The effort to stop and reverse global warming is being pursued on many fronts both large and small. The common thread that runs through nearly every proposed solution is that of sacrifice. Give up the gas guzzler. Turn the thermostat up in summer and down in winter. Ruin the view of Nantucket Sound. In the past month two pain-free concepts have been floated that are responsible and real.

Change Cow Feed - Cow burps contain magnificent amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that's 20X more effective as a heat trapping blanket than CO2. One of the reasons they burp so much is that a grain diet of corn and soy does not agree with their stomachs. Cows have an easier time digesting grasses and belch much less when they eat them. There are a lot of cows in the world. Here's the story from NYTimes.

Paint Rooftops White - At a get together of Nobel Prize winners, U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said, “if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly, it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years.” Here's the story at The Dirt.

 

 

 

June 12, 2009 - Yesterday the Massachusetts National Guard announced a proposal to build a wind farm on the Massachusetts Military Reservation. The wind farm would have 17 windmills producing up to 34 megawatts of electricity - that would make it the largest source of wind energy in the state. Here's the story from Boston.com

BOSTON, MA, May 22, 2009 – Cape Wind completed its State and Local permitting process yesterday with a unanimous vote of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board to grant Cape Wind a ‘Certificate of Environmental Impact and Public Interest.’ The certificate rolls up all State and Local permits and approvals into one ‘composite certificate’. Cape Wind President Jim Gordon welcomed the news, “Today's vote marks not just a successful conclusion to a seven-year state regulatory review of the Cape Wind project but the beginning of a new era of clean energy jobs and renewable power from the endless wind resources off our shore." Completion of the Federal Permitting process for Cape Wind is expected soon when U.S. Secretary Ken Salazar issues a Record of Decision on Cape Wind. The Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior issued Cape Wind a favorable Final Environmental Impact Statement in January. If Cape Wind beats back anticipated legal challenges then 130 wind turbines sited in Nantucket Sound will end up powering about 400,000 homes.

May 19, 2009 - It has become a truism that melting glaciers contribute to raising the level of the sea and that low lying waterfront lands will be eroded faster and inundated by water in the decades to come. That is unless the waterfront area was what the glacier itself rested upon. It seems that when land is relieved of the weight of a glacier the land expands like foam after it's been squeezed - and the land rises faster than the seas. This effect has been observed in Juneau Alaska where glaciers are retreating a rate of 30 feet per year and more. There are positive and negative effects in this. Morgan DeBoer opened a nine-hole golf course, at the mouth of Glacier Bay in 1998 on land that did not exist 50 years ago. On the other hand, dropping water tables are drying up wetlands. Here's the full story by Cornelia Dean at NY Times.