Recently in Environment Category

I talked before about things we can do to reduce the iciness of sidewalks. That is a supply side solution. We need to think about demand side solutions to the problem of ice-related falls on icy sidewalks.

Bill Lindeke wants to turn it into a game, but in the end, he is still young.

There are things we can do to better accommodate the ice as well.

• I can wear cleats of some kind or another. The problem is walking on non-ice, or worse cleared pavement, is not nearly so good with this tool. And ice is non-homogenously distributed across our sidewalks this time of year.

• I can walk around with a hair dryer and a very large battery.

• I can drive.

• I can not travel on ice.
  

I like the last one best. Why TF am I walking around on ice? In the end, not all travel can be safely accomodated.

P.S. The number of my falls each year can probably be measured by the number of posts complaining about ice.

Global Warming needs an advertising campaign. While those trying to stop it are well-funded, and many organizations try to deny it or minimize its effects, almost no one is selling us on its merits. Global warming opponents make is seem like the earth is going to become a dried up desert-like husk. One of my friends insists it's too late, the Earth is Toast.

Embrace that idea. Instead of the "Earth is toast", we need to say It's Toasted, giving the new and improved earth a warm and cozy feel, like a hot breakfast on a Winter's Day. And every day, we are slightly more and more toasted.

Brendon writes in:

Heating a sidewalk section has climate change implications. I calculate the 26-year cost of your section at $8,722 at the low end and $9,708 at the high end (depending on the discount rate you assign to the future impacts of climate change. I tend to lean towards the higher end). This means your break-even point is 8% to 20% higher, meaning maybe 173 to 192 pedestrians per day. Of course with a carbon tax in place, there would likely be more walkers in some places, meaning heating the sidewalks become feasible in more places.

Now, if you could use waste heat that hasn't been previously captured to heat sidewalks, as they are proposing to do with the new "interchange" plaza and HERC steam, the carbon footprint becomes effectively zero additional. Much less per kWh/BTU.

Other interesting facts, heating all the sidewalks in Minneapolis with electricity from the grid for one year would produce more greenhouse gases than the disposal of all our solid waste and wastewater does over the same time period. The additional energy consumption would be equal to about 1/3 of the current annual consumption in all residential properties in the city. It would increase the city's annual electricity consumption by 8%.

He nicely identifies a feedback effect, heating up sidewalks will create more emissions, which will heat the atmosphere, which will eventually negate the need for heating up sidewalks. There must be an equilibrium point here.

More seriously, the use of waste heat is a great idea, especially near the HERC. The problem would be building infrastructure to distribute that more broadly. There might also be waste heat from wastewater (which is still liquid in the winter, and thus warmer than the ground around it) which we don't capture, or let go to roads, by running sewers under the streets rather than the sidewalks.

Volk et al (2012) Traffic-Related Air Pollution, Particulate Matter, and AutismAir Pollution, Particulate Matter, and Autism:

"Context  Autism is a heterogeneous disorder with genetic and environmental factors likely contributing to its origins. Examination of hazardous pollutants has suggested the importance of air toxics in the etiology of autism, yet little research has examined its association with local levels of air pollution using residence-specific exposure assignments.

Objective  To examine the relationship between traffic-related air pollution, air quality, and autism.

Design  This population-based case-control study includes data obtained from children with autism and control children with typical development who were enrolled in the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment study in California. The mother's address from the birth certificate and addresses reported from a residential history questionnaire were used to estimate exposure for each trimester of pregnancy and first year of life. Traffic-related air pollution was assigned to each location using a line-source air-quality dispersion model. Regional air pollutant measures were based on the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality System data. Logistic regression models compared estimated and measured pollutant levels for children with autism and for control children with typical development.

Setting  Case-control study from California.

Participants  A total of 279 children with autism and a total of 245 control children with typical development.

Main Outcome Measures  Crude and multivariable adjusted odds ratios (AORs) for autism.

