The Weather Channel’s Natalie Allen, anchor of Forecast Earth: “Don’t continually show me the polar bear floating on the melting ice. Tell me what I can do.”

August 6, 2008

Over the past weeks, a number of readers have written in about one program on television they are following with great interest. It’s the Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth, which airs Saturdays and Sunday at 5 PM, 7 PM, 1 AM and 3 AM (Eastern). It focuses on climate change, green businesses and inventions, and the environment. It’s terrific.

When the decision was made in January to increase the program’s length to one hour, the producers added a new face: anchorwoman Natalie Allen, formerly of CNN and MSNBC. Allen, along with scientists Dr. Heidi Cullen and Dr. Marcus Eriksen, and zoologist Jarod Miller, cover fuels, feedstocks, “green gizmos”, plus portraits and profiles of both the enviromental issues and the people driving the response to climate change.

It’s a program that’s well worth the investment of time by viewers, and I was delighted to spend some time this week with Natalie, who shared some insights about the program, the stories, and the viewers. More information about Forecast Earth can be obtained at the extensive and informative website. Natalie’s blog can be accessed here.

BD: Hi Natalie, tell us a little about about Forecast Earth.

NA: We cover the big picture - the climatologists and scientists; the medium picture - new stories and profiles from me; and the small picture - such as green gizmos. We’re watched by Moms who are thinking about their children. By green businesspeople who are trying to make a difference. And people who really focus on climate change.

BD: How did you come to join the program?

NA: I was asking myself what could I do next in TV that could be important. From 1992 to 2001 I was at CNN, anchoring mostly during daytime, then I was at at MSNBC. Last year I was freelancing at NBC when the phone rang. The producers at the Weather Channel said they were expanding their climate initiatives, that Forecast Earth had fantastic scientists and they wanted a news person to front the show as it expanded to an hour.

I felt when I joined that this would be the news story of our time, and look how much it has changed.

BD: What’s different about Forecast Earth, from work you had done at other news networks?

NA: I remember research that there less than 3 minutes on climate and the environment on news channels each day. 3 minutes! And as you can imagine, at CNN and MSNBC you get 3-4 minutes, max, to tell a story. Here we do one thing, and we give it time.

BD: You’re a news person in a sea of scientists, how do you see your role?

NA: To the scientists here, and I’m the one without the PhD, I’m like the everyperson, always trying to think of the questions that the viewers would ask.

BD: How do you approach story selection?

NA: You know, I think it was the lady who does my hair that said it first: “Don’t continually show me the polar bear floating on the melting ice; tell me what I can do.”

BD: How has the program changed you personally, the way you approach daily life?

NA: Well, I was already recycling, using cotton bags at the Publix, that sort of thing. But now, I basically freak out if I can’t recycle.

BD: Tell us about a favorite segment, perhaps a story about someone who is making a difference.

NA: Ray Anderson runs a carpet business in Georgia, and is very successful. A few years ago a client asked him “what’s your environmental plan?” and he replied “What do you mean? We don’t have one.” He looked into it, and now he’s turned his company around, and his carpet business — and let’s face it, carpet can last in landfills for a long time — will be carbon zero by 2013. “What matters,” he said, “is not your stock price but what you leave behind.” He proudly said he was the first in Georgia to own a Prius, beat Ted Turner to it.

BD: Of the stories you’ve done, tell us about one that has touched you the most personally?

NA: Robert Swan, who was the first to walk to both the North and South Pole and who has seen the melting icecaps and the ozone hole; he was one of those who talked about climate change for years when nobody would listen.

BD: If you could send a message to your viewers what would it be?

NA: Thank you, each one of you, for caring about climate change.

Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Interview | 1 Comment

Biofuels Digest Newsmaker: Ethanol guru Dr. Bruce Dale

May 15, 2008

Professor Bruce Dale is Professor of Chemical Engineering and former Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State University. In 1996 he won the Charles D. Scott Award for contributions to the use of biotechnology to produce fuels, chemical and other industrial products from renewable plant resources. Dr. Dale has authored over 90 referred journal papers, is an active industry consultant and expert witness, and holds thirteen U. S. and foreign patents. He joined Biofuels Digest by telephone today for a Newsmaker interview.

Digest: With the food vs. fuel debate, what do you see as positive and what is negative? Is there a potential to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as cellulosic ethanol gets mixed up with corn ethanol in a “ban biofuels” movement?

