In a long overdue, but important post, I would like to welcome, and encourage you to welcome, two new members to the Mains Associates team.

Elizabeth Kelley and Jennifer Small have recently began to work with us both on client projects and in creating original content for our site.  They are just two of our team, and over the coming months, we will be introducting more and more of our team through blog postings, articles, and other pieces of content available on our site.

Elizabeth is a graduate student in biology at Stanford University whose main interests are neuroscience and genetics. In her free time she enjoys reading, dog training, and spending time outdoors.

Jennifer is a freelance writer and photojournalist experienced in promotional, grant, and editorial writing.   Originally from Michigan, she moved to the Bay Area in 2007 to finish her degree in Technical & Professional Writing at San Francisco State University.

Amid the tragic record-breaking flood in the Midwest comes a report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. Based on over 100 academic papers, it addresses the past and future effects of global warming.

The study implies that the increase in greenhouse gases over the last fifty years may be responsible for the increasing drought (in the southwest) and downpours, which are now occurring at a rate of three times the past century’s average.

The Midwest, meanwhile, is having its’ second “500-year” flood in the past 15 years (the first one occurring in 1993). The Cedar River in Iowa has now beaten their previous flood record by rising over 11 feet! Although this event is too recent to have been addressed in the report, it is clear that for some disasters, there are more factors involved than greenhouse gases. The Iowa landscape has been heavily restructured for urban development and farming, eliminating natural wetlands and fields containing native deep rooted plants adept at water absorption.

The reports’ predictions on future climate change are the same predictions we’ve been reading about for years; fewer cold days/nights, increasing number of hot days/nights, increasing heat waves (most pronounced over northwestern North America), more frequent and extreme downpours and droughts (notably in the southwest). What the report does add is that we will not see a slow and steady increase in temperature and natural disasters, for which we can somewhat comfortably adjust to, but instead experience sudden increases in extreme phenomena.

Extreme phenomena like two “500-year” floods in the span of 15 years? It sounds like as a country we need to strengthen our disaster preparedness and urge Iowans to build their houses on stilts!

Hot on the heels of our article on crude oil from algae comes this article on crude oil from pig manure.  Much like the concept of algal crude oil, the idea is to create a fuel that is as similar to our current compounds as possible.  This makes it easier to integrate into our current infrastructure, a big hurdle for many alternative energy sources, and thus roll out to consumers.

The article describes the process created by Yuanhui Zhang that uses heat and pressure to turn organic compounds into oil.  Creating a high-heat and pressure environment takes energy, so the question on my mind is whether or not the energy we gain from this alternative fuel is more than the energy used to create it.  The same question holds for algal crude as it does for ethanol, hydrogen, or other alternative fuels.  I suppose the ultimate would be to use a renewable source like wind or geothermal to power the manure-to-crude conversion, but this article doesn't indicate that the research is far enough along to get into those engineering questions just yet.

I just learned (via Nature) about Scientists Without Borders (SWB), an extraordinary joint project launched on 12 May 08 by the New York Academy of Sciences and the UN Millennium Project. The goal is to “mobilize and coordinate science-based activities that improve quality of life in the developing world. The SWB database will provide a way for organizations, projects and individuals with complementary needs and resources to find one another.” A major challenge of the initiative is to link science-related activities across the developing countries that face many communication barriers. The SWB site can function as a Community of Practice for researchers in developing countries and their colleagues and allies in the developed world.

Our experience in facilitating science communications, especially in space life sciences between NASA and the Russian, French, European, Canadian, and Japanese Space Agencies taught us many lessons within the developed world. The SWB will no doubt face even greater challenges and perhaps greater rewards in doing so across the developing world. The SWB deserves broad support and you can register on their site and begin to participate as you wish. We have offered our support to the SWB and encourage you to do the same. The world needs the science community to virtually join hands to deal with our major global issues.

We began writing our Green Article series for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that the issue of what is Green is complex and often confusing. So in the mail today arrives the latest, bright ORANGE issue of WIRED magazine claiming that everyting we know about Green is wrong! Thanks guys.

The truth is that they aren't really slaying the sacred cows, but pointing out the downside of some choices one makes when deciding what is green; every decision we make has a trade-off. The article takes the, admittedly controversial, viewpoint that reducing our carbon footprint is THE most important action for us to take. The points they make, however, each also include their own tradeoffs.

Let's take, for example, "A/C is OK". The implied conclusion to their point is that we should all move to the south/southwest where we don't have to heat our homes in the winter (those in the high desert might disagree!). Those of you who live in such an area know that the drought issue, which is historically speaking is not yet severe, is a huge problem. It raises the issue of measuring the carbon cost of piping all that water to the desert. While the article doesn't touch on that aspect, though I hope the author at least considered it.

Whether he did or not, the example shows in extremis that each choice we make has tradeoffs. They need to be carefully considered, based on the best available research at the time, before coming to a decision. We hope, though our series of Green articles, to help you make better decisions, or at the very least, point you to good, research-based sources of information to help you make better decisions. If you are interested in our series, please use the signup box on the right to subscribe.

(5/21 - edited to clarify sentence regarding the Southwest drought issue)

The ever-interesting and useful Bad Astronomer pointed me to an interesting discussion on Universe Today about the value of space exploration. We at Mains Associates of course believe in it strongly. One of our projects (long ago, in a galaxy, uh, right here) supported Henry Hertzfeld's research into the returns to NASA's Life Sciences R&D. You can read the whole report on his site, but the gist is,

On the basis of these conservative estimates taken with mission success of the life sciences effort and ample evidence of other social benefits from the descriptions provided by the users of many specific life sciences spinoff applications, it can be concluded that NASA Life Sciences investments have more than “paid for themselves.”

While this is just one area of space exploration, it does focus on the economic benefits, ignoring the ancillary benefits so many of the commenters on Universe Today also point out. Is space exploration worth it? The answer is a resounding, "Yes!"