Paul Rogat Loeb writes: Like most Americans, I’m guarding my dollars, but when my furnace died during Seattle’s coldest winter in decades, I needed to replace it. And when I did, with a high-efficiency Trane model made in Trenton New Jersey, the costs and gains underscored key lessons about what we need to do to craft a stimulus package that actually builds for America’s future. My new furnace saves energy and fights climate change. It promotes American jobs, and pays back its costs in a reasonable time frame. It points toward how to genuinely renew America’s economy instead of encouraging the same consumption for consumption’s sake that has helped create our current problems.

Let’s look at what my $5,000 purchased. It supported Trane’s factory workers in New Jersey and in their main plant in Tyler, Texas, supported local Seattle installers, and supported beleaguered New Jersey, Texas, and Washington state and city governments through the sales tax I paid and the taxes paid by the companies involved. In my personal economy, it meant I’ll save more than a third of my yearly gas bill and a commensurate amount of my CO2 emissions. My old furnace was a thirteen-year-old 70% efficient model that was down to barely 60% because single-cycle furnaces lose 1% a year as their burners corrode and heat exchangers get less efficient. The new one is 97% efficient and will maintain far more efficiency because its variable speed motor is much easier on its components. I live in a relatively small and well-insulated house in a generally temperate climate, and I keep my thermostat low, but I’ve still been spending $850 a year on gas heat (solar panels take care of most of my hot water), and if I add in savings on my electric bill from the furnace’s extra-efficient fan, I’ll save roughly $340 a year at current gas prices, and more as fossil fuels of all kinds become scarcer. If natural gas costs continue to increase at their recent rate, 61% in the past five years, my investment will pay back in roughly nine years-a far better and safer return than I could get from any bank account or roller-coastering stock market investment. If I lived in a colder climate or had a larger or less-insulated house, the furnace would pay off sooner still. I’ll also prevent the release of roughly three tons of CO2 every year.

So how do we make similar choices affordable for everyone, whether or not they have the savings to do this on their own? Imagine if the pending stimulus package helped people make such investments nationwide, combining direct incentives with low or no-interest loans, along the lines of those long advocated by Al Gore. Imagine if it prioritized energy efficiency and investment in renewables, particularly those that are American-made. (01/13/09)
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BBC Medical Science – Sleeping for under seven hours a night greatly raises the risk of catching a cold, US research has suggested. A team from Carnegie Mellon University found the risk was trebled compared with those who slept for eight hours or more a night. It is thought that a lack of sleep impairs the immune system and the body’s ability to fight off the viruses that cause colds and flu. The study appears in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Previous research has suggested that people who sleep seven to eight hours a night have the lowest rates of heart disease. However, there has been little direct evidence that getting a good night’s sleep can help ward off a cold.

The researchers studied 153 healthy men and women with an average age of 37 between 2000 and 2004. Each was interviewed about their sleeping habits over a two-week period. They were then quarantined and given nasal drops containing rhinovirus, which causes the common cold. For the following five days the volunteers reported any signs and symptoms of illness, and had mucus samples collected from their nasal passages. And 28 days after exposure to the virus, blood samples were taken from each volunteer so tests could be carried out to see if they had developed antibodies to fight infection.

The less an individual slept, the more likely they were to develop a cold. The quality of sleep also appeared to be important. Volunteers who spent less than 92% of their time in bed asleep were five-and-a-half times more likely to become ill than those who were asleep for at least 98% of their time in bed.

The researchers believe that lack of good quality sleep disturbs regulation of key chemicals produced by the immune system to fight infection. Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre at the University of Cardiff, said sleep and the immune system were closely linked. “The immune system may control the sleep-wake pattern and lack of sleep or sleep disturbance may depress the immune response to infection. I do believe there is enough information on this to indicate that lack of sleep or sleep disturbance will reduce our resistance to infections such as colds and flu.” (01/13/09)
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BBC Marine Biological Science — Some animals and plants are shrinking. Human activities are responsible, and we know the reason why. The first time I came across the phenomenon of the incredible shrinking fish was in Australia a few years ago, when I met researchers who’d noted that the world’s biggest fish, the whale shark, is getting smaller - and at a startling rate, with the average length falling from 7m to 5m in a decade.

The most likely explanation is that fishermen are pulling the biggest whale sharks they can find out of the ocean, either because they’re the easiest to spot or because they’re the most lucrative catches.

Individuals that are naturally smaller are more likely to survive and reproduce - and so over time sets of genes producing fish of smaller size become more common in the population.

