White House Begins Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education

Association of Energy Engineers New York Chapter www.aeeny.org

November 2009 Newsletter Part 1

White House Begins Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education By Kenneth Chang, NYTimes, Nov 24 09

Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.

Ron Thomas/Giles Communication, via Associated Press Elmo and his “Sesame Street” co-star Big Bird will be among those trying to show students the value of science and math. TO IMPROVE SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists. President Obama announced on Monday a campaign to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math. “You know the success we seek is not going to be attained by government alone,” Mr. Obama said kicking off the initiatives. “It depends on the dedication of students and parents, and the commitment of private citizens, organizations and companies. It depends on all of us.” Mr. Obama, accompanied by students and a robot that scooped up and tossed rocks, also announced an annual science fair at the White House. “If you win the N.C.A.A. championship, you come to the White House,” he said. “Well, if you’re a young person and you’ve produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too. “Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models, and here at the White House, we’re going to lead by example. We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.” The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, focuses mainly on activities outside the classroom. For example, Discovery Communications has promised to use two hours of the afternoon schedule on its Science Channel cable network for commercial-free programming geared toward middle school students. Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May. The MacArthur Foundation and technology industry organizations are giving out prizes in a contest to develop video games that teach science and math. “The different sectors are responding to the president’s call for all hands on deck,” John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser, said in an interview last week. The other parts of the campaign include a two-year focus on science on “Sesame Street,” the venerable public television children’s show, and a Web site, connectamillionminds.com, set up by Time Warner Cable, that provides a searchable directory of local science activities. The cable system will contribute television time and advertising to promote the site. The White House has also recruited Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, and corporate executives like Craig R. Barrett, a former chairman of Intel, and Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, to champion the cause of science and math education to corporations and philanthropists. Dr. Ride said their role would be identifying successful programs and then connecting financing sources to spread the successes nationally. “The need is funding,” she said. “There is a lot of corporate interest and foundation interest in this issue.” Administration officials say that the breadth of participation in Educate to Innovate is wider than in previous efforts, which have failed to produce a perceptible rise in test scores or in most students’ perceptions of math and science. In international comparison exams, American students have long lagged behind those in much of Asia and Europe. But some education experts said the initiatives did little to address some core issues: improving the quality of teachers and the curriculum. “I think a lot of this is good, but it is missing more than half of what needs to be done,” said Mark S. Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization in Washington. “It has nothing to do with the day-to-day teaching,” said Dr. Schneider, who was the commissioner of education statistics at the Department of Education from 2005 to 2008.

2 Dr. Holdren said the initiatives, which are financed almost entirely by the participating companies and foundations and not the government, complement the Race to the Top program of the Department of Education, which will dispense $4.35 billion in stimulus financing to states for innovative education programs. The Race to the Top rules give extra points to applications that emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects. “The president has made it very clear it is a big priority,” Dr. Holdren said. In April, Mr. Obama, speaking at the National Academy of Sciences, promised a “renewed commitment” that would move the United States “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade.” To achieve this goal, Mr. Obama talked of “forging partnerships.” Monday’s announcement contains the first wave of such partnerships, officials said. David M. Zaslav, the president and chief executive of Discovery, said Mr. Obama’s words about science education inspired Discovery to come up with the idea of two hours of programming, a mix of old and new content, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays on the Science Channel. The idea is that students coming home from school will have a ready means to learn more science. “We took that to the administration,” Mr. Zaslav said. “They loved it.” The lack of commercials is “a big statement by us that it’s not about the money,” he said. “It’s about reinforcing the importance of science to kids and inspiring them.” The programming is to begin next year; the date has not been set yet. The foundation of Jack D. Hidary, an entrepreneur who earned his fortune in finance and technology, worked with the National Science Teachers Association, the MacArthur Foundation and the American Chemical Society to create a Web site, nationallabday.org, that matches scientists willing to volunteer their time and teachers describing what projects they hope to incorporate into their classes. For example, Mr. Hidary said, a project could involve students’ recording of birdsongs and comparing them with others from elsewhere. “That’s actually scientifically useful,” he said. “Kids can actually perform useful science.” The projects are to culminate in National Lab Day, which schools will hold the first week of May, but the projects will typically spread over several months. Mr. Hidary said students learn better with hands-on inquiries. “We are not about one-offs,” he said. “We’re not looking for bringing in a scientist for a day.” After the chemical society joined the effort, other scientific organizations also signed on, Mr. Hidary said, adding, “Each one is coming, upping the ante.” For the video game challenge, the idea is to piggyback on the interest children already have in playing the games. “That’s where they are,” said Michael D. Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group and one of the sponsors. “This initiative is a recognition of that.” Sony is expected to donate 1,000 PlayStation 3 game consoles and copies of the game LittleBigPlanet to libraries and community organizations in low-income areas. Part of the competition will consist of children creating new levels in LittleBigPlanet that incorporate science and math. The other part will offer a total of $300,000 in prize money to game designers for science and math games that will be distributed free. “We’re finding extraordinary engagement with games,” said Connie Yowell, director of education for MacArthur. If the engagement is combined with a science curriculum, she said, “then I think we have a very powerful approach.” Some of the initiatives were already in the works and would have been rolled out regardless of the administration’s campaign. “Sesame Street” already planned to incorporate nature into this year’s season, but has now decided to add discussions of the scientific method in next year’s episodes.

