Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2013.13217

Everyone bewildered by the seemingly unprecedented weirdness of this year's summer might spare a thought for those living in 1783, who went through another kind of trial by weather. Gilbert White of Selborne's account of the events of 23 June to 20 July is a masterpiece of deadpan gothic: "The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust coloured ferruginous light on the ground … but was lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All the time the heat was so intense that the butcher's meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed."

White didn't know this phenomenon was caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland, and regarded it as just an extreme example of the British weather's intrinsic capriciousness. His daily journal shows that 1783 had already been depressingly awful. Immense rains in January, deep snow into May, cold north winds throughout the spring. The year before had been just as dismal.

Sounds familiar? A browse through centuries of graphic weather description in English writing gives a different – and oddly reassuring – perspective on the soul-sapping bleakness of the past three years. Which makes me wonder if there is an undeclared motive behind the Met Office's unprecedented decision to hold a crisis meeting this week to discuss the UK's "disappointing" recent weather. We don't need any hints about the agenda: 2013 had the coolest spring for 50 years, 2012 was the wettest year "since records began", the cold winter of 2010-11 (the paralysing snowdrifts of 1979 and 1982 having, it seems, already been forgotten) is regarded as "exceptional". Jet stream shifts and Arctic ice-melt will be on the agenda, which will focus on whether we are experiencing just a short-term blip, a longer-term natural trend, or a sinister early fallout from global warming.

It will doubtless be a fascinating academic debate, but won't – indeed can't – come to any firm conclusions, given that it is concerned with such a short period. (A "trend" is defined as a consistent shift over 30 years.) Perhaps the Met Office hopes it may point a way towards better forecasting. I think the meteorological business is at last acknowledging how deeply it is involved in our cultural experience of the weather. Our national preoccupation has made the forecast part of the weather, and the forecasters have come to be regarded as oracles, not just sources of practical guidance but scapegoats when things go wrong. Sensing our heightened concerns, they may this week be undertaking a risky reading of the runes.

If so, I fear the outcome will be evasive, depressing, and miss the point of what is needed. If there is long-term change afoot in our weather, it matters not a jot to the quality of our lives whether it is part of an entirely natural cycle or a consequence of global warming. (We're way past the point where anything short of a massive programme of carbon capture could halt the latter for the next half century.) We need to learn to adapt to what is happening. This has always been especially difficult for the British.

Because we live on an island in the Atlantic storm belt, just offshore from a huge continental land mass, our meteorological lot has always been messy and erratic. We can't acclimatise, culturally or psychologically, can't reconcile ourselves to these repeated bolts from the blue. We take refuge in false memories of perpetual golden summers, and regard what, on any objective scale, would be trivial weather nuisances, as dashers of hopes and ruiners of our sense of the proper order of things.

Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that we could find ways of positively enjoying grim weather – of, in the language of cognitive behaviour therapy, "reconfiguring" it? I think there are signs we could. This week the Aldeburgh Festival has been staging Britten's opera Peter Grimes on the shoreline, where it belongs, with a stiff north-easterly blowing salt on to the lips of the audience. Next week it's Glastonbury, where rain and mud are on the cast-list of star attractions, and which has turned the wellington boot into a fashion item. Maybe we'll see a reprise of Dorothy and William Wordsworth's (early adapters) habit of going round snuggled together in a vast single topcoat.

Up here in East Anglia, on the front line of sea-level rise, the first houses on stilts are being built, reviving a common tradition of the flood-prone middle ages. If only the local farmers (already pleading for support) could get beyond their paralysed dependence on monocultures, we'd be moving in the right direction. (Any Mexican smallholder, sowing a dozen varieties of corn to cope with any contingency, would be derisory of agribusinesses' reflex of entrusting all its seeds to one genetic basket.)

Evolution itself, a long, successful negotiation with changeable climates, depends on diversity and quick-footed inventiveness. We need to get in line. At the moment it's as if, T-shirted at the umpteenth climate change rally, we've looked up and, good gracious, the weather has changed, and we'd clean forgotten our mum's advice to always take an extra layer.