Results  Children with autism were more likely to live at residences that had the highest quartile of exposure to traffic-related air pollution, during gestation (AOR, 1.98 [95% CI, 1.20-3.31]) and during the first year of life (AOR, 3.10 [95% CI, 1.76-5.57]), compared with control children. Regional exposure measures of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter less than 2.5 and 10 μm in diameter (PM2.5 and PM10) were also associated with autism during gestation (exposure to nitrogen dioxide: AOR, 1.81 [95% CI, 1.37-3.09]; exposure to PM2.5: AOR, 2.08 [95% CI, 1.93-2.25]; exposure to PM10: AOR, 2.17 [95% CI, 1.49-3.16) and during the first year of life (exposure to nitrogen dioxide: AOR, 2.06 [95% CI, 1.37-3.09]; exposure to PM2.5: AOR, 2.12 [95% CI, 1.45-3.10]; exposure to PM10: AOR, 2.14 [95% CI, 1.46-3.12]). All regional pollutant estimates were scaled to twice the standard deviation of the distribution for all pregnancy estimates.

Conclusions  Exposure to traffic-related air pollution, nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5, and PM10 during pregnancy and during the first year of life was associated with autism. Further epidemiological and toxicological examinations of likely biological pathways will help determine whether these associations are causal."

In general pollution has been going down in the US, and autism diagnosis has been going up. Some of that may be diagnosis issues (though the previously linked article suggests not). However, there is an interesting point, in the Volk article: "In addition, ultrafine particles (PM0.1) may penetrate cellular membranes." As we filter larger and larger pollutants from the tailpipe, we may be making more small pollutants (One way to reduce measurable pollution particles is to make them smaller, so they are no longer measured). For instance the as wikipedia says about the Diesel Particulate Filter "maintenance free DPF break larger particles into smaller ones."

Now @ | streets.mn: Tree canopy and house size : "I will take a controversial position: trees are good."

Tim Taylor (Conversable Economist) on: Driverless Cars:

"The fully self-driving car isn't right around the corner. Clearly, costs need to come down substantially and a number of complementary technologies need to be created. However, we do already have cars in the commercial market with cruise control and anti-lock brakes, as well as cars that sense potential crash hazards and can parallel park themselves. Changes like these happen slowly, and then in a rush. As the report [Self-driving cars: The next revolution From KPMG and CAR] notes, "The adoption of most new technologies proceeds along an S-curve, and we believe the path to self-driving vehicles will follow a similar trajectory." Maybe 10-15 years? Faster? "

A pessimistic colleague of mine writes:

the arguments in favor of energy efficiency will be swamped by the added demand. Right now, people don't drive more because it's a pain. If I can drive while sleeping, I'll be more likely to work in one city, commute to another; or, go to the cabin every weekend; or, allow little Johnny to sign up for a soccer league since the car (not me) will drive him; and so on.

automatic-drive cars would make travel much more convenient, which would increase travel demand -- likely, a lot. That's not a benefit for energy consumption.

maybe we'll have electric-only cars, which would help with local emissions but not energy consumption; and, we'll only get those if we require them, which it's not clear we will..

signed,
pessimist.

I agree distances will increase, but the cars will be more efficient as human driving patterns (excessive braking and stop and start, e.g.) will be replaced. There are parallel trends in making cars more energy efficient as well. How this nets out is unclear, but I am more optimistic.

Some Sandy links:

(1) Subway Recovery:

In general I am really impressed with the speed of the subway recovery. If periodic flooding does not destroy the network, maybe New York does not need to relocate or build really expensive defenses, just take a 1 or 2 week vacation every hurricane.

From WNYC: Subway Network Recovery animation

From NYT: New York Subways Find Magic in Speedy Hurricane Recovery

(2) Gas Rationing:

From NYT: In New York Gas Shortage, Missed Opportunities and Miscalculations

From NYT: Odd-Even License Plate Rules Have a History

We really need to invent/deploy gasoline-powered gas stations and refineries. It seems many stations had gas they could not pump for lack of electricity. Obviously lots of other problems as well, and I am sure there are risks of sparking near lots of gasoline, but this should be a solvable problem.

Wired: How to Create Fuel Out Of Thin Air :

"A small British company has developed a process that uses air and electricity to create synthetic fuel. Yes, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but the result is what Air Fuel Synthesis is calling, after much consideration to the term, ‘carbon-neutral’ gasoline.

Here’s how it works: air blows up into a tower filled with a sodium hydroxide solution mist. After reacting with some of the sodium hydroxide, the carbon dioxide in the air forms sodium carbonate. The mixture gets pumped into a cell where it gets hit with an electric current, which releases more carbon dioxide, the excess of which is collected and stored for subsequent reaction.

