If only your electricity meter could talk... (Photo by Kenn Kiser)
If the summer heat’s had you cranking up the a/c… you might be anxious about getting a big bill in the mail. Imagine if your house could send you an email to warn you that you’re spending a lot… before the bill arrives. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains:
Transcript
If the summer heat’s had you cranking up the A/C, you might be anxious about
getting a big bill in the mail. Imagine if your house could send you an
email to warn you that you’re spending a lot before the bill arrives. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains.
In the future, your electricity meter could talk to you.
You’d be able to type into your computer how much you want to spend on lighting and cooling
your house each month. Using wireless technology, your utility meter would
then send you an email when you’re going over those goals.
It’s a system created by mechanical engineering students at the University
of Michigan. Professor Steven Skerlos advises the team.
“As a recent homeowner, it was very obvious to me that even I had little
awareness of the impact that I was having and the consumption of course
until it was way too late. The bill comes a couple months later and you
can’t go back in time and turn down the thermostat or use less water.”
Skerlos says the system can also be used in water and gas meters.
But it might be several years before you can get the new system. Skerlos
says he’s had interest from the companies that make the meters, the next
step is getting utility companies to buy in.
A scientist collects samples of ballast sediment. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
A new study finds that ocean-going ships that enter the Great Lakes often carry biological pollution in their ballasts, even when they declare their ballasts are empty. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new study finds that ocean-going ships that enter the Great Lakes often carry biological pollution in their ballasts, even when they declare their ballasts are empty. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The study by the University of Michigan and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looked at ships coming into the Great Lakes from the ocean. Nearly 80-percent of them declared “no ballast on board” and avoided inspections by the Coast Guard.
But several of those ships were tested by the researchers. They found that although the ballast water was pumped out, there were thousands of organisms left behind in the sediment in the bottom of the ships’ ballast. Then, when the ships unloaded at their first stop, they took on Great Lakes ballast water which stirred up the sediment.
And that made it possible for the biological contaminants to be pumped out at the next Great Lakes port.
The authors of the study warn that more restrictions must be placed on how the ships handle ballast water, or the Great Lakes will continue to be invaded by more invasive species such as the zebra mussel, round goby, and 180 other foreign aquatic species that have harmed the Lakes’ ecosystems.
Auto emissions are a hot topic when it comes to compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Canada has found a way to get automakers to voluntarily cut emissions. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)
Canadian officials have reached a deal with U.S. automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The deal is expected to help Canada meet its obligations under the Kyoto protocol. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Canadian officials have reached a deal with U.S. automakers to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The deal is expected to help Canada
meet its obligations under the Kyoto protocol. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Last year, Canadian officials threatened to adopt a strict California car
emission regulation. That standard calls for a 30 percent cut in emissions
by 2016.
But Canadian officials now say they have reached a voluntary agreement with
the automakers. They say car makers have said they will reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 5.3 million tons by 2010. They say that’s about a 25 percent
decrease.
Mike Flynn is a transportation analyst at the University of Michigan. He
says Canada’s agreement could still have an impact on U.S. cars.
“It may be cheaper for the automakers in the long run to manufacture the same higher-standard vehicles and sell them in both the U.S. and Canada than to have a small run specifically tailored for Canada.”
Automakers continue to fight California’s emissions regulation in court.
They say the law exceeds the state’s power.
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.
Motor oil dripping from cars can add up and end up contaminating waterways and sediments. (Photo by Brandon Blinkenberg)
Industries and companies get labeled as
“polluters.” But what do you do when you find out you’re a pretty big polluter yourself… and you find out it’s going to cost you a lot of money to fix the
problem? As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your
Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca
Williams finds herself in that dilemma:
Transcript
Industries and companies get labeled as “polluters.” But what do you do when you find out you’re a pretty big polluter yourself… and you find out it’s going to cost you a lot of money to fix the problem? As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams finds herself in that dilemma:
(sound of car starting)
This is my ‘89 Toyota Camry. It has 188,000 miles on it. Pieces of
plastic trim fly off on the highway, and I have to climb in from the
backseat when my door gets frozen in the winter. But I got it for free, I get good gas mileage, and my insurance is cheap. But now, it’s leaking oil – lots of oil. I knew it was bad when I started
pouring in a quart of oil every other week.
I thought I’d better take it in to the shop.