]]> Richard Mabey Guardian http://ecotopical.com/site/environment:-climate-change-|-guardian-co-uk/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/18/weather-grim-but-lets-enjoy-it http://ecotopical.com/ecology/#12 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:27:00 -0400 A recently mapped genome of the famous albino gorilla Snowflake shows he was born to an uncle and a niece, a new study says.

Driving through the countryside in the south of France, you would probably be charmed by the vineyards and delighted at the thought of drinking fine French wine. But when Rienk van Grondelle looks at the same view, he envisages something completely different. Where farmers now grow vines or corn to feed animals, he sees a future landscape dotted with red ponds.

The ponds would teem with red algae for the production of "biofuels" – gases and vegetable oils made from organic waste that are considered a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, because when burned they release less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels.

One day, van Grondelle speculates, ethanol and butanol will be produced not only from algae but directly from artificial leaves. "They would look pretty much like normal leaves, only you won't find them on a tree," he says. They would probably not even be green, he adds, but would perform the same task as natural plants: capturing light energy and transforming it into chemical energy.

Biofuels are considered a viable alternative to fossil fuels because they can be integrated into the present industrial and transportation system: they can be combined with conventional fuels without revolutionising our supply infrastructures. However, conventional biofuels such as palm oil and sugar cane have had substantial environmental impacts, especially in terms of land use. Forests and agricultural land all over the world have been converted to biofuel production, creating problems with loss of biodiversity and feeding local communities.

A new generation of biofuels made from engineered plants capable of more energy-efficient photosynthesis may help to solve the problem, because they would require less space to obtain the same amount of energy and if implemented at a domestic level they would save resources now used for transportation.

Van Grondelle, professor of biophysics at VU University Amsterdam, has devoted his life to that crucial moment when light hits a leaf's surface and triggers a chemical reaction to produce carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. "Photosynthesis is amazingly efficient: it uses very simple molecules to exploit the power of light. And this happens in an infinitesimal fraction of a second."

This is what his research, and the last 30 years of his life, have been all about. "I am trying to understand what triggers the process and how it's regulated, so we can learn lessons from nature, mimic it in a solar device and eventually improve it."

The great advantage of harvesting light through photosynthesis rather than photovoltaic technology, says van Grondelle, is that 80% of the world's energy consumption is still based on fuels. Another advantage of biofuels is that you can store them for later use, whereas the electricity generated by solar and wind power is intermittent. "That's exactly what plants do through photosynthesis: they store energy for you."

Since the 1970s, when van Grondelle joined the biophysics group in Leiden as a PhD student, the study of photosynthesis has made great progress. As a result we now have a complete picture of how energy from light is captured by chlorophyll pigments in the cells of a leaf's surface and passes through a sequence of molecules like an electric discharge. These molecules harness the energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and chemical fuel – food.

"Now we can engineer these complexes and figure out, relying on experiments, what changes need to be done to improve their structure and make them better," says van Grondelle. "We can modify a surface enabling it to capture a wider [range] of the light's spectrum. This way, the process produces more energy."

He points out that plants and algae have evolved to produce only enough energy to live and reproduce. "For example, if you calculate the energy return on investment of a plant, say a tree, you will see that it is not very efficient." The first step to solve this efficiency problem is to study very simple organisms such as algae.

Photosynthesis in algae is a lot more efficient than that in plants, and you can more easily genetically engineer them to enhance their ability to capture light and convert it into chemical energy.

Van Grondelle admits that it remains difficult to calculate the ultimate efficiency of a photosynthesis-based power plant while research is ongoing, but the plan is to be producing ethanol and butanol at a competitive price within 10 years.

In 2010 the European Research Council provided his team with €3m of funding to investigate the role of proteins bound to chlorophyll in the efficiency of photosynthesis. The objective is an efficient way to make biofuels that could support a cleaner transportation system and replace natural gas in the domestic supply.

He doesn't claim that his research alone can save the world. "I believe the solution for the world's growing energy demand has got to be a combination of different technologies and political strategies."

