well, could it?
Could your trash can solve the energy crisis? is the question asked by the latest issue of the New Scientist.
The article highlights one of many companies looking to convert your trash into clean, green energy.
IST is not alone in this revolution. It is one of a growing number of companies and research groups around the world working on gasification – a process that zaps household waste into energy and which, its advocates say, produces few or no harmful emissions. Yet as pilot gasification plants begin to spring up around the world, this apparent environmentalist’s dream is not being universally welcomed. Opponents argue that the process is far from clean and that its track record in terms of energy efficiency and emissions can hardly be considered green. Not to mention the fact that it encourages the throwaway society that the environmental movement has been trying so hard to get rid of. So what is the real story? Is vaporising trash the answer to our energy and waste-disposal woes, or an environmental wolf in sheep’s clothing?
It involves a process called plasma gasification, which is something I won’t go into, since the article is very informative about the process.
I am directing you to this article a.) because it is interesting, but more importantly, b.) continuing proof that people are innovative and working hard to come up with alternatives to how we view waste and energy. I think it is also important to look at criticism of these new process by looking at who is the critic. Many large, established, politically active corporations are looking at these innovations as a threat. They have the time and money for extensive ad campaigns to confuse the consumer with what is good and bad about emerging technologies.
I do think the article is well written and deserves attention so that you have this in your mind. Especially, if we start seeing the attacks by other “scientists” challenging or refuting these processes as a possibility.
paradox lost
Many of the climate change deniers point to the Antarctic to prove their point. You see, it is actually having an ice increase, while the arctic is suffering its worse losses. So, John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey has set his sights on figuring out why this may be the case.
And, in an ironic twist, it seems the hole in the ozone is the culprit… but it isn’t going to last. Weather patterns in the Antarctic have changed due to the hole as a result warmer air is blowing over the western part of the continent and colder air is on the east.
this makes me sad
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up the scariest thing I had to worry about was earthworms on the ground by the jungle gym. Or maybe, if there were a smog alert and I wouldn’t be able to go play in the pool.
We had is easy.
Kids nowadays…. well, this report just makes me sad:
No Kidding, One in Three Children Fear Earth Apocalypse, via TreeHugger
There’s a new bogeyman lurking in the closet, and this one isn’t imaginary. Us. One out of three children aged 6 to 11 fears that Ma Earth won’t exist when they grow up, while more than half—56 percent—worry that the planet will be a blasted heath (or at least avery unpleasant place to live), according to a new survey.
Commissioned by Habitat Heroes and conducted by Opinion Research, the telephone survey polled a national sample of 500 American preteens—250 males and 250 females.
On a sliding scale of anxieties, minority kids have it worst; 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children believe that the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they reach adulthood.
Can you imagine? I can only think it is awful to feel that scared about your future and then have to be dependent on your parents to turn it around for you. Most parents worry about grounding their kids and what impression that will leave…I laugh at the thought of some kid in therapy 30 years from now saying… “if only they had saved the world”…
But seriously, guys…. if only we would save the world
as if they aren’t bother some enough
So, you just get to your desk, whether at home or work. You open up your email to see that you have 22 new messages… and, then you see that 15 of them are span and you have to go through the process of delete, delete…. de… lete.
It is annoying and a waste of time.
But there are indications that it is also a harm on our planet, according to The San Francisco Chronicle:
A report being released Wednesday by security company McAfee Inc. finds that spammers are a scourge to your inbox and the environment, generating an astounding 62 trillion junk e-mails in 2008 that wasted enough electricity to power 2.4 million U.S. homes for a year.
The “Carbon Footprint of E-mail Spam Report” estimated the computational power needed to process spam — from criminals tapping their armies of infected PCs to send it, Internet providers transmitting it, and end users viewing and deleting it.
The report concluded that the electricity needed to process a single spam message results in 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere — the equivalent of driving 3 feet in a car.
So, the next time you get spam… just get more mad thinking that the energy could have been used to power your home. oh. well.
two things about the ocean
So first, comes a report that if we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate, the acidification of the ocean is a certainty and a “planet changer“. One reason is because the coral life is expected to die off within the half century.
The ocean absorbs about 1/4 of the CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activities each year, which tempers the effect of this greenhouse gas on our climate. Carbonic acid is formed when the CO2 is dissolved in the seawater, which lowers the pH (increases the acidity). An acidic ocean reduces the rate at which corals can produce their skeletons and at which other marine organisms can build their shells. And so many other marine organisms are affected by anything that takes a toll on the corals. It’s estimated that the global economy based on coral (and other related marine life) is about $16 trillion per year.
On the heels of that report, comes this report where the EPA is looking into the idea that ocean acidification is a violation of the Clean Water Act.
The United States Environmental Protection Agencyannounced steps to protect U.S. waters from the threat of ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act. Today, EPA issued a notice of data availability to be published in the Federal Register that calls for information and data on ocean acidification that the agency will use to evaluate water-quality criteria under the Clean Water Act.
The notice responded to a formal petition and threatened litigation from the Center for Biological Diversity that sought to compel the agency to impose stricter pH criteria for ocean water quality and publish guidance to help states protect American waters from ocean acidification. EPA’s notice marks the first time that the Clean Water Act will be invoked by the agency to address ocean acidification.
“Ocean acidification is likely the greatest threat to the health of our oceans and is occurring at a frightening rate,” said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program. “The federal government has finally acknowledged that ocean acidification is a threat; now it must take the next step and fully implement the Clean Water Act to protect our nation’s waters from ”the other CO2 problem.”
