Sustainablog

My previous post retraced the precipitous decline in the reputation of biofuels that occurred between 2006 and today.  In this post I’m going to talk about just a few of the activities going on for “second generation” biofuels (beyond corn, soy and palm oil, wheat…).  One of the key features of these initiatives is that they reduce the competition with food crops - something which will only become a more significant issue in the future.  I’ll be talking about several Universities and companies who have hung in there through the ups and downs of oil prices and the “trendiness” and “rejection” of biofuels.  I think that these folks are going to make significant long-term contributions. If you have been soured in the past on the biofuel concept, please consider these alternatives.

Algae

There was a recent Wall Street Journal article about “5 Technologies that could change everything.”  One they included was biofuels from Algae.  People have been working on this for a long time including a very long government effort.  The great thing about algae is that you can grow it in places and with water sources that are completely unsuitable for farming.  Algae can be extremely productive.  The problem is that the low capital investment systems are less productive and the highly productive, “bio-reactor” approach has a huge capital cost.  The good news is that there are enough companies working away on this that sooner or later there might be a break-through.  I won’t pretend to be an expert on how this is going, but I have a hunch it will eventually become significant.

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In the comment streams on my blog posts there is a recurrent theme from one segment of the respondents - they have a deep distrust in the large companies that are involved in modern agricultural technology.  They don’t believe these companies will behave ethically because they are for profit entities “only answerable to their shareholders.”   

I’d like to speak directly to this as a long-time Ag industry insider whose experience does not support these suspicions. I know that some will dismiss this perspective assuming I am biased, but one has to balance potential for bias with actually having first-hand experience from which to speak.  Over the last 32 years I’ve work for or with most of the companies, large and small, that provide agricultural technologies.  Fourteen of those years have been as an independent consultant so I get to know what is going on inside of many companies in a given year.  I have still only had direct knowledge of a subset of what happens, but in all of that exposure I’ve never witnessed an unethical decision or action - not even the consideration of one.  I’ve seen certain decisions that were short-sighted.  I’ve sometimes seen decision-making processes that are more driven by fear than by opportunity.  I’ve seen missed opportunities because vision was lacking.  I’ve occasionally seen failures to take advantage of synergies that could have been realized between divisions of large organizations. I’ve seen problems, but I believe that some level of dysfunction is inevitable in any organization involving people.  Still, unethical behavior isn’t something I’ve seen so I disagree that it is automatically likely just because of the characteristics of the company.  

On balance I’ve also seen these organizations, large and small, frequently make important contributions to society in terms of the productivity and safety of our food supply.  I’ve seen these companies continue to do that in an environment of constant activist attack and very limited public understanding because so few people farm.

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The discussions following my two last posts about climate change opinion shifts and about an anti-science coalition have made it clear that one of the reasons people distrust science is that “Science” fails to speak with one voice.  There are definitely forces from the outside of Science that erode trust, but there are also internal issues.

The problem is that Science will not ever “speak with one voice.”  Scientists often have different opinions about a given topic.  Often that simply represents a healthy part of the scientific process.  When I hear someone say, “scientists don’t even agree about this!” I want to say, “you don’t know many scientists, do you!”  We are trained to questions assumptions and scrutinize analytical methods.  We are taught how to spot artifacts and how to come up with alternate hypotheses.  Some scientists get a little aggressive about this (there is usually at least one curmudgeon in every department).

There are definitely some topics that are so complex that it is impossible to be 100% sure about conclusions.  There are questions that are not amenable to running a controlled experiment.  These are all factors that make a topic like climate change so controversial.  These are legitimate reasons for the lack of a single “answer from science.”

All the above said, there are plenty of examples of scientific disagreements that arise from what can only, honestly be called bad science. Doing science well is non-trivial.  It requires a good deal of mental rigor and comprehensive information acquisition.  If we scientists are honest we all have to admit that we can fall short of the ideal “scientific method” at times.  Trust in “Science” ultimately means trusting “Scientists” and thats sometimes where the trouble starts.  There are 5 main ways that I can think of that scientsts can “behave badly.”  Maybe you can add some more.
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A wise Nebraska farmer I know taught me this saying: “It’s what you know for certain that keeps you from learning.”   This principle is at the core of why certain groups and entities are rejecting good science.

As a scientist, and particularly as a scientist involved in agricultural and environmental issues, I’m increasingly aware of this trend.  In some cases this involves open hostility to science, in others it is just a matter of ignoring the scientific input. What is disturbing is how many different “voices” are in this unlikely “coalition” and the extent to which they are coloring the views of the broader society  (as seen in the recent Pew survey of American attitudes about climate change). 

At acknowledged risk of offending people, I will try to describe factions in the groups that tend to reject things that science would tell them.  I know that what I am talking about does not apply to everyone, or even most people in these groups, but it is still a potent force in our society. 

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The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released results of a major survey tracking what people believe about “Global Warming.”  It is not encouraging!  Across age, gender, race, political affiliation, and religion there have been declines in the number of people who believe that human activity is involved and increases in the number of people who don’t think it is happening.  My own demographic (white, male, 54 years old, political Independent, Evangelical Christian) is among the most skeptical, though the Baby Boom slightly bucks the trend for age.  Some friends and I are working on a strategy to challenge the Church on this issue.

