Microscopic Bacteria, Large-Scale Issues – The First Steps in Communicating the Links Between Vibrio and Climate Change

By Zoe O’Donoghue, 2012 Clean Air-Cool Planet Climate Fellow

Clean Air – Cool Planet’s climate fellows begin their fourth week today and we’re all now happily immersed in our projects. My project, looking at how climate change is impacting Vibrio bacteria population ecology, got off to a roaring start when my scientific mentors, Dr. Steve Jones and Dr. Vaughn Cooper from the University of New Hampshire, handed me a hefty stack of scientific literature. I dove right in, wading through study after study on how rising water temperatures and changing salinity due to rainfall are making the bacteria more prevalent and diverse along coastlines globally. This is mainly an issue due to the risk of human infection from one of the many pathogenic strains of Vibrio (not all types of the bacteria will make us sick, though some, like Vibrio cholerae which causes cholera, definitely will).

Zoe, Dr. Steve Jones and Tess Markham take readings in the Great Bay Estuary.

And then it gets even more complicated! Temperature and salinity are not the only environmental factors at play in estuary and coastal ecosystems, and let’s not even get started on the vast number of avenues for human exposure (anything from consuming raw shellfish to wound exposure in contaminated water), or the genetic markers of Vibrio pathogenicity which we don’t fully understand.  I’ve also been doing some of my own research, looking to NOAA, the CDC and the FDA for more data. Needless to say, I’ve had my hands full with trying to learn and understand all of this information.

Collecting samples

Luckily I’ve had some field experiences too- I spent the afternoon of June 12^th on a sample collection trip with Dr. Jones, CA-CP President Adam Markham, as well as Adam’s daughter Tess. We took water, sediment and oyster samples from two locations in the Great Bay Estuary of New Hampshire and Maine where Jones has been studying Vibrio for more than two decades. We all got a chance to “rake” the oysters and I learned how to tell if an oyster is alive or if it is a “sweet one” just filled with mud. Since I’m from New Mexico, this was a novel experience for me, and quite enjoyable.

Tess, Adam Markham and Dr. Jones

Just last Friday I began the first drafting stages of the “white paper” that I’ll be writing as the next step of my project. I started by outlining my thoughts and ideas in order to receive feedback from Drs. Jones and Cooper as well as Adam. Given all the data I’ve found its going to be a sizeable piece but hopefully the end product will help people get a better understanding of the complex issues surrounding Vibrio and climate change. Aside from the paper itself I plan to compose a 2 to 4 page fact/graphics sheet to summarize the most important aspects of this research and express why people should care about a tiny little organism like Vibrio.

Onward!

Have You Started YOUR Energy Plan?

By Julia Dundorf
Manager of Community Relations and Co-director of the New England Carbon Challenge,
Clean Air – Cool Planet

 

 

We hear a lot about green jobs and restarting the economy these days.  We also hear veiled and not-so-veiled dispersions about addressing energy consumption and climate change.  It’s going to kill jobs ya know! 

Despite numerous prestigious economic reports of the value and imperative of addressing climate and energy issues earlier rather than later – check out the Stern Report or the more local report out of the University of NH New Hampshire’s Green Economy and Industries: Current Employment and Future Opportunities – we’re still living in this rabbit hole of short sighted, antiquated paradigms.

In my work at Clean Air-Cool Planet as Manager of Community Relations and Co-director of the New England Carbon Challenge, I talk to people a lot about what they can do to take control of their own energy future – municipal and energy committee leaders, homeowners and renters, legislators and kids.  It all boils down to some pretty simple precepts.  I shared some of these thoughts the other day at the exceptional Housing Conference that NH Housing Finance Authority puts on every year in Concord and again to some of the Build Green NH folks at the Building NH Trade Show and Conference organized by the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of NH.

Regardless of one’s ideological framing, the way we mindlessly expend energy is senseless.  Pick your button issue – energy independence, climate change, foreign (or domestic) fossil fuel markets, environmental impacts of fossil fuel extraction or burning (think Gulf spill), green jobs, peak oil, resource conservation, rising energy costs (we can be sure they will) – they all point to the absurdity of our profligate addition to all things energy.  “Alright Dundorf, enough of the soapbox, give us specifics,” you say?  

Let’s look at heating fuels, according to the US Energy Information Administration, 82% of the nation’s fuel oil and kerosene sales are in the Northeast.

Figure 3. Residential Heating Oil Sales By Region

That’s a stunning statistic.  Now overlay this rough reference point… for every $1 spent in the region on heating fuels, only about 10 to 15 cents stay in the region, driving the local economy.  This just makes no business sense.  We’re not only letting our precious energy leak out of our aging building stock, through inefficient building techniques and business as usual practices, but we’re letting our energy dollars leak out of our region.

Simply put… this is MISSED OPPORTUNITY! 

Again whatever your ideological drivers, can’t we agree on THAT?  What could the other $.85 – $.90 for every $1 of heating fuels buy us?  More efficient schools or teachers, healthcare for all children, tax refund checks or incentives to put in the energy efficiency measure that will drive down this energy consumption?  Pick YOUR priority. They’re all important.  They’re all possible if we prioritize energy conservation, efficiency and clear, renewable energy sources. 

One more stat for you to chew on, “Every dollar invested in efficiency returns $2.60 to New Englanders” according to the recently released report from the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, “From Potential to Action:  How New England Can Save Energy, Cut Costs,  and Create a Brighter Future with Energy Efficiency”.

