Is it as "green" as they say? Mostly, nope.

You knew this, right? When most companies tell you they're “green,” they're lying—at least a little.

(Image: Is it really green? This image represents the "greenwashing" Sin of Vagueness. Source: Terrachoice Environmental Marketing.)

The technique is called “greenwashing,” and it's designed to convince consumers that the product is somehow better than competitors, or is safer, or has reduced negative impact on the environment.

The environmental marketing firm Terrachoice has issued its 2009 version of the Sins of Greenwashing.

You can read it yourself at the link above, but as we're here to do some of the work for you, here are some highlights.

Terrachoice identified seven “sins” of greenwashing, and then went out and checked more than 2,200 products sold in North America. Its conclusion: 98 percent committed at least one sin.

Put another way, that means that only one product out of 50 is actually as environmentally friendly as it says it is.

And what are the Terrachoice seven sins? Here they are, from the Greenwashing Sins report.

One, the hidden trade-off. Saying paper from a sustainably harvested forest is actually greener may be false if that paper is produced with higher levels of greenhouse gases or water pollution.

Two, no proof. Some products claim recycled content, for example, that nobody has checked.

Three, vagueness. “All-natural” doesn't mean safe, or green. Botulism is natural, as is lead and also radioactive plutonium. (Yep, "radioactive" plutonium commits a kind of sin, since most any plutionium you're likely to find will be radioactive.")

Four, irrelevance. Terrachoice uses the example “CFC-free.” It's kind of meaningless, since CFC content is illegal. Makes as much sense as a label saying “Contains no nuclear weapons” on a bottle of beer.

Five, lesser of two evils. Like, organic cigarettes are better for you than regular ones.

Six, fibbing. Making claims that are outright false. Thankfully, this sin is the least common, Terrachoice says.

And the newest addition to the list, Sin Seven: worshipping false labels. This can take several forms, among them posting some kind of meaningless “certification” image. Some companies use logos that don't actually have any certification process behind them.

The whole business challenges consumers to do more than read labels, but also to think about them.

If a can of beans says “eco-friendly,” you can legitimately ask, “Says who?”

If a shaker of baby powder says “all natural,” you can ask, “But what about allergens and toxicity?”

And lots of products say they're biodegradable. But this puts the burden on the buyer, because unless you subject the product to the exact conditions it needs to biodegrade, it won't. Example: biodegradable plastics made from corn require fairly high heat and moisture to break down. An average backyard compost bin won't degrade it very quickly, and if it goes to the landfill, it may not degrade in your lifetime.

When you do see a logo, pay attention. These are the ones Terrachoice has determined have some validity: Design for the Environment, U.S. EPA; EcoCert; EcoLogo; Energy Star; Epeat; Forest Stewardship Council (FSC); Green Seal; Greenguard; Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI); USDA Organic; WaterSense.

These aren't all the legit certification logos, so don't reject a product simply for the lack of one of these. On the other hand, encourage firms to convince you with real data rather than a slogan and a picture.

“In the absence of a reliable eco-label, remember the Seven Sins of Greenwashing (www.sinsofgreenwashing.org) and choose the product that offers transparency, information and education,” said Terrachoice.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

New call for study of false killer whales around Hawai'i

An apparent crash in the population of false killer whales around the Hawaiian Islands has prompted a call for new research into whay that's happening.

One of the questions is whether and how much fishing is affecting the whales.

(Image: NOAA photo of false killer whales off Hawaii by Robin Baird.)

The Marine Mammal Advisory Committee of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council met last week in Honolulu and called for a series of studies into whale populations.

Among the reviews recommended: aerial counts, photo identification and genetic work on the population; assessments of the impact of longline and shortline (longlines less than a nautical line in length) fishing on the whales; determining to what degree the whales are impacted by being shot by fishermen and ingesting hooks when they go after bait or hooked fish; getting the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument to study the whales in its waters; and more.

It's generally concluded that the large dolphins known as false killer whales have two distinct populations around Hawai'i. One is a group of several hundred whales that remain around the islands, and the other is the pelagic stock that ranges long distances through the eastern North Pacific.

As far as the National Marine Fisheries Service knows, Hawai'i's longline fleet catches fewer than six animals a year, but there is not enough information on whether that has a significant impact on the local population.

“There is also no data available on the current productivity rate or on the current population trend of the Hawaii stocks. Furthermore, additional injury and mortality of false killer whales is known to occur outside of the EEZ by US and international longline operations, and the potential effect on the Hawaii pelagic stock is unknown,” the fishery council said in a news release.

