New Climate Forecasting System to Be Created

Association of Energy Engineers

New York Chapter www.aeeny.org

September 2009 Newsletter Part 1

New Climate Forecasting System to Be Created

By Elaine Engeler,Associated Press Writer, Sept 4 09

Evening view from my apartment terrace in Brooklyn Heights. Photo by Frances Koral

THE WORLD CLIMATE CONFERENCE has approved the creation of a new climate forecasting system to help countries adapt to climate change and enable them to better prepare for natural disasters, officials said Friday.

Delegates from around 150 nations attending the conference adopted the declaration by consensus on Thursday, and the U.N. weather agency predicted the new Global Framework for Climate Services would be up and running by 2011 to improve climate forecasts and share that information around the world.

Rich countries such as the United States already have systems that provide climate forecasts, but only in the short term and not coordinated with the rest of the world, said Thomas Karl, director of the National Climate Data Center at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Climate services is a new concept," he said in an interview.

He said even climate information from Mali or Malaysia is important to the U.S., and that the new framework will provide that and have experts from around the world regularly meet to coordinate their analysis of climate change information.

The price of creating the new system was not given, but Karl said it would probably cost twice as much as the world currently spends on climate prediction.

The Global Framework for Climate Services will provide forecasts on weather patterns months or even years ahead, Karl said. In the next few months, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization's members will meet to set up a task force to help implement the framework.

African countries said Friday they hoped the new system would help their farmers prepare for droughts and floods, and make agriculture — the cornerstone of most of their economies — more resilient to climate change.

Guinea's minister of transport, El-Hadj Mamady Kaba, said the Global Framework would send climate information out faster to the people who need it and help authorities plan for disasters.

"Extreme climate events are being seen more and more frequently," he told the conference, citing severe droughts, floods, cyclones, wind and dust storms, as well as heat waves.

John Njoroge Michuki, Kenya's environment minister, said: "Dried up water bodies and wetlands, and drastic changes to rainfall patterns, have resulted in flooding, rising epidemics and severe and prolonged drought and famine" in his country.

Of the 11 glaciers on Mount Kenya at the beginning of the last century, five have melted, Michuki told the conference, adding that there is an "urgent need" for more climate information.

Rich nations should support the installation of more weather and climate observation stations in Africa, Michuki said.

The five-day World Climate Conference, which was ending Friday, tried to find ways for the world to cope with global warming that will occur because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, regardless of what climate negotiations achieve in a December meeting in Copenhagen. Delegates said the Geneva conference will provide useful scientific information for the Copenhagen negotiations, which aim at forging a new accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing the gases blamed for global warming.

Engineering a Climate Solution

By Cornelia Dean, NYTimes, Sept 1 09

SOME QUESTIONS ARE RELATIVELY STRAIGHTFORWARD. For example: Could engineers pump chemicals into the atmosphere to increase the amount of sunlight reflected away from Earth, cooling the planet? Almost certainly, the answer will turn out to be yes.

But would the consequences of this step or any other climate-altering geoengineering be acceptable? From an engineering standpoint, that question is hard to answer – no one can say for sure what the consequences might be. Beyond that, though, what is “acceptable?” This is not a question that scientists or engineers have the authority to answer.

Although geoengineering is a subject of lively debate among a relatively small group of scientists, so far there has been little public discussion. (I wrote an article about the technology, and another one about engineering ethics generally.) Now the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, has entered the debate with a new report, “Geoengineering the Climate.”

At the moment, the technology of geoengineering “is bedeviled by much doubt and confusion,” the astrophysicist Martin Rees, who heads the Royal Society, writes in the report’s introduction. “Some schemes are manifestly far-fetched, others are more credible, and are being investigated by reputable scientists; some are being promoted over-optimistically.”

The report, by a panel of experts convened by the society, says more research is needed on geoengineering techniques, and that it should involve international collaborations and discussions with the public.

The best approach – the “safest and most predictable,” the report says – would be to avoid the need for geoengineering in the first place by drastically reducing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. But unless emissions are cut to half of what they were in 1990, the report says, the planet appears to be on course for a rise in temperature of almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century – enough to cause severe problems and, potentially, to prompt calls for geoengineering action.

But as Dr. Rees put it, “the technology do to so is barely formed, and there are major uncertainties regarding its effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts.” Because there is so little peer-reviewed research, he wrote, the report as a whole is based on “necessarily preliminary and incomplete information.”

The other questions are more difficult. For example, using chemicals to make the planet more reflective might cool things a bit, but it would do nothing to reduce other greenhouse-gas impacts, like rising acidity in the oceans as they absorb more carbon dioxide.

Is that acceptable? Who decides?

As people look to geoengineering as a weapon against the effects of global warming, the report says, public attitudes toward geoengineering “and public engagement in the development of individual methods proposed, will have a critical bearing on its future.”

The Superintendents Technical Association (aka the Supers Club) is

the first technical society of multifamily building maintenance

personnel. For free e-mail edition of monthly newsletter, visit our Web

site: www.nycSTA.org or ask

Dick Koral,

Home

Current NY Chapter AEE Sponsors:

The New York Chapter of AEE would like to thank our corporate sponsors who help underwrite our activities. Please take a moment to visit their websites and learn more about them:

§ Duane Morris LLP

§ Constellation Energy

§ Innoventive Power

§ Association for Energy Affordability

§ R3 Energy Management

If you or your firm is interested in sponsoring the New York Chapter of AEE, please contact Jeremy Metz at .

Panels of Light Fascinate Designers

By Erica A. Taub, NYTimes, Sep 7 09

General Electric

Flexibility is one of the appeals of OLED, a cousin of the LED.

LED light bulbs, with their minuscule energy consumption and 20-year life expectancy, have grabbed the consumer’s imagination.

