KPCC: Science News

Battling the bottle: Students and industry face off over water

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:02:44 -0800

Bottled water is trickling away from college campuses nationwide, thanks to the efforts of student activists and the nonprofit groups that support them with campaigns like Ban the Bottle.

But that's not going over too well with the International Bottled Water Association. The industry, which had $10.6 billion in revenue in 2010, went on the defensive this month with a YouTube video to counter what it calls "misinformation" used to turn college students against bottled water.

Corporate Accountability International, which created the Think Outside the Bottle campaign that has been used on some campuses, says more than twenty schools have complete or partial bans on bottled water because of environmental and health concerns about the industry. Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and California's Humboldt State University imposed campus-wide bans in September, and the University of Vermont announced last month it will end its contract with Dasani bottler Coca-Cola in July.

In addition to removing bottled water from vending machines, stores and cafeterias, students have pushed for reusable bottle hand-outs, water fountains, and filling stations. "We're really trying to make it part of the student culture to carry a water bottle," says Clare Pillsbury, a Macalester senior who led her campus's effort.

But the IBWA video suggests the cause is unworthy of students' energy – instead, perhaps they could focus on genocide in Darfur. It claims bottled water is a good alternative to sugary beverages and easier to recycle than other packaged drinks. The IBWA also argues bottled water is safer than tap water.

The students – and a lot of water experts and authors – disagree with most of these points. They say the bottles add up to a lot of waste, and that the companies have privatized something that should essentially be free.

So, what's the take-away?

IBWA president Joe Doss always circles around to freedom of choice. "It's not a tap water versus bottled water issue," he says; the industry just wants students to have the option.

And they do, the activists say – they just have to go off-campus.

The bottled water war is spreading beyond campuses, though. Several cities have stopped using public funds to purchase bottled water, and Grand Canyon National Park announced Monday it will stop selling water in containers smaller than one gallon.

Doss estimates his industry grew by five percent in 2011, so for now the freedom of choice looks safe. But that could change, if activists continue to get their way.

"The fact is, you could eliminate bottled water," Pillsbury says. "These companies are creating a product that we don't need."

California plant to convert salt water to fresh water approved

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:19:37 -0800

People take in the view from the front of a boat in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Seawater could become drinking water at a Huntington Beach plant within a few years. State water regulators at a meeting in Loma Linda on Friday approved a permit for the new facility.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board voted to push forward plans for a plant that will convert about 50 million gallons of ocean water into drinking water every day.

That’s enough to supply at least a quarter of a million people in Orange County with fresh water.

Roughly 70 percent of the earth's surface is covered in water, yet only 0.3 percent is both fresh and available for human consumption.

A Connecticut-based firm proposed the desalination system and developers would build it on a 12-acre site near a coastal power plant. They say the facility will be the largest of its kind in the western hemisphere.

Its price tag is about $350 million, but the plant’s operators say taxpayers won’t have to pay for it.

Most area businesses, water agencies and lawmakers support the plan, maintaining that it’s an affordable way to provide a safe and reliable water supply.

However, some environmentalists contend that the system could kill fish and other sea life, since a state regulation that prohibits the use of seawater to cool power plants wouldn't apply to a desalination plant.

A report by the U.S. General Accounting Office predicts that 36 states will face water shortages by 2013... and McKinsey & Co. forecasts that global demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40 percent in 2030.

Feds slam San Onofre nuclear plant, SoCal Edison for failing to follow their own procedures

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:54:31 -0800

Evening sets on the San Onofre atomic power plant December 6, 2004 in northern San Diego County, south of San Clemente, California. Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

Federal regulators have released a report blaming the November ammonia leak at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on employees who failed to recognize or fix degraded equipment.

The Nuclear Regulator Commission took a shot at Southern California Edison because they didn't follow their own procedures at the twin-reactor site about 45 miles north of San Diego and "failed to provide adequate procedural guidance to operations personnel."

The federal evaluation found workers "failed to adequately identify, evaluate and correct a problem" in the water purification system, which in turn led to the leak at the San Clemente plant.

The problem had "very low safety significance," according to the report. Two of the inspection's three "self-revealing" findings were determined to "involve violations of [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission] requirements."

While there was no public health risk and no one was hurt, some workers were evacuated at the time of the leak.

"The failure to take adequate corrective actions for degraded plant equipment was a performance deficiency. The performance deficiency is more than minor because" it resulted in an emergency alert, according to the report.

But watchdog groups have criticized SoCal Edison for not alerting the public for more than an hour after the Nov. 1 leak started in a storage tank.

Some workers were evacuated, but there was no public danger.

Meanwhile, the company is investigating a leak in a steam generator tube, as well as unusual wear in hundreds of tubes in the second plant.

