Pete Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.<
Transcript
Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.
Scientists want to put together a 3D picture of what the gulf oil plume looks like, and they’re using new computer code and supercomputers to do it.
The numbers are getting crunched at Argonne national laboratory outside Chicago.
Pete Beckman runs the computing center there.
He says satellites and water samples give us some information, but we could really use a more complete picture.
“If we know for example that, because of eddies and currents, that things will accumulate at a particular map location, well, that’s where you would send the booms to soak up the oil. If you can concentrate your resources in one place, you’re much more effective.”
Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish.
Artist's concept of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. The satellite crashed into the ocean on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009.
(Photo courtesy NASA Jet Propulsion Library)
(NOTE: THE SATELLITE FEATURED IN THIS STORY CRASHED INTO THE OCEAN ON TUESDAY, FEB. 24TH)
Drive your car. Mow your lawn. Heat your house. It all puts climate changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But not all of the carbon dioxide stays up there. Vincent Duffy reports scientists at NASA hope a new satellite will help them solve the mystery of where some of that CO2 goes:
Transcript
(NOTE: THE CARBON SATELLITE CRASHED INTO THE OCEAN ON TUESDAY, FEB. 24TH)
Drive your car. Mow your lawn. Heat your house. It all puts climate changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But not all of the carbon dioxide stays up there. Vincent Duffy reports scientists at NASA hope a new satellite will help them solve the mystery of where some of that CO2 goes:
People worried about climate change pay a lot of attention to carbon dioxide.
It’s one of the chief causes of climate change. And people put a lot of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, almost 8 billion tons a year.
That has former Vice President Al Gore worried. Here he is testifying before
Congress last month –
“Our home, earth, is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the
planet itself of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for
human beings.”
If we are in danger, then scientists need a good handle on what happens to
all that carbon dioxide.
About half of the CO2 created by humans is absorbed back into the earth by
what scientists call ‘carbon sinks.’ Scientists know half of the absorbed
carbon dioxide goes into the oceans, and the other half is sucked up by
plants. But scientists don’t know which plants are absorbing the most carbon
dioxide, and how the CO2 travels there.
The scientists at NASA hope a new satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory, will help them answer those questions.
David Crisp heads up the project. He says measuring carbon dioxide levels
from the ground doesn’t provide enough information to know where the
CO2 actually ends up.
“But from space we can actually make much more detailed measurements,
make a snapshot of the carbon dioxide distribution in the atmosphere. That
will give us much more information about where the carbon dioxide is and
from that we can infer where the sources are and where the sinks are.”
Right now it’s a bit of a blur. Anna Michalak is a professor at the University
of Michigan and part of the NASA team. She says to track what’s going on
with all the CO2 on the earth is like trying to figure out how cream went into
a cup of coffee.
“If I give you a cup of coffee, and I pour cream into the cup of coffee, and I
ask you what’s going to happen when I start stirring, it’s pretty easy to
predict that you’ll have a creamy cup of coffee. But what we do instead is
someone hands us a creamy cup of coffee and asks us, ‘Did we pour the
cream in on the left side or the right side, and did we pour the cream in five
minutes ago or ten minutes ago?’ And you can imagine that’s a much more
difficult question.”
Michalak says the satellite observatory will help answer that difficult
question, and help us understand how plants may react to carbon dioxide in
the future, as the earth’s climate changes. She says right now plants seem to
be absorbing more CO2 than ever before.
“And we have no guarantee that this is going to continue in the future. And
so you can imagine that something that has such a high value, there is an
interest in us knowing how predictable and how reliable this service is to us.
Because the cost for us to replicate anything resembling that is just
astronomical.”
The satellite will also answer other questions about climate change. Things
like which countries emit the most CO2.
Jiaguo Qi studies climate change at Michigan State University. He says the
satellite may show that people concerned about the cost of reducing green
house gasses may unfairly blame the United States and other developed
nations.
“Media report that North America is primarily responsible for global
warming. But we don’t know how much carbon dioxide other countries are
emitting, because we donít have good measure. This one will tell us who is
emitting and how much they are emitting instead of just blaming us.”
And the data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory might show that it’s not
just the forests and jungles that help keep climate change at bay. It might
also be forests and farmland in the United States, and your lawn, and even
golf courses.
A new report says true wilderness is vanishing. The authors say we
might need to rethink conservation. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new report says true wilderness is vanishing. The authors say we
might need to rethink conservation. Rebecca Williams reports:
The report in the journal Science says we might need to think
differently about how we protect wild areas. There are very few places
left on Earth that haven’t been touched by people.
The authors say that as of 1995, only 17% of the planet’s land area had
remained untouched. They’re defining true wilderness as places without
any people, roads, crops or lights detectable at night by satellite.
They say there’s some land set aside in wilderness preserves…
but it’s just 1% of Earth’s land area.
The authors of the report include two Nature Conservancy scientists.
They say population growth might make traditional views of conservation
unsustainable.
They argue we might have to focus more on managing nature and the
services it provides… instead of trying to keep people out of
wilderness areas.