But the price of meeting the rise in global energy demand may be very different urban and rural landscapes. "It might be difficult to imagine," Grondelle concedes, "but in a civilised society it is already widely accepted to use land for meat production or industrial agriculture."

Once the technology has been implemented on agricultural land, he says, it could be rolled out across the urban environment. "Every backyard may have a pond, or a tank, where algae are grown for domestic energy supply."

Lou Del Bello is a freelance journalist from Italy with a background in environmental issues. She is studying for an MA in science journalism at City University in London. Email her cleanenergy.lou@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @loudelbello

]]> Lou Del Bello Guardian http://ecotopical.com/site/environment:-climate-change-|-guardian-co-uk/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/jun/18/future-biofuels-pond-algae-backyard http://ecotopical.com/ecology/#17 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:44:00 -0400

Hairstyles strewn with fresh flowers are most often associated with weddings, but why shouldn't you rock this look on a daily basis if you feel like it? There are so many ways to incorporate fresh or faux blooms into your daily look, from messy hippie-chic braids to elegant updos accented with a single blossom.

Fresh Flower Tips

Before we get started on the tutorials, here are some tips for using fresh flowers in your hair: -Leave part of the stem attached to the flower so it's easier to pin. -Keep flowers in water until you're ready to use them -Don't add blooms to your ‘do until you've totally finished styling – hairspray will cause them to wilt.

If you'd rather go with faux, you can find beautiful handmade flower crowns, barrettes, clips and other hair accents in virtually every color and flower type at Etsy.

Easy Romantic Scarf Updo with Flower

It doesn't get much easier than this: take a pretty scarf, roll your hair up in it and tuck in a flower. You can easily pin your bangs back and tuck them under the scarf for a sweet vintage look that takes very little effort. The full tutorial, with additional tips, is at Latest Hairstyles.

1960s French Twist with Flowers

Inspired by the elegant 1960s looks of the television show Mad Men, this French twist works with a wide variety of hair types and lengths. The blog She Lets Her Hair Down makes it a bit more casual with the addition of summer flowers.

Braided Flower Updo Hair Tutorial

This romantic braided updo would be easier to achieve with another person helping, but as the video proves, it's possible to DIY. Several rope braids are tucked up, rolled and securely pinned to hold them in place.

Bonus: Leaf Crown Tutorial

This leaf crown couldn't be easier to make, and it can be incorporated into all kinds of hairstyles. You don't require much more than a few leafy branches and a stapler. Get it at How To Hair Girl.

Top Photo: Noon on the Moon Flower Crown

The post Summer Hair How-To: Style with Flowers Three Ways appeared first on Eco-Chick.

In celebration of its relaunch, Greenhome.com, the original online ecostore, is sharing stories of some of its customers, and their motivations for buying green. 

Her name is Cynthia Neftin, and she is the owner of Oxnard, California-based Café Nefola, whose motto is “healthy, local, fresh and natural.” An additional tag line – “from fat to fit, this is it” – leaves returning customers and new visitors in no doubt as to the restaurant’s orientation.

If you need to mend your ways – and who in Oxnard, the franchise capital of California, doesn’t? – you will appreciate Café Nefola’s menu, which focuses on comestibles that are so good for you, you might literally start to vibrate when you close the door behind you.

When did Cynthia get her green on? After several false starts, as a manicurist and then a caterer, she moved to Oxnard, which was largely rural, and realized she wanted to own a restaurant. Or something.

The first restaurant was an ice cream franchise. The relationship didn’t last, but Cynthia was still stuck for the lease, so she looked around – at a rural village that was still in the formative stages – and made a vertical leap, right into a rural mindset that was already acquainted with local, fresh, and natural.

“I had everything right here, at the tips of my fingers, and it naturally got me to where I am now.”

Now is a completely 21st century realization that things have to change, whether it’s eating or manufacturing products. Cynthia quickly found her go-to green source with Greenhome.com, which has an entire subsection devoted to green food service supplies like compostable smoothie cups and bagasse takeout containers. There is no other way to make things work. And it works for Cynthia on a very personal level as well.