...
"

They plan to scale up slowly (a refinery in 15 years). However, play this out. Eventually we not only clean out all the CO2 we put into the atmosphere, we clean out all the CO2 animals exhale and plants inhale, killing all life everywhere. (Assuming we convert more to fuel than we burn). We can call this new threat Global Oxygenating.

It's Morning in America

[Two rainbows (one a double rainbow!)]

Brendon sends me to MPR Minneapolis moving toward single-sort recycling

Wikimedia blog: Welcome to the world’s first Wikipedia Town

Fast Company: J. Crew CEO, Apple Board Member Mickey Drexler Reveals Steve Jobs' iCar Dream, Confirms "Living Room" Plans:

"'Look at the car industry; it's a tragedy in America. Who is designing the cars?' Drexler said. 'Steve's dream before he died was to design an iCar.'"

Several folks have sent me to Wired's take on the paper discussed in the SciAm article I linked to earlier: World's Subways Converging on Ideal Form

Alex @ Getting Around Minneapolis discusses the rerouting of buses in St. Paul in response to the Central [University Ave.] Corridor Green Line … St Paul transferring

[My #8 bus is getting absorbed by the 67. The rider will be pleased the route now goes farther (actually there are 172 average daily rides over 50 daily bus trips, and they run a full size bus) and hopefully has a higher frequency (it can't be lower). The #2 is still crazy from a circuity perspective.]

SR sends me to Betabeat, which discusses Zimride: Nine Startups Tried to Teach Brooklyn Bowl How to Share Last Night :

"Next, former Lehman Brothers employee John Zimmer came up to pitch Zimride even though he really didn’t need to. The San Francisco based startup just got funded for $7.5 million. Mr. Zimmer explained that 80 percent of the seats in cars on America’s highways are unoccupied. That’s why he founded Zimride, which allows users to find a driver with empty seats and book a ride just like you would a bus, train or plane ticket.

Zimride is a social marketplace for drivers and riders who can see each other’s profiles and decide if the ride is one they’re willing to take. If it takes off, Mr. Zimmer believes Zimride will help take cars off the road, reduce traffic wait times and help people make new friends. In fact, Zimride has been the catalyst for more than one relationship already—but please guys, it’s not a dating site."

Can't the trees and the earth get their act together and cooperate:

Arbor Day is April 27

Earth Day is April 22

Imagine a merger, just like Presidents Day, all the economies of scale, it might even become a federal holiday, Last Monday of April.

(This was not accidental)

There is a lot of noise in my neighborhood about a new sound wall erected on I-94 by MnDOT. Some neighbors (on the north) are complaining they are getting more noise as a result of the wall (on the south side of the highway), as the noise bounces off that wall and up to their house, which is above the noise wall on their-own side of the freeway (and where the wall is punctured by Franklin Avenue). The house shown below has a party of signs and balloons with various anti-noise slogans.

Noise is of course unwanted sound. Your music is my noise. It is a classic externality of transportation, and in fact one of the most costly (its economic value may exceed the cost of air pollution). To reduce the amount of externality, transportation agencies erect noise walls, reducing the amount of noise on the other side of the wall (and thus diminishing the decrease in property value). But that noise doesn't just disappear, it makes the road noisier, or it is claimed, in this case, the north side of the freeway.

People can often adapt to a steady stream of white noise as on a crowded freeway, but it is the unusual noises (the one loud truck, the motorcycle, the airplane, the train) that are more disruptive and annoying.

So who has rights here?

If there is a homeowner, and someone moves in next door and makes a lot of noise, we often say the new neighbor is creating the noise externality. We often hear about the "Polluter Pays Principle". But Coase (who is still alive at 101!) would say that but for the homeowner, there would not be an externality either. (If a truck roars in the forest and there is no-one there to hear, does it make a noise?) Either the homeowner should pay the neighbor to shut up, or the neighbor should pay the homeowner to get insulation and better windows, or the homeowner should accept the damages, or the neighbor should pay him for his damages, society is indifferent. What we need is a clear source of property rights. Clearly who wins and loses in these two circumstances does change with the allocation of those rights. Managing these externalities (so that we can avoid expensive "nuisance" lawsuits) is one of the important jobs of planning. Do I have a right to quiet, or do you have a right to make noise?