3 “We’ve really never kind of approached it that way before,” said Gary E. Knell, president and chief executive of the Sesame Workshop. Time Warner Cable had already decided to devote 80 percent of its philanthropy efforts to science and math education before Mr. Obama’s speech in April. But the company adjusted its project to fit in with the others. “Being part of a bigger effort,” said Glenn A. Britt, the chief executive, “increases the chances that the effort will be successful.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Study Suggests Rainwater Is Safe to Drink - In a study by researchers at Monash University in Australia, 300 volunteer households in Adelaide were given filtration units to treat their rainwater. Only half of the units were real, while the other half did not contain filters. Families recorded their health over a 12-month period, after which time the health outcomes of the two groups were compared. The results showed that rates of gastroenteritis between both groups were very similar. People who drank untreated rainwater displayed no measurable increase in illness compared to those that consumed the filtered rainwater. (From ASPE)

4 We Have Met the Deniers, and They Are Us By Adam Sacks, Grist, Nov 10 09

Photo: Adam D. SacksJames Inhofe.

MARC MORANO. RICHARD LINDZEN. BJØRN LOMBORG. GEORGE W. BUSH. Names of shame, ignominy, criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself. Agents of the lethal delays in our response to escalating, accelerating, catastrophic global warming. Yet, as deniers of climate change, they’re amateurs compared to us. Us activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen politicians. Even though we’re believers, not skeptics, our denial is far more insidious and subtle. So subtle, in fact, that we’ve managed to convince ourselves that we’re not in denial at all. Quite the opposite. Why, the thought is too absurd even to contemplate. But it’s true. We’re deniers every time we say “80 percent by 2050,” or even “80 percent by 2020”; every time we refer to tipping points in the future tense; every time we advocate substituting “clean” energy for “dirty” energy; every time we buy a squiggly light bulb or a hybrid vehicle; every time we advocate for cap-and-trade, or even a carbon tax; every time we countenance the mention of loopy geoengineering schemes; every time we invoke the future of our children and grandchildren and ignore the widespread suffering from global climate disruption today. Every time we say these things and more, we’re promoting denial of dire climate reality, the reality that’s spinning out of our grasp so fast that we conduct our frenetic climate “solutions” efforts in a kind of stupor, obsessing with parts-per-million statistics, keeping desperately busy to ward off our own utter collapse borne of despair. The reality we’re denying? We’re denying that we’ve put so much carbon into the atmosphere already that positive feedback loops are well on their way to amplification hell.[1] We’re denying that time lags between carbon emissions and their effects are frighteningly relevant, and that the disastrous effects we’re seeing now are from emissions of 30 years ago. We’re denying that non-linear responses of physical systems cannot be calculated and therefore are perilously ignored. We’re denying that our consumption and waste have far exceeded planetary capacity, possibly irreparably so. We’re denying reality because we’re not talking about it; we’re invoking fantasies and free lunches instead.