Dale: There’s a potential to throw out the baby with the bath water but I think cooler heads will prevail. Not to run down corn or sugar I heard a prominent person at NRDC drew a distinction between cellulosic and first generation. Ten minutes later a GM guy said the same thing.

What’s distressing is the failure of the media, and society as a whole. The never draw comparisons. It’s not like we have a perfect fuel. Gasoline is what we have. It’s ethanol, made at this time from grain, or gasoline. We are in a real pickle and we need alternatives.

Shopping for a car I wouldn’t say I am going to buy a Lexus no matter what. I would make choices and comparisons. That’s not happening with the debate.

On the positive side, I think that biofuels are robust enough that they can take the criticism.

Digest: In the base of misleading coverage of biofuels, do you see it as a product of the fact that most people haven’t been exposed to the complexities of agriculture, trade, environment and business - so we have a learning curve - or are there more sinister forces at work?

Dale: There are all kinds of motivations , of people. There are some powerful interests that want to strangle biofuels in their infancy, so some coverage isn’t honest, can’t be. A lot of this is Future Shock, it takes a while to become educated on the technology and not many journalists are educated in science or engineering. They are intelligent but it will take time.

It turns out that Timothy Searchinger - who is affiliated with Princeton - is a lawyer and not a scientist. He was with the environmental defense fund. It’s remarkable that no one took a few minutes to Google him to find out his background. I don’t know him, but it’s not a study that would have passed muster among the people I know who analyze life cycle impacts. It doesn’t meet the standards to be published.

With respect to direct land use effects, clearly if you plough up an acre of CRP land, then an impact analysis has to be done and should be. But to speculate about the impact of market forces a half a world away, it is really weak and dangerous.

Let me give you an example. If our friends in the automotive industry put more electric hybrids on the road, it would use more nickel from mines in Kenya. The Searchinger analysis says that the electric car’s impact has to be measured in terms of any negative impact that comes from a rise in nickel demand and nickel prices, anywhere in the world where this has a consequence.

It’s unethical and we don’t have the data. We are so far away from being able to do that analysis.

Digest: E85 has not received the support many had hoped for it. The public seems to have understood very easily that ethanol has 30 percent less BTUs than gasoline, but they haven’t as easily understood the positive potential from ethanol’s higher octane levels. Is that why E85 is lagging?

Dale: I am aware of the arguments over E85’s loss of mileage. The auto industry can design or tune engines to take more advantage of ethanol’s higher octane, but they have bigger fish to fry and they don’t get into that.

Digest: What do you see as the biuggest challenge for cellulosic ethanol. The high production cost?

Dale: Speaking as a chemical engineer, and in terms of process engineering, I am confident that we will get the costs down on cellulosic ethanol production, and that it will happen more quickly than people think. There is more than enough biomass to provide the cellulosic feedstock, there is plenty of plant material. In terms of how we are going to collect and transport thousands of tons of biomass, now is the time. The USDA should be establishing research centers on the scale of the DOE’s funding of biomass conversion into fuel. It needs to happen. The cellulosic issue will happen in the next five years.

Digest: What processes besides enzymatic cellulosic ethanol have the most promise? Pyrolysis? Gasification?

Dale: Ultimately there are a number of thermal and biological processes and our use of them will be largely determined by the properties of the feedstock. For reasons I am not going to get into here, the thermal processes are more likely for woods, especially soft woods, while the biological processes are more likely to be used with the straws and grasses.

Digest: Are new fuels going to be a major part of the picture. What about biobutanol?

Dale: I like butanol as a fuel molecule, but in the patents and papers I have read, there’s never more than a 2 percent concentration of butanol. There’s too much water, and I don’t see how they are going to solve this. But I wish them well, because it is a very good molecule.

Digest: What do you see as the biggest challenge for biofuels as a whole.

Dale: I am an optimist, but I am not particularly optimistic about our political leadership in either party. I don’t see much realism from the parties or the candidates on energy or transport issues. We need leadership on this, and the new President has to supply this. If he or she does not “get this” problem of our petroleum dependence, it will be a lot more difficult to realize our goals.

We need to keep the pressure up on our elected representatives to find honest solutions to petroleum. Let’s be grown ups, there are no perfect alternatives out there except to keep our dependence on petroleum.

Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Interview, Producer News, Research | Leave a Comment