it’s got that kind of bulbous shape, I can see the filament, I mean, I would recognize this easily as a light bulb.”
Gruether: ““Absolutely. It’s a recognizable light bulb. You’re exactly right. That all looks forward to the kind of lamp forms that became common and that we’d recognize today.”
And that’s not all that’s the same. Just like the first light bulbs, the incandescent bulbs most of us use in our homes today, waste energy. 95% of the energy used is expended in heat. Only five-percent actually makes light. That means everytime you switch on the light – if it’s an incadescent bulb – you’re wasting 95% of the electricity your paying for. In our homes, not much has changed in the last hundred years or so. But in commercial buildings, things have changed a lot.
Commercial builders and industrial architects learned a long time ago that energy efficiency is important. Most of the new office building and factories built today use passive sunlight and high-efficiency lighting that not only saves energy but uses the right spectrum of light to get the best output from their employees.
Moji Navvab teaches about light in architecture at the University of Michigan. He says you can learn a lot about good energy efficient light too. He says with the wide variety of fluorescent, LED, and spot lighting, you can get the right kind of light for whatever you’re doing and use a lot less electricity compared to a house lit only by traditional incandescent bulbs. It’s about using the right light for the right place. Navvab says, really, it’s pretty simple and you can get a lot of information about proper lighting on the Internet.
“If you really are focusing on healthy lighting or you want to save energy, if you go search on the web right away, you can get the information and then you can go to your local stores and they can match it for you.”
But at the local store, most of the time buyers are not very well-informed at all.
Beverly Slack is a salesperson at Kendall Lighting in Okemos, Michigan. She says unless they ask, she doesn’t push energy efficient lighting. And when she does mention fluorescent lighting, which uses about one-fourth the energy that incadescent bulbs use, customers grimace.
“Right. But, they don’t realize the difference in the fluorescent lamps, how they’ve changed, how the different colors have changed in the fluorescents. They’re still thinking of the old standard cool white so, people don’t want them because of that fact.”
Slack says what customers really want is dramatic lighting, and lots of it. They want trendy, recessed lights and track lights that often use extremely hot burning bulbs in a way that’s interesting, but not often very useful.
“They want decorative, decorative, decorative. I mean, it’s amazing. Because I can just see their light bills going sky high.”
Slack says the trend in home lighting in recent years has been just the opposite of commercial lighting. At home, people are using more light, more fixtures, and less energy efficient bulbs. With the trend in new houses being larger, requiring more lights, and homeowners wanting decorative lighting to show off their big new houses, conservation at home is often just being ignored.
It’s no longer about turning off the light when you leave the room, it’s about lighting up the showplace. And as long as the power bill is lower than the mortgage, it’ll probably stay that way.
Smokestacks, diesel engines, and a number of other things cause particulate emissions, which can create some negative health effects, and aggravate existing health problems. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)
In the summer, local weather forecasts often
include information about dangerous ozone levels.
But scientists are learning more and more about
another type of pollution that can reach harmful
levels even in the winter months. And as the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports… we
might be hearing more about this type of pollution in
our daily weather reports:
Transcript
In the summer, local weather forecasts often include information about dangerous ozone levels. But scientists are learning more and more about another type of pollution that can reach harmful levels even in the winter months. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, we might be hearing more about this type of pollution in our daily weather reports:
Parts of the region recently reached “code red” for poor air quality. And
that had some people perplexed. Warnings about dangerous levels of ozone are
frequent on hot summer days, especially in urban areas. But this was the
middle of winter.
The warnings were for high levels of tiny particles that federal regulators
only recently began monitoring. They’re spewn from diesel engines,
factories, power plants, and fireplaces. Air monitors in Michigan,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Indiana recently registered unhealthy levels of
these particles – some of them for a few days straight.
Jim Haywood says the problem was an unusual weather event for this time of
year. Haywood is a meteorologist with the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality. He says a high pressure system moved very slowly over
the Great Lakes region for several days. When you get high pressure, the air
below sinks, generating a layer of warm air that acts like a lid.
“So that warm air that was sinking effectively stops at a few hundred feet
from the surface of the ground. It acts like a cap. It does not let any of
the pollutants that are released at the surface pop up through that cap.”
So all the pollutants that would have gotten picked up and diluted by the
wind instead just hung out for days – building up, and reflecting sunlight
to create haze.
Eventually, a cold front pushed the high pressure system out of the way, and
took the pollution with it. But what about those few days when the Environmental Protection Agency was warning about unhealthy levels of particulate pollution? For people with
heart or lung disease, agency health officials say short-term episodes can
lead to asthma attacks or even heart attacks. And they say healthy children
and adults can experience throat and lung irritation.
Susan Stone is an environmental health scientist with EPA. She says
particle pollution warnings could soon become a staple of the daily weather
report – much like the familiar summer ozone warnings.
“With ozone, we have the network in place to be able to deliver those
forcasts, people are used to hearing that on TV, and we are working to
provide that same level of coverage for particle pollution.”
