Welcome to the Environment Show, exploring issues and events of the planet, I'm Thomas
Lalley.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by Heming's Motor News, the
monthly Bible of the Old Car Hobby from Bennington, Vermont, 1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
Your host is former Environmental Conservation Commissioner for the State of New York, and
former President of the National Audubon Society, Peter Burley.
Thanks, Thomas.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, we'll look at new designs to harness the sun.
Some people think we'll be able to buy solar panels and hardware stores in just a few
years.
Then, we'll explore a cave with plants and animals never seen anywhere.
They may give an insight into how life could exist on Mars, and we'll find out what sorts
of issues environmentalists are dealing with in Israel.
And our Earth calendar looks at why rats should be nervous at this time of year.
These stories and more coming up this week on the Environment Show.
We've been hearing for years about the prospects of cheap, clean, and renewable energy from the
sun.
But it seems like solar energy is still more a dream than a reality.
At a recent conference, the world's top researchers in solar energy meant to discuss its future
and what is already happening.
Thomas Lalley reports.
One of the things that enables many of our societies to exist as they are is power
from oil, gas, and nuclear energy.
Without them, life would be fundamentally different.
We go to great pains to ensure a steady supply of these materials, which have proven reliable
and plentiful thus far.
Unfortunately, oil, gas, and nuclear energy cause significant pollution and will eventually
run out.
There are alternatives to fossil fuels, but most Americans never use them, or do they?
The technology is proven, reliable, reduced to practice, and essentially off the shelf.
You can buy this.
It's not available yet in Home Depot, but I predict that it will be in not too long term.
People often ask, well, when will we have cost-effective photovoltaics?
And I answer, it's not really a technical problem.
Technology has been demonstrated.
It's really a question of political will.
Photovoltaic technology is not a cottage industry.
It requires very significant investments, hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.
And in order to make these investments, society needs to want this technology.
And as soon as we want it, enough we will have it.
Stephen Strong is the president of Solar Design Associates in Harvard, Massachusetts.
He's considered one of the pioneers in solar energy.
He and others met in Boston this month at a landmark conference on how to expand the
use of photovoltaics.
The mechanisms used to create electricity from the sun.
Many believe today that the best way to gather solar energy is by making it part of buildings.
So instead of making your roof out of traditional asphalt shingles, why not make it out of solar panels?
Stephen Hackeroth is a solar designer and builder from Mendocino, California.
He says this is the best way to collect solar energy.
This is the first building integrated photovoltaic conference.
And if photovoltaics are ever going to happen, the sun is so dispersed in its energy.
It's a production that it has to be on everybody's roof.
It can't be in centralized power places.
And so this is where it is going to happen.
And this is the first conference of this kind.
In this country, the most dramatic uses of photovoltaics are in desert areas, where enormous
fields of solar panels are laid out to collect large quantities of energy.
But small European and Asian countries don't have that option.
Land is just too scarce.
So in those countries, photovoltaics have been used for much smaller projects.
Tom Thompson is the executive director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association,
which sponsored the conference.
He says new advancements in technology will open photovoltaics to a whole new market.
Amico Enron and advanced energy systems, two solar energy companies, are going to be
presenting for the first time an AC photovoltaic panel.
What we're going to see tomorrow is a solar cell that is able to directly and immediately
convert that sunlight into AC electricity so that it can be used immediately by our homes
without the need of additional components.
What we can do with this technology that we're going to see tomorrow is we're going to be
able to plug that panel into a typical wall outlet, and you can actually generate power
and send it over the grid.
And each homeowner will have the opportunity of being an independent power producer.
In other words, you can become a small power plant, generating solar electricity and sending
it along the same lines which now bring power into your home.
So a photovoltaics are so great.
Why don't we see them anywhere?
Paul Maycock is the president of PV Energy Systems in Catlett, Virginia.
He says photovoltaics are in use all over the place.
It's just that we don't always recognize it.
Virtually all of the nation's telecommunications where we have mountain top repeaters, we
have desert repeaters, whether it be military or satellite links or whatever telephone lines
are PV powered.