Airports often face the question with their neighbors. Clearly airplanes create noise. Should the neighbors be compensated? Well, if the neighbors moved in after the airport already made a lot of noise, they paid less for their house (or pay a lower rent) already, why should they be compensated twice? If the airport is paying, then the airlines are paying, and if the airlines are paying, their customers are paying. But if the airport moves in after the neighbors had already built their houses (and to help tilt the playing field, the airport had been zoned as a park previously so there was no airport-anticipation), we feel it should compensate.

In this case, maybe there is an inexpensive technical solution. Maybe there is an expensive technical solution. Maybe MnDOT should buy out Mr. or Ms. Unhappy-with-Noise and resell the house at a noise-affected discount with a noise-easement. Maybe Mr. or Ms. Unhappy-with-Noise will just have to live with a noisier world.

BBC: Wireless highway charges electric cars as they go:

"Engineers in his lab are developing a way to wirelessly charge electric cars from magnetic coils embedded into the road. The car would pick up the power via another coil, meaning – in theory – that you would never have to make a charging stop again."

Stephen Smith @ The Atlantic Cities: Why Tokyo's Privately Owned Rail Systems Work So Well :

"Beyond the astonishing size and quality of the networks, Japan's three major metropolitan areas, sometimes called the Tokaido megalopolis after its Edo-era road, are also home to a vibrant free market in transportation. Singapore and Hong Kong also have private companies, but competition is weak compared to Japan's dizzying array of independent firms. Japan has by no means a completely free transportation market – even the private companies receive low-interest construction loans and are subject to price controls and rolling stock protectionism – but at the moment, it's the closest thing this planet has."

Does this appall anyone else?

From Autoblog Green: Mazda CX-5 joins the cast of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax: " The computer-generated film from Universal will feature a "Seuss-ified" Mazda CX-5 rolling through a forest of lollipop-like truffula trees.

It's a slightly strange movie for a car company to call its own, since the original book was a enviromentalist tale and the Lorax – who spoke for the truffula trees against the industrial ambitions of the Once-ler – complained even more when trucks began rolling into the forest. The case is aided by the fact that Universal got rid of that storyline almost completely, and Mazda's Skyactiv credentials are what's really in play here."

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one)." - Surak

"The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." - Kirk

Case A. An individual releases toxic substances into the unowned environmental commons where it is breathed in by many members of the community for the individual's benefit and to some community-members' cost. This is pollution.

Case B. The community releases toxic substances into an individual where it is ingested by the individual for the community's benefit and to some individuals' cost. This is immunization.

Is A bad and B good?

A produces in economic terms a "negative externality", an unwanted side-effect on third-parties. (Strictly speaking, pollution may also produce positive externalities, e.g. some agriculture may benefit from a change in the chemical composition of the air, or change in temperature, etc., these are often thought to be relatively small compared to the downsides)

B produces a "positive externality" (a good side-effect on third parties) [e.g. Herd immunity is whereby the immunity of a significant portion of the population protects others from disease, as it limits the ability of viruses to spread.]

So long as most individuals benefit from immunization, people seem to let it slide. But there have been a number of immunization attempts that were not generally successful, where the downsides may have outweighed the upside, the 1976 Swine Flu immunization is an example, where the flu killed 1 person, and the immunization killed 25 (of course, the story is quite complicated, and those who were immunized in 1976 were less likely to get ill in the 2009 outbreak, so it may have been net positive in the long run).

Pollution exists and is known to cause harm. Most people think all else equal, pollution is bad for society. There is debate on how much to regulate or price pollution, as well as the magnitude of the harm caused from individual pollutants. In the US, air pollution in general is down, though decreasing some pollutants may increase other pollutants (e.g. processes that reduce the size of pollutants may reduce the amount of large particulates but increase the number of small, less easily measured, particulates).

It is known that vaccines have side effects, it is not known in advance which unlucky individual will be the recipient of those side effects.

If you are a communitarian, A is unacceptable, B is acceptable. If you are an individualist, A is acceptable and B should be voluntary.

An individualist may willingly submit to immunization, but only if their personal benefit outweighs their personal cost, not strictly for herd immunity of for the benefit of others (unless those are things that they get salutary benefits from, either from a feeling of moral righteousness or from rising in status do to the perceptions of others). They believe society does not have the right to forcibly vaccinate individuals, or coerce individuals into vaccination in exchange for mandatory services (e.g. public education).

