Tag: computer

New Coal-Burning Power Plants on Great Lakes Shores?

  • Some environmentalists and residents who live on Lake Michigan fear that an expansion of a coal-burning power plant will have a negative impact on the lake. (Photo by Richard B. Mieremet, courtesy of the NOAA)

Environmentalists are concerned about two new coal-burning power plants to be built on the shores of one of the Great Lakes. Among their concerns are increased air pollution and that the view of the lakeshore will be ruined. The power company says it needs the plants to meet the increasing demand for electricity. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann-Elise Henzl
reports:

Transcript

Environmentalists are concerned about two new coal-burning
power plants to be built on the shores of one of the Great Lakes.
Among their concerns are increased air pollution and that the view
of the lakeshore will be ruined. The power company says it needs
the plants to meet the increasing demand for electricity. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann-Elise Henzl reports:


Wisconsin Electric power company has more than one million customers in Wisconsin and Michigan’s upper penninsula. The company says soon, it won’t be able to provide power for all of them with its current plants, and the transmission lines that allow Wisconsin Electric to buy power from other states are over taxed. So the company wants to expand a coal-fired power plant twenty miles south of Milwaukee. That would add two coal-burning units and double the plant’s size and output. Paul Shorter is the manager for site coordination.


“From the infrastructure standpoint, if the state wants to grow and attract business, I think that’s one reason. The other reason is to meet that growing demand of about two percent a year, which is related to telephones, TV’s, VCR’s, computers. We’re always asking for more, and companies are producing it, and they have to be supported by energy.”


On a windy spring morning, Shorter is standing on the roof of the existing plant. As waves crash on the Lake Michigan shoreline, Shorter looks north, pointing out the site for the expansion.


“Now this whole area over here is going to be excavated, for placement of the new facilities, there’s going to be about five million cubic yards of dirt that we’re going to move around on the property. Part of it is to cut down that bluff, to get everything down to the level of this current facility.”


Shorter sees power and progress. But a nearby resident, Ann Brodek, sees something else.


“As you look at the plant now, as it sits on the shore, to me, it looks kind of like a looming, prehistoric monster on the edge of the shore. It just is dirty and huge and on a shoreline of a beautiful lake. This is not where that should be.”


Brodek lives just ten miles south of the plant, near the shore of Lake Michigan. She’s among area residents and environmentalists who’ve been fighting the plant. Ever since Wisconsin Electric started trying to get state approval. Bruce Nilles is a senior Midwest representative for the Sierra Club. He says the expansion would destroy a half-mile of shoreline, that’s home to birds and wildlife. And he says the Great Lakes region doesn’t need more coal-burning plants.


“The proposal is using technology that we created, basically, back in the nineteenth century: grinding up the coal and burning it. We know that releases mercury into the environment in very large amounts. All the new studies are showing that we already have far too much mercury in our environment. And once it’s in the environment, it doesn’t go away. Every lake, river, and stream in the state of Wisconsin has a fish consumption advisory, including Lake Michigan, because there’s too much mercury in the fish.”


Wisconsin Electric defends its plan to build coal-burning units. The company says the units would use new, cleaner technology, and meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act. It also says improvements at the existing plant would cut pollution in half. Wisconsin regulators agreed with the company and approved the plan. Opponents sued. They say the state failed to require a complete application for the plant. They also say regulators didn’t look at alternatives, like a natural gas-fired plant. Last fall, a circuit judge agreed with the opponents of the plant. The regulators and Wisconsin Electric appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is where the case is now. The court could give the go-ahead for the plant expansion, or it could throw out all or part of the proposal.


Meanwhile, opponents like resident Ann Brodek are glad their argument is still alive.


“I would think that every bordering state, including Canada, would be speaking out against this thing. This is going to affect everybody, and we’re not going to give up and there’ll be suits. There’ll be lawsuits. We’ll do everything we can.”


The state Supreme Court is expected to annouce its decision by this summer. Wisconsin Electric hopes an answer comes by then. It wants to have the new coal-fired units operating by the summer of 2009, and it’ll take about four years to build them.


For the GLRC, I’m Ann-Elise Henzl.

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States Seek to Ban Internet Hunting

  • Live-shot.com is a website providing a "Real Time, Online, Hunting and Shooting Experience." Many states are proposing legislation to ban web hunting, saying that it's unsportsmanlike.