“Having this restaurant, being green, changes the way I think when I’m out and about. It also changes the way I think about other peoples’ businesses. Personally, I’m hoping I can teach other people a little bit of awareness: that’s my personal ideal. And judging by the way the business is slowly improving, I’m sure I get through to some.”

Adding a caveat, she admits she doesn’t always see who she has gotten through to, or how it has affected them, but she is trying to become more aware of that, too, and capitalize on teaching tools she doesn’t always realize she has.

Part of her green is local sourcing. This means arugula and spinach greens, but not water chestnuts or bean sprouts. Many of her customers don’t mind the fact that some things which aren’t locally grown don’t appear on the menu. Others do. To please both factions, Cynthia occasionally brings in some non-local items like Valencia oranges from Florida to rival the region’s navel oranges. But she makes such concessions knowing that, in time, her desired clientele will accept the idea of fresh and local, which is how I started and how I want to be.”

The biggest problem in running a fresh, local, “green” restaurant – double focus on the green (as a meme and as the color of healthy vegetables) – is getting what she needs when she needs it.

“But even in that area, I’ve noticed that store owners are becoming more receptive to the green theme and more responsive in stocking environmentally-friendly products. For example, one local store is beginning to carry compostable products. Not recyclable, but compostable!”

The difference?

“About 25 years! Recyclable means it can be repurposed, but uses energy to become so. If not recycled, it persists in a landfill for a quarter century. Compostable, on the other hand has a waste stream lifecycle of about 30 to 90 days.

“In other words, people think recyclable is going to save us. It is not. A good example would be plastic bags in a supermarket, which are no longer supplied (in California, at least). I think people are going to notice that, learn more about it, and ultimately realize that we (humans) don’t have a choice.”

Cynthia must be doing something right! Even her growing group of vegan advocates hasn’t outed her for her food choices, food service items, or her food ideology. And professional that she is, she never ‘settles’ for second-best.

“And they’re a tough group. They really care about the green food philosophy, and about their bodies.”

The future for Café Nefola is a move in about two weeks, to what Cynthia calls a “better location”. Is there one? After all, the restaurant is relocating from a front-row view of the Channel Islands Harbor.

“It’s closer in, and I’m hoping to get a couple of bicycles out front to encourage bike commuting instead of driving. The café is also going to get into the delivery business.

On a final note, Cynthia shared with me one of her ‘greener’ ventures. The company is LifeSource. With one water filtration unit at her restaurant and another at her home, she is probably as much an expert as company salespersons, assuming there are any.

According to Cynthia, not only is it the best-tasting water she has ever had, but when used to wash produce it makes fruits and vegetables last longer without any chemicals.

“I wash my lettuce, and it lasts a week to a week and a half.”

Try that with your city water, or even your shallow urban well water. LifeSource water systems are also easily movable, in case you decide to head for a better climate. Better than Southern California. You’ve got to be joking, dude!

Written by Jeanne Roberts

Image credit: thebittenword.com via photopin cc

While Project Better Place has met its end, the EV company Tesla Motors is gaining momentum. The company, which is gearing up to have its Model X join the Model S on the market in 2014, recently made a triumphant announcement: it has repaid its Department of Energy loan in full.

Tesla finally made a profit during the first quarter of 2013, $11.2 million from $561.8 million in revenue. But it was the nearly $1 billion raised in a stock and note sale, not profits, that the company used to pay this federal debt nine years early. The outstanding balance of Tesla’s 2009 Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loan was $451.8 million, profiting US taxpayers just a bit with roughly $12 million in interest. This massive final payment on Tesla's startup loan makes it the first motor vehicle company to pay back its loan from the ATVM loan program.

via: The Atlantic Wire

Senior members of the German government have warned EU member states that German automakers could scale back or scrap production plans in their countries unless they support weakened carbon emissions rules, according to diplomatic sources.

With EU governments and lawmakers aiming to finalise the rules next week, which most of the 27 member states back, Germany has stepped up the pressure on them to water down limits on vehicle emissions to protect the country's mighty car industry, particularly luxury makers such as BMW and Daimler.

The sources added that some calls warning EU member states of possible consequences have come from members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office.

Her office declined to comment.

