Also remarkable is China’s openness with their air-pollution data. Every hour, they post online more than 1,500 measurements of PM2.5 (as well PM10, SO2, NO2, and ozone) all across their country. China may be a closed society in many ways, but they seem to be crying out for help. At Berkeley Earth, we have been downloading all these numbers for the past year and a half, and the patterns of severe pollution are now clear. It is not confined to cities or basins but widespread and virtually inescapable. Ninety-seven percent of China’s population breathes what the EPA deems as “unhealthy air” on average. In contrast, the democracy of India reports few PM2.5 measurements. I suspect they have them but are simply not making them public. They do publish results for Delhi, and virtually every time I look, the pollution there is worse than it is in Beijing.
People suggest a switch from coal to solar, but this is too expensive for China to afford. In 2015, solar power contributed less than 0.2 percent to their energy use, and solar plants are going bankrupt as Chinese subsidies are withdrawn. Wind power is expanding, but wind’s intermittency is a big problem, and the use of energy storage drives up cost. Hydro is hardly an environmental choice; the Three Gorges Dam displaced 1.2 million people (voluntarily, the Chinese tell us) and destroyed 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,350 villages. Their new Mekong River dam is expected to wreak havoc throughout Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The best hopes consist of natural gas, which China has in abundance, and nuclear power, which is under rapid development. PM2.5 from natural gas is reduced by 1/400 compared with coal—and it reduces greenhouse emissions by a factor of 2 to 3. China is desperately attempting to extract its shale gas but is doing miserably; the only true master of that technology is the U.S., where it has triggered an enormous and unexpected drop in the price of both natural gas and oil. Nuclear power, once despised by environmentalists, is gaining traction in the U.S., with many past opponents recognizing that it offers a way to reduce carbon emissions significantly. China is surging ahead in nuclear, with thirty-two new plants planned. Although such plants are reported to be expensive, the Chinese know that the high cost is only in the capital cost—that amortized over twenty-five years, nuclear is as cheap as coal, and much cheaper when you add in the environmental costs.
Air pollution will be a growing story. China also has plans, on paper, to double its coal use in the next fifteen years. They will cancel those if they can, but they also worry that slower economic growth could threaten their form of government. As bad as the pollution has been so far, I worry that we ain’t seen nothing yet.
The United States is sharing its nuclear technology, and I expect that in two decades China will be the principal manufacturer of nuclear power plants around the world. But we need to set a better example; we need to show the world that we consider nuclear to be safe. And we need to share our shale-gas technology far more extensively. Too often we read the pollution headlines, shake our heads, perhaps feel a little schadenfreude toward our greatest economic adversary, and then we forget about it.
Someday global warming may become the primary threat. But it is air pollution that is killing people now. Air pollution is the greatest environmental disaster in the world today.
Technobiophilic Cities
Scott Sampson
Vice president of research and collections, Denver Museum of Nature and Science; dinosaur paleontologist; science communicator; author, How to Raise a Wild Child
The news cycle regularly features stories about reinventing 21st-century cities. Among societal issues, perhaps only education is targeted more frequently for reform. And for good reason.
Since 2008, more people have lived in cities than not. By the end of this century, cities will generate nearly 90 percent of population growth and 60 percent of energy consumption. While these bustling hubs of humanity function as the planet’s innovation centers, they’re also responsible for the lion’s share of environmental damage. By some estimates, today’s cities generate around 75 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, along with countless other pollutants. They consume vast expanses of forests, farmland, and other landscapes, while fouling rivers, oceans, and soils. In short, if we don’t get cities right, it’s hard to imagine a healthy future for humanity, let alone the biosphere.
By my reading, most of the press surrounding the reinvention of cities can be grouped into two camps. One camp calls for “smart,” “digital,” and “high-tech” cities. Here the emphasis is on information and communication technologies with the potential to boost urban functioning. Fueled by the recent tsunami of civic data (climate information, traffic patterns, pollution levels, power consumption, etc.), key areas cited for high-tech interventions include flows of people, energy, food, water, and waste. Advocates imagine cities that can talk, providing live status updates for pollution, parking, traffic, water, power, and light. Thanks to such innovations as ultra-low power sensors and Web-based wireless networks, smart cities are rapidly becoming reality.
From the other camp we hear about the need for “green,” “biophilic,” even “wild” cities, where nature is conserved, restored, celebrated. Of course, cities have traditionally been places where the wild things aren’t, engineered to wall humans off from the natural world. Yet recent and rapidly accumulating research documents the positive health effects of regular contact with urban nature. Benefits include reduced stress levels, stronger immune systems, and enhanced learning. Perhaps most important are the myriad physical, mental, and emotional benefits that seem essential to a healthy childhood. Proponents of the green-city camp also argue that many of the pressing issues of our time, among them climate change, species extinctions, and habitat loss will not—indeed, cannot—be addressed unless people understand and care about nearby nature.
