From the shores of Louisiana: What fuels energy change?

by Jon Bowermaster on

Born in the Natal province of South Africa, Ivor van Heerden has been an adopted Louisianan for more than thirty years. During his years here he’s been head of the state’s coastal restoration program, on the staff at LSU, co-director of the state’s hurricane center and a head of Team Louisiana, which investigated the hows and whys of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

Also along the way he’s been branded everything from an expert to a gadfly, an egomaniac to a Cassandra. While he predicted the damage a Katrina-like storm would have on New Orleans several years before it happened – thus his charge to investigate after the hurricane – when he came out very publicly pointing fingers at the Army Corps of Engineers for “shoddy engineering” his job at LSU was suddenly eliminated (“budget cuts” said university officials; he’s still suing to get his job back).

He’s stayed in Louisiana since he was let go from LSU more than a year ago because he’s invested so much time studying its coastline and because he truly loves the state and its wildernesses. Since the Gulf spill he’s been up and down the coastline and in the air above it, consulting with clean-up efforts.

When I find him in his gravel drive in a small town outside Baton Rouge he’s packing his car for Houma, home of one of the spill’s command centers. Despite a reputation as a nature lover he’s no fuzzy romantic and is calmly outspoken on everything from big hurricanes to big oil. He’d spent the day before on two flights over the Chandleur Islands, where oil had just come ashore.

%Gallery-95432%”This is absolutely the last thing we need, being the most important part of the year in Louisiana ecologically. Our wetlands are already in such sad shape and now we’ve got hurricane season approaching. It’s the growing season for the grasses and wetland plants that suck energy out of the surge, which help protect us from storms. And of course this is the time of year when the birds are breeding and the fish larvae are starting to enter the bays and estuaries.”

How bad was the view from the air? “It was truly impressive. Some of the slicks are huge – one we looked at was 10 miles by 2 miles, about a mile off the coast. If something like that came ashore it would be devastating.

“A worst case scenario would be that a tropical storm spins out next week and we have five, six, ten feet of surge and it drives that oil in and totally fouls a huge part of coastal Louisiana. In some ways we’re lucky it’s happening now rather than during the height of hurricane season, which is when we expected such a catastrophe to happen because a drill rig had been knocked over.”

Given his ongoing fight with LSU over his job – his request for a trial was turned down just a week ago, though he is appealing – I wonder if he might temper his outspokenness regarding assigning blame for the spill.

“Obviously BP, or Transocean are at fault since it’s their equipment that failed. Whether it was malfunction of equipment or human error, they are ultimately responsible. But we Americans share a fair amount of the blame. Most of us are in denial about the whole energy situation in this country so it is our fault as much as anyone else’s.

“But BP or Exxon or whoever else is not going to go drill in one-mile deep water if they can’t make money. It costs them billions of dollars to sink just one well. But they can make money because of our energy policy. If we could suddenly change it so that we all had solar panels on our roofs, use solar heating and so on, we would reduce the demand for this oil and it would become uneconomical to go into these deep waters and we could eliminate some of these problems. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, I honestly don’t. I think we’re just going to continue down this road until we have a major energy catastrophe when we are all of a sudden forced to change.”

Solar-powered plane flies at night

by Sean McLachlan on


An airplane that relies entirely on solar energy has flown for 24 hours straight, cruising along happily through the darkness and emerging into the dawn with three hours left in its batteries. Once the sun rose, of course, the batteries immediately began to recharge.

The Solar Impulse is the product of the same great minds that brought you the cuckoo clock–the Swiss! The entire wingspan is covered with 12,000 solar cells that power four electric engines. Average cruising speed is 70 km/hr (43.5 mph). You can see complete stats on the plane here.

The next step for the engineers is to make the next generation of the plane, one that will fly around the world by 2013. The Solar Impulse is not the first solar-powered airplane, only the first to complete a manned night flight. Scientists and engineers have been experimenting with solar-powered planes since the 1970s and manned flights since the 1980s. This new leap forward will add impetus to a field of study that has so far received little attention from the press.