SoCal Edison says it has made changes to address the findings.

The report came as the company investigates a separate leak in a relatively new steam generator tube that prompted the precautionary shut-down of one reactor.

Protesters at Apple stores demand 'ethical' products

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:08:30 -0800

Sarah Ryan, left, and Shelby Knox, with Change.org arrive at the Apple store at Grand Central to deliver petitions asking Apple to change its manufacturing practices. Credit: Mary Altaffer/AP

In an effort to protest the working conditions in the Chinese factories that make Apple products, demonstrators delivered a petition to six different Apple stores in four different countries.

The petition, which asks the country to make "ethical" products, included about 250,000 signatures. Organizers said they were delivering them to Apple stores in Bangalore, London, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Sydney and New York City.

Shelby Knox, the director of Change.org (the website used to collect the signatures) personally delivered the petitions to the manager of the Apple store at New York's Grand Central Terminal.

"We're coming together as fans of Apple, who buy their products, to say we want an ethical product," said Knox. "You are a leader in technology and we want you to be a leader in making ethical products for us to use."

When asked if she would switch to another brand, Knox said there wasn't an ethical alternative.

The protests come after various reports have documented poor working conditions at Foxconn's factories in China. Foxconn manufactures electronics for big brands like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Nintendo. In January, The New York Times ran a long piece that documented the working conditions at the factories and before that Wired reported on them.

According to Wired some Foxconn employees work 12-hour days without a break. At times, they're not allowed to talk or sit down.

Apple sent ABC News a statement in which the company said it insists "our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made."

Apple said every year it was increasing the number of inspections it undertook.

"Last month Apple became the first technology company admitted to the Fair Labor Association, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving conditions for workers around the world," Apple said. "The FLA's auditing team will have direct access to our supply chain and they will report their findings independently on their website."

Suspected Romanian hacker indicted for intrusion into NASA JPL computers

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:16:20 -0800

Credit: alperer16/Flickr.com

Federal prosecutors are putting the heat on a Romanian hacker nicknamed Iceman. A federal grand jury indicted hacker Robert Buytka, 25, Tuesday on charges of breaking into 25 computers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, used for climate research and weather forecasting.

The breaches allegedly happened December 2010.

Assistant U.S. attorney Erik Silber says the lab had to take the affected Atmospheric Infrared Sounder Program computers offline for more than two months.

"They were taken out of use, essentially to be able to eliminate his access on it, to eliminate malicious code that had been put on the computers and then to restore the data that was there. But they didn’t crash the computers or anything like that, but they had to be taken out of service."

A Romanian court convicted Butyka of the crime last month; he received a three-year prison sentence there. Now he faces 10 years in an American prison if a jury convicts him on these new charges.

Damage from the hacking is estimated at $500,000, including costs of work on the computers and lost research time.

High school science whiz kids from Southern California visit White House

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:14:19 -0800

Hayley Hoverter, inventor of soluble sugar packets Credit: Kitty Felde/KPCC

President Barack Obama shot marshmallows across the White House dining room today — all in the name of science, of course. The marshmallow launcher was part of an exhibit of prize-winning science projects from high school kids across the country.

A pair of Southern California teenagers were there.

President Obama welcomed the teenagers to the White House science fair. This is the second year the First Family has turned the downstairs of the White House into a display hall for the latest innovations in science.

The exhibit gave the president a chance to announce a $22 million project by corporations and non-profits to train 100,000 new math and science teachers. But it also let him celebrate a group of high school science students with remarkably clever ideas.

He called on Hayley Hoverter who invented a new type of sugar packet that dissolves in hot water. "It’s flavorless, it’s colorless and potentially could save up to two million pounds of trash each year. And that’s just at Starbuck’s!"

Hoverter, 16, from the Academy of Finance at L.A.'s Downtown Magnet High School says her class assignment was to write a business plan for a cause she cared about. She says her mom used to work in a cafe when she was younger, "so I used to see firsthand all the trash that was being consumed and it really bothered me."

She came up with the idea of the world’s first soluble sugar packet. "It’s sugar encased in starch paper so you can just drop the entire packet in, other than throwing it out, ripping it open." Hoverter says she got the idea partially from rice paper candy that she used to eat "when I was little, and the whole entire thing kind of just melted in your mouth. So that kind of stuck."

Hoverter won the National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge which comes with $10,000 to develop the idea. She’s now conducting feasibility studies to see whether other condiments or instant hot chocolate might work well with soluble packets.

Football inspired an invention by 15-year-old freshman fullback Braeden Benedict from Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. Two years ago, he says he had a teammate who suffered a concussion in a game. "And they didn’t know about it for one or two weeks afterwards. Just because he couldn’t focus at all in classes. And so after that, he missed weeks of school, he was really out of it, and it he can’t play football anymore just because it’s too dangerous."