A new kind of hunting has already been outlawed in at least one state… and could be in others soon. Hunters, lawmakers, and animal rights activists say the practice is inhumane. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley
reports:

Transcript

A new kind of hunting has already been outlawed in at least one state… and could be in others soon. Hunters, lawmakers, and animal rights activists say it’s inhumane. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:


John Lockwood has created the web site “live shot dot com.” For a fee, users can control a gun from their computer to shoot animals on his Texas ranch. Critics say it doesn’t allow for a fair hunt.


But Lockwood says it closely resembles an “in-person” hunt because someone is on-site. He says that person sits in a blind with the user-operated gun and acts as the user’s guide.


“The animal still has the same chance of detecting you, you know the human scents as he would in any hunting situation. It’s not like all that’s out there is this inanimate object that’s aiming and shooting. It’s just like if somebody was there hunting.”


Lockwood says he created the site to help people who couldn’t get out to hunt, like the disabled. He says the online hunters must have a valid Texas hunting license.


But lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation to ban the practice.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

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Packrats Hooked on Freecycling

  • Aaron and Claire Liepman with an old faucet and garden owl they're hoping to give away on the Freecycle Network. Aaron Liepman moderates two freecycle groups in Michigan. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

We all have things that we no longer use hidden in our closets, or stuffed away in the attic, or crammed into the garage. It’s not that we’ll ever use them, but we can’t bear to just throw them away. They’re still good. Now, a new service is matching up people who want to get rid of things with people who want those things. In part of an ongoing series called ‘Your Choice; Your Planet,’ the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explores freecycling:

Transcript

We all have things that we no longer use hidden in our closets, or stuffed away
in the attic, or crammed into the garage. It’s not that we’ll ever use them, but we
can’t bear to just throw them away. They’re still good. Now, a new service is
matching up people who want to get rid of things with people who want those
things. In part of an ongoing series called ‘Your Choice; Your Planet,’ the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explores freecycling:


I’m a packrat. I just wanted to make that clear right from the beginning. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll probably confess you’re a packrat too.


But even I know when there’s something taking up space in my house that HAS to go. In the back of my closet, there’s a large, heavy, men’s wetsuit.


You know, a SCUBA diving suit. A relative gave it to me when he moved away. Now, I’m not a diver. I’m not even really a snorkeler. But I’ve kept it for two years. You know, just in case.


I need a little help getting rid of things. So, when I heard about freecycling… I thought, “This is it. This will help me face my inner packrat.”


Freecycling uses email groups to connect people in their hometowns. It brings together one person with their broken telescope… and that one person who needs – or just wants it.


The only rule – everything has to be free. No money, no trading. And also, you meet the giver or taker in person.


It’s Deron Beal’s idea. He manages recycling crews for businesses in Tuscon, Arizona. One day a year ago, he found himself with a warehouse full of stuff.


“We had a lot of the businesses we recycle with
downtown giving us old desks or computers, saying, can you do something with this. I’ll be darned if we got so much stuff in, I figured, let’s open this up to the public and set up the freecycle network.”


Beal emailed some friends and nonprofits. At first, he says it was just he and his friends giving each other stuff. But in just a few months, freecycle turned into a verb. Beal set up a website, freecycle-dot-org. And put instructions up so people could start freecycling in their own cities. Now, more than 90-thousand people all around the world are doing it.


So… I went to see the freecycling guy in my area, Aaron Liepman. He moderates two freecycle groups. He makes sure everything stays free, and steps in if people start arguing. He also helps packrats like me freecycle.


(sound in, typing)


Aaron sets me up on his computer.


“So, let me sign out and you sign in. (clicking) So now you type in your subject, just like an email message.


RW: “Offer: wetsuit. What else?”


“Wetsuit, SCUBA wetsuit. (crinkles, zipper noise) Looks like it’s a size large, that’ll be useful information. It has a little hat to keep you warm in the water (laughs).”


(typing out)


We look over my post, and I click Send.


So, I’ve started cleaning out my closet. But I’m not totally converted to this freecycling idea. I mean, really, aren’t we just moving our stuff from one house to the next? That doesn’t really cut down on consumption, does it?


I turned to University of Michigan professor Raymond DeYoung. He studies people’s buying and recycling habits. He thinks freecycling probably won’t change our buying habits all that much.


“Because we’re never going to be able with freecycling to get the new, get the novel, get the big, because by definition it’s already been bought, it’s already old, it’s the smaller. So it can’t impact our entire consumption behavior.”


DeYoung says, for freecycling to really succeed, we’d have to stop getting bigger houses. And stop filling them up with more and more things. But it’s hard, even for people who want to try to get by with less stuff.