A niche market in the EV world is Electric Plug-In Conversions, converting a run-of-the-mill hybrid (e.g. a used Prius) to a plug-in hybrid.

Minnesota's local converter ReGo Electric Conversions is holding an open house bright and early August 9, 2011 from 7:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M. at 5925 Nicollet Ave South.

They tell me a conversion is $4995. This is a factor of 10 cheaper than a Chevy Volt. Still, at what price of gas ($/gal) is this economical?

Pioneer Press: North St. Paul's 'Living Streets' program aims to make roads safer, more environmentally friendly

North St. Paul has added its own twist to a metro area street-construction plan.

The city has taken the national "Complete Streets" initiative - a set of policies calling for better-designed and usually narrower roads - a step further by adding eco-friendly elements such as trees and rainwater gardens to the design.

Advocates hope North St. Paul's plan, dubbed "Living Streets," will prevent polluted runoff from entering storm drains, create safer streets and make neighborhoods more attractive - all at less cost to the city.

Traditionally, "streets were looked at very narrowly as places for travel," City Manager Wally Wysopal said. "Now we realize we need to look at their impact for overall environmental concerns."

Sounds good.

If "living streets" is going to become a movement, it should get a domain like livingstreets.org or livingstreets.com , the first is held by squatters, the second by an individual advocate. livingstreets.org.uk is a pedestrian charity, close but not quite.

A reader sends this along ....Green Roads Construction: Are Contractors Our Roadblock?

The article argues in favor of green construction techniques, (construction results in a great deal of CO2 emissions, e.g.) and suggests the barrier is the cost-plus contracting system found in many places which rewards contractors for higher costs. An excerpt below:

"The lone region that’s scrapped “cost-plus” contracting, North Carolina, is indicative of the untapped potential of green construction. Instead of awarding contractors on a cost-plus basis, North Carolina has established road performance criteria. That means contractors in North Carolina have to bear the cost of asphalt themselves and can use any method available to them as long as they meet the standards set forth by the engineer.

“What [we] need to do is say, ‘Roads need to be paved to this standard, give me the least cost contract.’ Let the contractor take up the risk of the asphalt. If they think they can do it and meet the standard through hot in-place recycling, they’ll do it. They may make more profits in the process, but that is what you want – you want to incentivize more sustainable roads.” – Hadi Dowlatabadi

And guess, what? North Carolina has the lowest cost of road construction in all of North America. Coincidentally, it’s also home to the highest amount of hot in-place recycling. Consider this, in British Columbia it costs $25/square meter to build a road; in North Carolina it costs roughly $19/square meter. It’s no surprise that these lower costs result in higher profits without the need to use more asphalt."

The NY Times reports New Mileage Rules Debated by Carmakers and White House: "

The administration is proposing regulations that will require new American cars and trucks to attain an average of as much as 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025, roughly double the current level. That would require increases in fuel efficiency of nearly 5 percent a year from 2017 to 2025.

The standard would put domestic vehicle fuel efficiency on a par with that in Europe, China and Japan, saving consumers billions of dollars at the pump and creating for the first time a truly global automobile market.

The automakers say the standard is technically achievable. But they warn that it will cost billions of dollars to develop the vehicles, and they express doubt that consumers will accept the smaller, lighter — and in some cases, more expensive — cars that result."

Consumers will accept it if that is what is offered, i.e. if all automakers have to produce this at a price to move (i.e. hiking the price of poor fuel economy vehicles to shift the demand curve), the CAFE standards will have achieved their end. Why we can't just raise the gas tax to achieve the same ends and be done with it remains something I cannot fathom (yes I know politicians don't like to raise taxes, but this is implicitly a tax, and surely people complain about regulation with the same frequency they complain about taxes - you could return the money to taxpayers somehow and bill it as a credit). Anyway the article suggests this will result in a 50% Hybrid fleet, which seems perfectly plausible, especially since we are talking 14 years from now. Until the recent downtick in hybrid sales, we were well on our way to that mark.

Via Good, Physorg reports on a recent paper: City dwellers produce as much CO2 as countryside people do: study:

"Most previous studies have indicated that people in cities have a smaller carbon footprint than people who live in the country. By using more complex methods of analysis than in the past, scientists at Aalto University in Finland have discovered that people's carbon emissions are practically the same in the city and in the rural areas. More than anything else, CO2 emissions that cause climate change are dependent upon how much goods and services people consume, not where they live."