There are some 6,000 foreign longline ships working the Pacific. About 125 are based in Hawai'i. But additionally, there are many largely unregulated recreational and nearshore shortline fishing boats working from Hawai'i harbors.

There was some information at the meeting, generally anecdotal, that some of the unregulated fishers deliberately shoot false killer whales that come into contact with their fishing gear.
For more information see the fishery council website.

For more information on false killer whales, see this NOAA website, or visit http://www.cascadiaresearch.org/robin/falsekillerwhale.htm.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Dramatic greenhouse cuts necessary and also possible

If you want to help save the world as we know it, it will take more than incremental changes, according to new research.

A switch from an 18-mile-per-gallon car to a 20 mpg car won't do it. That's just a 10 percent improvement. We need 70 percent, according to new research.

(Image: New computer simulations show the extent that average air temperatures at Earth's surface could warm by 2080-2099 compared to 1980-1999, if (top) greenhouse gases emissions continue to climb at current rates, or if (bottom) society cuts emissions by 70 percent. In the latter case, temperatures rise by less than 2°C (3.6°F) across nearly all of Earth's populated areas. However, unchecked emissions could lead to warming of 3°C (5.4°F) or more across parts of Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia. (Graphic courtesy Geophysical Research Letters, modified by UCAR.)

New research, as the caption indicates, is suggesting we need a 70 percent cut in greenhouse gases to stabilize climate change, reduce flooding potential in Waikiki, minimize droughts, and so forth.

For the car, 70 percent means going from an 18 miles per gallon to a 60 miles per gallon vehicle--but that's just one way to do it.

For the 60 watt lightbulb, switching from incandescent to fluorescent will work, since it cuts emissions about three-quarters for the same amount of light.

In other areas, the saving are more difficult to attain, and more difficult to calculate. You can't readily cut your food consumption by 70 percent, but by eating locally grown produce, you could reduce significantly the among of travel energy inherent at the kitchen table, for instance.

It still won't prevent the loss of the world as we know it, but it could help keep the world from being too different, said researchers who report in the April 21 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

"This research indicates that we can no longer avoid significant warming during this century. But, if the world were to implement this level of emission cuts, we could stabilize the threat of climate change and avoid catastrophe," said lead author Warren Washington, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The AGU in a press release noted that global temperatures are up nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century, much (but not all) of it the result of human activities. And there's a suggestion that this level of change may put the globe near some kind of climate tipping point.

The paper is entitled, "How much climate change can be avoided by mitigation?" Its authors are Washington, Gerald A. Meehl, Haiyan Teng, David Lawrence, Lawrence Buja and W. Gary Strand, all of NCAR in Colorado; Reto Knutti: Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland; and Claudia Tebaldi: Climate Central, Princeton, New Jersey and Palo Alto, California.

Computerized climate models are favorite targets for frothing climate change deniers, but Washington and his associates got some interesting information out of them, using NCAR's Community Climate System Model, running on supercomputers.

They assumed that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has already risen from 280 to 380 parts per million since the start of the industrial age, will rise to 450. That's viewed by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program as a reachable goal if significant conservation programs are enacted. If not, the numbers is 750 by 2100.

At 450, they calculated that temperatures would go up another degree Fahrenheit by 2100, that sea level rise would still happen but could be reduced by three inches or so. Fisheries would be preserved by fish not moving to new waters where temperatures were more to their liking. And dramatic droughts in the American Southwest and floods in the Northeast could be limited.

The result, the authors say: “The climate system would stabilize by about 2100, instead of continuing to warm.”

"This study provides some hope that we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change -- if society can cut emissions substantially over the next several decades and continue major cuts through the century," Washington said.

It's not impossible; not even that difficult. If you want to keep the gas guzzler, just invite your neighbors to commute to work with you. Put three one-person-per-car commuters into a single vehicle together, and you cut emissions close to two-thirds.

And it may help prevent the accident you get into, chatting with each other on the cell phone while commuting.

How many other ideas for 70 percent cuts in energy production can you come up with?

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Hawaii hotspot theory: the moving pencil writes...

The latest in the complex geophysics of tectonic plates and hotspots, which has direct application to the Hawaiian-Emperor chain of islands and seamounts, is that both can move.

(Image: The Hawaiian Emperor Seamount Chain, with the Hawaiian Islands at lower right and the bend clearly visible, roughly halfway to Japan. The arc at the top, where the Emperor Seamounts terminate, is the northern edge of the Pacific Plate. Credit: NOAA.)

Here's a simplified analogy.

If you repeatedly tap a pencil on a piece of paper, it makes a dot.

If you drag the paper as the pencil is tapping, it makes a line of dots.

