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Fighting honey fraud

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Honey fraud is a significant issue for the food industry.  What is honey fraud?  Typically, it involves mislabeling where honey was produced or what types of flowers the bees collected nectar from.  Honey made from a single type of flower is often more expensive because of the unique flavor it provides or from potential health benefits.  Sometimes even cheap alternatives like sugar syrups are labelled as honey.  It turns out that honey is one of the most fraud-prone commodities in global trade, with fraud estimated to occur in up to 10% of the honey traded internationally.  Honey from some countries, such as China and India, has had 30% or more of samples found to be fraudulent.

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have developed an AI-powered method to verify the origin of honey thereby ensuring that what is on the label corresponds to what is in the jar.

The McGill method can determine what kind of flowers the bees visited to produce a particular sample of honey.  Previous honey authentication involved pollen analysis, which is ineffective for honey that was processed or filtered.  The new method uses high-resolution mass spectrometry which captures a unique chemical “fingerprint” from the honey.  Machine learning algorithms read the fingerprint to identify the honey’s origin.

The researchers tested their methodology on a variety of honey samples which they then compared with honey from known botanical sources.  Using previous methods for honey authentication can take days.  The McGill method takes only minutes and works regardless of how the honey was processed.

According to the researchers, people deserve to know that the honey they buy is what it claims to be, and honest honey producers deserve protection from fraudulent competitors.

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Fighting honey fraud with AI technology

Photo, posted May 6, 2012, courtesy of Emma Jane via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Faster electric vehicle charging

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One concern that people have in replacing gas-powered vehicles with electric vehicles is the time it takes to charge them.  Charging an EV at home from an ordinary 110V electrical outlet is a slow process; installing a 220V outlet speeds things up considerably but it still can take all night to fully charge a car.  The driving range of electric cars has increased over the years so that now there are many cars that can go 300 miles or more on a charge. For most people, so-called range anxiety is mostly gone.  But on long road trips, charging time can be a real issue.

There are increasing numbers of high-speed chargers along or adjacent to major highways that can provide 200 miles of driving range in less than half an hour.  But people want more charge, and they want it faster.

There are multiple efforts in improving EV batteries and charger technology aimed at transforming a visit to a public charger to an experience comparable to filling up at a gasoline station.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have designed a new kind of lithium-ion battery that will be able to go from zero battery power to 80% in just 15 minutes. This technology would certainly enhance the capabilities of today’s electric cars.  However, it is quite possible that other technologies that surpass this performance will emerge in the near future.  There is talk across the industry of cars that can charge up in 5 or 10 minutes.   There is also the prospect of many cars that can drive 500 miles on a charge.  These features would address the needs or desires of all but a very small number of drivers.

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From zero to 80 per cent in just 15 minutes

Photo, posted May 7, 2022, courtesy of Sharon Hahn Darlin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The end of the Chevron deference

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 At the end of June, the US Supreme Court upended 40 years of legal precedent in a ruling that sharply limited the regulatory authority of federal agencies.  The so-called Chevron Deference doctrine stated that when a legislative delegation to an administrative agency on a particular issue or question was not explicit but rather implicit, a court may not substitute its own interpretation of the statue for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrative agency.

Under the new ruling, courts will have more power to interpret these statutes.  Environmentalists fear that this decision could lead to hundreds of rules being weakened or even eliminated, particularly Environmental Protection Agency limits on air and water pollution, regulations on toxic chemicals, and policies to tackle climate change.

Conservative political organizations have been pushing for decades to roll back the government’s regulatory powers.  The new ruling creates a massive opportunity for environmental regulations to be challenged, considering the proliferation of increasingly activist, right-leaning courts.  In particular, climate regulations under the Clean Air Act are more susceptible to judicial reversal.  The ruling shifts the power from the agencies to the courts.

The danger of this decision is that more Americans will suffer from the worse effects of climate change, air pollution, and other environmental harms that current government regulation protect against.  Any time that the Court makes it harder for the government to regulate and easier for businesses to challenge regulations, it makes it more likely that industries will injure the public and the planet in search of profits.  This is basic economics in action.

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A Seismic Supreme Court Decision

Photo, posted September 17, 2020, courtesy of Thomas Hawk via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Good owls and bad owls

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In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, spotted owls have been the subject of environmental concern for more than 30 years.  Over the past 20 years, northern spotted owl populations have declined by up to 80% as the birds have faced marginalized territories and increasing numbers of wildfires.  Only about 3,000 of them remain on federal lands.  Spotted owls are picky eaters and are not very adaptable.

The barred owl, a larger and more ornery species, has been moving in on spotted owl turf for 50 years, competing for food and space, and out-reproducing them and chasing them out of their nesting spots.

A last-ditch effort to rescue the northern spotted owl from possible extinction has been proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  The plan would be to eradicate up to half a million barred owls over the next 30 years in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.  The owls would be dispatched using cheap and efficient methods, such as shotguns.

