From ‘Dead Zone’ Returns to Oregon Coast:

The return of oxygen-depleted water off the Oregon coast is a sign of a warming climate, which could have ill effect on populations of sea creatures, scientists said Monday.

It’s the sixth year the water, known as a dead zone, has formed.

“It does, indeed, appear to be the new normal,” said Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University. “The fact that we are seeing six in a row now tells us that something pretty fundamental has changed about conditions off of our coast.”

Unlike the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused by fertilizer washing down the Mississippi River, the Oregon dead zone is triggered by northerly winds, which create an ocean-mixing condition called upwelling.

Is this related to global warming? Who knows. But it’s curious that it started six years ago, when the current drought in the western US was in its second year.

This is yet another big, scary e+e thing we should hope the experts pay attention to–not that we’re lacking such items right now.

From Extreme weather brings flood chaos round the world:

People in countries across the world, from China to India and Sudan to Indonesia, are coping with severe wet weather, highlighting the position of flooding as the most deadly of all natural disasters.

While single events cannot be linked to climate change, the flooding come as research suggests that global warming will increase rainfall in some parts of the world, including the Indian monsoon, and increase the number of hurricanes – both due increased evaporation in a warmer world.

One person in 10 worldwide, including one in eight city-dwellers, lives less than 10 metres above sea-level and near the coast. This is an “at-risk zone” for flooding and stronger storms exacerbated by climate change, a recent study found.

Go read the original for much more detail and links.

From Concerns Mount Over Nuclear Energy After Series of Scares:

Despite the recent slew of incidents at nuclear power stations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the errors in Germany, Sweden and Japan were exceptions and certainly did not pose a danger.

That’s a view echoed by Klaus Kotthoff of the GRS group, an independent nuclear assessment and research organization.

While there is no technology that’s free of errors, Kotthoff pointed out that nuclear power plants are subject to a range of registration procedures and measures aimed at managing irregularities — as was the case at two nuclear plants in Germany earlier this month.

A fire broke out last month at the Krümmel nuclear plant near Hamburg in GermanyBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: A fire broke out last month at the Krümmel nuclear plant near Hamburg in Germany

“I believe these incidents were not noteworthy from a technical security point of view,” Kotthoff said.

Critics of nuclear energy, however, don’t buy the argument. Henrik Paulitz of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) said the recent German incidents were dangerous.

“The reactor protection system was activated. That only happens in serious cases,” Paulitz said, adding that they weren’t isolated cases.

There are several nuclear incidents in Germany about which the public is not sufficiently informed, he said. The information that is released is mostly “incomprehensible” and the controversial backgrounds are often concealed.

“Serious security deficits are usually glossed over,” Paulitz said.

Once again, I contend that the fundamental disconnect on the issue of the safety of nuclear power plants (meaning their day to day operations, not waste storage, decommissioning, material proliferation, etc.) comes down to a very simple calculation: The overall risk is the probability of an accident times the cost (monetary and otherwise) of an accident. Nuclear power supporters point to the extremely low accident rate, while nuclear power detractors point to the extremely high cost of a serious accident.

Two interesting articles about small companies pushing EV’s:

Miles Electric Vehicles Announces Initial Dealers

Have you driven a Fjord lately?

The push for EV’s will come from two main directions on the supply side: Startups, and large companies that get so desperate that they are willing to accept the risk of embracing a disruptive technology.

There are startups, like the ones above and Tesla Motors, and Mitsubishi announced some time back that they’ll be selling an EV version of the Colt in 2010. (I believe this is set for just the Japanese market, but I would love to see them ship a few thousand of them over here. They’d be sold before they were loaded onto the ship in Japan.)

Two more cautious articles about nuclear power, both of which I strongly recommend:

Going nuclear on warming

The mirage of nuclear power

From Fighting a swamp thing in Texas (emphasis added):

The little fern, known as giant salvinia, is like something out of a science fiction movie. Biologists call it the world’s worst weed. The plant has the uncanny ability to reproduce itself rapidly. One plant can become 60 million in less than two months. A handful today will cover more than 40 acres in just a few weeks time.

Left unchecked, the invasive plant forms giant mats on top of a water surface, smothering all life below.

“This is the most sinister aquatic plant I’ve ever dealt with,” says Randy Westbrooks, an invasive species specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “It takes no prisoners.”

Giant salvinia is native to the Amazon region of Brazil, where it’s kept in check by natural forces, namely a Brazilian weevil. The invasive plant was first discovered in the U.S. in a pond in South Carolina in 1995. Biologists believe it may have hitched a ride in a shipment of Brazilian lilies. Without a natural enemy, the small fern began spreading exponentially. The plant has been reported in a handful of lakes and streams from the Carolinas to California. Anywhere it ‘s spotted it brings trouble, as some say, like a green creature from the deep.

I saw the NBC news report on this last night, and it truly does look like something out of a bad SF movie. But, being Energy Geek Guy, I immediately had to wonder: If you have this stuff growing unchecked on lakes, and you have cellulosic ethanol plants nearby, isn’t that a recipe for cheap motor fuel? I’m sure that anything that grows that fast has a pretty low cellulose content, but if it can “cover more than 40 acres in just a few weeks time” we’re still talking about a lot of biomass.

If this were feasible, the harvesting would be cheap and simple. As best I could make out from the video NBC showed, the plant floats on the surface, with no roots attaching it to the lake bottom. You could harvest it simply by dragging a plastic net across the surface.

I’m sure there would be some environmental impact of trying to keep such a cycle going for months or years, but even if you had to resort to letting each lake go untouched one year in three (or some appropriate pattern), I’m guessing that you could still produce some serious tonnage of cellulose.