But an even newer technology is intriguing the world’s lighting designers: OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes, create long-lasting, highly efficient illumination in a wide range of colors, just like their inorganic LED cousins. But unlike LEDs, which provide points of light like standard incandescent bulbs, OLEDs create uniform, diffuse light across ultrathin sheets of material that eventually can even be made to be flexible.

Ingo Maurer, who has designed chandeliers of shattered plates and light bulbs with bird wings, is using 10 OLED panels in a table lamp in the shape of a tree. The first of its kind, it sells for about $10,000.

He is thinking of other uses. “If you make a wall divider with OLED panels, it can be extremely decorative. I would combine it with point light sources,” he said.

Other designers have thought about putting them in ceiling tiles or in Venetian blinds, so that after dusk a room looks as if sunshine is still streaming in.

Today, OLEDs are used in a few cellphones, like the Impression from Samsung, and for small, expensive, ultrathin TVs from Sony and soon from LG. (Sony’s only OLED television, with an 11-inch screen, costs $2,500.) OLED displays produce a high-resolution picture with wider viewing angles than LCD screens.

In 2008, seven million of the one billion cellphones sold worldwide used OLED screens, according to Jennifer Colegrove, a DisplaySearch analyst. She predicts that next year, that number will jump more than sevenfold, to 50 million phones.

But OLED lighting may be the most promising market. Within a year, manufacturers expect to sell the first OLED sheets that one day will illuminate large residential and commercial spaces. Eventually they will be as energy efficient and long-lasting as LED bulbs, they say.

Because of the diffuse, even light that OLEDs emit, they will supplement, rather than replace, other energy-efficient technologies, like LED, compact fluorescent and advanced incandescent bulbs that create light from a single small point.

Its use may be limited at first, designers say, and not just because of its high price. “OLED lighting is even and monotonous,” said Mr. Maurer, a lighting designer with studios in Munich and New York. “It has no drama; it misses the spiritual side.”

“OLED lighting is almost unreal,” said Hannes Koch, a founder of rAndom International in London, a product design firm. “It will change the quality of light in public and private spaces.”

Mr. Koch’s firm was recently commissioned by Philips to create a prototype wall of OLED light, whose sections light up in response to movement.

Because OLED panels could be flexible, lighting companies are imagining sheets of lighting material wrapped around columns. (General Electric created an OLED-wrapped Christmas tree as an experiment.) OLED can also be incorporated into glass windows; nearly transparent when the light is off, the glass would become opaque when illuminated.

Because OLED panels are just 0.07 of an inch thick and give off virtually no heat when lighted, one day architects will no longer need to leave space in ceilings for deep lighting fixtures, just as homeowners do not need a deep armoire for their television now that flat-panel TVs are common.

The new technology is being developed by major lighting companies like G.E., Konica Minolta, Osram Sylvania, Philips and Universal Display.

“We’re putting significant financial resources into OLED development,” said Dieter Bertram, general manager for Philips’s OLED lighting group. Philips recently stepped up its investment in this area with the world’s first production line for OLED lighting, in Aachen, Germany.

Universal Display, a company started 15 years ago that develops and licenses OLED technologies, has received about $10 million in government grants over the last five years for OLED development, said Joel Chaddock, a technical project manager for solid state lighting in the Energy Department.

Armstrong World Industries and the Energy Department collaborated with Universal Display to develop thin ceiling tiles that are cool to the touch while producing pleasing white light that can be dimmed like standard incandescent bulbs. With a recently awarded $1.65 million government contract, Universal is now creating sheetlike undercabinet lights.

“The government’s role is to keep the focus on energy efficiency,” Mr. Chaddock said. “Without government input, people would settle for the neater aspects of the technology.”

G.E. is developing a roll-to-roll manufacturing process, similar to the way photo film and food packaging are created; it expects to offer OLED lighting sheets as early as the end of next year.

“We think that a flexible product is the way to go,” said Anil Duggal, head of G.E.’s 30-person OLED development team. OLED is one of G.E.’s top research priorities; the company is spending more than half its research and development budget for lighting on OLED.

Exploiting the flexible nature of OLED technology, Universal Display has developed prototype displays for the United States military, including a pen with a built-in screen that can roll in and out of the barrel.

The company has also supplied the Air Force with a flexible, wearable tablet that includes GPS technology and video conferencing capabilities.

As production increases and the price inevitably drops, OLED will eventually find wider use, its proponents believe, in cars, homes and businesses.

“I want to get the price down to $6 for an OLED device that gives off the same amount of light as a standard 60-watt bulb,” said Mr. Duggal of G.E. “Then, we’ll be competitive.”

“Best Website” to NY/AEE

Congratulations to the Officers and Members of the New York City AEE Chapter!

The New York City AEE Chapter has been selected as the winner of the “Best Chapter Website” Award for 2009. This Award recognizes the impressive achievements of your chapter during the past year and comes with our appreciation for the good work you are doing.

We hope a chapter representative will be able to come to Washington, D.C. on November 3 to receive this award on your Chapter’s behalf. The Awards will be presented during the Chapter Leadership Meeting to be held at 1:00 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Room 103A. Please let Ruth Whitlock () know the name of the person who will accept the award. If you are unable to send a representative, please let her know if you would like the award plaque shipped to you.

Congratulations again on a job well done!

Cordially,

Al Thumann

Executive Director

Association of Energy Engineers

Experts Confirm Open Water Circling Arctic

By Andrew C. Revkin, NYTimes, Sept 6 09

[UPDATE 9/6: The National Ice Center on Friday said that a navigable passage has opened through sea ice along the entire Russian Arctic coast, although the center added that patches of dangerous thick ice still pepper the area. In a statement, the center said: "This is the first recorded occurrence of the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route both being open at the same time."