So Benedict, the son of two engineers, invented a liquid sensor that turns a white patch on the front of the football helmet bright red when a player gets hit really hard. "What I was doing first of all is I was trying to develop a low-cost sensor that could be used for youth in high school sports that would tell you that you’ve received a hit that could have caused a concussion. So that way at least they’ll be able to check you out, the medical staff there, so at least they’ll have some knowledge of it. 'Cause lots of times, they can’t even see the hits."

Braeden Benedict’s helmet sensor invention won the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. That came with a $25,000 prize — a down payment on a billion dollar idea from a high school science whiz.

Can animals be slaves? San Diego federal judge to decide

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:28:48 -0800

Five killer whales perform in the water park of "Marineland" in Antibes, southern France on April 17, 2008. Credit: VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images

For the first time in U.S. history, a federal judge is hearing arguments to decide if animals are constitutionally protected against being used as slaves.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller called the hearing in San Diego after Sea World asked the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that names five orcas as plaintiffs in the case.

PETA claims the captured killer whales are treated like slaves for being forced to live in tanks and perform daily at its parks in San Diego and Orlando, Fla.

"This case is on the next frontier of civil rights," said PETA's attorney Jeffrey Kerr, representing the five orcas.

Sea World's attorney Theodore Shaw called the lawsuit a waste of the court's time and resources. He said it defies common sense and goes against 125 years of case law applied to the Constitution's 13th amendment that prohibits slavery between humans.

"With all due respect, the court does not have the authority to even consider this question," Shaw said, adding later: "Neither orcas nor any other animal were included in the 'We the people' [...] when the Constitution was adopted."

Miller listened to both sides for an hour before announcing that he would take the case under advisement and issue his ruling at a later date. The judge raised doubts a court can allow animals to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit, and he questioned how far the implications of a favorable ruling could reach, pointing out the military's use of dolphins and scientists' experiments on whales in the wild.

Kerr acknowledged PETA faces an uphill battle but he said he was hopeful after Monday's hearing.

"This is an historic day," Kerr said. "For the first time in our nation's history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human. By any definition these orcas have been enslaved here."

The issue is not about whether the animals have been subjected to abuse, the defense said. If the court were to grant orcas constitutional rights, Shaw warned the ruling would have profound implications that could impact everything from the way the U.S. government uses dogs to sniff out bombs and drugs to how zoos and aquariums operate.

"We're talking about hell unleashed," he said.

PETA said a ruling in its favor would only help to protect the orcas in the entertainment industry and other cases involving animals would have to be decided on their own merits.

Kerr said Sea World employees are in violation of the 13th amendment because their conduct is enslaving an intelligent, highly social species that suffers from its confinements in ways similar to what humans would experience.

Brushing animals off as property is the same argument that was used against African-Americans and women before their constitutional rights were protected, PETA says.

Shaw pointed out that argument does not translate because both women and African-Americans are people for which the Constitution was written to protect.

Miller did not specify when he would issue his ruling.

LA County giving $2.5 million to replace trees following SoCal windstorms

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:00:04 -0800

Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

Windstorms earlier this winter felled thousands of mature trees across L.A. County. A new fund aims to replace them.

L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich has announced a $2.5 million grant program. Cities, public agencies and nonprofits can compete for up to $100,000 each to spend on trees.

The goal is to plant new trees on public land, in parks and open spaces and along parkways in residential neighborhoods. Urban arborists across the San Gabriel Valley region have been busy in the two months since heavy winds knocked trees down.

Environmentalists argue that trees are the lungs of the urban area, breathing in carbon dioxide and particulate smog, and breathing out oxygen. Social scientists say that trees add value to the urban economy.

The county program will accept applications through the end of May, with the goal of distributing money and getting new trees rooted next fall and winter.

San Gabriel bighorn sheep survey seeks volunteers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:00:04 -0800

A Bighorn Sheep near the road between Banff and Lake Louise Nov. 23, 2009. Credit: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

In the San Gabriel Mountains, state wildlife officials are looking for a few good sheep. Bighorn sheep, in particular. They're looking for a few good people to count the sheep, too.

In about a month, volunteers will meet at Verdemont community center in San Bernardino for orientation on surveying sheep in the San Gabriels. The Department of Fish and Game asks that participants be over 16 years old and in good health.

Amateur sheep spotters will need to display the same skills the Nelson’s bighorn sheep themselves do. The survey is a bushwhack through chaparral, a scramble over boulders, a climb up a steep slope.

The Nelson’s bighorns in the San Gabriel Mountains have lost territory as people have encroached in this area. State scientists say the sheep's numbers dropped 80 percent at one point, but have leveled out.