And we're seeing highway emergency phones, PV powered.
We're seeing all kinds of remote signals and communication systems that are PV powered.
Then if we go to the consumer, your calculator is PV powered, 125 million of them last
year.
Then we're starting to see trickle chargers.
We're seeing power packs for boats, power packs for motor homes, power packs for travel
trailers and what have you.
So you need a relatively small amount of electricity and you don't have the utility readily available.
We're there.
Still, photovoltaics are out of reach for most consumers.
They're simply too expensive when matched up against electricity from coal, oil, gas and
nuclear.
Even this new technology will take a few years at least to become cost effective.
In the meantime, if you're interested in solar energy, Stephen Strong says there are things
you can do.
If you're building a new house, that's very simple.
You make it as energy efficient as you possibly can and that makes good sense no matter
how you look at it.
And photovoltaics are available either to be installed over the roof or to be installed
as part of the structure.
If you can afford them now and you want to do that, you can do so.
If there is still a little bit out of your reach economically, you should plan your house
so that photovoltaics can be added later when the cost comes down.
There are also other solar technologies that are closer to being cost effective in a shorter
term.
Solar thermal for water heating is a very good one.
It provides a 12 months return on investment.
If solar gain in the structure is very simple and can cost very little or even nothing,
it's just a question of orienting the glass correctly.
Photoltaics is just one part and quite honestly it's the last thing on our list.
There are many things that people should be doing before they do photovoltaics because
the resultant loads will be that much lower and therefore easier to satisfy requiring
a smaller array and a smaller investment.
Ironically, one of the things that makes photovoltaics possible nowadays is the present electric
system.
Not only are some utility supporting PV research, but the power grid, the lines which bring energy
from generating plants to homes and businesses, means electricity can be added from just about
anywhere.
Just as the internet allows anyone connected to send information, the grid connects all
power users together.
But many say don't expect solar energy to replace fossil fuels entirely.
Paul Mekok says there are still significant problems associated with photovoltaics.
We're not a panacea for electricity generation.
At best, we could probably generate 25% of the electricity if we were fully economic
that the US needs.
Because in order to generate more than 25%, we have to store it.
But at the 20 or 25% which is a heck of a lot of photovoltaics, we're sustainable and
socially acceptable.
So you got to be real careful in saying we must have photovoltaics because it's in
environmentally clean and because it's sustainable and all.
That's true to the 20 or 25% level.
Of course there are other renewable energy sources like wind, biomass and hydro and even
others like fuel cells and things called flywheels.
But all of these have their own limitations and none are entirely without environmental
impact.
Researchers say electricity in the future, just like today, will be generated from a
variety of sources and one source might be the top of your house.
For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lalley.
I'm Peter Burling.
We're always interested in what you have to say.
What do you think of the Environment Show?
Are there special things you would like us to cover or not cover?
Write us at 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York, 1-2-2-06.
Or contact us by email at ENVSHOW at AOL.com.
That's ENVSHOW at AOL.com.
Or you can reach us in the World Wide Web at www.wamc.org-env.
You can hear the Environment Show anytime on the World Wide Web.
Just go to our webpage, click on the real audio and follow directions.
Still ahead, we'll hear from an Israeli environmentalist about the issues affecting
his country.
In our Earth calendar, explain why rats should be nervous at this time of year.
Part of the mission of the Environment Show is to explore how life is interconnected
and how human beings impact natural systems which sustain life in all its many forms.
Now that's broad enough to cover just about anything.
We met a researcher who was exploring an ecosystem that is not connected to anything we know.
The Mavila Cave in Southern Romania near the Black Sea was formed 5 million years ago
when the surroundings were tropical.
It's been completely sealed off for tens of thousands of years.
No sunlight, no fresh water, no organic material, and until now no people have gotten
into it.
And yet scientists have discovered 48 species of animals living in it, 33 of which are
new to science.
Thomas Cain, Professor of Biology at the University of Cincinnati, describes what is there.