5 Why do we act like this? Because just like the skeptics, we are inordinately fond of our cushy lives. Because we don’t want to give up our privileged, well-stocked existences any more than the skeptics do (and enter the realms of unthinkable thoughts, to wit, go back to the jungles? the caves? the starving, thirsting millions—or is that billions?—never, never, never, not us). Because in our heart of hearts, we want the skeptics to be right. We are brothers and sisters. And so we join them. But our denial is much, much worse, because we are the ones presumably advocating for action on global climate disruption. And when we fall short, who’s left to do the job? Here’s an example, in a note from a friend of mine and fellow climate campaigner: I was quite disappointed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) presentation last night. The meeting title was “Roadmap to a Carbon-Free Society” or something like that. There was no roadmap discussed at the meeting. They showed a bunch of charts and graphs showing how we could get to a 26 percent carbon reduction by 2020 and a 56 percent carbon reduction by 2030 (from a 2005 baseline). All those carbon reductions were based on changes to U.S. and state policy, it wasn’t clear what those proposed policy changes would be, although they seemed to involve some sort of cap and trade and a renewable energy mandate. They were primarily focused on reducing carbon in electricity generation. They had only 2 to 3 percent savings in carbon in buildings. Their proposed savings in the transportation sector seemed to focus on switching to ethanol (but not from corn). There was absolutely no call to action. There was no elaboration of priority. There were no specifics regarding the changes that would need to be made. This was a U.S.-only proposal. When asked about global effects, they basically said that was out of scope for their project. I am looking hard for something I can do that will make a real difference in the lives of my children and their children. Mark Here’s another example, from UCS again. I don’t mean to pick on them—they have a lot of co-enablers —but they are real scientists, for goodness sake! Yet they are as ensnared in the silencing trappings of culture as any of us. They’re still on an 80-percent-by-2050 path (below 2005, not 1990, levels), and they still imagine that global warming is simply a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions (“Global Warming Crossroads: Choosing the Sensible Path to a Clean Energy Economy”). As such, they avoid the lethal implications and challenges of the impossible exponential growth that drives our lives (more on this in my Aug. 23, 2009, post, “The Fallacy of Climate Activism”). After attending some of their mildly alarming but strangely reassuring presentations, I have spoken with several UCS scientists personally, and with hardly a tickle of prodding they quickly confess how panicked they are. Why don’t they just state it outright, in public? Because, they say (just like so many climate activists, with such a uniform voice one might concoct a conspiracy theory), the public can’t take it. People will shrivel up into their TVs and McBurgers and never come out again. Then we’ll really be in a fix. (But I thought we already were?) In December 2008, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), another well-meaning house of denial, sponsored a forum aimed primarily at climate activists, oddly entitled “Taking Climate Change Seriously” (I guess they figured we hadn’t done that yet). SEI folks are very nice, very smart people whom I like personally. And they are working sincerely and hard on solutions (which, however politically palatable, nonetheless carry very little weight with the thunderous forces of nature). A very bright, well-spoken UCS scientist opened the show by revealing that she would speak frankly with us, in a way that she wouldn’t with a general audience because they wouldn’t be able to take it. A cartoon

6 flashes onto the screen, showing the entrance to two different movie theatres. One is showing “An Inconvenient Truth,” which has no customers. The other, “A Convenient Lie,” has drawn a large crowd. The implication, of course, is that the public (whom we chronically assume is dumb) doesn’t want to know. She was pretty open about our dire circumstances, however, with those of us who already knew it (remember, we were there to take climate change seriously). The irony of all of this is that her presentation itself is the embodiment of the convenient lie: that it’s the public’s fault, despite the fact that scientists and climate activists don’t tell them the truth! How on earth are they supposed to know? No wonder the skeptics hold such tenacious sway. While An Inconvenient Truth was critically important as a wake-up call, the title of the movie became part of the problem: Climate change isn’t simply “inconvenient.” It’s lethal. Yet now that it’s been branded as “inconvenient,” it’s not so bad, we can live with it—we work around inconveniences, right? We do it all the time. Suppose that just yesterday a CFL burned out and it was dark in the hall and I stubbed my toe looking for my shoes and I had to bike to the hardware store (I don’t own a car) and it was chilly and wet outside and my glasses fogged up. That’s “inconvenience.” Here’s how the public can come to know the truth about climate: repetition. Learning and comprehension require repetition. Think about repetition being used to learn multiplication tables, or in advertising, or in political campaigns, etc. Certainly dire climate explanations require even more repetition because it is difficult emotionally as well as cognitively. But we haven’t yet even begun to tell that story, we are so spooked by our own reactions and what we think others’ reactions will be. To reiterate, in order to elicit a response commensurate with the problem, we have to start telling the truth about climate. We have never actually tried it! If we tell the truth, certainly some people will run away at first. But we keep telling it regardless. Otherwise we engage in palliatives as the world crumbles. There really is no other choice.

Finally, I’d like to say a few words about the recent remarkable 350 day, Oct. 24, 2009, when thousands of coordinated demonstrations across the world stated the climate emergency message loud and clear. An unprecedented and truly impressive organizing effort. I attended the local convocation of several communities meeting in Concord, Mass. We were regaled by activist politicians, a playful tug of war between costumed buckethead deniers and polar bears, post-hippie music, brochures, and photo ops galore. And generous dollops of denial. I found it all rather depressing. People were enthusiastic about sending our banners to Copenhagen, as if the “leaders” there would care (they would pretend, of course). The clean energy revolution held center stage, as if simply substituting windmills and solar panels now would make a difference to our beyond-tipped-point physics, as if it were all just an energy problem. But just scratch the surface and it was clear that we were grasping at straws, and the sense of helplessness and hopelessness, bleeding through the forced cheer, was pervasive. Perhaps we must confront and embrace the depths of our despair before we can see clearly. Once we do, however, the remarkable fact is that we can likely do something about climate catastrophe, despite the necessity, for the moment, of bypassing our globally failed political process. Very briefly, local self-sufficiency and sustainability, steady-state no- impact economics, eco-restoration, and rational birth reduction (starting with but clearly not limited to “developed” countries, whose impacts per capita are many multiples of third-world countries). Sounds difficult or even close to impossible. The question is how badly do we want it. Clearly not badly enough—yet. It will require a dizzyingly quick cultural transformation, but the seeds have been planted and are starting to sprout worldwide. We can turn this disaster into opportunity and hope. But only if we transcend our denial, and stop lying to the public. And, especially, stop lying to ourselves. ©2009. Grist Magazine, Inc. .