(sound of car shop)
My mechanic, Walt Hayes, didn’t exactly have good news for me.
“You know, you’re probably leaking about 80% of that, just from experience, I’d say
you’re burning 20% and leaking 80%.”
Walt says the rear main seal is leaking, and the oil’s just dripping
straight to the ground. Walt tells me the seal costs 25 dollars, but he’d
have to take the transmission out to get to the seal. That means I’d be
paying him 650 dollars.
650 bucks to fix an oil leak, when no one would steal my car’s radio. There’s no way. Obviously, it’s cheaper to spend two dollars on each quart of oil, than to fix the seal.
“Right – what else is going to break, you know? You might fix the rear main
seal, and your transmission might go out next week or something. Your car,
because of its age, is on the edge all the time. So to invest in a 25 dollar seal, spending a lot of money for labor, almost doesn’t make sense on an
older car.”
That’s my mechanic telling me not to fix my car. In fact, he says he’s seen
plenty of people driving even older Toyotas, and he says my engine will
probably hold out a while longer. But now I can’t stop thinking about the
quarts of oil I’m slowly dripping all over town.
I need someone to tell me: is my one leaky car really all that bad? Ralph
Reznick works with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. He
spends his time trying to get polluters to change their behavior.
“That’s a lot for an old car. If you were the only car in the parking lot,
that wouldn’t be very much. But the fact is, there’s a lot of cars just
like yours that are doing the same thing.”
Reznick says the oil and antifreeze and other things that leak from and fall
off cars like mine add up.
“The accumulative impact of your car and other cars, by hitting the
pavement, and washing off the pavement into the waterways, is a very large
impact. It’s one of the largest sources of pollution we’re dealing with
today.”
Reznick says even just a quart of oil can pollute thousands of gallons of
water. And he says toxins in oil can build up in sediment at the bottom of
rivers and lakes. That can be bad news for aquatic animals and plants.
There’s no question – he wants me to fix the leak.
But I am NOT pouring 650 bucks into this car when the only thing it has going
for it is that it’s saving me money. So I can either keep driving it, and
feel pretty guilty, or I can scrap it and get a new car.
But it does take a lot of steel and plastic and aluminum to make a new car.
Maybe I’m doing something right for the environment by driving a car that’s
already got that stuff invested in it.
I went to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan
and talked to Greg Keoleian. He’s done studies on how many years it makes
sense to keep a car. He says if you look at personal costs, and the energy
that goes into a making a midsize car, it makes sense to hang onto it for a
long time… like 16 years.
No problem there – I finally did something right!
Well, sort of.
“In your case, from an emissions point of view, you should definitely
replace your vehicle. It turns out that a small fraction of vehicles are
really contributing to a lot of the local air pollution. Older vehicles
tend to be more polluting, and you would definitely benefit the environment
by retiring your vehicle.”
Keoleian says if I get a newer car, it won’t be leaking oil, and it won’t
putting out nearly as much nitrogen oxide and other chemicals that lead to
smog. Oh yeah, he also says I really need to start looking today.
And so doing the right thing for the environment is going to cost me money.
There’s no way around that. The more I think about my rusty old car, the
more I notice all the OTHER old heaps on the road. Maybe all of you are a
bit like me, hoping to make it through just one more winter without car
payments.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
Hybrid cars like the Honda Insight are becoming more popular with consumers. However, a study predicts a decrease in jobs if sales of hybrids increase sharply. (Photo by Paige Foster)
A new report says new automotive technology such as gasoline-electric hybrid engines could cost thousands of American jobs. Researchers say states with large numbers of autoworkers could be hurt the most. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland:
Transcript
A new report says new automotive technology such as
gasoline-electric hybrid engines could cost thousands of American
jobs. Researchers say states with large numbers of autoworkers
could be hurt the most. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland:
Sales of gasoline-electric hybrids amounted to less than one-percent of all
the vehicles sold in the U.S. last year. But researchers at the University
of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute say hybrids, and vehicles
made with advanced diesel powertrains, could make up eleven percent of total
sales by 2009.
If that happens, the Institute projects it could cost the
U.S. about 200-thousand jobs. Pat Hammett directed the study. He says that
figure includes both actual jobs lost and new jobs not created.
“A lot of the hybrid components, for example, actually are new componentry
inside a vehicle. So, it isn’t necessarily that you are losing jobs in some
of that area, it could just be an example of not getting the growth.”