There’s no pay for helping out with the survey, though some campsite spots will open for free — first come, first served. You can answer the call of the wild by requesting a volunteer information packet at SanGabrielBighorn.org.

2 yellow-legged frog species make endangered lists

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:04 -0800

USGS scientists found this adult mountain yellow-legged frog on June 10 in Tahquitz Creek, a rediscovered population of the endangered frog in the San Jacinto Wilderness, San Bernardino National Forest, California. Credit: USGS

Mountain yellow-legged frogs, long under threat from trout, people and disease, are getting new protections from state Fish and Game officials.

The frogs live at elevation — in streams, rivers, creeks and vernal pools. Mountain yellow-legged frog habitat can be popular with hikers and climbers, and that terrain isn’t pristine.

California Fish and Game officials have stocked mountain streams and creeks with trout for sport fishing. Those introduced fish have spread; they feed on tadpoles. Federal scientists have documented a frog-killing fungus in Southern California mountains that’s part of a worldwide problem.

All those reasons have put two species of yellow-legged frogs on the radar of Fish and Game commissioners. Now they’ve voted to declare the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog threatened, and its southern mountain variant endangered.

The listings make it illegal to harm or capture the frogs. State officials say they’re already working with federal scientists to restore habitat for the frogs, even as they’re trying to keep recreational areas open for hiking and fishing.

Why do we love the Giants? It's all psychology

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:37:06 -0800

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning warms up before the NFC championship game against the San Francisco 49ers last month in the City by the Bay. Oddsmakers have their money on Manning and his Giants to once again prevail over the Patriots on Sunday. But is that prediction based more on psychology than facts? Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP

The Super Bowl: an annualized marketing event-cum-gambling extravaganza. That they have to play a football game to justify the ads, gambling and Ines Sainz's career is still in the official rule book somewhere, but that rule book is now sponsored by the Gatorade G2 series. Why does Gatorade have more series than Telemundo?

Anyway, a casual survey of fans, experts and Ines Sainz indicates that on the real question — Who will win the GAME? — there is a building consensus. The Giants are the pick of not only the vast majority of people I casually survey on the streets of Indianapolis, but also 39 out of 71 ESPN personnel, 5 out of 5 CBS experts, and 60 out of 110 celebrities.

How much credence should one give Mamie Van Doren, whose qualifications are starring roles in Sex Kittens Go to College and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women? Well, she also had an affair with Joe Namath, so her pick of the Giants should carry at least as much weight as Placido Domingo's.

Actually, I don't put any more stock in the "expert" predictions than those of the stars (or has-been quasi-stars), because all are being governed by some interesting psychological tendencies.

The Patriots are a 2.5-point favorite in this game. When the matchup was first set, they were a 3.5-point favorite, which might seem like an insignificant difference, but actually indicates that huge amounts of money were bet on the Giants, forcing oddsmakers to revise the point spread. The layman loves the Giants. The question is, why?

From a game perspective, you will hear that the Patriots have a terrible secondary, which is true; that their record-setting tight end is hurt, which is true; and that the Giants have a terrific pass rush, which is also true. But beyond those facts, there is more psychology at play than solid analysis.

Some No-Good Reasons To Favor The Giants

One point being made by celebrity and football experts alike is that the Giants are a "hot" team. "They're the hotter team," says ESPN's Mike Greenberg.

"Giants are on such a good roll right now," says Holly Madison, who is described by Scripps Howard as an "entertainer" (she was one of Hugh Hefner's Girls Next Door).

Artist LeRoy Neiman, who perhaps sees life in impressionistic dapples, predicts: "Positively the Giants, because they're on a winning streak."

True, the Giants have won five straight. But the Patriots have won 10. Focusing on the features of only one team while ignoring the fact that they face an opponent is a classic predictive fallacy when it comes to team sport.

One version of this is thinking that a certain team will be very motivated. "Coach X has really gotten his boys up for the game," you'll hear. And what, Coach Y is playing Enya music in the locker room and telling his players not to overexert?

History Repeats Itself — Or It Should, Anyway

Another logical fallacy is the similarity heuristic. Heuristics are mental shortcuts, and this one posits that people, when attempting to envision future results, like to have a model to hold onto.

Of course, if you were asked to imagine what will happen in a Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots, wherein the Giants have the much worse regular season record, and in fact barely made the playoffs, you would think back to Super Bowl XLII. Because the Giants won that game, it's easy to imagine the same script playing out in Super Bowl XLVI, even if your imagining isn't conscious.

Also, once a team or politician, or an American Idol contestant, wins, that win is seen as inevitable. The Giants got very lucky, what with catches off players' helmets and so forth. If Eli Manning had been sacked on that particular third-down play four years ago, would so many people be picking the Giants today?