Full article Jukka Heinonen and Seppo Junnila (2011) Implications of urban structure on carbon consumption in metropolitan areas Environ. Res. Lett. 6 (January-March 2011) 014018
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/1/014018

If you buy Life-Cycle Analysis, this is one strike against sanctimonious urbanites in the GHG blame game.

37 Signals on Ten design lessons from Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture

1) Respect “the genius of a place.”

2) Subordinate details to the whole.

3) The art is to conceal art.

4) Aim for the unconscious.

5) Avoid fashion for fashion’s sake.

6) Formal training isn’t required.

7) Words matter.

8) Stand for something.

9) Utility trumps ornament.

10) Never too much, hardly enough.

(Via Kottke.)

NY Times has a nice infographic: The Great Kilowatt vs. Gallon Face-Off

(Via Matt Kahn.)

eMercedesBenz Electric Roads May Be In Our Future

We ask a lot of our cars – heat me, cool me, be silent, be comfy, be exciting and, increasingly, propel me without costly and polluting gasoline. It’s the latter request that confounds, since batteries, the most obvious replacements for gas, are heavy and have limited energy storage.

But what if the energy storage burden was shifted from our overworked cars to the road?

Researchers at the Energy Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University are working on just such a solution, called electrified roads.

Electric vehicles, or EVs, could pick up small amounts of electricity as they drive over charging pads buried under the asphalt and connected to the electrical grid. Researchers say that a continuously available power supply would allow EVs to cut battery size as much as 80 percent, drastically reducing vehicle cost.

“Basically you get power directly from the grid to the motors as the car moves,” said Hunter Wu, a Utah State researcher who was recruited from The University of Auckland in New Zealand, where the technology was pioneered, to further develop the concept. “You can travel from the West Coast to the East Coast continuously without charging.”

Nicola Tesla first discovered the principles of wireless charging, or inductive power transfer, in the late 19th Century. It works by creating an electromagnetic charging field that transfers energy to a receiving pad set to the same frequency.

Manufacturers are already marketing wireless charging pads for electric vehicles – retrofitted to accept the charges – that can deliver a 5-kilowatt charge with 90 percent efficiency from a distance of about 10 inches.

There is also a trial application of electric roads – albeit at slow speeds and using very long charging pads – for buses at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, south of Seoul.

But Wu is thinking of something much more radical: charging at interstate speeds. This will require several technical breakthroughs, he said.

“At 75 mph, you’re only going to stay on a pad for about 30 milliseconds,” he said. “We need to turn the pad embedded in the road on and off really quickly.”

The pads would need to be able to signal to each other that a car is coming and the car would also need to communicate its need for a charge, he said.

Wu said the pad must also deliver power even when the car isn’t directly over top of it – a capability called horizontal misalignment that the current generation of stationary inductive power transfer chargers don’t have.

John Boys, a University of Auckland professor who is credited with refining the technology, said it would be possible to transfer up to 30 kW of power at an average efficiency of 80 percent on the highway. Assuming that chargers would be available at home and work, Boys said, a car would only need “a battery big enough to make it to the nearest interstate or major road.”

Wu said the cost of electrified roads, pegged at $1.5 million to 2.5 million per lane mile, could be made up through charging a toll along the roadway.

Not only would the cost of EVs, but range anxiety would be totally eliminated, he said.

“This technology,” Wu said, “would propel EVs forward.”

This is a fascinating proposed technology that could reduce the required battery size and weight, and thus increase efficiency of EVs. I previously noted a proposed technology: turning the road into a solar panel.

Combine these two ideas (solar roads with electric roads), and you can take the road and the car "off the grid."

TED - Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car (on Hulu)

Just in case you thought air pollution was good for you ... LA Times summarizes an Environmental Health Perspectives article:

Freeway air pollution linked to brain damage in mice:

"Now, exposure to pollution particles roughly one-thousandth the width of a human hair has been linked to brain damage in mice, including signs associated with memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a USC study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

In a statement, senior author Caleb Finch, an expert on the effects of inflammation and holder of USC's ARCO/William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging, said ‘You can’t see them, but they are inhaled and have an effect on brain neurons that raises the possibility of long-term brain health consequences of freeway air.’