Hammett says auto-producing states like Michigan, Ohio and Indiana would be
affected more than others. The report says states could reduce jobs lost to
new technologies by offering tax credits to encourage production in the
United States.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.
Small shrimp fishers are concerned about the Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' because shrimp can't survive in the oxygen depleted water. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some Midwest farmers leave no grass buffer between their fields and nearby streams, allowing excess nitrogen to easily enter the waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some farm fields drain stormwater from treated farm fields directly into nearby creeks that are tributaries of the Mississippi River. Scientists believe the fertilizer pollution contributes to the Gulf 'dead zone.' (Photo by Lester Graham)
The government has been working with agriculture, environmentalists and scientists to come up with a way to reduce the size of a ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone causes problems for the fisheries in the Gulf. It’s believed the dead zone is caused by excess nitrogen on farm fields in the Midwest that’s washed to the Mississippi River and then to the Gulf. A government task force has determined that if the flow of nitrogen into the Gulf can be cut by 30 percent, the size of the dead zone can be reduced. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… a new study predicts a 30 percent reduction won’t be enough to make a difference:
Transcript
The government has been working with agriculture, environmentalists and scientists to
come up with a way to reduce the size of a ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead
zone causes problems for the fisheries in the Gulf. It’s believed the dead zone is caused
by excess nitrogen on farm fields in the Midwest that’s washed to the Mississippi River
and then to the Gulf. A government task force has determined that if the flow of nitrogen
into the Gulf can be cut by 30 percent, the size of the dead zone can be reduced. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… a new study predicts a 30
percent reduction won’t be enough to make a difference:
The idea that fertilizer used on a corn field in the Midwest can cause a ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico
is hard to fathom. But when you realize that all or parts of 31 farm states drain into the
Mississippi basin, it becomes a little easier to understand. Excess nitrogen causes a huge algae
bloom in the Gulf. When the vegetation dies, it decays on the bottom and bacteria feed
on it. The huge expanse of bacteria depletes the oxygen.
Nancy Rabalais is a professor with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. She
says most life under the water needs that oxygen to survive.
“The oxygen is depleted in the water column so that the fish and shrimp, anything that
can swim, leaves the area. All the indicators show that it’s gotten much worse since the
1950’s to present, and that’s consistent with the increase in nitrogen in the Mississippi
River.”
Since 1985, Rabalais has been measuring the size of the dead zone every year. The zone
ranges in size from about 2,000 square miles to about 10,000 square miles.
That’s about the size of Lake Erie.
Jerald Horst is a biologist with the Louisiana Sea Grant. He says it’s hard to know the
exact impact on life under the sea…
“Very difficult to say ‘Gee, this year the shrimp
production is down somewhat because of hypoxia,’ or whether the shrimp production is
down somewhat because of a host of other environmental factors.”
But the fear is the hypoxic zone could stop being a dead zone that shrinks and grows
– and one year disappeared altogether… and instead become a permanent dead zone where nothing would ever live. That’s happened in a few other places on the globe such
as the Black Sea. It’s not clear that the same kind of thing can happen in the Gulf, but
signs are ominous. Horst says upwellings of oxygen-starved water near the shore after a
storm used to be very, very rare. Lately, they’ve become more and more frequent. He
says it means the problem is getting worse.
There’s still a lot of debate about whether the dead zone in the Gulf is a serious problem.
But, at this point, most agricultural agencies and farm groups have stopped disputing the
science and whether their nitrogen is causing the problem. Now they’re trying to figure
out the best and cheapest way to deal with it.
The government task force that’s working on the problem has arrived at an Action Plan;
the task force has determined the amount of nitrogen getting into the Mississippi River
needs to be cut by 30 percent to reduce the Gulf zone by half in ten years.
Donald Scavia has been working on the problem. He was involved in the debate when he
was a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He’s
retired from NOAA and now directs the Michigan Sea Grant. From his office at the
University of Michigan, Scavia explained how the task force arrived at the figure.
“We agreed to a 30 percent reduction because it was similar to what was done in other
places, probably acceptable to the community and will head us in the right direction.”
After arriving in Michigan, Scavia started research to determine if a 30 percent reduction
would do the job. Using three very different computer models, Scavia and his team
learned that they could actually predict the size of the dead zone from year to year…
“From that analysis, that not only looked at the size of the zone, but actually looked at
potential inter-annual variability caused by changes in climate, changes in weather say
that probably 35 to 45 percent nitrogen load reduction’s going to be needed to get to that
goal in most years.”