What Have They Done For Fans Lately?

Then there is the recency effect, which is sort of self-explanatory: that we tend to value the things we see more recently. The Patriots' greatest strength is their offense, but the offense didn't look great against the Ravens. So we say, "Ah, the Patriots' offense is over-rated."

Perhaps a better explanation is that against the conference's best defense, any offense will do less well than they do normally. The Patriots looked awesome the week before, but that result is dismissed by noting it was achieved against a weak Broncos team. Yes, the Broncos were weak, but most of their weakness was on offense. Denver had a pretty good defense for the second half of the year, a fact that is totally brushed aside.

Overall, I do think the Giants' pass rush will bother Brady. But I also think the Patriots' pass rush will hound the Giants, who have the second-worst pass protection in football. I do think the Patriots' secondary is weak, but the Giants aren't exactly top-notch.

I don't have an easy counterpoint to the fact that Rob Gronkowski's injury is a setback for the Patriots, except to note that New England is the most creative team around. This is why my Super Bowl prediction is LeRoy Neiman's career over Mamie Van Doren's by a point.

Court: Environmental laws violated in Bush administration's 2004 Sierra logging plan

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:35:50 -0800

File: 78-year-old Jack Morgan, wood cutter since retiring, rips a log burned in the massive McNally fire of July 2002 on July 30, 2004 in Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

Environmental laws were violated in the lead-up to the Bush administration's 2004 decision to expand logging in California's Sierra forests, a federal appeals court says.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Friday that the U.S. Forest Service failed to include any reference in its public report to the plan's effect on fish.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle, the 2-1 ruling does not require a halt to any tree-cutting activities.

But environmentalists say it will force the Obama administration to take a closer look at the impact of projects in the Sierras on fish and watersheds.

The administration is in the process of revising individual forest plans.

The Forest Service declined to comment.

California may have to return energy-efficiency federal funding in 4 months if they don't use it

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:35:53 -0800

A volunteer lines tape around a window before applying plastic in order to weatherize a home during winter. Credit: volunteer_story/Flickr.com

According to a recent state audit, California is not spending enough money — at least, not on energy reforms.

The report says that officials continue to drag their feet on energy-saving renovations, only using a little over half of the nearly $186 million granted California for efficiency projects by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009.

California Auditor Elaine Howle warns that based on its agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Commission must spend the remaining $108.6 million by April 30, 2012 or be forced to give the money back.

The injection of funds to California's Weatherization Assistance for Low Income Persons initiative came as nearly an overdose to the program, which had a budget of only $34 million the year before, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

The Obama administration granted the stimulus funds to help families boost their home energy savings, create jobs and move toward energy independence.

According to the report, Los Angeles has made "significant progress" in insulating homes after a slow start.

But, Howle says, Oakland and San Francisco may risk having to return some of the money because their programs are so behind.

Oakland and San Francisco officials have said their programs were slow to start because they focused on insulating apartments, which take longer to retrofit than single-family homes.

The Act went into effect in Feb. 2009. California has been awarded, in total, almost $34 billion by the federal stimulus package — nearly double that of New York, the recipient of the fund's second-highest amount of funds ($17 billion).

Could cheap gas slow growth of renewable energy?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:47:35 -0800

A rig in Washington, Pa., drills into shale rock to extract natural gas. Credit: Keith Srakocic/AP

The boom in cheap natural gas in this country is good news for the environment, because relatively clean gas is replacing dirty coal-fired power plants. But in the long run, cheap natural gas could slow the growth of even cleaner sources of energy, such as wind and solar power.

Natural gas has a bad rap in some parts of the country, because the process of fracking is not popular. But many people looking at cheap natural gas from the global perspective see it as a good thing.

Henry Jacoby, an economist at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at MIT, says cheap energy will help pump up the economy.

"Overall, this is a great boon to the United States," he says. "It's not a bad thing to have this new and available domestic resource." He says cheap energy can boost the economy, and he notes that natural gas is half as polluting as coal when it's burned for electricity.

"But we have to keep our eye on the ball long-term," Jacoby says. He's concerned about how cheap gas will affect much cleaner sources of energy. Wind and solar power are more expensive than natural gas, and though those prices have been coming down, they're chasing a moving target that has fallen fast: natural gas.

"It makes the prospects for large-scale expansion of those technologies more chancy," Jacoby says.

Natural Gas: 'A Bridge To Nowhere'?

From an environmental perspective, natural gas could help transition our economy from fossil fuels to clean energy. It's often portrayed as a bridge fuel to help us through the transition, because it's so much cleaner than coal and it's abundant. But Jacoby says that bridge could be in trouble if cheap gas kills the incentive to develop renewable industry.

"You'd better be thinking about a landing of the bridge at the other end. If there's no landing at the other end, it's just a bridge to nowhere," he says.

