SOCIAL STUDIES - A DAILY MISCELLANY OF INFORMATION BY MICHAEL KESTERTON

SOCIAL STUDIES - A DAILY MISCELLANY OF INFORMATION BY MICHAEL KESTERTON

The Globe and Mail 

May 23, 2008

CARBON CAPTURE

Parts of the Australian seabed will be offered for tender for carbon capture and storage ventures as early as December, The Australian newspaper reports. Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said he would complete the world's first legislative framework for carbon sequestration within months, clearing the way for greenhouse gases collected from coal-fired power stations to be injected through the seabed and captured in geological formations. The minister said calling for tenders this year would encourage investment and commercialization of the technology, which he described as a safe way to allow continued carbon-based power generation.

"The idea of charisma may be stronger than its actual effects," Carlin Flora writes in Psychology Today. "Rakesh Khurana, associate professor of organizational behaviour at Harvard Business School, finds that when American companies look for new leaders, they seek charisma above all other qualities - but the bottom-line results of this hiring practice are often disappointing, even disastrous. Under uncertain market conditions, charismatic CEOs are good for one thing: They temporarily boost their company's stock prices. But the improvement is usually short-lived. That's because charisma may have more to do with a person's image than with his or her innate abilities."

After six months of marriage, "I seem to be in danger of coming around to the idea that perhaps not all women are such bad chaps," Martin Deeson writes in the British edition of GQ magazine. Some of his hard-won knowledge about living with women:

Get them their own television.

Say yes to everything.

When you say no, make sure your wife is in the other room.

Get a hobby. It's cheaper than a mistress.

Get married on the first of the month so it's easy to remember your anniversary.

SQUATTER SCAMS

Across the United States, squatting is on the rise as house foreclosures surge, eviction notices mount and homes sit unsold for months, Reuters reports. In some regions, squatting is taking on new twists that include real-estate scams in which thieves "rent out" abandoned homes they don't own. Others involve "professional squatters" who move from one abandoned home to another posing as tenants and seeking cash from banks as a condition to leave the premises - known by real-estate brokers as "cash for key."

In Chicago, a bicycle spray-painted white has been chained to a streetlight pole where a bicyclist was struck and killed by a car last month. It joins at least eight other such monuments in the city, the Chicago Tribune reports. Some notes about "ghost bikes" and their growing appearances:

The concept originated in St. Louis in 2002, when Patrick Van Der Tuin, an employee at a bike shop, witnessed a car swerve into a bike lane and severely injure a young woman. In response, he took a junk bike, smashed it with a sledgehammer, spray-painted it white and installed it at the scene of the crash. "I wanted it to be as shocking as possible," he said.

Today, ghost bikes are found in major cities throughout North America, according to ghostbike.org. They have also appeared elsewhere in the world.

"The hope is that by placing visual reminders, it will cause people to stop and think, 'Oh, a cyclist got hit here,' " Morgan Ress, a member of the local advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last year.

WORLD O' TASTE BUDS

Recent notes:

"Why is it that after I eat a salad, I want something sweet - in particular, chocolate?" asks a reader of Women's Health magazine. Columnist Lisa Drayer replies that this craving could be habit, or it "could be a phenomenon we in the biz call 'taste-specific satiety.' You experience the highest flavour sensation of a certain food in the first few bites; after that, you taste it less intensely, and that can trigger cravings for a drastically new flavour."

The appearance of a drink can affect how happy we are with it: Our brains make a pleasant association between the colours of ripening fruit and increased sugar content, Roger Highfield writes in The Daily Telegraph. "Such colours, particularly bright reds, are especially powerful visual cues," says British psychologist Charles Spence. "When incorporated into a drink, they can dramatically change the perceived flavour, as well as increasing the perceived sweetness by as much as 12 per cent." French researchers tested this by using an odourless dye to colour white wine red. The wine tasters who tried the result used typical red-wine descriptors, suggesting that its colour played a significant role in how they thought of it.