The concept of killing off vast numbers of barred owls is awful, and nobody likes the idea.  However, other strategies have failed, and time is running out.  The only way to preserve the northern spotted owl is to protect and increase its habitat and have fewer barred owls.

To say that the proposed plan is controversial is a massive understatement.  A coalition of 75 wildlife and animal welfare organizations described it as a “colossally reckless action.”

A central issue in the debate is whether humans are responsible for this situation and should try to rectify it or, despite our desire to protect the spotted owl, we should just let nature take its course.

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They Shoot Owls in California, Don’t They?

Photo, posted April 4, 2022, courtesy of Kyle Sullivan / BLM via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

How will we know if the world is 1.5 degrees warmer?

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The Paris Climate Agreement has a goal of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  How do we know if we are succeeding and, more importantly, how would we know if we have failed?

This may seem like something fairly obvious, but it isn’t.  Global temperatures are definitely creeping upward.  This past year has been the warmest on record.  In fact, the global average temperature was more than 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels.  November was 1.75 degrees above pre-industrial levels.  So, does that mean that our climate goals have already failed?  Not really.

On a monthly scale there have already been individual months where warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2023.  Would an entire year above the target constitute failure?  Not necessarily.  There really isn’t an agreed-upon answer and that in itself represents something that could undermine global efforts to tackle climate change.

If we don’t know whether we are succeeding or failing, it is more difficult to pursue success.  The United Nations IPCC says the threshold will be surpassed when average warming exceeds 1.5 degrees for 20 years.  But that seems like a building a mountain highway with no guardrails and hoping to be safe.

Scientists are calling for new approaches to defining a universally agreed-upon measure of global warming that could trigger urgent action to avoid further rises.  What we really don’t need are justifications and excuses for continued inaction.  Clearly the climate is not waiting for us to debate the issue.

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Why We Won’t Know When We’ve Passed the 1.5-Degree Threshold

Photo, posted August 2, 2018, courtesy of J Bartlett Team Rubicon/BLM for USFS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Airplanes, corn, and groundwater

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The aviation industry wants to slash its greenhouse gas emissions.  One proposed strategy is to replace ordinary jet fuel with ethanol.  Ethanol in this country mostly comes from corn.  The airlines are enthusiastic about the idea; corn farmers are enthusiastic about the idea.  Ethanol suppliers are obviously enthusiastic about it.  But is it a good idea?

Today, nearly 40% of America’s corn crop is turned into ethanol.  Twenty years ago, the figure was around 10%.  The massive growth was the result of mandates for ethanol augmentation of gasoline for environmental reasons.

But the environmental benefits of corn ethanol have always been controversial at best when all the energy factors are considered. But apart from that, a very serious issue is that corn is a water-intensive crop, and it can take hundreds of gallons of water to produce a single gallon of ethanol.  As the climate warms and corn crops expand, groundwater in many corn-growing areas is being increasingly depleted and groundwater provides half our drinking water and meets far more than just the needs of corn farmers.

Corn farmers and ethanol producers see the rapid growth of electric vehicles as a threat to their lucrative business of supplying the auto fuel industry.  The ambitious goals of the airline industry to reduce its emissions would likely require nearly doubling ethanol production.

The situation is a powerful example of the tradeoffs that can arise as the world tries to make the transition away from fossil fuel.  Even green solutions can have their own environmental cost and sometimes that cost may be too steep.

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Airlines Race Toward a Future of Powering Their Jets With Corn

Photo, posted September 2, 2007, courtesy of Rosana Prada via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Geoengineering could create winners and losers

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Geoengineering – deliberate interventions to alter the climate and curb climate change – is a controversial topic, to say the least.  Once practically considered taboo even to discuss, there in increasing interest in at least exploring various ideas about how to halt or reverse climate change through direct actions that impact global temperatures.

Putting aside the very real concerns about the risks and dangers associated with such action, there is also the issue that climate interventions may create dramatically different effects across the globe, benefitting some areas and adversely affecting others.

A recent study by scientists at Rutgers University tackled this very issue.  Published in the journal Nature Food, it described the results of computer models simulating the impacts of stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI), which is spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it would partially shield the Earth from the Sun, lowering temperatures.

The study looked at 11 different SAI scenarios and found that none of them benefitted everyone.  Uncontrolled global warming favors crop production in cold, high-latitude areas such as Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, and our northern border states.  Moderate amounts of SAI favors food production in the mid-latitudes (such as in the US and Europe.)  Large amounts of intervention favors agricultural production in the tropics. 

Even if geoengineering might not have dire consequences – which is by no means certain – it would create winners and losers.  Nations may have different ideas of what constitutes an optimal global temperature.  So, who gets to decide where to set the global thermostat?  The prospects for conflict loom large. 