In the short run, at least, the wind industry isn't too worried about this. Denise Bode, who heads the American Wind Energy Association, says low gas prices don't undercut current prices for wind, because those are mostly fixed by 20-year contracts, not market prices.

And even if wind is a bit more expensive than natural gas, she says utilities still want it in their mix. Windmills aren't subject to changing fuel prices, so the cost of production is quite predictable. That's not true for natural gas — there's no guarantee that today's cheap prices will stay as low as some predict.

"It's very difficult to really know how certain that is, so you always want to balance that with something that is certain," Bode says.

Reducing Political Will For Renewables?

What really worries her isn't natural gas — it's politics. Wind could lose a huge tax break at the end of this year. And that would have a much more dramatic effect than low natural gas prices.

"You'll see very low numbers" for new wind installations if the federal production tax credit expires," Bode says. "In fact, I think EIA [the U.S. Energy Information Administration] projects almost zero for 2013."

The solar industry's subsidies run for several more years, so they are not in that bind, at least not yet. But Trevor Houser, an energy analyst at the Rhodium Group, says these tax credits and other incentives like state renewable standards are key if renewables are to grow and mature during the natural-gas glut.

"Long-term renewable deployment in the U.S. is going to depend primarily on policy," Houser says. "Is there enough concern about environmental consequences to put in place incentives for renewable energy?"

That partly depends on how much of a premium people and companies will be willing to pay for cleaner energy. Right now, with natural gas so cheap, that premium is fairly substantial.

"If those prices hang around for another three or four years, then I think you'll definitely see reduced political will for renewable energy deployment, " Houser says. "But we don't expect prices that low to hang around that long, because low prices are in many ways self-correcting."

Gas is so cheap now that companies that produce it are struggling to make a profit. So Houser expects prices to move up. That will help close the price gap between gas and renewable energy.

Even so, there's still a huge way to go before prices and government policies do enough to significantly reduce emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming.

Oil drilling off California coast approved by House panel

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:01:06 -0800

The U.S. Capitol November 21, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

A GOP-led House committee has approved bills that open the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve to oil drilling, encourage oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and push new oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast.

Republicans say the measures provide energy security and a source of revenue to help pay for roads and bridges, but it was the offshore oil lease sales that sparked the most spirited debate. Any discussion of offshore oil drilling among Californians revolves around the 1969 spill off the Santa Barbara coast that dumped 200,000 gallons of crude across 35 miles of coastline.

Democratic Congressman John Garamendi of Walnut Creek referred to it as he offered objection after objection and amendment after amendment to stall the offshore drilling bill. "There is the probability of oil spills, small and on occasion large, when you drill from the ocean," he said.

But Republican Congressman Tom McClintock, who grew up near Santa Barbara, told fellow members of the House Natural Resources Committee that oil spills in California have been happening for centuries. "It goes back to 1542 when Cabrillo sailed up the coast of California and recorded a massive oil spill off of Ventura, Santa Barbara. It was natural spillage that was seeping up into the ocean. Carpenteria nearby got its name because the Chumach Indians used the huge tar deposits that washed up on the beaches to caulk their canoes."

He added that folks living near that beach keep turpentine in the garage to clean off “globs" of tar on their feet from what he called “natural oil seepage.” He insisted the drilling there has "actually relieved the pressure to the point that the beaches are actually cleaner there than they were in the mid-1960s."

Garamendi suggested a compromise: a process known as horizontal drilling. He says nearly all the oil off the California coast can be reached from the shore. But that suggestion, like every other Democratic amendment, was turned down.

By a vote of 25–19, the committee approved the sale of leases off the coast of Santa Barbara by July of 2014. The measure now goes to the full House for a vote.

Republicans say revenue from drilling will help pay for repairing roads and bridges.

"There is no denying that gas prices are too high and major infrastructure projects are needed immediately," said Republican Congressman Jeff Denham of Fresno.

Grace Napolitano of Norwalk and John Garamendi of Walnut Creek raised objections at today’s Natural Resources Committee hearing. Congressman Garamendi said GOP amendments in the bills turn back the clock on federal regulations.

"You’re pushing aside the Federal Land Policy Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Energy Policy Act, and saying they’re not to be considered," Garamendi said, "and that what was done in 2008 by the Bush administration is quite satisfactory. Get out of the way and go forward."

Garamendi and Napolitano raised concerns about water pollution during discussion of the bill promoting oil shale development.

Many Partnership for LA Schools classrooms don't have computers, Smart Boards

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:24:29 -0800

File: A student writes on a Smart Board.

For many classrooms, "Smart Boards" and computers are the ground floor of their technology arsenal. Many classrooms in the 22 schools run by the Partnership for L.A. Schools don’t have these tools.