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Around 1300 c.e. the Yao and Zhuang people of Guangdong Province in Southern China faced a serious problem.  In the Longsheng area there was a growing population, but their mountainous surroundings gave them very little land that could be used for farming.  They needed more food and so they turned to technology for the solution.  What they did was to terrace their mountainsides even up to slopes of 45%. I’m sure that the method was perfected over the 400 years of building.  What they were able to do is still an impressive example of civil engineering, even today.  Using stones and mud they built terrace walls that stand firm even with the torrential downpours that are common in the area.  They used bamboo piping to distribute water to each paddy - some so narrow that they only have room for two rows of rice.  This production system has remained productive for centuries when many other contemporary farming societies around the world simply depleted one area and moved on to the next.  These terraces are called Longji, or the ”Dragon’s Spine” and they now extend over 66 square kilometers.  They are both beautiful and inspiring.

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The large-scale Organic dairy cooperative, “Organic Valley” has just sunk to a new low in the practice of “I will market against my farmer neighbors by stoking consumer’s fears.” They announced that they have launched an on-line calculator that is supposed to show you how much pesticide and fertilizer use is avoided when you buy their products.  The news release essentially boils down to the message, “buy our products or you will probably die!”  It also essentially accuses the 97.5% of us who don’t buy Organic of destroying the planet.

When talking about pesticides the press report says: “For adults, exposure through diet has been linked to infertility, Parkinson’s, testicular cancer, birth defects and much more. More than one million children in America age five and under ingest at least 15 pesticides daily. Early exposures are suspected in the sharp rise in health problems including autism, obesity, asthma, brain cancer and other childhood cancers.”  This broad-brush assertion is misleading on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start.  I’m not saying that there have never been any health issues with any pesticide anywhere, but we also have sufficient food in part because of pesticides.  Though many people don’t know it, there are pesticides used on organic crops as well.  Actually, the EPA has done a very good job of regulating pesticide use over the years so that people don’t need to be frightened about their food.

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I need to be very careful in what I say about this topic because it would be easy to scare people beyond what is rational.  I could also also easily make enemies in the Wheat industry which is about the last thing I’d like to do.  I’m going to try to hit the right balance, but it is risky.

Mycotoxins

Most people don’t know that Mycotoxins are a very real issue in our food supply.  These are nasty, natural chemicals that are produced by certain fungi that infect crops. This is not something new.  In Medieval times there was a wide-spread neurological disorder called “Ergotism.” It was caused by mycotoxins in the rye crop produced by a disease called “ergot.” The poor people who lived off of rye, rather than wheat, were disproportionately effected.

Mycotoxins are still an issue today.  2009 has been a particularly bad year for a toxin called “vomitoxin” in wheat, barley and pasta wheat.  Its not a secret, but unless you read the farm press or trade news, you would never know.  Sometime do a Google News search for “vomitoxin.”  If there is rain when these grains are flowering, they can become infected with a fungus called Fusarium graminierum. The disease starts by reducing the farmer’s yields, but it can also produce a toxin in the remaining grain called deoxynivalenol (more commonly called DON toxin).  The trade term, “vomitoxin,” comes from the physical response that animals have if they are fed too much of this contaminated grain (which is obviously not pretty).

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Dr. Norman Borlaug passed away this weekend at 95.  He left behind an amazing legacy of contribution to humanity.  It is likely that he saved more human lives than any other person in history.  He did it by developing far more productive wheat than had ever been grown.  His “short stature” wheat had shorter, thicker stems so that it could hold bigger heads of grain that would otherwise “lodge” (collapse over on to the ground where it can’t be harvested).  It was also resistant to the devastating wheat disease called “Stem Rust.”  This wheat ended up feeding millions of people around the world, particularly in Pakistan and India in the 1960s.  Borlaug’s breakthrough was a key part of the “Green Revolution” and it did much to address the hunger and poverty issues of the time.  For this, and his life-time of additional work Bourlag recieved the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Metal .  Only Martin Luther King, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa have received all of these commendations.  He was also awarded the National Medal of Science and a host of other awards from around the world.  There is an excellent article about the life and career of this remarkable man in the Des Moines Register.

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This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on September 5.

On August 19 Cleantech Group published a report that was supposed to put an end to an ongoing debate on the question if the Kindle and other e-readers are actually greener than physical books. The release’s title was “E-readers a win for carbon emissions.”

It was supposed to be the life cycle analysis many people, including myself were waiting for. I have to admit I was very excited to read about it as we follow this debate for a long time. I decided to read it and see if this is really it. If it’s really over.

The report, entitled ‘The Environmental Impact of Amazon’s Kindle’ was written by senior reporter Emma Ritch. I read the executive brief (7-page long) and was happy to find a well-written analysis that integrates many pieces of information that together create a more coherent picture. At the same time I wasn’t that sure about the validity of the findings.

There were two main issues that bothered me mostly: the carbon footprint of a single Kindle and the assumption about the number of e-books the average user is reading. As you’ll see these are important factors in the analysis and have significant influence on the findings.

Here are my thoughts about them in more details:

1. What’s the carbon footprint of a single Kindle?

This is an important part of the analysis - you can’t have a comparison between physical books and the Kindle without this figure. But fortunately the report has it: “…the second-generation Kindle represents the same emissions as 15 books bought in person or 30 purchased online. That would yield a range of between 60.2 to 306 kg of CO2, or an average of 167.78 kg of CO2 during its lifespan.”

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