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Climate Intervention Technologies May Create Winners and Losers in World Food Supply

Photo, posted November 18, 2021, courtesy of Conall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

It Really Is Greenhouse Gases | Earth Wise

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The scientific consensus that human-generated carbon dioxide is changing the climate began to form in the 1980s. 

For a long time, the changes to the climate were simply denied.  After a while, as those changes became increasingly hard to ignore, the argument shifted to the changes being real but not caused by anything people are doing.  The multi-trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry was strongly motivated to focus attention away from the association between carbon dioxide and climate change.

The greenhouse gas effect has been known since the 19th century.  It isn’t just real; it is essential to life on earth.  Without sufficient levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to trap some of the sun’s heat, the earth would be an ice planet incapable of supporting much in the way of life.  But there can be too much of a good thing.

Naysayers continue to grasp at alternative explanations for the warming planet rather than the inconvenient truth.  Some people try to claim that it is the release of heat from all our energy-generating activities -power plants, heaters and air conditioners, vehicles, and so on – that is warming the planet.

That issue has been studied in detail.  Human activity does generate a lot of heat and, technically speaking, that heat does help warm the planet.  However, the sun dumps 10,000 times more heat on the earth than all of human energy production added together.  Just the normal fluctuations in solar energy are 10 times larger than everything we do put together.

What is increasingly warming the planet is not the continuing energy striking the earth; it is primarily the fact that growing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are trapping more and more of that heat and preventing it from escaping into space.

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Integrating anthropogenic heat flux with global climate models

Photo, posted August 25, 2009, courtesy of Gerald Simmons via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Oil Drilling In Los Angeles | Earth Wise      

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Movies were not the first industry to boom in Los Angeles.  Oil was.  There was a lot of it, and it flowed close to the surface triggering rampant drilling all over the area.  By the 1920s, Los Angeles was one of the largest oil-exporting regions in the world.

A century later, there are over 20,000 active, idle, or abandoned wells spread across LA county, home to 10 million people.  Some are hidden behind facades; others are plainly visible, pumping away day and night.  About a third of Angelenos live less than a mile from an active well site.  In the last 20 years, improved oil extraction technology has actually led to a resurgence of oil drilling in Los Angeles.

Studies of the health impact of LA’s oil wells found that asthma is significantly more common among people living near oil wells than elsewhere in the county.  Surveys of residents’ lung functions revealed lower function on average when people live near wells.   Measurements of toxins in the air – such as benzene, toluene, and n-hexane – showed that levels of these substances were significantly reduced when oil production at a site stopped.

This issue has finally come to the forefront after a nearly a decade of community organizing and studies of adverse health effects.  In a unanimous vote on January 26, the Los Angeles City Council took the first step toward phasing out all oil and gas extraction in the city by declaring oil extraction a nonconforming land use.  The LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to phase out oil extraction in unincorporated county areas.  Los Angeles’ long, troubled history with urban oil drilling appears to be nearing an end.

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Los Angeles’ long, troubled history with urban oil drilling is nearing an end after years of health concerns

Photo, posted March 26, 2016, courtesy of Giuseppe Milo via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Coral Reefs And Ecosystem Services

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A new study led by the University of British Columbia provides the first comprehensive look at what climate change, overfishing, and habitat destruction of coral reefs mean for their ecosystem services.  For humans, this means how the global decline in coral reefs has affected their ability to provide essential benefits including food, livelihoods, and protection from storms.

The study found that global coverage of living corals has declined by about half since the 1950s and the diversity of reef species has declined by more than 60%.  So, it is no surprise that there has been a significant loss in the ability of reefs to provide ecosystem services.

The study analyzed data from coral reef surveys around the world, fisheries catches, indigenous consumption, and more.  Apart from the declines in reef coverage and biodiversity, the study found that fish catches on coral reefs peaked in 2002 and has steadily declined since then, despite increased fishing efforts.

The findings of the study led the researchers to conclude that continued degradation of coral reefs in the years to come threaten the well-being and sustainable development of millions of people in communities on the coast that depend on coral reefs.  Fish and fisheries provide essential nutrients in places with few alternative sources of nutrition.  Coral reef biodiversity and fisheries have added importance for indigenous communities, where important cultural relationships exist with reefs.

The study’s authors say that the results are a call to action.  The level of destruction happening all over the world’s coral reefs is threatening people’s culture, their daily food, and their history.  It is not just an environmental issue; it is a human rights issue.

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Photo, posted September 22, 2010, courtesy of David Burdick / NOAA Photo Library via Flickr.

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Cooling Down Urban Heat Islands

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Researchers have known about and studied the urban heat island effect for quite some time.  Since large cities began to emerge in the 19th century, it has been understood that various aspects of the urban environment lead to warmer temperatures than the surrounding countryside.