The water in the cave comes from deep in the Earth and it's warm.
It contains a gas called hydrogen sulfide, which some people may recognize as the odor
that one smells with riding eggs.
And the cave contains some microbes, some bacteria actually, that can use hydrogen sulfide
and carbon dioxide, which is in the atmosphere, to make food, to make organic material in
a process that's very similar to the way green plants do it on the surface, where plants
use sunlight as an energy source and use carbon dioxide to make food.
These microbes in the cave are using hydrogen sulfide as an energy source and using again
the CO2 to produce a food base.
This food then becomes the base for this ecosystem of these 48 species that I talked about earlier.
The thing that makes this unusual is that most, in fact, every other cave we know, for
example, mammoth cave here in the United States, the food for the animals ultimately comes
from the outside.
It comes from material that's washed in or falls in or is carried in by animals.
But Movila cave appears to have no input from the surface.
And so the entire food base for this community is being produced in the cave in the absence
of sunlight.
The explorer travels through underground streams of the cave with scuba diving equipment.
These lead to small chambers filled partly with water and partly with methane, carbon dioxide,
and only about a third of the oxygen found in the atmosphere.
It's in these bubbles that the animals are found.
A whole food chain exists there which starts from a mat of microbial material that looks
like wet tissue paper.
All of them have some characteristics that are actually typical of most cave animals.
They're all blind.
Many of them have really no vestige of eyes at all.
They tend to be depigmented.
They tend to be very light in color.
Some of them are actually white and almost translucent.
Many of them tend to have very long legs.
In the case of some of the invertebrates that we have in there like crustaceans, relatives
of the shrimp and some of the insects that we have, they have very long antennae which
we know is typical of other cave organisms.
Presumably it's a compensation for the inability to use site in the dark environment.
Hence, touch and chemical sense become important ways of getting around in the environment.
I can describe a couple of the more unusual species.
One is a leech.
It's a blind depigmented leech.
It's a predator in the aquatic, the water community, if you will, of the cave.
It is not as many leeches as our parasite.
It doesn't attach to organisms and draw blood.
Rather, it's a predator on earthworms.
We've had them in the lab.
They will feed on worms and much the way a little child might suck down a piece of spaghetti.
We also have another animal.
It's actually an insect.
Although it goes by the common name water scorpion, it's also a predator.
It turns out to be the only member of its group that's known from caves.
It's got a long beak on the front end and it's got a few legs that are rather large
and it's able to grab organisms and pierce them with this beak and literally suck out
the inside of its prey.
It's also a major component of the aquatic community.
So what is the significance of all this?
One thing is that chemosynthesis, driven by hydrogen sulfide, can be a sustaining source
of life as is photosynthesis, which is driven by the sun.
Professor Tom Kane also believes that this system may provide clues about the possibility
of life on Mars.
People I know that are interested in life on Mars, or the possibility, I should say, of
life on Mars, are beginning to think that perhaps even if there is life on Mars, maybe
it's deep in the Martian surface, because usually life requires two things.
One is an energy source and the other is liquid water.
And the water on the surface of Mars is frozen, deeper in the under the surface, there may
be liquid water.
And if there is, then there's the possibility for life if you have an energy source, but
obviously sunlight wouldn't be possible.
So perhaps hydrogen sulfide or some similar compound might provide an energy source for
microbes that have been able to persist on Mars if life ever existed there.
Mavila Cave gives new dimension to the term biodiversity and teaches that whenever we
think we have at least identified the various threads of life that make our planet, there
are more out there and they've been around a long time.
Environmental issues in developed countries seem at times to be strikingly similar.
We talked with Yoav Sige, who is chairman of Israel's largest environmental organization,
the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, known as SPNI.
He identified preservation of open space and stopping a proposed major north-south
highway 15 miles from the coast as SPNI's major concerns.
Protection of Israel's wildlife is where he begins.
The country is very verified in terms of natural resources and species, very rich in
species.