So there you have it. Big Data versus Mother Nature. Two views on the future of cities, apparently at opposite ends of the spectrum. One values technological innovation, the other biological wisdom and nature connection. Yet on close inspection these perspectives are far from mutually exclusive. In fact, they’re complementary.
It’s entirely possible for cities to be both high-tech and nature-rich. Today, few proponents of green cities claim we need to go “back to nature.” Rather they argue for going forward into a future rich in both technology and nature. New terms like “technobiophilic cities” and “nature-smart cities” are emerging to describe this blended concept, urban settings where the natural and digital are embraced simultaneously.
Yes, nature-smart cities will have plenty of green roofs, green walls, and interconnected green spaces. Seeding native plants attracts native insects, which in turn entices native birds and other animals, transforming backyards, schoolyards, and courtyards into miniature ecosystems. These nuggets of urban nature, in addition to improving the health of humans, are the last good hope for scores of threatened species. In addition, cities rich in nature can leverage smart technologies to help urbanites switch to renewable energy sources—wind, sun, water, and geothermal. Green transportation reduces carbon emissions and improves the environment. Green buildings can act like trees, running on sunlight and recycling wastes, so that cities function like forests.
Interestingly, both views of our collective urban future highlight the importance of an informed and engaged citizenry. Digital technologies and Big Data may well put control back into the hands of individuals—for example, through greater participation in local governance (“E-Governance”). Similarly, citizen scientists and citizen naturalists can play important roles in restoring plants and animals, monitoring these species, and making adjustments to improve the quality and quantity of nearby nature. Here, then, is a potent pathway to help people act on the basis of robust scientific data (and boost science literacy along the way).
In short, there’s much more than hot air in all the news about reimagining the future of cities. At least within urban settings, Mother Nature and Big Data have the potential to make excellent bedfellows. Indeed our survival, and that of much of
Earth’s biodiversity, may depend on consummating this union. If successful, we’ll witness the birth of a new kind of city, one in which people and nature both thrive.
LENR Could Supplant Fossil Fuels
Carl Page
President, Anthropocene Institute; engineer; entrepreneur; cofounder, eGroups
Climate collapse demands a supply of energy far cheaper than fossil fuels, resistant to bad weather and natural disaster, and sustainable in fuel inputs and pollution outputs. Can a new, poorly understood technology from a stigmatized field fulfill the need? The Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) could help at large scale very quickly.
In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann provided an initial glimpse of an unexpected reaction dubbed cold fusion, which makes lots of heat and very little radiation. LENR is being pursued quietly by many large aerospace companies, leading automakers, startup companies, and, to a lesser extent, national labs. Over the years, many teams have observed the reaction by various means, and a consistent pattern has emerged. Experiments have become more repeatable, more diverse, more unambiguous, and higher in energy. There are no expensive or toxic materials or processing steps, so it could be the move beyond fossil fuels we have been waiting for. No government-regulated materials are used, so a quick path to commercialization is possible.
Familiarity with hot fusion led to initial false expectations. Early hasty replication work at MIT was declared a failure when heat but no high-energy neutrons were detected. The reaction requirements were not known at first, and many attempts failed to reach fuel-loading and ignition-energy requirements. Even when the basic requirements were met, nanoscale features varied in materials and made the reaction hard to reproduce. Pons and Fleischmann had trouble repeating their own excess-energy results after they used up their initial lucky batch of palladium. Today we understand better how material defects create required high-energy levels.
In many experiments with LENR, observed excess heat markedly exceeds known or feasible chemical reactions. Experiments have gone from milliwatts to hundreds of watts. Ash products have been identified and quantitatively compared to energy output. High-energy radiation has been observed and is entirely different from hot fusion.
Michael McKubre at SRI International teased out the required conditions from the historical data. To bring forth LENR reactions that produce over-unity energy, a metal lattice is heavily loaded with hydrogen isotopes. It is driven far out of equilibrium by some excitation system. High proton flux and electromigration of lattice atoms are also found in successful demonstrations.
Dr. Melvin Miles quantitatively characterized the outputs of LENR in meticulous 1995 experiments at China Lake. LENR releases helium-4 and heat in the same proportion as hot fusion, but neutron emissions and gamma rays are at least 6 orders of magnitude less than expected.
Successful excitation systems have included heat, pressure, dual lasers, high currents, or overlapping shock waves. In order to create conditions that drive the reaction, materials have been treated to create energy-concentrating flaws, holes, defects, cracks, and impurities and to increase surface area. Providing a high flux of protons and electron current is also characteristic of successful demonstrations. Solid transition metals, including nickel and palladium, host the reaction. Ash includes ample evidence of metal isotopes in the reactor which have gained mass, as if from neutron accumulation—as well as enhanced deuterium and tritium. Tritium is observed in varying concentrations. Weak X-rays are observed, along with tracks from other nuclear particles.
LENR looks like fusion—judging, as a chemist might, by the input hydrogen and output helium-4 and transmutation products. It looks not at all like fusion when judging it as a plasma physicist might—by tell-tale radioactive signatures. Converting hydrogen to helium will release lots of energy no matter how it’s done. LENR is not zero-point energy or perpetual motion. The question is whether that energy can be released with affordable tools.