I guess a wetsuit is a good first step.


It’s been a couple days, and I’ve gotten four messages. The first came five hours after my posting. From Shawn… he wrote: “I’ll take the wetsuit.” But he didn’t sound that excited.


In freecycling, you can use “first come, first serve” to decide who gets your item. But you don’t always have to. And I kind of wanted my wetsuit to be appreciated… you know, actually get to see the water. So I waited a couple days. Then, I got Kelly’s message. She wrote: “WOW!” in all capital letters and said her son would love the wetsuit… for snorkeling.


So I emailed Kelly. And we set up a place to meet in downtown Ann Arbor.


(street sound up)


“Wetsuit!” (Oh, are you Kelly?) “yeah, I’m Kelly.. (Hi, I’m Rebecca. This is the wetsuit.) Great!”


Kelly’s been freecycling for a month. And she says she’s hooked.


And judging from the postings, a lot of people are. They seem to like getting other people’s beer can collections and turtle sandboxes.


But some on the list worry it’s getting to be too much of a good thing. People have started to ask for laptops, and houses… and a time machine, any condition.


“I think because it’s so new, some people are asking for funny things, like don’t we all want cash, and a Lamborghini (laughs). I just laugh at those and go on.”


Kelly says she thinks the network will probably get past that after awhile, leaving behind just the really devoted freecyclers.


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

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Report: E-Waste Piling Up

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:

Transcript

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to
scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent
report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:


Electronic waste – or e-waste – is what ends up in landfills when people throw away electronic
devices such as computer monitors and television sets. The report by the Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition tracked the amount of e-waste that ends up in landfills. Researchers found there’s more
e-waste than waste from beverage containers and disposable diapers. Electronic products can
threaten human health because they contain toxic heavy metals.


Sheila Davis headed up the Coalition’s report:


“People are starting to sit up and take notice and especially when you start having large volumes
of the material. So many states are taking notice. For example, California, Massachusetts,
Minnesota and Maine have all banned these products from landfills, e-waste from landfills.”


Yet Davis says many people in other states end up pitching their used electronics because many
recycling programs are often inconvenient and expensive.


But for now, Davis suggests people contact their local governments for more information on
where to take their used electronics.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erika Johnson.

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Reward for Tagged Fish

Great Lakes scientists are using new technology to track certain kinds of fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

Great Lakes scientists are using new technology to track certain kinds of fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:


Researchers on lakes Huron and Superior are using a new computerized tagging system to track fish including trout and sturgeon. The new tag measures the water depth and temperature of the areas fish prefer to be. Henry Quinlin is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ashland, Wisconsin:


“Upon learning the habitat preferences, habitat could be enhanced or created to benefit lake sturgeon or the other species that are being studied.”


Quinlin hopes the data can be used to design better habitat protection and restoration projects. He also says the program’s success is dependent on sport fisherman returning the tagged fish. That’s why his office is paying one hundred dollars a piece for fish with the special tags. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

Upgrading Computer Recycling

  • Computers and computer equipment, such as these keyboards, are often thrown in the trash when they break or become obsolete. Efforts are underway to find a safe and effective method for recycling the growing electronic waste stream.

As older computers become obsolete, we’re faced with a dilemma: what to do with the out-of-date equipment? The problem will only grow as personal computers become a stock item in more and more households. But so far, the manufacturers, the recycling industry, and the government don’t have a plan in place to deal with the old equipment. That’s a problem because some of that equipment contains lead, mercury, and other toxic materials that can cause damage to the environment and people’s health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

To learn more about computer recycling efforts, you can visit: National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, Electronic Industries Alliance, and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

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UPGRADING COMPUTER RECYCLING (Short Version)

  • Computers and computer equipment, such as these keyboards, are often thrown in the trash when they break or become obsolete. Efforts are underway to find a safe and effective method for recycling the growing electronic waste stream. Photo by Mark Brush.

The U.S. is trying to figure out what to do with tens-of-millions of computers and monitors that go bad or become obsolete each year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has details:

To learn more about computer recycling efforts, you can visit: National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, Electronic Industries Alliance, and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Farming With Computers

You probably have a computer in your car, on your desk and maybe even in your stove. It seems like there are computers everywhere these days helping with everything from our checking accounts to our turkey roasts. Now researchers want to install computers in another place, where most of us would least expect it – in Old MacDonald’s tractor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has this story:

A Fish Eye View of the Lakes

  • The "Benthic Explorer" now sits on the bottom of Lake Superior and provides live pictures of its underwater world. Photo by Chris Julin.