7 As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways By Charles Duhigg, NYTimes, Nov 23 09

Damon Winter/The New York Times

A worker maintaining a tank at a Brooklyn wastewater treatment plant. Half the rainstorms in New York overwhelm the system.

“Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city’s drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city’s waterways pose serious health risks.”

IT WAS DRIZZLING LIGHTLY IN LATE OCTOBER when the midnight shift started at the Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant, where much of Brooklyn’s sewage is treated. A few miles away, people were walking home without umbrellas from late dinners. But at Owls Head, a swimming pool’s worth of sewage and wastewater was soon rushing in every second. Warning horns began to blare. A little after 1 a.m., with a harder rain falling, Owls Head reached its capacity and workers started shutting the intake gates. That caused a rising tide throughout Brooklyn’s sewers, and untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal. “It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall,” said Bob Connaughton, one the plant’s engineers. “Sometimes all it takes is 20 minutes of rain, and you’ve got overflows across Brooklyn.” One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During

8 the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health. But despite those upgrades, many sewer systems are still frequently overwhelmed, according to a New York Times analysis of environmental data. As a result, sewage is spilling into waterways. In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency. But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows. It is not clear whether the sewage systems that have not reported such dumping are doing any better, because data on overflows and spillage are often incomplete. As cities have grown rapidly across the nation, many have neglected infrastructure projects and paved over green spaces that once absorbed rainwater. That has contributed to sewage backups into more than 400,000 basements and spills into thousands of streets, according to data collected by state and federal officials. Sometimes, waste has overflowed just upstream from drinking water intake points or near public beaches. There is no national record-keeping of how many illnesses are caused by sewage spills. But academic research suggests that as many as 20 million people each year become ill from drinking water containing bacteria and other pathogens that are often spread by untreated waste. A 2007 study published in the journal Pediatrics, focusing on one Milwaukee hospital, indicated that the number of children suffering from serious diarrhea rose whenever local sewers overflowed. Another study, published in 2008 in the Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, estimated that as many as four million people become sick each year in California from swimming in waters containing the kind of pollution often linked to untreated sewage. Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city’s drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city’s waterways pose serious health risks.

A Deluge of Sewage “After the storm, the sewage flowed down the street faster than we could move out of the way and filled my house with over a foot of muck,” said Laura Serrano, whose Bay Shore, N.Y., home was damaged in 2005 by a sewer overflow. Ms. Serrano, who says she contracted viral meningitis because of exposure to the sewage, has filed suit against Suffolk County, which operates the sewer system. The county’s lawyer disputes responsibility for the damage and injuries. “I had to move out, and no one will buy my house because the sewage was absorbed into the walls,” Ms. Serrano said. “I can still smell it sometimes.” When a sewage system overflows or a treatment plant dumps untreated waste, it is often breaking the law. Today, sewage systems are the nation’s most frequent violators of the Clean Water Act. More than a third of all sewer systems — including those in San Diego, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Philadelphia, San Jose and San Francisco — have violated environmental laws since 2006, according to a Times analysis of E.P.A. data. Thousands of other sewage systems operated by smaller cities, colleges, mobile home parks and companies have also broken the law. But few of the violators are ever punished.

9 The E.P.A., in a statement, said that officials agreed that overflows posed a “significant environmental and human health problem, and significantly reducing or eliminating such overflows has been a priority for E.P.A. enforcement since the mid-1990s.” In the last year, E.P.A. settlements with sewer systems in Hampton Roads, Va., and the east San Francisco Bay have led to more than $200 million spent on new systems to reduce pollution, the agency said. In October, the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said she was overhauling how the Clean Water Act is enforced. But widespread problems still remain. “The E.P.A. would rather look the other way than crack down on cities, since punishing municipalities can cause political problems,” said Craig Michaels of Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group. “But without enforcement and fines, this problem will never end.” Plant operators and regulators, for their part, say that fines would simply divert money from stretched budgets and that they are doing the best they can with aging systems and overwhelmed pipes. New York, for example, was one of the first major cities to build a large sewer system, starting construction in 1849. Many of those pipes — constructed of hand-laid brick and ceramic tiles — are still used. Today, the city’s 7,400 miles of sewer pipes operate almost entirely by gravity, unlike in other cities that use large pumps. New York City’s 14 wastewater treatment plants, which handle 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day, have been flooded with thousands of pickles (after a factory dumped its stock), vast flows of discarded chicken heads and large pieces of lumber. When a toilet flushes in the West Village in Manhattan, the waste runs north six miles through gradually descending pipes to a plant at 137th Street, where it is mixed with so-called biological digesters that consume dangerous pathogens. The wastewater is then mixed with chlorine and sent into the Hudson River.