Stone says EPA is rolling out a new program called Enviro-Flash
nationwide. It sends real-time air quality information to people’s email
accounts or pagers. EPA is offering the service through state
environmental agencies. And beginning in 2010, areas that register
unacceptable levels of particle pollution will be required to clean up their
air.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
The Duluth Seaway Port Authority's bulk cargo dock is typical of many in the port. Officials are troubled by corrosion appearing on the docks in the harbor - the steel is corroding much faster than normal. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
A piece of steel that has been removed from a dock
wall, showing extensive pitting. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Engineer and diver Chad Scott (left) discovered the dock corrosion in the late 1990's, and suspects a microbiological connection. Jim Sharrow (right), Duluth Seaway Port Authorities Facilities Manager, is hoping for some fast answers. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Corrosion is eating away at the steel walls that hold one of the Great Lakes’ busiest harbors together. The corrosion is unlike anything known to be happening in any other Great Lakes port. But other port officials are being encouraged to take a closer look at their own underwater steel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:
Transcript
Corrosion is eating away at the steel walls that hold
one of the Great Lakes’ busy harbors together. The
corrosion is unlike anything known to be happening in
any other Great Lakes port. But other port officials
are being encouraged to take a closer look at their own
underwater steel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Bob Kelleher reports:
Some kind of corrosion is eating away at the Duluth
Seaway port’s docks. The docks are those long
earth-filled metal rectangles where ships from around
the world tie up to load and unload. Those docks are
lined with sheets of steel, and the steel is rusting
away. Jim Sharrow is the Duluth
Seaway Port Authorities Facilities Manager.
“It’s corroding quickly – much faster than people expect
in fresh water. And our main concern is that we’ll lose
the integrity and the strength of the dock long before
expected, and have to do steel replacement at $1,500 or
more per lineal foot, much earlier than ever would have
been expected.”
Corrosion should be a slow process in Duluth’s cold
fresh water. But, Sharrow says, there’s evidence it’s
been happening remarkably quickly for about thirty years.
“What we seem to see here is corrosion that started in
the mid 1970s. We have steel that’s 100 years olds
that’s about as similarly corroded to steel that is 25
to 30 years old.”
It’s a big problem. There’s about thirteen miles of
steel walls lining docks in the harbor that serves
Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. There’s half
again as many feet of wooden docks, held together with
steel pins. There’s corrosion on the legs of highway
bridges and the giant
steel ore docks that ship millions of tons of taconite
– a type of iron shipped to steel mills in Gary,
Indiana and Cleveland, Ohio.
“We characterize this as a 100-million dollar problem in
the harbor. It’s a huge problem, and what is so odd
about this is that we only see it happening in the
navigational area of the Duluth-Superior Harbor.”
The harbor links the St Louis River with Lake Superior.
Go a few miles up the river and there’s little corrosion
. So it doesn’t seem like the problem’s there. But, back
in the harbor, at the current rate of corrosion, Sharrow
says, the steel will fail quickly.
“I figure that in about 10 years at the current rate,
we will have to start replacing steel.”
“Particularly marginal operators could decide rather
than repair their docks it would be better for them to
go out of business, and we’re hoping that that isn’t
the case here.”
While the cause is a mystery, there’s no shortage of
theories. It could have something to do with stray
electrical voltage; water acidity; or the kinds of
steel manufactured in recent years. Chad Scott
discovered the corrosion in the late 1990’s. He’s an
engineer and a diver. Scott suspects
a micro-biological connection. He says there might be
something growing in small round pits that form on the
steel.
“We cleaned up the water. That’s the main thing –
that’s one of the main changes that’s happened since
the 70s, is we’ve cleaned up our water. We’ve cleaned
up our harbor, which is a good thing. But, when we
cleaned things up we also induced more dissolved oxygen
and more sunlight can penetrate the water, which tends
to usually promote more growth – more marine
microbiology growth.”
A team of experts met in Duluth in September to share
ideas. They came from the U.S. Navy, The Army Corp of
Engineers, and Ohio State University. And they agreed
there’s something odd going on – possibly related to
microbes or water chemistry. They also recommend that
other Great Lakes ports take a closer look at their
underwater steel. Scott says they at least helped
narrow the focus.
“We have a large laundry list right now. We want to
narrow that down and try to decide what is the real
cause of this corrosion. And these experts, hopefully,
will be able to get us going on the right direction,
so we can start doing testing that will identify the
problem.”
With the experts recommendations in hand, port
officials are now planning a formal study. If they
do figure out the cause, then they’ve got to figure
out how to prevent it. They’re in a race with
something, and right now they don’t even know with
what.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Kelleher.
Stands of pine like this have been clear-cut to demonstrate an option that forest owners can take to manage their property. (Photo by Keran
McKenzie)
Most forests in the Great Lakes region are privately owned. That concerns the U.S. Forest Service because the agency says many forest owners don’t know how to properly manage their woodlands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports that a new education project that demonstrates tree-harvesting techniques has angered some residents:
Transcript
Most forests in the Great Lakes region are privately owned. That concerns the U.S.
