Wide Angle: Geo-engineering and the Water Cycle

October 09, 2009

When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, the resulting effect on global climate was staggering. The eruption sent so many millions tons of debris and aerosols into the stratosphere that it, quite literally, blocked the sun. Despite the fact that greenhouse gas emissions continued their steady rise in the year that followed the eruption, the stratospheric debris from Pinatubo caused global temperatures to drop during that time by almost a degree. Scientists hoping to find geo-engineering solutions to cooling the earth took note. Would there be a way to mimic the Pinatubo eruption, without the destruction and sulfur dioxide, and block or reflect enough of the sunlight to stop the heating of the earth? Lots of ideas have been floated, ranging from satellites that deploy giant parasol-like fans, to simply painting roofs a more reflective white. You can read a couple of posts from our friends at Treehugger to find out more: here and here. Here's the thing, though. You can't dramatically tinker with a complex system and not expect the unexpected. In the year after the Pinatubo eruption, scientists noted interesting, and potentially devastating, effects on the water cycle in certain parts of the world. And that's led some scientists to ask just exactly what effects large-scale bio-engineering might have on the earth's water cycle. Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist with the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology on the Stanford University campus, is running some modeling tests to try the answer those questions about geo-engineering and the water cycle. I caught up with him for this week's podcast, and he started by giving a bit more background on what happened to the Ganges River in India after the Pinatubo eruption:

(Photo by USGS)

Wide Angle: Smarter Meters for a Smarter Grid

July 10, 2009

OK, admittedly, so-called "smart" electricity meters may not have the cool factor of say, smart refrigerators. But Britain is banking on them to help citizens save money, and help the country meet its European Union obligations to reduce energy consumption and cut carbon emissions. If all goes according to the British government's plan, the next decade will usher in a huge roll-out of smart meters in the UK. So, my Wide Angle assignment was simple:  find someone in the smart meter industry who could tell me how smart meters work, and what kind of energy savings one might be able to expect. I found Mark England, Managing Director of a company called Sentec, which is based in beautiful Cambridge, England. England in England...I like that. Anyway, Mark told me that Sentec's been around for 12 years or so, and has been working on smart meters, and in particular the sensor technologies embedded in smart meters, for the past five years. I start the podcast with a very simple question: just what is a smart meter, and how does it work?

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Wide Angle: Wind Power for Antarctic Base Station

May 28, 2009

Wow. This is not your garden variety wind turbine installation, eh? This is Princess Elisabeth station in Antarctica. It's a Belgian research facility located "upon the Utsteinen nunatak in the Dronning Maud Land (East Antarctica)," according to the station website. Better yet, if you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can fly right to it. Princess Elisabeth is designed to study the effects of climate change. Fittingly, it's also designed to be the first zero emission research station. Usually, diesel fuel is brought in to power generators for Antarctic stations. But not this one.