"Some employers claim meaningful work as being in their gift [of employment]. Maybe you've heard your chief executive talk of 'commitment,' 'discretionary effort,' 'buy-in' and the 'fulfilment of potential' - it makes 'meaning' seem only a short jump away. But even the best-led and most well-intentioned employers cannot create meaning for people. They can treat people well, but that's no guarantee of meaning. Meaning is something workers find or don't find on their own."

- Stephen Overell, author of

Inwardness: The Rise of Meaningful Work

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080523.FASS23/TPStory/?query=carbon

USA Today

Thursday 22 May 2008

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Not long ago, the fledgling ethanol industry was the darling of investors, farmers, the federal government and a lot of Americans who liked the idea of turning corn into fuel.

Suddenly, it doesn't have nearly as many friends.

Rising global food prices and shortages have spurred calls in Congress to roll back the federal mandate to blend more ethanol and other biofuels with the gasoline supply. Critics say so much corn is being used for ethanol that there's less available for people and animals to eat, raising prices of everything from tortillas to meat.

What's more, investors aren't seeing the returns they'd hoped for as once-record profits began to fall.

"Consumers are starting to get restless, and Washington is starting to listen," said Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin, who follows Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the No. 2 U.S. ethanol producer.

The ethanol market would be severely limited if Congress rolled back the mandate for annual increases in the amount of biofuels added to the fuel supply — 9 billion gallons by the end of this year, increasing to 36 billion by 2022.

That would most hurt companies that rely exclusively or primarily on ethanol, which include small, often locally owned distillers — already under pressure since ethanol prices fell and corn prices rose sharply — as well as larger publicly traded firms such as VeraSun Energy (VSE), the largest ethanol producer.

"If you sell one product and the only reason there's a market for it is because the government makes a law requiring consumption — if that law goes away, obviously you're in trouble," Gilpin said.

The odds of Congress changing that mandate this year are slim because the 10 states that produce more than 80% of U.S. ethanol have almost half of the 270 electoral votes needed to win a presidential election, said analyst Kevin Book of Friedman Billings Ramsey.

After the election, sentiment may change. Congress took a mild swipe at ethanol in the new farm bill, shaving a tax credit for refiners that blend ethanol into gasoline from 51 cents to 45 cents. President Bush vetoed the bill Wednesday but the House already voted to override the veto and the Senate is expected to do so Thursday.

Ethanol loses market favor

Investor disappointment also is weighing on ethanol-only companies, particularly smaller and privately held businesses, says Rick Kment, an ethanol-industry analyst for agricultural data company DTN.

He said much of the public and private investment was made when profits were as high as $2 a gallon. "It is very unlikely we will see that kind of profit again."

Shares of Brookings, S.D.-based VeraSun have fallen more than 15% since April 1, and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX), another major maker, has fallen about 30% in the same period.

After VeraSun posted first-quarter profits last week that fell short of expectations, some analysts raised worries about the industry.

"We remain cautious on the entire sector as we expect sustained higher corn and natural gas prices with little relief in sight," Calyon Securities' George Kotzias wrote in a note to investors.

VeraSun officials did not return a call seeking comment.

On the other hand, analysts say ethanol producers such as ADM, which distill it as one of many businesses, appear better positioned.

ADM doesn't break out the profit it makes from ethanol, but the unit that includes those operations accounted for about 20% of earnings last year. In the most recent quarter, when profit in that unit fell by almost a third, companywide profit increased 42%. At the time, ADM called the volatility in the quarter "unprecedented" as corn prices set a record above $6 a bushel. But CEO Patricia Woertz said retreating from biofuels would be a mistake. ADM said Tuesday that the company had no further comment.

Ironically, the turmoil about ethanol has grown even as some industry vital signs have stabilized.

Corn has eased back a bit. Ethanol sells for more than it did last year, but at 60 cents to 70 cents a gallon less than wholesale gas, it's still cheap enough to be an attractive option for refiners looking to make oil go further, Kment says. And demand is steady.