I don't know if you probably know, but people usually don't know that we have laparls
and gazelles and wolves and many species of flowers out of which, more than 300 are endemic
species, which means they can be found only in Israel.
And the development is the needed one, the vital one because of the population growth and
the needs.
The one which is wasteful is actually certain to cover every piece of the land.
Given an expanding population and a very small land base, open space is under tremendous
pressure.
The main concern and the good problems that we are facing in Israel now is lack of open
space.
It's a very small country.
We accommodate 5 million people and the population is growing.
And this, in fact, get us to be almost the densest state in the western world.
Since most of the country is desert, we are speaking about the area which is not desert
and desert is a lot of military training zone.
The population density already in this area reached more than 500 per square kilometer.
This is denser than Holland, which is only 400.
Now the population is growing as a result of immigration absorption and natural growth.
And we are aiming at a very frightening number of about 800 per square kilometer in the
popular area in Israel.
In addition to concerns about space, the Israeli environmental community sees the new proposed
north-south highway as a waste of precious land and resources when rail and improvement
of existing routes are viable alternatives.
Recently, S.P. and I rally 10,000 people in the demonstration against the highway.
Yoav Sige is trying to bring about a metamorphic change in the whole development culture in Israel.
He thinks he and his colleagues at S.P. and I are getting somewhere.
Yoav Sige is the chairman of the Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar.
Have you ever felt one day that an alien being is going to swoop down and snatch you from
the very ground you walk on?
Maybe not.
But to rats and mice, this is a situation all too familiar.
For the alien or great horned owl in this case, it's dinnertime.
And right now these predators are breeding throughout America.
According to Jim Parker's wildlife specialist at Virginia Tech University, these owls get an early start
because they have an exceptionally long developmental period.
In this way, they differ from most other birds who usually start their breeding later on in
the spring.
But Parker says the great horned owl needs more time.
The incubation period itself, the time from when the eggs are actually laid to when they
hatch, is somewhere between 27 and 30 days.
On average, about 28 days is a good round number.
But then even after hatching, it takes a long time for these birds to develop.
The young don't leave the nest or are not capable of getting out of the nest for about
six to seven weeks.
And they don't reach the capability of being able to fly for about 10 to 12 weeks.
So it's a very extensive developmental period that they're going through.
And in some parts, that is what determines or causes these birds to have to start the
process so early.
Surprisingly, says Parker, most people don't realize how abundant these birds are because
they're nocturnal.
But just listen carefully, he says, and you'll be sure to hear them hooting in every direction.
Their reddish brown and tan colors allow them to blend into their habitat.
At 25 inches tall, they have ear-like tufts on the top of their heads and very large prominent
eyes with which to see their prey.
Depending on where you live though, these non-migratory owls are at different stages of
their breeding cycle.
In our mid-Atlantic region and as far north as perhaps up into Central Pennsylvania, they're
right on the onset now.
If they have not yet laid eggs, they're in the process of laying their eggs now.
And as you go a little further north, they will begin that process up until around the
middle of March or so up into New England and southern Canada.
With feathers that go all the way down to their feet, the great horned owl can sneak up on
their prey without being detected.
As Parker's points out, they provide an important service as predators.
They are a predator and that they feed on other organisms.
We don't want to say that they control prey in any sense, but they do take advantage of
the abundance that's out there and may have some regulatory capacity in keeping those
numbers in check to a certain degree.
But they're going to simply take whatever is most available, whether that be small mammals,
whether that be things like rabbits or skunks or rats or whatever is out there.
They're going to shift off and use what they can most available and not waste a lot of
their energy and time trying to go after any one particular prey item.
If nothing else, the great horned owl shows us the benefits of sharing household chores.
But perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Rat, who aren't even cooked before they're consumed, are getting
a raw deal here.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burley.
For a cassette copy of the program, call 1-800-747-7444 and ask for program number 323.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible
for its content.
Thomas Lally is the producer and Dr. Alan Chartuck is the executive producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old
Car Hobby, 1-800-CAR-HER.
So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