The study relied on a unique technology developed at USC for collecting particulates in a liquid suspension and recreating air laden with freeway particulate matter in the laboratory, which enabled scientists to conduct controlled experiments on cultured brain cells and live animals.

Exposure lasted a total of 150 hours, spread over 10 weeks, in three sessions per week lasting five hours each.

How can we protect the millions of people who live alongside freeways from this type of toxicity?

In an interview, lead author Todd Morgan, a research professor in gerontology at USC, said, ‘Our data would suggest that freeway pollution could have a profound effect on the development of neurons and brain health in children and young kids, especially those who attend schools built alongside freeways.’

‘So limiting one’s exposure -- especially children’s exposure -- to freeway pollution is essential to control asthma, cardiovascular conditions and cognitive development,’ Morgan said."

I was curious how Hybrid Electric Vehicles were doing, I had seen some data a few years ago showing the share of HEVs rocketing upward, to the point we could expect a large share of HEVs (or EVs) in the US fleet in a few years (perhaps a majority of new vehicles). However 2010 was a down year not only for sales (which given the overall economy is not surprising), but also share of sales (which given the drop in fuel prices from 2008, and perhaps the state of the economy, is not surprising, but perhaps troublesome). Sales are still dominated by the Toyota Prius.

All technologies have their ups and downs, deployment is seldom perfectly smooth (though it looks quite smooth in retrospect).

Data are from US EIA and EPA
Worksheets available at www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/data/
And
Heavenrich (2010). Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 through 2010. Appendix D. U.S. EPA: Washington DC. www.epa.gov/otaq/fetrends.htm

From The Pioneer Press: Maplewood to study organized trash collection plan

"This takes away my right to hire or fire whatever company I choose to do business with," Chris Green, a Maplewood resident, told council members.

"This is being run as if Hitler was running (it)," said Fran Grant, another resident. "I think as taxpayers we should have a right to ... spend our money the way we want to."

Several other speakers said an organized trash collection system would strip them of their personal freedom, limit free enterprise, affect small businesses and affect the quality of their trash service. A handful also spoke in favor of an organized trash collection system.

The city began looking into the issue most recently about a year ago after Maplewood's Environmental and Natural Resource Commission identified it as a top priority in 2009, according to Shann Finwall, environmental planner for Maplewood. Through its initial study, Finwall said, Maplewood learned an organized trash system could end up saving money for residents because of the city's ability to buy the services of private trash haulers in bulk.

In addition, Finwall said organized hauling would mean fewer garbage trucks on city streets, which could be better for road maintenance and reduce pollution. She added that a state statute required the city to pass Monday's resolution before it could further study the reach of those potential benefits or learn more about any possible downsides.

There is always a trade-off between centralization and decentralization. That some people make it a religious argument always puzzles me. If it is more efficient to have one large trash can in the kitchen than 20 small ones, then I will have one large one. If it is more efficient to have one can in the kitchen than to keep it outside with the final trash, that too is a savings, where I can combine (and thus reduce) my trips to the dumpster. That is an economy of scale (the increased distance in my within-kitchen travel is outweighed (or not) by my lowered collection costs when the trash is finally taken outside). In that case, I receive the benefits and costs of either alternative, so I internalize any potential externalities. The answer is empirical, not religious, not improved by proving Godwin's Law.

Perhaps the residents do not trust their community to do the analysis, but that is a different problem.

I believe however, as I said in my recent post on recycling You have to keep them separated
that the balance needs to include both individual and public costs, and including one to the exclusion of the other is likely to be inefficient overall.

From the Economist Battery technology: Highly charged

Promising technology for fast-charging batteries, one of the barriers that must be overcome for fleet electrification.

... "The battery-maker's dilemma is that the recharging rate depends on the area of contact between electrolyte and electrode. A thin, sandwich-like arrangement, in which cathode, electrolyte and anode are close together, can thus be discharged and recharged rapidly. However, this speed comes at a price. The amount of energy a battery can store depends on the volume of its electrodes, so a thin battery does not last long. What is needed is a way to increase contact area without sacrificing volume. And that is what Dr Braun has found. Moreover, his solution looks suitable for mass production.