While this technology is still in the experimental stage, the potential impact for the airline industry and the environment is obvious. Airline emissions pose a major environmental threat, and G8 leaders have called for a 50 percent reduction in airline emissions by 2050. That’s a tall order, but it looks like the Swiss have shown the way forward. Of course the Solar Impulse’s slow speed and small cockpit mean the age of solar-powered 747s is a long way off, think of it as the modern equivalent of the Wright Brothers plane. It was only a generation after Kitty Hawk that passengers started flying to international destinations.

Environmentalists protest BP art sponsorship

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re planning to see some art in the United Kingdom this summer, you might have to walk through a picket line.

Environmental groups are protesting BP’s sponsorship of exhibitions and galleries across the UK, saying the oil giant is trying to clean up its image despite being responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Protests have already taken place at the National Portrait Gallery in London, which receives large donations from BP. On Monday there will be protests at London’s Tate Britain as the museum hosts a special celebration of twenty years working with BP.

Other recipients of BP money read like a Who’s Who of prestigious museums, including the Tate Modern, Royal Opera House, and the British Museum, among others. With the disaster in the gulf showing no sign of abating, this summer is looking to be a hot one for some of the UK’s biggest museums.

Should museums be held accountable for the actions of their donors? Tell us what you think in the comments section.


Photos of oil-soaked pelicans courtesy International Bird Rescue research Center.

Altamira prehistoric painted cave to reopen

by Sean McLachlan on


One of Europe’s most breathtaking examples of prehistoric art will soon be accessible to the public.

The Paleolithic cave art at Altamira, in the Cantabria region of northern Spain, will soon be open to visitors. Altamira’s paintings of bison, deer, and other animals date from 14,000 to 20,000 years ago and are some of the best preserved of all prehistoric cave art. Even more intriguing are the hand prints by the artists themselves.

Cantabria’s Culture Ministry and Altamira’s board of directors have decided to reopen the site sometime next year. Access will be limited and they did not release details as to the number of people who will be allowed into the cave. Altamira has been closed since 2002 because even the few visitors allowed at that time affected the delicate environment that had preserved the paintings for so many millennia. Like at the famous Paleolithic cave of Lascaux in France, mold has started growing on some of the paintings. The circulation of air from people coming and going changes the temperature, and their breath changes the humidity.

Some archaeologists have criticized the move, saying that allowing visitors will increase the damage already done. If the plans to reopen Altamira go through, it could lead to a controversy similar to the one surrounding Lascaux, which has seen a group of scientists called the International Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux call for an independent investigation into how the cave is managed.

Photo of Altamira reproduction at Madrid’s Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España courtesy José-Manuel Benito.

China has world’s most polluted city, thanks to coal mining

by Laurel Miller on



Cigarettes have gotten really pricey, but here’s a solution: take a trip to China. The city of Linfen, in Shanxi Province, has been named the “world’s most polluted city” by the World Bank, as the air quality is the equivalent of inhaling three packs of cigarettes a day. Coal is China’s main source of energy, and Shanxi Province is the leading coal producer. The same World Bank survey noted that 16 out of 20 of the world’s most polluted cities are in China.

The geniuses at VBS.TV sent a journalist to Linfen (which for some strange reason, has no tourism), to provide a first-person account of what it’s like to spend a day in Smog City. Unsurprisingly, residents have a high rate of lung disease and stomach and lung cancers, but most don’t wear face masks (in contrast to residents in many of Asia’s largest cities). Unfortunately, perma-smog is such a part of daily life, the dire environmental and human health consequences that are the result of coal mining lose their impact. Studies show that particulate from China’s factories and coal mines travels as far as the West Coast of North America.

Linfen serves as yet another heartbreaking reminder that globally, we need to work on reducing our energy consumption, and finding alternative resources. Don’t forget to turn the lights off when you leave.

[Via CNN]