The Partnership’s chief academic officer Colleen Oliver said the partnership’s spent more than $3 million to deliver more technology to classrooms.

"We’re rolling out at various stages across all 22 of our schools this year," Oliver said, "additional supports for students and teachers in the area of math and English language arts, primarily reading."

Partnership officials say many students lag because they don’t have fast Internet connections at home. The partnership says it’s working with neighborhood groups near its schools in Boyle Heights, Watts and South L.A. to make sure more students gain access to the school learning programs.

Wednesday is national Digital Learning Day. Classrooms across the country are observing it by displaying the ways they promote instruction with electronic technology.

House leaders introduce transportation bill; could be paid for with offshore drilling

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:49:52 -0800

File: A Tullow Oil company offshore oil platform off the coasts of French Guiana, September 17, 2011. Credit: Jody Amiet/AFP/Getty Images

House Republicans have introduced a six-year, $260 billion transportation bill. It would provide loans that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been lobbying for. But it comes with a cost — oil drilling off the California coast.

The good news is that after eight extensions, there’s finally a multi-year transportation bill. It allocates a billion dollars a year in matching loans known as TIFFIA — the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.

House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica of Florida says the loan program already works well. "We can make it work better. We are going to put three to four times what we have into it. The Senate’s already done it. It has the support of business and labor. So it’s a major component, to take the money that we have, which isn’t much, stretch it out."

Villaraigosa has been lobbying hard for more TIFFIA dollars. The loans would allow L.A. County to start transit programs now rather than waiting the 30 years it will take to fully pay for the projects from the voter-approved 0.5 percent sales tax.

The House version would be partially funded by gasoline taxes, partially by expanded oil and gas drilling in the U.S. Villaraigosa calls it "the most important piece of legislation that Congress will consider to put Americans to work and to also cut some of our reliance on imported energy."

Those drilling bills will be debated tomorrow in the House Natural Resources Committee. One of those bills would offshore oil drilling off the California coast, from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

That’s a non-starter for Democrats. Barbara Boxer, who’s introduced the Senate version of the transportation bill, says drilling off the coast of California is not an option.

Burbank Water & Power aims to practice what it preaches with 'eco-campus' (Photos)

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:57:53 -0800

Credit: Molly Peterson/KPCC

The city of Burbank has unveiled what it’s calling an “eco-campus” at the headquarters for its public utility, Burbank Water and Power. The city says the old facility will now be a model of conservation and energy efficiency.

A new water capture and filtration system on Lake Street next to the Magnolia Power Plant sends water into BWP's property. General manager Ron Davis says that means the utility can do more with recycled resources.

"You have here on this site a lot of water getting used. There’s fountains. There’s grounds. There’s power plants. There’s power plants that need pure water, not just cooling water," Davis told an opening ceremony crowd Saturday. "All of it recycled water. All of it. Only the drinking fountains and the handwashing is potable water."

Drought-resistant landscaping is the centerpiece of a garden BWP workers will use. The utility installed solar panels atop its parking lot and made its buildings more energy-efficient with the help of a federal grant.

Burbank Water and Power’s general manager, Ron Davis, says the message of the eco-campus is that conservation’s not a hardship.

"What you see here is not just doing with less as people think conservation is, it’s about doing more and better with less," Davis said.

It starts with water.. One street bordering the facility is designed to capture and filter rainwater — it soaks down between the pavers, and goes into storage tanks.

Behind an employee gate, that water feeds native and drought-tolerant plants, including vines that will snake up a steel transformer now taken out of service.

Calvin Abe’s landscape architecture firm designed the system.

"The landscape of southern California. The urban landscape that is harsh, inhumane sometimes, can be re-contextualized; repurposed," Abe said in a presentation.

The eco-campus also has new solar panels. Keith Coneko, of the Leo A. Daly firm, says they’ll remind you of Burbank’s aviation history.

"Burbank being the kind of aircraft capital of southern California, with the panels and everything, it’s kind of forming images of wings and stuff," Coneko said.

Burbank built its eco-campus without raising rates, or issuing bonds. Jeff Kightlinger of the Metropolitan Water District commended its customer BWP for dedicating 2 percent of its revenue for water efficiency.

"So that’s pretty impressive, and it’s something a lot of utilities haven’t done," Kightlinger said, "particularly in these hard times, but Burbank has always known that if you save water you do save money, and it goes back to the residents eventually."

A million-dollar federal Energy Department grant helped pay for the upgrades. BWP's Ron Davis said that the utility has also been setting aside some money for several years.

"Like a hotel or a bus, we’re not full all the time," Davis said. "It’s not always August. And yet our assets are designed to serve the community reliably on the hottest day of the year. So we take those assets and we fairly aggressively marketed them, used them to rent to others, fill the bus up."