So what are we waiting for?  Before you pull out your cans of spray foam, learn how to build storm windows, or hire an energy auditor to assess your energy-saving opportunities, make a plan.  We seem to make plans for everything in our lives but rarely do we lay out our short and longer term plans for reducing energy consumption.  I’ve got just the tool to walk you through it and help you get those energy project done.  Visit myenergyplan.net and start planning today.

While you’re there check out the schedule of Button Up NH Workshops, free, public trainings on how your home uses energy and what you can do about it.  By the way, these tools are largely funded through RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in this case through NH’s Public Utilities Commission’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Fund.  The RGGI program is expressly designed to stimulate and support reductions of emissions, e.g. reductions in energy consumption.  Yet in our topsy-turvy priorities, even THAT program is beleaguered.  But that’s another rant for another day.

Let’s stop the bickering and denial and take advantage of the missed opportunities happening every minute in our region. 

If not us then who?

If not now, then when?

Listening to Pros at Work

By Anne Stephenson,
Campus Outreach and Climate Fellows Coordinator
Clean Air-Cool Planet

Anne Stephenson

 

As some of our reader might remember, Jennifer, Claire and I are teaching an on-line Carbon Management Course for the new UMASS Dartmouth Certificate in Sustainable Development.  We recently interviewed our friend and colleague Brett Pasinella, from the UNH Sustainability Academy, for the benefit of our students.  But the conversation was so interesting, we thought our blog readers would enjoy listening too!  Tune in to me and Brett talking about the challenging transition of greenhouse gas inventory to carbon management plan, and about how specific reduction goals have changed the UNH community’s attitudes towards energy projects. 

In the second file, Brett takes time to describe how he and his colleagues tackle the challenge of evaluating the communication, education, and participatory elements of carbon reduction projects, and not just energy dollars or tons of carbon saved.  Brett also shares his tips for succeeding in the growing field of carbon management and how one succeeds at “being a jack-of-all-trades and a master-of-none”. 

So tune in!  And tell us what you think!  At CA-CP we think one of the most challenging aspects of carbon management is ensuring that inventories become reduction plans, and that those reduction plans, in turn, become institutionalized in the everyday workings of an organization.  UNH has done both better than most.  And like the excellent participant in our sustainability community that they are, they are remarkably open about the challenges they face(d).   Click here to hear their story!  (click title to play – right-click, then save-as to download)

Transition to Plan

Evaluating Projects

What’s Good for the Troops…

By Bob Sheppard
CA-CP CFO and vice president of the Corporate Program,
Clean Air-Cool Planet



Two weeks ago one of the presenters at a forum we co-sponsored in Concord NH, mentioned a sobering reality about the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Many of those killed or injured are not traditional battlefield causalities, but people guarding fuel convoys, which are easy prey. Those statistics immediately caught my attention because I have a niece who proudly serves as a Registered Nurse in the US Army, and has spent time patching people back together overseas.

The encouraging news is that those numbers have not been lost on the Pentagon, and they are talking about their plan. Up to 80 percent of the loads convoys in Afghanistan carry through the treacherous Khyber Pass are fuel. While that fuel initially costs about a $1 a gallon, when you figure in the cost for moving the precious cargo to the front lines, it approaches an astounding $400 per gallon.

The convoys that haul fuel to bases have been sitting ducks for enemy fighters.

The page-one story in the New York Times reports that military brass have a plan to wean them selves from fossil fuels by promoting renewable energy. A U.S. Marine company from California, a state that continues to play a leadership role in this sector, is on the ground in one of those hard-fought areas in Afghanistan where insurgents are still fighting toe-to-toe, armed not only with state of the art weapons systems, but hardened solar PV. These systems will provide electricity critical to the 150 members of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. Those troops will be working under energy efficient lights, eating chow in mess tents cooled by solar-powered fans charging their computers and communications systems via rays of the sun and sleeping in tents that are both powered and shaded by portable solar panels.

According to the story in the NY Times “There are a lot of profound reasons for doing this, but for us at the core it’s practical,” said Ray Mabus, Navy secretary and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Mabus has said he wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. That figure includes energy for bases as well as fuel for vehicles and ships. The other military branches are following suit; the US Air Force is reportedly testing a 50-50 plant-based bio-fuel mix in its jets, and has begun experimenting with algae-based fuel.

During CA-CP’s first decade, we have talked about civilian applications for renewables, or reducing carbon emissions by using less fossil fuel, highlighting the success stories of our partners.

Here in our own backyard, The University of New Hampshire built a pipeline to tap a municipal landfill to generate energy for the Durham campus.  Another winner of our Climate Champion Award, office-products retailer Staples, has brought fuels cells online to generate clean, affordable, reliable power at a large distribution facility in Ontario California.

More recently, we partnered with Joseph James, a South Carolina businessman and one of the co-founders of that state’s biomass council, on a series of events to engage businesses around comprehensive climate and energy legislation. James is working to ensure that black farmers and rural communities in the South are included in the new “green” economy.  He is president of a company that is developing a promising technology that converts wood chips and bio-crops into a substance that can be used as a substitute to coal, or fuel.

If the Pentagon is actively considering alternatives to fossil fuels, my question is how long will it take to spur development of really transformative technology, something that is game changing in both civilian and military applications? Our partners are interested in participating in these types of innovative demo projects.