If you’ve ever been curious about what goes on at the bottom of the world’s largest lake, you can take a look for yourself – and you don’t even have to get wet. A device called the “fishcam” is sitting under 35 feet of water in Lake Superior and it’s now sending pictures to the Internet. Researchers say it’s the only permanently mounted underwater camera in the world sending live images back to shore. The pictures are fun to look at, but researchers say they’re also useful to biologists who study underwater life in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has the story:

Transcript

If you’ve ever been curious about what goes on at the bottom of the world’s largest lake, you can take a look for yourself — and you don’t even have to get wet. A device called the “fish cam” is sitting under 35-feet of water in Lake Superior and it’s now sending pictures to the Internet. Researchers say it’s the only permanently mounted underwater camera in the world sending live images back to shore. The pictures are fun to look at, but researchers say they’re also useful to biologists who study underwater life in the Great Lakes.


The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has the story.


A team of researchers put the camera underwater more than a year ago. It sits on the lake bottom, several miles from Duluth. The researchers have watched pictures from the “fish cam” for months, but now, anyone with a computer hooked to the Internet can get a scuba diver’s view of the bottom of Lake Superior. The research team recently gathered at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth to unveil the “fish cam” website. Fish expert Greg Bambenek has had the fish cam hooked-up to the computer at his house, but at the aquarium, he watched the fish cam on the screen of a laptop.


“That’s streaming out on the web right now. It’s updated every ten seconds. The fish there are mullet. At night, we have a micro-cam that brings the zooplankton into close focus, and at times you’ll see the mullet eating the zooplankton.”


Those zooplanktons are tiny animals called “water fleas.” They’re fractions of an inch long –far too small to show up through the fish cam’s standard lens. But Bambanek says it’s a different story at night, when the fish cam switches to a magnifying lens, and the computer screen comes alive with little critters.


“Leptodora is the large one. Then you’ll see little copepods that kind of look like Pokemon creatures with the antennas coming off their head, and they’re smaller. They’re only a couple millimeters, so you wouldn’t be able to see them if you were diving in the water.”


The people gathered to see the fish cam’s first Internet images had to settle for a murky picture. A strong northeast wind was blowing in off the lake, kicking up big waves, and stirring up the bottom. The researchers say big waves make for blurry pictures. Even so, lots of fish were visible in the frame. The fish might be crowding in because researchers are releasing fish scent through a special tube attached t the camera. But photographer Doug Hajicek says it’s surprising how many fish swim past even without the fish scent. Hajicek designed and built the underwater camera, and he’s been watching a private feed from the fish cam for months.


“This lake is extremely alive. There is a food chain that is so delicate and tiny. Everybody thinks of Lake Superior as just a sterile body of water, and we’re hoping to change that.”


Some of the fish that swim into view are called ruffe, a non-native species that’s invading the Great Lakes. Researcher Greg Bambenek says it is surprising see so many ruffe here, six miles from Duluth. He says biologists believed ruffe stayed closer to harbors. Bambenek says that’s just one example of the valuable information about life in the Great Lakes that scientists can get from the fish cam.


“We can take freeze-frame, count the number of zooplankton, count the number of fish, and also look at it over time, and also see what does a northeaster do? What do the fish do? Do they leave? Do they come back? What does water temperature do? We have a temperature sensor down there. We also have a hydrophone so we can hear what’s going on underneath the water. So, it is a research tool.”


Bambenek says the research team learned a lot during the year it took to get the camera up and running on the Internet. He says the team is planning to put another camera in Lake Superior, farther from shore, and hopes to put a third camera somewhere on the floor of the ocean.


You can see images from the Lake Superior fish cam at Duluth.com/fishcam.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chris Julin in Duluth.

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What Will Global Warming Bring?

  • Researchers are developing models to try to determine what the effects of global warming will be on the Great Lakes region. Photo by Jerry Bielicki.

Some scientists in the Great Lakes basin are looking at how global warming might be affecting the region, both today and long into the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the story:

Transcript

Some scientists in the great lakes basin are looking at how global warming
Might be affecting the region, both today and long into the future. The
Great lakes radio consortium’s Lester graham reports.