Fragile System But New York’s system — like those in hundreds of others cities — combines rainwater runoff with sewage. Over the last three decades, as thousands of acres of trees, bushes and other vegetation in New York have been paved over, the land’s ability to absorb rain has declined significantly. When treatment plants are swamped, the excess spills from 490 overflow pipes throughout the city’s five boroughs. When the sky is clear, Owls Head can handle the sewage from more than 750,000 people. But the balance is so delicate that Mr. Connaughton and his colleagues must be constantly ready for rain. They choose cable television packages for their homes based on which company offers the best local weather forecasts. They know meteorologists by the sound of their voices. When the leaves begin to fall each autumn, clogging sewer grates and pipes, Mr. Connaughton sometimes has trouble sleeping. “I went to Hawaii with my wife, and the whole time I was flipping to the Weather Channel, seeing if it was raining in New York,” he said. New York’s sewage system overflows essentially every other time it rains. Reducing such overflows is a priority, city officials say. But eradicating the problem would cost billions. Officials have spent approximately $35 billion over three decades improving the quality of the waters surrounding the city and have improved systems to capture and store rainwater and sewage, bringing down the frequency and volume of overflows, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection wrote in a statement. “Water quality in New York City has improved dramatically in the last century, and particularly in the last two decades,” officials wrote. Several years ago, city officials estimated that it would cost at least $58 billion to prevent all overflows. “Even an expenditure of that magnitude would not result in every part of a river or bay surrounding the city

10 achieving water quality that is suitable for swimming,” the department wrote. “It would, however, increase the average N.Y.C. water and sewer bill by 80 percent.” The E.P.A., concerned about the risks of overflowing sewers, issued a national framework in 1994 to control overflows, including making sure that pipes are designed so they do not easily become plugged by debris and warning the public when overflows occur. In 2000, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to crack down on overflows. But in hundreds of places, sewer systems remain out of compliance with that framework or the Clean Water Act, which regulates most pollution discharges to waterways. And the burdens on sewer systems are growing as cities become larger and, in some areas, rainstorms become more frequent and fierce. New York’s system, for instance, was designed to accommodate a so-called five-year storm — a rainfall so extreme that it is expected to occur, on average, only twice a decade. But in 2007 alone, the city experienced three 25-year storms, according to city officials — storms so strong they would be expected only four times each century. “When you get five inches of rain in 30 minutes, it’s like Thanksgiving Day traffic on a two-lane bridge in the sewer pipes,” said James Roberts, deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Government’s Response To combat these shifts, some cities are encouraging sewer-friendly development. New York, for instance, has instituted zoning laws requiring new parking lots to include landscaped areas to absorb rainwater, established a tax credit for roofs with absorbent vegetation and begun to use millions of dollars for environmentally friendly infrastructure projects. Philadelphia has announced it will spend $1.6 billion over 20 years to build rain gardens and sidewalks of porous pavement and to plant thousands of trees. But unless cities require private developers to build in ways that minimize runoff, the volume of rain flowing into sewers is likely to grow, environmentalists say. The only real solution, say many lawmakers and water advocates, is extensive new spending on sewer systems largely ignored for decades. As much as $400 billion in extra spending is needed over the next decade to fix the nation’s sewer infrastructure, according to estimates by the E.P.A. and the Government Accountability Office. Legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill contains millions in water infrastructure grants, and the stimulus bill passed this year set aside $6 billion to improve sewers and other water systems. But that money is only a small fraction of what is needed, officials say. And over the last two decades, federal money for such programs has fallen by 70 percent, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which estimates that a quarter of the state’s sewage and wastewater treatment plants are “using outmoded, inadequate technology.” “The public has no clue how important these sewage plants are,” said Mr. Connaughton of the Brooklyn site. “Waterborne disease was the scourge of mankind for centuries. These plants stopped that. We’re doing everything we can to clean as much sewage as possible, but sometimes, that isn’t enough.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Seas Are Struggling to Absorb Emissions By Sindya N. Bhanoo, NYTimes, Nov 19 09

THE EARTH’S OCEANS, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests.