Food price drop would help

ADM Executive Vice President John Rice believes pressure on the industry would ease with a drop in food prices.

"I think globally, it'd be very good to have a large corn crop and a large oil seed crop," he told analysts at a conference last week. "I think it would eliminate some of this debate, the food vs. fuel."

Ethanol companies have gone on a public relations campaign the past few weeks, citing studies that raise doubts about the degree to which ethanol is affecting food prices. They also argue that gasoline blended with a small amount of ethanol is saving drivers money.

"Consumers today who are filling up with the blended fuel are saving somewhere around a dime (a gallon)," said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry lobbying group.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-05-21-ethanol-problems_N.htm

The Toronto Star

May 23, 2008 04:30 AM
Ottawa–A carbon tax would place an unfair burden on low-income Canadians, Jack Layton said yesterday.

"Those advocating a carbon tax suggest that by making the costs for certain things more expensive, people will make different choices," Layton said.

"But Canada is a cold place and heating your home really isn't a choice."

The New Democratic Party leader was at a fundraiser for an Ottawa homeless shelter to talk about poverty but used the platform to criticize a Liberal climate change plan that has not even been introduced.

He also plugged his own global warming solution.

Layton said the most effective way to combat climate change would be a cap-and-trade system that penalizes industrial polluters whose emissions surpass a certain level.

He also supports a national program that would retrofit homes and buildings to make them more energy efficient.

"Instead of making it more expensive to heat your home while consuming the same amount of energy and emitting the same amount of pollution, I want to help make it more affordable to heat your home – by helping to make it more energy efficient and pollute less," he said.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is expected to announce a climate change plan that would penalize activities that contribute to global warming. Dion maintains his scheme would be revenue neutral, with taxes it raises returned to Canadians in the form of lower personal and corporate income taxes. As well, the tax code would be tweaked to help low-income earners, Liberals say.

Layton told reporters after his speech that he recognizes that getting serious about fighting climate change might mean economic hardship, but he said any hard times should fall first to the biggest polluters.

http://www.thestar.com/article/429174

City proposes strategy for climate change TheStar.com - GTA - City proposes strategy for climate change
Adaptation plan asks agencies, divisions to submit ways to cope and prepare in next year's budget
Vanessa Lu, City hall bureau chief

The Toronto Star

Thursday May 22, 2008
Climate change is here to stay, and even if greenhouse gas emissions were cut to nothing, the impact, including extreme weather, cannot be stopped.

That means it's time for people and cities to find ways to cope and prepare. And Toronto wants to require every agency and division of the city to come up with ways to adapt to climate change in next year's budget. The proposal was approved by the parks and environment committee yesterday, but still needs city council's approval.

"In some instances, doing the right thing by the environment saves you money. In some instances, though, we'll have to spend some dollars," said Councillor Gord Perks. For example, buying more fuel-efficient vehicles is initially more costly but pays off later.

Many environmentalists have always believed reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be the paramount task, but Jennifer Penney, research director for the Clean Air Partnership, said adaptation strategies are now needed because climate change is well under way.

Toronto is already experiencing extreme weather effects, including this winter's heavy snowfall, a heat wave just before the blackout in 2003, and the August 2005 storm that caused flash flooding and washed out part of Finch Ave.

The 2005 storm cost almost $500 million in damage, including $44 million to city infrastructure.

Ways to cope with climate change include planting more trees and expanding parkland around water and waste water facilities to cut storm water runoff. Yesterday's vote on an adaptation strategy comes nearly a year after council's unanimous vote last July to get serious on climate change.

HOW TO ADJUST

Things individuals can do to adapt to climate change:

Reduce energy use and dependency

Protect basement from flooding with backwater valves and sump pumps

Protect themselves from health risks like West Nile virus

Have a cool place to go during heat waves

Heed severe weather and smog warnings

Buy locally grown food

Landscape with plants requiring less water

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/428471