Scavia’s study was published in the journal Estuaries.
A 35 to 45 percent reduction is a much tougher goal than the 30 percent the task force is
recommending. As it is, states were planning massive artificial wetlands and extensive
drainage programs to soak up excess nitrogen before it got to the tributaries that fed the
Mississippi River. They also planned to get farmers to reduce the amount of nitrogen
they’re using. That’s a tough sell for a couple of reasons. First of all, it would have to be
voluntary because nitrogen use is nearly completely unregulated. Second, farmers
often use what they call an insurance application of nitrogen… they use a little more than
is actually needed to get a good crop, because nitrogen is relatively cheap. The excess
often ends up washed into ditches and streams and creeks and rivers… and finally to the
Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone. So… cutting nitrogen flow into the
Mississippi by 30 percent was a huge task. Cutting nitrogen by as much as 45 percent… well… you can imagine…
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Small shrimp fishers are concerned about the Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' because shrimp can't survive in the oxygen depleted water. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some Midwest farmers leave no grass buffer between their fields and nearby streams, allowing excess nitrogen to easily enter the waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some farm fields drain stormwater from treated farm fields directly into nearby creeks that are tributaries of the Mississippi River. Scientists believe the fertilizer pollution contributes to the Gulf 'dead zone.' (Photo by Lester Graham)
A new study predicts the government’s plan to reduce the size of the ‘Dead Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be strong enough to make a difference. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new study predicts the government’s plan to reduce the size of the “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of
Mexico won’t be strong enough to make a difference. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:
The Dead Zone in the Gulf is believed to be caused by excess nitrogen used by farmers in the 31
states that drain into the Mississippi and ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico. The Dead Zone
causes problems for the fisheries in the Gulf. A study published in the scientific journal, Estuaries, predicts that an Action Plan put together by a government task force might not
go far enough. Michigan SeaGrant director Donald Scavia used computer modeling in the
study…
“What we tried to do here is take three different, very different models and ask the same question
of those models to try to get an answer.”
The answer was the same… the government task force plan to reduce the amount of nitrogen
reaching the Mississippi River by 30 percent is not enough. The models indicated a 35 to 45
percent reduction is needed to shrink the Dead Zone by half in the next ten years.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
New research suggests that while parents of children who have asthma try to protect their youngsters from the things that trigger attacks, those measures often aren’t very helpful. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:
Transcript
New research suggests that while parents of children who have asthma
try to protect their youngsters from the things that trigger attacks,
those measures often aren’t very helpful. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:
Researchers at the University of Michigan found 80 percent of the
parents they surveyed were doing something to prevent attacks, but
often missed important measures. For example, a quarter of the parents
said a smoker lived in the same house as a child with asthma, but they
hadn’t done anything about it.
In one case, the parent of a child with pollen-triggered asthma bought
a new mattress cover, but didn’t close windows to keep pollen out of
the house.
Dr. Michael Cabana is a U of M pediatrician who led the study. He says
many parents also needlessly buy products they think will lessen asthma
symptoms.
“A lot of times, parents may get more information from other commercial
sources more often than the time they have to spend with either their
primary care doctor or their doctor who might be a sub-specialist in
asthma. So I think physicians have to do a better job putting that
information into perspective.”
Dr. Cabana suggests parents talk to their child’s doctor about asthma
triggers before spending money on asthma-related products.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.
The American Heart Association says air pollution appears to be a risk factor when it comes to heart disease. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:
Transcript
The American Heart Association says air pollution appears to be a risk
factor when it comes to heart disease. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:
Air pollution has long been linked to respiratory illness. But the
American Heart Association now says people who live in areas with high
rates of air pollution are at a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
Doctor Robert Brook is a researcher at the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor. He helped author the report.
“We don’t want to be alarmist. And what we’re trying to make clear is that
this is an independent risk, but compared to the established risk
factors — obesity, blood pressure, tobacco smoking and inactivity — it’s a
relatively small one.”
But Brook says the danger is great enough that people with an elevated
risk for heart disease should minimize outdoor activity on days when
air pollution is at its worst.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.
If only your electricity meter could talk... (Photo by Kenn Kiser)