11 Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday’s issue of Nature. The research suggests that the seas cannot indefinitely be considered a reliable “carbon sink” as humans generate heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans’ chemistry, the study found. “The more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb,” said the study’s lead author, Samar Khatiwala, a research scientist at the Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It’s a small change in absolute terms,” Dr. Khatiwala said. “What I think is fairly clear and important in the long-term is the trend toward lower values which implies that more of the emissions will remain in the atmosphere.” To calculate the slowdown, Dr. Khatiwala and his collaborators created a mathematical model using tens of thousands of measurements of seawater collected over the past 20 years, including temperature, salinity and the presence of manufactured chlorofluorocarbons. They then worked backward with the data to create a formula that estimates the accumulation of human- generated carbon dioxide in the oceans from 1765, the opening of the industrial era, to 2008. Even as human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide increase, the oceans’ uptake rate growth appears to have dropped by 10 percent from 2000 to 2007, Dr. Khatiwala said. The last major research effort to measure industrial carbon uptake in the oceans was published in a 2004 Science study led by Christopher Sabine. His methodology was different but arrived at similar conclusions. Dr. Sabine used carbon dioxide measurements taken by more than 100 cruise ships to come up with a single figure: the oceans’ total industrial carbon uptake until 1994. Dr. Khatiwala’s approach provides estimates of ocean carbon storage for every year from 1765 to 2008. “Sabine’s estimate was like a single fuzzy snapshot,” Dr. Khatiwala said. “We’ve gone from that to having a relatively short movie of what happened from the start of the industrial era.” Dr. Sabine said he agreed with the analogy, pointing out that his estimate for uptake up to 1994 was very close to Dr. Khatiwala’s for that period. “Even though the techniques are completely different, they are in consensus at the one point that we can compare them,” Dr. Sabine said. Yet much work remains to be done to confirm the results and to expand upon them, Dr. Khatiwala said. Dr. Sabine is in the midst of a follow-up study to his 2004 “snapshot” that he will again compare with Dr. Khatiwala’s “movie.” Research ships are out measuring current carbon levels in the ocean, Dr. Sabine said, and he expects to have new results by 2012. Other questions remain to be answered. Dr. Khatiwala’s team also made an estimate of carbon dioxide uptake by the land, for example. The scientists were surprised to find that the Earth’s land might be absorbing more carbon dioxide than it was giving up. They speculate that plants might be absorbing more carbon dioxide, which would make them grow faster. That is a research question for others, said Dr. Khatiwala, whose work is water-centric. “We’re not land people,” he said, “but why and where this is happening is a topic of ongoing research.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

12 Energy Design Guidance for Small Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities

ATLANTA—The newest Advanced Energy Design Guide (AEDG), written by a group of leading building industry organizations, is just what the doctor ordered. The AEDG for Small Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities is the sixth in the 30 percent AEDG series, designed to provide recommendations for achieving 30 percent energy savings over the minimum code requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999. “The recommendations in the Small Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities Guide provide good design practices for integrating energy efficiency in a healthcare environment, while maintaining indoor air quality and required airflow and pressurization relationships,” Shanti Pless, chair of committee that wrote the guide, said. The Guide focuses on small healthcare facilities up to 90,000 square feet in size, including acute care facilities, outpatient surgery centers, critical access hospitals and inpatient community hospitals. These buildings have intensive heating and cooling systems, which the guide covers extensively; additionally, other important energy saving measures such as daylighting are included. “The energy efficiency recommendations in the Guide were developed based on design experiences from members of a project committee made up of healthcare facilities design professionals, combined with the insight gained from modeling the energy performance of these specific recommendations,” Pless said. Some tips that the Guide offers include:  Providing an unoccupied air flow and temperature setback for spaces that are not used 24 hours a day, such as surgery suites;  Installing high efficiency condensing boilers with an outdoor air temperature reset schedule for all climate zones to address the high amounts of reheat energy used by such facilities to control humidity;  Carefully laying out lighting design to meet recommended lighting power density by space type;  Maximizing the use of daylighting and daylighting-responsive controls through both sidelighting and toplighting strategies in all space types that do not have air change requirements;  Installing an insulated thermal envelope, with additional recommendations to address air barriers and continuous insulation strategies. The recommendations allow contractors, consulting engineers, architects and designers to easily achieve advanced levels of energy savings without having to resort to detailed calculations or analyses. Also, case studies provide excellent examples of advanced hospital and healthcare facility designs that demonstrate the flexibility offered in achieving advanced energy savings such as the 30 percent goal of the Guide. The Advanced Energy Design Guide series has been developed in collaboration with these partnering organizations: ASHRAE, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES), the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Since the Guides first began to be offered as free downloads at the beginning of 2008, more than 200,000 AEDGs have been downloaded. Other books in the series deal with small office and retail buildings, K-12 school buildings, highway lodging and small warehouse and self storage buildings. For more information on the entire Advanced Energy Design Guide series, or to download a free copy, please visit www.ashrae.org/freeaedg. A softback copy of the Guide may be purchased for $62 ($53, ASHRAE members). To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Service at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 (worldwide), fax 404-321-5478, or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.

13 In Appalachia, a Researcher Makes Honey From Coal By Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 15 09

Jonathan Palmer for The Chronicle Eastern Kentucky U.'s Tammy Horn explains the behavior of bees, which she hopes could transform Appalachia.