Researchers led by a group at Portland State University in Oregon have been utilizing a new way of studying the urban heat island effect.  They have used citizen science volunteers in 24 cities around the world to map temperatures in the cities at ground level in great detail using mobile sensors attached to slow-moving vehicles.  Previous studies have used data from satellite or stationary sensors.  They have learned that the urban heat island effect is more complicated, more varied, and subtler than the earlier data indicated.

They found that there are six things that affect urban heat. Three are living — the volume of the tree canopy, the height of the tree canopy, and the ground level vegetation. Three are human-built — the volume of buildings, the difference in building heights, and the coloring of the buildings.

Buildings can have both negative and positive effects. Tall buildings that cast shade actually lower relative afternoon temperatures, while densely packed shorter buildings, like the big-box stores in suburban areas, lead to hotter afternoon temperatures. The studies show that increasing the difference in building heights in an area creates more air circulation, which has a cooling effect.

The study also showed that urban heat is a social justice issue.  Lower-income neighborhoods largely barren of trees have considerably higher temperatures than more affluent, tree-shaded areas.

Such detailed research can be used to guide decisions in urban planning with regard to trees, building heights, and the color and type of surfaces in our urban spaces.

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Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands?

Photo, posted July 21, 2009, courtesy of Daniel Dionne via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Plastic-Eating Mushrooms

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Plastic waste has become one of the most pressing environmental issues in the world.  Whether it is about drinking straws, grocery bags, or six-pack rings, getting rid of plastic items in the waste stream is a major focus of attention for more and more people.

Al mismo tiempo, cerca del 35% de los que tomaron Vyleesi sintieron una disminución de la atracción. Además, alrededor del 40% de los participantes en el ensayo clínico sintieron náuseas después de inyectarse Vyleesi, y el 13% tuvo náuseas masculinafuerte.com lo suficientemente graves como para requerir medicación. Los efectos secundarios incluían el oscurecimiento de las encías y la piel, especialmente en la cara y el pecho. Sin embargo, sólo se observó en el 1% de los pacientes.

A really promising way to deal with all the plastic ending up in landfills has grown out of research that was being conducted in the Amazon rain forest in 2012.  Back then, a group of students from Yale University discovered a fungus that eats only polyurethane.  It is a mushroom known as Pestalotiopsis microspore and it not only can survive exclusively on the plastic, but it can do it in anaerobic (that is, oxygen-free) environments.  Thus, these plastic-eating mushrooms could potentially thrive at the bottom of landfills.

More recently, other studies have identified additional mushroom species that can eat plastic.  Some of them are common, such as the oyster mushroom, which itself is edible.  In 2018, the first ever State of the World’s Fungi symposium took place in London.  The event focused on multiple applications for mushrooms, including their use as building materials, their ability to remove pollutants from soil, and their capacity to enable the conversion of waste into biofuels.

Under controlled conditions, it takes just a few weeks for plastic-eating mushrooms to start breaking down plastics.  After a few months, all that is left are puffy white mushrooms which, even if they are not used for anything themselves, can be composted and turned into soil.

So far, there has been relatively little exploitation of mushrooms for improving the environment, but they may well be a big help in dealing with the growing problem of plastic waste.

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Scientists discovered a mushroom that eats plastic, and believe it could clean our landfills

Photo, posted August 12, 2014, courtesy of Tim Sheerman-Chase via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Building For Climate Change

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The manifestations of climate change are creating increasingly familiar images:  floodwaters rising up house windows, charred buildings in the wake of wildfires, and homes and businesses demolished by storm winds. As these sorts of calamities become ever more common, changes to how houses are built are going to be necessary.

How can homes become more resilient against severe and unpredictable weather?

Research at Carlton University’s Sprott School of Business looks at this issue.

As an example, houses can be framed and finished in certain ways that help protect them from wind and flooding.  But such methods are currently only happening in the custom-build fringes of the housing sector.  Widespread adoption will require, at the minimum, significant changes to building codes.

Revising building codes is not an easy matter.  The codes themselves are highly technical and complex, and beyond that, the process Is often politicized.

Even simple things like hurricane ties, which are small pieces of hardware that prevent a roof from lifting during a severe wind are not now included in building codes.  Insurance companies support their use as inexpensive protection for houses.  But even though the overall cost is relatively minor, the building industry pushes back at the additional expense.

The need to reduce carbon emissions has created a push for sustainable housing.  But the increasingly erratic weather means that houses also need resilience and adaptation.  These features will inevitably add costs and incorporating them into building codes requires producing convincing business cases.

The U.S. experienced 394 natural catastrophe events last year costing $225 billion in damage.  Finding ways to make homes and businesses more resilient is not just a good idea; it is essential.

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How to Start Weather-Proofing Homes for Unpredictable Weather

Photo, posted June 12, 2008, courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)