Garlic mustard is an exotic species in some places, so it doesn't have any natural predators. That means it can push out native plant species and disrupt ecosystems. Researchers are trying to find ways to prevent this by targeting smaller populations. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)
Invasive species cost the United States economy some 120 billion
dollars per year. Adam Allington reports some researchers plan study
new methods of controlling and eliminating some invasive plants:
Transcript
Invasive species cost the United States economy some 120 billion
dollars per year. Adam Allington reports some researchers plan study
new methods of controlling and eliminating some invasive plants:
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are developing a
model that targets small populations of invasive plants before honing
in on big clusters.
Dr. Tiffany Knight says the idea is that small populations often spread
quicker then larger ones:
“If you can focus your efforts on satellite individuals that are just
at the front of where the population is spreading, it might be a more
efficient method which saves time and money of managers.”
The invasive plant they’re working with is garlic mustard. It’s a
European species that spreads by out-competing native plants on the
forest floor.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding the research, banking on
the idea that a method which effectively controls garlic mustard, might
also be applied to other invasives such as kudzu, which is
devastating Southern forests, or spartina, which is causing troubles in
coastal areas.
A new book says that much of the space covered by parking lots is only designed for use for the holiday rush, and is unused for the rest of the year. (Photo by Lars Sundström)
A growing number of city planners say we’re building more parking than we really need. They say the fact that nearly all parking is free, makes the situation worse. Their ideas are turning nearly fifty years of urban planning on its head. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this second report in a two-part series:
Transcript
A growing number of city planners say we’re building more parking than we really need. They say the fact that nearly all parking is free, makes the situation worse. Their ideas are turning nearly fifty years of urban planning on its head. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:
If you had to pay for a parking space, would you think twice before making a frivolous trip, say, to a convenience store for a candy bar?
City planning researcher Donald Shoup bets you would stay home if you had to pay, or maybe you’d walk instead. That’s a point he makes in his recent book, The High Cost of Free Parking. In it, he tries to show that free parking entices us to waste gas. He says paved lots also compete for better uses of land, like parks or housing. Shoup says the problem’s very real – but to see it, you need to step out of your automobile.
“Any view of suburbia from the air will show you a lot of parking lots and a lot of these parking lots will have empty parking spaces.”
I decided to take a look at what’s Shoup’s talking about in Lincolnwood Illinois, a Chicago suburb. I cheated by skipping the air fare, though. Some new Internet sites can provide satellite photos of your area. I joined two of Lincolnwood’s city planners, Tim Clarke and John Lebeque, in their office to get a birds-eye view of their home turf.
Clarke: “The plus is closer.”
Allee: “Right, and go ahead and see if you can find… There it is. Lincolnwood.”
Clarke: “Wow.”
Lebeque: “Whoa.”
Allee: “So find a retail strip.”
Turns out, Donald Shoup was right. Within a minute, we find a popular grocery store, with a huge parking lot. Tim Clarke recognizes it.
“It’s probably one-third filled. I’m not sure when this aerial was taken. I’ve never seen the parking lot full.”
So why should a busy store’s parking lot be two-thirds empty most of the time? Shoup says it’s the cities’ fault. Cities make the rules. They say how many spaces each new business, house, and apartment building must provide.
By his estimation, city government does a poor job at guessing how much parking we really need. Shoup says governments force businesses to provide enough spaces to meet peak demand, such as the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year.
“Everyone understands the advice, don’t build your church for Easter Sunday, but we build our parking for the week before Christmas.”
In other words, cities tell stores to build parking for the year’s busiest two weeks, even if most of the spaces are empty the rest of the time. He says, without city pressure, a lot of businesses would create smaller lots or they’d sell off parking space they don’t need.
Tim Clarke, the Lincolnwood planner, says suburbs do err on the side of too much parking, but they’re often planning for future growth. He gives an example of a small Lincolnwood dental practice that had 7 examination rooms, but only used three of them. The dentist wanted to build fewer parking spaces than the village required, because it was small and family-run.
“But one could imagine that that family at some time in life would sell that business and someone would come in and want to use all 6 or 7 examining rooms at one time.”
So city planners have to look at the long term use of a building.
Many of Lincolnwood’s largest retailers actually build more than they need to. Bob Johnson runs a Lowe’s Home Improvement store built in late 2003. He says stores like his don’t gamble with having too few spaces.
“I think customers are going to shop, again, where they feel most comfortable and what’s convenient for them. The key word there being convenience. If they’re inconvenienced, they might drive another couple blocks down the road.”
Shoup says that’s a calculation that businesses have to make. He says market forces can help decide how many spaces should be built, but government should not force retailers to have too many spaces. Nor should it force them to offer only free parking.
In fact, Professor Shoup says cities, especially suburban cities, could use land more efficiently if businesses controlled demand for parking like they control everything else: by setting the right price.
“I’m just saying that cities should not force anyone to provide more parking than drivers are willing to pay for.”
Killing our appetite for cheap, abundant parking could be difficult, but Shoup says pressure’s building for change. He says, as suburbs grow, space gets tight. And that raises prices for all land uses.
“I think most people now are focused on the high cost of housing. I think we’ve got our priorities wrong if housing is expensive and the parking is free.”
In his battle against too much parking, Shoup says the most effective weapon might be a little comparison shopping. Free parking might not seem so cheap once it’s compared to the cost of other needs.
A seismologist with the U-S Geological Survey says a recent article on
earthquakes in the Midwest is irresponsible. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Pete Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