HAZARD, KY. - The library at the Lotts Creek Community School is buzzing with excitement as a half-dozen grade schoolers struggle into full-body protective "wee bee" suits. As they labor with zippers and wrestle with veils, a visitor lowers herself into a pint-size chair in their midst. "My name is Tammy Horn," she says, "but you can just call me the Bee Lady." For the next hour and a half, Ms. Horn, an English professor turned apiarist, fields a rat-a-tat-tat of questions: "Are there really killer bees?" ("They're African honeybees, and they're more aggressive because they have lots of natural predators.") "Where are the bees in your hive?" ("You can't bring bees to school.") "What happens if a bee gets in my suit?" ("Kill it before it stings you!") Beekeeping is a part of Appalachian heritage, says Tammy Horn, of Eastern Kentucky U. She hopes to establish thousands of hives on land reclaimed from coal-mining operations. One of the most voluble questioners is Latiefa, a slender fifth grader who sheds her bee suit to reveal an oversize T-shirt with the slogan, "Coal mining for our future. We support Kentucky coal." But Ms. Horn, a native of the state who returned after earning a doctorate from the University of Alabama, has a bolder and more complex vision for the region's future, one in which mining, long the economic mainstay in this impoverished area, plays a crucial supporting role. Her vision is to create nothing less than an Appalachian "honey corridor" in eastern Kentucky and neighboring West Virginia, starting with more than 33,000 surface-mined acres, which could be reforested in a way that sets up a bee industry. She envisions training hundreds of local residents in beekeeping, a once- common avocation for their parents and grandparents. In addition to jarring honey and producing beeswax for

14 Jonathan Palmer for The Chronicle .

Jonathan Palmer for The Chronicle Tammy Horn (left) uses smoke to make the bees more docile before she opens the hives. She learned the technique from one of the subjects of her next book, on women and beekeeping. cosmetics and other uses, beekeepers could offer queen-rearing and pollination services, she says, breeding an Appalachian strain of honeybee resistant to disorders that threaten to wipe out the insect's population. Nearby colleges, like Eastern Kentucky University, where Ms. Horn is a senior researcher, could provide assistance and conduct critical scientific research. By drawing on a pursuit once elemental to their heritage, she says, Appalachian residents could reshape their land and their economy. "It's not just someone sitting on the side of the road selling honey out of Mason jars," she says.

15 One day, Ms. Horn hopes some 25,000 hives could be supported on former strip mines. Under federal law, such lands must be returned to their prior condition or reclaimed for "better and higher uses." In its initial phase, her project, Coal Country Beeworks, has 53 hives on five sites.

Hives on the Slopes On an early-autumn morning, Ms. Horn sets out to visit one of the bee yards—rendered as "bayards" in her unhurried cadence—on a section of a mine operated by International Coal Group, a 30-minute ride from Hazard. As she drives out of the hollow, clumps of fog wreathe the ridgeline, and the mountainsides are washed in muted greens and grays. The mine site lies up a narrow, switchbacking road shared by coal-laden trucks, which seem to loom around each bend. Ms. Horn points out an older surface-mining site along the roadside; a portion of the mountain has been blasted away and laid bare for commercial reuse that never materialized. By contrast, the reclaimed International Coal Group site appears more natural, its slopes treed with high- value hardwoods. The mining giant was one of the first companies Ms. Horn approached two years ago with her pitch: Alter your planting mix to include trees, shrubs, and flowers that pollinators prefer. The signature tree for Appalachian beekeepers is the sourwood, a low-canopy native that blossoms late, putting out white, bell-shaped flowers near the Fourth of July, tiding bees over from spring to fall flowers. Purists value sourwood honey for its distinctive flavor, floral with a deep, almost burnt-butter aftertaste. While sourwood's pollen is manna to bees, it is considered a trash tree by the timber industry. Because reclamation work has largely focused on planting commercial forests, sourwoods have rarely been seeded. Still, Don Gibson, International Coal Group's director of permitting and regulatory affairs, says Ms. Horn's proposal was never a tough sell, even when she told him she belonged to a statewide environmental group that has been a biting critic of the mining industry. It costs little to plant bee-friendly trees and wildflowers, he says, and the benefits are outsized. "People wouldn't drive five miles to see a reclaimed surface-mine site, but they'll come 1,000 miles to see a bee yard," he says. Over the last two years, more than 250 people have toured the three International Coal sites that house the bee project, giving the company the opportunity to talk to visitors about modern-day mining and reclamation methods. "If the region can see the economic promise going forward," Mr. Gibson says, "it will be a win for everyone involved." For her part, Ms. Horn says she tries to keep the focus off politics and on the bees. Driving up the gravel path she has dubbed Bee Boulevard, she unlocks the gate to the small fenced-in bee yard and its cluster of nine squat hives, which resemble chests of drawers. She busies herself lighting wood chips in a handheld smoker, pumping the bellows to swathe her body in fumes that cancel out the aromas of shampoo and detergent, which could alert the bees to her presence. Then she puffs ribbons of smoke along the bottoms of the hives, which prompts the bees to eat more honey and, hopefully, become more docile. She learned the technique from a South African apiarist, one of the subjects of