Many researchers in a number of different fields are coming to the same basic conclusion: the earth is warming and it’s affecting the Great Lakes. So far, the effects have been difficult to track, unlike watching the day-to-day changes in the weather. Measuring climate change requires measurements over many decades, or better yet over centuries. There are only a few places where weather measurements have been taken over that long of a period. But, where they have, researchers are finding weather is becoming more chaotic and indications are that the long-term climate is warming.
Many climatologists believe that warming is due at least in part to greenhouse gases, that is, pollution in the upper atmosphere trapping more of the sun’s heat, much in the same way a greenhouse works.


Taylor Jarnigan is a research ecologist with the U-S Environmental Protection agency who’s been looking at one aspect of climate change. He’s been studying whether increasing amounts of lake effect snow from Lake Superior over the past century, especially the past 50 years, is evidence of a change in the temperature of the lake. Preliminary study suggests that the lake’s surface temperature is warming, and that causes more snow when cold air passes over it. But he says the amount of snow has varied widely from year to year.


“Some of this variability is certainly due –in my opinion– to an increasing volatile climate system itself. El niño and la niña are becoming more intense, so you have an increasing oscillation between, say, an usually warm summer followed by an unusually cold winter which tends to produce an unusually large amount of snow.”

The surface temperature of the lake has only been monitored for a few decades, while snowfall depths have been recorded for much longer. Jarnigan says, since there seems to be a direct correlation between the surface temperature of the lake and snowfall, he can calculate the temperature of the lake going back more than a century, and finds that Lake Superior is getting warmer.


When researchers find direct measurements that have been taken for more than a century, they feel fortunate. For example, John Magnuson with the University of Wisconsin has been reviewing the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That’s the international organization established by the United Nations to study global warming. As a part of that review, Magnuson has been looking over shipping and harbor records that date back 150 years or more to see if there’s evidence of global warming. One thing he’s learned is that lakes and streams aren’t iced over for as long as they once were.


“And in the last hundred-and-fifty years we’ve seen significant changes in lakes around the entire– lakes and streams around the entire northern hemisphere. The date of freezing on the average and the date of break up is changing by about six days per century.”


And Magnuson says that six day change on both ends of the freeze-thaw cycle mean that there’s nearly two weeks less ice coverage than a century ago.


That seems to bolster research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Ecological Research Laboratory. Studies there indicate that over the last several years Great Lakes ice coverage on average is not as far ranging and doesn’t last as long as it did historically.


There’s no certain way to tell what might happen to the Great Lakes if the apparent warming trend continues.


But there are some ways to speculate. There are at least two computer models that try to estimate how much warmer the climate in the Great Lakes region might become by the year 2090. Based on those models, researchers have tried to figure out what that might mean for the area. Peter Sousounis was working at the University of Michigan at the time of that research. He says using either computer model it looks as though crops would produce more. Soybean yields could double. But other predictions are not as beneficial. It looks as though Great Lakes water levels would drop, probably about three feet more than they’ve already dropped, causing some problems for shipping. The study also found algae production would decrease by 10 to 20 percent. That’s important because algae provide the base for the Great Lakes’ food chain. Pine trees might also be all but eliminated from the region, and Sousounis says dangerously high ozone days might occur twice as often.


“Our findings indicate there are some potentially serious consequences in terms of reduced lake levels impacting shipping across the region, some serious economic impacts that if we don’t learn how to deal with these, there are going to be some serious changes in our lifestyles.”


Critics say the models can’t represent all of the variability in nature, so it’s difficult to be sure about any of the predictions. An adjustment here or there can lead to all kinds of alternative scenarios. Sousounis concedes more work needs to be done and more variables plugged into the models, but he’s convinced change will come; the degree of change is the only question.


These days, very few scientists argue against the studies that suggest the earth is warming. John Magnuson with the University of Wisconsin says a few DO argue that the change might merely be natural climate variability – that is, Mother Nature taking an interesting twist– and not necessarily a warm-up caused by manmade greenhouse gases.


“The skeptics, or the more cautious people, what they do when they look at that range of variation over the last thousand years, what they see is there is a signal in the warming that’s coming above the historic variation of climate. And, the climatologists of the world collectively feel there’s very strong evidence that warming is occurring, that greenhouse gases are a very significant part of that warming.”


Magnuson says most mainstream scientists agree climate change is happening, and even dramatic reductions in greenhouse gases won’t prevent some continued global warming over this century. But most say reducing pollution would slow the rise in temperatures and curtail the warming sooner. Only time will tell how that warming will change the Great Lakes region, and all of the researchers we talked to say in the meantime we’ll likely see more chaotic roller coaster type weather patterns as never before in recorded history.


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