Like other municipal utilities, Burbank is asking for rate hikes to pay for water quality, renewable energy and other mandates. The eco-campus could help demonstrate that they ‘re justified.

This story has been updated.

Google, Facebook, others to design scam-fighting e-mail system

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:52:36 -0800

A phishing attempt, impersonating the IRS. Credit: mathowie/Flickr.com

Google, Facebook and other big tech companies are jointly designing a system for combating email scams known as phishing.

Such scams try to trick people into giving away passwords and other personal information by sending emails that look as if they come from a legitimate bank, retailer or other business. When Bank of America customers see emails that appear to come from the bank, they might click on a link that takes them to a fake site mimicking the real Bank of America's. There, they might enter personal details, which scam artists can capture and use for fraud.

A whole slew of federal investigations have been conducted to combat the rise of scammers, including one which nabbed 100 suspects and brought in the largest number of defendants ever charged in a cybercrime case.

To combat that, 15 major technology and financial companies have formed an organization to design a system for authenticating emails from legitimate senders and weeding out fakes. The new system is called DMARC — short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance.

DMARC builds upon existing techniques used to combat spam. Those techniques are designed to verify that an email actually came from the sender in question. The problem is there are multiple approaches for doing that and no standard way of dealing with emails believed to be fake.

The new system addresses that by asking email senders and the companies that provide email services to share information about the email messages they send and receive. In addition to authenticating their legitimate emails using the existing systems, companies can receive alerts from email providers every time their domain name is used in a fake message. They can then ask the email providers to move such messages to spam folder or block them outright.

According to Google, about 15 percent of non-spam messages in Gmail come from domains that are protected by DMARC. This means Gmail users "don't need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders," Adam Dawes, a product manager at Google, said in a blog post.

"With DMARC, large email senders can ensure that the email they send is being recognized by mail providers like Gmail as legitimate, as well as set policies so that mail providers can reject messages that try to spoof the senders' addresses," Dawes wrote.

Work on DMARC started about 18 months ago. Beginning Monday, other companies can sign up with the organization, whether they send emails or provide email services. For email users, the group hopes DMARC will mean fewer fraudulent messages and scams reaching their inbox.

The group's founders are email providers Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc. and Google Inc.; financial service providers Bank of America Corp., Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.'s PayPal; online service companies Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. and American Greetings Corp. and security companies Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and the Trusted Domain Project.

Google uses it already, both in its email sender and email provider capacities. The heft of the companies that have already signed on to the project certainly helps, and its founders are hoping it will be more broadly adopted to become an industry standard.

Facebook IPO: worth the price or next Internet bubble?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:08:48 -0800

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg poses at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Feb. 5, 2007. Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP

Many investors are expecting Facebook to file papers for an initial public offering sometime later this week. The company, which was founded in a Harvard dorm room less than a decade ago, is expected to be valued at nearly $100 billion by Wall Street.

And if these early reports are true this is shaping up to be the biggest Internet IPO ever.

"It will be larger than the Google IPO — larger than the Amazon IPO — the largest internet IPO in history," says Kathleen Smith. She tracks initial public offerings at Renaissance capital. "It's rumored that they will seek to raise $10 billion."

The deal could create more than a thousand Facebook millionaires and will likely give Facebook's 27-year-old co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a net worth north of $20 billion dollars — at least on paper.

So this all kind of begs the question: Is Facebook worth the price, or is this another Internet bubble in the making?

"This is very expensive company, let's face it," says Sam Hamadeh, who follows the tech industry and Wall Street for the financial research company PrivCo. "At a hundred billion dollars you are talking about one of the largest companies in the United States, or the most valuable companies. The upside is reasonably limited."

Hamedeh believes this is one of the reasons that Morgan Stanley may end up leading the IPO instead of Goldman Sachs. Morgan has an enormous network of brokers who sell stock to wealthy individuals like doctors, lawyers and retirees.

"Those are the kind of people who will buy without digging too much into the numbers or being picky about the value of the company," he says. "They tend to buy company names that they recognize."

Hamedeh says these retail investors tend to be less price sensitive than the big institutional investors Goldman Sachs typically deals with.

And Hamedeh says Facebook will have to grow like a weed for years to justify its stock price.

But the reason so many investors seem optimistic is that Facebook has been growing like a weed.

"We forecast that Facebook's revenue in 2010 was about $2 billion," says Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, which tracks online advertising sold by private companies.

She says this year Facebook brought in more than $4.2 billion dollars in revenue, "so you can see that it more than doubled from 2010 to 2011," she adds.

The year before that Williamson estimates that the company's revenues tripled. Earnings figures won't be available until the company files to go public and releases audited financial statements.