One EU diplomat said Berlin had reminded Lisbon of Portugal's €78bn eurozone bailout, which was heavily financed by Germany, in its bid to convince the country to drop its opposition to softer limits.

"They have tried everything at the highest level to pressure member states, in particular countries in the bailout club, to support their proposals," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Germany seems hell-bent on pressing its interests. Even countries that are generally pro-German feel that they are going too far."

A German government source denied that Berlin had put particular pressure on countries that have received EU financial aid, and said its aim was to protect jobs in the EU auto sector.

"Our strategy is to focus on France, Britain and Italy as the big car producing countries, and on the countries which have important supply industries," the source said.

"They should all be together in this fight. We should not drive jobs out of Europe at a moment of high unemployment."

Germany's position is backed by a handful of central European countries with domestic auto production, but France, Britain and Italy are opposed, EU sources say.

The proposal from the European commission, the EU's executive, would set a goal of 95n of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km) as an average for all new vehicles sold in Europe from 2020.

Each manufacturer is assigned an individual target to take account of the nature of their fleet and their record of past cuts.

But making less-polluting cars is costly and restricts profit margins, which is why major German manufacturers want to delay the stricter rules.

The legal changes demanded by Berlin would allow luxury makers to continue selling more powerful – and profitable – models in Europe after 2020, when the new EU emission limits will take effect.

Under the plan, carmakers would be allowed to carry over credits to pollute that were accrued before the new rules kick in.

Known as supercredits, these permits are earned if manufacturers make some very low-emissions vehicles, such as electric cars, which German firms are making to meet a separate national target.

The problem is that if they manage to hold on to a glut of supercredits, they can carry on making higher emissions models, and emissions levels will fail to meet the 2020 95 g/km target.

An internal European commission document, seen by Reuters, on the latest German proposal says its plan "could result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, increased oil and fuel use and reduced energy security."

Germany and its carmakers say the flexibility they want is essential for spurring innovation, but critics say the changes amount to major loopholes in the rules.

An EU source said the German proposal would delay achievement of the 95 g/km target until 2023 for those carmakers who made use of the accrued credits.

No-one from BMW was immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Daimler denied the company had played any part in any threats, direct or indirect, made to EU member states.

In the past, the car industry has exaggerated the difficulty of EU targets, environmentalists say, and they need to innovate to find ways to cut emissions to stay ahead of a global trend.

The United States has agreed fuel efficiency standards, though they lag Europe, while China, where smog has stirred social unrest, is increasingly aware of the implications of vehicle emissions for air pollution.

In 2008, after dire predictions of factory closures and mass job losses, the European Union agreed a limit of 130 g/km to be phased in between 2012 and 2015.

Average emissions were already down to 132.2 g/km in 2012, the EU's European Environment Agency said, meaning the target is on course to be met early, prompting accusations that the industry cried wolf in order to weaken the rules.

Germany as a whole is at the upper end of the EU emissions range, with emissions of 147 g/km in 2011, according to the non-profit International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

At the lower end are nations including the Netherlands, which has given tax breaks for fuel-efficient vehicles, and Denmark, which has led a wider push for energy efficiency.

]]> Guardian Guardian http://ecotopical.com/site/environment:-climate-change-|-guardian-co-uk/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/18/germany-eu-car-emissions-law http://ecotopical.com/ecology/#21 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:07:00 -0400 Jeremy Hance Mongabay http://ecotopical.com/site/mongabay/ http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0618-gen-fipronil.html http://ecotopical.com/ecology/#22 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:38:00 -0400 Rhett Butler Mongabay http://ecotopical.com/site/mongabay/ http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0618-gen-nyc-composting.html http://ecotopical.com/ecology/#23 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:14:00 -0400 The Ecologist The Ecologist http://ecotopical.com/site/the-ecologist/ http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1968987/comment_why_the_organic_movements_badger_cull_stance_threatens_its_image.html http://ecotopical.com/ecology/#24 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:04:00 -0400 The Ecologist The Ecologist http://ecotopical.com/site/the-ecologist/ http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/1968951/nature_engagement_cycling.html