Plasma physicists understand hot thermonuclear fusion in great detail. Plasma interactions involve few moving parts, and the environment is random, so its effect is zeroed out. In contrast, modeling the LENR mechanism will involve solid-state quantum mechanics in a system of a million parts being driven far out of equilibrium. In LENR, a nanoscale particle accelerator can’t be left out of the model. A theory for LENR will rely on intellectual tools that illuminate X-ray lasers or high-temperature superconductors or semiconductors.
Many things need to be cleared up. How is the energy level concentrated enough to initiate a nuclear reaction? What is the mechanism? How do output energies in the MeV range produce heat without obvious high-energy particles? Peter Hagelstein at MIT has been working hard at a “Lossy Spin Boson Model” for many years to cover some of these gaps.
Robert Godes at Brillouin Energy offers a theory that matches observations and suggests an implementation: the controlled electron-capture reaction. Protons in a metal matrix are trapped to a fraction of an angstrom under heat and pressure. A proton can capture an electron and become an ultracold neutron that remains stationary but without the charge. That allows another proton to tunnel in and join it, creating heavier hydrogen and heat. Neutron accumulation creates in succession deuterium, tritium, and hydrogen-4. Hydrogen-4 is new to science and is predicted (and observed?) to beta-decay to helium-4 in about 30 milliseconds. All this yielding about 27 MeV in total per atom of helium-4, as heat.
The proton-electron capture reaction is common in the Sun, and predicted by supercomputer simulation at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory [PNNL]. It is the reverse of free-neutron beta decay. Such a reaction is highly endothermic, absorbing 780 KeV from the immediate surroundings.
Fission experts expect hot neutrons to break up fissile atoms. LENR does it backward—ultracold neutrons (which cannot be detected by neutron detectors but can readily be confirmed by isotope changes) are targets for hydrogen. Hence helium is produced with the tools of chemistry and without overcoming the Coulomb positive-particle repulsion force. And without requiring or producing radioactive elements.
The theory of LENR’s exact mechanism is still in dispute; no theory pleases everyone. Output power levels are usually below commercial viability, and many different methods produce the characteristic excess heat. Just as gold was mined before geology was understood but got a lot more predictable afterward, LENR methods are reinforced by occasional success. The complete explanation of the mechanism will happen when a serious effort is made to prove (or disprove) the candidate theories. Nowadays we are forced to rely on entrepreneurial zeal instead of orderly science, because of the hyperconservatism of science-funding agencies. So there is no coordinated effort to efficiently focus on finding the correct theory. Collaboration helps, but that is one thing secretive companies are bad at.
It is strange that LENR is neglected by the DOE, industry, and the Pentagon. But no stranger than the history of nuclear power. If it weren’t for the leadership of Admiral Rickover and his personal friends in Congress, nuclear-fission power for submarines and power plants would never have seen the light of day. Nevertheless, progress will be made by private enterprise in lieu of government support. Sadly, that means you cannot stay up-to-date by relying on a subscription to Science. But stay tuned.
Emotions Influence Environmental Well-Being
June Gruber
Assistant professor of psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder
We know that emotions can influence individual well-being. Across numerous studies, we see that the intensity and flexibility of our emotions have robust effects on a wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal well-being outcomes. Furthermore, an optimal diversity of (positive and negative) emotional experiences in everyday life promotes greater subjective well-being and decreased psychopathology symptoms. But are the effects of emotion on well-being specific to individual-level outcomes?
Recent scientific news suggests the answer is No: Emotions also influence environmental well-being outcomes. Psycho
logical processes, including our emotional states, play an important and previously understudied role in our response to pressing environmental issues. For example, exposure to scenes of environmental destruction engages distinct neural regions (e.g., anterior insula) associated with anticipating negative emotions: This, in turn, predicts individuals’ donations to protect national parks. Thus, negative rather than positive emotional responses may drive pro-environmental behaviors (as suggested by powerful work conducted by Brian Knutson and Nik Sawe). Such findings come on the heels of task-force reports underscoring the need for an affective level of analysis, given the collective impact of emotion-relevant processes (such as emotion regulation and responding) on shaping broad-based environmental outcomes. Important, too, are advances in psychology that recommend applying insights about individual affective reactions to spur public engagement in pro-environmental behaviors.
This burgeoning work at the intersection of affective science and environmental psychology shows that emotions can improve environmental health by shaping our emotional reactions toward environmental issues as well as the frequency and degree of conservationist behaviors. Yet much work remains to be done, including mapping the reciprocal relationship between our emotions and environmental choices in decision making and policy planning. We also need to learn more about how rapid changes in immediate environmental surroundings (e.g., access to clean water, local air pollution) might have reciprocal downstream effects on affective states and motivated behaviors. And we must further investigate whether and how individual judgments and real-world choice behaviors can scale to aggregate policy level.
Know This Page 4