Over time, the fish shrink.

Different groups of researchers have studied the shrinking phenomenon in lots of other fish - cod, flounder, salmon, pilchard - and, to a lesser extent, in land animals and even plants. Now a group of US and Canadian researchers has pulled all of this data together for a paper in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Chris Darimont and his colleagues assembled a list of studies tracking changes in 29 different species which are hunted or fished or plucked for human consumption.

Some studies had looked at the overall size of the animals (or plants), while others followed changes in the size of various body parts.

The height at flowering of the Himalayan snow lotus (used in traditional medicine) has fallen, the weight of Norwegian caribou has reduced, the horns of bighorn sheep are not as long as they used to be, the volcano keyhole limpet is shrinking.

And commercial fish species after commercial fish species is also getting smaller. … Why? (01/13/09)
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BBC Biological Science — Centuries of crop diversification are at risk of being lost forever, warns Jeff Bentley. In this week’s Green Room, he says a growing dependency on just a few modern, high-yielding varieties is leaving the world’s food supplies exposed.

A potato is not just a potato; there are thousands of local varieties still grown in their birthplace in the Andes. Some are long, thin and purple; others are lemon yellow and floury, or shaped like a bull’s horn. Most crops have many varieties, a rich heritage that most urban dwellers are no longer aware of.

The cultivated potato comes in six different species and perhaps 3,000 varieties, most found only in the Andes. That is a lot of genetic information. Until recently these local, native varieties were safe on the farm, but as farmers turn increasingly to modern, high-yielding varieties, the old ones are being abandoned. For example, in the 1970s near Lake Titicaca, agronomists collected more than 200 varieties of quinoa, a native Andean grain. Now, no more than 50 of these are still grown.

Our generation is snuffing out ancient races of crops which fed the Incas, the Mayans, the Sumerians, and the Tang dynasty. But it’s not entirely too late to save these crop varieties, and their irreplaceable genetic information.

In 1997, the government agency responsible for Bolivia’s collection of quinoa suddenly collapsed. Combine harvester (Image: PA) The drive for greater efficiency and higher yields carries a genetic cost

Many of the 1,800 accessions of this native grain were no longer found in the field, and would have been lost forever without the thoughtfulness of Alejandro Bonifacio, a native Aymara. With no agency to care for the quinoa collection, Dr Bonifacio simply took it home.

It took him a year to find work elsewhere, but he saved these endangered crop varieties and has spent the past 10 years adding to it and describing it. If only all crops were so lucky. …

As the Earth gets warmer, we will need to breed other hardy new crop varieties. Plant breeding is like playing cards: more hands are possible with a full deck. We’ll only be able to create new varieties in the future if we save the old ones we have now. Many rare crop varieties are now grown on just a few farms, often by elderly people. The crops will be lost forever unless young people start to grow them.

If humanity mourns the loss of wild plants, we should really worry about the extinction of cultivated ones. These plants sustain our lives. (01/13/09)
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BBC Human Ignorance and Greed: The latest deadline set by the Nigerian government to stop flaring natural gas from oil wells in the Niger Delta has passed without stopping the flames, which campaigners say are poisoning local people.

“Sometimes you can’t tell whether it’s the dawn breaking or the flame,” says activist Vivian Bellonwu, the frustration clear in her voice, after seeing nothing change despite the 1 January target. “It’s a history of shifting goal posts, missing deadline after deadline”.

Everyone agrees gas flaring wastes billions of dollars in useful gas.

Campaigners say it causes huge environmental damage and according to doctors, it is responsible for causing chronic health problems among people who live in the Delta. But the government and the oil companies are blaming each other.

“It’s all insincerity from the government and the companies -they’re destroying lives and livelihoods,” says Mrs Bellonwu.

Nigeria flares the second largest volume of gas of any producer, behind Russia.

Communities who live near Nigeria’s more than 1,000 onshore well heads are blighted by gas plumes that rise from the ground, spreading toxic smoke and chemicals over their farms. Social Action, the organisation Mrs Bellonwu works for, has been representing the communities who live near the many gas flares that light up the watery marshland and mangrove swamps of the Delta. “When you approach a gas flare, the first thing you notice is the heat, the villages around the flares are all very hot.”

The flames also light up the sky 24 hours a day, and the noise that comes from them is a continuous roar like a jet aircraft taking off. She says doctors have reported higher rates of cancer, children with asthma and a suggestion the burning gasses may be making residents infertile. (01/13/09)
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