All I want to say about this is that this is BIG, HUGE news. Can you imagine if they find it is in violation and the limitations and restirictions that will then be enforced by everyone from big corporations to the US Navy.
I like this Lisa Jackson….
farfegnugen
Admission: my entire life, I have only owned Volkswagens. I like them. They have served me quite well. I even had one that I drove for ten years, got about 300K miles on it with only one standard transmission! These are good, GOOD cars.
So, I thought I would direct you all to this article:
Volkswagen US CEO pushes for fuel efficiency, via The Associated Press
Automakers must work to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions as they struggle to deal with the toughest economic conditions in more than a generation, Volkswagen’s U.S. CEO said Wednesday.
Stefan Jacoby, president and chief executive of Volkswagen of America, told journalists at the New York International Auto Show that these changes won’t just come from hybrid and electric vehicles, but also more fuel-efficient gas and diesel models.
It continues on discussing the benefits of diesel (which VW just came out with an AMAZING version of) and the need for fuel efficiency standards that mimic the new rules set in California.
This is a company that is trying. Yes. Could they do more? Any automaker could do more… but, I think they are doing close to their best.
room for journalists in climate change
In a report out of the latest meeting of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the number one sentiment was that journalists were not doing their job in getting the word out about the severity of this whole global warming thing.
In fact, Katherine Richardson from the University of Copenhagen said that a new strategy is needed for communicating climate change, one that sidesteps journalists, and the money-making organizations they work for, entirely, according to Nature.
But the author of the report brings up a relevant issue: if the scientists don’t talk to the journailists, ensuring accurate data.. who will?
Authorities on climate change are irreplaceable in informing the media, whether they do so by being a reliable source for science reporters, by writing op-eds in mainstream newspapers or by contributing to blogs. With recent cuts in core science reporting staff, such as those at CNN, it is especially vital that scientists continue this service to society. It would be better still if they combined this with more direct communication through avenues such as blogs, which are becoming increasingly important resources for reporters and interested citizens (Nature 458, 274–277; 2009). But such efforts should be seen as complementary to, rather than as a replacement for, mainstream media. By embracing both, scientists may well see their messages begin to permeate more effectively.
interesting things to read
State of the Nations – III The Environment, via Scoop
I didn’t read parts I or II, but part III is quite interesting:
The earth’s resources are finite. They are being fought over and consumed at a rate that is not sustainable. It is a problem that goes well beyond the most publicized problem of climate change. It is interesting that in a supposed free trade world, the military has to be such a big part of the effort to control resources. It is a complete and full contradiction without any gray areas. Even without resource wars, given the artificially created demands of western society, we would rapidly deplete many resources and continue to increase the levels of pollution, environmental damage, species extinction, climate change and other environmental disasters that are occurring. It simply cannot continue.
Has global warming really stopped?, via The New Scientist
(psst… I’ll give you a hint… nope)
We show that the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer-term warming.
Lying in Wait, via Chemical and Engineering News
someone has been using the ocean as a trash receptacle…
The find earlier this month off the Oahu coast by researchers from theSchool of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology (SOEST) at theUniversity of Hawaii, Manoa, on behalf of the U.S. Army is likely just part of the more than 8,000 tons of chemical agents that the Army reportedly dumped off the Hawaiian shores at the end of World War II. But this cache is only a small fraction of all the munitions and bulk containers holding chemical weapons agents that were routinely scuttled in the ocean.
According to Army documents, large quantities of shells, mines, solid rocket fuels, propellants, radioactive materials, and chemical weapons were dumped into the ocean not only off U.S. shores but all around the world. And on at least 74 occasions, the Army knowingly dumped hazardous chemical agents such as mustard, lewisite, phosgene, and VX off U.S. coastlines. Records of exact locations of such dumps can be hard to find, only partly for security reasons.
THIS is how you treat your children
Aboriginal leaders say they’ll evacuate 700 kids affected by harmful fumes, via Canadian News
A remote First Nations community in northern Ontario is preparing to evacuate about 700 children over fears that harmful fuel fumes are making them ill, an aboriginal leader said Thursday.
Plans are underway to airlift the children out of Attawapiskat First Nation near James Bay this month, even though it could cost millions of dollars, said Grand Chief Stan Louttit.
“Both levels of government refuse to help,” he said.
no maple? ok… NOW i am mad!
A little known secret about me… I L.O.V.E. maple.
I don’t indulge often… I rarely eat pancakes, so no maple ingestion there. I don’t eat donuts.. but back in the day I would jump for the maple eclairs. Maple Oatmeal… all mine! And, I did once have a nasty habit for the maple frosted scones at Starbucks. (May I follow all of this up by saying… I didn’t know then, what I know now.) When I find a recipe that is sweetened with the sugary tree juice, you can bet I try it.
That is why I was so disappointed to come across this article: All Tapped Out, via The Daily Climate.
All farming depends on the weather, but few foods are more dependent on a specific climate than maple syrup. After all, for the sugar maple’s sap to run at all requires cooperative weather — freezing nights followed by warmer days.
But with the build-up of invisible greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those temperature swings don’t happen as reliably. At risk is an American tradition that stretches back even before Europeans discovered the “New World.”
“Weather controls it all,” says Marty Fitzgerald, a fifth-generation sugarmaker in upstate New York.
And, in recent years, the weather has been weird.
What is most interesting about this article is the education I gained about how maple… er, sap… is extracted and produced into syrup. Honestly, I was pretty surprised that it is $65 million per year industry.
If you are slightly interested in syrup production and the effects from global warming and temperature shifts, this is a fun read. If not, don’t read it… but be warned… imitation maple syrup may be close at hand.
Stumble it!