His starting material, as he describes in a paper in Nature Nanotechnology, is made of closely packed polystyrene spheres about a millionth of a metre in diameter. This is an arrangement similar to that found in opal (except that in opal the spheres are made of silica) and the result is, indeed, opalescent.

The next stage is to fill the gaps between the spheres with nickel. This is done by electrodeposition--like nickel-plating a piece of steel. After that, the material is heated, to melt the polystyrene. This leaves a sponge made of metallic nickel. The connections between the spherical gaps in the sponge are then enlarged, using a technique called electropolishing to dissolve the surface layer of the metal. This creates an electrically conductive framework suitable for smothering with materials normally used to make cathodes.
...
The result is a huge area of contact between the nickel (which conducts electrons to and from the battery), the cathode (which conducts ions to and from the electrolyte to compensate for the movement of those electrons), and the electrolyte (through which the ions are moving between cathode and anode)--but without a significant loss of cathode volume. Just, in other words, what the doctor ordered.

The consequence, according to Dr Braun, is a charging rate ten to 100 times higher than that of a normal, commercial battery (in one instance, the researchers created a lithium-ion battery that could be 90% recharged in two minutes), at a probable increase in production cost, once the process is properly industrialised, of 20-30%. And that rate might be improved still further if similar techniques were applied to the anode--a task that Dr Braun is now working on."
...

Minneapolis advises I must separate my recycling, and leaves a yellow "nastygram" on my trashcan if I do something wrong.

For recycling alone, I need to track 9 categories of waste flows (see table at bottom). If each requires 2 square feet, that is 18 square feet of real estate per household in space devoted to temporarily storing recyclables. This 18 square feet might be slightly off, but measurements in my house put it as about right.

At $100 per square foot (typical of real estate), $1800 of space per house must be devoted to storing recycling. At 168,352 housing units in Minneapolis (2000) , this is $303,033,600 of space devoted to storing recyclables.

Minneapolis says:

Why Must I Separate All My Recycling?

 

Sorted recycling generates the biggest revenue. Revenue from recycling provides money for:

• Large item pickup
• The voucher program
• Clean City programs
• Ongoing operating costs

If the City of Minneapolis used singlestream recycling (all recycling in one bin, as some areas do), the higher cost of processing these materials would result in lower revenue, and possible cuts in other waste services.

The question is, is the Net Present Value of the future stream of lower revenue anywhere near $300 million? I don't think so. A simpler recycling program for users would allow more of my house to be devoted to things other than storing recycling (on the theory that I sort at time of disposal, rather than separate to prepare the trash for transshipment after already premixing). It might also increase compliance.

Recycling is a good thing. I hear Minneapolis is considering singlestream recycling.. This is an especially good thing. Now if they could go to weekly instead of fortnightly, we might be making real progress.

Material and Energy Flow management at the household is quite complicated. I counted the following Inflows:

• Water
• Mail
• Electricity
• Natural Gas
• People
• Food
• Other goods

And Outflows:

• Electricity
• Returned on AC
• Wastewater
• Stormwater
• Compost
• Boxtops for Education
• Unseparated, Unrecylcable Trash (which ideally would be close to zero)
• Recycling:
• Paper
• Aluminum
• Glass
• Plastics
• Batteries
• Garden waste (branches, grass clippings)


• Recycling the city does not do:




• Plastic bags from grocery stores


• Lightbulbs


• Waste Electronics


• Water filters


• Toner cartridges


• Bulk goods


• Reuse




• Old Clothes


• Bulk goods




• Mail


• People

And I am sure both lists are missing things. Perhaps if we had competitive trash services, private firms would figure out the optimal mix of mixing and separation.

The following table is provided for easy reference.

All recycling must be placed in separate paper bags, as follows:

From the Pioneer Press: Can't find a parking spot? Get a hybrid ... or a baby:
New types of restricted slots are popping up in local parking lots, but not everyone's a fan.

This (at least the "fuel efficient cars" part is occurring because of LEED, which I have railed about before.

Buildings are not 'energy efficient' if they are surrounded by parking and require driving to get there, even if that parking privileges certain travelers, even if those cars are "fuel efficient". Fuel efficiency should be its own reward. The enforcement hassle (is the car listed with some fuel efficiency list which no one knows and is not current?) make the whole thing a ridiculous game. This is not quite as bad as giving hybrids preference in HOV lanes, but almost as silly.