If you start moving the pencil as the paper is being dragged, the line of dots changes direction.

There's been lots of speculation about how that works on the earth's surface. In this case, the piece of paper is the Pacific Plate—the vast chunk of the Earth's crust that underlies most of the Pacific Ocean. The pencil is a hotspot, which repeatedly pokes through the plate to form volcanoes.

Current theory is that the Pacific Plate is adrift, moving slowly to the northwest, with islands popping through as it goes over the hotspot. The nascent island Loihi and the Big Island are being formed now, fed directly by the hot spot. Maui is a million or so years old, O'ahu two or three million and Kaua'i five million years and 300 miles from the hotspot.

On it goes in roughly a straight line out to beyond Kure Atoll, where the Hawaiian archipelago takes a distinct northward turn, and it becomes the Emperor Seamounts. There's long been talk about how the change in direction took place, but most folks have settled on a change in the direction of the Pacific Plate's movement.

The newest theory is presented in Science: “The Bent Hawaiian-Emperor Hotspot Track: Inheriting the Mantle Wind,” by University of Rochester geophysicist John Tarduno, and fellow scientists Hans-Peter Bunge, Norman Sleep and Ulrich Hansen. You can find a rundown at http://www.earthmodels.org/publications/science-2009.

The upshot is that they argue that the hotspot was moving south as the Pacific Plate moved northwest, and the bend is the result of the hotspot dramatically slowing down. In the pencil-paper analogy, as the paper is being dragged by its upper left corner, the tapping pencil is being moved down, and then stops and continues tapping in place.

The science of why the hotspot moved are beyond the scope of this piece, but it's not just a theory; there is science beyind it.

One piece of compelling evidence is that geological testing can indicate how far north a volcanic rock was formed. If a hotspot were stationary, then all the rocks of the Hawaiian Emperor chain would have signs of being formed at the latitude where Loihi is now being formed.

They don't. The oldest seamounts in the Emperors were formed farther north. Tarduno, quoted in ScienceDaily, says: "The only way to account for these findings is if the hotspot itself was moving south.”

There's some background on hotspot theory at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/hotspots.html.

The science paper: John Tarduno, Hans-Peter Bunge, Norm Sleep, and Ulrich Hansen. The Bent Hawaiian-Emperor Hotspot Track: Inheriting the Mantle Wind. Science, 2009; 324 (5923): 50 DOI: 10.1126/science.1161256.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

How many 100-mile-per-gallon car models? X-Prize says maybe 136 of them.

There might not be a big selection of cars with superb fuel economy at the local car dealer in Hawai'i, but there should be soon.

(Image: Some of the X-Prize entries are shown off. Credit: Progressive Automotive X-Prize.)

The Progressive Automotive X-Prize today announced it has an amazing 111 qualified entrants, prepared to prove they can build safe, production-capable cars that consumers will buy—and which get the equivalent of 100 miles a gallon. The builders have 136 car designs.

That's more than four times the average fuel economy of American cars.

The payoff: the winning car designer, to be selected next year, gets $10 million.

Entrants from 25 states (there is no Hawai'i entry) and 11 nations represent individuals, car makers, universities and a range of groups.

A quarter would build full-on electric cars. Nearly another quarter gasoline or diesel cars. And another quarter gas or diesel hybrids. The remaining cars include multi-fuel, natural gas, compressed air, various biofuels and variants—one is even a combined human-gas-electric powered vehicle.

In appearance, they run the gamut. There are cars that look like traditional cars, and ones that look like golf carts. Ones that look like three-wheeled motorcycles, and like high-tech plastic spiders. Some are real spacey.

And a couple look like something the kid down the street made out of junk parts.

There are two classes. For your standard suburban driver who doesn't want to stand out too much, there's the Mainstream Class: “Mainstream Class vehicles must carry four or more passengers, have four or more wheels, and offer a 200 mile range.”

For those with an edge, there's the Alternative Class: “Alternative Class vehicles must carry two or more passengers, have no constraints on the number of wheels, and allow for a 100 mile range.”

There's also a Demonstration Division that doesn't qualify for the cash prize, in which established big car makers can show off their most fuel efficient design efforts.

Says Progressive: “In the coming months, Registered Teams will undergo Design Judging based on a detailed Data Submission package, which will provide information on their vehicle's features, production capability, safety and business plans. Those that pass Design Judging will move into the performance testing phase and partake in a series of competition events that will begin as early as May 2010.”

For more information visit http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/.

See our last post on the X-Prize here. For more RaisingIslands stories on efficient transportation, click the "efficient transportation" link in the right-hand column.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009