Forest Service because the agency says many forest owners don’t know how to properly
manage their woodlands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports that a
new education project that demonstrates tree-harvesting techniques has angered some residents:
(sound of chain saws)
Workers are cutting down trees in a fifty-year-old pine crop. At the same time, state
foresters are leading a botanist, a private tree farmer, and a reporter through this forest
education site. One of the foresters, Rick Miller, is directing the chain saws to show what
needs to be cut for what’s called a “crop tree release.”
“This one here we selected out with the orange flags, the trees that show the best form and
dominance in the crown. They have a nice big healthy crown. And then what we’re doing is removing
any trees that are touching the crowns of those ones that are orange, and just opening it up
to give the crown more room up there to spread out and possibly increase their growth and their
vigor.”
A forest owner who wants to make money off his pine stand might do a crop tree release to
improve the quality of the remaining timber. The bigger the tree, the more money it’s worth
to a logging company.
Heading deeper in, a crop of pine trees lined up like soldiers trails to our right, and wilder
hardwoods shade us from the left. There are signs to demarcate different timbering techniques:
improvement cut, understory removal, selective cut. Project manager Frank Corona stops at one
section of oaks, maples and cherries.
“You have small trees, medium trees, some larger trees. Trees are probably selectively
harvested in here and you have all different ages of trees in this stand…”
The cool shaded path abruptly opens up. The lush canopy is replaced by harsh sunlight.
GRANT: “Oh wow, so this is the clear-cut…”
CORONA: “This is the clear-cut.”
The forest is gone… cut to the ground. All that remains are the 120 hardwood stumps on
the torn-up dirt. Botanist Steve McKee suports construction of the demonstration site.
But he also loves trees.
GRANT: “What do you think when you see that clear-cut?”
MCKEE: “Well, clear-cuts are never pretty, ya know? So, uh, I think the most shocking thing
for me is I’ve walked in this my whole life and it was surprising. But I knew it
was coming too, so…”
But some people in the community say they didn’t know the demonstration project would include
clear-cutting older trees. Anne McCormack hikes the Mohican nearly every day, clearing trails,
cleaning garbage, or enjoying the woods. The education site has been roped off from the public
during construction. But she found out there was a clear-cut demonstration in an old growth
section of the forest.
“So, I just was… I was just shocked. I mean I can’t say anything more. I just felt
terrible for… I felt terrible for the trees that stood there since before white settlers
were even in Mohican. And there they just were bulldozed and chain cut for education.
I mean, it doesn’t add up.”
McCormack’s not the only one who’s upset. A lot of people didn’t realize this is what
the Forest Service had in mind. Back at the clear-cut site, Corona says many trees suffer
from disease when they mature to 120 years. He says it’s a good age for private land owners
to consider the clear-cut option.
“This was a time where before they would rot out or anything and we see more damage, more
susceptibility health-wise in the entire stand, we could make a harvest in here and utilize
those trees and start this whole new cycle of growth in here.”
The foresters and forest owners say clear-cutting is a viable option, and just one of the
many examples at the demonstration project in the Mohican forest.
Tree farmer Scott Galloway says people need to understand that owning a forest is another
form of family farming. For instance, he got a call recently from a man who inherited 30
acres and needed money right away. He doesn’t know how to manage his tree crop.
“Where does he go? How do you make the right decisions quickly? The faster he can make
decisions, in his lifetime with his forest, the sooner he’ll be able to enjoy the benefits
of those decisions. It’s all about forestry, wildlife, natural resources. So the more education he
can get, the better those decisions will be and the better off all of us are environmentally because of it.”
The Forest Service says a demonstration project is needed because forest acreage is getting
cut up into smaller and smaller parcels. That means the forests are owned by more and more
people who need to know how to manage their timber. The Forest Service hopes this project
will help them make better decisions.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
You’ve probably heard about global warming, maybe also climactic cooling. Scientists have identified another phenomenon called “global dimming.” They say the world is getting darker. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
You’ve probably heard about global warming, maybe also climactic cooling. Scientists
have identified another phenomenon called “global dimming”. They say the world is
getting darker. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports.
In the 1980’s, a handful of researchers noticed a strange trend. Less sunlight was
reaching the earth’s surface than fifty years earlier. The scientific establishment
dismissed the notion as ridiculous. But researcher Michael Roderick of Australia
National University says today, ‘global dimming’ is becoming accepted. He says much
of the northern hemisphere is 10 to 20 percent darker than it used to be.
“Something in the atmosphere is blocking the sunlight from getting through. And that
something is either more clouds or more aerosols, so basically pollution.”
Roderick says the dimming is worst in big cities, but rural areas and even Antarctica also
are getting less sun.
Scientists don’t know what ‘global dimming’ means for people, plants, and animals.
Roderick and geophysicists from around the world are meeting this week in Montreal to
take a first stab at that question.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Marc Baldo, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (left) and Shalom Goffri, postdoc in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (right) hold examples of organic solar concentrators. (Photo by Donna Coveney at MIT, courtesy of NSF)