16 her next book, a global history of women and beekeeping. (Her first book, Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation, was published in 2005 by the University Press of Kentucky, and she is already planning a third volume, a study of bees and the trees they pollinate.) Ms. Horn's first beekeeping mentor was her late grandfather, Ted Hacker. She was 29 and a newly minted Ph.D. when she was passed over for a tenure-track teaching position. Wounded, she retreated to her grandparents' farm in eastern Kentucky. The progress of Parkinson's disease meant that her grandfather was no longer able to negotiate beekeeping's careful rituals, and he turned to Ms. Horn for assistance, although she admits she "didn't know a honeybee from a yellow jacket." Opening a hive for the first time was an epiphany. Instead of a rush of honeybees, she recalls, two or three bees floated up out of the hive and landed on her veil. "They were as curious about me as I was about them," she says, almost dreamily. Back at the mine site, Ms. Horn expertly pries off the top of the first of the hives. She painstakingly works apart the frames, sticky with honey and resin, and lifts one up. The bullet-shaped drones dully buzz about as Ms. Horn examines the honeycombed frame, nearly solid with eggs, a new brood. In the distance, a blast at the still-active mine site sounds like a muffled thunderclap. Quickly, she slides a small square of cardboard, treated with sharply scented thyme oil, between the frames. The essential oil accelerates the bees' instinctive grooming, getting rid of potentially deadly Varroa mites in preparation for the winter ahead. As soon as she started helping her grandfather with bees, Ms. Horn wanted to abandon academics for an apiarist's life. "By then I had enough of academe to wonder if I was cut out for it," she says. "There are always going to be people wanting to teach Shakespeare. There are not always going to be people who want to do this work." But her grandfather persuaded her to stick with her scholarly career, even if it meant eking out annual teaching contracts, until she could formulate a solid plan. It took a decade, during which Ms. Horn taught English literature and general-education courses at Eastern Kentucky and the University of West Alabama and was the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College. In her off hours, she delved into the history of beekeeping and explored how reclamation law in the United States and elsewhere could be used to sustain a more diverse agricultural landscape. When a retiring beekeeper offered her $36,000 in financing, she was ready to start Coal Country Beeworks. It has been a scramble. Her position at Eastern Kentucky's Environmental Research Institute is primarily supported by grants. Her "frantic" proposal writing has yielded some success, such as a project with NASA to measure whether global temperature changes are affecting the blooming cycles of regional foliage. Economic officials in neighboring West Virginia have shown interest in starting beekeeping on mine sites as a development effort in that state, and Ms. Horn has been in talks with a local biosciences company about pollination research.

17 Still, the bee project largely remains a one-woman show. Ms. Horn's SUV is chockablock with bee suits, extra hive frames, and the occasional fast-food coffee cup, and she spends several days a week traveling the state to meet with business leaders, talk to community and school groups, and care for the hives. "Once the temperature drops below 55 degrees" and the bees winter over, she says, "I get a social life again." In fact, the honeybees have been a boon to Ms. Horn's romantic life—after a front-page article on her work appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader, her high-school sweetheart looked her up. The two are now dating.

Editor’s Note: Do these issues of the newsletter add anything useful to your professional life? I would really appreciate notes from readers. Good, bad or indifferent! Dick Koral [email protected]

NY Chapter AEE Board Members David Ahrens [email protected] 718- 677-9077x110 Michael Bobker [email protected] 646-660-6977 Robert Berninger [email protected] 212- 639-6614 Timothy Daniels [email protected] 212- 312-3770 Jack Davidoff [email protected] 718-963-2556 Fredric Goldner [email protected] 516- 481-1455 Bill Hillis [email protected] 845-278-5062 Placido Impollonia [email protected] 212-669-7628 Dick Koral [email protected] 718- 552-1161 John Leffler [email protected] 212-868-4660x218 John Leffler [email protected]?? Robert Meier [email protected] 212-328-3360 Ryan Merkin [email protected] 212-564-5800 x 16 Jeremy Metz [email protected] 212-338-6405 John Nettleton [email protected] 347-835-0089 Asit Patel [email protected] 718- 292-6733x205 Dave Westman [email protected] 212-460-6588 Chris Young [email protected] 914-442- 4387

Board Members Emeritus Paul Rivet [email protected] George Kritzler [email protected] Alfred Greenberg [email protected] 914-422-4387 George Birman

18 Past Presidents Mike Bobker (2003-05), Asit Patel (2000-03), Thomas Matonti (1998-99), Jack Davidoff (1997-98), Fred Goldner (1993-96), Peter Kraljic (1991-92), George Kritzler (1989-90), Alfred Greenberg (1982-89), Murray Gross (1981-82), Herbert Kunstadt (1980-81), Sheldon Liebowitz (1978-80)

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